"When the far right crack rape jokes, it's part of a systemic bid to demean."

When they say, "I wouldn't bother to rape you", they are confessing that they would rape someone else. You can denounce them as would-be rapists.

Hungary's right-wing repressive government posts lies on Facebook, then complains when it deletes any of them.

The forecast for global heating disaster is at least 2 billion climate refugees by the end of this century.

I think it will be more, because scientists keep discovering more positive-feedback loops that will make things worse than was previously predicted. The refugees may well end up dead.

The disaster that happens in this century will be just the start. After 2100, things will keep getting worse for thousands of years.

Supporting a baby will get harder and harder as global heating and resource exhaustion bite. We must emphasize the importance of reducing human reproduction.

If you want to take risks with your own life, or about how you will live, you are entitled to. But don't make a baby if it will have to share such risks with you. More children growing up stunted by precarity do not give the world hope — they pull it down.

If you are not in a situation where you can be reasonably confident you can support a baby, you should not make one. Use birth control, and if it does not work, have an abortion.

Chinese totalitarianism includes rewriting history, even that of thousands of years ago, as well as of the last few decades.

One point I disagree with: I don't think the Xia dynasty was mythical. When I studied Chinese history in 1970, I was told that the Shang dynasty was mythical; my teachers did not know about the discovery at Anyang of the last Shang capital, and writings that documented the reigns of late Shang kings.

Earlier Shang capitals have not been identified, but surely they existed. I expect the Xia dynasty existed too, even though we have no archaeological material yet that we can connect with it. Trying to find some is a rational and useful project.

But is it any use to look for them under President Xi's history-distorting rule? If people report finding traces of the Xia dynasty, should we believe them?

Big companies are buying state laws to classify certain kinds of workers as independent contractors rather than employees.

I think it is a confusion to associate this issue with racism, because those are two separate issues, and the easiest way to understand them is separately. Laws to squash the poor are unjust no matter what demographic groups they belong to.