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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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When businesses run their own inspection

mercredi 24 février 2021 à 01:00

The "new idea" of letting pork processing plants do their own inspections was tried experimentally under Obama. In 2014-2017, the plants which did this had twice as many violations as other plants.

Does this surprise you? It does not surprise me. In general, the reason businesses lobby to run their own inspection is so that they can do a quick and sloppy job of it, and sell things they should have discarded. The result can spread disease.

In general, the reason why government agencies accept these proposals from business is that they are trying to serve business rather than serve the public. A good government would teach its officials to laugh those lobbyists out of the office.

The US should simply cancel this bad policy.

Republicans' spreading of Covid-19

mercredi 24 février 2021 à 01:00

Republicans' spreading of Covid-19 was the culmination of a decades-long trend: plutocratist policies of deregulation and marketization have made the US more unequal in life expectancy as well as in income.

Filtering or breaking down microplastics

mercredi 24 février 2021 à 01:00

Progress in filtering or breaking down microplastics, though not yet at commercial scale.

The misguided concept of "Cultural appropriation"

mercredi 24 février 2021 à 01:00

Rihanna wore a pendant with an image of Ganesha, and is being criticized for it using the misguided concept of "cultural appropriation."

Setting aside that confusion, is there something to criticize about Rihanna's pendant? I am not sure. Was it disrespectful to the worshipers of Ganesha? Perhaps a little -- in that it acts to disconnect the appearance of Ganesha from its context and meaning.

I disagree with every religion, more or less, and I might use one's symbolic images as well as its words to make a point about it, perhaps to criticize it, much as Nina Paley did (better than I ever could) in Sita Sings the Blues.

But I would not disconnect them from their context. I may criticize a religion but I do not want to undermine knowledge or awareness about it.

Columbia University students on strike

mercredi 24 février 2021 à 01:00

A thousand students at Columbia University are on strike, refusing to pay their tuition fees, demanding a reduction in those fees but also other changes in the name of justice, such as fossil fuel divestment.

I'm richer than you! infinity loop