Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Cate Swannell discusses how research showing the multitude of harms which can result from COVID-19 infection. Calixto Machado-Curbelo, Joel Gutiérrez-Gil and Alina González-Quevedo study how new variants are entering the brain in different ways than prior versions – easing the respiratory damage associated with
Continue readingTag: Economics
The Cracked Crystal Ball II: WhereIn Andrew Coyne MisCharacterizes Re-Shoring
I have always had an on-again/off-again relationship with Mr. Coyne’s writings. When he sits down and thinks an issue through its logical consequences, he can be incredibly insightful and make some really good points. Then there are the times when he misses the point of what something is because it
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Economics of delusion
Ethnographer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, and native of British Columbia, Wade Davis speaks…
Continue readingExcited Delirium: Prices, Inflation and Greed & How to Use Abandoned Malls
Just another day of price hikes and shoulder shrugs for monopolies in Canada … The post Prices, Inflation and Greed & How to Use Abandoned Malls first appeared on Excited Delirium.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Local, green and sustainable economies
A problem faced by more than one British Columbia community is how to resurrect a local economy after global corporations decide easier profits can be made by exporting unprocessed resources. The subject had me remember a worthwhile PBS documentary by investigative journalist David Brancaccio…
Continue readingExcited Delirium: Populism: Your Demise Can’t Come Soon Enough
Populism sucks. Time for ‘planetism’. The post Populism: Your Demise Can’t Come Soon Enough first appeared on Excited Delirium.
Continue readingExcited Delirium: Housing: Building Stupid on Stupider
Housing: affordability won’t come when we allow millions more McMansions to be built. The post Housing: Building Stupid on Stupider first appeared on Excited Delirium.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: The common good is becoming less common
A book by Professor Robert Reich, one of the most prominent voices among progressives, examines the ongoing decline of the common good, which he defines as being about “what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society.” Reich believes those values include respect for
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Industry-friendly regulation and laughably ineffective penalties
Through quiet collaboration, wealthy predators in Canada have used economic and political power to sustain unconscionable wireless profits. This will not change because those same vultures control much of Canada’s mainstream media. That means high prices and defective competition are not considered newsworthy.
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: SocialCoin – The Socially Responsible Alternative to Bitcoin
I am placing this concept in the public domain for anyone with the necessary technical skills to create the structures and necessary algorithms to implement it. Wikipedia provides an extensive section on Bitcoin and in particular Bitcoin mining. Essentially Bitcoin is created by an energy wasting computer process they call
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Switch to Wind, Water, Solar, and Save Billions
“$2B saved since Ukraine war Wind and solar power plants generated 46.3 terawatt-hours of electricity between May 1, 2021 and April 30, 2022, the data [in Turkey] showed. “Without these power plants, underutilized gas-fired plants or coal power plants relying on imports would have had to run in order to
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: What Does COVID Do Anyway?
COVID-19 a thrombotic disease that can be caught again, and again, and again if the first bouts are survived, and isn’t confined to a “season” because it’s so much more contagious than influenza. It has multiple waves that sweep through a community each year. Governments are using ‘magical words’ to
Continue readingScripturient: Poilievre’s Wacky, Quacky Economics
Pierre Poilievre — aka Skippy — loves cryptocurrency and wants to make Canada the world’s crypto capital. Crypto is a computing process, not a product, it’s well outside the capabilities of individual computer systems to “mine” so it is controlled by large crypto-mining farms owned by corporate interests, using vast
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: A good read and MMT
Occasionally I will read a book and experience an epiphany. I now see the topic from a completely new perspective. Perhaps the most memorable of these was reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and discovering the purpose of life. I recently enjoyed a similar insightful experience reading Stephanie Kelton’s The
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Climate poison could be an asset
Methane, which the BC government has supported with billions of dollars in subsidies and tax relief, is a risk to public health. Methane emissions escaping from northeast BC gas fields are a topic that industry and government officials hesitate to acknowledge. Captured methane could be the basis of profitable fishfood
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Malevolence, lies, and broken promises
As repugnant as protesting blockaders are, there is a connection between that behaviour and the lies and broken promises political operatives think unimportant.
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: Clearly Political
There’s a wind blowing in Canada, and it’s blowing away from public health measures that have kept most Canadians healthy and safe from the pandemic’s primary driver, the SARS-CoV2 virus. Somewhere between 1010 Saskatchewanians and about 4000 have perished in the last 2 years from the virus, while more than
Continue readingNorthern Currents –: Top Banking CEO blames workers’ wages for causing inflation
In the end, workers are attacked on two fronts via inflation rhetoric. First, by banking CEO’s who claim workers make too much money, and second, by the Conservatives who claim that they received too much government support during the pandemic.
Continue readingIN-SIGHTS: Existential topics
English journalist George Monbiot published a Twitter thread on January 28 that resonates powerfully with me. The contents are reproduced…
Continue readingNorthern Currents –: Businesses received $26 billion more in pandemic relief money than individuals
The influence of the private sector paid off for business owners, as they received more pandemic relief money collectively than individuals did. Justin Trudeau’s federal government came out with a slew of programs to help those in Canada, but many of these predominantly favoured employers. According to a new CCPA
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