SHOCKER: European Parliament vice-president arrested in Qatar corruption investigation. “Police arrested Eva Kaili, a Greek socialist MEP, on Friday hours after the four others had been detained for questioning.
The case for buying less — and how to actually do it
Vox: Buying fewer unnecessary items is good for the planet, your wallet, and your brain. “This holiday season could be a scary time for some: Between inflation (prices have risen 8.2 percent in a year) and economic uncertainty pointing to a potential recession, in addition to ongoing pandemic recovery, it might not be the ideal moment to think about buying a bunch of crap. A 2019 survey by Ladder and OnePoll revealed that Americans spend an average of $18,000 per year on nonessential items, including streaming services and lattes, impulse Amazon finds, and unnecessary clothes.
Not only is this enough to buy a semester of in-state tuition for your soon-to-be-college kid, but it translates to lots of clutter you have to deal with as items become unnecessary with time. Household goods and services are responsible for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, one study shows. It seems we are as aware as ever of this fact — since the pandemic, consumers want to reduce their unnecessary shopping behaviors.” [Shop your closets, basement, shed, dresser drawers. You will be surprised at the clothes, shoes an boots you will find to wear again.
Donate what you do not want or use – check into Habitat for Humanity ReStores in your area. Book exchanges and used book shops allow in kind exchanges so that you always have new-old books to read. Plant and seed exchanges are also plentiful and make gift giving and receiving a year round event, rather than just on the holidays.]
Border Researchers Now Can Use 65+ Open-licensed Images of Surveillance Tech
EFF – “From Camera Towers to Spy Blimps, Border Researchers Now Can Use 65+ Open-licensed Images of Surveillance Tech from EFF – The U.S.-Mexico border is one of the most politicized technological spaces in the country, with leaders in both political parties supporting massive spending on border security and the so-called “Virtual Wall.” Yet we see little debate over the negative impacts for human rights or the civil liberties of those who live in the borderlands. Despite all the political and media attention devoted to the border, most people hoping to write about, research, or learn how to identify the myriad technologies situated have to rely on images released selectively by Customs & Border Protection, copyright-restricted photographs taken by corporate press outlets or promotional advertisements from the vendors themselves.
To address this information gap, EFF is releasing a series of images taken along the U.S. Mexico-Border in California, Arizona, and New Mexico under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which means they are free to use, so long as credit is given to EFF (see EFF’s Copyright policy). Our goal is not only to ensure there are alternative and open sources of visual information to inform discourse, but to raise awareness of how surveillance is impacting communities along the border and the hundreds of millions of dollars being sunk into oppressive surveillance technologies…”
Articles of Note
As literary studies wanes in public importance, professors stress the field’s political relevance. That smacks of desperation »
New Books
Has science proven free will to be an illusion? Not quite. We are autonomous — up to a point »
Essays & Opinions
Ikea particleboard, gray sweatpants, ergonomic gaming chairs — “we live in undeniably ugly times,” argues n+1. But why is that? ugly »
