A Taylor Swift fan took the brave position of calling out the beloved superstar, and everyone else involved, for the death of Ana Clara and many in need of medical attention at her concert Friday night in Rio: “First of all, Taylor made sure fans had water during the show.
Continue readingTag: neoliberalism
Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Crawford Kilian reviews Ryan Meili’s A Healthy Future as an important account of the insufficient political response to the COVID-19 pandemic, while David Climenhaga calls out the absurdity of Preston Manning’s prescription for disaster in pushing for even to be done to protect
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Culture of Uncare or Pandemic of Inhumanity
Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe coined the term “culture of uncare” to explain intentional efforts to sever links from one another and from the environment. She calls it “severing links,” but the word that comes to mind is alienation. We’ve been alienated from our environment, from our work, from others, and from
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Newsflash: Covid Should Be Avoided
Studies make if very clear that Covid is really bad for us, yet we’re going to do nothing to prevent the spread. In case you didn’t know, if you have almost $20,000 to spend each year, per kid, on a private school, that many of them have excellent pandemic plans still in place.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Central Error of the Pandemic
Dr. Satoshi Akima, who does internal medicine in Australia, has a great post up about the economic reasons for ignoring the pandemic. First, a bit of context to consider from Dr. Lisa Iannattone, “Disability rates haven’t stabilized since the great mass infection event of early 2022 [masks dropped in March
Continue readingAlex's Blog: Crack-Up Capitalism, Quinn Slobodian: A Review
In this engrossing historical account, Quinn Slobodian lays out how a few very rich men—yes pretty much men—and the neoliberal intellectuals upon whose ideas they fed, imagined and sometimes built their versions of utopia: “zones” free from the grasping hands of the many who want to tax their riches or
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Housing and Value(s)
Here’s a little story about the house at the end of my street. About 30 years ago, it was a bit of a grow-op, with vicious guard dogs, one that actually ate the leg off the neighbour’s family dog! When I’d walk down the street with my kids, we’d always
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Media Subterfuge
Want to be a respected news outlet? Stop writing horribly misleading headlines. An article in The Guardian is causing a stir, not because of what the article says, but because of the heading and subheading: “Thousands of Covid generation under-fives excluded from schools in England: Nearly half of children in some
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Covid or Climate: Can’t it be both?
In a local school board meeting from last June, in which they discussed their plan to remove HEPAs in rooms that had mechanical ventilation added (as if it’s and either/or option), they first discussed how far they’ve overshot their energy budget. There were clear implications that Covid mitigations had forced
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Student Absences
I’ve been thinking about the concern with kids not going to school for reasons beyond the rampant illnesses caused by letting a highly-infectious virus run wild. The Fortune article suggests that schools are less welcoming now. “Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry.” They mention a host of reasons for absences including
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Canada is facing a grave crisis, and it needs courageous leaders, but brutal street-clearing operations won’t help
There’s no question Canada is facing a grave social crisis on multiple fronts. Howard Anglin (Photo: Twitter/Howard Anglin). The homeless crisis, the housing crisis, the deadly drug poisoning crisis, and the crisis of our overburdened health care system are all real, and they share a common cause. Forty years of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Mixing Church and State
The religious far right is growing and getting more powerful and unnerving, and we know the fights happening in schools board meetings. This 25 min. BBC video from earlier this year is instructive. It’s telling that Patriot Mobile put millions of dollars behind school board elections, taking over politics from the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Role of Public Health under Neoliberalism
The air quality is bad again today, but public health hasn’t issued any warnings, and it’s not on the Weather Network website. A few people were commenting on their eyes burning and asthma being triggered. Sure enough, the air particulate numbers are up. So, it looks like we’re on our
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Problems with Psychiatry
Paul Minot, MD, wrote a thread inviting other threads on the practice of psychiatry. Caveat, I have no idea of the credibility of any of these claims, but some make a lot of sense to me: “I’ve been practicing psychiatry for 38 years. I love my job, my peers, and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Richard Murphy points out the stark contrast between the UK Cons’ attempt to pretend that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and the tens of thousands of excess deaths still resulting from it. Mary Van Beusekom discusses a new study showing that Ontario’s infection levels
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jessica Wildfire writes about the desperation to return to some past normal (stoked of course by the people who profit from it) which is leading far too many to take obviously reckless risks with their health in the midst of a pandemic.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Lost Counterculture
Henry Madison, just some random dude on twitter, wrote an interesting bit on concerts and the enmeshment of generations. I disagree with several of his claims below: Blondie “Imagine a 77-year old favourite of the boomers’ parents, playing at Woodstock in the 1960s. The oldest performer at Woodstock was Ravi
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: How neoliberalism brought down Russia … and nearly us
The economic collapse of the 1930s brought down democracies across Europe unleashing fascism across the continent. Other countries, including Canada and the United States, introduced drastic measures to protect the vulnerable which helped save them from the same fate. Capitalism was failing, rescued by the rudiments of the welfare state.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: We’re Reaping What We’ve Sown
There’s tons of news about all the smoke – so much about the smoke. But I’m finding very little information about the actual fires. We know that firefighters are coming to help from the states and from South Africa, which is fantastic, but where are the videos of planes water
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gil McGowan highlights how the UCP’s intolerable plans for Alberta include another four years of systematic wage suppression in order to further enrich the donor class. – Cory Doctorow writes about the importance of having “ideas lying around” to respond to an obviously
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