President Joe Biden benefited from a record-breaking amount of donations from anonymous donors to outside groups backing him, meaning the public will never have a full accounting of who helped him win the White House. Biden’s winning campaign was backed by $145 million in so-called dark money donations, a type of fundraising Democrats have decried for years. Those fundraising streams augmented Biden’s $1.5 billion haul, in itself a record for a challenger to an incumbent president. That amount of dark money dwarfs the $28.4 million spent on behalf of his rival, former President Donald Trump. And it tops the previous record of $113 million in anonymous donations backing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012. Democrats have said they want to ban dark money as uniquely corrupting, since it allows supporters to quietly back a candidate without scrutiny.
(University of Aberdeen) The University of Aberdeen has today launched the UK’s first postgraduate degree programme in Energy Transition Systems and Technologies.
The new course, which is available to study full-time on campus from September (depending on Covid-19 situation), or part-time online, reinforces and builds upon the city’s reputation as a major international energy centre.
It will educate to MSc level a new generation of systems engineers providing industry-relevant skills and training, with future career possibilities in all areas of the energy sector.
Based in the School of Engineering, with expert contributions from the Schools of geosciences, business and law, the new Masters programme will draw on much of the ground-breaking research being conducted within the University’s Centre for Energy Transition (CET).
By Asma Lateef
As 2021 begins, Bread for the World Institute, along with many others in the United States, is trying to discern a way forward in the aftermath of the January 6 attempted coup. I never expected to write “attempted coup” about our own country. But what happened at the Capitol is how coups often unfold.
The coup attempt targeted the very last step of the process before the inauguration of a new president congressional approval of the results of the presidential election as certified by the Electoral College and each state. It is usually a formality since the ballots have already been counted, checked, and rechecked.
The Envision Virgin Racing Formula E team has partnered with the UK government and will feature its branding on the cars ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference
AKQA and Sydney Symphony Orchestra collaborate for Sydfest 2021
January 12, 2021 5:07
AKQA has announced a pro-bono initiative with Sydney Symphony Orchestra for The [Uncertain] Four Seasons Project at Sydfest 2021.
The announcement:
The [Uncertain] Four Seasons is a global project to recompose Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ using climate data for every orchestra in the world.
Global innovation and design company AKQA and Hamburg based advertising agency Jung von Matt, in partnership with The Sydney Symphony Orchestra, composer Hugh Crosthwaite and Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub have used climate data to recompose Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’. One of the most loved classical pieces of music, Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ was written three centuries ago and is an endlessly inventive depiction of each season, influenced by the rhythms of the year.