by Charles Oliver, ReasonMay 10, 2024.
Extract:
A A German court ruled that robots at the Tegut supermarket chain must have Sundays off, just like human workers. According to German law, retail stores must close on Sundays and Christian holidays to give employees a day off. Tegut has circumvented this law by fully automating its stores, and makes 25 to 30 percent of its sales on Sundays. A union that represents store workers sued to force stores to close on Sundays, saying it feared the company’s success would undermine support for the country’s blue laws.
My Comment: A good reminder of one of the many ways that the United States doesn’t suck.
by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal revolutionMay 14, 2024.
Extract:
Alec Stapp points out that Canada is the only NATO country to have a free trade agreement with the United States. It’s pretty remarkable if you think about it. NATO allies are bound by mutual defense commitments, support for military cooperation and a commitment to democratic principles. Despite these shared commitments, the United States continues to impose tariffs and quotas on our NATO allies, including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Portugal and Spain . It’s like getting married and not having a joint checking account. If they are good enough partners to commit to their defense, then surely NATO allies are good enough partners to commit to free trade? (bold added)
by Doug Bandow, The American ConservativeMay 9, 2024.
Extract:
Biden took office speaking of his commitment to human rights and his determination to transform MbS, as the crown prince is known, into an “outcast”. Today, the administration is proposing to transform the U.S. military into a modern Janissary Corps, a bodyguard for the thousands of royal princes who rule over their countrymen. It is high time to stop relying on Saudi Arabia.
And:
For years, American policymakers have justified their fixation on the Middle East with the importance of protecting Israel and importing oil. Israel, however, has become a regional military superpower, threatened more by brutal mistreatment of Palestinians and bitter internal political struggles than by external attacks. The oil market has diversified and supplies are limited mainly by US sanctions, which could be liberalized or lifted at any time. Terrorism is a problem of infinity and a disastrous American military intervention. The growing activity of China and Russia in the region constitutes a diplomatic challenge and not a threat justifying increased military commitments. Today, like my Cato Institute colleague Jon Hoffman explain“What Washington needs from the region on issues traditionally central to Saudi relations, including oil, stability and terrorism, is quite limited and simple to achieve.”
Any support for Riyadh is difficult to justify. Saudi Arabia is one of the worst dictatorships in the world. According to Liberty House, the Kingdom is more repressive than Russia, China and Iran: “Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties. No official at the national level is elected. The regime relies on pervasive surveillance, criminalization of dissent, appeals to sectarianism and ethnicity, and public spending financed by oil revenues to maintain power. The mismanagement of MbS was highlighted by the horrible murder and the dismemberment of journalistic critic Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. More than five years later, official cover-up continues.
by Anonymous, Foundation against Intolerance and Racism, May 15, 2024.
Extract:
Traditional cataloging practice requires that the cataloger describe the book as objectively as possible; there are even specific guidelines reminding catalogers not to select subject headings (those hyperlinked subject descriptors in the record) based on their own values and beliefs. One of the first questions I was asked during my job interview was to confirm that I would be willing to catalog materials that I found personally offensive. After all, libraries – and, by extension, catalogers – are supposed to be the guardians of free speech and intellectual freedom. We do not know who will search for the records and for what purpose, and therefore we must be fair, precise and objective in order to facilitate the search for the records. But it seems that the cataloger’s primary duty now is to protect users from the harm that documents (not even documents!) can cause them.
In the discussions I mentioned above, other catalogers unapologetically stated that certain marginalized groups should decide how a book should be labeled. If a cataloguer belonging to a marginalized social group believes that the book in question is harmful or offensive, they have every right to add a note in the catalog stating their beliefs. We now have four books in the international catalog (used by libraries around the world) with the “Transphobic Works” label. Several books that criticize the current model of gender-affirming care now have the subject “Transphobia.” These books are not about transphobia, so the subject title is probably used as a way of warning the reader of the file (and potentially the librarian who chooses which books to order for the library) that it is “bad books” and that they shouldn’t be. read or purchased.
by Jacob Sullum, ReasonMay 15, 2024.
Extract:
“This was a planned, coordinated, long-term conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal spending, to silence people who had something negative to do with say about his behavior,” said lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo. said at the start of Trump’s trial last month. “It was voter fraud, pure and simple.”
Contrary to what Colangelo thinks, there is nothing “plain and simple” about the case against Trump. To begin with, Trump is not accused of “conspiracy” or “electoral fraud”. He is accused with the violation of a New York law against “falsification of business records” with “intent to defraud.”
by James Broughel, ReasonMay 15, 2024.
Extract:
Nuclear power could be a game-changer in terms of energy affordability, grid reliability and reduced carbon emissions. However, this approach was stifled for decades based on a deeply flawed scientific model: the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model. The theory behind this model suggests that any exposure to ionizing radiation, no matter how small, increases cancer risks and that risks increase linearly with exposure levels. This is not true.
The roots of the LNT’s domination are more political than scientific. Its influence dates back to Hermann Muller, geneticist and Nobel Prize winner in 1946. Muller’s research in the 1920s and 1930s purported to show that radiation induced mutations in fruit flies, without a safe threshold. He became an ardent evangelist for the idea that even tiny doses of radiation could cause hereditary defects.
However, it appears that Muller deliberately misled his supporters. For example, Muller falsely claimed in his 1946 Nobel Prize acceptance speech that there was “no leak» of the conclusion that all radiation is harmful, even if we know the evidence to the contrary.
