Look, if you think a glowing jobs report, or the plummeting gas prices, or the bipartisan spending agreements are going to cause Republicans to acknowledge any goodness in the Biden administration, you’re kidding yourself.
Biden will continue to stutter occasionally and Harris will keep chuckling, and the Fox News cameras are going to be ready and waiting.
With all our posts here on phasing out beef in favor of plant-based meat, I couldn’t resist publishing this photo, the result of a handful of cows that found their way into a newly built home and lived in it for a month before being noticed.
Eighteenth Century English theologian John Wesley founded what was to become the Methodist arm of Protestantism.
As shown at left, his principles were essentially identical to what today would be called “liberal” or “progressive” values.
The history of monotheism on this planet is generally violent and cruel, but there are notable exceptions, and Wesley is most certainly among them.
One could say that Pope Francis is another, one of the most powerful voices for reason and humanism in our world today.
We see frequent and impassioned discussions on this topic nowadays, especially as the threat of environmental collapse continues to mount.
I thought the author of the meme here nailed it nicely.
This quote from Aristotle translates as “Only an educated mind can understand (entertain?) a thought that is different than his own without necessarily accepting it.”
I’m reminded of a segment I heard on NPR just yesterday about a college economics professor and his two sons, both of whom are majoring in econ. The dad’s a libertarian, and, understandably, so are the boys.
Though this is a concept very far from what I believe, I really try to wrap my wits around this philosophy, which had a real run in the U.S. Its high watermark of acceptance here was probably somewhere in the mid-20th Century; the popularity of the Libertarian Party capped at ~5%.
It’s true that most things cannot be accomplished as efficiently in the public sector as they can be privately. If I had been allowed to pay nothing into Social Security over the years, I’m sure that I would have been far ahead of the game, now that I’m a senior citizen.
But all this ignores what I believe to be a far larger fact, i.e., that we live in a society. Yes, we have our own personal rights, but we also have duties to do things like keeping the environment clean, educating all children, and ensuring people aren’t dying of treatable diseases.
There are also hundreds of functions that can’t function at all without government: national defense, policing and criminal justice, fire-fighting, emergency management, utilities, infrastructure, and so on.
Nonetheless, I understand that people, especially rich ones, want to keep every penny of their money, and see no obligation to society at large. See example below:
The cartoon here reminds me of the many allegations aimed at Trump over the years. He’s a pathological liar, or a racist, or a backstabber, or a misogynist. All true, but all completely meaningless, because none of these is a crime.
Of course, seditious conspiracy is a crime, so now we have something of interest to talk about.
Americans are rejoicing in the news that professional liar and conman Alex Jones is getting skewered by the U.S. justice system. Where all this goes is yet to be seen, but he’s certainly in the process of getting creamed.
It’s a natural human tendency to want to see good people prosper and bad people meet their comeuppance. And Americans have been deprived of that sense of fair play for far too long now.
May justice in the case of Alex Jones be the first of many victories for the good guys. In particular, may his downfall lead to that of the entirety of the team that attempted to overthrow the U.S. government following the 2020 election.
The astonishing developments in the defamation suit brought by the Sandy Hook victims against Alex Jones has us all hoping that the wave of conspiracy theories/theorists may have crested.
After Jones is ruined financially, and criminally prosecuted for perjury or whatever, we’ll have the pleasure of watching attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems figuratively dismember Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and whole bunch of other professional liars.
What might come next? What about damages from those who suffered bodily injury and death due to COVID-19 disinformation campaigns?
It’s not unreasonable to believe that this tsunami of litigation will serve as a powerful deterrent to those seeking to profit from spreading malicious bullshit.
As those who check out this excellent article on the subject of recycling EV batteries will learn, the answer is a qualified yes, and the entire arena is growing more robust with each passing year.
The first thing to understand is that old EV batteries often serve a second life as stationary energy storage, where the demand for energy density is not a consideration. An EV battery that initially stored 100 kWhrs that loses 20% over time will normally be replaced, but that 80 kWhr battery still has significant use in various places.
Once it’s finished, it’s time for recycling, to extract and reuse the many valuable materials. Large machines shred the batteries, the start of a long process that separates plastics and ferrous materials, then lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, using a “hydrometallurgical” process (see article).
Increasingly, these recycled materials are used to manufacture new batteries, which reduces the amount of mining required to put new EVs on the road.
The entire process is a long way from perfect, but it will be far closer to that ideal by the time most of today’s EVs are ready for retirement.
In an earlier post, Is a New Political Party in the U.S. a Good Idea?, I pointed out that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the Democratic party. It may lack forceful new ideas, and it may be led by a less-than-bombastic president, but that’s just fine, in comparison with the criminal insanity that has become the GOP.
The button shown at left makes this point very nicely.
