Corduroy Academy

( Mostly) radical thoughts, ideas, and links from late stage colonial capitalism.

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    Aidan
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    Bottled water contains 100 times more plastic nanoparticles than previously thought

    The average litre of bottled water has nearly a quarter of a million pieces of microplastics and tiny, invisible nanoplastics, new research has found. 

    These have been detected and categorised for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers.

    Scientists had long figured there were lots of these microscopic plastic pieces, but until researchers at US universities Columbia and Rutgers did their calculations they never knew how many or what kind.

    Looking at five samples each of three common bottled water brands, researchers found particle levels ranged from 110,000 to 400,000 per litre, averaging at around 240,000 according to a study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Microplastics everywhere!

    I can feel some weird conspiracy theories coming on here.

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    Aidan
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    Study finds microplastics in nearly all American proteins: meat, fish and plants

    An Environmental Pollution study published on Monday reviewed a wide range of meat, fish and vegetarian meat alternatives — and found that 88 percent of them contained some form of microplastics.

    Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastics the approximate size of a grain of sand or a human hair, which carry a host of potential health risks.

    Based on annual protein consumption habits of Americans, the scientists found that the average American takes in 11,500 microplastics per year — with the highest protein consumers taking in as many as 3.8 million plastic fragments and fibers.

    Led paint made all the boomers narcissistic xenophobic individualists. Maybe microplastics are making our generation anxious and hyperactive.

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    Aidan
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    Taiwan election: What it means for ties with US and China

    The self-ruled island is electing a new leader who will set the tone for its relations with China and the US for years to come.

    Taiwan is holding presidential and parliamentary elections on Saturday, which will be watched closely by China as well as the United States.   

    Beijing views the self-ruled democratic island as part of China and has not ruled out using force to achieve its goal of bringing it under its control.

    The US, on the other hand, is Taiwan’s most important strategic partner.

    Washington officially maintains a One China policy, which acknowledges the People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China.

    At the same time, the US informally helps Taipei and provides military and other aid to the island in accordance with the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.

    The territory’s contested status is a constant source of friction between Beijing and Washington.

    How does this become a “US sponsored FREEDOM” rather than a sovereign island nation fighting for its own independence from a dictator? Oh, right, my mistake – capitalism.

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    Aidan
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    Pakistani leader calls for global unity to fight diseases and emergencies caused by climate change

    Pakistan’s prime minister on Wednesday called for unified efforts to tackle global infectious diseases like COVID-19 and emergencies caused by climate change, nearly 1 1/2-year after devastating floods killed 1,700 people in his nation.

    Representatives from 70 countries, the World Health Organization, and other international organizations attended a two-day summit. It comes as reports show that millions of people who lost their homes in the floods were still living in tents for the second consecutive harsh winter.

    The 2022 unprecedented flooding, which started in mid-June that year and which experts attribute in part to climate change, at one point left a third of Pakistan submerged.

    Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar told the meeting in Islamabad that “no state in the world, no matter how powerful it is, can meet such challenges” alone.

    When the ruins of the human “civilisation” lay smouldering after the capitalists finally “win,” aliens, or some distant better evolved Earth species, will one day discover records of people calling for unity and action in the face of extinction and think – what the fuck was wrong with these people.

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    Aidan
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    Global unemployment set to worsen in 2024: UN

    The global unemployment rate will increase slightly in 2024, the United Nations said on Wednesday (Jan 10) as it raised concerns about stagnant productivity, worsening inequalities and inflation biting into disposable income.

    The UN’s labour agency said the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down, with ongoing geopolitical tensions and persistent inflation triggering aggressive moves by central banks.

    That said, global growth in 2023 was modestly higher than anticipated, and labour markets showed surprising resilience, the International Labour Organisation said.

    However, real wages declined in most of the G20 countries as wage increases failed to keep pace with inflation, said the ILO.

    Globally, workers (i.e., everyone that works), the environment (i.e., where we live), and those exploited and extracted from by capitalism are doing it harder and harder. We need action.

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    Aidan
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    X Purges Prominent Journalists, Leftists With No Explanation

    The X accounts of several prominent journalists and leftist pundits were suspended from the site, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday morning with no clear explanation.

    The suspensions affected several journalists and commentators, including Texas Observer journalist Steven Monacelli, Ken Klippensten of The Intercept, podcaster Rob Rousseau, and Alan MacLeod of MintPress News. The landing page for their accounts says it’s been suspended, but does not give any explanation as to why. A message on the profiles simply states “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.”

    Say “threat to the capitalist status quo” with me, and you’ll have found an explanation.

    At, probably who knows, the threat of action they reinstated the accounts.

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    Piper
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    Pope Francis calls for ban on ‘deplorable’ act of surrogacy

    Pope Francis has called births by surrogacy “deplorable”, saying there should be a worldwide ban on the practice.

    “I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs,” the Pope said in his speech.

    Keep your rosaries away from our ovaries. The dignity he’s missing is freedom of choice, of body and thought. A good argument here might’ve been to promote the reduction of the reproduction of more vulnerable (human) workers under the hideous capitalist hellfire …. but he’s actually only concerned with pretending that babies appear magically from a stork god. Girl, bye.

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    Aidan
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    Don’t believe Haaretz and the NYT. Israeli society fully supports the Gaza genocide.

    An editorial in Haaretz last week, as well as a piece by the New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg a few days later, told a similar story. Both articles portrayed genocidal statements by Israeli leaders, and both articles explained them as an expression of far-right extremism. Haaretz seems to suggest that the solution (which would protect Israel at the International Court of Justice) would be for Netanyahu to fire his extremist ministers. Goldberg’s article takes it even further, suggesting that Netanyahu is also part of the problem. 

    However, there’s a story that is not being fully told in these two main liberal outlets. Both ignore the evidence and the polling that show near universal Israeli support for the unfolding genocide in Gaza — both from the Israeli political class and the vast majority of the Israeli population. 

    The biggest victory here has been the mobilisation of the US’s hegemonic media machine to keep the world’s population complacent. The raced and classed denial of genocide shows time and again the world (has been indoctrinated to) only cares for whites.