Love the idea. Wish it were worldwide policy. Should’ve gone further to address the entire food process, banning harmful chemicals in fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
June 2025 archive
Jun 11 2025
American workers / Mexican workers / GM
“Think of how handily Detroit’s auto workers were distracted from GM’s greed when they were given Mexican free-trade-zone labor to treat as a scapegoat; the American worker’s enemy isn’t the Mexican worker, it’s the auto manufacture who screws them both.” from Overclocked, Cory Doctorow
Jun 07 2025
from The Last Election, Andrew Yang and Stephen Marche
“It is a successful fifteen seconds of television, the result of months of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultancy fees.” p24 Yeah. Politicians are as bad as business owners. If they spent their marketing budget on making a better product, providing better service … There ought to be a low ceiling in …
Jun 06 2025
funny bit from John Scalzi
I’m reading through his “Whatever” archive … “See, now, this is a dog: [picture of Kodi …] as opposed to a Shih Tzu, at which you look and say to yourself ‘This is what happens when you put a mop and a stuffed animal in a room with a Barry White CD.’” Picture Day Part …
Jun 05 2025
An idea for profs
Here’s an idea I’d implement if I were still teaching: Have your students grade each other’s papers, anonymously. First, they have to establish critieria and justify them, then they have to grade the paper they’re randomly assigned accordingly. You grade them according to how well they graded the other’s paper. Hopefully, this will counteract the …
Jun 04 2025
Research into male/female differences–is a redo required?
Does any research into the differences between male and female distinguish between females who have experienced pregnancy and childbirth and those who have not? It’s doubtful, since most research is conducted by men, to whom making such a distinction would not even occur. But there are permanent changes to the brain as a result of …
Jun 04 2025
Unpregnant (the movie)
The movie titled Unpregnant has been on my list for a while, but I’ve just subscribed to CRAVE. One, I was appalled to see that the movie is categorized as a comedy. I suspect the categorizing is done not by CRAVE staff, but according to the movie’s submitted metadata, which means it’s the writer, director …
Jun 03 2025
from Slow Motion: changing masculinities, changing men, Lynne Segal
“The question of why it is men, and most often fathers or step-fathers, who sexually abuse children is not addressed [in recent books on fathering].” p55 “And far from criticizing women for failing to satisfy men’s needs, feminists … question whence these ‘needs’ derive, and whether these needs themselves should not be seen as the …
Jun 03 2025
The obsession with Mars
The obsession with any sort of off-planet future is completely irrational. Look: Mars, for example, is uninhabitable as is. So you’re going to have to build bubbles or bunkers to live in. So why not just build them here? Save the travel expenses.
Jun 02 2025
a few of the many insights in Holly Bourne’s When We Were Friends
“That song [“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” by Carole King) is the most true song that’s ever been written.” p175 “Speaking so loudly [about football] and with such arrogant authority that everyone else sort of had to listen.” p219 “Is it just me or is it crazy that football chat is taken seriously when …
fiction
