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Thursday, May 29, 2025

The ubiquity of plastic in modern life makes recycling seem like a moral imperative. From straws and bags to take-out containers, single-use plastics crowd landfills and clog waterways. And the crisis is accelerating. Legal scholar Roberta Mann warns that by 2050, plastic in the ocean could outweigh fish. The United States led the world in plastic waste in 2016, Mann writes, generating over 42 million metric tons. The COVID-19 pandemic further fueled plastics consumption, with a spike in single-use personal protective equipment and packaging from online shopping. But here's the catch: research suggests that our dependence on recycling as a solution isn't only ineffective -- it's based on a carefully crafted illusion. The narrative that recycling can meaningfully counteract the plastic crisis was constructed by the oil and gas industry to maintain public demand for plastic and delay regulation of its production. read more


Wednesday, May 28, 2025

As the fate of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers remains in limbo amid Donald Trump's mass deportation threats, and the administration's H-2A policies are undecided, the future of these guest workers remains unclear. Their numbers grow each year -- and they are increasingly central to an industry historically dominated by undocumented workers. read more


Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Analysis: Russia's latest deadly offensive also did clear damage to Donald Trump's ego, writes John Bowden read more


A British-South African endurance athlete became the first person to swim around the island of Martha's Vineyard on Monday, completing a 60-mile (97-kilometer) trek over multiple days to raise awareness about the plight of sharks ... read more


Saturday, May 24, 2025

FTA: Amazingly, while the Israelis were training the El Salvadoran death squads they were also supporting the anti-semitic Argentine military government of the late 1970s and early 1980s " at a time when that government was involved in another "dirty war" of death squads and disappearances. In 1978, Nicaragua's dictator Somoza was making his last stand against a general uprising of the Sandinista-led population who were sick of his family's dynasty which had ruled and monopolised the county for half a century. The Israelis and the US had been supplying Somoza with weapons for years. But when President Jimmy Carter came into office in 1976 he ordered a cessation of all US military assistance to Nicaragua. Israel utilised Carter's human rights policy to its advantage. Filling the void, the Israelis immediately increased their weapons supplies to Somoza until he fled the country when the Sandinistas took power. read more


Comments

If they are used properly, which isn't often, semicolons are quite useful.

From the Chicago Manual of Style

6: Punctuation
6.60: Use of the semicolon
Chapter Contents / Semicolons

In regular prose, a semicolon is most commonly used between two independent clauses not joined by a conjunction to signal a closer connection between them than a period would. (For the similar use of a colon, see 6.65.)

She spent much of her free time immersed in the ocean; no mere water-resistant watch would do.
Though a gifted writer, Miqueas has never bothered to master the semicolon; he insists that half a colon is no colon at all.
Note that many fiction authors consider semicolons to be unnatural in dialogue and may also object to their use in narrative; editors should resist adding any in such contexts without consulting the author. For the use of the semicolon in index entries, see 15.17, 15.104. For its use in parenthetical text citations, see 13.124. For its use with a second subtitle of a work, see 13.92.

6: Punctuation
6.64: Semicolons in a complex series
Chapter Contents / Semicolons

When items in a series themselves contain internal punctuation, separating the items with semicolons can aid clarity. If ambiguity seems unlikely, commas may be used instead (see 6.19). See also 6.140. Note that when a sentence continues beyond a series (as in the third example below), no additional semicolon is required.

The membership of the international commission was as follows: France, 4; Germany, 5; Great Britain, 1; Italy, 3; United States, 7.
The defendant, in an attempt to mitigate his sentence, pleaded that he had recently, on doctor's orders, gone off his medications; that his car -- which, incidentally, he had won in the late 1970s on Let's Make a Deal -- had spontaneously caught fire; and that he had not eaten for several days.
Marilynn, Sunita, and Jared, research assistants; Carlos, programming consultant; and Carol, audiovisual editor, provided support and prepared these materials for publication.
but
She decided to buy three watches: an atomic watch for travel within the United States, a solar-powered, water-resistant quartz for international travel, and an expensive self-winding model for special occasions.


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