#national trucking week

[loyalexpressgroup]

Thank You for Your Professionalism!

Merci pour votre professionalisme!

La concentration et l’attention sont les clés pour demeurer sécuritaire sur la route. Les chauffeurs doivent être hyper vigilants lorsqu’il est question de sécurité et pour éviter des conséquences graves. Contrairement aux autres emplois, c’est une réalité quotidienne pour les camionneurs. Il est essentiel pour les camionneurs de mettre en pratique les meilleures techniques de conduite, la conduite préventive, ainsi que suivre les lois et règlements provenant de la compagnie et les gouvernements afin d’avoir du succès dans leur travail. Nos camionneurs atteignent ces standards à tous les jours ce qui leur permet d’offrir un excellent service à nos clients.

Merci pour le professionnalisme dans tous les aspects de votre travail.

Thank You for Your Professionalism!

Focus and attentiveness is the key to remaining safe on the road. Drivers need to be hyper-vigilant when it comes to safety to avoid serious consequences. Unlike other jobs, this is a daily reality for truck drivers. It is essential for a truck driver to practice best driving techniques, good preventive driving, and follow all company and government rules and regulations to successfully do their job. Our drivers uphold these standards every day to provide excellent service to our customers.

Thank you for your professionalism in every aspect of your job.

[bazpango]

dead wife flashback trope but it’s just L during the helicopter scene: straight up giggling under white sheets in early morning, hours before they have to go to work, running full force in the dead of night back from the industrial task force kitchen with stolen snacks, laughing and trying not to trip in the handcuffs. Dusk and the sun is just peeking through L’s hair, and he catches light staring, little ghost of a smirk on his face!!!

[artisticdivasworld]

2024 Trucking Year in Review: Challenges, Victories, and the Road Ahead

This past year has been a whirlwind of news in the trucking industry, from regulatory shifts to technological advancements and economic challenges. Let’s take a step back and look at some of the major stories that shaped 2024 for truckers and trucking companies alike. One of the most talked-about developments this year was the ongoing push for stricter emissions regulations. The Environmental…

[queerculus]

National coverage of the hurricane has been so heavily tilted towards the typical hurricane-affected areas that it is going almost completely unreported as of posting that the town of Chimney Rock, North Carolina has been completely leveled.

Aside from some residential areas, the entire town is gone.

I'm posting this because in the coming days and weeks there are going to be a lot of calls to help people who survived the storm and many are going to assume that this is business-as-usual hurricane season stuff, but it isn't. This storm tore through Appalachia, flooding regions that have literally never flooded like this. The hills and plants that hold soil in place have been severely damaged because this kind of weather event is so deeply unprecedented the plants that live here are completely unprepared for this to happen literally ever.

There are no undamanged highways in or out of Asheville. We can't even recover the phone and data networks until trucks can get into the area, and they can't get into the area because some of the roads are just GONE. The water was so fast and so intense it washed the dirt from underneath the pavement and chunks of road literally fell down the fucking mountains.

When you see things over the next few days asking for help, please understand that this is not typical hurricane season damage. Entire communities have been flattened. The infrastructure in much of the region is utterly destroyed and will take weeks just to begin recovery in some parts.

The phone and data grid are offline.

Power and water are out for most people.

The roads used for evacuation are undrivable.

This is an absolute nightmare scenario.

[sayruq]

Biden will direct the U.S. military to undertake the mission alongside allies and humanitarian partners, a senior administration official said. The project will take “a number of weeks to plan and execute” and will involve forces already in the region or that will be there soon. Senior administration officials said the project will not require any U.S. boots on the ground in Gaza. Instead, the plan involves U.S. personnel on military vessels offshore who will not be required to go ashore to install the port. Initial shipments of supplies would come via Cyprus, enabled by the U.S. military and partners. Officials said the U.S. would work with the United Nations and other humanitarian partners to distribute aid across Gaza once it reaches the port.

There are thousands of aid trucks sitting at the Egyptian border that could be allowed in instead of this ridiculous convoluted plan which means

This is an excuse to officially send in US troops into Gaza where they will help the IDF continue their genocide in the name of aiding Palestinians

"The project will take “a number of weeks to plan and execute”" meaning there is no intention of ending the genocide any time soon

The last part is most important and the one that should scare us the most given the already horrific conditions of Northern Gaza

[reasonsforhope]

Green energy is in its heyday. 

Renewable energy sources now account for 22% of the nation’s electricity, and solar has skyrocketed eight times over in the last decade. This spring in California, wind, water, and solar power energy sources exceeded expectations, accounting for an average of 61.5 percent of the state's electricity demand across 52 days. 

But green energy has a lithium problem. Lithium batteries control more than 90% of the global grid battery storage market. 

That’s not just cell phones, laptops, electric toothbrushes, and tools. Scooters, e-bikes, hybrids, and electric vehicles all rely on rechargeable lithium batteries to get going. 

Fortunately, this past week, Natron Energy launched its first-ever commercial-scale production of sodium-ion batteries in the U.S. 

“Sodium-ion batteries offer a unique alternative to lithium-ion, with higher power, faster recharge, longer lifecycle and a completely safe and stable chemistry,” said Colin Wessells — Natron Founder and Co-CEO — at the kick-off event in Michigan. 

The new sodium-ion batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, with an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles.

Wessells said that using sodium as a primary mineral alternative eliminates industry-wide issues of worker negligence, geopolitical disruption, and the “questionable environmental impacts” inextricably linked to lithium mining. 

“The electrification of our economy is dependent on the development and production of new, innovative energy storage solutions,” Wessells said. 

Why are sodium batteries a better alternative to lithium?

The birth and death cycle of lithium is shadowed in environmental destruction. The process of extracting lithium pollutes the water, air, and soil, and when it’s eventually discarded, the flammable batteries are prone to bursting into flames and burning out in landfills. 

There’s also a human cost. Lithium-ion materials like cobalt and nickel are not only harder to source and procure, but their supply chains are also overwhelmingly attributed to hazardous working conditions and child labor law violations. 

Sodium, on the other hand, is estimated to be 1,000 times more abundant in the earth’s crust than lithium. 

“Unlike lithium, sodium can be produced from an abundant material: salt,” engineer Casey Crownhart wrote ​​in the MIT Technology Review. “Because the raw ingredients are cheap and widely available, there’s potential for sodium-ion batteries to be significantly less expensive than their lithium-ion counterparts if more companies start making more of them.”

What will these batteries be used for?

Right now, Natron has its focus set on AI models and data storage centers, which consume hefty amounts of energy. In 2023, the MIT Technology Review reported that one AI model can emit more than 626,00 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent. 

“We expect our battery solutions will be used to power the explosive growth in data centers used for Artificial Intelligence,” said Wendell Brooks, co-CEO of Natron. 

“With the start of commercial-scale production here in Michigan, we are well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for efficient, safe, and reliable battery energy storage.”

The fast-charging energy alternative also has limitless potential on a consumer level, and Natron is eying telecommunications and EV fast-charging once it begins servicing AI data storage centers in June. 

On a larger scale, sodium-ion batteries could radically change the manufacturing and production sectors — from housing energy to lower electricity costs in warehouses, to charging backup stations and powering electric vehicles, trucks, forklifts, and so on. 

“I founded Natron because we saw climate change as the defining problem of our time,” Wessells said. “We believe batteries have a role to play.”

-via GoodGoodGood, May 3, 2024

--

Note: I wanted to make sure this was legit (scientifically and in general), and I'm happy to report that it really is! x, x, x, x

[ralfmaximus]

This week, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) stunned safety advocates by proposing new vehicle rules that it says will help reduce pedestrian deaths in America. The new rules appear aimed directly at the trend of increasingly massive SUVs and trucks, which have been shown to be more deadly to pedestrians than smaller and midsize vehicles.

FINALLY we're doing something about these fuckoff huge pickups & SUVs. Guess what happens if Trump gets back in office?

[seat-safety-switch]

Have you seen how expensive food is getting? When I was at the grocery store last, I had to actually elbow other people out of the way when I was trying to shoplift. All these amateurs, doing it for their starving families, trying to sneak past the new security guard with an entire box of Lucky Charms tucked under their suspiciously un-seasonal winter coat. That's why he's there, now!

Because of this, I've thought really hard about starting a farm of my own. There's only two big obstacles: my property is entirely covered in shit-box cars, and I don't like hard (or even soft) work. So I had to figure out how to trick someone else into using their property to grow healthy, tasty vegetables for the rest of the community. That way, I could go back to cramming large quantities of mass-produced corporate corn-syrup-injected synthetic food into my bag and then not paying for it.

Here's something that's fun: the university has a lot of free land. And if you trick eager students into doing anything that looks good on their resumés, they will work an infinite amount of hours for no money. They're feeding their fellow citizen! A truly noble endeavour that not even mean old Dean Carbuncle could stand in the way of. Of course, I first needed to make it look like a legitimate enterprise. Have you ever shoplifted raised garden bed planters from a Home Depot? It's surprisingly easy if you wear a hard hat, orange apron, and bring your own forklift. Loaded a couple of those bad boys onto a flat-bed rental truck, signed it out myself ("J. Not-Fakington,") and headed for the campus quad and the co-eds eager to interrupt their high-falutin' studies with some dirt farming.

In a few weeks, the students were getting interviews with the news. One of them got an internship with the United Nations because she figured out how to hyper-grow corn cobs – they're like three meters long, you need at least two people just to lift them – and now the university is paying people to come and take them away. The grocery stores are again empty of all but the ultra-rich and my sticky, sticky fingers, and we've learned that although crime doesn't pay, a whole lot of crime sometimes benefits those around you.

[evilwizard]

and these daemons, folks—they say they can take the form of any animal… tremendous stuff, really tremendous. and they caught sleepy joe’s white raven drinking out of an outhouse. it’s true, believe you me. but these daemons, they can take any form! any form. for children, our nation’s beautiful children, they can just tell their daemon to be a dinosaur, it’ll happen. jurassic park, great movie. chris pratt. my daemon never settled on a permanent form, personally. the magisterium assures me it’s perfectly healthy—a sign of tremendous intelligence, actually. last week she—my daemon—she got run over by a cement truck. didn’t feel a thing. great stuff

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #21

May 31-June 7 2024

As part of President Biden's goal to bring the number of traffic deaths to zero, the Department of Transportation has sent $480 million in safety grants to all 50 states, DC, and all the US territories. The grants will focus on trucks, buses and other large vehicles. Thanks to DoT safety actions deaths involving heavy vehicles dropped by 8% from 2022 to 2023 and the department wants to keep pushing till the number is 0.

The Departments of Interior and Agriculture announced $2.8 billion plan to protect public land and support local government Conservation Efforts. $1.9 billion will be used to repair and restore national parks and public land, restoring historic sites, as well as Bureau of Indian Education-funded schools. $900 million will go to conservation funding, allowing the government to buy land to protect it. Half the funds will go to the federal government half to state and local governments and for the first time ever a tribal Conservation Land Acquisition program has been set up to allow tribal governments to buy land to protect nature.

The Department of Transportation announced that it had managed to get customers nearly $1 Billion dollars worth of flight reimbursements. The DoT reached an agreement with 3 airlines, Lufthansa, KLM, and South African Airways to pay between them $900 million to passengers effected by Covid related cancellations and delays. This adds to the $4 billion dollars of refunds and reimbursements to airline passengers under the Biden Administration.

The Department of Interior announced $725 million to clean up legacy coal pollution. This is the 3rd pay out from the $11.3 billion dollars President Biden signed into law in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to clean up coal pollution and invest in communities that used to rely on the coal industry. The money will be spent across 22 states and the Navajo Nation. Closing dangerous mine shafts, reclaim unstable slopes, improve water quality by treating acid mine drainage, and restore water supplies damaged by mining.

HUD launches the first of its kind investment program in manufactured homes. Manufactured homes represent a major market for affordable housing and the Biden Administration is the first to offer support to people trying to buy. HUD hopes the program will help 5,000 families and individuals buy their own home over the next 5 years.

The Department of the Interior announced $700 million for long-term water conservation projects across the Lower Colorado River Basin. The Colorado River Basin provides water for more than 40 million people, electric power to 7 US States and is a critical crucial resource for 30 Tribal nations and two Mexican states. The project hopes to save more than 700,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead. In the face of climate change causing a historic 23-year drought, there is record low water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The Biden Administration has moved aggressively to try to protect the Colorado River and make sure there's enough water in the West.

HUD makes $123 million for fighting Youth Homelessness available. This represents the 8th round of investment in Youth Homelessness since 2021 for a total of $440 million so far. The Biden Administration is focusing on innovative answers, like host homes, and kinship care models, with emphasis on creating equitable strategies to assist youth who are most vulnerable, including BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and youth with disabilities. This is part of the Biden Administration goal of cutting homelessness by 25% by the end of 2025

The Department of Agriculture announced a series of actions to strength Tribal food sovereignty. The USDA will grant tribes in Maine, Alaska, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington $42 million through the Indigenous Animals Harvesting and Meat Processing Grants to support native animal harvesting. $18 million for projects under the Tribal Forest Protection Act. As well as $2.3 million to support the service of Indigenous foods in school meal programs. The USDA also plans its first ever class of interns specifically focused on Tribal agriculture and food sovereignty. The USDA also plans to host a first ever international trade mission focused on Tribal Nation and Native Hawaiian Community businesses.

Bonus: President Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, and Secretaries of Defense Lloyd Austin and State Antony Blinken traveled to Normandy France to mark the 80th Anniversary of D-Day. They were joined by a handful of surviving veterans of the landings many over 100 years old.

[loyalexpressgroup]

C’est le 25e Semaine nationale du camionnage cette semaine!

Et nous voulons reconnaître nos chauffeurs.

Merci pour votre loyauté

À l’occasion de la semaine nationale du camionnage, le Groupe Loyal Express désire souligner que le travail incroyable que leurs camionneurs effectuent. Opérer un véhicule commercial est loin d’être une tâche facile. Cela nécessite un sérieux temps et beaucoup effort afin d’acquérir les compétences requises pour bien conduire un camion – ce n’est tout le monde qui peut le faire. Maitriser les techniques pour conduire un camion, apprendre les dernières technologies, et suivre les politiques et procédures de l’entreprise sont tous des défis que les camionneurs rencontrent au quotidien, et nous pouvons toujours compter sur nos chauffeurs pour effectuer le travail nécessaire.

Merci pour votre engagement inébranlable ainsi que le bon travail que seuls êtes capables d’effectuer.

It's the 25th National Trucking Week this week! And we want to recognize our drivers.

Thank You for Your Loyalty

During National Trucking Week, the Loyal Express Group would like to highlight all their drivers for the incredible work that they do. Operating a commercial vehicle is hardly an easy task. It takes serious time and effort to acquire the skills needed to handle a truck — and not everyone can do it. Mastering the techniques to drive a truck, learning the latest technologies, and following company policies and procedures are all challenges that a truck driver encounters daily, and we can always count on our drivers to get the job done!

Thank you for your unwavering commitment to being the very best at what you do.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

The Navajo Nation doesn’t allow radioactive uranium ore to be transported through its lands without permission, but that’s exactly what a mining company began doing this week on roads administered by the state—which has no such restrictions.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren told tribal police to stop the trucks, and he issued an executive order Wednesday that called for the company to negotiate a hauling agreement with the tribe before any other trucks enter Navajo land. First Lady Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren announced a “No Illegal Uranium Hauling” walk along part of the transportation route in Cameron. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, under pressure for months from tribes and environmental advocates over the situation, subsequently brokered a deal with the company to hit pause.

In a Thursday night call, Hobbs told Nygren that shipments would halt until the company—Energy Fuels Resources—and the Navajo Nation hold discussions about safety concerns.

While Nygren is glad the governor acted, he wants to know how long transportation activities will stop.

“I don’t know what temporary hold means on the governor’s side,” Nygren said in an interview after the walk, held Friday morning. “Does that mean five days? Does that mean 10 days? Does that mean a month? … I hope temporary means six months, aligning with my executive order, so that we can have those discussions.”

Asked by Inside Climate News about timing, a Hobbs spokesperson said, “At this moment, there’s no additional information on when the end date will be.”

Energy Fuels Resources, the owner of Pinyon Plain Mine in Arizona and White Mesa Mill in Utah, confirmed it started hauling ore from one site to the other on Tuesday. In a statement issued before the agreement to pause that work, the company said this transportation is “safe and legal” and “in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

State law doesn’t bar that transport, but a Navajo law enacted in 2012 does. The situation cuts to the heart of U.S. history with Indigenous people: Treaty agreements that acknowledge tribal nations’ right to determine what happens on their lands are routinely ignored by states, companies and the federal government.

“Energy Fuels is subject to Navajo authority when accessing Navajo territory and can be excluded from Navajo territory for threatening the well-being of the Navajo People, although they likely claim they are beyond Navajo authority when on a state highway running through the Navajo reservation,” Gabe Galanda, an Indigenous rights attorney and the managing lawyer at Galanda Broadman, said in an email. “The state of Arizona may likewise claim regulatory power over a state highway running through the Navajo reservation but that assertion affronts Navajo inherent sovereignty and territorial control.”

[artisticdivasworld]

Managing Stress on the Road: A Guide for New Truck Drivers

If you bought it, a trucker hauled it. As we celebrate National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, it’s important to not only acknowledge the hard work and dedication of drivers but also to address the challenges they face on the road—especially the stress that comes with the job. For new drivers, adjusting to long hours, unpredictable schedules, and the isolation that comes with being on the road…

[odinsblog]

Game of Thrones stars and other actors read South Africa's case file charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Transcript:

It was already known that repeated exposure to conflict and violence, including witnessing and experiencing housing demolition, combined with Israel'siege of Gaza since 2007, is associated with high levels of psychological distress amongst Palestinians.

Indeed, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2712 expressed its deep concern that the disruption of access to education has a dramatic impact on children and that conflict has a lifelong effect on their physical and mental health.

This disruption and its dramatic impact on children must be considered in particular and in the context of the number of Palestinian students and educators who have been killed, 4,037 and 209 respectively, and wounded, estimated at 7,259 and the number of Palestinian schools having been damaged or destroyed 352 or 74% of the schools in the whole of Gaza.

Medical professionals assess that the health effects on all Palestinian children, women, men, older people, people with disabilities and people marginalized identities are immense.

An emergency coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières interviewed on her return from five weeks in Gaza, describes: It's even worse in reality than it looks. The amount of suffering is just something incomparable. It's really unbearable. I'm speechless when I try and think of the future of these children. Generations of children who will be handicapped, who will be traumatized.

The very children in our mental health program are telling us that they would rather die than continue living in Gaza now.

The extreme levels of bombardment and lack of any safe areas are also causing severe mental trauma in the Palestinian population in Gaza.

Even before the latest onslaught, Palestinians in Gaza suffered severe trauma from prior attacks. 80% of Palestinian children experienced higher levels of emotional distress, demonstrating bed wetting, 79% and reactive mutism, 59% and engaging in self harm, 59% and suicidal thoughts, 55%.

Eleven weeks of relentless bombardment, displacement and loss will necessarily have led to a further increase in those figures, particularly for the estimated tens of thousands of Palestinian children who have lost at least one parent and those who are the sole surviving members of their families.

For the families who remain intact or partially intact, quote, “It's about doing everything you can so your child doesn't realize that you've lost control.”

There are reports of Israeli forces using white phosphorus in densely populated areas in Gaza.

As the World Health Organization describes, even small amounts of white phosphorus can cause deep and severe burns, penetrating even through bone and capable of reigniting after initial treatment.

There are no functioning hospitals in the north of Gaza in particular, such that injured persons are reduced to waiting to die, unable to seek surgery or medical treatment beyond first aid, dying slow, agonizing deaths from their injuries or from resultant infections.

Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, including children, have reportedly been arrested, blindfolded, forced to undress and remain outside in cold weather before being forced onto trucks and taken to unknown locations.

Medics and first responders in particular have been repeatedly detained by Israeli forces, with many being detained in communicado at unknown locations.

Videos published by Israeli media on Christmas Day appeared to show hundreds of Palestinians rounded up inside al-Yarmouk football stadium in Gaza City, including children, older people and persons with disabilities, being forced to strip to their underwear in degrading conditions. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, or UN OCHA, reports video footage showing bruises and burns on the bodies of detainees.

Images of mutilated and burned corpses, alongside videos of armed attacks by Israeli soldiers are reportedly circulated in Israel via a Telegram channel called, 72 Virgins Uncensored, billed as exclusive content from the Gaza Strip.

[betterbooktitles]

"I’m certain I’m not the only millennial who feels we as a nation have taken a dizzying turn when it comes to drugs. I remember a uniformed police officer showing up once a week in 5th Grade (a year before Sex Ed) to explain how to avoid buying and taking drugs. Luckily, I already knew the dangers of the drug trade because I had seen The Usual Suspects. I knew cocaine was a bad thing to buy, sell, or steal, especially from a drug kingpin. The D.A.R.E. program, however, let me know how important it was to say no to anything fun, including alcohol. At least until I understood a little algebra first. We did role-playing exercises where we walked one by one toward the portly police officer and he casually asked if we wanted to hit a mimed joint with him. All we had to do was say “no” and walk to the other side of the room, defying the only rule I knew about improv. We wrote essays about how important it was to preserve our pristine bodies and minds, obviously unsullied since we had yet to take the class teaching us how puberty was going to defile them both. I’m still mad that my friend Nicole’s essay beat mine in a contest, and she got to read hers in front of the whole school all because she had the benefit of an older brother who took too much acid and sat in her room all night talking about why the existence of light proved God was real. My essay about a time I saw my friend’s dad drink a beer and then drive his truck somewhere was also good! We signed pledges to enter the new millennium drug-free. We took the red pencils that said “Friends Don’t Let Friends Do Drugs” and sharpened all of them down to say “Let Friends Do Drugs,” “Friends Do Drugs,” “Do Drugs,” and simply “Drugs.” Despite that little rebellious act, my friends and I spent a solid six months swearing we’d never put any harmful substance into our bodies besides every form of candy available.

Imagine how I feel now as a D.A.R.E. graduate becoming my dad’s drug dealer. It’s less thrilling than I thought it would be. Between my father’s warning not to hang around one specific neighborhood in Cleveland as a kid and nearly every TV show about drugs, I thought I’d always be buying marijuana from an intimidating dude who definitely had a gun and would use it immediately if he thought I was wearing a wire. Instead, I now buy marijuana from a well-lit storefront that looks like the Apple Store. I’ve even gone to a place where a guy with an iPad explained what each available strain would do to me. I buy what sounds good with all the confidence of a man pointing at items on a menu written in a language he can’t read. I put it all in a cardboard box. I place a book on top. I mail the box to my dad from my local post office. I tell myself the book is to hide the contraband crossing state lines, but in truth, the book is what clears my conscience. I want to send my dad something edifying while also sending him the drug that all of America worried would make me unable to read if I tried it once. The unrequested book is a red herring to distract from the vice, like when you were young and didn’t want to buy condoms outright at the store so you cushioned them between a pack of peanut M&Ms and a magazine. Hmm, what else did I need, —��right, while I’m here — might as well pick up a few condoms.

Right as marijuana becomes legal in most states, I’m about done with the drug. I’ve had three good times on edibles, and one of them was when I felt nothing and fell asleep at 9:30 PM. I’m flabbergasted that my dad likes edibles. He seems to be a man free of anxiety. Case in point, I once brought him some THC lozenges to our summer holiday in Chautauqua, and around dinner time I told him “You might want to only take half of what I gave you” to which he replied, “I took it hours ago.” He was stoned and no one noticed.

While I’m stuck in my head, stoned or sober, wondering why I didn’t take some acting gig 15 years ago, wondering if I’ll ever make enough money, worrying I’m doing everything wrong including in this moment as I write this sentence, my dad is enjoying himself.

Judith Grisel, the author of Never Enough: The Neuroscience And Experience of Addiction, describes using marijuana as throwing “a bucket of red paint” on your brain. She was approaching the stimulant clinically in terms of how it differed from the laser focus of other drugs (THC reacts with many receptors in the brain, cocaine focuses on one), but now every time I smoke, I think of the red paint metaphor. While other people seem able to crank an entire joint and do insanely complicated stuff like function at their jobs, I am reduced to a gelatinous blob, on top of which my eyes and brain are navigating a dream state that, like many dreams, isn’t all that interesting the next day. Mostly, I get high and can’t decide what I want to watch on TV or what video game I want to play, I realize how hungry I am, and then I fall asleep with cereal still stuck to my teeth. Pot, for me, is like the squid ink hitting the screen in Mario Kart: I can still see where I’m going, but everything gets a little harder to do, and the panicked half-blindness makes everything slightly more chaotically fun."

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Other articles include:

An essay on Claire Dederer's book Monsters and movies made by monsters.

Writing inside a Toyota Service Center.

Writing mistresses.

[sayruq]

The United Nations said Tuesday it suspended food distribution in the southern Gaza city of Rafah due to lack of supplies and insecurity. It also said no aid trucks entered in the past two days via a floating pier set up by the U.S. for sea deliveries. The U.N. has not specified how many people have stayed in Rafah since the Israeli military began its intensified assault there two weeks ago, but apparently several hundred thousand people remain. The World Food Program said it was also running out of food for central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Rafah have sought shelter in a chaotic exodus, setting up new tent camps or crowding into areas already devastated by previous Israeli offensives. Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the U.N’s World Food Program, warned that “humanitarian operations in Gaza are near collapse.” If food and other supplies don’t resume entering Gaza “in massive quantities, famine-like conditions will spread,” she said.

The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged “use of starvation as a method of warfare,” a charge they and other Israeli officials angrily deny. The prosecutor accused three Hamas leaders of war crimes over killings of civilians in the group’s Oct. 7 attack. The U.N says some 1.1 million people in Gaza – nearly half the population — face catastrophic levels of hunger and that the territory is on the brink of famine. The crisis in humanitarian supplies has spiraled in the two weeks since Israel launched an incursion into Rafah on May 6, vowing to root out Hamas fighters. Troops seized the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which has been closed since. Since May 10, only about three dozen trucks made it into Gaza via the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel because fighting makes it difficult for aid workers to reach it, the U.N. says. For months, the U.N. has warned that an Israeli assault on Rafah could wreck the effort to get food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians across Gaza. Throughout the war, Rafah has been filled with scenes of hungry children holding out pots and plastic containers at makeshift soup kitchens, with many families reduced to eating only one meal a day. The city’s population had swelled to some 1.3 million people, most of whom fled fighting elsewhere. Around 810,000 people have streamed out of Rafah, although Israel says it has not launched the full-fledged invasion of the city it had planned. The United States has said Israel did not present a “credible” plan for evacuating the population or keeping it safe. The main agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, announced the suspension of distribution in Rafah in a post on X, without elaborating beyond citing the lack of supplies. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UNRWA distribution center and the WFP’s warehouses in Rafah were “inaccessible due to ongoing military operations.”

An absolute nightmare