Assorted content to end your week. – Maximilian Kotz et al. study the foreseeable effect of the climate crisis on the cost of food, and find that increased global warming will result in systemic inflation in food prices. And Matthew Taylor reports on research showing that the carbon pollution from
Continue readingTag: privacy
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate report highlights how higher temperatures and devastating consequences have become the norm around the globe. Anand Ram reports on a new study showing that the effects included a jarring new development, as air quality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Melissa Lem and Samantha Green write about the push from the health care community to ensure that fossil fuel companies can’t keep deceiving the public about the harm caused by their operations. And John Woodside reports on the majority popular support for a windfall
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Oshan Jarow discusses Sapien Labs’ work measuring mental health levels around the globe – and the resulting conclusion that “conveniences” including smartphones and ultra-processed foods may contribute to a lower level of mental wellness. And Michelle Gamage writes about the plummeting life expectancy of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Armine Yalnizyan offers a warning about the spread of the tapeworm economy in which corporate profiteers wriggle their way into public services and siphon off resources. – Julia Velkova discusses how reliance on tech monopolists undermines the capacity to decide and deliver on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Dharna Noor discusses how the U.S.’ dirty fossil fuel industry is propagandizing against any transition to cleaner energy sources. And Benjamin Shingler reports on research showing that the forestry sector (like so many other industries) is causing far more damage to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jon Henley reports on new research showing that adopting right-wing policies does nothing to help left-of-centre parties win votes (while producing disastrous effects in shifting the spectrum of political options). – Laura Weiss discusses why U.S. Democrats need to acknowledge and present a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Margaret Walton-Roberts and Ivy Lynn Bourgeault highlight how plans to poach workers from abroad are bound to fall short of meeting our need for care providers (while also raising ethical concerns). And Benjamin Shingler discusses how extreme heat is putting an increasing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Sabina Vohra-Miller discusses the ample body of research showing how COVID-19 vaccinations produce superior health outcomes in the course of a pregnancy. And Nature examines the limited effectiveness of rapid tests in identifying asymptomatic cases (which are responsible for half of COVID transmission). –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Stephanie Soucheray discusses how many patients whose senses of taste and smell have been affected by COVID-19 never fully recover, while the University of Waterloo finds new evidence of lasting impact on the brain. And Carolyn Bramante et al. study how metformin can
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Alejandro de la Garza writes about the devastation continuing to be wrought by COVID-19 in Lamb County, Texas even as the powers that be pretend the pandemic is in the past. And John Michael McGrath discusses why Ontario shouldn’t count on the Ford
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Tom Brodbeck writes about the need to treat the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic as human beings, rather than mere statistics to be reported once and never thought of again. – Gabriel Favreau discusses how the pandemic (combined with a negligent government
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: How to Make Credit Card Purchases Safer – Banks, Are You Paying Attention
Do you worry about the security of your credit card information when you provide it to lesser known merchants to make payments ? Do you worry that the information you provide to well known major merchants could be stolen as their databases are hacked as seems to happen regularly ?
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On voluntary efforts
The past few days have seen the emergence of an effort to build up self-reporting capacity to fill in where provincial governments are choosing to be wilfully blind to COVID caseloads – as well as a response questioning whether people should be willing to provide information to that project. Now,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ben Cohen writes about the expert consensus on the need for booster shots and public health measures to slow the spread of the Omicron COVID variant. – Juliana Kaplan and Andy Kiersz write about the latest World Inequality Report, which shows ever
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – The Globe and Mail’s editorial board recognizes that any responsible government would be continuing to apply public health rules to prevent a fourth wave of COVID, rather than hyping partial vaccination as a cure-all. Zeynep Tufecki discusses how the U.S.’ political dysfunction
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Big Brother Is Watching You – and Yes, It Matters
I talked to my boy in the car this past weekend about what to do when he drives, if he has any problems; and he talked to me about the language learning, free software that he uses on his phone. Two days later, Virgin Mobile, now owned by Bell, sends
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Tom Parkin calls out Jason Kenney’s defence of genocide and its architects in an attempt to keep his party’s white supremacist base onside. And PressProgress notes that Kenney’s insistence on turning an in-person Stampede into the greatest summer outbreak ever has large
Continue readingThings Are Good: Three Years of Privacy Thanks to the GDPR
Three years ago today the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enacted in the EU to protect you from morally questionable digital surveillance, and trust me, we’re all better off for it. Essentially the GDPR stops large companies from tracking you across the web and using that information to change
Continue readingThings Are Good: Deleting Facebook Improves Your Health
You’ve probably heard that Facebook is bad for you and shrugged it off thinking that it’s not a big deal. Turns out it is, and you really should get off of Facebook. We all know how Facebook spies on use and profits from our secrets by selling our data. Tracking
Continue reading