Israel's entire coastline has been polluted by an oil spill.

By luck, Gaza escaped the pollution. Could Israelis, yearning to bathe in the sea, make peace with Gaza so that this will be possible? Probably not, but it is a nice idea to think about.

Claiming falsely that a blackout was caused by renewable generation is a standard tactic of planet roasters.

The US has a history of white supremacists staging violent overthrow of properly elected state governments, then imposing racist rule with rigged elections. Jan 6 was not the first time. The article describes an instance in 1876.

That article is pervaded by symbolic bigotry, expressed by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid such bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.)

I object to bigotry, and normally I refuse to link to articles which instantiate it. I made an exception for this article because it teaches something very important about the history of racist violence, and I didn't see much chance of finding another article on the topic without the bigotry.

Nonetheless, I rebuke the article's bigotry. Spitting at all whites is wrong, and far from helping to eliminate racism, it is more likely to do the opposite.

*Connecticut Lawmakers Want to Try Again to Make Prison Phone Calls [gratis].*

San Francisco plans to rename many schools, including the ones named after George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

I think that would be a mistake.

We designate people as heroes because we admire their actions. However, as our moral standards change, over time we come to perceive some of their actions as wrongs, flaws. When we talk about them, we should criticize their flaws.

In some cases, the flaws we discover may be so large that we conclude they were not heroes at all, merely evildoers. I think Columbus is a candidate for that.

However, it is a mistake to demand that past heroes be flawless. If we designate them as evildoers at the sight of the first serious flaw-by-our-standards, by and by we will have no heroes left. Therefore I think we should continue to admire a hero if per great deeds greatly outweigh per flaws.