No One Knows How To Recycle Yogurt Cups Either, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: Recycling isn't as straightforward as we think, exposing the NSA's secret spying hubs and the one rule change that will change the NFL.
If You Think Recycling Is Confusing, You're Not Alone
We've all been there. We have an empty container, maybe it's an orange juice carton, maybe it's a takeout container, maybe it's a yogurt cup — somewhere between trash and recyclable but you're not really sure. You just kinda stand there, paralyzed not wanting to contribute to more waste on this planet, but also don't want to throw a wrench into the recycling works. According to Bloomberg's Faye Flam, this isn't your fault.
Flam reports that some 91 percent of all recycled plastic here in the US ends up in a landfill. Which is the fault public education, and above all, an over-simplification of the recycling systems here in America. You see, while it's easier to just throw everything vaguely-recyclable into a friendly blue bin, it's much less easier for the recycling companies to sort that out into stuff that is or isn't recyclable. And in the end, it goes to a landfill.
If we truly want to make recycling work, then we need to do a better job of recycling education, to remove that moment of hesitation when someone is gripping a recently-eaten yogurt cup, wondering if it's trash or not.
The NSA Has Internet Spying Centers Around The Country
Our use of the internet is so ubiquitous, so everyday, that it's easy to fall into the assumption that our devices are connected through this impenetrable void. That if someone really wanted to see what you're doing online they need to specifically target you. A new report this week from the Intercept on the NSA's secret spying hubs across the country will convince you otherwise.
As the famous expression goes, the internet really is a series of tubes. In order to connect to another computer around the world, data must physically travel from your computer, through physical fiber-optic cables that stretch across oceans and nations, to the computer you're trying to communicate with. When you send an email or chat, that message is literally, physically crossing the globe — which means that someone can literally, physically look at it as it makes it's way through the internet.
What the Intercept is reporting is that the NSA has eight identified data centers across the country — known as peering locations — that serve as internet bottlenecks of a sort. While, legally, the NSA cannot monitor domestic internet traffic, it can monitor any traffic that originates from one country, travels through the US, and then ends in another. These eight peering locations make that task extremely easy.
The NFL Outlawing Head Contact Could Change Football
A comparison everyone loves to make between the two sports that involve two sides of big men fighting over an egg-shaped ball is that American football has helmets and rugby does not. The conventional wisdom is that since rugby players don't have any pads they can't just wantonly throw their bodies, and more importantly, their heads, into opponents, thus making a safer game. This isn't necessarily true.
That said, while the NFL isn't anywhere close to considering changes to attire, it is focusing on how players use their helmets. This week, Deadspin's Dom Cosentino reports that a new rule change, essentially preventing players from using their helmets at all to make contact with opponents, could potentially change the game.
With CTE becoming nothing short of an epidemic amongst players at all levels of the game — most recently Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski — the NFL has to do something to try and prevent head injuries. Even despite the cries from die-hard fans that the game is softening, or that staples like the three-point stance become obsolete, the reality is CTE is a threat to the future of the sport. While youth sport participation rates are declining overall, football, with it's increased equipment costs and now genuine chronic health concerns, sits at the bottom.
[Deadspin]
