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A letter to Maggie Hassan

A letter to Maggie Hassan

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Senator Maggie Hassan (D. NH) wrote to subscribers to her newsletter to celebrate an extremely regressive and ill-advised policy by the Democratic administration. Here’s her email and my response: Maggie Hassan’s email Families are reeling from the impact of Putin’s war and supply chain challenges, and Granite Staters are paying the price at the pump. It’s clear that we need to take additional action to bring down costs for families. To help bring down high oil and gas prices, I…

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Map of the EU
Predictions about how the economy will change

Predictions about how the economy will change

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This post is a little bit of prediction – pretending we can see the future clearly, and describing what it will be like. Specifically, I will make some predictions for the global economy in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate change, and the supply chain issues arising from COVID-19. How the economy will change: EU and Brexit Let’s get the elephant in the room packed up in his trunk and moved into another room which better suits its…

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How well the COVID-19 vaccines protect

How well the COVID-19 vaccines protect

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ArsTechnica has a thoroughly researched and very well-written article about how well the COVID-19 vaccines protect and whether they are worth getting if you have already been infected by any of the virus’s five variants: Read about the COVID-19 vaccine as at March 28th, 2022.

How fundamentalist Christians could get it right

How fundamentalist Christians could get it right

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I spent the last weekend with some evangelical Christians who I like on a personal level. They all believe that they are called to “spread the word”. Despite a genuine intellectual interest from me for most of my life, they have all singularly failed to communicate a positive image of Jesus and, especially, his followers. This article explains how fundamentalist Christians could get it right, but instead get it wrong when it comes to sharing their world view. First, everyone…

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How to make your content accessible

How to make your content accessible

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I have long been concerned about following web standards (and any others that apply to me) to ensure maximum accessibility for readers of my website (and others I maintain). I recently attended a brief training that covered the definition of accessibility. It’s wider than I realized. Accessibility can be defined in terms of people’s disabilities – something like “the product or service can be used regardless of a user’s disabilities” – but it’s better to define it more broadly as…

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Being Green in 2022

Being Green in 2022

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I recognize that most of the impacts from climate change can only be mitigated by governments making regulation changes. Without those regulations, landfill might continue to be cheaper than recycling, single-use plastics will remain cheaper than more sustainable alternatives, and gasoline (UK: petroleum) vehicles and machinery will continue to be easier to use than alternatives. A few companies are responsible for most of the world’s carbon emissions, and Americans are by far the largest polluters per head. This article is…

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine

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Today, Russia invaded Ukraine. We have known for a while now that Russia was pondering invading. Ukraine, though not a perfect democracy, has expressed an interest in aligning more with the free countries of Europe and has been getting more democratic recently. As a result, Russia’s dictator, Putin, has decided that it needs to ‘protect’ not only those in the east who consider themselves Russian, but also those in the rest of the country who consider themselves Ukrainian. This sounds…

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A little of being a foreigner

A little of being a foreigner

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I am an American Citizen, but aside from the legal documentation, I am culturally a foreigner. Because of this I have some experiences that I suspect others never have, or have less often. Before I tell this story, I think you need to know about a difference between British and American homes that is really obvious to a visitor from one to the other: British homes are made of different materials than American ones. In England, homes are almost all…

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We know whether the COVID vaccines work

We know whether the COVID vaccines work

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The COVID vaccines have been rejected by some people, especially in the USA. The reasons vary from lies about the use of aborted babies in their production, to doubts about how well they work. (A so-called ‘pro-life’ group has said there are no moral reasons not to use the Moderna, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, or even Johnson and Johnson vaccines – source 1, source 2). To clarify that they do work, these graphs provide a very clear, simple comparison of similar…

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lightbulb in focus
Why you know less than you think

Why you know less than you think

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Everything I know is learned. It’s an important thing to remember – it’s easy to forget and believe that everything you know is true in some fundamental and foundational way. Everything you know is learned too. Let’s unpack that. What do you know to be true? I know that I am writing this at the moment. Well, I think I am. Some dreams are pretty vivid, and hallucinations can be so vivid that people genuinely don’t know what’s going on….

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