Comparing Facebook to a doomsday machine: its power over the world is too great, so we must get rid of it before it wrecks things.

I am proud that I never had a Facebook account. But if you did have one, it is not too late to delete it.

Israeli soldiers were trying to take a generator away from a Palestinian house; some Palestinians were holding on to the generator, so the soldier shot Haroun Abu Aram in the back of the neck and paralyzed him permanently.

Israel was demolishing the house, having declared it "illegal", surely based on one of the usual unjust pretexts.

House Democrats "demoted" the poverty ratchet rule, "Paygo", by adopting exceptions for laws that address the consequences of the climate crisis or Covid-19.

I call it the "poverty ratchet rule" because it said that change would give the poor more support had to be counteracted by a change to cut other support for the poor. The result was that any change that cut support for the poor without any accompanying increment, that reduction was effectively permanent.

Adopting a rule like Paygo represents prioritizing the interests of the rich over the interests of giving he poor a decent life. In other words, the rule is a triumph of neoliberalism and dooH niboR.

Seven crucial lessons 2020 taught to reality-oriented Americans.

In the UK, during the summer and fall, an influential right-wing pressure group pushed for "open up and ignore the virus", much as happened in the US. They cited Sweden as an example of success to imitate. They got funding associated with the Koch brothers.

They got what they wanted, and now the UK has a Covid-19 crisis and hospitals are overwhelmed.

The details were different in the US, but it is the same right-wing death march. I wonder if it is funded by the same killers in both countries.

I do wonder why Sweden avoided having a major first wave when other countries had one. Even though it wasn't a lasting solution, it is an interesting phenomenon that might be useful.