Republicans' spreading of Covid-19 was the culmination of a decades-long trend: plutocratist policies of deregulation and marketization have made the US more unequal in life expectancy as well as in income.

Progress in filtering or breaking down microplastics, though not yet at commercial scale.

Rihanna wore a pendant with an image of Ganesha, and is being criticized for it using the misguided concept of "cultural appropriation."

Setting aside that confusion, is there something to criticize about Rihanna's pendant? I am not sure. Was it disrespectful to the worshipers of Ganesha? Perhaps a little -- in that it acts to disconnect the appearance of Ganesha from its context and meaning.

I disagree with every religion, more or less, and I might use one's symbolic images as well as its words to make a point about it, perhaps to criticize it, much as Nina Paley did (better than I ever could) in Sita Sings the Blues.

But I would not disconnect them from their context. I may criticize a religion but I do not want to undermine knowledge or awareness about it.

A thousand students at Columbia University are on strike, refusing to pay their tuition fees, demanding a reduction in those fees but also other changes in the name of justice, such as fossil fuel divestment.

Starmer says that *Labour must work with business to create fairer society.*

"Working with business" sounds good to people who dislike conflict, like "working with Republicans", but both are programmed to fail. Working for more fairness together with the main source of unfairness is not likely to get very far.

Even worse, announcing that that's your intended approach gives the source of unfairness veto power. "Working with" thus turns into "begging the indulgence of."

Frederick Douglass reminds us that "Power concedes nothing without a demand." Starmer would like Britons to forget to make the demand.