https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/who-fact-checks-the-fact-checkers-research/

“‘Fact-checking’ fact checkers: A data-driven approach,” a 22-page October research article from the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, examined practices of U.S. fact-checking organizations Snopes, PolitiFact and Logically, along with The Australian Associated Press.

Sian Lee, Aiping Xiong, Harseung Seo and Dongwon Lee of Penn State University’s College of Information Sciences and Technology did the peer-reviewed research.

The Penn State researchers found U.S. fact-checking spikes during major news events. In recent years, that was during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. Further, the researchers said, misinformation’s spread can mislead and harm people and society.

The researchers examined 11,639 fact-checking articles from Snopes and 10,710 from PolitiFact from Jan. 1, 2016, to Aug. 31, 2022. They found Snopes checked more “real claims” — claims that rate true or mostly true — with 28.7% versus 11% for PolitiFact.

Looking widely, the researchers found high agreement when Snopes and PolitiFact probed the same information. Of 749 matching claims (examining the same information), 521 received identical ratings and 228 (30.4%) had diverging ratings. But, the researchers found nuances caused nearly all of these divergent verdicts — granularity of ratings (Snopes and PolitiFact scales differ slightly); differences in focus; differences in fact-checked information and the different timing of the fact-checks.

Adjusting for these systematic discrepancies, Penn State’s researchers found just one conflicting rating among the 749 matching claims.

https://blueviewfootwear.com/

Same people, they’ve been making biodegradable footwear for a bit now.

At one point both Israel and Hamas seemed to agree that there were approximately 200 250 hostages.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-do-we-now-about-hamas-hostages-2023-10-19/

HOW MANY HOSTAGES ARE THERE?

An estimated 200 people, including 30 teenagers and young children and 20 people over the age of 60, are being held hostage in Gaza, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said on Thursday, citing military sources.

Hamas says it has 200 hostages and that 50 more are held by other armed groups in the enclave. It said more than 20 hostages have been killed by Israeli air strikes, but has not given any further details.

Edit: Wikipedia cites a slightly higher number

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israeli–Palestinian_prisoner_exchange

In November 2023, Palestinian militants held around 250 people from Israel, including Israeli nationals and non-Israelis following their capture during the Hamas-led attack on Israel.

Edit 2: my mistake, they corroborate their numbers (250)

I don’t have other numbers handy, but that 3GWh number is storage capacity, which isn’t comparable to annual usage.

It is a complicated topic, pest management strategies can vary. A lot of the time it is site and organism specific as far as what you’d end up with, certain species can be susceptible to different infestations. So many invasive organisms require different cures, these can include chemicals, fungicides, filtration, but these kinds of contamination events are somewhat expected after enough time, so as long as the same issue isn’t recurring too frequently, the economic strategy is to just reboot the pond after a clean.

Typically, the strategy is to outcompete what you may get contaminated with. Ideally your crop is a high productivity strain of algae (much more productive than things originating outside the pond), and as long as the algae exhibit faster growth rates, the invasive species doesn’t have an opportunity to take off as the desired algae will continue to take the majority of nutrients.

If you get something toxic in there, it’s gotta be dealt with accutely based on the critter, but other preventative strategies like inlet media filtration/heating, crop rotation, and organism population monitoring can help mitigate these things from starting up. A good review can be found here.