You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction – The New York Times

“People feel a kind of longing for a belonging to the natural world,” says the author and scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer. “It’s related to, I think, some of the dead ends that we have created for ourselves that don’t have a lot of meaning.” In part to share a potential source of meaning, Kimmerer, who is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a professor at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, published her essay collection, “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” That book, which was put out by Milkweed Editions, a small Minnesota nonprofit press, and which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary, has more than done its job. “Braiding Sweetgrass” has now been a yearslong presence on best-seller lists, with more than 1.4 million copies in print across various formats, and its success has allowed Milkweed to double in size. Given the urgency of climate change, it’s very unlikely that the appetite for the book’s message of ecological care and reciprocity will diminish anytime soon. “As we’ve learned,” says Kimmerer, who is 69, “there are lots of us who think this way.”

There’s a certain kind of writing about ecology and balance that can make the natural world seem like this placid place of beauty and harmony. But the natural world is also 

full of suffering and death.¹

 Do you think your work, which is so much about the beauty and harmony side of things, romanticizes nature? Or, maybe more to the point, do you think it matters if it does? I am deeply aware of the fact that my view of the natural world is colored by my home place. Where I live, here in Maple Nation,² is really abundant. We live in a place full of berries and fruits. So thinking about the land-as-gift in perhaps this romantic way would come more naturally to me than to someone who lives in a desert, where you can have the sense that the land is out to kill you as opposed to care for you. That’s absolutely true. But I don’t think that’s the same as romanticizing nature. Of course the natural world is full of forces that are so-called destructive. I think about Aldo Leopold’s³  often-quoted line, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” But those destructive forces also end up often to be agents of change and renewal. It is a mistake to romanticize the living world, but it is also a mistake to think of the living world as adversarial.”

Binyamin Appelbaum | America Has a Debt Problem, and the Answer to It Starts With Form 1040 – The New York Times

By Binyamin Appelbaum

Mr. Appelbaum is a member of the editorial board.

“Washington’s favorite show, “Debt Ceiling Chicken,” is playing again in the big white theater on Capitol Hill. And once again, it is diverting attention from the fact that the United States really does have a debt problem.

Republicans and Democrats in recent decades have hewed to a kind of grand bargain, raising spending and cutting taxes, and papering over the difference with a lot of borrowed money.

From 1972 to 2021, the government, on average, spent about 20.8 percent of gross domestic product while collecting about 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in revenue. It covered the gap with $31.4 trillion in i.o.u.s — the federal debt.

The government relies on this borrowed money to function, and for decades, it has defied a variety of dire predictions about the likely consequences. Notably, there’s no sign that Washington is exhausting Wall Street’s willingness to lend. In financial markets, U.S. Treasuries remain the ultimate comfort food. There’s also little evidence the government’s gargantuan appetite is making it harder for businesses or individuals to get loans, which could impede economic growth.

But the federal debt still carries a hefty price tag.

The most immediate problem with the government’s reliance on borrowed money is the regular opportunity it provides for Republicans to engage in blackmail. Congress imposes a statutory limit on federal borrowing, known as the debt ceiling. The government hit that limit this month, meaning the total amount of spending approved by Congress now requires borrowing in excess of that amount.

Raising the ceiling ought to be a formality, since it simply allows the government to meet the obligations Congress already has approved. But House Republicans say they won’t raise it without a deal to cut future spending.

The Biden administration is rightly insistent that it won’t pay Congress to do its job, as the Obama administration agreed to do in 2011.

After all, Americans don’t want large spending cuts. The vast majority of federal spending is supported by most Americans. About 63 cents of every federal dollar goes to mandatory programs, the largest of which, Social Security and Medicare, are wildly popular. Others, like Obamacare subsidies, are less popular, but there’s no need to speculate about what would happen if Republicans tried to cut the program. They’ve tried and failed repeatedly. An additional 15 cents goes to discretionary programs. The big-ticket items, like health care for veterans, highway construction and subsidies for law enforcement, are pretty popular, too. The rest is the defense budget and interest payments.

Indeed, Americans need more federal spending. The United States invests far less than other wealthy nations in providing its citizens with the basic resources necessary to lead productive lives. Millions of Americans live without health insurance. People need more help to care for their children and older family members. They need help to go to college and to retire. Measured as a share of G.D.P., public spending in the other Group of 7 nations is, on average, more than 50 percent higher than in the United States.

But Democrats ought to emphasize a distinction between resisting Republican demands and defending the government’s current borrowing habits. There is another, better way to fund public spending: collecting more money in taxes.”

How a Drug Company AbbVie Made $114 Billion by Gaming the U.S. Patent System – The New York Times

By Rebecca Robbins

• • Jan. 28, 2023

7 MIN READ

In 2016, a blockbuster drug called Humira was poised to become a lot less valuable.

“The key patent on the best-selling anti-inflammatory medication, used to treat conditions like arthritis, was expiring at the end of the year. Regulators had blessed a rival version of the drug, and more copycats were close behind. The onset of competition seemed likely to push down the medication’s $50,000-a-year list price.

Instead, the opposite happened.

Through its savvy but legal exploitation of the U.S. patent system, Humira’s manufacturer, AbbVie, blocked competitors from entering the market. For the next six years, the drug’s price kept rising. Today, Humira is the most lucrative franchise in pharmaceutical history.

Next week, the curtain is expected to come down on a monopoly that has generated $114 billion in revenue for AbbVie just since the end of 2016. The knockoff drug that regulators authorized more than six years ago, Amgen’s Amjevita, will come to market in the United States, and as many as nine more Humira competitors will follow this year from pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer. Prices are likely to tumble.

The reason that it has taken so long to get to this point is a case study in how drug companies artificially prop up prices on their best-selling drugs.”

David Lindsay: Excellenet article, but upsetting. It appears that there are many solutions, such as passing a law that says all additional patents to a new drug have to use the same start date as the original patent.

Peter Coy | Making Farms Organic Is Paying Off – The New York Times

By Peter Coy

Opinion Writer

“I talked by phone on Thursday with Garrett Mussi as he was driving around 1,000 acres in California’s San Joaquin Valley where he grows organic corn, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic and almonds using environmentally friendly methods. He spoke about being a good steward of the rich soil. He described using drip irrigation to conserve water and cover crops to add nitrogen to the soil and compost to enrich it.

Learning to farm in an organic way “has been a good experience,” he told me. “It definitely has its challenges, but farming overall is a challenge. I enjoy it. Always learning something new.”

Mussi doesn’t own any of the acres he tends so carefully. He is a tenant farmer. The owner of the land is Farmland L.P., an investment fund that buys farmland and readies it for certification as organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture: using pesticides sparingly, and only the least harmful kinds; minimizing erosion; sequestering carbon in the soil; rotating crops regularly and providing habitats for butterflies, bees and other pollinators. Some organic farmers use lady bugs to eat aphids and owls to eat rodents.

What we have here is finance meeting farming and doing good, not evil.”

COVID-19: What To Know About Isolating Together

“You know that it’s important to help stop the spread of COVID-19 by being extra cautious if you think you’ve been exposed. And there is a good chance that you have been exposed to the virus a few times, and you might have even been infected.

As of August 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that when you’ve been exposed to COVID-19, take immediate precautions for 10 days and get tested at least five days after the date of exposure. Precautions include wearing a mask around others and monitoring yourself for symptoms.1 The CDC no longer recommends quarantine after exposure.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, there have been plenty of households where more than one person got sick at the same time. If one person tests positive for COVID-19, the CDC advised to have that person isolate from everyone else in the house.2

 But what if two or more people are infected? Is it OK to isolate together?”

Source: COVID-19: What To Know About Isolating Together

David Wallace-Wells | Britain’s Cautionary Tale of Self-Destruction – The New York Times

By David Wallace-Wells

Opinion Writer

“In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. On average, English ambulances were taking an hour and a half to respond to stroke and heart-attack calls, compared with a target time of 18 minutes; nationwide, 10 times as many patients spent more than four hours waiting in emergency rooms as did in 2011. The waiting list for scheduled treatments recently passed seven million — more than 10 percent of the country — prompting nurses to strike. The National Health Service has been in crisis for years, but over the holidays, as wait times spiked, the crisis moved to the very center of a narrative of national decline.

Post-Covid, the geopolitical order has been thrown into tumult. At the beginning of the pandemic, commentators wondered about the fate of the United States, its indifferent political leadership and its apparently diminished “state capacity.” Lately, they have focused more on the sudden weakness of China: its population in decline, its economy struggling more than it has in decades, its “zero Covid” reversal a sign of both political weakness and political overreach, depending on whom you ask.

But the descent of Britain is in many ways more dramatic. By the end of next year, the average British family will be less well off than the average Slovenian one, according to a recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at The Financial Times; by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one.”

David Lindsay: Impressive columne, but why. Here the top comments, helps move the analysis along.

Minneapolis Mom

Mpls MNJan. 25

Its interesting how Britain’s decline in real wages coincides closely with the dramatic drop in their corporate tax rates – from 30% in 2008 to 19% today. Conservatives follow the same recipe everywhere – fund tax reductions on corporations and the wealthy by cutting government programs. Motivate voters with xenophobic fear-of-the-other tropes. Rinse and repeat.

15 Replies974 Recommended

J. Kenji López-Alt – The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow – The New York Times

By J. Kenji López-Alt

Jan. 24, 2023

5 MIN READ

Cooking  Feast on recipes, food writing and culinary inspiration from Sam Sifton and NYT Cooking. Get it sent to your inbox.

Have you been reacquainting yourself with the forgotten spices and fusty beans from the depths of your pantry? How fusty is too fusty? When is the right time to throw something out? And what about fresh ingredients? If I’m trying to keep supermarket trips to a minimum, how long can my eggs, dairy and produce keep?

Here’s the first thing you should know: Expiration dates are not expiration dates.

Food product dating, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls it, is completely voluntary for all products (with the exception of baby food, more on that later). Not only that, but it has nothing to do with safety. It acts solely as the manufacturer’s best guess as to when its product will no longer be at peak quality, whatever that means. Food manufacturers also tend to be rather conservative with those dates, knowing that not all of us keep our pantries dark and open our refrigerators as minimally as necessary. (I, for one, would never leave the fridge door open for minutes at a time as I contemplate what to snack on.)

Let’s start with the things you definitely don’t have to worry about. Vinegars, honey, vanilla or other extracts, sugar, salt, corn syrup and molasses will last virtually forever with little change in quality. Regular steel-cut or rolled oats will last for a year or so before they start to go rancid, but parcooked oats (or instant oats) can last nearly forever. (Same with grits versus instant grits.)

Everyone Wants Your Email Address. Think Twice Before Sharing It. – The New York Times

By Brian X. Chen

Brian X. Chen is the lead consumer technology writer for The New York Times.

Jan. 25, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

5 MIN READ

When you browse the web, an increasing number of sites and apps are asking for a piece of basic information that you probably hand over without hesitation: your email address.

It may seem harmless, but when you enter your email, you’re sharing a lot more than just that. I’m hoping this column, which includes some workarounds, persuades you to think twice before handing over your email address.

First, it helps to know why companies want email addresses. To advertisers, web publishers and app makers, your email is important not just for contacting you. It acts as a digital bread crumb for companies to link your activity across sites and apps to serve you relevant ads.

Trying to Live a Day Without Plastic – A. J. Jacobs – The New York Times

By A. J. Jacobs

Jacobs is a journalist in New York who has written books on trying to live by the rules of the Bible and reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z.

• • Published Jan. 11, 2023  Updated Jan. 13, 2023

11 MIN READ

“On the morning of the day I had decided to go without using plastic products — or even touching plastic — I opened my eyes and put my bare feet on the carpet. Which is made of nylon, a type of plastic. I was roughly 10 seconds into my experiment, and I had already committed a violation.

Since its invention more than a century ago, plastic has crept into every aspect of our lives. It’s hard to go even a few minutes without touching this durable, lightweight, wildly versatile substance. Plastic has made possible thousands of modern conveniences, but it has come with downsides, especially for the environment. Last week, in a 24-hour experiment, I tried to live without it altogether in an effort to see what plastic stuff we can’t do without and what we may be able to give up.

Most mornings I check my iPhone soon after waking up. On the appointed day, this was not possible, given that, in addition to aluminum, iron, lithium, gold and copper, each iPhone contains plastic. In preparation for the experiment, I had stashed my device in a closet. I quickly found that not having access to it left me feeling disoriented and bold, as if I were some sort of intrepid time traveler.”

” . . . . .    Plastics Present and Past

The world produces about 400 million metric tons of plastic waste each year, according to a United Nations report. About half is tossed out after a single use. The report noted that “we have become addicted to single-use plastic products — with severe environmental, social, economic and health consequences.”

I’m one of the addicts. I did an audit, and I’d estimate that I toss about 800 plastic items in the garbage a year — takeout containers, pens, cups, Amazon packages with foam inside and more.

Before my Day of No Plastic, I immersed myself in a number of no-plastic and zero-waste books, videos and podcasts. One of the books, “Life Without Plastic: The Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Avoiding Plastic to Keep Your Family and the Planet Healthy,” by Mr. Sinha and Chantal Plamondon, came from Amazon wrapped in clear plastic, like a slice of American cheese. When I mentioned this to Mr. Sinha, he promised to look into it.

I also called Gabby Salazar, a social scientist who studies what motivates people to support environmental causes, and asked for her advice as I headed into my plastic-free day.

“It might be better to start small,” Dr. Salazar said. “Start by creating a single habit — like always carrying a stainless-steel water bottle. After you’ve got that down, you start another habit, like taking produce bags to the grocery. You build up gradually. That’s how you make real change. Otherwise, you’ll just be overwhelmed.”

Margaret Renkl | You’re Pointing Your Camera the Wrong Way – The New York Times

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

“NASHVILLE — Not quite halfway through the new season of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” a young woman, Portia, breaks into tears at breakfast. She is staying at a luxury resort in Sicily as the personal assistant of one of the wealthy guests. While her tablemate, a true vacationer, takes smiling selfies with the shining Ionian Sea in the background, Portia glances across the terrace at her despairing employer. “Is everything boring?” she asks, her voice quivering.

Portia’s problem is only partly the obscene wealth to which she exists in permanent adjacency. As her breakfast companion’s cheerful self-portraits suggest, she is at also odds with her era: “I just feel like there must’ve been a time when the world had more, you know? Like mystery or something,” she says. “And now you come somewhere like this, and it’s beautiful, and you take a picture, and then you realize that everybody’s taking that exact same picture from that exact same spot and you’ve just made some redundant content for stupid Instagram.”

This is the cry of anyone in Portia’s generation who is paying attention. It should be the cry of everybody else, too. With the advent of the self-facing camera, the human world turned in fundamental ways.

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera,” the great documentary photographer Dorothea Lange often said. That was surely true of Ms. Lange, whose iconic photographs of Depression-era migrants and urban bread lines captured the beauty as well as the profound anguish of the period.”