Certain ultraprocessed foods are contributing to worldwide obesity, chronic health conditions and premature death, yet the food industry continues to aggressively market new and existing products in this category for massive profits, according to experts. https://cnn.it/485zrBw

Another reason the corporatization of the university is just misdirection of public funds into private coffers. Amazon Web Services currently down and Canvas (the main course-hosting template used by the UC system) goes down with it. Neither me nor any of my hundreds of students can prep for class.

The plan is to ruin the economy and force us to supply our basic needs in ways profitable to corporatist supply chains and tollboothing of all things/food/shelter/entertainment/medicine/life. Help your fellow community members. They will be what really keeps life livable in the coming years.

Spending strike. Cancel subscriptions. Use the library (Kanopy, Libby etc. many available through your library card). Walk or bike when possible. Boycott gas. Frequent local businesses, check if new businesses aren’t actually recent private equity acquisitions expanding into your area.

For a relief from the weight of the moment without relieving the sense of purpose, the great Wendell Berry has a poetic manifesto worth three minutes of your time:

This well-researched NPR episode shows how Zionism is clearly born from America and England, colonial powers that are currently the most boot-lickingly oppressive toward free speech, and has nothing inherently to do with people in the holy land. Worth a listen~~ www.npr.org/2024/06/13/1...

Let it be a normal social experiment in today’s U.S. to have 2nd Amendment advocates tested in their ability to use all the purported safety benefits of mass gun ownership, rather than unarmed school children trying to survive the start of school year.

Margaret Atwood give an example of the ideal literature for public school under the current administration’s guidelines. Still can’t help being dystopically brilliant I suppose.

substack.com/@kennethms/n...

Buying used books online? Just a reminder that not all online used book sellers are the same. Thrift Books, World of Books=both owned by private equity. Abe books is Amazon. Only Powell’s is truly independent. Bibio.com and Better World Books have non-profit, non-corporate structures.

I have to say, TNG Wesley's Sweater, still makes me nostalgic: wilwheaton.net/2013/09/wil-...

ILLINOIS… Gov. Pritzker…

Masha Gessen distills our reality of unmarked vans, secret lists, and public denunciations by fascistic politicians and self-annointed reactionary enforcers to conclude the obvious: Our police state has arrived. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/o...

Project 2025 is erasing Indigenous history in real time. Navajo Code Talkers vanished from Pentagon records, tribal flags stripped from VA hospitals, and reports on missing Indigenous women deleted. Tribal rights are being rebranded as “DEI” to justify their dismantling.

Read more:

Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford will win Wisconsin's Supreme Court race, CNN projects.

Read more: cnn.it/3XFHctA

Reminders:

In President Donald Trump’s meritocracy, you apparently don’t need much educational experience to run the Department of Education.

With a demonstrated lack of knowledge about even the most basic education laws and policies, wrestling exec and billionaire Linda McMahon is now the head of the DOE.