All I can think is how incredibly shameful it is for this kind of behind-the-scenes bullying to be happening, but the persons responsible apparently must not see shame in it somehow…?

My first thought was misfolded prions. Sounds like one possible avenue of the potential harmful “environmental exposure” the microbiologist (and CJD researcher) in the article was talking about.

According to the video, the places aren’t being built to be attractive to live in but to be cheap upfront investments for landlords (so not just small but crappy layouts and quality overall), and the majority of said landlords are “middle class” (their words) couples rather than large companies.

For hands-off investors, maybe. Directly responsible parties should see jail time though.

There’s a Brit Marling movie where exactly that kind of thing happens to some corporate execs. (I think it was a chemical company instead of mining though.)

The title is…

He should, and he can, but he doesn’t.

My first thought before reading was that it’s a shame of course, but not a surprise. While reading, I didn’t see (or missed?) if charges are going to be laid in this case. Maybe they’re just gathering info on who to charge? Surely there have to be existing laws that suffice.

I tried to find where Haaretz wrote about STOIC (as referenced in this article), and instead came across an article about STOIC having had a campaign to influence lawmakers. (It’s paywalled, but the comments section is interesting.) There’s also a headline off that page about a march of nationalist Israelis through “the Palestinian area of Jerusalem,” chanting:

Personally, I like to check both Firework (for the forecast animation), and Accuweather (for additional local measurement data).

Yes, here’s another joke (you might be able to see the first couple of reviews without logging in):
https://ca.indeed.com/cmp/Shoppers-Drug-Mart/reviews?fjobtitle=Volunteer

Interesting observation. I’ve done the same myself, at least in urban surroundings. I hope it makes your walk more enjoyable and satisfying.

It helps to grow up cleaning your own schools and having being taught personal responsibility from a very young age. I have no doubt there are still elementary kids commuting to other towns alone by train to go to school, as there were when I was living there.

A bunch of young trees don’t equate to old growth forests in any sense and it’s even worse if the species hasn’t evolved in in balance with that environment’s other species and conditions.

So it’s not even just that the tree needs to survive. On top of that we need to put time and resources into the right mix of regionally native trees which will thrive and integrate into their surroundings to properly reform ecosystems over numerous decades that we don’t even have.

Maybe I’m being naive, but in the absence of solid evidence, my working assumption is that they have some satellite pattern of people who have parts of the spectrum of traits they want, but not all of them. If so, then that means that although they would suppress it for the job, some of them surely have a conscience.

But I admit this is all hypothetical, just based on things I’ve read and some specific testimony I heard in a podcast that shed more light on things recently.

Anyway, I did a slight edit above: probably --> “possibly.”

I can only speak for myself and not OP here but if she left, then probably possibly not. The career folks? Definitely. If their hiring profile is anything like that of the CIA, they have a specific preference for sociopaths/narcissists-- folks who are very good at manipulating others.

It doesn’t. Graeber was an anthropologist and Wengrow is an archaeologist. It’s a review of existing evidence from past civilizations (the diversity of which most people are hugely ignorant about), making the case the most common representations of “civilization” and “progress” are severely limited, probably to a detrimental extent since we often can only base our conceptions of what is possible on what we know.

That’s highly subjective, but the fascinating book The Dawn of Everything argues otherwise. There are even parts about the anthropological evidence some peoples just up and changed systems every so often (yes, non-violently). Our problem as people in the modern era is many can’t imagine anything else, not that no one ever did.

Yes, because the requirement for extensive infrastructure running across large stretches of land makes market entry nearly impossible for new competitors (while also being disruptive for customers if it does become possible). Hence all the issues we have with lack of competition and its effects.

If by the nature of the product or service there is no ease of switching providers and if the thing is a necessity to get by in the modern world, it shouldn’t be (solely) private.

I’m surprised and disappointed the percentage isn’t higher than that, but these polls tend to have skewed sample groups anyway.

Maybe some of them require it? I haven’t encountered that requirement for a store membership myself though.

Of course. Markets respond to company profits and losses, not employee profits and losses. Layoffs, low wages, and buybacks boost share prices, we all know this! As long as a few people will pay big money, those who benefit don’t care if most people can’t afford anything. To me, this is one of many signs chasing higher GDP all the time largely just enriches the wealthy further while doing nothing for most people.

That’s how they did the non-targeted (carpet) bombings. These were three guided, precision strikes on a group that pre-cleared their travel arrangements on a specific route at a specific time with the IDF in advance, even targeting vehicles with WCK logos specifically marked on top. The outcome is exactly what they wanted: no food aid to Gaza at all.

Now they just have to pretend to have a study and bury the topic for a year or whatever like they do with every other atrocity when speaking internationally, which the media will take at face value even though officials and IDF members have been well-documented, calling for Palestinian people to be wiped out, their restrictions on aid have always been horrific and absurd, and settlers were blockading aid trucks with “raves” to prevent aid getting in.

Western nations will sanction any other country for a fraction of what Israel has done, but instead it seems our leaders are content to let this play out and gradually push more and more for the replacement of the prime minister with someone just as bad or worse when it’s all over, for an optics upgrade (since the Netanyahu “brand” is burnt now).

I hope this law is why I’ve noticed Rainforest Alliance seals on cheaper chocolate brands recently and not that Rainforest Alliance has lowered their standards. (I looked it up a year or two ago and RA’s site explicitly stated that they don’t allow the seal to be used if they’re aware of worker exploitation.) I guess it must be a lot cheaper for corpos to get that on their labels than if they used the Fair Trade seal.

If you’re referring to universities as corporate, then yeah more or less. It’s a con game. When issues like this persist and worsen for a long time (I first heard about a more benign form of this issue a good 20 years ago), it’s safe to assume that’s because powerful people want it that way. Public anger is useful as long as it’s directed at responsible parties who get real benefits, not victims of a con. This is the result of corporate and public governance based on numbers and not people.

Adisaputri and Ralph filed a complaint with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission in 2019 but say it got them nowhere, even though human rights commission documents submitted to CBC News by Ralph show that a director for the company, when speaking to an officer, admitted to having a no-children policy.

“They basically ignored us for two years,” he said. “And then at the end of the two years just went, ‘No.’”

Looks like there might be more going on here than backlogs (which are bad enough on their own).

No, it’s in the marketing material sent abroad to recruit students for the benefit of post-secondary institutions that use them to plug gaps in funding. It’s been reported on for a long time how they’re exploited.

I’d understand and be open to a blanket ban or restrictions on all algorithmic short form media, but that’s not what this is. The rationale for the US ban is supposed to be privacy and limiting foreign influence, not concerns over algorithms or they’d have to come up with a reason they’re not banning all the other algorithmic short form media out there. Singling one company out, as the EFT and others have pointed out repeatedly, does nothing about privacy and security issues that are at least as bad with TikTok’s competitors.

This is a combination of censorship (particularly of pro-Palestine content, which many TikTok users are defiantly and persistently supporting even though it’s been severely restricted there), and probably some pandering to certain groups. I’m getting increasingly concerned with this idea I keep seeing people espouse this borderline fascistic idea that rather than encouraging people to develop media literacy, we should just censor all information they see, as if long-term censorship in sanctioned corporate media didn’t set the tone for so many of the problems we’re facing now.

You covered it implicitly here but I’ll state explicitly that corporate media’s narrow perspective and reluctance to seriously investigate real issues doesn’t help either. It’s creating a dystopian effect.

They mean even less if a causal link isn’t established, or even if there is a link but the issue is better explained by other factors. There are many signs people use social media to compensate for something missing in their lives (such as lack of connection, inability to find like-minded people close by, etc.), but no proof I’ve yet heard of that it’s the root cause of unhappiness. The closest to that is maybe people falling into maladaptive patterns of seeking content that would enrage or depress them, but I imagine at least as often it’s going to be people using it as an escape from a difficult reality. We should be discussing why reality is so difficult to manage and in more extreme cases, why talking about mental health issues is so scary that so many people need to escape via alcohol, drugs, screen time, etc.

Because fuck being an empathetic human and actually connecting with people as equals, right? Keep on winning the entire Internet over with that unimpeachable charm and welcoming approach.

They’re pretty clearly saying that nut milks are watery and taste nothing like dairy milk. Coconut milk would be closer to the creaminess of dairy milk at least, but it’s expensive and might require heating first for those of us with sensitive stomachs. It’d also have to be grown ethically, for those who actually care about human labour and environmental impacts.

Yup, just walk away… or answer ‘no’ since smart folks don’t always say ‘yes’

No surprise here. Frankly getting sick of decades of media conflating GDP with the wellbeing of citizens as opposed to the largest, most powerful financial interests. Yes there’s a correlation there, but we would be using far more accurate and direct metrics if the status of citizens was the actual goal.

No doubt, but what I was getting at was how shoddy the reporting clearly is there. They don’t even say if they asked for more details on this very bizarre claim.

This is CTV. :/

Also…

Gaza health authorities said more than 100 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces. Israel challenged the death toll and said many of the victims were run over by aid trucks.

WTF? And who was driving these trucks?

Every single time.

There absolutely is. Parties encourage people to treat elections like a sport and identify with a “side.” Corporate media play along with the horse race paradigm, rather than pushing back on this kind of framing that distracts from actual issues. (And heavens forbid we talk about conflicts of interest, especially when they cross party lines and are endemic to entire governments-- ruling and opposition parties alike.)

It’s been increasingly normalized for vast swathes of the voting public to pay little to no attention what each party stands for now, and what they’ve done in the past. Media also fails to give fair attention to a variety of methods by which a given crisis could be tackled, since the interests of the corporate world tend not to be in line with the interest of the public.

100% agree with all the people saying it’s not enough, but it could be a start, which potentially forces interesting changes at the company level even if it doesn’t do much with the economic system.

I would rather see no shareholder influence, but weakened shareholder influence and less incentive for CEOs and execs to be douchebags can still be meaningful (though perhaps not alone). Unfortunately, since people who want to lead others tend to be empathetically challenged, they still need explicit incentives for them not to just go through the same old exploitative and abusive patterns. Say this went through, the people who replace the spoiled CEOs who decide to leave would just end up being corrupt as well if some kind of positive reinforcement doesn’t also exist.

So without any media attention, when no one is paying attention?

And no doubt every other closely-tied economy, as well.