Blogaround

1. ICC issues arrest warrants for Israel's Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leader (November 22)

2. How Trump’s “Mass Deportation” Plan Would Ruin America (Sep/Oct issue, via) This article has statistics about how a huge percentage of farm workers (and workers in other essential industries) are undocumented, and if they were all deported, it would devastate the US economy.

So... the thing I'm confused about is, if the country needs them, then why is it illegal? The US immigration policies don't make sense, then- the economy is dependent on people breaking immigration law. ????? What's going on here? We need to change the immigration law to reflect the fact that we really need immigrants. Right?

3. Star Power: China’s Businesses Count Cost of Fake Reviews (November 27) "Allegations from former Chagee employees also surfaced online, claiming the chain imposed strict limits on negative reviews, allowing just three per 10,000 orders — any more and the employees’ salaries would be docked."

Also from Sixth Tone: Copy Right: The Painstaking Method and Magic of Mastering a Replica (November 29) "Across China, a growing number of national museums are embracing 'craft restoration' — a method that emphasizes recreating artifacts not just for their appearance, but as faithful embodiments of the techniques that originally shaped them."

4. Big Pharma Is the Only Reason Anyone Still Dies From HIV (November 29) "The second problem is that the pharma industry spends millions a year lobbying Congress to keep its R&D costs a secret. It’s one thing to tell Congress you need to charge high prices to recover your costs, but it’s a little disingenuous if you spend $379 million a year to make sure nobody knows what those costs are."

5. Hal Lindsey is gone (the Late, Great Planet Earth is not) (November 30) "They taught their followers that the only thing that mattered was being 'Rapture ready,' but away from the microphones they had all made sure they were ready for life — long life — without a Rapture. I wish we’d all been ready."

Also from the Slacktivist: Take back the web (what’s in your RSS feed?) (December 2) "But if making more money for Google — and Meta, and X — is not the primary goal of your time on the internet, then you may find that using an RSS is a wonderful, glorious, liberating thing."