Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Plastic teabags release microscopic particles into tea

Many people are trying to reduce their plastic use, but some tea manufacturers are moving in the opposite direction: replacing traditional paper teabags with plastic ones. Now, researchers have discovered that a soothing cup of the brewed beverage may come with a dose of micro- and nano-sized plastics shed from the bags. Possible health effects of ingesting these particles are currently unknown, the researchers say.

Public Retirement Funds and Universities Are Financing Empower Texans, a Far-Right Lobbying Group, New Report Reveals

Empower Texans, which receives most of its funding from oil and gas billionaire Tim Dunn, has put over $9 million into Texas electoral politics.

The post Public Retirement Funds and Universities Are Financing Empower Texans, a Far-Right Lobbying Group, New Report Reveals appeared first on The Intercept.

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.

Many observers now seem to think this suddenly hot story came out of nowhere this year, but that is not true.

The post I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down. appeared first on The Intercept.

The Moderate Middle Is A Myth | FiveThirtyEight https://prismo.xyz/posts/0a576828-c392-46da-bdd9-322a11a8dbad

More U.S. Commandos Are Fighting Invisible Wars in the Middle East

“We’re not getting answers to basic questions, like who the U.S. has killed and why it hasn’t better protected civilians."

The post More U.S. Commandos Are Fighting Invisible Wars in the Middle East appeared first on The Intercept.

We Were Warned: The Climate Emergency and the Surveillance State

Betsy Reed hosts this week's Intercepted. Guests include whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept's Naomi Klein, Sharon Lerner, and more.

The post We Were Warned: The Climate Emergency and the Surveillance State appeared first on The Intercept.

Four Cartoonists on Decolonizing Their Lives

In our Empire issue, we asked four artists how they’re re-claiming their own identities

You CAN Take It With You

We’ve Been Getting Along So Well

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard says impeachment of Trump would be “terribly divisive” for country

Why the House Democratic Caucus Was Able to Move So Rapidly Toward Impeachment

“We spent all summer getting the shit kicked out of us back home,” said one Democrat who received such treatment.

The post Why the House Democratic Caucus Was Able to Move So Rapidly Toward Impeachment appeared first on The Intercept.

Pelosi Just Launched an Impeachment Probe

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday announced plans to launch formal impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. In recent days, a growing number of Democrats have argued that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian leaders to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son could be grounds for removing the president from office. “This is […]

At this point, understanding computers isn't even about understanding the difference between GOTO and GOSUB or knowing what TCP/IP stands for - or even *is*. It's about understanding power. If you buy a laptop off Amazon, boot into Windows, log into Facebook, and check your Gmail, you're entering into exploitative power relationships where you - like the workers who made the laptop, sold you the laptop, delivered the laptop, the workers who manually moderate your Facebook feed, like the miners who dug up the copper and cobalt - are at the bottom.

Much like a job where you exchange your time and labor for capital, you are exchanging your personal relationships for convenience.

In order to get out from under this, you *do* need to educate yourself somewhat. You gotta know how certain things work. You don't have to become a programmer or hacker though. It's not the fucking Matrix. You just have to understand things enough to manipulate them and know where you stand.

The first Librem 5 smartphones are shipping https://puri.sm/posts/first-librem-5-smartphones-are-shipping/ “This is a big moment, not just for us as a company, but for everyone concerned about issues of privacy, security, and user freedom. The Librem 5 represents years of work, building the software and hardware required to make this phone a reality.” - Todd Weaver, founder and CEO of #Purism #Librem5 #Librem5Aspen #Linux #LinuxPhone #LinuxMobile #GNOME #FOSS

Hikers, Trump, and the Capitalist Conspiracy to Ruin Public Lands

An Interview with Christopher Ketcham about his book “This Land” and the threats to 450 million federal acres.

The post Hikers, Trump, and the Capitalist Conspiracy to Ruin Public Lands appeared first on The Intercept.

Model helps choose wind farm locations, predicts output

The wind is always blowing somewhere, but deciding where to locate a wind farm is a bit more complicated than holding up a wet finger. Now a team of researchers has a model that can locate the best place for the wind farm and even help with 24-hour predictions of energy output.

We Should Integrate Schools Based on Class, Not Race

Sean Reardon has some interesting new research on the black-white achievement gap in primary school today. It’s mostly contained in Table 5 of his report, which is a little hard to read, but here it is: Even after controlling for economic status, attendance at a school with a big racial attendance gap (i.e., heavily black) […]

Happy Trump Maybe Impeachment Day! Here Are the Latest Developments.

The calls to impeach President Donald Trump are growing louder after he admitted to discussing former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden on a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the days leading up to the phone call, he withheld $391 million in military funds from the country, suggesting the possibility […]

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez Call for Reversal of Puerto Rico Austerity Measures

Thirteen members of Congress signed a letter demanding that the Puerto Rico fiscal oversight board, known as “la junta,” disclose its conflicts of interest.

The post Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez Call for Reversal of Puerto Rico Austerity Measures appeared first on The Intercept.

Neurotoxin lead sometimes added to turmeric for brighter color

Some spice processors in Bangladesh use an industrial lead chromate pigment to imbue turmeric with a bright yellow color prized for curries and other traditional dishes, elevating blood lead levels in Bangladeshis.

The “Democratic” in DSA

As the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) met August 2 in Atlanta for its biennial convention, a number of the 1,056 delegates did so with trepidation. They feared the gathering could devolve into factionalism, splintering the organization that, in the last five years, has grown from 6,000 to 55,000-plus members across 150 chapters.

Chris Riddiough was among those worried, a socialist feminist from Washington, D.C., who has been a leading DSA figure since its founding in 1982. For the past two years, Riddiough served on the strife-riven 16-member National Political Committee, the group’s elected governing body.

“Going into the convention, there were aspects that were reminiscent of the whole mischegas with SDS,” Riddiough says, referring to the implosion of Students for a Democratic Society at its 1969 convention. “The Left has a long history of shooting itself in the foot. My concern was that we not repeat that history.”

A few shots were fired in Atlanta, but none likely to cause irreversible damage. “I came out more optimistic than when I went in,” Riddiough says.

Convention delegates affirmed that participation in electoral politics is worthwhile. By passing the “Class-Struggle Elections” resolution, DSA committed itself to using “elections, public offices and legislation as vehicles to encourage working-class organization, promote progressive legislation and build support for democratic socialist ideas.” The resolution included a caveat that says DSA’s ultimate goal is to break with the Democrats “and their capitalist donors,” and “form an independent working-class party,” rather than reform the party from within.

A new party? It’s socialist Dems who are already changing the nation’s political conversation. DSA members Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) were elected to the House as Democrats in 2018. And across the country, DSA members continue to be elected to state and local office, 29 of whom attended the convention. Most of these pols have run as Democrats (without “capitalist donors”) and won by turning out registered Democratic voters.

One such elected official at the convention was Ruth Buffalo, a North Dakota Democratic state representative and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation who works as a public health professional in Fargo. In 2018, she ousted a Republican incumbent who had led a GOP effort to suppress the Native vote.

Another is Gabriel Acevero, a Maryland Democratic state representative and an Afro-Caribbean LGBTQ activist who organizes for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (wonderfully, he swore his oath of office on a copy of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time).

No DSA resolution will alter the fact that the majority of progressives in America, including the majority of people of color and union members, identify as Democrats. The “Class-Struggle Elections” resolution concedes as much, noting that DSA-endorsed candidates can, for tactical reasons, run on the Democratic Party line “for now,” which means that DSA is not breaking with its decades-long tradition of working within the Democratic Party.

That “for now” could be quite a long time—given that America’s first-past-the-post elections prevent the emergence of new parties.

The future of democratic socialism in America is bright. To wit, DSA resolved to become an organization of 100,000 members by 2021. For an organization that has grown by 800 percent in the last five years, it’s an ambitious but achievable goal. At its Atlanta convention, DSA demonstrated that, despite growing pains, it can accommodate disagreement, unite around common principles and not be torn asunder by sectarian posturing that has so often divided the Left.