CBC: Black plastics may contain toxic compounds that can leach into food, experts say
Study finds fire retardants in products like kitchen utensils, takeout containers made with recycled plastics.
Those containers look awfully familiar…
Norrsken: Impact/100
Don’t you know that there are literally thousands of people out there working on mind-blowing solutions to the world’s greatest challenges?
That’s why we’ve created the Impact/100. It’s a list of the world’s most promising impact startups, as chosen by Norrsken and our partners.
You could say a lot about them, but it’s basically this: It’s 100 ways to fix the future.
NYT: Cara Hoffman: Running Away From Trump’s America Is Complicated. I Should Know.
My next departure was after the first Trump victory in 2016. I didn’t want to live in a nation capable of electing a Donald Trump, with his world of endless self-promotion, dishonesty and accumulation. I didn’t want to watch his hatred and lies become accepted or rationalized. But it wasn’t just Mr. Trump. I had become a workaholic, sometimes spending 12 hours a day staring into the void of a glowing computer screen. My partner and I lived in part of the Lower East Side that eventually became gentrified beyond recognition. Every year I felt more certain that to succeed in an atomized consumer culture was to fail as a human being.
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In 2015, roughly 6,800 Americans applied for Canadian residence. After Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017, that number jumped to over 9,000. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 17 percent of Americans said they wanted to leave the country permanently. In the latest polling from 2024 that number had risen to 21 percent.
American Citizens Abroad estimates 3.9 million Americans were living abroad permanently as of 2023. According to World Population Review, as of 2024 those millions of Americans were living in 158 different countries. The largest number, about 800,000, were in Mexico. Financial advisers and immigration experts are now anticipating a new surge of Americans leaving.
Of course, for many people they need to leave to find a place that they can afford.
SMH: Eyes of the energy world on WA vanadium battery tech
A deep-storage battery being trialled in Kununurra in the Kimberley region of Western Australia could solve the clean energy challenge for some of the nation’s most remote communities.
As well as being a challenging environment to live or work in, hot and humid Kununurra is not connected to the state or national electricity grid.
“A lot of our communities are remote and do struggle with the cost of living and we don’t want them to miss out on the energy transition,” Horizon Power’s executive general manager for business development and strategy Vi Garrood said.
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Horizon is also trialling Redflow’s zinc bromine flow battery (100 kW/400 kWh) on Nullagine’s microgrid and BASF’s sodium sulphur battery (250 kW/1450 kWh) at Carnarvon.
NYT: Kash Patel’s Threat to the Rule of Law
The perfect expression of the authoritarian approach to the rule of law comes from a former Peruvian president, Óscar Benavides: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” The truly corrupted legal system combines impunity for the ruling class with punitive repression of political dissent.
When Jack Smith moved to dismiss his federal cases against Donald Trump, that clearly signaled Trump’s impunity. It was a representation of the adage that might makes right. He won, so he now enjoys a privilege from prosecution.
The selection of Kash Patel to lead the F.B.I. — a move that would require firing or forcing the resignation of Christopher Wray, the current F.B.I. director, well before the end of his 10-year term — demonstrates Trump’s commitment to repression and revenge.
Patel is the ultimate Trump loyalist. I strongly recommend reading Elaina Plott Calabro’s profile of Patel in The Atlantic. Much of her reporting was based on interviews with Patel’s former colleagues in the first Trump administration.
“Patel was dangerous,” Calabro wrote, summarizing their thoughts, “not because of a certain plan he would be poised to carry out if given control of the C.I.A. or F.B.I., but because he appeared to have no plan at all — his priorities today always subject to a mercurial president’s wishes tomorrow.”
Last Updated: 01.Dec.2024 16:07 EST
