It's a mistake to refer to legislative "compromises" between free states and slave states, before the US civil war; since the free states mostly gave slave states what they wanted, in response to threats to secede, these are properly call "appeasements".

Ralph Nader: pushing to do most things faster makes people do many things worse.

Nader doesn't notice that massive surveillance is one of the wrongs done by ordering things on line.

The only thing I really wish I could do faster is answer my email. But there is no hope of that — it's the thinking that takes most of the time.

Hawai'i's coral reefs are facing an extreme bleaching event due to the unusual heat of the water. It is 2C to 4C hotter than usual.

If two bleaching events in successive years is deadly, 50 years from now nearly every year would be a hot enough to cause a bleaching event. But it won't matter by then, because the increased level of CO₂ in the water will kill all the coral.

The UN punishes whistleblowers much as the US does.

Burundi seems to be creating excuses to close the main remaining independent newspaper.