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transmutationisms · 1 year ago

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in addition to being prone to an obvious naturalistic fallacy, the oft-repeated claim that various supplements / herbs / botanicals are being somehow suppressed by pharmaceutical interests seeking to protect their own profits ('they would rather sell you a pill') belies a clear misunderstanding of the relationship between 'industrial' pharmacology and plant matter. bioprospecting, the search for plants and molecular components of plants that can be developed into commercial products, has been one of the economic motivations and rationalisations for european colonialism and imperialism since the so-called 'age of exploration'. state-funded bioprospectors specifically sought 'exotic' plants that could be imported to europe and sold as food or materia medica—often both, as in the cases of coffee or chocolate—or, even better, cultivated in 'economic' botanical gardens attached to universities, medical schools, or royal palaces and scientific institutions.

this fundamental attitude toward the knowledge systems and medical practices of colonised people—the position, characterising eg much 'ethnobotany', that such knowledge is a resource for imperialist powers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to mine and profit from—is not some kind of bygone historical relic. for example, since the 1880s companies including pfizer, bristol-myers squibb, and unilever have sought to create pharmaceuticals from african medicinal plants, such as strophanthus, cryptolepis, and grains of paradise. in india, state-created databases of valuable 'traditional' medicines have appeared partly in response to a revival of bioprospecting since the 1980s, in an increasingly bureaucratised form characterised by profit-sharing agreements between scientists and local communities that has nonetheless been referred to as "biocapitalism". a 1990 paper published in the proceedings of the novartis foundation symposium (then the ciba foundation symposium) spelled out this form of epistemic colonialism quite bluntly:

Ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, folk medicine and traditional medicine can provide information that is useful as a 'pre-screen' to select plants for experimental pharmacological studies.

there is no inherent oppositional relationship between pharmaceutical industry and 'natural' or plant-based cures. there are of course plenty of examples of bioprospecting that failed to translate into consumer markets: ginseng, introduced to europe in the 17th century through the mercantile system and the east india company, found only limited success in european pharmacology. and there are cases in which knowledge with potential market value has actually been suppressed for other reasons: the peacock flower, used as an abortifacient in the west indies, was 'discovered' by colonial bioprospectors in the 18th century; the plant itself moved easily to europe, but knowledge of its use in reproductive medicine became the subject of a "culturally cultivated ignorance," resulting from a combination of funding priorities, national policies, colonial trade patterns, gender politics, and the functioning of scientific institutions. this form of knowledge suppression was never the result of a conflict wherein bioprospectors or pharmacists viewed the peacock flower as a threat to their own profits; on the contrary, they essentially sacrificed potential financial benefits as a result of the political and social factors that made abortifacient knowledge 'unknowable' in certain state and commercial contexts.

exploitation of plant matter in pharmacology is not a frictionless or infallible process. but the sort of conspiratorial thinking that attempts to position plant therapeutics and 'big pharma' as oppositional or competitive forces is an ahistorical and opportunistic example of appealing to nominally anti-capitalist rhetoric without any deeper understanding of the actual mechanisms of capitalism and colonialism at play. this is of course true whether or not the person making such claims has any personal financial stake in them, though it is of course also true that, often, they do hold such stakes.

#hps

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covid-safer-hotties · 1 month ago

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My boyfriend traveled to Europe for a work trip. What's the protocol for when he gets back to make sure he didn't pick up COVID? I just assume the CDC website these days says not to worry about it and viruses are made of sunshine and rainbows.

The CDC's recommendations are made of worse than sunshine and rainbows: they're made of okaying a CEO to refuse his workers sick leave for covid in 2021. That shit they say about "not having a fever" is literally based in an old wive's tale about illness in general, as they science says nearly 60% of all covid spread comes from asymptomatic or presympomatic people. Tbh, the HHS, CDC, and NIH didn't need to have RFK and Battacharya put in charge to destroy them, they've been doing it to themselves for years by bowing to corporate desires instead of standing behind evidence-based airborne mitigations to protect the public health... but that's a different rant.

1. He needs to be wearing a quality mask the whole plane trip. The newest LP.1 strain is on the rise in Europe and is more transmissible. (This is one of those things that would have been good to plan for a month ago so you could get sip valves and the like for hydration)

2. Mask mask mask when he gets back. I assume you don't have a molecular home test. Rapid tests are incredibly fallible until people become more symptomatic, so taking a negative RAT as a sign of safety is potentially a route to exposure. Metrix sells a molecular home test with much better results that looks for *any* covid, not just high viral load. Order one now (they also make combo covid/flu tests, but IDK if they've hit the consumer market yet).

3. If you can, cordon off an area to be his quarantine for at least a few days. (Tips on how to do that) If you're using RATs, aim for two a day about 12 hours apart for the first 3-5 days. If you're seeing nothing, and assuming he's been in Europe for a while, you may consider relaxing your home quarantine, especially if you have air filtration and good ventilation in place.

4. If he does test positive, both you and he should continue to mask often, but his masking is most important. Source control is key in preventing spread of covid. Have him open the windows he can and assure there's a negative pressure out so his aresols don't creep into the home (guides in the isolation protocols linked above). Make sure he has his creature comforts (game system, books, movies, etc.) and plenty of tasty snacks and nutritious food. You can use video conferencing tools to have time together, talk during meals, etc. A lot of what you do if and when he gets sick is up to the limitations of your home (idk what size, style, or environmental factors are coming into play: it's easier to quarantine in a 2 story mcmansion than a 2 room apartment.) But he can come out once he's passed a series of rapid tests (3-5 is the rule of thumb to assure no false negatives, which are common) or a home molecular test.

#mask up #public health #wear a mask #wear a respirator #still coviding #pandemic #covid #covid 19 #coronavirus #sars cov 2

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whencyclopedia · 3 months ago

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Chesapeake-Leopard Affair

The Chesapeake-Leopard affair was an incident that took place off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, on 22 June 1807 when the British warship HMS Leopard fired on and boarded an American frigate USS Chesapeake while searching for deserters from the Royal Navy. The incident was one of the events that led to the War of 1812.

Background

In 1807, as the United States was still struggling to find its footing as an independent nation, the Napoleonic Wars were raging in Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte, having crowned himself Emperor of the French three years before, found himself opposed by a series of ever-shifting coalitions of European nations bankrolled by Great Britain. On land, Napoleon's armies had proved dominant; with such great victories as the Battle of Austerlitz (2 December 1805) and the Battle of Friedland (14 June 1807), he had conquered Central Europe and was now exerting influence throughout most of the continent. Britain, meanwhile, had smashed French naval power at the Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) and was afterwards the undisputed master of the waves. This dichotomy left the neutral United States in a precarious position: to deal with one empire meant to upset the other. President Thomas Jefferson, nervously keeping tabs on the developments in Europe, voiced the concerns of many of his countrymen when he wrote: "What an awful spectacle does the world exhibit in this instant, one man bestriding the continent of Europe like a Colossus, and another roaming unbridled on the ocean" (Wood, 622).

But even as the war created anxiety in America, so, too, did it open the door of opportunity. American merchants were quick to capitalize on the gap in international trade caused by the fighting; with France and Spain no longer able to send merchant ships to their colonies in the West Indies, these colonies reluctantly opened their ports to American ships instead. The Americans would then re-export these Caribbean goods to European markets, making a fortune in the process. In 1807, the combined value of American imports and exports reached $243 million, turning the United States into the largest neutral carrier of goods in the world. When Britain complained that the United States' middleman trade strategy violated their so-called Rule of 1756 – which prevented nations from trading in times of war with ports that had been closed to them in times of peace – the Americans circumvented the rule by importing the Caribbean goods to the United States before re-exporting them to Europe, technically turning them into neutral cargo in the process.

American shipping would become threatened, however, as the Franco-British rivalry reached its stalemate. Unable to directly attack the British Isles due to the power of the Royal Navy, Napoleon decided to instead force Britain's submission by paralyzing its economy. In November 1806, he issued the Berlin Decree, the first block in his Continental System, in which he issued a continent-wide embargo on British trade. Any ship carrying British goods was liable for seizure, including those belonging to neutral countries. Britain retaliated with several orders-in-council, which placed a blockade on all ports that complied with Napoleon's embargo, stipulating that all nations who wished to trade at these ports had to first stop in England to pay transit duties. This, of course, left the American merchants in a difficult situation, as they could no longer trade at any European port without running afoul of either the French or the British. Before long, the warring empires were each seizing neutral American ships; between 1803 and 1812, France seized 558 American vessels, while the British captured 917.

#History #22June1807 #American #Americans #WHE #[#]

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opencommunion · 6 months ago

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"The sight of hungry people scavenging through dumpsters and panhandling was once more common in cities in the United States and Europe than in Havana. But a series of quiet moves, first by Trump, and now by Biden, have produced a humanitarian crisis throughout Cuba.

... Joy Gordon, an expert on sanctions at Loyola University Chicago and author of Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, told Drop Site News that there has been a shift towards minimizing visible harm to civilian populations since the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, which resulted in widespread malnutrition and epidemics. 'There’s a strategy of trying to offload the enforcement to the private sector,' she said. 'U.S. policy has created conditions that make it commercially compelling for the private sector to withdraw from whole markets, resulting in severe and widespread economic harm, but in a form that is not directly attributable to US policymakers.'

... Perhaps the best example of an almost invisible but insidious sanction is designating Cuba as a 'state sponsor of terrorism.' Presented as a benign policy tool to make the world a safer place rather than an arm of economic warfare, it has contaminated the word 'Cuba' more than ever in the global economy. Almost overnight the label provoked both global banks and vital exporters to pull out of the Cuban market, according to diplomats and businesspeople on the island. ... The island had been on the State Department’s terror list before, up until 2015. But since the relisting in 2021 the effects have been fiercer.

... Most Cubans fleeing this misery head to America. ... By keeping the terror designation and other sanctions in place, the Biden administration has fueled this record-breaking wave of Cuban migration. Over the last three years, more than a half-million Cubans have arrived in the U.S., according to figures from the Customs and Border Patrol Agency. The whole dynamic has a whiff of madness: record Cuban migration stoked by the Biden administration plays into the broader 'border crisis' that is helping Trump as the election approaches.

... The list of state sponsors of terrorism has always stood on the frontier between analysis and propaganda. No matter how bad their records, U.S. allies never make the list; adversaries do. ... According to former intelligence and State Department officials, for the last three decades the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment has been that the island has not sponsored what even the U.S. would define as terrorism since the 1990s. ... From its first months in office, Biden’s team has repeatedly said—both publicly and privately to members of Congress—that it was carrying out a broad review of policy towards Cuba, including the terror designation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in 2022 that the administration 'will continue as necessary to revisit those to see if Cuba continues to merit that designation.' But last year, that claim was revealed as bogus. In a private meeting, a State Department official privately told members of Congress that no review process had even begun, according to sources present.

... Analysts agreed that with political will, Cuba could have been taken off the list within weeks of Biden’s inauguration in 2021. Some 80 House Democrats sent Biden a letter urging him to do just that within weeks of his inauguration. Even if the administration carried out a six-month review as some argue the law requires, the designation could have been lifted by the middle of Biden’s first year in office. Had the White House done so, hundreds of thousands of Cubans might well have been living at home with their loved ones today, living with better access to food and medicine, rather than fighting their way to the border and battling the byzantine U.S. immigration system.

The Biden administration’s position became even more tangled in May when it removed Cuba from the list of countries that are not 'fully cooperating' with the U.S. on counterterrorism. According to official designations, Cuba now 'fully cooperates' with counter-terrorism efforts while at the same time 'sponsoring' terrorism. How the same country could do both things remains unexplained. Asked why the State Department had not even begun a review, spokesperson Matt Miller told Drop Site at a press briefing that the U.S. policy was aimed at furthering 'the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people,' a reference to the U.S. goal of overthrowing the regime."

#caribbean #imperialism #library

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 month ago

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golfing nero : Dave : @FinancialReview

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 6, 2025 (Sunday)

Heather Cox Richardson

Apr 07, 2025

After President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements on April 2 wiped $5 trillion dollars from the stock market, the Republican Party is scrambling.

Farmers, who were a part of Trump’s base, are “struck and shocked” by the tariffs, the president of the South Dakota Farmers Union told Lauren Scott of CBC News, saying they will have a “devastating effect.” Rob Copeland, Lauren Hirsch, and Maureen Farrell of the New York Times report that Wall Street leaders who backed Trump are now criticizing him publicly, with one calling for someone to stop him. The size of yesterday’s peaceful protests around the country, less than 100 days into Trump’s term when he should be enjoying a honeymoon, demonstrated growing fury at the administration’s actions.

Yesterday, in the midst of the economic crisis and as millions of protesters gathered across the country, the White House announced that “[t]he President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round tomorrow.” This afternoon, President Donald J. Trump posted a video of himself hitting a golf ball off a tee, perhaps as a demonstration that he is unconcerned about the chaos in the markets.

When Trump administration officials Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett appeared on this morning’s Sunday shows, their attempts to reassure Americans and deflect concerns also sounded out of touch.

Bessent, a billionaire, told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press that the administration is creating a new, more secure economic system and that Americans “who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening.” He went on to suggest that the losses were likely not that significant and would turn out fine in the long term.

Lutnick insisted that the tariffs are about national security and bringing back manufacturing, although the administration has frozen the Inflation Reduction Act funding for the manufacturing President Joe Biden brought to the U.S., overwhelmingly in Republican-dominated districts. Lutnick kept hitting on the MAGA talking point that other countries are ripping the U.S. off, and insisted that the tariffs are here to stay.

On This Week by ABC News, Hassett took the opposite position: that countries are already calling the White House to begin tariff negotiations. Host George Stephanopoulos asked Hassett about the video Trump posted on his social media account claiming that he was crashing the market on purpose, forcing him to say that crashing the economy was not part of Trump’s strategy. Hassett claimed that the tariffs will not cost consumers more and that Trump is “trying to deliver for American workers.”

The tariffs not only have forced administration officials into contradictory positions, but also have brought into the open the rift between old MAGA and billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump’s tariff policy reflects the ideas of his senior counselor on manufacturing and trade, Peter Navarro, a China hawk who invented an “expert” to support his statements in his own books. Musk, who opposes the tariffs, has taken shots at Navarro on his social media platform X. On Saturday, Musk directly contradicted Trump and MAGA when he told a gathering of right-wing Italians that he wants the U.S. and Europe to create a tariff-free zone as well as "more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America." On the Fox News Channel this morning, Navarro retorted that Musk “sells cars” and is just trying to protect his own interests.

Republicans also have to quell fires as the demands of the very different constituencies Trump brought into his coalition to win in 2024 are creating growing anger. A second child has now died of measles in West Texas, and as of this morning, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of opposing vaccines, had continued to call vaccines a personal decision. Although he is not a doctor, he pushed the idea that ingesting Vitamin A helps patients recover from measles. Since his suggestion, a hospital in Texas says it is now treating children whose bodies have toxic levels of Vitamin A.

During the confirmation process for his post, Kennedy seems to have promised Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and a medical doctor, that he would not alter vaccine systems, but since taking office he has made dramatic cuts. Today, Cassidy posted on X, “Everyone should be vaccinated!” and added: “Top health officials should say so unequivocally b/4 another child dies.”

Evidently feeling the pressure as the measles outbreak spreads, Kennedy this afternoon conceded on X that “[t]he most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.”

Today, Dan Diamond and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post reported that cuts to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have even Republican lawmakers and former Trump officials from his first term worried that the country is at risk of food-related disease outbreaks like the 2022 contamination of infant formula. On April 4, Heather Vogell of ProPublica reported that the Abbott Laboratories factory at the heart of the 2022 crisis continues to use the same unsanitary practices. Employees told her that workers still take shortcuts when cleaning and checking equipment for bacteria as supervisors try to increase production and retaliate against those who complain about problems.

The White House told Diamond and Natanson that cuts to the FDA and other health agencies will make them more “nimble and strategic.” Abbott Laboratories told Vogell that the workers’ assertions were “untrue or misleading” and said it “stands behind the quality and safety of all our products.”

Diamond and Natanson note that experts who worked under both Republican and Democratic presidents, as well as former Trump officials and Republican lawmakers are also concerned about cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors atmospheric and ocean systems and predicts weather, and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that responds to disasters. Storms across the South have been wreaking havoc in the past days. Today alone saw deadly weather in Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and Oklahoma; the governors of Tennessee and Kentucky have declared states of emergency.

Reporter James Fallows notes that the U.S. senators from the states hardest hit—Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas—are all Republicans and are all backing Trump and Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is behind the cuts to NOAA and FEMA.

Today, Michael Sainato of The Guardian reported that workers at the Social Security Administration say that cuts to staffing and services along with policy changes have created “complete, utter chaos” at the agency that is threatening to cause a “death spiral.” Acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration Leland Dudek told Sainato that “we are updating our policy to provide better customer service to the country’s most vulnerable populations.”

Late Thursday, Trump fired General Timothy D. Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and of the U.S. Cyber Command, as well as Haugh’s deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, and several staff members from the White House National Security Council. He apparently did so at the recommendation of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. The NSA collects information from overseas computer networks, while Cyber Command engages in both offensive and defensive operations on them.

While Democrats are out front, lawmakers across the political spectrum are concerned about the firings. Senator Angus King (I-ME), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Julian E. Barnes of the New York Times: “Our country is under attack right now in cyberspace, and the president has just removed our top general from the field for no reason at the recommendation of someone who knows nothing about national security or even the job this general does.”

And then there is the crisis over the arrest and rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to prison in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was in the U.S. legally, is married to a U.S. citizen, and is the father of a U.S. citizen. In 2019 a court barred the government from deporting him to El Salvador. On March 31 an official from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the court under oath that Abrego Garcia had been arrested and deported to prison because of an “administrative error.” And yet the government also said it could not get him back because he is no longer in U.S. jurisdiction.

After a hearing on Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States no later than 11:59 p.m. on April 7. The administration immediately filed an emergency motion to stop the order while it appeals her decision. Today, Xinis filed her opinion, which said that “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal…. [H]is detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” And yet administration officials “cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person—migrant and U.S. citizen alike—to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the 'custodian,' and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction.”

Today, Cecilia Vega, Aliza Chasan, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Andy Court, and Annabelle Hanflig of CBS News’s 60 Minutes reported that 75% of the Venezuelans the Trump administration sent to prison in El Salvador “have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.” Another 22% have records for nonviolent crimes like shoplifting or trespassing. A dozen or so are accused of murder, rape, assault, or kidnapping. When the reporters reached out to the Department of Homeland Security about these numbers, a spokesperson said that those without criminal records “are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters, and more; they just don't have a rap sheet in the U.S.”

This utter disregard for the constitutional right to due process is raising alarm among Americans who have noted that when Trump declared an emergency at the southern border on January 20, he ordered the secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security to advise him whether they thought it necessary to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act. That act allows a president during times of civil unrest to use the military against U.S. citizens.

U.S. stock futures plunged again tonight, with Dow Jones Industrial Average futures down 1,250 points, or 3.3%, S&P 500 futures down 3.7%, and Nasdaq futures down 4.6%. And yet Trump is doubling down on tariffs, posting that they are “a beautiful thing to behold…. Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!”

Republican leaders have not silenced the chatter about Trump serving a third term, despite its obvious unconstitutionality, at least in part because they know he is the only person who can turn out MAGA voters. But their calculations appear to be changing. Today, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Sunday that Trump is a “very smart man, and…I wish we could have him for 20 years as our president,” but that “I think he’s going to be finished, probably, after this term.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#the economy #stock market #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Republicans #MAGA #Dave #Financial times #U.S. Stock Futures #NOAA #FEMA

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catenary-chad · 13 days ago

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I’ve made blanket statements about “rail freight is a profitable business and passenger service is usually a money pit” but there’s some pretty interesting nuance relevant to Stex that becomes more significant in Europe.

Longer distance bulk freight is a profitable business. It made up 80% of BR’s freight revenue and was its only profitable freight segment. This is “trainload freight” that’s a long line of all the same thing (grain, oil, stone, etc). A lot of longer distance bulk loads in continental Europe are handled by barge vs train.

Car/Wagonload freight is unprofitable in Europe and low-profit in the US, and economically undesirable to large rail companies because of that. The Freight (and Components!) in Stex fit this since they’re a mixed group, though I think that was done because a line of identical characters would be boring.

It has a much harder time competing with road transport because logistics of getting things in and out of rail yards and general clunkiness of rail freight makes it much more time-consuming over short distances. Roads are also uncritically fully government funded and trucking companies pay low access fees to use them vs higher access fees on rails. In Europe it’s even more slanted towards roads with cheap trucking labor and antiquated buffer and chain couplings adding a ton of time/labor to adding/removing cars, these are finally planned to be phased out by 2030 to make rail freight more competitive.

Passenger-freight prioritization is an issue pretty much worldwide, to different degrees and in different ways. Yes, passenger trains do dominate the rails in most of Europe, yes they’re higher priority and cleaner/better maintained…. because they have live cargo with higher standards and even perishable goods don’t mind being an hour late, humans do! There’s just a greater need to move large quantities of people (who handle the clunky transfer and last-mile moves themselves) and more benefit to getting a ton of small individual passenger vehicles off the roads vs a smaller number of trucks.

It’s apples to oranges to compare coaches more in line with intercity/long distance luxury to carload/wagonload freight. Intercity passenger trains can be profitable in a system where infrastructure maintenance costs aren’t considered. But they’re better compared to longer-distance trainload freight in terms of being a faster direct train with fewer stops, which is financially sustainable even in fully private systems. Regional and local passenger trains are a fairer comparison and those are far less profitable. The old US long distance luxury trains the coaches are visually based on were absolute money pits mainly run for PR reasons. Belmond’s trains are probably their closest modern equivalents, and seem to be far more stable but ultimately they’re a niche luxury market vs essential service.

Modernization is also the furthest thing from a threat to rail freight and if anything, notorious choo choo killers Dr. Richard Beeching and Al Perlman often have their major freight improvements looked over. See also the buffer and chain coupler situation (I take psychic damage remembering that fact as an American). It’s arguably more of an issue in Europe with the far smaller advantages of rail freight, any reduction in labor cost and turnaround time is VERY valuable. Small freight lines in the US get away with some ridiculously antiquated equipment (Iowa Traction lol) but that’s an even weirder separate rabbit hole. Electrification is an incredibly positive thing for rail freight since it allows a major increase in speeds, increasing capacity in congested non-electrified areas. That’s mostly a factor in the UK though, since continental Europe is much more electrified and just struggles with lack of physical tracks (though this is also a UK problem and a main reason for HS2). Battery and hydrogen power just aren’t energy dense enough to viable for freight usage and English-language media constantly undersells how absurdly OP electric trains are. It’s not like electric cars, they are so much lighter and more powerful than combustion alternatives that they were desired for capacity/power reasons before global warming was even a thought.

In short: passenger/freight just doesn’t make sense as a class thing and the comparison canon makes isn’t even a fair one. It obscures the actual issues facing rail freight (lack of capacity and struggle to modernize). I don’t even think the intercity vs carload combo was even picked for that deep of reasons, unit trains and lower-end passenger trains are just less fun and popular as toys and onstage characters. Mine trains and subways are an extreme example, they’re almost nonexistent as models despite being otherwise well-preserved and publicly recognized.

Trucker Caboose is a timeless and international villain (and cabooses are very much still used on occasion, though I can’t speak for how recognizable they are internationally). Weirdly enough this is a situation where steam engines would be a solid villain too, representing refusal to improve practices and infrastructure (one was used to protest this in Germany recently lol).

Ironically, Greaseball is a far less effective villain in the context of European freight, American freight diesel locomotives like the EMD Class 66 were very positively received in Europe. On the business end that is, they were physically unpleasant for actual employees. He’s almost a kind of crappy superhero- while relatively dirty, inefficient and “stupid” vs other diesel manufacturers, EMD engines are notoriously reliable and maintainable and even smaller models like the SD40 are very powerful by European standards. Making him the “biggest and the strongest” makes more sense with him as something like a Class 66, though he would not be competitive speed wise (compared to a 50s-era EMD E9 that’s relatively weak but would be competitive on rugged, curvy tracks the Nationals couldn’t use their full speed on). I think I get why Europeans seem to skew towards him being a less malicious himbo, that’s the actual role an American diesel engine would have there vs symbol of hegemony (see my Greaseball post on how he gets even worse than the workshop when played true to US reality)

#stex #starlight express #while i mainly use US dynamics because they’re stupid and extreme versions of issues that exist elsewhere #I think international rail politics and economics are fascinating and have a lot of fun nuance #protag greaseball is hilarious because i was rooting for him in bochum just for breaking up the slooow first half of the show #the components are too ambiguous to easily categorize tbh. probably best compared to fast freight (especially with a freezer car)#which was relatively successful for amtrak but lost money for BR #making a knockoff thomas the tank engine a villain seems compelling in the face of reported UK cultural issues around change #but I just do not understand those well enough to go into that. I’ve just seen a lot of people bring up aspects of it

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cognitivejustice · 4 months ago

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Key messages

With a circularity rate of 11.8% in 2023, Europe consumes a higher proportion of recycled materials than other world regions, although improvements have been limited in recent years. Accelerating the transition to a circular economy has become a policy priority.

Monitoring the circular economy involves tracking not only material flows but also environmental degradation, as it is associated with resource extraction, processing, and use.

A strong enabling framework of policies, knowledge, and financing has been developed at the EU level to foster and support the circular economy. Companies and consumers are showing early signs of adopting new business models and consumption patterns. However, linear systems continue to prevail, and the effectiveness of ongoing efforts remains unclear, partly due to limited monitoring data.

Each European uses about 14 tonnes of material and generates 5 tonnes of waste annually—among the highest levels globally and beyond sustainable limits, posing barriers to narrowing material cycles in Europe. On the positive side, the EU has managed to grow its economy while using a stable amount of resources and generating a stable amount of waste, achieving a modest level of decoupling.

Europe is highly efficient in extracting value from resources, with resource productivity exceeding €2/kg since 2015, more than 2.5 times the world average. Similarly, Europe recycles almost half of the waste it generates, and would benefit from promoting high-quality recycling and supporting the effective functioning of secondary material markets.

Material circularity in Europe has been low and relatively stable in recent years, as both recycling volumes and material use have stagnated since 2014. Furthermore, global environmental impacts from Europe’s consumption are increasing, and the environmental benefits of circularity have not yet become apparent.

#solarpunk #solar punk #circular economy #europe #eu #vision statement #recycling #repurpose #reuse #reculture

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oxford-garments · 2 months ago

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Hatton Garden - Wikipedia

I AM TRAPPED IN LONDON DIAMOND DISTRICT!

START SUPPLYING!

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Authentic Movement STERRC (SMUGGLING, TRAFFICKING, EMBEZZLEMENT, RHIZOMES, AND RUGGED & REFINED CULTIVATOR)

Of Undisputed Origin.

Periodic Table Metallurgy Cultivator with Artisanal Primitive Anthropology, Nationalist, Art Intellect with Athletic Ability, Riverbanks Farmland, Real Estate Investment Trust and Real Estate Brokerage Trust Account, Pool-Live Monopoly Turf Accountant Board Game Tournament, Rugby and Kickboxing, Eagle Conservation, Painting and Polyrhythm Syncopated Progressive Drum Loops with Rhythm Flag (Anacrusis; Staccato and Legato; Barcarolle; Tonic and Dominant; Triple G Positions), and (Diamond; Decapods; Mollusk; Opium; Deliriants; Tobacco; Coffee; and Arms) Black Market

Kimberley Certificate

Open-pit Mines Economic Geography

Banking System and Probabilistic Model Exchange

Intermodal Cargo Countyline Trafficking Infrastructure

De facto SLL/SDM FX Counter Trading Party for Diamond CFD; SLL 5% AND SDM -0.5% Interest Rates Contract for Difference.

CURRENCY, OIL, & GOLD COMMODITIES CANDLESTICK CHARTS

Swing Trading: Use mt4/mt5 With Heiken Ashi Charts, Setting at 14 or 21 Momentum Indicator above 0 as Divergence Oscillator and Volume Spread Analysis as Reversal Oscillator and Trade when bullish candlesticks above 200 exponential moving average and/or 20 exponential moving average (EMA) on H1 (Hourly) Time Frame; use H4 (4 Hours) and D1 (1 Day) as reference.

(Artisanal Primitive King) Pedagogy: King Anthropology; Mixing a form of Royalty Title with Anthropology. CRAFT SOCIETY Sensory Processing Anthropology Artisan Primitive: Sensory Play of the Sensory Ethnography, Sensory Modulits CNS; Artisanal Plantation Metallurgy Cash Crops Spectrum; Evolution; Savagery, Emerging Markets, Civilianization, ECONOMICS OF FINANCIAL MARKETS; Economic Science (Supply-side Economics), Economic Geography (Artisanal Plantation), Economic Mathematics (CFD Probabilistic Model Exchange), Microeconomics (Contract Theory, Purchasing Theory, Portfolio Theory, Producer Price Index, Profit Sharing Plan, Lipstick Effect, Opportunity Cost, Private Limited Partnership, Public-Private Sectors, Pyramid Marketing, Minor Purchase Group) for Sensory Geography (5 Senses City); Prenatal Hormones with Fetus Alcohol Consumption for Sensory Overload Savant;

Athletic Spirit of Rugby: Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in England in the first half of the 19th century. Rugby is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is played between two teams of 15 players each, using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field called a pitch. The field has H-shaped goalposts at both ends. The SVNS,[1][2] known as the for sponsorship reasons, is an annual series of international rugby sevens tournaments run by World Rugby featuring national sevens teams. Organised for the first time in the 1999–2000 season as the IRB World Sevens Series,[3] the competition was formed to promote an elite-level of international rugby sevens and develop the game into a viable commercial product. A fly-half (number 10) is usually the first player to receive the ball from the scrum-half following a breakdown, line-out or scrum. Therefore, they must be decisive with what actions to take. They must possess leadership and communicate effectively with the back line.[58] Good fly-halves are calm, clear thinking and have the vision to direct effective attacking plays.[59] Fly-halves need good passing and kicking skills. Often the fly-half is the best kicker in the team and needs to be able to execute attacking kicks such as up-and-unders, grubbers and chip kicks as well as being able to kick for territory.[58] Many fly-halves are also the team's goal kickers.

Clive Myr. Obasi

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tanadrin · 11 months ago

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This edition also includes some really useful historical notes to augment Book I of Utopia; the early 16th century was a time when the population was growing, adding slack to a labor market that had been tight since the Black Death (to the improvement of the position of the peasantry that survived it), there was gradual inflation that was also eroding at the position of anybody without much capital to invest, patterns of trade were changing, and of course the process of enclosure was spreading.

The problem wasn't just a lack of, like, theoretical underpinnings for dealing with these economic and social issues. Of course Henry VIII didn't have a court economist or anything to help him out with his fiscal policy. But it was also just that the conception of what the law and what government was for was different: in the much more leisurely pace of the premodern world, there was a strong feeling that the law and government were supposed to basically be a steady-state system. You would figure out the ideal set of laws, implement them, and be done; you might have to work to enforce those laws, but the laws were not supposed to be constantly changing, and you definitely weren't supposed to have to be continually updating and expanding them as an instrument of policy, because the world in general was supposed to be much like it always was, from one decade to the next.

And that's not a crazy way to view the world in the Middle Ages! Premodern inflation rates were low. People's intuitions around value and price were based on that experience. Population growth was low. Patterns of international trade didn't change quickly. When things did change suddenly, it was either because of a catastrophe like the Black Death or upheavals like war or famine; and communities and individuals that had won legal privileges from their feudal lords were jealous of those privileges, leading (along with the inherently fragile nature of subsistence agriculture) to a certain conservatism in the culture.

In this worldview, the job of a king or a minister isn't to be the careful manager of a dynamic system. It's to be a wise and thoughtful dispenser of justice and guardian of the inherited legal system. This is also the vision of Utopia itself: a society which has settled into an ideal steady-state, whose political economy is thus fixed, and which has no real room for "development," because the kind of development you or I think of as inherent to history is, at best, a synonym for "something went horribly wrong, and we have to repair it," if it exists at all. The irony there, of course, is that Utopia is not a medieval book: it's being written just as the Renaissance is bursting over Europe ushering in the beginning of modernity. Things are changing in England, and while they are changing slowly right now, the pace of change is about to pick up drastically, especially when that little German monk publishes his 95 theses.

Really, I wonder what it must have felt like to be a humanist at the beginning of the 16th century. There is much to be excited about--news from the new world (not yet the battleground of large European empires), the rediscovery of classical learning, the flourishing of art and literature. But so much is about to change--and much of it in a bad way! the European Wars of Religion are just around the corner!--and you have no idea.

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thoughtportal · 9 months ago

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COVID-19 makes a worrying comeback, WHO warns amid summertime surge

COVID-19 infections are surging globally, including at the Paris Olympics, and are unlikely to decline anytime soon, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The UN health agency is also warning that more severe variants of the coronavirus may soon be on the horizon.

“COVID-19 is still very much with us,” and circulating in all countries, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of WHO told journalists in Geneva.

“Data from our sentinel-based surveillance system across 84 countries reports that the percent of positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 has been rising over several weeks,” she said. “Overall, test positivity is above 10 per cent, but this fluctuates per region. In Europe, percent positivity is above 20 per cent,” Dr. Van Kerkhove added.

New waves of infection have been registered in the Americas, Europe and Western Pacific. Wastewater surveillance suggests that the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 is two to 20 times higher than what is currently being reported. Such high infection circulation rates in the northern hemisphere’s summer months are atypical for respiratory viruses, which tend to spread mostly in cold temperatures.

“In recent months, regardless of the season, many countries have experienced surges of COVID-19, including at the Olympics where at least 40 athletes have tested positive,” Dr. Van Kerkhove said.

As the virus continues to evolve and spread, there is a growing risk of a more severe strain of the virus that could potentially evade detection systems and be unresponsive to medical intervention. While COVID-19 hospital admissions, including for Intensive Care Units (ICUs), are still much lower than they were during the peak of the pandemic, WHO is urging governments to strengthen their vaccination campaigns, making sure that the highest risk groups get vaccinated once every 12 months.

“As individuals it is important to take measures to reduce risk of infection and severe disease, including ensuring that you have had a COVID-19 vaccination dose in the last 12 months, especially, if you are in an at-risk group,” stressed Dr. Van Kerkhove.

Vaccines availability has declined substantially over the last 12-18 months, WHO admits, because the number of producers of COVID-19 vaccines has recently decreased.“It is very difficult for them to maintain the pace,” Dr. Van Kerkhove explained. “And certainly, they don't need to maintain the pace that they had in 2021 and 2022. But let's be very clear, there is a market for COVID-19 vaccines that are out there.”

Nasal vaccines are still under development but could potentially address transmission, thereby reducing the risk of further variants, infection and severe disease.

“I am concerned, “ Dr. Van Kerkhove said. “With such low coverage and with such large circulation, if we were to have a variant that would be more severe, then the susceptibility of the at-risk populations to develop severe disease is huge,” Dr. Van Kerkhove warned.

#Article #COVID #vaccines #WHO #public health #the united nations

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thehopefuljournalist · 2 years ago

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weird question, but do you know if regenerative agriculture is growing, and by what rate? it's important to me but looking for articles on my own can trigger a panic attack :[ no worries if not !

Hey! Thank you so much for asking. Honestly, agriculture and sustainable agriculture specifically are very close to my heart as well, so I was glad for the excuse to do some research :)

Also, thank you for your patience, I know you sent this Ask a bit ago. It’s good that you’re listening to yourself and not going around searching for things that might cause you harm, so thanks again for reaching out!

So, what is regenerative agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture is a way of farming that focuses on soil health. When soil is healthy, it produces more food and nutrition, stores more carbon and increases biodiversity – the variety of species. Healthy soil supports other water, land and air environments and ecosystems through natural processes including water drainage and pollination – the fertilization of plants.

Regenerative agriculture is a defining term for sustainability in our food system - while there is no one true definition of regenerative agriculture, the concept has been around for centuries, taking root in Indigenous growing practices. Regenerative approaches can bolster soil health and watershed health. They can also add to climate mitigation and potentially tie into regulatory or commercial incentives for a more sustainable diet.

Regenerative farming methods include minimizing the ploughing of land. This keeps CO2 in the soil, improves its water absorbency and leaves vital fungal communities in the earth undisturbed.

Rotating crops to vary the types of crop planted improves biodiversity, while using animal manure and compost helps to return nutrients to the soil.

Continuously grazing animals on the same piece of land can also degrade soil, explains the Regenerative agriculture in Europe report from the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council. So regenerative agriculture methods include moving grazing animals to different pastures.

How can it help?

Regenerative farming can improve crop yields – the volume of crops produced – by improving the health of soil and its ability to retain water, as well as reducing soil erosion. If regenerative farming was implemented in Africa, crop yields could rise 13% by 2040 and up to 40% in the future, according to a Regenerative Farming in Africa report by conservation organization the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the UN.

Regenerative farming can also reduce emissions from agriculture and turn the croplands and pastures, which cover up to 40% of Earth’s ice-free land area, into carbon sinks. These are environments that naturally absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, according to climate solutions organization Project Drawdown.

5 ways to scale regenerative agriculture:

1. Agree on common metrics for environmental outcomes. Today, there are many disparate efforts to define and measure environmental outcomes. We must move to a set of metrics adopted by the whole food industry, making it easier for farmers to adjust their practices and for positive changes to be rewarded. 2. Build farmers’ income from environmental outcomes such as carbon reduction and removal. We need a well-functioning market with a credible system of payments for environmental outcomes, trusted by buyers and sellers, that creates a new, durable, income stream for farmers. 3. Create mechanisms to share the cost of transition with farmers. Today, all the risk and cost sits with the farmers. 4. Ensure government policy enables and rewards farmers for transition. Too many government policies are in fact supporting the status quo of farming. The food sector must come together and work jointly with regulators to address this. 5. Develop new sourcing models to spread the cost of transition. We must move from sourcing models that take crops from anywhere to models that involve collaboration between off-takers from different sectors to take crops from areas converting to regenerative farming.

The rise of regenerative agriculture

In 2019, General Mills, the manufacturer of Cheerios, Yoplait and Annie’s Mac and Cheese (among other products), announced it would begin sourcing a portion of its corn, wheat, dairy and sugar from farmers who were engaged in regenerative agriculture practices and committed to advancing the practice of regenerative agriculture on one million acres of land by 2030. In early 2020, Whole Foods announced regenerative agriculture would be the No. 1 food trend and, in spite of the pandemic and the rapid growth of online shopping overshadowing the trend, business interest in the field still spiked by 138%.

More recently, PepsiCo announced it was adopting regenerative agriculture practices among 7 million acres of its farmland. Cargill declared it intends to do the same on 10 million acres by 2030, and Walmart has committed to advancing the practice on 50 million acres. Other companies pursuing regenerative agriculture include Danone, Unilever, Hormel, Target and Land O’ Lakes.

According to Nielsen, 75% of millennials are altering their buying habits with the environment in mind. This sentiment, of course, does not always materialize into tangible actions on behalf of every consumer. However, it is clear from the actions of PepsiCo, General Mills, Walmart, Unilever and others that they believe consumers’ expectations of what is environmentally friendly are shifting and that they will soon be looking to purchase regeneratively-produced foods because of the many benefits they produce.

The next step in the transition to regenerative agriculture is certification. The goal is to create labeling that will allow the consumer to connect to the full suite of their values. Some companies are partnering with nonprofit conveners and certifiers. The Savory Institute is one such partner, convening producers and brands around regenerative agriculture and more holistic land management practices.

In 2020, the Savory Institute granted its first “Ecological OutCome Verification (EOV) seal to Epic’s latest high protein bars by certifying that its featured beef was raised with regenerative agriculture practices.

The program was developed to let the land speak for itself by showing improvement through both leading and lagging functions such as plant diversity and water holding capacity. There are now thousands of products that have been Land to Market verified, with over 80 brand partnerships with companies such as Epic Provisions, Eileen Fisher and Applegate. Daily Harvest is giving growers in that space three-year contracts as well as markets and price premiums for the transitional crop. It's focusing on that transitional organic process as a stepping stone toward a regenerative organic food system.

Daily Harvest’s Almond Project creates an alliance with the Savory Institute and a group of stakeholders - including Simple Mills and Cappello’s - to bring regenerative practices to almonds in the Central Valley of California.

These companies are working with Treehouse California Almonds, their shared almond supplier, to lead soil health research on 160 acres of farmland. Over five years, the Project will focus on measuring outcomes around the ecosystem and soil health of regenerative practices – comparing those side by side with neighboring conventional baselines.

“We need industry partnership; we need pre-competitive collaboration,” says Rebecca Gildiner, Director of Sustainability at Daily Harvest, of the Almond Project. “Sustainability cannot be competitive. We are all sharing suppliers, we are all sharing supply – rising tides truly lift all boats. The industry has to understand our responsibility in investing, where historically investments have disproportionately focused on yields with a sole focus of feeding the world. We know this has been critical in the past but it has overlooked other forms of capital, other than financial. We need to look towards experimenting in holistic systems that have other outcomes than yield and profit - instead of saying organic can’t feed the world, we have to invest in figuring out how organic can feed the world because it’s critical.”

////

In short!!!

Many articles are stating regenerative agriculture as a defining, and rising “buzz word” in the industry. It seems that consumers are becoming more and more aware and are demanding more sustainable approaches to agriculture.

We, of course, have a way to go, but it seems from the data that I’ve gathered, that regenerative agriculture is, in fact, on the rise. Demand is rising, and many are working on ways to globalize those methods.

Source Source Source Source

#climate change #climate #hope #good news #climate news #climate crisis #more to come #climate emergency #news #climate justice #agriculture #ecosystem #farming #conservation #biodiversity #regenerative agriculture

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meret118 · 6 months ago

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Once the narratives have taken hold, the autocratic leader can change the hardware that runs the country. Most of these steps are incremental and might even be defensible on their own. But together, they build a formidable institutional power base that can keep the leader and his party in power permanently.

Here are some of those steps:

Strengthen Executive Power. After serving one term as prime minister, Orbán lost office in 2002. He resolved that next time, he is going to be much more aggressive in strengthening his hold on power. Trump and his team have prepared for their second term in a similar way. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation behind the infamous Project 2025, portrayed Hungary as “the model for conservative statecraft.” Project 2025 echoes Orbán’s playbook, pushing to dismantle liberal influence in the “administrative state” and strengthen executive power. As Trump’s initial nominees also show, we can expect systematic efforts to sweep out officials deemed disloyal to the president. Trump also plans to centralize control over institutions, ranging from the Federal Reserve Board to the Federal Communications Commission.

Discipline the judiciary. Efforts at reining in the Justice Department and exerting more influence over the judiciary will be crucial. With Republicans already controlling the Supreme Court, any new appointments during Trump’s term would cement a conservative majority for decades. Trump was also open about his plan to fire attorneys who refuse to follow his orders. Vance even mentioned the option of simply disobeying judicial authorities.

Change Election Processes. Manipulating electoral rules and district boundaries to benefit the ruling party is a strategy that Orbán imported from the U.S. The state of Georgia is a case in point, where Republicans have increased their power to change electoral results they deem fraudulent. In Congress, Republicans have proposed far-reaching legislation that could allow Republicans to twist the electoral process to their advantage in future election cycles.

Control the media. Orbán consolidated media control through centralized propaganda, market pressure and loyal billionaires. In the U.S., in addition to the already powerful empire of Rupert Murdoch, several recent examples show the power of friendly tycoons over the media. Elon Musk is a good case study; he used Twitter-turned-X to bolster right-wing populists and now stands to gain much from his relationship with Trump. This mirrors Orbán’s strategy to forge a strong alliance with the country’s billionaires for mutual protection and support. Trump also plans to move fast on a business-friendly agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and expanded energy production.

Secure Control over Party. A final critical step is securing full control over the party. Just as Orbán replaced mainstream leaders with loyal outsiders, Trump co-opted much of the Tea Party in his takeover of the Republican Party. Trump’s team has positioned key allies as candidates and RNC leaders, placing his daughter-in-law as co-chair and pushing out numerous establishment staffers. And his current moves to name uber-loyalists to administration jobs regardless of their qualifications is also an effort to make Republicans in Congress bend to his will.

The Antidote

. . .

The courts. If there are any brazen attacks on constitutional principles, the justice system should be the first line of defense. However, illiberal regimes often operate within legal boundaries, making them harder to challenge. Courts in Europe have so far had little power against Orbán. Litigation or legal restrictions on populists also tend to backfire, boosting their image as outsiders fighting against an unjust, technocratic system, as Trump has already demonstrated in his efforts to discredit the legal cases against him. What this means is that the fight against right-wing populism is primarily political.

The media. Fighting for media pluralism and independence is vital. Investigative journalism helps, but it tends to preach to the converted. There need to be news channels and media outlets for getting messages across to non-metropolitan areas dominated by far-right news sources. Liberal-minded billionaires should not sit idly by as they did in Hungary, watching the right take over the media. The New Right is also significantly more embedded in social media than liberals are. Those of us who favor democracy cannot let Elon Musks and Andrew Tates control the public discourse. Progressive influencers: Time to log in and post away — there’s a narrative battle to win.

States and cities. Democrats cannot win without a powerful social base embedded throughout the country. Fighting for every seat and institution in states and cities is one of the most important things opponents of autocracy need to do. Even in hard illiberal regimes like Turkey or Hungary, free cities are channels for interaction with citizens, provide organizational resources and can be used to present alternative visions of governance.

Countering populist power structures requires first defeating populist narratives — a battle the anti-populist center is losing. The demise of Hungary’s once-strong left-liberal elites, now completely overpowered by the right, should serve as a stark warning, which leads us to the most important battleground: the Democratic Party.To win the fight against autocracy, above all, the Democratic Party must reconnect with the working class to preserve liberal institutions. There are simply not enough educated moderate suburbanites for an electoral majority.

First, this means creating new and strengthening existing local organizational structures, especially labor unions. Popular mobilization is crucial to energize the base. Yet, such mobilization sometimes focuses on issues important to the active base only — a tactical error that should be avoided. For example, the most mobilized segments of Hungarian society tend to focus on media freedom or democracy, but these are not the primary concerns of ordinary citizens, leading to repeated failures of mass mobilizations. To create the groundwork so ordinary people will mobilize during elections, it’s important to engage with them outside elections, focusing on issues that matter to them.

Second, party financing should shift from the corporate elite to small and micro-donations. Fortunately, Democrats already have a strong base of small donors, but it needs to grow. This is the only guarantee against elites capturing the Democratic Party and provides a solid foundation to push through popular reforms that elites oppose. Freeing the party from elite capture will allow it to talk about things that matter, from the decline of middle America to inequality.

Third, commit to left-populist economic policies. Republicans have stolen key populist messages; Democrats need to reclaim them. If done smartly, populist economic policies work and are popular in swing states, even among right-leaning voters. Championing issues like breaking the chokehold of pharmaceuticals over the health system, fighting inflation or increasing the minimum wage are key to overcoming the chasm separating low- and high-income Americans and would allow Democrats to regain their pro-worker bona fides.