The habitual use of "smart" phones seems to be weakening people's memory, and is perhaps responsible for visible changes in brain development.

What should we do about that?

Like a true surrender-monkey, the author says it is unthinkable to do away with them. The article suggests that taking one-minute breaks would make the problem less. Well, one can hope.

I'm glad to say that I have ever had a "smart" phone. I know others who reject this; you can, too!

I go further than that, personally. All portable phones track your movements and can be modified remotely to listen to all the conversations around you, all the time -- so I refuse to carry any kind of snoop-phone.

A subtle but general question in copyright law is the basis of a lawsuit: to what extent can a work of fiction embody the conclusions of historical research about specific people in its plot without counting as "plagiarism".

Viewing copyright as a system for encouraging authorship,

the answer is clear: this should be permitted, because prohibiting it does not serve that goal and instead obstructs it. A fictional work is not a substitute for a historical work -- they do not compete.

However, if you use the propaganda term "property" to conceptualize copyright, it will bias you in the wrong direction. You might unconsciously start from the assumption that authors (in practice, more often the publishing companies that published their work) are entitled to maximum power regardless of what effects that has.

This is one of the reasons to reject and shun the term "intellectual property." The other reason is that it's an over generalization about several disparate and unrelated laws. If you assume they are similar, you are likely to misunderstand each of them.

Murderous drug mafias have led the Netherlands to launch a sort of war on drug mafias.

I would guess that most of the drugs smuggled through the Netherlands is headed for other countries in Europe, and only a small fraction is for Dutch users. If there were a lawful way to buy cocaine for personal use, it might pull the rug out from under the mafias.

Depending on your employer to pay for your trip to get an abortion puts you in a very vulnerable position.

In any case, I expect that only a tiny percentage of US workers work in jobs that are covered by such commitments. (Can anyone find out what percentage?) It's a nice gesture but it isn't a solution.

Politicians are finding excuses to increase use of natural gas. They cite various bogus excuses, but all this can really do is accelerate global heating.