socialpirate @socialpirate - Tumblr Blog

Loitering is one of those victimless crimes that seem to be put in place exclusively to control people that the public doesn't like. Anti-vagrancy laws date back to Reconstruction and are one of many, many public policy things that draw directly from legislation designed to target Black people.

wachinyeya

A decade after lead-contaminated water was found in Flint's water system, the legal battle to replace lead water pipes is nearly finished.

Jul 9, 2025

The Flint water crisis began in 2014, after lead-contaminated drinking water was found to be leaching out from aging pipes into homes citywide.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Natural Resources Defense Council, with help from other activists and nonprofits, have released statements on the recent progress, celebrating the milestone.

The statements which they chalk up the crisis to “cost-cutting measures and improper water treatment,” that the state “didn’t require treatment to prevent corrosion,” after a “a state-appointed emergency manager” switched the water supply to the Flint River.

There is no safe level of lead exposure; each nanogram causes harm. In addition to long-known risks, such as damage to children’s brains and certain cancers, there is also significant evidence that exposure to lead is linked to numerous cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart attack.

The coalition mobilized the citizenry and filed a lawsuit against Flint and Michigan state officials to secure safe water. The result was a settlement in March 2017, under which a federal court in Detroit ordered Flint to give every resident the opportunity to have their lead pipe replaced at no cost, as well as conduct comprehensive tap water testing, implement a faucet filter distribution and education program, and maintain funding for health programs to help residents deal with the effects of Flint’s tainted water, according to the NRDC.

The coalition then returned to court six times in six years to ensure the city and state kept to the timeline, which was delayed by COVID-19, and other reasons which The Detroit News described as “spotty record-keeping” and “ineffective management.”

On July 1st, the State of Michigan submitted a progress report to a federal court confirming that, more than eight years after the settlement, nearly 11,000 lead pipes were replaced and more than 28,000 properties were restored where the maintenance had taken place.

Of the 4,200 buildings where lead pipes are known to still be in service, their owners have either left the properties vacant, abandoned, or have declined the free replacement under the Safe Water Drinking Act. The coalition has said it will continue to monitor city and state progress on these remaining lines.

“Thanks to the persistence of the people of Flint and our partners, we are finally at the end of the lead pipe replacement project,” said Pastor Allen C. Overton of the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, one of the organizations that sued the city. “While this milestone is not all the justice our community deserves, it is a huge achievement.”

liberaljane

s-n-arly

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free