Nuclear power is a lost cause

Fusion, maybe, someday. Maybe. But fission needs to just end.

This kind of colossal waste of time and money on failed nuclear power projects is, of course, the more typical story than the myths spun in the press about the need for “low carbon” nuclear energy, a misleading representation used to argue for nuclear power’s inclusion in climate change mitigation.

In reality, the story of nuclear power development in the US over the last 50 years is beyond pitiful and would not pass muster under any “normal” business plan. How the nuclear industry gets away with it remains baffling. - CounterPunch

Finding new wars post-Afghanistan

It's what too many people have their sick, dark hearts set upon.

Why are so many otherwise sane people, including Joe Biden’s foreign policy team, already rattling sabers in preparation for a new faceoff with China, one that would be eminently avoidable with judicious diplomacy and an urge to cooperate on this embattled planet of ours?

...Looking at the U.S. from across an ocean, a British friend of mine was bemused by this country’s propensity for turning rivals into dangers of the worst sort. He asked me whether the very unity of the United States hinges on hyping and then confronting external enemies, an “artificially contrived military commonality,” as he put it, that may serve to prevent this country’s states from performing their own little “Brexits.”

He has a point. What is it about this country that makes our leaders so regularly revel in inflating threats to our well-being? War profits, of course, as well as the kinds of dangers that seem to justify an ever more colossal military. Still, I suggested to my friend that inflating such dangers hasn’t induced a sense of national unity, though it has, at least, provided a major distraction from what, so late in the game, can still only be called class warfare...They also, of course, offer our oligarchs and kleptocrats yet more opportunities to plunder taxpayer dollars. - TomDispatch

Nitrate fertilizer overuse is poisoning poor people's water

That of people who aren't poor as well. But as usual the effects are disproportionate.

Fairmont is far from unique. A study by the Environmental Working Group published on June 23 found that nitrate pollution in tap water is more likely in lower-income communities. In Minnesota, 73% of water utilities with elevated nitrate were in areas that fell below the average state income...

Nitrogen contamination is linked to livestock production as the tons of nitrogen-rich manure produced by animal feeding operations is used as fertilizer in crop fields...

While livestock operations must account for nitrogen levels in the soil and in the manure when applying manure to crop fields, the manure combined with commercial fertilizer can result in too much nitrogen being applied to the ground. - Investigate Midwest

Everyone owes mega-gratitude to indigenous resisters

Even though a whole lot of people don't have the sense to realize that. As is the case with so much else.

Indigenous rights and responsibilities, the report explains, “are far more than rhetorical devices — they are tangible structures impacting the viability of fossil fuel expansion.” Through physically disrupting construction and legally challenging projects, Indigenous resistance has directly stopped projects expected to produce 780 million metric tons of greenhouse gases every year and is actively fighting projects that would dump more than 800 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year.

The analysis, which used publicly released data and calculations from nine different environmental and oil regulation groups, found that roughly 1.587 billion metric tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions have been halted. That’s the equivalent pollution of approximately 400 new coal-fired power plants — more than are still operating in the United States and Canada — or roughly 345 million passenger vehicles — more than all vehicles on the road in these countries. - Grist

The Texas abortion ban is not an Islamic thing

A lot of people should know better. And I acknowledge that I really didn't, until I read this article.

It was no surprise to me that the extreme abortion ban that went into effect in Texas last week led to Islamophobic hashtags and media conversations. After all, contrasting the United States to Islam is part of an age-old imperialist way of thinking that stems from Orientalism, which seeks to differentiate between what is “right” in the West and “wrong” in the “Other.”

...It’s Islamophobic to assume that Muslim countries love banning abortion. It’s also ignorant to present misogyny as a “foreign” problem that should be expected in the supposedly “less progressive” nations of the East, but is a shock in the United States.

In Islam, abortion is permitted in cases such as rape, incest, socioeconomic difficulties, impact on the pregnant person’s mental or physical health, and fetal impairment. Texas SB 8 does not permit abortion in any of these situations, except for a life-threatening physical condition. Out of 47 Muslim-majority countries, only 18 have abortion laws as restrictive as Texas SB 8, according to a 2014 study in the journal Health Policy and Planning. - Rewire News Group

The horrifying, disgraceful reality/legacy of the U.S. in Afghanistan

It so happens that I'm currently reading James Risen's book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. It kicks ass, same as this article.

This month, as the Taliban swiftly took control of Kabul and the American-backed government collapsed, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the government’s watchdog over the Afghan experience, issued his final report. The assessment includes remarkably candid interviews with former American officials involved in shaping U.S. policy in Afghanistan that, collectively, offer perhaps the most biting critique of the 20-year American enterprise ever published in an official U.S. government report.

“The extraordinary costs were meant to serve a purpose,” the report notes, “though the definition of that purpose evolved over time.”

Released in the days after Kabul fell, the report reads like an epitaph for America’s involvement in Afghanistan. - James Risen/The Intercept

The new reality on abortion rights

I never seriously believed that even this SCOTUS wouldn't block the Texas vigilante law. They may still be working on how to block that part of it, while also providing a guide for a six-week ban they will uphold. But, hell, I don't know.

Still, the work remains. And today, at West Alabama Women’s Center, and in clinics across the country, it was mostly business as usual. Looking ahead, (Robin) Marty is already reflecting on how people will likely step up in really incredible ways, which she ironically worries could serve as a defense for future abortion litigation. “If we as activists, and as clinic workers, and as the movement itself manage to help people get care, that is obviously good for pregnant people. But in the grander scheme of things legally, that actually then serves to show that, ‘Hey, this law did not have nearly the devastating impact that people claimed that it would,’ and the courts are going to use that as an excuse to say, ‘Look, it can stay in effect. Look, more states can pass this,'” she says. “So our choices right now are to either mitigate as much damage as we can, and then hope against hope that the courts don’t see that as, ‘Hey, look, it’s really not that bad,’ or just watch people harmed and forced into pregnancies or into dangerous situations or sued or fined or in jail. There’s no win for us.”

Marty’s book, which lays out how to get care if you need an abortion and cannot access it, is quite literally a guide to what happens next in this country. It’s also a call to action. “It’s a to-do list of how to protect yourself during civil disobedience and, more importantly, how to figure out if you’re the sort of person who should do civil disobedience because it is privileged people who need to step up and do it,” she says. - Mother Jones

Internet trolls aren't assholes just because it's the internet

Per a recent study.

The team considered the mismatch hypothesis, which in the context of online behavior refers to the theory that there is a conflict between human adaptation for face-to-face interpersonal interaction and the newer, impersonal online environment. That hypothesis more or less amounts to the idea that humans who would be nicer to each other in person might feel more inclined to get nasty when interacting with other pseudonymous internet users. The researchers found little evidence for that.

Instead, their data pointed to online interactions largely mirroring offline behavior, with people predisposed to aggressive, status-seeking behavior just as unpleasant in person as behind a veil of online anonymity, and choosing to be jerks as part of a deliberate strategy rather than as a consequence of the format involved. - Gizmodo