Bugaluu :: News

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Harmful microplastics have been found in human placenta, with some of them known to trigger asthma, damage the liver, cause cancer, and impair reproductive function.

Director of the Marine Institute of Plymouth Professor Richard Thompson analyses nurdles and other micro-plastics thanks to a microscope, in a laboratory at the University of Plymouth, south western England, on February 27, 2023. (BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Toxicological Sciences journal on Feb. 17, examined the issue of nano- and microplastic (NMP) pollution in human beings. Researchers found that all 62 tested placenta samples contained microplastics, with concentrations ranging from 6.5 to 790 micrograms per gram of tissue. The placenta is an organ that develops in the uterus during pregnancy. It provides oxygen and nutrients to the baby while also removing waste products from the child’s blood.

The most prevalent microplastic found in the samples was polyethylene, which accounted for 54 percent of all detected NMPs and was “consistently found in nearly all samples.”

Polyethylene has been associated with several health complications like asthma, hormone disruption impacting reproduction, and mild dermatitis or swelling and irritation of the skin.

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and nylon each represented approximately 10 percent of the NMPs by weight. PVC has been linked to damage to the liver and reproductive system. The substance is carcinogenic. While nylon itself is seen as harmless, the material undergoes chemical treatments during the manufacturing processes that can pose health risks.

The remaining 26 percent of microplastics found in the 62 tested placenta were represented by nine other polymers. Matthew Campen, Professor in the UNM Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, who led the team that conducted the study, expressed concerns about the steadily rising presence of microplastics and its potential health implications.

While plastics themselves have traditionally been seen to be biologically inert, microplastics are so small they can cross cell membranes, he noted. Mr. Campen found the concentration of microplastics in the placenta troubling as the tissue was only eight months old when tested. “Other organs of your body are accumulating over much longer periods of time,” he said.

Mr. Campen believes the accumulation of microplastics in human tissue could explain the puzzling rise in certain health problems like colon cancer among people younger than 50, inflammatory bowel disease, and decreasing sperm counts.

“It’s only getting worse, and the trajectory is it will double every 10 to 15 years,” he said. “So, even if we were to stop it today, in 2050 there will be three times as much plastic in the background as there is now. And we’re not going to stop it today.”

Talking about the rising volume of microplastics in the environment, Mr. Campen said that “if we’re seeing effects on placentas, then all mammalian life on this planet could be impacted. That’s not good.”

Microplastic Effects

The presence of microplastics in placentas was first identified in 2020 in a study from Italy. Researchers analyzed six placentas and identified 12 microplastic fragments in four of them. “Microplastics were found in all placental portions: maternal, fetal, and amniochorial membranes,” it said.

“Microplastics carry with them substances which acting as endocrine disruptors could cause long-term effects on human health.”

In 2022, microplastics were discovered in the lungs of a living human being for the first time. Out of the 13 lung samples, 11 had the presence of 39 microplastics. Researchers identified 12 types of microplastics commonly found in bottles, packaging, clothing, and rope.

A recently published study found microplastics in the majority of protein foods like chicken, pork, seafood, beef, and plant-based meat alternatives. The foods sampled in the study included processed, unprocessed, and minimally processed items.

Roughly half the identified microplastics were fibers, which researchers said was consistent with other studies. Almost a third of the microplastics were plastic fragments.

A 2023 study on mice found that three-week exposure to microplastics resulted in “behavioral changes as well as alterations in immune markers in liver and brain tissues. Additionally, we noted that these changes differed depending on age, indicating a possible age-dependent effect.”

Another study conducted in mice found that nanometer-sized particles reached the brains of the animals just two hours after being exposed. A third study found that inhaled microplastic and nanoplastic particles can “alter inflammatory, cardiovascular, and endocrine activity.”

Microplastics have also been found in breast milk. Researchers of the study called the finding a “great concern” given that nanoparticles have also been discovered in human placenta.

“In fact, the chemicals possibly contained in foods, beverages, and personal care products consumed by breastfeeding mothers may be transferred to the offspring, potentially exerting a toxic effect,” they wrote.

“Hence, it is mandatory to increase efforts in scientific research to deepen the knowledge of the potential health impairment caused by MP (microplastics) internalisation and accumulation, especially in infants, and to assess innovative, useful ways to reduce exposure to these contaminants during pregnancy and lactation.”

Since the 1950s, plastic use globally has grown exponentially, leading to the generation of a metric ton of plastic waste for every individual in the world. Roughly a third of the plastic that has been produced is still in use, with much of the remaining discarded or sent to landfills where they start to break down.

Mr. Campen pointed out that many plastics have a long half-life, which refers to the time required for half a sample to degrade.

“So, the half-life of some things is 300 years and the half-life of others is 50 years, but between now and 300 years some of that plastic gets degraded. Those microplastics that we’re seeing in the environment are probably 40 or 50 years old,” he said.

In a move that adds a new and likely Republican-favoring variable to a 2024 presidential race that features two unpopular major party candidates, the centrist “No Labels” political organization on Friday voted to move forward with fielding a ticket of their own. 

“Earlier today, I led a discussion with the 800 No Labels delegates from all 50 states,” said No Labels national convention chair Mike Rawlings. “They voted near unanimously to continue our 2024 project and to move immediately to identify candidates to serve on the Unity presidential ticket.” 

Founded in 2010, No Labels bills itself as a “national movement of commonsense Americans pushing our leaders together to solve our country’s biggest problems.” It’s not a political party, but is instead configured as a 401(c)(4) social welfare organization. That structure frees the group from having to disclose its donors or report on its actions. 

A scene from a 2013 No Labels rally on Capitol Hill (Jacquelyn Martin/AP via NBC News)

In 2021, No Labels launched an ambitious project to secure ballot access so it would be positioned to give a platform to a bipartisan ticket in the 2024 election “if the two major parties select candidates the vast majority of Americans don’t want to vote for in 2024.”

With the Trump-Biden rematch now a virtual certainty — and 67% of Americans saying they’re tired of seeing the same candidates — No Labels on Friday held a mass online meeting where delegates gave leadership the green light to try filling a ticket — by design, pairing a Republican and a Democrat as presidential and vice-presidential candidates, in no particular order. 

“Try” is the key word. Even as it announced it will move forward with its 2024 project, Rawlings acknowledged the group hasn’t identified candidates and may not be successful in finding a pair worth presenting to America. The selection process will be handled by the group’s leadership, who will present their recommendation to delegates for a vote. 

Last year, it appeared centrist Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin was a favorite to run with No Labels. In February, however, Manchin ruled out a bid, saying he had no interest in becoming “a spoiler.”

Similarly, after suspending her Republican nomination campaign last week, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley ruled out a run. “If I were to do No Labels, that would require a Democrat vice president. I can’t do what I want to do as president with a Democrat vice president,” she told journalists. 

One relatively obscure name did surface on FridayThe Wall Street Journal reported that No Labels is considering former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, a Republican, for the top of the ticket. He served from 2019 to 2023. Duncan’s centrist resume includes rejecting the idea that Georgia’s 2020 presidential race was rigged and seizing upon the dubious Georgia racketeering indictment of Donald Trump and others as an opportunity to urge the GOP to “move past Donald Trump.” 

Not exactly a household name: Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan is under consideration to head the No Labels ticket (CNN)

Democrats are already feeling vulnerable in the face of broad party dissatisfaction with President Biden — to the extent that 13% of Michigan and 19% of Minnesota Dems voted “uncommitted” in their primaries. On top of that, polls suggest the presence of third-party and independent candidates give a net boost to Trump. Centrist think tank Third Way, for example, found Trump leads Biden by 0.5% in a in a head-to-head matchup. With the addition of an unnamed “moderate, independent” candidate, Trump’s lead grows to 2.5%.  

Leftists reacted with anger to Friday’s news. “No Labels has put their dangerous, reckless thought experiment ahead of the rights and freedoms of millions of Americans and the future of our democracy,” Rahna Epting, executive director of liberal activist group MoveOn, told The New York Times. “Any candidates who join the No Labels presidential ticket will be complicit in making it easier for Donald Trump and MAGA extremists to win a second term in the White House.”

Leftist vitriol against No Labels has been flowing for months. “Anybody who participates in this No Labels malarkey should have their lives ruined,” the Bulwark’s Jonathan Last said in December, according to No Labels. “The should lose whatever jobs they might have. They should be kicked off corporate boards” and “become social pariahs.”

Democrats aren’t the only ones clenching their fists over No Labels — the fake-Republican grifters at the Lincoln Project are also howling. “We’ve said it for months: A vote for No Labels is a vote for Donald Trump,” co-founder Reed Galen told the Journal. “The only way to stop the disintegration of democracy is to vote to re-elect President Biden.”

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate iron levels in their blood due to a COVID-19 infection could be at greater risk of long COVID.

(Shutterstock)

A new study indicates that problems with iron levels in the bloodstream likely trigger chronic inflammation and other conditions associated with the post-COVID phenomenon. The findings, published on March 1 in Nature Immunology, could offer new ways to treat or prevent the condition.

Long COVID Patients Have Low Iron Levels

Researchers at the University of Cambridge pinpointed low iron as a potential link to long-COVID symptoms thanks to a study they initiated shortly after the start of the pandemic. They recruited people who tested positive for the virus to provide blood samples for analysis over a year, which allowed the researchers to look for post-infection changes in the blood. The researchers looked at 214 samples and found that 45 percent of patients reported symptoms of long COVID that lasted between three and 10 months.

In analyzing the blood samples, the research team noticed that people experiencing long COVID had low iron levels, contributing to anemia and low red blood cell production, just two weeks after they were diagnosed with COVID-19. This was true for patients regardless of age, sex, or the initial severity of their infection.

According to one of the study co-authors, the removal of iron from the bloodstream is a natural process and defense mechanism of the body.

But it can jeopardize a person’s recovery.

“When the body has an infection, it responds by removing iron from the bloodstream. This protects us from potentially lethal bacteria that capture the iron in the bloodstream and grow rapidly. It’s an evolutionary response that redistributes iron in the body, and the blood plasma becomes an iron desert,” University of Oxford professor Hal Drakesmith said in a press release. “However, if this goes on for a long time, there is less iron for red blood cells, so oxygen is transported less efficiently affecting metabolism and energy production, and for white blood cells, which need iron to work properly. The protective mechanism ends up becoming a problem.”

The research team believes that consistently low iron levels could explain why individuals with long COVID continue to experience fatigue and difficulty exercising. As such, the researchers suggested iron supplementation to help regulate and prevent the often debilitating symptoms associated with long COVID.

“It isn’t necessarily the case that individuals don’t have enough iron in their body, it’s just that it’s trapped in the wrong place,” Aimee Hanson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge who worked on the study, said in the press release. “What we need is a way to remobilize the iron and pull it back into the bloodstream, where it becomes more useful to the red blood cells.”

The research team pointed out that iron supplementation isn’t always straightforward. Achieving the right level of iron varies from person to person. Too much iron can cause stomach issues, ranging from constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain to gastritis and gastric lesions.

1 in 5 Still Affected by Long COVID

COVID-19 has affected nearly 40 percent of Americans, with one in five of those still suffering from symptoms of long COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Long COVID is marked by health issues that continue at least four weeks after an individual was initially diagnosed with COVID-19. Symptoms can last for days, weeks, months, or years and may include fatigue, cough or chest pain, headache, brain fog, depression or anxiety, digestive issues, and joint or muscle pain.

On Saturday Yemen’s Houthis have launched what international press reports are describing as the one of the group’s largest single attacks since the operation to disrupt Red Sea shipping began last November.

The US Central Command, or CENTCOM, described in a statement that a “large-scale” Houthi attack occurred in both the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden involving over a dozen suicide drones. The day prior, even more had been launched in a wave of attacks. It has been an intense 48 hours in the Red Sea.

Image: US Navy/DoD

Coalition naval forces shot down at least 15 drones which CENTCOM said “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels, US Navy and coalition ships in the region.”

The Houthis have long declared they are directly targeting Western coalition warships in regional waters, along with foreign commercial vessels suspected to be en route to Israeli ports.

The US military statement confirmed that “US Navy vessels and aircraft along with multiple coalition navy ships and aircraft shot down 15” of the inbound drones. “These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure.”

The biggest single wave of Houthi drones launched prior to this week had included 18 drones and three missiles, in a January 9th attack.

Friday had also witnessed one of the largest single-day attacks thus far, per an account from the Houthis: 

The attack on Friday targeted the bulk carrier Propel Fortune, which continued on its way, according to the United States military’s Central Command. “The missiles did not impact the vessel,” the U.S. military said. “There were no injuries or damages reported.”

The Houthis said Saturday they were behind the attack. Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree claimed that along with targeting the Propel Fortune Attack, the Houthi forces also launched 37 drones targeting American warships.

Last month and this month have been particularly devastating as a UK tanker completely sunk after being struck by missiles, and another Gulf of Aden missile strike on the Barbados-flagged ship ‘True Confidence’ resulted in the deaths of three crew members.

Some have argued that given the Western coalition is clearly ineffective in stopping the Houthi attacks, the only solution to the Red Sea crisis is for a ceasefire to take effect in Gaza:

“When we got the hostage release deal… Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel, and then there was a pause in hostilities to get humanitarian aid to Gazans, the Houthis stopped.

That’s the only thing that’s shown there to be de-escalation.”

–@TimKaine to @brikeilarcnn pic.twitter.com/IGhsqNW5ou

— Just Foreign Policy (@justfp) January 25, 2024

The attack on the True Confidence was the first ever fatal Houthi strike on a ship. The Shia miliary group linked to Iran has vowed to keep up the attacks so long as Israel continues its war in Gaza.

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Job openings that require formal education credentials are “gradually disappearing” this year on Indeed, the popular job search website said.

Businesses hiring in Anaheim, Calif., on Aug. 26, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

As of this January, some 52 percent of job postings in the United States didn’t come with any education requirements at all. That’s up from 48 percent at the same time in 2019, according to a Feb. 27 report by Indeed Hiring Lab, the company’s economic trend analysis wing.

Over the same five-year period, the share of postings requiring at least some kind of formal education has fallen across nearly every schooling level, with postings requiring a bachelor’s degree or above seeing the sharpest job by 2.6 percentage points, the report suggested.

In addition, only 17.8 percent of U.S. jobs posted on Indeed required a four-year degree or higher, dropping from 20.4 percent in the past five years.

“While educational requirements are unlikely to vanish from job postings, growing support of skills-first hiring approaches is a clear sign for workers to invest in skills now, regardless of their education level,” Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, wrote in the report.

“In other words, even college-educated workers may have to think about re-skilling more going forward.” he added.

The labor market remains “tight”—meaning there are more job vacancies than unemployed workers willing and able to fill them, according to Mr. Stahle. For employers, this could mean that they may have to reflect on their hiring strategies and consider candidates who can demonstrate the required skills without necessarily having a degree.

“By implementing skills-first hiring practices where it makes sense, employers can attract high-quality candidates, compete in tight labor market sectors, and mitigate some of the demographic headwinds facing labor supply,” the economist advised.

When it comes to which roles skill-first hiring makes the most sense for, Indeed found that educational requirements have loosened in 41 of the 47 occupational sectors it analyzed during the past five years. This shift is more pronounced in some sectors than others, particularly in software development, project management, and tech-adjacent information design and documentation.

Jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) were among the sectors requiring the highest levels of education this January. For example, over 65 percent of industrial engineering jobs posted on Indeed explicitly preferred, if not required, a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In contrast, education requirements were lowest in sectors like driving (0.3 percent explicitly required or preferred a bachelor’s degree or higher), cleaning and sanitation (0.6 percent), and food preparation and service (1.3 percent).

There have been some ups and downs in college degree requirements over the last five years, Indeed noted. Interestingly, the website saw an uptick in bachelor’s and graduate degree requirements between 2020 and 2022 in 19 occupational sectors, especially knowledge-work fields such as accounting, architecture, and physicians and surgeons.

There could be many reasons behind the rise in educational requirements when the U.S. labor market was tightening, according to Indeed. One possible explanation points to COVID-19 pandemic-driven quits and early retirements, which forced employers to backfill roles vacated by experienced or educated professionals who retired or otherwise resigned.

“A sudden exodus of experienced and educated workers may have prompted a flood of backfill postings from employers seeking a close match to those workers who had recently departed,” Mr. Stahle stated, adding that the share of job postings requiring a college degree started to fall again in April 2022.

“It seems that the recent surge in public support for skills-first hiring and a shift in the types of workers being hired are the most probable drivers,” he wrote. “Even after adjusting for changes in job title-mix over time, there has been a noticeable increase in companies looking to hire workers with less formal education to fill their vacancies.”

The hiring trend described in Indeed’s report was also observed by LinkedIn, a popular business social networking website. According to an analysis published last August, almost 30 percent of paid job posts on LinkedIn in 2022 did not include professional degree requirements, up from 21 percent in 2019.

However, there remains the question of how many employers are translating the shift into actual hires. Greg Lewis, a senior content marketing manager at LinkedIn, noted that the percentage of degreeless hires made appeared to still fall short of the rate of degreeless jobs posted.

“Does dropping degree requirements actually translate into more hires of workers who don’t hold degrees? As we‘ll see, the answer for many industries and functions is ’no,‘” said Mr. Lewis. “While many have started to ’talk the talk’ of skills-first hiring, relatively few are managing to ‘walk the walk.’”

A mid-air engine fire, a tire separating from the landing gear, several emergency landings—what the hell is happening in the aviation industry this week?

Here are the latest headlines: 

ZeroHedge (Tuesday): “Plane Was Nosediving”: United Airlines Boeing 737 Engine Erupts In Flames Over Texas
CBS News (Thursday): American Air jet clipped Frontier Jet on Miami International Airport tarmac
ZeroHedge (Friday): United’s Boeing 737 Max Jet Veers Off Runway In Houston, Marking Third Incident In Week
ZeroHedge (Friday): Tire Separates From Boeing 777, Crushes Cars In San Francisco Parking 
ABC7 News (Friday): SFO-MEX United flight makes emergency landing at LAX due to hydraulic failure: officials

US Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is silent on this week’s incidents. 

Some X users blame the series of aviation failures on the possibility of airline companies focusing on disastrous DEI policies.

Yet ANOTHER Boeing plane has had a near fatal problem in the air. The company is all aboard on DEI, so these problems are going to get worse. https://t.co/oI6RF06SUv

— Dr. Clayton Forrester (@DrClaytonForre1) March 7, 2024

So many DEI plane stories in the news today https://t.co/a8N9NqQN1o

— Salty OPS (@keegfish) March 8, 2024

Smfh.. Now we’re going to be dodging plane debris on the ground bc of DEI https://t.co/A6L6oPHrtW

— Atlas Shrugged (@saintlysinner5) March 7, 2024

Others ask the question: “Sabotage, shoddy maintenance, or other?” 

Engine fire
Runway mishap
Midair loss of tire
Emergency landing in Los Angeles
United Airlines is having a bad week.
Sabotage, shoddy maintenance, or other?
What’s going on at United?

— Dewey Harrison (@TruET1627) March 9, 2024

I’m starting to wonder if someone might be trying to sabotage Boeing?

United Boeing 737 Max suffers landing gear failure at Houston airport https://t.co/dXL4g8TW3t via @MailOnline

— Let Them Be Kids – 🇺🇲 (@DivineComity) March 9, 2024

United Airlines SFO incidents. Two days in a row. Sabotage?

— Mickey Dearborn (@DearbornMickey) March 9, 2024

Okay so is someone trying to sabotage Boeing planes or are they just falling apart on their own? Regardless I’m not flying United anytime soon. https://t.co/8OzSbikDnA

— Angeles Romero (@angeles524) March 9, 2024

What still haunts frequent flyers is the early January incident when a door plug ripped off the fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max. 

Meanwhile, on Saturday morning, NBC News quickly pushed out an article titled “Aviation incidents seem to be proliferating, but experts say there’s no reason for alarm,” which read like a damage control piece by the aviation industry to calm fears. 

“This is not a safety trend,” said John Cox, a pilot and the president and CEO of Safety Operating Systems LLC, of the recent spate of aviation incidents.

Let’s not forget the twin Boeing 737 disaster that killed 346 people five years ago. 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions.

It’s not exactly news that social trust has declined significantly in the United States. Surveys find that public trust in institutions and the professional classes that dominate those institutions has cratered. (see chart below) Social trust–our confidence that other people are trustworthy–has also fallen to multi-decade lows.

This was not the case in decades past. Americans maintained high levels of trust in their institutions, government and fellow citizens. The decline in social trust is across the entire spectrum: our trust in institutions, professional elites and our fellow Americans has declined precipitously.

The causes of this decay of social trust can be debated endlessly, but several factors are obvious:

1. Institutions forfeited the trust of the citizenry by withholding / editing realities to serve the interests of hidden agendas and insiders’ careers. The Vietnam War was pursued on fabrications, as was the second Gulf War to topple Saddam. Watergate eroded trust on multiple levels, as did the Church Committee’s investigation of America’s security agencies’ domestic spying / over-reach.

2. The managerial / professional elites at the top of the nation’s institutions no longer put the citizenry’s interests above their own. The public’s trust has eroded as institutions are primarily viewed as vehicles for self-enrichment and career advancement: healthcare CEOs pay themselves millions, higher education is bloated with layers of non-teaching administration, defense contractors and the Pentagon have greased the revolving door to the benefit of incumbents and insiders, and so on, in an endless parade of self-serving cloaked with smirking PR claims of “serving the public.”

The shift from a high-trust society to a low-trust society is consequential economically, politically and socially. Low-trust societies have stagnant economies, as nobody trusts anyone they don’t know personally or through personally trusted networks, and nobody trust institutions to function effectively or fulfill their stated mission to serve the public good.

Faced with incompetent, unaccountable, corrupt bureaucracies and a culture overflowing with scams, frauds, imposters and get-rich-quick schemes, people give up and drop out. Rather than start a business and accept all the risks just to get dumped on or ripped off, they don’t even try to start a business. Given the financial insecurity that is now the norm, they decide not to get married or have children.

The vast trading networks of the Roman Empire were based on personal trusted networks and trust in Rome’s functionaries / institutions. The owners of trading ships dealt with trusted captains and merchants, who then paid duties to Roman functionaries in Alexandria and other major trading ports.

In other words, tightly bound personal trusted networks work well as long as the state institutions that bind the entire economy are trusted as fair and reliable–not perfect, of course, but efficient and “good enough.”

But when public institutions are viewed as unfair, unreliable, corrupt or incompetent, the entire economy decays. Even personal trusted networks cannot survive in an economy of unfair, unreliable, corrupt or incompetent state bureaucracies and private institutions.

The American economy is now dominated by enormous privately owned and managed monopolies and cartels that are the private-sector equivalent of self-serving state bureaucracies. Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Ag, Big Finance, etc., are even worse than state bureaucracies because there are no legal requirements for transparency or recourse. Try getting a response from a Big Tech corporation when you’ve been shadow-banned or sent to Digital Siberia.

The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions. These are not guaranteed, of course; in many locales, even these reservoirs have been drained. But in other locales, enterprises and institutions such as the county water utility, the local newspaper, the local community college, etc. continue to earn the trust of the public by performing the services they exist to provide effectively and at a reasonable cost.

The larger the institution and the greater its wealth and power, the lower the social trust–for good reasons. The greater the influence of the managerial elites, the greater the disconnect from the everyday experiences of the citizenry and customers, and the more extreme the self-serving PR.

Sure, I trust Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Finance–to rip me off, profiteer, send me obfuscating bills, jack up junk fees, make it impossible to contact them, and send me to Digital Siberia if I complain.

The divide between the elites and the commoners should prompt us to examine the low-trust path we’re sliding down:

In a society in which everything is phony, low quality or fraudulent, you’re taking a chance trusting anyone you don’t know personally–and even that can be risky now that self-aggrandizing flim-flam is the last remaining path to financial security for non-elites.

A low-trust society is an impoverished society, economically stagnant and socially threadbare. That’s where we are now, and the more fragmented, greedy, self-serving, desperate and deranged we become, the lower the odds that we’ll find the means to rebuild trust.

Sadly, we already know that anyone claiming to “rebuild trust” is spouting PR designed to mask self-enrichment. We also know that the vast army of well-paid flacks, factotums, enforcers, happy-story apologists, lackeys, toadies and sell-out minions are declaring “everything’s great!”

Just mumble, “Uh, sure” and continue to Tune in (to degrowth), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to self-reliance and relocalizing capital and agency).

*  *  *

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