AOC: *"One major difference between GOP and Dems is that [Republicans] leverage their right flank to gain policy concessions and generate enthusiasm, while Dems lock their left flank in the basement [because] they think that will make Republicans be nicer to them."*

In addition, we see that the Democratic leadership adopted a fool's strategy to respond to Sen. Toomey's demand for a last-minute concession: namely, to insist on the deal already made. This led, unsurprisingly, to a "compromise" which was to give (in some rough sense) half the concession that was demanded. Democrats have done this foolish thing before.

If they were seriously ready to fight, they would have come back demanding a concession of equal importance in the other direction. Then the natural compromises would have been "both concessions" or "neither concession."

*Global food industry on course to drive rapid habitat loss.*

Video of the death of Muhammad Muhaymin Jr in 2017 shows that thugs killed him pretty much the way they killed George Floyd this year.

The Eritrean army, invading Tigray, seized and conscripted Eritrean refugees who had fled there.

Eritrea's conscription is basically condemnation to a life of servitude, which is why so many people have fled from there.

The pandemic has hastened the elimination of jobs and their replacement with low-paid precarious gig work which surveils and oppresses workers and customers alike. This report is about Australia but I expect it is similar in the US.

The real solution to this is a guaranteed income. However, we can help make work activity less precarious by rejecting the gig platforms.

The food delivery companies parasitize restaurants so much that it can drag them under. In Cambridge, Mass, I've seen signs on the street that urge people to pick up the take-out food they order, rather than asking using a gig platform to deliver it. The restaurant gets more money from the former than from the latter, even though the customer probably pays less. And if you pick up the order yourself, you can pay cash and avoid even more surveillance.

In a store, you can reject the self-checkout machines, as I do. In some stores, the self-checkout machines won't accept cash, which is another reason to refuse to use them. But even where the machines do accept cash, I refuse to use them because they should hire more humans instead.

If we use the self-checkout machines, they will reduce staffing. If we don't use the self-checkout machines, they will increase staffing. So I decided to be the first to refuse. You can be the second!