Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Amy Peng et al. examine the profound positive impact of mask mandates in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in Ontario. And Sheena Cruickshank warns about the avoidable harm we can expect as so many respond to the political and social signals to abandon
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Rachael Lyle-Thompson discusses how children are happier in countries with social safety nets which reduce the anxiety level around them. And Eric Galbraith et al. find that satisfaction levels in small-scale Indigenous societies may be just as high as in the wealthiest countries
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Claude Lavoie examines the problems with the far-too-rarely-questioned assumption that public policy needs to be oriented toward top-end economic growth at the expense of human well-being and environmental sustainability. – George Monbiot calls out how the wealthiest few have torqued the law to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Stephanie Soucheray examines new research showing that a large majority of respondents have concealed infectious diseases out of perceived economic or social necessity. And Zoya Teirstein discusses modeling showing that we’re vastly underestimating the death toll from the climate crisis – with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Julia Conley reports that Massachusetts’ referendum-approved millionaire tax raised substantially more income than projected, contributing both to greater equality and more funding for public priorities. – Charlotte Kukowski and Emma Garnett discuss the need to overcome multiple forms of inequality in order to ensure
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: The morality of tyrants
I have long been intrigued at how men who inflict torture and murder on their fellow human beings can consider themselves moral leaders. History is replete with authoritarians of various hues who fit the mould. One who exemplifies the type at the moment is Russia’s very own Vladimir Putin. One
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Al Jazeera reports on the World Meteorological Organization’s analysis showing that greenhouse gas emissions reached yet another new high in 2022. Fiona Harvey reports on the findings in the World Resources Institute’s State of Climate Action report, including the reality that transitional steps are several times
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ed Broadbent discusses how economic equality is a precondition to freedom for the majority of the population. Chris McGreal reviews Angus Deaton’s book on the role of the corporatist assumptions of economists in fomenting a war on the poor. And John McDonnell warns that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Stephanie Soucheray discusses new research showing how people with existing health problems are at substantially higher risk of long COVID. And Helen Floersh points out a new study on how different COVID-19 variants are adapting to evade immunity. – George Monbiot writes about
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Adele Waters writes about the large numbers of UK doctors who are suffering from long COVID as a result of their efforts to care for patients – but who have been abandoned to financial ruin as a result. Elizabeth Cooney examines the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Chris Hedges interviews Matt Kennard about the hostile corporate takeover of democracy. And Adam King highlights how Canada’s oil industry is profiteering at public expense while using the harm done by their own greed to promote the right-wing politicians in their pocket. – Jennifer
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Mary Van Beusekom discusses new research showing that a quarter of COVID-19 survivors are still facing impaired lung function (among other health problems) a year after infection. And Prakash Nagarkatti and Mitzi Nagarkatti write about the CDC’s approval of new vaccines better targeted toward
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Tess Finch Lee writes about the importance of doing everything we can to protect children (and indeed the general population) from COVID-19. But Thomas Piggott laments that instead of taking a lesson in interdependence and the need for social care, we’ve been
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jamey Keaten and Seth Borenstein report on the World Meteorological Association’s finding that we’ve just had the hottest summer in recorded history. And Chelsey Harvey highlights how the combination of extreme heat and other climate calamities looks to be a harbinger of worse
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Amy Goodman interviews Peter Kalmus about the need to start treating the climate breakdown as an emergency, while Joelle Gergis points out that the extreme destruction from catastrophic climate-caused events in the summer of 2023 represents just a taste of what we can
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – The Honest Sorceror points out the obvious unsustainability of exponential growth in resource extraction when the mass of inanimate man-made objects already exceeds that of life on Earth. And Andy Thanatogenos discusses how to live with the knowledge that we’re on a doomed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Nippon.com discusses a new survey indicating that a large majority of people in Japan continue to mask regularly to protect their own health and that of others. But Richard Woodbury reports that Nova Scotia (like other Canadian jurisdictions) is seeing significant unexplained excess mortality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Piers Forster reports on new research showing that both greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures continue to push past all recorded records. Andrew Freedman adds sea surface temperatures to the list of indicators setting off alarm bells for anybody bothering to pay attention. And Shannon
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – David Wallace-Wells writes that the U.S.’ neoliberal political consensus may finally have dissolved – though that possibility is of little comfort when the party continuing to push it is able to block change. – Ian Hudson examines how income inequality is worsening
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: The Darker Side of UCP Policy
Welcome to Alberta's 2023 election cycle. Campaigning has effectively been going on for some time now, but the writ was issued yesterday and now it's official. We're in an election cycle. This is basically a two horse race. Alberta either elects the UCP, now led by Danielle Smith, or it
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