Questões

September 7, 1991

Dear friend,

       I do not like high school. The cafeteria is called the "Nutrition Center," which is strange. There is this one girl in my advanced English class named Susan. In middle school, Susan was very fun to be around. She liked movies, and her brother Frank made her tapes of this great music that she shared with us. But over the summer she had her braces taken off, and she got a little (1) taller and prettier and grew breasts. Now, she acts a lot dumber in the hallways, especially when boys are around. And I think it's sad because Susan doesn't look as happy. To tell you the truth, she doesn't like to admit she's in the advanced English class, and she doesn't like to say "hi" to me in the hall anymore.

      When Susan was at the guidance counselor meeting about Michael, she said that Michael once told her that she was the (2) prettiest girl in the whole world, braces and all. Then, he asked her to "go with him," which was a big deal at any school. They call it "going out" in high school. And they kissed and talked about movies, and she missed him terribly because he was her best friend.

      It's funny, too, because boys and girls normally weren't best friends around my school. But Michael and Susan were. Kind of like my Aunt Helen and me. I'm sorry. "My Aunt Helen and I." That's one thing I learned this week. That and more consistent punctuation. I keep quiet most of the time, and only one kid named Sean really seemed to notice me. He waited for me after gym class and said really immature things like how he was going to give me a "swirlie," which is where someone sticks your head in the toilet and flushes to make your hair swirl around. He seemed pretty unhappy as well, and I told him so. Then, he got mad and started hitting me, and I just did the things my brother taught me to do. My brother is a very good fighter.

Book: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Stephen Chbosky.

         Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the most rapidly advancing technology humans have ever developed. A year ago, you wouldn’t often hear AI come up in a regular conversation, but today it seems there’s constant talk about how generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E will affect the future of work, the spread of information, and more. A major question that has thus far been almost entirely unexamined is how this AI-dominated future will affect people’s minds.

           There’s been some research into how using AI in their jobs will affect people mentally, but there isn’t yet an understanding of how simply living amongst so much AI-generated content and systems will affect people’s sense of the world. How is AI going to change individuals and society in the not-too-distant future?

            AI will obviously make it easier to produce disinformation. That will affect people’s sense of trust as they’re scrolling on social media. AI can also allow someone to imitate your loved ones, which further erodes people’s general ability to trust what was once unquestionable.

Internet: <wired.com> (adapted). 

Text 3: Extreme heat intensifies across south-west US

A heat dome over the US south-west has translated (1) into extreme heat warnings from coast to coast, which continue to affect more than 110 million people.

Temperature records could be broken in as many as 38 cities. In Las Vegas, the intense heatwave is threatening on Sunday to break or tie the city's record high of 117F (47.2C).

It comes as soaring temperatures are also hitting southern Europe and Canada is battling the worst season of wildfires in its history.

Scientists have long warned (2) that climate change linked to human activities will lead to an increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events.

Elsewhere in the south-western US, hundreds of firefighters have been battling brush fires in blistering heat and low humidity on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

Extract from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66218321

    Melting of ice is slowing planet’s rotation and could disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS. The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet.

    The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years. The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping.

    The length of the Earth’s day has been steadily increasing over geological time due to the gravitational drag of the moon on the planet’s oceans and land. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world’s oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth more oblate – or fatter – slowing the rotation of the planet and lengthening the day still further.

   The planetary impact of humanity was also demonstrated recently by research that showed the redistribution of water had caused the Earth’s axis of rotation – the north and south poles – to move. Other work has revealed that humanity’s carbon emissions are shrinking the stratosphere.

    “We can see our impact as humans on the whole Earth system, not just locally, like the rise in temperature, but really fundamentally, altering how it moves in space and rotates,” said Prof Benedikt Soja of ETH Zurich in Switzerland. “Due to our carbon emissions, we have done this in just 100 or 200 years. Whereas the governing processes previously had been going on for billions of years, and that is striking.” 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/15/climate-crisis-making-days-longer-study