September 2, 2020

the burger is the same age as me, both born in 1996

TikTok

September 1, 2020

Trump's Campaign Is About To Take A Very Dangerous Turn, And Democrats Should Be Extremely Alarmed

This is going to get very dark, very quickly. Donald Trump’s election campaign might not be disciplined, well-run, or even particularly smart. But it has several advantages that Joe Biden’s does not, most of which stem from the president’s total disregard for political norms and normal human decency. While Trump has an assembly of campaign managers, spokespeople and organizers around him, he has molded his current operation into a mirror of himself. While this means total dysfunction and chaos at all levels, Trump has historically shown a remarkable ability to survive self inflicted disaster and come out on top. It is a dangerous mistake to think that Trump is politically stupid. He isn’t.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trumps-campaign-is-about-to-take





Do not underestimate Trump

If Joe Biden’s campaign is to deliver the resounding victory they badly need to get rid of Trump, they need to pay very, very close attention to what is happening in his campaign right now, and make sure they have the ability to counter repeatedly. And hard. While the president is a narcissistic sociopath with little ability to control his egoic impulses, his political instincts can be unnervingly good. Trump doesn’t strategize per se, but he has an uncanny ability to sense the mood of his supporters, instill fear in white Americans, and sow chaos to his advantage. This mastery of the dark arts of politics delivered him victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and has allowed him to completely takeover the GOP and turn it into his own personality cult. Trump’s political weaponry should never be underestimated, because as Hillary Clinton recently warned Biden, the president is “somebody unlike anyone you've been involved with before in politics, someone who lies with impunity, who literally will say anything, try to throw you off your game." More than that, Trump will literally do anything to throw Biden of his game too. Trump’s “strategy” in politics is to engage in all out warfare by throwing as many things at his opponent as possible. Trump, it should be remembered, brought Bill Clinton’s sexual assault accusers to a press conference before his debate with Hillary Clinton, literally stalked her on stage, and then promised to throw her in jail. This year, the Trump campaign is going even darker.

Law and Order Is Trump’s Issue

As Black Lives Matter protests flare up around the country in response to police violence, the country is embroiled in what could be described as low level civil war. Armed right wing militias are driving into cities to fight protestors, and sometimes kill them. Reported the NYTimes: The police in Kenosha shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, in the back, fueling protests there and elsewhere, while right-wing groups in Portland came into the city to confront Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Last week in Kenosha, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Illinois went to the scene of unrest there openly carrying a rifle and saying he had come to protect businesses. Before the night was over, two people had been fatally shot, and Mr. Rittenhouse has now been charged with homicides. With the violence, Trump has found his opportunity. Pointedly, Trump has refused to condemn the white militias or Kyle Rittenhouse (despite clear video footage of the violence and killings), and instead has been laying the blame on antifa, Black Lives Matters protestors, and liberal mayors of cities hit by violence. He has been threatening to send in federal troops to quell protestors and done absolutely nothing to try to calm the situation down. As Joe Biden noted in a powerful speech yesterday in Pennsylvania, “he can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it.” Trump wants more tension on the streets, more violence, and more police brutality. Why? Because he understands the optics help sell him as the law and order candidate.

The New Strategy

The GOP convention last week starkly laid out this new strategy. Every speaker knew what to say; the country is out of control, Democrats hate the police, and Donald Trump is the only one who can maintain law and order. “Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists and agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens,” Trump told the audience gathered at The White House. “How can the Democratic Party ask to lead our country when it spent so much time tearing down our country?” Trump understands that he needs to claw back educated white people who live in the suburbs, particularly women if he is to capture the Electoral College. He has been busy alarming them about “low income housing” invading the suburbs (read: black people) under a Biden administration, and knows white suburban voters care a great deal about law and order. Like a rat scavenging for food, Trump has sniffed out the one area where he believes he can eat into Biden’s substantial lead. Evidence from recent polls show that it is working as Trump narrowed the gap between him and Biden significantly. With this kind of data, Trump is going to do everything in his power to ensure there is more hate, more racism, and more violence in the coming weeks.

snip

September 1, 2020

Chris Hayes is pushing his bullshit on Sweden again, both the lie about herd immunity, and about

our economy being just as trashed as the rest of the EU. I have even seen it labelled as close to the WORST in the EU. That is utter tosh as well.

I am at wit's end that these dual lies keep getting shovelled in the US media. So much disinformation about Sweden out there, especially in the US media, some of it just flat out lies. The worst thing that happened to us, framing wise, was when bad faith actors (with ZERO knowledge of what was actually going on) on the RW started trying to us us as a cudgel to beat their enemies in the US over the head with. I have posted so so many updates over the past 6 months, but it often gets lost in the fog, and also many take an a priori hostile stance in terms of anything to do with Sweden and COVID-19.


Herd immunity was never the primary goal here in Sweden. I keep seeing this posted over and over and it is simply incorrect. It has come up over and over again because some officials have started talking about Stockholm (where we live) reaching this level by the end of May. That has been misconstrued by so many to think that the drive for herd immunity is the principal core strategy, when it is not.

Hallengren: Sweden Not Pursuing Herd Immunity

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2020-04-29/hallengren-sweden-not-pursuing-herd-immunity

Sweden’s Minister for Health and Social Affairs, Lena Hallengren, explains the country is not pursuing a policy of ’herd immunity’ when it comes to coronavirus and that looser restrictions in Sweden are being used because of how long they may have to stay in place. She tells Daybreak Europe’s Caroline Hepker and Roger Hearing it is too early to make comparisons about which countries have made the right policy choices in addressing the pandemic.

Running time 11:20

(Audio at the link.)


Another huge myth, pushed by cheap, shoddy journalism is that it is the Wild West here, and basically the entire country is running around like banshees with zero mitigation actions. This is utter tosh.

see this article for further drilling down:

'The biggest myth about Sweden is that life is going on as normal'

https://www.thelocal.se/20200424/interview-isabella-lovin-coronavirus-the-biggest-myth-about-sweden-is-that-life-is-going-on-as-normal

also

Sweden to shut bars and restaurants that ignore coronavirus restrictions

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-stockholm/sweden-to-shut-bars-and-restaurants-that-ignore-coronavirus-restrictions-idUSKCN2262AX


Now I shall deal again with the very bad aspects of what happened, as I am in no way try to sugarcoat anything


Our large fail, a horrid tragedy (and the main reason we are so badly off in terms of deaths per million compared to Denmark, Norway, and Finland) was our nursing homes and our scattered site elderly care. They account for as much as 70% (there is a shedload of argument here atm, some say it is even higher, some say it is lower, around 55-60%, but certainly it is higher than our neighbour Nordic nations) of our deaths en toto. We (unfortunately) had a FAR more lax system in terms of visitation/protocols and in terms of higher staff turnover than the other Nordics do with their elderly-care homes. Those arguments and finger-pointings are now (and have been for months, even as the deaths has basically slowed to a drip) the hottest topic in the whole country atm. They fucked up bad.

Several months ago, on SVT (our state TV,) a group of doctors and healthcare experts (these fall into the group that say it is around 70% of all deaths) said we if had similar nursing home deaths and overall elderly deaths per million rates that Denmark has, our deaths per million OVERALL (for all age cohorts) would only be a wee bit higher than the Danes. They also said that if you adjust for the vastly increased level of COVID-19 in the immigrant/refugee saturated areas, and make their percentages of population the same as Denmark or Norway (let alone Finland which has by far the fewest number of immigrants and refugees as a % in all of the Nordics, most who go there are only going to immediately flood over the Finnish/Swedish border, as Denmark cut them off down south at the Öresund) that our overall death (when combined with a similar elderly care death rate as discussed above) would not only be lower than Denmark, but would be approaching Norway levels.

They also said that other Nordics are being far more conservative than Sweden has been with their COVID-19 death attributions so all the other Nordics have higher death rates than they are letting on (that war of words has been going on for months, and has gotten REALLY nasty at times, especially with Denmark versus Sweden, quelle surprise), All the other Nordics have a very hostile stance in regards to Sweden in terms of our refugee/immigration policy. That group (the refugees/immigrants) have also be really hard hit here as well, as they do not practice social distancing to a level anywhere near to what the native Swedes do, plus they are less well-off income wise, and also health wise (for a number of reasons.) That is the reason for the lowered death rates when adjustments are made for an apples-to-apples comparison, as opposed to the chalk and cheese raw numbers that are rammed in our face far too often. I do, however have to add, that ANY discussion, as I said above, of immigration/refugee here is Sweden has been a minefield for ages, although the Syrian conflict several years back, finally broke the silence (at peak, we were taking in the US equivalent of 3 to 5 MILLION a month and the far RW white nationalist Sweden Democrats (SD, in Swedish Sverigedemokraterna) were surging towards a historic, terrifying victory, until some of the other parties finally caved in and slowed the inflows and changed the laws (to a point).

(A bit of an aside, SD, whilst hardcore RW, white nationalists, are also pretty much VERY anti-Russian as well, for centuries-long historic reasons that are almost never talked about in the foreign press as well. We do have some hardcore, actual neo nazi parties who DO love Russia, but they are microscopic in size. The biggest, Alternativ för Sverige, has only around 1200 members, most other have less than 100)


more on the false charge of herd immunity being our basic strategy

Sweden hits back at Trump's 'herd immunity' criticism

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/sweden-hits-back-at-trump-s-herd-immunity-criticism-1.1419502

Sweden’s foreign minister Ann Linde has dismissed criticism by U.S. president Donald Trump concerning the country’s outlier strategy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. “He has used a factual error,” the minister said in an interview on broadcaster TV4 on Wednesday. Her comments follow Trump’s remarks a day earlier when he told reporters that Sweden is trying to achieve “herd immunity” and “is suffering greatly” from not doing enough.

The Nordic country is under intense scrutiny as it continues to experiment with a laxer policy response to the virus despite an accelerating death toll. Restaurants, shopping centers and primary schools all remain open in Scandinavia’s biggest economy. “Some countries seem to think that we aren’t doing anything, but we’re doing a lot of things that suit Sweden,” Linde said.

President Trump’s comments have also drawn the ire of Sweden’s top epidemiologist. “If you compare the situation to New York, where I have a relative working, things here are working well,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with state broadcaster SVT. Meanwhile Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Lofven has said he sees no reason to respond to Trump, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen. “I have spoken lately to about 10 heads of state and I note that we are all following the same lead strategy,” Lofven said.

snip

Also, contrary to a lot of disnfo that I see pushed (especially in the US news) our economy contacted far less than the EU overall (the EU contracted 40% more, and multiple nations contracted close to, or more than double ours), and we are on track to go back to positive growth by Q1 or Q2 2021. The vast majority of our contraction came from a drop in exports, mainly from the supply chain for raw materials freezing up, and also from external demand from other countries diminishing. We also were the close to the only EU nation that has positive growth in Q1 2020.



Coronavirus: Sweden's economy hit less hard by pandemic

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53664354

Sweden, which avoided a lockdown during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, saw its economy shrink 8.6% in the April-to-June period from the previous three months. The flash estimate from the Swedish statistics office indicated that the country had fared better than other EU nations which took stricter measures.

However, it was still the largest quarterly fall for at least 40 years. The European Union saw a contraction of 11.9% for the same period. Individual nations did even worse, with Spain seeing an 18.5% contraction, while the French and Italian economies shrank by 13.8% and 12.4% respectively.



Sweden has largely relied on voluntary social distancing guidelines since the start of the pandemic, including working from home where possible and avoiding public transport. Although businesses have largely continued to operate in Sweden, the country's economy is highly dependent on exports, which were hit by lack of demand from abroad.

The authorities here have always said the country's Covid-19 strategy wasn't designed to protect the economy. They have stressed that the aim was to introduce sustainable, long-term, measures. But the government did hope that keeping more of society open would help limit job losses and mitigate the effect on businesses.

snip

August 31, 2020

Some good new from Sweden, we have not had a COVID-19 death for 7 days now

This is official government data from Folkhälsomyndigheten, our state health agency

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa/page/page_0/






We still have had zero deaths from COVID-19 amongst schoolchildren (our schools never shut down except for some high schools and most universities)

We have had one death, months ago, of a 4 year old with multiple comorbidities

Zero deaths from 5 to 19 years of age since the beginning

10 deaths total 20-29yo

16 deaths total 30-39yo

so 27 total deaths for the entire duration pandemic for the lower half, age wise, of the population (which is around 5 million people)

around 99% of the deaths were 50 years of age or older

96% of deaths were 60 years of age or older

90% were 70 years old or older

almost 70% were 80 years old or older

26% were 90 years old or older




Still no lock-downs the whole time and I still see almost zero people with masks, literally I would say 1 in 500 to 1000, and so many days I see none as I go around the city. All our friends confirm this, and that is all over Sweden, not just Stockholm. We (my wife and I) are still in the antibody and t-cell count immunity study and so far no drop in either, and it has been almost 5 months now since we were infected (with zero symptoms.)

Also, contrary to a lot of disnfo that I see pushed (especially in the US news) our economy contacted far less than the EU overall (the EU contracted 40% more, and multiple nations contracted close to, or more than double ours), and we are on track to go back to positive growth by Q1 or Q2 2021. The vast majority of our contraction came from a drop in exports, mainly from the supply chain for raw materials freezing up, and also from external demand from other countries diminishing.

August 31, 2020

Buzzcocks - What Do I Get? (Official Video) + Orgasm Addict

Label:
United Artists Records - 5C 006-60429, United Artists Records - 5C 006-60 429
Format:
Vinyl , 7 ", 45 RPM, Single
Country:
Netherlands
Exit:
1978
Kind:
Rock
Style:
Punk



Label:
United Artists Records - UP 36316
Format:
Vinyl , 7 ", 45 RPM, Single
Country:
UK
Exit:
28 Oct 1977
Kind:
Rock
Style:
Punk




A Woman With a Scalpel: Linder Sterling assembles and disassembles “Orgasm Addict,” a meat dress, herself

https://proxymusic.club/2018/08/04/linder-sterling-buzzcocks-orgasm-addict-linder/

August 30, 2020

COVID-denier in Orange County, CA claims to have a disability and says corona is a "fraud" + more

https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1299768124586299393


Anti-masker in Alaska gets kicked out of Walmart & has a public meltdown

https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1299874056318210050


Anti-masker gets debunked & you can hear the pain in his voice realizing he's a dumbass

https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1299710266909904896


Anti-masker at Chipotle wants to speak to the manager & threatens to file a lawsuit.

This is a joke right? That shirt is perfect. Rolling on the floor laughing

https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1299684316478402560

August 30, 2020

Trump Has a Different Definition of Corruption

The president helps himself to public resources, but that doesn’t count—as long as he upholds “Republican values.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/trump-has-different-definition-corruption/615802/



On Wednesday, in response to criticism that Donald Trump and other administration officials violated federal law by using government resources at the Republican National Convention, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows declared, “Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares. They expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values.” If Meadows is referring to those Americans outside the Beltway who dislike Donald Trump, he’s wrong. Anti-Trump voters may have never heard of the Hatch Act, but they care about Trump’s assault on the rule of law. During the Ukraine scandal earlier this year, a plurality of all Americans and more than 80 percent of Democrats told pollsters that Trump should be impeached. But Meadows has a point—a deeply disturbing one—about the president’s supporters. For the most part, they don’t care about Trump’s brazen legal transgressions during the Republican convention, or at any other point in his presidency. This isn’t because they don’t care about corruption. It’s because of the way they define the term: less as the violation of America’s laws than as the violation of America’s traditional hierarchies. Thus, so long as Trump promotes “Republican values,” he can’t be corrupt.

As I have previously noted, the word corruption can connote different things. It’s used to describe the betrayal of public trust for private gain. But, etymologically, it is also linked to contamination, debasement, and impurity. And throughout American history, Americans have often labeled as “corrupt” people who undermined not the rule of law but the preexisting racial or gender order. In public discourse for much of the 20th century, the Reconstruction era—in which Black southerners gained some political representation—was synonymous with corruption. In fact, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has pointed out, the Jim Crow era that followed Reconstruction constituted the real “kleptocracy”; Black citizens were robbed of their political rights, their economic freedom, their possessions, and their land. But many white Americans associated Reconstruction with corruption because it had corrupted the white dominance that they considered essential to legitimate government. After Black people in the South won the right to vote again in the 1960s, their political participation was deemed corrupt yet again. In his book Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, the University of Maryland historian George Derek Musgrove notes that, at one point in the 1980s, the Department of Justice investigated Black politicians at five times the rate it investigated white politicians. He cites a study in which the Iowa State sociologist Mary Sawyer concluded that allegations of corruption against Black officials “were pursued on the basis of less evidence” and news stories about alleged corruption were “printed with less solid information.” The reason, she argued, was that some white people “are personally affronted and threatened by the prospect of blacks having power over their lives.” Black power constituted corruption in and of itself.

That racialized definition of corruption remains very much alive today. Consider the presidency of Barack Obama. Obama’s supporters look back on his presidency as admirably scandal-free. But to many Republicans, Obama personified corruption. After all, a majority of Republicans, as late as 2017, told pollsters they believed that Obama had been born outside the United States. Which means that simply by assuming the presidency, he was violating the Constitution. No wonder Trump—who used birtherism to launch his national political career—has fumed about a fictitious “Obamagate” and called the Obama administration the “most corrupt in history.” The accusation of corruption was also central to Trump’s 2016 campaign against “Crooked Hillary.” And it proved highly effective. The most common reason Americans gave for disliking Clinton, according to a June 2016 Morning Consult poll, was that she was “not trustworthy.” The second most common reason was that she was “corrupt.” In fact, according to Politifact, which evaluates the veracity of politicians’ statements, Hillary Clinton’s are almost four times as likely to be rated “true” or “mostly true” as Trump’s. But, like Obama, Clinton was seeking a job previously held by white men only, and thus threatened one of America’s most sacred hierarchies. As the Yale researchers Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto found in a 2010 study, female politicians who are characterized as “power-seeking” often evoke “feelings of moral outrage (i.e., contempt, anger, and/or disgust).” In other words, many Americans viewed Clinton’s bid for power as inherently corrupt.

In his book How Fascism Works, the Yale philosopher Jason Stanley argues, “Corruption, to the fascist politician, is really about the corruption of purity rather than of the law. Officially, the fascist politician’s denunciations of corruption sound like a denunciation of political corruption. But such talk is intended to evoke corruption in the sense of the usurpation of the traditional order.” To use Meadows’ language, if you’re defending “Republican values,” you can’t actually be corrupt—even if you’re using federal employees and property for political purposes, even if many of your aides and close associates have been convicted of crimes, even if taxpayers have paid your businesses $900,000 during your presidency. In 2016, when Trump faced a woman running to succeed a Black president, his fascistic conception of corruption helped win him the election. So far, it has proved less effective against Joe Biden. It has proved less effective because, by the standards of Trump and many of his supporters, Biden really is less corrupt just by being a white man. His presidency would constitute less of a “usurpation of the traditional order.” No wonder “Corrupt Joe” has not yet caught on.

snip

August 29, 2020

A Carnival of Disinformation

Republicans warmly welcomed voters into their post-truth convention.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/trumps-rnc-was-loaded-disinformation/615838/



Americans who tuned in to this week’s Republican National Convention were treated to a slickly produced, four-day dispatch from an alternate reality—one in which the president has defeated the pandemic, healed America’s racial wounds, and ushered in a booming economy. In this carnival of propaganda, Donald Trump was presented not just as a great president, but as a quasi-messianic figure who was single-handedly preventing the nation’s slide into anarchy. Every presidential-nominating convention is, to a certain extent, an exercise in hype and whitewashing. But Trump’s 2020 convention went further—rewriting the history of his first term with such brazenness that it seemed designed to disorient. The setting of the convention’s final night reinforced the surreality: the made-for-TV stage on the White House’s South Lawn; the cheering, unmasked audience of more than 1,000 standing shoulder to shoulder; the speakers blaring Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” loud enough to drown out protesters at the gate. “This election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle it,” the president declared in his speech formally accepting the Republican nomination. “That won’t happen.” By one count, the address contained at least 20 false or misleading claims.

Many of the Republican strategists I spoke with this week flatly acknowledged that their party was presenting a version of recent events that veered toward fan fiction. But given the bitter mood of the country and the dire state of the race, they said, the campaign’s desperation was understandable. “In some ways, the speeches are reminiscent of the speeches one hears at a memorial service, where … everyone stretches the truth to say nice things,” A. J. Delgado, who worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign, told me. “And we’re all in the audience muttering, ‘Well, that’s not true, but I get it—what else can you say?’” The rat-a-tat of distortions and conspiracy theories began with Trump’s address to delegates on Monday, when he accused Democrats of trying to rig the election with universal mail-in voting, which he called “the greatest scam in the history of politics.” (It is not.) Later, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana claimed that Joe Biden had “embraced the insane mission to defund” the police. (He has not.) Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida warned that Democrats would “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door.” (They will not.) And Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said Democrats wanted to “keep you locked in your house until you become dependent on the government for everything.” (They do not.)

When the coronavirus—which has so far killed more than 180,000 Americans—came up during the convention, it was in service of Trumpian revisionism. “From the very beginning, Democrats, the media, and the World Health Organization got the coronavirus wrong,” the narrator said in a video that aired Monday night. But “one leader took decisive action to save lives: President Donald Trump.” That this narrative was untethered from reality—Trump’s early refusal to take the virus seriously is well documented—didn’t stop his lib-owning fans from exchanging high fives on social media. “That video is going to make all the right heads explode,” tweeted the conservative talk-radio host Erick Erickson. The myth that Trump has already beaten the virus pervaded the convention. As my colleague Russell Berman has noted, the pandemic was repeatedly referred to in the past tense. “It was awful,” Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in his speech on Tuesday. Bryan Lanza, a former Trump adviser, defended this warped account as simply a “glass-half-full” version of the president’s record. When I challenged him on that, he countered, “What do you view as defeating the coronavirus? Because I know this administration is measuring by the death count.” I pointed out that more than 1,000 Americans are dying every day from the virus. “Every death is a tragedy,” Lanza replied. “But remember where we were in March, when people were estimating 3–5 million deaths? Three hundred thousand is a fraction of that.”

Much of the Republican convention seemed to be organized around erasing the national memory of Trump’s bigotry. He presided over a naturalization ceremony. He surprised an ex-felon with a presidential pardon. A slate of Black speakers was invited to say nice things about the president, defend him against accusations of racism, and tout his role in passing a criminal-justice-reform bill. Of course, in between these feel-good stunts and testimonials were bleak warnings about the “Marxist revolutionary” forces that are wreaking havoc in American cities—and could be coming for you next. The most potent of these segments featured the McCloskeys, an affluent Missouri couple who went viral after pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their house in June. “Make no mistake,” Patricia McCloskey told viewers, “no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.” Protesters, she said, are “not satisfied with spreading chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether.” Police brutality—the issue at the heart of this summer’s unrest—received only glancing mentions during the convention.

snip

August 28, 2020

Amsterdam solved its "wild peeing" problem with hemp planters you can (legally) urinate in

https://www.mic.com/p/amsterdam-solved-its-wild-peeing-problem-with-hemp-planters-you-can-legally-urinate-in-32230874



Amsterdam has a public peeing problem. The city is surprisingly short on public restrooms, and unsuspecting tourists can be caught off guard when restaurants and cafes charge up to one euro just for a little relief. The lack of readily accessible toilets has turned the city’s canals into glorified pee troughs, and to combat the issue, the city is trying a new, environmentally friendly approach by introducing hemp-filled urinals, located at public peeing hot spots, where people can empty their bladders and do something good at the same time.

These public facilities, called GreenPee, were provided by Dutch company Urban Senses and have started cropping up around the city. The urinals are designed to look like planters with a bit of modern aesthetic flair, with metal exteriors and greenery growing on top. The planters offer a large opening on the side with a target zone for people to point their streams toward. Instead of offering a standard flushing mechanism that would send the waste spiraling through the city's plumbing system, the containers are filled with hemp that captures the urine.

According to CNN, the GreenPee planters first started popping up in the city in 2018 as part of an ongoing effort to curb the amount of public urination, or "wild peeing," as Amsterdam officials call it, that was occurring. After the pilot program proved to be a success, the city just installed eight additional planters earlier this month. Prior to their introduction, Amsterdam had tried a number of other solutions. Officials issued large fines, up to 140 euro (about $165) for people caught engaging in the act of peeing where they aren't supposed to. The city has also attempted to install outdoor urinals to direct people to at least pee in a designated area if they insist on doing it in the open air. While the effort has largely been targeted toward men, Amsterdam has also introduced retractable outdoor urinals for women to use. Since being introduced, officials claim that the GreenPee urinals have reduced the levels of wild peeing in parts of the city by up to 50 percent. They have already installed 12 of them, and are looking into expanding the effort to include female and gender-neutral options, according to The Telegraph.

Wild peeing has all sorts of negative side effects that harm the city, the environment, and even the people peeing in public. An average of 15 people per year die in Amsterdam while trying to pee into the canals. Urine also tends to have a corrosive effect that can eat away at the city's historical buildings when people decide to empty the tank in an alleyway. It can also be harmful to some ecosystems when people relieve themselves into green spaces, as the body may be expelling things that it can't otherwise digest. Those downsides are largely negated by GreenPee, which not only gives people something to aim at when they need to go, but also turns that urine into something functional. The urinals use the pee to produce an organic fertilizer that can be extracted from the boxes and used to feed plants throughout the city. The planters also manage to attract bees and other insects that are necessary for a healthy ecosystem, and use considerably less water to process waste than a traditional toilet would. If you absolutely have to pee in public, you might as well do some good in the process. GreenPee makes that possible.

snip

August 28, 2020

"NO DEAL" BREXIT:AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN

In his latest blog the director of the Federal Trust, Brendan Donnelly, argues against suggestions in the British press that the EU underestimates the determination of the UK government in the Brexit negotiations. If there is a 'no deal' Brexit, it will be because of a lack of common ground between the EU and the UK, not because of misunderstanding.

https://fedtrust.co.uk/no-deal-brexitan-accident-waiting-to-happen/



In an interesting article in this weekend’s Sunday Times, its political correspondent Tim Shipman warns that the chances of a “no deal” Brexit are higher than usually assumed. He attributes this risk largely to misunderstandings by the EU and UK of each other’s negotiating positions. Such an analysis is on the face of it persuasive. There may well be “no deal” and there are certainly misconceptions cherished by the UK and the EU about each other. But these misunderstandings are unlikely to be decisive. If there is “no deal” it will be because insufficient common ground can be established between the negotiating parties. It is far from clear that enough common ground has ever existed in the Brexit negotiations or can be conjured into existence by clever diplomatic formulae.

How the negotiations developed



Where the negotiations are going



What can Johnson do now?......

snip