TW: mental health, torture
"Inmates at the ADX spend approximately 23 hours of each day in solitary confinement. Jones had never been so isolated before. Other prisoners on his cellblock screamed and banged on their doors for hours. Jones said the staff psychiatrist stopped his prescription for Seroquel, a drug taken for bipolar disorder, telling him, “We don’t give out feel-good drugs here.” Jones experienced severe mood swings. To cope, he would work out in his cell until he was too tired to move. Sometimes he cut himself. In response, guards fastened his arms and legs to his bed with a medieval quartet of restraints, a process known as four-pointing." NYTimes
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Defeat the patriarchy with the power of tampons
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"The EU leaders present themselves as modern-day William Wilberforces, embarking on a high-minded crusade. But this is patently false and entirely self-serving. What is happening in the Mediterranean today does not even remotely resemble the transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans did not want to move.
Today, those embarking on the journey to Europe want to leave their home countries. And if they were free to do so, they would be taking advantage of the safe flights that budget airlines operate between north Africa and Europe at a tiny fraction of the cost of the extraordinarily dangerous sea passage." Guardian
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"In her college-level physics classes, Dr. Crenshaw saw a familiar pattern emerge. White male students, who were the minority in the classroom, often positioned themselves on the “winning” side of binaries that abound in popular understandings of physics. For example, physics is understood to be rational not emotional, theoretical not practical, elite not common. By referring to themselves as the most experienced, the best, they experts, the most rational, the most logical, the male students were able to create an environment where they were understood to be the best. They quickly assumed they were experts and acted like it." Feministing
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Racial segregation increased in every region of the US between 1880 and 1940, at a pretty uniform pace
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"If you just forget about the world "immigration" and think about "a place that lots of people are moving to," I think it's obvious that for most people with most sets of skills "a place that lots of people are moving to" is a place with more job opportunities (you could teach their kids or clean their houses or cure them when they're sick or fix their electricity) than "a place that nobody wants to move to."" Vox
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Decriminalisation of sex work. Still very, very obviously the correct policy
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Great rundown on the emerging *strictly financial* case for renewables over fossil fuel energy
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An incredibly principled man is on trial for exposing corruption, murder and torture by top government officials in Angola.
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So here's a 2004 report from the Norwegian Ministry of Justice basically acknowledging the criminalising the purchase of sex has life more difficult for sex workers in Sweden. (see especially pp. 12-14 "Violence" and pp. 19-20 "The consequences of the law)
Note that the Norwegian government nevertheless did criminalise the purchase of sex in 2009, mostly because of racist attitudes towards the Nigerian migrant women who started doing street based sex work in Oslo from around 2003.
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A lot of these are pretty hilarious, tbh
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I don't think you can dispute that industrial agriculture and food processing are absolutely essential. They have allowed us collectively to massively reduce the proportion of our time obtaining and preparing food.
But I think the author overstates the *immediate* benefits of industrial food processing to the European working class. It may have reduced drudgery, but it also had serious health consequences in the short term.
"A detailed re-reading of Victorian sources, however, reveals that diet and public health reached a high point in the mid-Victorian era, to decline noticeably at the end of the 1870s with the introduction of the first generation of processed foods. The increased sugar intake alone caused such damage to the nation's teeth that many people could no longer chew tough foods, thereby reducing their intake of vegetables, fruits and nuts."
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"During the debate, panelist Fiona Broadfoot showed her colours when she claimed that since clients were criminalised in Sweden, the country had become "less sexually deviant" because there was less prostitution. Are we really going back to the days when consenting sex between adults, in this case where payment is involved, is labelled deviant? What a dangerous precedent." Politics.co.uk
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Everything I thought I knew is wrong
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So here's a controversial question... What is the *optimal* amount of food wastage? It's obviously not zero, because ensuring that you use every scrap of food will end up using far more resources than you conserve. Supermarkets are much easier to regulate than individual households, but, by the statistics, they're already the least wasteful element in the supply chain. How much more efficiency is it worth squeezing out of them?
"Of the 7.1m tonnes of food wasted in France each year, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants and 11% by shops." Guardian
The provision to stop supermarkets from deliberately destroying food is good, but maybe that should be paired with measures to encourage tipping, rather than giving to charity (governments will always prefer "proper" charities to self-help). Like, what if you require that supermarkets just set out a table at the end of the day where anyone can take what they want, and in return they're legally absolved of any responsibility towards the people eating that food?
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Breastfeeding is super duper overrated as a health intervention
"Many women find breastfeeding to be an enjoyable way to bond with their babies. There is certainly no evidence that breastfeeding is any worse for a baby than formula. And maybe there are some early-life benefits in terms of digestion and rashes, which you may or may not think are important. But what the evidence says is that the popular perception that breast milk is some kind of magical substance that will lead your child to be healthy and brilliant is simply not correct."
"Inmates at the ADX spend approximately 23 hours of each day in solitary confinement. Jones had never been so isolated before. Other prisoners on his cellblock screamed and banged on their doors for hours. Jones said the staff psychiatrist stopped his prescription for Seroquel, a drug taken for bipolar disorder, telling him, “We don’t give out feel-good drugs here.” Jones experienced severe mood swings. To cope, he would work out in his cell until he was too tired to move. Sometimes he cut himself. In response, guards fastened his arms and legs to his bed with a medieval quartet of restraints, a process known as four-pointing." NYTimes
>>><<<
Defeat the patriarchy with the power of tampons
>>><<<
"The EU leaders present themselves as modern-day William Wilberforces, embarking on a high-minded crusade. But this is patently false and entirely self-serving. What is happening in the Mediterranean today does not even remotely resemble the transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans did not want to move.
Today, those embarking on the journey to Europe want to leave their home countries. And if they were free to do so, they would be taking advantage of the safe flights that budget airlines operate between north Africa and Europe at a tiny fraction of the cost of the extraordinarily dangerous sea passage." Guardian
>>><<<
"In her college-level physics classes, Dr. Crenshaw saw a familiar pattern emerge. White male students, who were the minority in the classroom, often positioned themselves on the “winning” side of binaries that abound in popular understandings of physics. For example, physics is understood to be rational not emotional, theoretical not practical, elite not common. By referring to themselves as the most experienced, the best, they experts, the most rational, the most logical, the male students were able to create an environment where they were understood to be the best. They quickly assumed they were experts and acted like it." Feministing
>>><<<
Racial segregation increased in every region of the US between 1880 and 1940, at a pretty uniform pace
>>><<<
"If you just forget about the world "immigration" and think about "a place that lots of people are moving to," I think it's obvious that for most people with most sets of skills "a place that lots of people are moving to" is a place with more job opportunities (you could teach their kids or clean their houses or cure them when they're sick or fix their electricity) than "a place that nobody wants to move to."" Vox
>>><<<
Decriminalisation of sex work. Still very, very obviously the correct policy
>>><<<
Great rundown on the emerging *strictly financial* case for renewables over fossil fuel energy
>>><<<
An incredibly principled man is on trial for exposing corruption, murder and torture by top government officials in Angola.
>>><<<
So here's a 2004 report from the Norwegian Ministry of Justice basically acknowledging the criminalising the purchase of sex has life more difficult for sex workers in Sweden. (see especially pp. 12-14 "Violence" and pp. 19-20 "The consequences of the law)
Note that the Norwegian government nevertheless did criminalise the purchase of sex in 2009, mostly because of racist attitudes towards the Nigerian migrant women who started doing street based sex work in Oslo from around 2003.
>>><<<
A lot of these are pretty hilarious, tbh
>>><<<
I don't think you can dispute that industrial agriculture and food processing are absolutely essential. They have allowed us collectively to massively reduce the proportion of our time obtaining and preparing food.
But I think the author overstates the *immediate* benefits of industrial food processing to the European working class. It may have reduced drudgery, but it also had serious health consequences in the short term.
"A detailed re-reading of Victorian sources, however, reveals that diet and public health reached a high point in the mid-Victorian era, to decline noticeably at the end of the 1870s with the introduction of the first generation of processed foods. The increased sugar intake alone caused such damage to the nation's teeth that many people could no longer chew tough foods, thereby reducing their intake of vegetables, fruits and nuts."
"During the debate, panelist Fiona Broadfoot showed her colours when she claimed that since clients were criminalised in Sweden, the country had become "less sexually deviant" because there was less prostitution. Are we really going back to the days when consenting sex between adults, in this case where payment is involved, is labelled deviant? What a dangerous precedent." Politics.co.uk
>>><<<
Everything I thought I knew is wrong
>>><<<
So here's a controversial question... What is the *optimal* amount of food wastage? It's obviously not zero, because ensuring that you use every scrap of food will end up using far more resources than you conserve. Supermarkets are much easier to regulate than individual households, but, by the statistics, they're already the least wasteful element in the supply chain. How much more efficiency is it worth squeezing out of them?
"Of the 7.1m tonnes of food wasted in France each year, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants and 11% by shops." Guardian
The provision to stop supermarkets from deliberately destroying food is good, but maybe that should be paired with measures to encourage tipping, rather than giving to charity (governments will always prefer "proper" charities to self-help). Like, what if you require that supermarkets just set out a table at the end of the day where anyone can take what they want, and in return they're legally absolved of any responsibility towards the people eating that food?
>>><<<
Breastfeeding is super duper overrated as a health intervention
"Many women find breastfeeding to be an enjoyable way to bond with their babies. There is certainly no evidence that breastfeeding is any worse for a baby than formula. And maybe there are some early-life benefits in terms of digestion and rashes, which you may or may not think are important. But what the evidence says is that the popular perception that breast milk is some kind of magical substance that will lead your child to be healthy and brilliant is simply not correct."
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