Republicans that control US state governments are systematically reducing the power of city governments to go against plutocratist state policies.

Female prisoners in Arizona don't receive enough menstrual pads, and if they use up the insufficient number, they bleed on their clothing and get punished for that.

The legislature is considering a bill to give them the supplies they need, but some male legislators are so patriarchal that they resent even hearing about the subject.

The philosophy of the Enlightenment, centered around 1800, survives in today's humanist values.

I agree with Pinker that life is better — for most people — in the modern age than it was in past ages. I disagree with his conclusion that bleak expectations are irrational defeatism. Our progress has been going backward in recent decades.

This article suggests (I have not read his book) that Pinker does not recognize the harm that plutocracy has done globally since the 1990. Although material progress, in the sense of material riches, continues, the richest few are grabbing nearly all of it. In the US, the poor are worse off and have shorter life expectancy. "Free trade" has put the world's low-paid workers into direct competition, which the rich use against all of them. The rich now control many governments, including the US government.

He also does not recognize how increased inequality makes life worse for people, even aside from possible decrease in their own income.

Even if we were not undoing our achievements, we could not maintain them for long by continuing our current practices. Global heating, topsoil exhaustion, and population growth ensure that. The issue of sustainability is a rational one.

It sounds fine to cite past situations where civilizations invented solutions to their problems, but there were other past situations where they failed and the people died. Future progress may do great things, but it is foolhardy to suppose problems will be corrected. Especially when rich people who don't want them to be corrected dominate the state.

The fashionable thing to put on your skin for carnival in Brazil is … microplastics that will get into the ocean and poison sea animals.

The FBI can do an "assessment" on anyone for the vaguest of reasons, or even on everyone who lives in a certain area, correlating many kinds of data bases including their phone calls and travel.