US officials are trying to conceal how the US tortured Abu Zubaydah, and the Supreme Court will decide the case.

A committee head in the European Parliament has proposed to ban subcontracting of workers.

I basically agree, but I see a few cases that ought to be exceptions. If the job to be done amounts to less than 3 hours per working day, or if the work will last less than two months, it should be permissible to hire a temp worker from a temp agency.

CEO of Mars candies: *To truly reach net zero emissions, we need to transform the business supply chain.*

To some extent this article is meant to boost that company, but the basic issue is valid. Extracting or producing the ingredients, shipping them to the factory, and shipping products to consumers, cannot be neglected.

However, to expect every company that makes things to plan decarbonization with its whole supply chain is unlikely to work.

This is why I favor a steadily increasing carbon tax. If everyone knows that the tax will increase a certain amount per year every year until the greenhouse gas load starts falling, businesses will make their investment decisions accordingly.

So the tax does not crush poor people, we should give them additional state support that is far more than enough to cover the added cost of paying the tax. This way, they will all be better off than before and will feel economic pressure to economize on polluting products and activities.

An interview with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. She concluded from her experience in the company that it would always choose to do more harm in order to make more money.

Curiously, she thinks there is something Facebook is basically good, and worth preserving if only it wouldn't promote hate and anger. I disagree, because I criticize many other things about Facebook, such as collecting personal data and identifying people.

New Zealand has given up on trying to wipe out the current outbreak of Delta variant. It proves too transmissible to eradicate that way.

The article is concerned with the fact that a smaller fraction of Maori are vaccinated than of the population as a whole. The right way to be concerned about this is constructively. If the government treats vaccinating the Maori as vitally important, and works with Maori leaders to do so, it can get the job done.

So Maori tend to live more people to an apartment? That's because they tend to be poor, and the country has a housing shortage (like many other countries). To correct that will require years, so the issue is not pertinent for short term decisions. For the medium term, the whole population needs to unblock construction.

If all countries had adopted New Zealand's firm approach at the outset, with equal carefulness, we would have eradicated Covid-19 in 2020 and the Delta variant would never have evolved.

If we don't hurry up and vaccinate the whole world, some new variant, worse than Delta, could knock us back to square one.