Friday, August 18, 2023

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Joseph Choi reports on new research showing that updated COVID-19 vaccines help build immunity against the Eris strain. And Keenan Sorokan reports on both Eris' spread into Saskatchewan, and the strong recommendation from the experts still interested in public health that people get boosted and take steps to avoid spread of the virus.

- Anne Shibata Casselman offers a grim look at what Canada will look like in a few decades if we can't reverse course from the current path toward climate breakdown. Dharna Noor reports on the juxtaposition of dirty energy conglomerates demanding to be let off the hook for the climate crisis in the wake of Maui's lethal wildfires. And Zack Budryk reports on new research showing that U.S. carbon pollution is increasingly caused by the richest households. 

- Phillip Inman reports that the UK is among the many countries seeing corporations rake in record profits while falsely pretending that price increases are the result of unavoidable inflation. 

- David Climenhaga rightly recognizes that the choice to use violence to remove the crises of homelessness and drug poisonings from public view does nothing to ameliorate the underlying problem. And Cory Johnston is duly critical of the City of Regina's refusal to recognize that reality in smashing communal encampments while doing nothing to ensure people have alternative housing. 

- Finally, Jessica Wildfire compares our current sociopolitical reality to a "behavioral sink", where conditions of relative abundance give way to needless waste and competition, and eventually the disintegration of any social cooperation. (And it's particularly worth highlighting her observation that in our case, that's the result of a deliberate choice by people with immense amounts of money and power to use their resources undercutting the very idea that wealth can be shared or community interests considered.) 

[Edit: fixed wording.]

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