We just moved to a neighborhood where we know a ton of neighbors. I am struck by how expensive it is (though I moved in with my partner, so my personal expenses dropped) to live in a place where you walk around and in two blocks see a couple of familiar faces at this point.
As western North Carolina recovers, I'm curious what things could have looked like if the lower end of the supply chain, where things that sell for dollars a ton end begin their journey to be worth $10k a ton, were more adequately compensated to have a more wealth and thus more chance at resilience.
The way the area gets discussed in here really brings to mind the way that multinationals harvest money out of the tax system by vertical integration, leaving the small town where extraction happens much less well off than it was during the era of more steps, particularly without a VAT system.
Spruce Pine, in western North Carolina, makes up the global primary source for silica to be used in electronics manufacturing. This excerpt from Vince Beiser's The World in a Grain goes into the way that this small town has experienced the industry and what it means. www.wired.com/story/book-e...
The processor that makes your laptop or cell phone work was fabricated using quartz from this obscure Appalachian backwater.
Last night, Trump praised Charles Lindbergh in a speech in Wisconsin. Today, not a word about that in *any* article in our leading newspapers. Am i missing something? Or does the press does not care that 1 of the 2 presidential candidates praised a Nazi who masqueraded as an isolationist?
Strega Nona fall hitting. I leave home with fresh baked bread to deliver to a friend in exchange for some small leather home goods. I hit the farmers' market for ingredients for a cauldron of soup. Venmo bans me from exiting my grandmacore day to say anything about the provenance of any goods.
The blissfulness of early Sunday, rolling over and seeing a message sent late asking about the book you were mentioning. You roll over, pleasantly discussing the Hobbit and economic reform. Then you remember what having an online bubble means as the rising tide of "Horny?" arrives.
The asylum system has loose rules because it is for people who have the least likelihood to be able to plan their documentation and get to an embassy or consulate before fleeing. I do not believe in anything that puts them at higher risk, and that's what recent admins of both parties have done.
The ability to move to a place of refuge is essential. It is how many of our families landed here (even if they were used by a government happy to use them as fodder and foot soldiers in colonial wars). We established this system literally for the ship that bore Anne Frank back to the Netherlands.
Obviously, Democrats are not saying to dismantle the asylum system directly and are essential to support at this point. But hardening the border is also doing this slowly and steadily, and the Democrats' base must push them to protect the system through which we say never again.