Kasha Patel, Kati Perry, Daniel Wolfe and Emily Sabens, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan:
Here, I give you a classic example of how a technology is developed and implemented without any consideration for its impact on the wellbeing of the matrix of life, and now has created a whole range of unanticipated problems.
Credit: The Washington Post
In recent years, cities, towns and small communities across the world have taken part in a radical revolution — of our lightbulbs. Traditional orange-tinged high-pressure sodium bulbs are being swapped for more energy-efficient, whiter and brighter LED (light-emitting diode) lights. But the rise of LEDs is also illuminating new problems for our night sky, as well as our health.
Over the past decade, scientists found, the night sky has become nearly 10 percent brighter each year because of artificial lights, mainly LEDs emitting too much glare. Streetlights are part of the problem, as are sources such as illuminated billboards and stadium lights.
Lights near stadiums can often be the brightest light source of a city and can be minimized by using timers or dimmers.
Those same outdoor lights are also affecting our health. Common types of LED lights contain higher proportions of bluer wavelengths, which can affect people’s nighttime patterns. They disrupt our circadian rhythms, lower the performance of our immune systems and increase the occurrence of certain diseases, including cancer.
As this report describes we are about to see a massive deterioration of our already bad health care system, particularly in Republican controlled Red states. The weakest, the poorest, the sickest are about to lose any health care coverage at all as they are dropped from Medicaid. Florida and Arkansas ruled by two of the worst chistofascist MAGAts in public office are leading the way to this disaster. The result: massive suffering and unnecessary deaths.
Hundreds of 1199 SEIU health care workers staged a rally and sit to block Third Avenue where some were arrested, in New York City. Credit: Lev Radin / Pacific Press / Lightrocket / Getty
The marked disruption that characterized the initial years of COVID-19, while distressing and destructive, also bore with it some radical implications. Jarred out of the course of our everyday lives, it seemed as if we might reexamine our assumptions and perhaps demand that the limited state assistance on offer continue, or even grow? So it had seemed, but those possibilities were soon foreclosed. Instead, the ruling class has touted a “return to normal,” as it hastens to unravel the few scraps of expanded social safety nets that were briefly extended to the people. Such a “normal,” of course, demands that we ignore the amassing long-term sufferers and the hundreds of continuing COVID-related deaths each week.
In keeping with this return to the neoliberal status quo, the expiration of pandemic protections means that, for the first time in three years, all U.S. states may now reevaluate — and terminate […]
I am not against capitalism, but I am against American capitalism because it places profit above the wellbeing of humans and the planet itself. It is the central problem of American culture. This story illustrates the point I am making. These corporations knew their technologies caused vast harm, but they concealed that as long as they could so they could make as much profit as possible. As countries like New Zealand, the Netherlands, and several in Scandinavia have shown, however, it is quite possible to have capitalism and still make fostering wellbeing the first priority. The problem is not capitalism per se, it is ethics and values.
After examining decades of once-secret files, researchers find that DuPont and 3M waited at least 20 years before disclosing dangers of PFAS. Credit: AP
He was born with only one nostril, and a keyhole-shaped pupil in his right eye covered by a deformed lid. His condition was so grave that physicians warned his mother that he might not survive more than a few hours after his birth.
He survived, and his early childhood was marked by dozens of surgeries to address the birth defects that his mother, a worker at a DuPont plant in West Virginia, initially struggled to explain.
But still—years after evidence began to emerge that the chemical manufacturer engaged in a cover-up about the dangers of so-called “forever chemicals”—Bucky Bailey, now 42, wondered if the ailments that he and so many other people suffered might have all just been a catastrophic, but unmalicious mistake. Then he began reviewing decades of DuPont’s own confidential files, which were made public through a raft of court proceedings over the past 20 years.
This is a measure of what I see as the temperature of sickness in American culture.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
39% extremely proud to be American essentially unchanged from low of 38%
67% of U.S. adults extremely or very proud to be American
60% of Republicans, 33% of independents, 29% of Democrats extremely proud
WASHINGTON, D.C. — At 39%, the share of U.S. adults who are “extremely proud” to be American is essentially unchanged from last year’s 38% record low. The combined 67% of Americans who are now extremely or “very proud” (28%) also aligns with the historically subdued 65% reading one year ago.
Another 22% of U.S. adults currently say they are “moderately proud,” while 7% are “only a little” and 4% “not at all.”
When Gallup first asked this question in January 2001, 55% of U.S. adults were extremely proud to be American. However, pride soon intensified after 9/11, with extreme pride ranging from 65% to 70% between 2002 and 2004. The percentage of Americans expressing extreme pride declined in 2005 and in subsequent years, but it remained at the majority level through 2017. Since 2018, extreme pride has consistently been below that, averaging 42%.
Given the appalling corruption and blatant bias of the MAGAt majority of the Supreme Court it is my pleasure to give you some good news from a D.C. judge who actually cares about giving justice to a Christian church, and punishing christofascist Proud Boy thugs. It tells us that the entire judiciary has not been corrupted.
Credit: Robert P. Alvarez / Shutterstock
A DC judge has ordered a group of Proud Boys members to pay over $1 million for their role in destroying property belonging to a well-known, majority-Black, Washington, D.C., church in 2020, CNN reports.
This comes after, in May, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Lt. Shane Lamond was indicted on four federal criminal charges, after DOJ prosecutors alleged “that Lamond shared police information with” Proud Boys member Enrique Tarrio “and tipped him off about the case against him: the one in which he was arrested for his part in burning a Black Lives Matter sign that had been stolen from” the DC-based Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Judge Neal E. Kravitz’s decision also comes nearly two months after Tarrio and fellow member, Joseph R. Biggs, were included in the group of five men found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a DC jury for their participation in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
