279° - 1a árvore de 2021

Plantada em torno de maio de 2021

4° ano seguido que planto neste local

Créditos: VanRes1974

 hesitancy over the vaccines, recorted from Jonathan Cook

For decades our media have preferred to focus on the problems caused by drunk drivers, or speeding motorists, or even car pollution. But these issues, however significant they are in our daily lives, are overshadowed by the far more terrifying reality that our car and oil-dependent economies are taking a suicidal toll on our species by destroying the climate.

Fixating on one can be a way to avoid thinking about the other.

Something similar seems to be happening with Covid. We fixate on vaccines and “anti-vaxxers”, on mandates and passports – on blaming each other – rather than the reality that our societies and our social contracts were long ago hollowed out by corporate interests that captured the state.

If there is hesitancy over the vaccines it is because a portion of society is not afraid enough of the virus either to overcome their fear of a pharmaceutical industry that long ago put profits ahead of people or to set aside their doubts about the capture of our regulatory authorities by those same corporations.

 

https://www.unz.com/jcook/is-forced-isolation-of-the-unvaccinated-really-the-lefts-answer-to-the-pandemic/

 

+ As the reconciliation bill is ripped apart one vital program (prescription drugs, paid family leave, clean energy program) after another (free community college, expanded Medicare coverage for vision & dental, corporate and billionaire tax hikes), I wonder if the Democrats feel like they are participating in their own political autopsy? It looks like that to an outsider.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/29/roaming-charges-32/

 

logistics, supply chain, real state
“Tighter Warehouse Space Adds to the Supply-Chain Squeeze” [Wall Street Journal].
“‘Space in our markets is effectively sold out,’ said Thomas Olinger, chief financial officer of logistics real-estate firm Prologis Inc., in an Oct. 15 earnings call. ‘In the last 90 days, supply-chain dislocations have become even more pronounced, with customers acting with a sense of urgency to secure the space they need.’…. The squeeze on distribution space is adding to the broader congestion in supply chains, from tight container shipping capacity to backups at inland rail hubs, that has locked down inventory restocking efforts and dragged down economic recovery efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic. Space has been particularly hard to find near U.S. ports as shippers and logistics companies seek out warehouses to store containers and goods. The surging demand for warehouse space since the pandemic began has been driven by the move by consumers to online shopping and efforts by retailers to position goods closer to their customers for faster delivery. After the pandemic moved more shopping online, ‘a good percentage of that behavior change, it turns out, has stuck,’ said John Morris, who leads CBRE’s industrial and logistics business in the Americas.”
NK
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/200pm-water-cooler-10-27-2021.html

275° 

e a aurora em conselheiro lafayete

na quebra do jejum 

enquanto o sol 

banha 

len

ta

men

te os 

caminhos de queluz e

o campo triste dos carijós 

Por VanRes, 29/03/2021, v02.e7.a47

e um estudo 

da aurora em Conselheiro Lafayete

no breakfast/quebra do jejum 

enquanto o sol 

banha 

lentamente 

o Campo Alegre dos Carijós

e os caminhos de Queluz

Manufacturing and logistic: 

“Chinese magnesium shortage: Global car industry to grind to a halt within weeks amid ‘catastrophic’ halt” [New Zealand Herald (dk)]. 

 

“The world’s largest carmakers and other users of aluminium could be forced to halt production within weeks amid a ‘catastrophic’ shortage of magnesium across Europe. Magnesium is a key material used in the production of aluminium alloys, which are used in everything from car parts to building materials and food packaging. China has a near-monopoly on global magnesium manufacturing, accounting for 87 per cent of production, but the Chinese government’s efforts to reduce domestic power consumption amid rising energy prices have slowed output to a trickle since September 20. In Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces, the world’s main magnesium production hubs, 25 plants had to shut down and five further plants slashed production by 50 per cent as a result of the power cuts Europe is expected to run out of magnesium stockpiles by the end of November. On Friday, a group of European industry associations representing cars, metals, packaging and other sectors issued a joint statement warning of the ‘catastrophic impact’ of the production cuts, which they said had already resulted in an ‘international supply crisis of unprecedented magnitude’. The statement called for urgent action from the EU Commission and national governments to work with China to stave off the ‘imminent risk of Europe-wide production shutdowns.'” 

...

 

Mr Horter promised another update within weeks but warned "in the meantime, you may want to consider letting your customer base know of this silicon and magnesium availability crisis and also let them know that other products or inputs needed for making billet or slab may also reach a crisis point".

 ...

...  the current crisis was a "clear example of the risk the EU is taking by making its domestic economy dependent on Chinese imports".

Europe has grown almost entirely dependent on China for magnesium since Chinese dumping forced the closure of Europe's remaining magnesium production plant in 2001.

"Between 2000 and 2021, China's magnesium production increased from 12 per cent of the global supply to 87 per cent, creating an effective international monopoly on a 1.2 million tonnes per annum market demand," European Aluminium's report said.

"The magnesium sector is only one in a long list of production leakages since the early 1990s.

"European primary aluminium production alone has lost more than 30 per cent of its capacity since 2008. In parallel, China continuously increased production capacity to meet the steady increase in European and global demand for both aluminium and magnesium."

European manufacturers now face "dramatic risks" as China is expected to direct its remaining magnesium production to its own industries, with European companies no longer receiving the necessary raw materials to continue production.

 

 Class Planning  October, 27/29, 2021  (Wednesday/Friday) 3rd grade

Summup version

Reading text: Structural racism: what it is and how it works,  June 30, 2021, by Vini Lander  

Transversal Theme: Ethnic and Racial Relations - Structural Racism

Typology Review: opinionated text (Definition, categories, structure, example)

Writing abstract:  Main ideas of the text

Reading texts

Talking points: 

Cultural Reference: Movies, series episodes, books, events related to the theme

 

Extended:

Transversal Theme: Ethnic and Racial Relations - Structural Racism

Typology Review: opinionated text (Definition, categories, structure, example)

Reading text: Structural racism: what it is and how it works,  June 30, 2021, by Vini Lander 

Writing abstract:  Main ideas of the text

Answer the interrogative pronouns about text : What, who, when, where, how, why (causes), which consequences

Reviewing writing: punctuation, adversative conjunctions (but, although), simple past (did happen/happened)

Reading texts aload in english: 

Talking: 

    Answering 6 WH questions about student example.

What did happen? Whom/where/when/why/how did it happen?

Cultural Reference: Movies, series episodes, books, events related to the theme

(BLM, SAH; MLK/FBI; Stop Asian Hate; Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)

Reference: Adapted from: Structural racism: what it is and how it works,  June 30, 2021, by Vini Lander (https://theconversation.com/structural-racism-what-it-is-and-how-it-works-158822). Vini Lander is professor of Race and Education and Director of the Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality in the Carnegie School of Education, Leeds Beckett University )

Lyrics and songs: Bob Marley

What, whom (who), where, when, why (causes), Which (consequences/example), how

DED -II  

*Copiar atividade de uma turma para outra*

Outro ponto para agilizar o processo. Desculpe-me, novamente, se estou sendo redundante.

Lance todas as Atividades Avaliativas do mesmo tipo na sequência.

Por exemplo, lance "Atividades Complementares" de uma turma. Quando terminar, salve e clique em "copiar". Assim copia o cabeçalho (não copia notas ou nomes).

Você só terá que alterar a "Turma" e "bimestre".

O resto do cabeçalho já vem preenchido, com "Disciplina", "Etapa de Matricula", "Valor Máximo", "Descrição da Atividade", "tipo".

Em tempos de processando, e mesmo em tempos normais, agiliza bastante

Prof Vander

postagens relativas a DED

https://vanresnews.blogspot.com/2021/10/ded-em-modulo-processando.html

https://vanresnews.blogspot.com/2021/10/ded-iii-preenchimento-automatico-de.html

https://vanresnews.blogspot.com/2021/10/ded-economize-tempo-ii-copiar-atividade.html

Por Prof. Vander

 

52 - Crer Saber, por VanRes, v. 1.03, 19/08/2021

 

não sei

queria saber

não sei se anseio

mais

 

feliz por alguns

acreditarem conhecer

a verdade

a habitar naquele

tão transcendental

lugar do saber

 

ou seria

nada

mais

que

uma

crença

 20/10/2021 - Leituras incomodantes

"More than 99.9% of studies agree: Humans caused climate change", by Cornell University "More than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies. ... The research updates a similar 2013 paper revealing that 97% of studies published between 1991 and 2012 supported the idea that human activities are altering Earth's climate. The current survey examines the literature published from 2012 to November 2020 to explore whether the consensus has changed.... Co-author Simon Perry, a United Kingdom-based software engineer and volunteer at the Alliance for Science, created an algorithm that searched out keywords from papers the team knew were skeptical, such as "solar," "cosmic rays" and "natural cycles." The algorithm was applied to all 88,000-plus papers, and the program ordered them so the skeptical ones came higher in the order. They found many of these dissenting papers near the top, as expected, with diminishing returns further down the list. Overall, the search yielded 28 papers that were implicitly or explicitly skeptical, all published in minor journals."

 Cable News’ No. 1 Host Flirts With Fascism (Ari Paul).  "These two European leaders [DUDA, from Poland, Orban, from Hungary] have prompted revulsion not just because their platforms are politically extreme, but because they stand against the very ideals—multiculturalism, transnationalism, gay rights and openness in media and academia—that were meant to prevent the kind of nationalistic and authoritarian fervor that resulted in World War II."

New game can help users identify, avoid online echo chambers, by Jessica Hallman, Pennsylvania State University  October 15, 2021.  "Every day, social media users are exposed to fake news and political polarization on social networks. What makes people vulnerable to believing false information they find online? ...The tool, a game named ChamberBreaker, is a theory-based game that enables a player to test their own awareness of content that could result in echo chambers and to observe how they are accelerated by the spread of fake news. Their goal is to help players resist echo chambers in the future and ultimately reduce the rate of fake news dissemination".

 

Short-sleepers are more likely to suffer from irregular and heavy periods. October 20, 2021 1.19pm EDT, Kat Kennedy PhD Student, Physiology, University of Arizona,   Sara Nowakowski Associate Professor of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine. " Menstruating women who sleep less than six hours a night tend to suffer heavier and irregular periods. That is the conclusion from our new study, which was recently published in the Journal of Sleep Research. We found that those who got less than six hours of sleep on average nightly were 44% more likely to have an irregular period and 70% more likely to have heavy bleeding during a period than healthy sleepers who got seven to nine hours."

 

Below - from Naked Capitalism

 “Biden discusses $1.9 trillion top line for economic package and tells Democrats free community college is out” [CNN]. “President Joe Biden informed House progressives Tuesday afternoon that the final bill to expand the social safety net is expected to drop tuition-free community college, a major White House priority, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. And the President discussed a $1.75 to $1.9 trillion price tag [over ten years] for the sweeping spending package, according to a person familiar with the talks. While the number is not finalized, it is far closer to West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s $1.5 trillion top line [over ten years] than progressives’ number, which was $3.5 trillion [over ten years]. Moreover, he indicated that the child tax credit — a key Democratic priority — would likely be extended for one additional year, much shorter than what many in their party wanted, one of the sources said. The child tax credit will also likely be means tested, keeping with what Manchin had wanted. Biden also indicated to the group that they would reduce the proposed funding for so-called homecare for the elderly and disabled — down to less than $250 billion, sources said. Democrats had wanted to keep the funding at $400 billion. The President told progressive lawmakers that negotiators are weighing reducing the duration of the paid leave benefit outlined in the package to four weeks, down from a proposed 12 weeks, according to three sources familiar with the meeting.”

Commodities: “Dune Is the Sci-Fi Epic Commodities Traders Have Always Wanted” [Bloomberg]. “At its heart is the spice—the reason Arrakis is so valuable, the (nominal) reason the Atreides are sent there, and the reason the house’s bitter rivals, the Harkonnens, are so keen to wrest the planet back from them. It’s here that the eyes of any commodities traders in the audience will light up as they realize, for what seems like the first time, there’s a blockbuster tailored to their exact interests.” And the ending: “[W]hile not every element manages to come together perfectly, the framing does provide a solid bedrock for the action playing out on screen, as well as an opportunity to reflect on the economic systems that shape our world. If greed is intrinsic to capitalism and inevitably leads to conflict and inequality, that, and sandworms, should be avoided at all costs.”  

Shipping: “They’ve been stuck for months on cargo ships now floating off Southern California. They’re desperate” [Los Angeles Times]. “Some 300,000 of these migrant merchant sailors have been stranded on vessels at sea or in ports around the world, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, a London-based trade union that is among the maritime agencies lobbying governments to address what’s been labeled the “crew-change crisis.” They endure unbroken monotony and growing desperation. Their unions and charity groups describe exhaustion, despair, suicide and violence at sea, including at least one alleged murder on a cargo ship headed to Los Angeles…. Imagine weeks at sea or at anchor without the ability to contact loved ones, spotty Wi-Fi connections at ports, living on a food budget that amounts to $7.50 per person, per day. Imagine living in cramped quarters, confined to a 680-foot by 98-foot ship for months longer than you agreed to, your direct contact limited to a couple of dozen other crew members. And the coronavirus has added a two-fold stress increase.”

“From Kellogg’s to John Deere, who is striking right now — and why?” [Today]. And the deck: “Workers across the country are demanding better pay and working conditions.”

 

19.10.2021 - leituras incomodantes e outras leituras

As leituras que mais me incomodaram ontem foram:
- conto: "Son" de John Updike;

- para biografia de Richard Falk, a resenha de Walden Bello: Zionism’s Bête Noire: How Richard Falk Became an Intellectual Pariah. Falk foi UN's Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Occupied Territory

Outras leituras que me moveram ontem:

poema: "Sedução", de Adélia Prado, em Bagagem. verso: "É de ferro a roda dentada dela.]

postagem: More Brain Death At NATO, by Moon of Alabama

capítulo sobre Álvares de Azevedo em "Formação da Literatura Brasileira - Vol II" de Antônio Cândido

resenha de Walden Bello: Zionism’s Bête Noire: How Richard Falk Became an Intellectual Pariah. Falk: UN's Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Occupied Territory

artigo: TAVARES, Luma Nunes. Os desafios na produção do texto dissertativo-argumentativo nas aulas de LínguaPortuguesa dos alunos do 3º ano do ensino médio. 2018.

postagem sobre a necessidade de expressar a raiva por Richard Murphy com preâmbulo de Yves Smith: It’s OK To Be Angry. How Else Will We Change the World?

releitura, conversa e revisão do texto 13°  "a seleção do tempo" (ínfimos - infinitos)

episódio "Mass", de Raised by wolves

Qual de suas leituras mais te incomodou ontem?

Por VanRes, 20/10/2021 (20/10/2021, 06:35 a 06:50)

 "O avanço do agronegócio, em meio à estagnação da renda per capita nacional, pressupôs uma ampla cobertura estatal viabilizada por

 desoneração fiscal providenciada pela Lei Kandir, que eximiu as exportações de produtos primários do pagamento do ICMS (1996),

pela isenção tributária de lucros e dividendos (1995) e pela 

seguida valorização cambial e

 prática das altas taxas de juros a enaltecer a 

conversão de empresários industriais em comerciantes, rentistas e neoextrativistas."

 https://outraspalavras.net/crise-brasileira/pochmann-assim-o-brasil-regride-130-anos/#:~:text=O%20avan%C3%A7o%20do,rentistas%20e%20neoextrativistas.

saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose.  “Sweeteners hurt the ability of gut bacteria to keep us well: Israeli study” [Times of Israel].

Three less common sweeteners,
acesulfame potassium (Ace-K),
advantame, and
neotame,
did not have this effect.

 

Researchers find 3 most common artificial sweeteners cause a ‘breakdown in communication’ among microbes, potentially raising risk of
obesity,
diabetes and 

digestive problems

“Artificial sweeteners cause a “breakdown in communication” among gut bacteria, changing the microbiome and potentially increasing the risk of disease, Israeli scientists say. Gut bacteria keep people healthy, but to do so they need to be present in the right balance. This is maintained in part by a communication mechanism that bacteria use, called quorum sensing, which enables bacteria to detect and respond to cell population density by regulating their own genes, affecting their behavior. ‘Artificial sweeteners disrupt that communication, which indicates that artificial sweeteners may be problematic in the long run,’ said Dr. Karina Golberg, who led the peer-reviewed study published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.”

the three most common sweeteners all impeded bacterial communication: saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose.

 

Three less common sweeteners,
acesulfame potassium (Ace-K),
advantame, and
neotame,
did not have this effect.

 

 “Christie: 2020 Joe Biden ‘is now officially dead and buried'” [The Hill], by Caroline Vakil - 10/03/21 

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on Sunday that 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden "is now officially dead and buried" after the president went to Capitol Hill in an attempt to break an impasse among Democrats on a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a massive social spending package 

“‘It’s the death of 2020 Joe Biden. When he went to the Hill, 2020 Joe Biden is now officially dead and buried,’ [Chris] Christie said on ABC’s ‘This Week.’ ‘The guy who ran against the progressives, ran against Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, ran to be a uniter in this country, ran saying he was going to force compromise. And he went up to Capitol Hill, and he capitulated to the progressives, the liberals in his party.’ ‘And why should we be surprised? He couldn’t stand up to the Taliban. How could we expect him to stand up to AOC?’ he added, referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), before ‘This Week’ co-anchor Jonathan Karl called his comments a ‘partisan take.'”

 

“Progressives’ mobilization delusion” [Matt Yglesias, Slow Boring]. “One of the biggest problems with mobilization theory is that in politics (and also other spheres of life), there are a lot of opportunists. And by moving from a straightforward question like ‘is this popular?’ to something harder to measure like ‘does this mobilize voters?’ a lot of people who have specific agendas can make up hazy reasons why you need to prioritize their issues.”

 “Why Democrats’ climate goals may test their Latino appeal” [Associated Press]. “Last year, Biden won Cameron County, which encompasses Brownsville and is about 90% Hispanic. But Trump’s margin of the vote increased there by 20 percentage points over 2016. Farther north, Trump flipped oil- and gas-producing, but still heavily Hispanic, Jim Wells and Kleberg counties. ‘We are very dependent on oil and gas. That’s the reason you saw those numbers,’ said [said Mayra Flores, a 35-year-old respiratory care practitioner and organizer for Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign], who was born in Mexico, came to the United State at age 6 and picked cotton every summer growing up after age 12. ‘That’s what people do. That’s where they work.'”

 neoliberal playbook:

(1) Degrade public health by underfunding and corruption,
(2) watch it fail in a very public test, and
(3) replace it with coercion. Best of all, in future you can go directly to coercion!

05/10/2021

 

 left’s favorite floating signifier: neoliberalism.[Vulgar Marxism].

To grease the wheels of accumulation, every president from Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush helped build out a new model of governance that
cut corporate taxes,
dismantled welfare,
deregulated industry,
broke labor power, and
promoted financialization.

This is the original meaning of what is now the left’s favorite floating signifier: neoliberalism. In George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, a preacher explains the emergence of the undead by intoning: “When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.” Well, when there is no more labor to profitably exploit in the periphery, capital will deepen exploitation in the core. If capitalism is a vampire that “only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks,” as Marx described it, then neoliberalism is a zombie, returning to feast on the flesh of loved ones after picking the bones of strangers clean.

 

“Enough food” is each person having daily access to an average of 2,353 calories of culturally appropriate, locally available, affordable, unrefined, and delectable nourishment. The good news is that we already grow enough food to feed 10 billion people. The challenges are that the food is not fairly distributed, a lot of it is thrown away, and the process of growing it industrially is trashing the planet. Contrary to conventional mythology, smallholder farms and regenerative agriculture can feed the world. By paying attention to racial equity, Indigenous food sovereignty, waste reduction, and agroecosystem health, we can uproot hunger and seed justice on a planetary scale. —Leah Penniman, Black Kreyol farmer and food justice activist

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/how-much-is-enough/2021/08/10/meditations-on-enough

 

Morality demonstrated in stories can alter judgement for early adolescents

by Bert Gambini, University at Buffalo

Do children reading about particular moral characteristics absorb those traits as a building block for their own morality? The findings, which appear in the Journal of Media Psychology, suggest so, and further support how this indirect approach to socializing children's morality can supplement the direct teaching of moral principles kids might receive through formal instruction.

 ...

"When parents are considering what media they might want to select for their children, they can take into account 

- what particular moral value is being emphasized by the main character, and 

- how the main character is treated because of those actions," she says.

 

...

 

Hahn is first author of the new study, which adds critical nuance to a body of literature that explores how media content affects children. While many previous studies have focused on broad conceptualizations, like prosocial or antisocial effects that might be associated with specific content, Hahn's study looks at how exposure to content featuring specific moral values (care, fairness, loyalty and authority) might influence the weight kids place on those values.

 

 

...

For the study, Hahn and her colleagues took the main character from a young adult novel and edited the content to reflect in each version the study's focus on one of four moral values. A fifth version was manipulated in a way that featured an amoral main character. Those narratives were shared with roughly 200 participants between the ages of 10 and 14. This is a favorable range for media research because it's more difficult to introduce narrative comprehension in younger kids, while equally challenging to hold the attention of older adolescents, who become bored with rudimentary storylines, according to Hahn.

 

More information: Lindsay Hahn et al, Narrative Media's Emphasis on Distinct Moral Intuitions Alters Early Adolescents' Judgments, Journal of Media Psychology (2021). DOI: 10.1027/1864-1105/a000307

 

 

 Crise energética chinesa!?!?!

Menor crescimento da produção interna de carvão (4,4%)

    [causa medio prazo]

          (em relação ao crescimento do consumo de energia (14%) e [em do PIB],  

     [causa de curto prazo]

        menor importação (Austrália, agravado pelo AUKUS),

     [longo prazo, que o texto não fala, devido a mudança de base industrial, para indústria 4.0].

[médio prazo - China projeta cortes, no plano plurianual, em investimentos em projetos de mineração na África e América Latina, por exemplo)

Maior uso De energias renováveis 

[ indústrias eólicas e solares sao mais tecnologicamente avançadas e com cadeias de produção mais qualificadas - Se o carvão correspondeu a 4,4, de aumento da oferta, devido a 14% de aumento no consumo de energia, quanto do aumento da produção de energia foi derivado de fontes renováveis],

Diminuição de exportação de defensivos agrícolas [ ou pesticidas e fertilizantes] (para atender demanda interna - maior produtor, maior exportador, maior consumidor)

Redução de compra de minérios [problemas com fornecedores [ AUKUS, outros membros do falecido BRICS], 

Reduzir importação de gás natural e petróleo ( e também amônia, uréia [furacão IDA), por aumento de custo internacional 

"Crise" [ou melhor, alteração] do mercado imobiliário e construção civil (Evergrande) [ incentivo a construção para uso e desincentivo a construção para especulação, 

Ou 

[Mudança de matriz energética, para reduzir poluição, mitigar aquecimento global e aumentar autonomia energética?!?!?]

 [As reduções de importação e da emissao de gases estão relacionadas a alterações no plano plurianual, portanto, podem se relacionar não tanto a problemas derivados de causas imediatas, mas principalmente por tentativa de focar em questões básicas e de longo prazo, como dar conta do aumento das demandas internas, bem  como e se tornar mais autônomo e ou autarquico reduzir dependência externa]

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33092

 

UK is in need of about 90,000 HGV drivers

Trade association Logistics UK estimates that the UK is in need of about 90,000 HGV drivers - with existing shortages made worse by a number of factors, including the
pandemic,
Brexit, an
ageing workforce, and
low wages and
poor working conditions.

This isn't a particularly popular idea with many cabinet ministers.

That's because the new immigration system that came in after Brexit was all about saying to companies: "You can't rely on cheap foreign labour any more, you've got to focus on the workforce in this country, you've got to train them, you've got to pay them better wages."

Relaxing those immigration rules now undermines that message. It could lead to other sectors saying they want special treatment too.

 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58687026

About Panic buying

Panic buying is a natural reaction to a stressful experience. In particular, it's a response to uncertainty. When people feel things are uncertain, they tend to focus on something that gives them a sense of certainty and makes them feel in control.

Of course, most people can't recruit new lorry drivers or mobilize the army to help with the delivery—but they can stock up on fuel. In taking this action, they feel as if they are doing something proactive, and taking charge of the situation.

COVID-19 has exacerbated uncertainty around what the future may hold and increased anxiety for many people, which is notable given we know existing anxiety is a precursor for panic buying. So when people heard there were concerns about petrol supply, it's not altogether surprising they began queuing up with extra Jerry cans. People may be more susceptible to this behavior than usual given the pandemic.

,,,

 

Precise and thoughtful communication is key to alleviating concerns, and therefore deterring people from panic buying. In this case, the public needs reassurance that there is not going to be a petrol shortage, as well as information about solutions—but it needs to be convincing. For example, announcing that 5,000 HGV drivers will be able to get temporary work visas without stating how they will be recruited may not be seen as entirely credible.

The way language is used can also affect people's perception of a situation. It's encouraging to see reports indicating the government has advised councils not to use the terms "panic" or "panic buying" in this discussion. Indeed, widespread use of the word "panic" means we perceive others as panicking. And thinking back to the principles of herd behavior, we tend to assume others know what they're doing—and we become more likely to follow suit.

So it's important that the government, local authorities and the media be careful with the language they use during this time.

Things you can do

If you are in the UK and currently affected by the crisis, ask yourself whether you really need to buy petrol. If you decide you don't really need to—perhaps you can leave your car at home and take public transport—even this basic thought process is a way of taking charge and reducing anxiety levels.

If you're concerned about the possibility of not being able to drive your car, it's a good idea to come up with a plan B. What specifically would you do if you found yourself with an empty tank? Could you perhaps travel to work with a neighbor who still has petrol in their car? Check bus and train routes and travel times to see whether that may be a solution.

By having a specific plan, you will feel as if you are in charge—albeit in a different way—and this might make you feel less inclined to urgently seek petrol.

https://phys.org/news/2021-10-petrol-toilet-paper-ways-crisis.html

 

Who benefits from the massive surge of migrants crossing our southern boarder?

 Obviously, more is involved than just compassion for millions of poor Guatemalans and their children. And while adding future Democratic voters is clearly the long-term aim of those tolerating the invasion, there is one group of immediate beneficiaries whose needs have garnered scant attention: affluent Americans whose comfort depends on armies low-wage, happy-to-please foreign-born workers. The awkward truth is that millions of upscale Americans risk transforming the US into a banana republic in pursuit of creature comforts. Like those wretched masses wading across the Rio Grande, they, too, want a better life.

 

Employers prefer these new arrivals for the simple reason that that they are superior workers. They are more
reliable,
punctual,
dutiful and
anxious to please, and
their salaries reflects economic reality, not a wage dictated by government bureaucrats untroubled by economic reality. Employers are not scraping the bottom of the barrel vis-à-vis home-grown workers. That the newcomers often help support their families back home via remittances further encourages them to be well-behaved employees.

https://www.unz.com/article/open-borders-and-affluent-americans/ 

Ron Unz:

Although those immigration benefits to affluent Americans obviously contribute, I think the biggest current factor is just the enormous ideological and political momentum in support of immigration among Democrats, not least because their arch-fiend Donald Trump had made opposition to immigration one of his biggest political issues.

However, I think over the last couple of decades there was an entirely different hidden factor, namely demographic issues in America’s most influential urban centers:

https://www.unz.com/runz/race-and-crime-in-america/#the-hidden-motive-for-heavy-immigration

 “Can the System Save Itself Again?” [Vulgar Marxism]. “From the point of view of the Democratic Party, Biden’s domestic agenda is critical to its

short-term electoral fortunes,
the medium-term stability of the political system that empowers it, and
the long-term health of the biosphere in which the capitalist mode of production is possible.

So how can it be that this party, both as a self-interested actor and the superego of American capital, may fail to pass it?… But it turns out capital remains as shortsighted as ever, and has mobilized to tank Biden’s agenda.

 

Throughout its history, critics and admirers alike have understood that if improperly managed, capitalism will destroy a society’s capacity for social reproduction, and with it the conditions that sustain its own existence. For this reason, much of the political class in the Global North came to recognize the need for their states to ensure a more stable balance between the productive needs of capital and the human needs of labor - for their own citizens anyway. Though capital fiercely resisted this renegotiation of the social contract, it was disciplined through the power of organized labor and a political class willing to accept and enforce a compromise. 

...

 

 

nationwide collapse in social trust and faith in institutions 

 Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was the result of northern non-college whites realigning their politics to match non-college whites in the rest of the country. The high-wire act that saw this cohort defy demographic gravity for sixty years was sustained by a unionized industrial sector loyal to the Democratic Party, an arrangement that has disintegrated. Economic stagnation has also led to a nationwide collapse in social trust and faith in institutions that is fueling disturbing pathologies in our culture and politics.

https://vulgarmarxism.substack.com/p/can-the-system-save-itself-again

 “Kyrsten Sinema must be stopped” [Matt Yglesias, Slow Boring].
"Sinema isn’t blocking popular progressive ideas because she’s getting corporate money; she’s getting corporate money because she’s blocking popular progressive ideas, and businesses want their key ally to succeed and prosper.”

"Because while I don’t believe Kyrsten Sinema will be the future of the Democratic Party, one can at least squint and sort of see it. So far, most of the newly elected Democrats from favored quarter suburbs are pretty solid liberals who still back taxing the rich and expanding the welfare state. But Sinema and a handful of her allies in the House do portend a possible alternate route where Democrats try to turn themselves into a pro-business identity politics movement that mostly just gets creamed by the populist right. It’s a very alarming development, and unless she changes course quickly, it would be very advisable to mount a primary challenge to her…."

 

“Pandemic Bird-Watching Created a Data Boom—and a Conundrum” [Wired]. “

 With the fall migration now in full swing, this army of avid birders is amassing a wealth of data about how
weather,
human movements,
artificial lights, and
city infrastructure
can affect birds as they travel. Farnsworth notes that while both Cornell projects have grown every year since their inception over a decade ago, the increase in users, downloads, and data over the past 18 months was unprecedented.” 

 

apps like Merlin and eBird. 

Why charter schools are not as ‘public’ as they claim to be

September 30, 2021 8.28am EDT

 

Kevin Welner

Professor, Education Policy & Law; Director, National Education Policy Center, University of Colorado Boulder

 

Proponents of charter schools insist that they are public schools “open to all students.” But the truth is more nuanced. As an education policy researcher – and as author of a new book about charter schools I wrote with fellow researcher Wagma Mommandi – I have discovered that charter schools are not as accessible to the public as they are often made out to be.

This finding is particularly relevant in light of the fact that charter school enrollment reportedly grew at a rapid rate during the pandemic. Specifically, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, enrollment increased 7% from 2019-20 to 2020-21. The organization says that is the biggest enrollment jump in a half-decade.

In our book, we identify and describe 13 different approaches that charters use to bring certain types of students in and push other kinds of students out.

Here are four examples from our book.

Unbiased. Nonpartisan. Factual.

1. Targeted marketing and advertising

By using specific types of language in their promotional materials and by targeting those materials to specific audiences, charter schools often send a message that they are looking for a certain type of student. This is a way for charter schools to reach or appeal to a certain audience but not others, which in turn shapes who ends up applying to a given school.

For instance, Mueller Charter Leadership Academy in San Diego told prospective families that “All eligible students are welcome to apply. However, it should be noted that because this is a highly advanced, demanding program, it may not be appropriate for everyone.”

Targeted advertising can also carry a message. LISA Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2016 sent out targeted recruitment mailers to area neighborhoods – skipping over the three zip codes for the heavily Black and Latino parts of town.

“They’re sending a message they don’t want the kids on the east side of town,” Max Brantley, editor of the Arkansas Times, remarked after his newspaper exposed the practice. The school later apologized and explained that its plan was to subsequently reach out to those populations through digital advertising.

2. Conditional applications

Charter schools sometimes require multiple essays or a minimum GPA as a condition for initial or continuing enrollment.

Roseland Accelerated Middle School in Santa Rosa, California, for instance, required applicants to submit five short essays plus an autobiography using “well constructed and varied structure.”

Minimum GPA requirements can be imposed at the application stage or once admitted. At Lushor Charter School in New Orleans, parents and students are asked to sign a contract that requires students to maintain a 2.0 GPA in core subject areas for continued enrollment.

3. Parents required to ‘volunteer’

Some charter schools require parents to volunteer a certain amount of time at the school, or pay money in lieu of volunteering. Pembroke Pines Charter High School in Florida, for example, required each family to complete 30 such “volunteer hours” per year, but allowed 20 of those hours to be “purchased” – US$100 total to buy out the first 10 hours and $200 more for the next 10 hours. These requirements place an additional burden, in terms of time and money, on families that are already struggling economically.

‘No excuses’ charter schools are known for harsh discipline. Monkey Business Images/Getty Images Plus

4. Aggressive use of discipline.

At so-called “no excuses” charters that “sweat the small stuff”, students have – at least historically – been subjected to harsh discipline for minor infractions, such as chewing gum or failing to constantly keep their eyes on the teacher during class.

Some of these schools repeatedly suspend students and call parents to leave work to pick up a suspended child. The most high-profile example is Success Academy charter school in Fort Greene, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, where school leaders created a “Got to Go” list of 16 students who were then subjected to harassing discipline. In one case, a school official threatened to call 911 on a 6-year-old because the child was having a “bad day.” Nine of the 16 students did in fact withdraw from the school.

Functioning like private schools

Cumulatively, these and the other approaches we detail in our book – titled “School’s Choice” – make charter schools more like private schools than the public schools they claim to be.

These practices influence which students are admitted to charter schools and then stay in those schools. Charter school choice therefore affects schools’ demographics, including the degree to which they are segregated.

They affect funding equity as well, since state school-finance formulas often don’t adequately account for the actual costs of educating different students. In Pennsylvania, for example, charter schools are funded through a system that creates problematic incentives related to access for students with special needs. As explained in a report by the state’s bipartisan legislative Special Education Funding Commission, the current funding system provides charter schools “the same funding for each student with a disability, regardless of the severity of that student’s disability.”

“This creates a strong incentive to overidentify students with less costly disabilities and to under-identify (or under-enroll) students with more severe (or more costly) disabilities,” the report states. A speech impediment, for example, is an example of a mild disability, versus a student with, say, a traumatic brain injury, which is a more severe disability. As the report explains, “A student with a mild disability can be a financial boon to a charter school, given that the funding the charter receives will exceed the charter’s cost to educate a child.”

Notably, Pennsylvania’s funding system does not create these incentives for district-run public schools.

These practices also can play a decisive role for comparisons of academic outcomes between charters and traditional public schools run by a school district. Overall, research consistently shows little if any difference in the average test-score outcomes for the two types of schools. But the comparisons may not be fair and accurate. If charter schools can improve their test scores by screening out students they don’t think will do well, it can give them an unfair advantage in comparisons with public schools that accept all students.

Policy incentives revisited

So what can be done to make charter schools more accessible? One way is to change policy incentives such as the Pennsylvania funding system mentioned earlier. States can also change the way they reward schools for how well their students do on tests. Arizona, for instance, has policies that give extra funding to charters and other schools with higher achieving students.

In the final two chapters of our book, “School’s Choice,” Mommandi and I point to a future with charter schools that don’t screen or push out students who are lower achieving or more expensive to educate. First, we hold up examples of charter schools that have resisted the incentives to limit access by, for example, working to support their communities’ most marginalized students. We then offer a design for a healthier charter school system that doesn’t put these exemplary schools at a disadvantage when it comes to accountability and funding systems.

Even in a post-pandemic world, charter school enrollment may continue to grow. But until the public has more access, charters will not be truly public.