Because the Biden administration refuses to make a public case for keeping alive the pandemic emergency declaration that led to a huge expan
"By the estimates of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 15 million people are going to lose their health insurance over the next few months, including 5.3 million kids. Worse, based on historical trends, 6.8 million of those people will lose their Medicaid coverage in spite of still being eligible for it simply because of bureaucratic trifles ...
"The effects of the declaration’s end will go well beyond this, affecting working people’s ability to get free tests, vaccines, and affordable treatment for the virus. It also means the end of extra food stamps, another generous program set to continue as long as the emergency exists and a vital lifeline for working people struggling to keep up with grocery bills in the face of inflation ...
"From a practical and moral standpoint, this is obviously a travesty. But it’s also a needless own goal for the president, putting an already deeply unpopular Biden in the position of running for reelection in a year’s time with millions of people losing their health insurance — and his potential Republican opponent being able to boast he’d been the one to extend it to them in the first place. More than that, it makes a mockery of his frequent public statements insisting that his administration will 'continue to fight for racial justice,' since, as the HHS, acknowledges, 15 percent of those who are about to lose their coverage as a result of his decision are black and one-third are Latino ...
"If the idea is that Americans are now tired of thinking and caring about the pandemic, making supporting any COVID-related policies politically toxic, then this is the wrong way to go about unwinding those. Americans didn’t hate that the pandemic response included protecting them from being kicked out of their homes by greedy landlords, getting financial support for the government while they were unemployed, or having health insurance and a variety of other health care needs guaranteed."
They're also all essential for you to get coffee. Even if you don't go to a coffee shop to get it, three out of four of those people still were responsible for you being able to buy the coffee beans in the first place.
They all deserve a thriving wage. Not just enough to live off of, but enough to live a happy life. Even if they're immigrants, even if their labor is illegal- the only reason illegal immigrants are used for labor is because they're desperate for any income and their home countries are even worse for jobs and their and their family's safety than this one, and because corporations are the ones choosing to exploit them for profit. Don't blame the individuals just trying to survive, blame the ones who keep the system the way it is.
"children are still harvesting coffee beans for both Starbucks and Nespresso, which is owned by Nestlé. According to the investigation, the children work for 40 hours a week under harsh conditions, with wages not exceeding £5 (about $6.40) a day—only slightly more than a cup of coffee. "
Oh, and on top of that, unfriendly reminder that Nestlé (not sure about Starbucks) supports the IOF occupation and ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous Palestinians.
On this day, 28 November 1985, an internal document circulated within the Shell oil corporation stated that “there has been a global warming over the last 100 years, that the 0.5 degrees increase is a result of CO2 [carbon dioxide] buildup, that we will see a further 1-2 degree warming over the next 40 years… Such a rise would be greater than any change in the last 1,000 years… The global mean sea level has risen by some 15 cm over the last 100 years… By 2050, the range of uncertainty of the rise in global mean sea level is 20-120 cm.” It formed part of an extensive confidential internal report by the company produced in 1988 on the greenhouse effect which definitively showed that from at least 1981 Shell was aware of climate change, that it was man-made, that burning fossil fuels was its primary cause, and that it would have catastrophic effects. Despite this, for decades the company covered up its findings, sponsored fake public studies to try to deny climate change, and fought any government attempts to limit CO2 emissions.
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The man who won't rest until the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is cleaned up has successfully tested his system for doing so.
““The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned,” announced Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, the wonderkid inventor who’s spent a decade inventing systems for waterborne litter collection.
Recent tests on his Ocean Cleanup rig called System 002, invented to tackle the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic pollution, were a success, leading Slat to predict that most of the oceanic garbage patches could be removed by 2040.
Intersections of ocean currents have created the massive floating islands of plastic trash—five slow-moving whirlpools that pull litter from thousands of miles away into a single radius.
The largest one sits between California and Hawaii, and 27-year-old Slat has been designing and testing his systems out there, launching from San Francisco since 2013.
GNN has reported on his original design for the floating device, but his engineering team improved upon it. System 002, nicknamed “Jenny,” successfully netted 9,000 kilograms, or around 20,000 pounds in its first trial.
It’s carbon-neutral, able to capture microplastics as small as 1 millimeter in diameter, and was designed to pose absolutely no threat to wildlife thanks to its wide capture area, slow motion, alerts, and camera monitors that allow operators to spy any overly-curious marine life…
Slat estimates ten Jennies could clean half the garbage patch in five years, and if 10 Jennies were deployed to the five major ocean gyres, then 90% of all floating plastic could be removed by 2040.” -via Good News Network, 10/19/21
The Federalist Society has reshaped America’s courts.
The Federalist Society is a 501c3 nonprofit, which makes it exempt from taxes but limits its political work; however, the network of politicians, donors, conservative lawyers, and activists with links to the organization are under no such restrictions. “Because of its 501c3 status, it has to very fervently double down on the idea that the organization does not take policy positions, does not help with judicial selection, does not endorse Republican candidates, does not work with the Republican Party," Hollis-Brusky explains. "But its individual members in their free time do all of those things. So the Federalist Society only claims responsibility for connecting these folks. For me, it's a distinction without a difference.”
I think the thing is that USAmericans do genuinely believe that the US has a moral onus to Do Something when it comes to literally any problem on earth, and moreover, that that's a belief that doesn't go away when they become a leftist.
Like, when you convince a USAmerican that intervention and economic sanctions are bad, the idea that is developed is specifically 'oh, so we shouldn't intervene, because the current government is bad.... but, once we have a good, socialist government, then we can!' - that, yes, they should be the world police, but that's just not practical right now. 'Malaysia should intervene in the humanitarian crisis in the Amazon' is recognised as absurd, but 'we should Do Something' is taken for granted. The supposed moral imperative they have isn't abandoned, it's just learned that they can't carry out this moral imperative until after the revolution.
I think this is why US leftists are so deeply resentful of China's non-interference policy. 'Why aren't they Doing Something' - why aren't they carrying out our revolution for us, why aren't they intervening, or sanctioning, or otherwise exerting control on the rest of the world? They adore the formerly-imperialist Russia's brand of internationalism and intervention because it's exactly what they aspire to do - believing that, again, they'd have an imperative as a morally righteous power to act as The World Police, But Good. If a socialist state isn't acting this way, then they mustn't be righteous, mustn't care. At best, it may be taken with some bitter attempt at sympathy that it simply isn't practical right now, that hopefully sometime soon they can become unilateral world police.
The idea that there exist problems that will never be up to you to solve, internal matters that will need to be solved internally, is one that can be difficult to swallow, for the imperial core citizen. In the same way that whiteness is felt as the absence of race, imperial nationality is felt as the absence of nationality - of being a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world, one to whom 'this is an issue internal to our nation, you are not a part of it' is an alien concept.
Stock buybacks are a major way the rich can hoard their wealth instead of investing in workers — which is why a coalition of unions is demanding an end to such buybacks.
As gas prices at the pump continued to make national news and undercut voters’ confidence in the economy, Shell plc announced $4 billion in stock buybacks and increased dividend payments to its investors less than two weeks before the 2022 midterm elections. This prompted President Joe Biden to criticize the company’s decision and threaten a windfall profits tax on energy companies. Yet the reality of such legislation passing Congress was low. And only three days after President Biden’s statement, ConocoPhillips increased its existing share buyback authorization by $20 billion and boosted quarterly dividends by 11 percent.
Oil companies’ massive and record profits, together with an apparent disregard of the presidential threat of windfall tax legislation, highlight how the ability to affect economic change may not primarily lie with politicians at this point, but rather in the hands of US workers and their labor unions. Take the issue of oil company stock buybacks.
“We have serious concerns about the lack of investment back into facilities, particularly given the profits reported by the oil industry as a whole and the amount of announced stock buybacks,” explained Mike Smith, chair of the United Steelworkers’ (USW) National Oil Bargaining Program.
Oil company stock buybacks exemplify economic trends that a majority of Americans believe help the wealthy while hurting the working class and the poor. With rising consumer prices and decades of stagnant wages cutting into workers’ household budgets, Americans have consistently expressed concerns about governmental leadership on economic issues and low economic confidence over the last year.
Smith signaled that USW’s future bargaining and campaigns in the oil sector will mobilize workers to confront these corporate practices: “Rather than focus solely on shareholders, it’s essential for companies to commit to resources like safer technologies and decarbonization that will provide longevity and stability for the energy industry and its workforce. We intend to continue pushing for these types of investments.”
USW is not alone in this push. To fill a void of adequate governmental regulation or reform that would address corporate greed as a driving force of economic inflation, labor unions representing workers in a variety of employment sectors are organizing campaigns that expose the underlying causes of economic inequality and address Wall Street stock buybacks, dividends, and ownership in companies.
Workers Confront Wall Street Corporate Ownership
Ahandful of Wall Street asset management firms known as the Big Three — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street — together comprise the largest shareholder in approximately 90 percent of S&P 500 firms and 96 percent of Fortune 250 companies. This concentration of ownership alarms both sides of the political spectrum for different reasons. But legislative regulation has yet to rein in Wall Street firms that arguably violate antitrust laws.
hello to all of my colleagues here on tumblr dot com; currently the largest academic strike in history is happening across the university of california system with 48,000 academic workers on the picket line. if you’re interested in showing your support for this historic action, you can donate to the official hardship fund of UAW 2865, UAW 5810, and student researchers united-UAW here
In a so-called “post-colonial” world, the plantation remains, but the formal role of the king is replaced by an agro-economist aided by financial institutions. New titles, but world-ending colonial violence, calculated dispossession, and resource extraction remains in very similar forms. Imperial extraction in tropical Africa is closely connected to imperialism in Southeast Asia. The legacy of 1890s imperialist plantations in Africa lives on today through Indigenous dispossession in Indonesia. Some of the companies that designed and profited off of plantations in the Belgian Congo still, today, exist, and they continue their plantation business with similar tactics.
The Gilded Age didn’t end, it adapted.
Same entities who wrecked forests of the Congo also wrecked forests of Southeast Asia. Sometimes one individual person destroys multiple forest worlds across the planet. The agro-economist managing King Leopold’s notorious rubber plantations in the Belgian-controlled Congo (between 1885 and 1908, where millions died, and many others had their hands removed for failure to meet harvest quotas) … was the same agro-economist who first introduced palm oil plantations in Southeast Asia. And his company would later come to control most of the world’s palm oil, before then using Wold Bank programs to return to and (re)colonize Africa in recent decades. This person was Adrien Hallet, an acquaintance of the royal family circle. Leopold’s formal rule in Congo ended in 1908. But Hallet had made enough money in the rubber trade, that he could afford to purchase property in Southeast Asia and, in 1909, he founded the Belgian plantation-operating company Socfin.
Hallet is credited as the one who “perfected” rubber tree plantation agriculture, experimenting in the Congo, and then Hallet used his knowledge of the African oil palm trees to introduce palm monoculture in Southeast Asia, founding the world’s first large-scale palm oil plantation in Sumatra.
Wealth extracted from plantations in Africa, sponsoring the further extraction of wealth from plantations in Southeast Asia. Dispossession in the Congo, funding dispossession in Indonesia.
By 1940, with Hallet’s son now running the company, Socfin controlled 20% of the world’s palm oil supply, and at least 5% of the world’s rubber. Most of this palm oil wealth was extracted from Southeast Asia. But the Belgian company had also returned to the Congo to continue to proliferation of plantations, not under a “king’s” orders this time, but under corporate rule. (Much of a difference, really?)
Today, and for the past 20 years, by far the highest rates of deforestation within the borders of a single nation-state happens in Indonesia. Today, the majority of palm oil is produced in Indonesia. And 45% of the world’s palm oil comes specifically from Borneo (which is mostly controlled by the Indonesian state), where the forest habitat of highly endangered Borneo orangutan is nearly eliminated to clear ground for the plantations. Of the 8.3 million hectares of palm oil plantations in Borneo, the deforestation to accommodate the majority (5.4 million hectares) of the plantations happened merely in 10 years between 2010 and 2020. In other words, the plantations are rapidly expanding. And not only in Borneo. The many Indigenous people of West Papua live under colonial control of the nation of Indonesia; it has been said that West Papua is a de facto resource extraction colony for the Indonesian state. Their vibrant tropical rainforest is cleared for palm oil plantations. Cassowaries and other iconic regional creatures die. In Borneo and West Papua, resistance to encroaching monoculture is functionally criminalized; dissent and advocacy for the independence or autonomy of West Papua is dangerous; activists are arrested, murdered, etc.
Most of colonial Africa was “liberated” from European rule in the early 1960s, right? “Independence.” Socfin reorganized itself, using many subsidiaries. Socfin was then acquired by the infamous shady French conglomerate, Bollore, in 1988, now one of Europe’s top 200 companies.
The World Bank and IMF had held the continent hostage with structural adjustment and manipulative lending schemes which strong-armed people into accepting mass privatization, so that African communities accessed only the industries and development projects deemed appropriate by financial institutions. “Oh, you’re an African community that wants access to our market? Play by IMF’s rules. Oh, you need a loan to build better drinking water access? You must allow a Canadian corporation to open a cobalt mine.” And so the Bollore group gained leverage, maintaining the plantations built by Socfin. Bollore now functionally controls railways, ports, warehouses, and plantations across Africa.
The plantation is still here. The king isn’t technically in charge any more, but the financial institution replicates the function. Empire remains. Mostly unofficially, of course.
seeing people describe the process of meeting romantic or sexual partners as “the dating market” and going completely batshit insane, foaming at the mouth with rabies about how neoliberal ideology and cultural hegemony has devastated our ability to even conceptualize the most basic forms of human intimacy without making reference to the loathsome abstractions of commodity trade under capitalism
“So deeply rooted is the market economy in our minds that its grubby language has replaced our most hallowed moral and spiritual expressions. We now « invest » in our children, marriages, and personal relationships, a term that is equated with words like « love » and « care. » We live in a world of « trade-offs » and we ask for the « bottom line » of any emotional « transaction. » We use the terminology of contracts rather than that of loyalties and spiritual affinities.”
you guys. if you haven't been following the mar a lago fbi raid saga this week you have really been missing out. it came out monday night that the fbi had spent the day collecting boxes of documents from mar a lago and maga world lost it. "this is war", hard right demands to abolish the fbi, insane posturing, every single pundit on the record saying "if this search was for anything short of the nuclear codes, this is going to massively backfire on the biden administration" (foreshadowing!). eventually report comes out that people close to trump are quietly telling the rest of the gop to dial it back just a hair, because things might get worse before they get better. most crucially is that the susan collinses of the world are demanding accountability from the justice department, demanding that they explain why this raid was warranted. (notably, trump himself has the warrant describing exactly what the fbi was there to collect, and is free to share that with the world at any point - the judge/doj is typically barred from making that public at any point, so by hounding the wrong figures for the warrant they're thinking they can control the narrative.)
not so. today, attorney general merrick garland makes a statement saying you know what? you guys are so right. there's actually significant public interest in making the details of this warrant - why a former president was raided by the fbi - public knowledge. so with your blessing, mr trump, i am asking the judge who signed the warrant (he and his synagogue have been getting death threats already btw, rot in hell forever you maga fuckwits) to unseal the warrant. trump, you have until 3pm friday to publicly object to this action. love and light, merrick
and then wapo reported tonight that the warrant was for, among other things, nuclear documents. yeehaw
As someone who has been following this situation with a bag of popcorn, I need to go off about what makes this so goddamn bizarre
So the context obviously: Trump's main residence, his home at Mar-A-Lago resort, was raided by the FBI for documents that he shouldn't possess. The FBI raiding a former president's home is completely unprecedented.
This is NOT an easy task. It requires substantial levels of support from a judicial system that is primarily owned by Trump's appointees and significant evidence to suggest that a law was broken and a raid was the only remaining option to prove it.
Trump and his supporters' first complaints were that "This is completely unnecessary!" and they demanded the FBI release the warrant details--despite Trump being capable of releasing the warrant details himself. They just preferred the publicity of being able to blame the FBI for it
The FBI released the warrant details to Trump's request on Friday, revealing that, holy shit, they retrieved top-secret files including among them information on US nuclear weapons, some of which I've seen implied to be the highest level of classified possible
Trump is being investigated for 3 potential crimes, which are (in summary) concealment or mutilation of government records, destruction of evidence, and violations of the Espionage act. That could be interpreted as spying, but at the very least, it suggests the distribution of fragile government information to other countries
The question now is not whether a law was broken. We know for a fact that he illegally possessed documents. The question now is what law(s) were broken, and who to blame (whether Trump himself or those that were handling documents for him)
Generally, complaints by his followers have transitioned to "Okay so he broke the law--but why was a raid necessary to prove it" and they're demanding to see the evidence that led up to it. They will never be satisfied
Something they like to keep claiming is that a raid wasn't necessary because Trump was being "cooperative" with the FBI because he handed over some documents earlier this year. For context, the FBI subpoenaed documents Trump possessed, and he handed over some of them. Some. His supporters like to use this to claim that he was being cooperative even though it literally shows that he was being untrustworthy in his negligence to hand over everything he should have.
They often demand that the FBI could have retrieved the documents more peacefully... even though they literally did issue a subpoena for them and he didn't fulfill it. They could not have done more. This was the last option.
Trump has complained about corruption in the Judicial branch... despite the Court being majorly his appointees, and the fact that he himself appointed the FBI director who approved the raid
He illegally possessed files on US nuclear weapons. Some of his followers have gone so far as to claim "but not all nuclear information is that bad! He could have had things that were harmless!"
Trump has simultaneously baselessly implied that the FBI planted evidence while also claiming that he had legal right to possess those files and demanding they be returned. You can't have it both ways chap
The only way the FBI could've known about the documents was if someone very close to Trump disclosed it to them. I've seen a lot of estimates that only 4-8 people have that kind of information. This means Trump has to be paranoid about a traitor very close to him which is hilarious and fun to see
Many of his supporters have claimed that the Judicial system is rigged and that the FBI should be defunded and arrested... ignoring the fact that, you know, he illegally possessed top-secret government files. Police brutality against people of color is fine, but God forbid the FBI stops someone from carelessly possessing classified nuclear weapons documents!
i cant stress enough how absolutely bizarre it is to see people admitting that he did break a law but they somehow think it's "political" for the FBI to catch him for it
He likes to claim that Barack Obama had possessed millions of government files as if it's some kind of gatcha argument when the documents in question were actually in the safe possession of a National Archives facility... not Obama's house
He had top-secret nuclear weapons documents in his house?????
Generally, Trump's supporters have either polarized in his defense or are just at a loss for words. Many have gone silent and quietly withdrawn their support. Some have admitted they're concerned about the FBI's findings. Others are blindly following his weird claims to the point of violent extremism (which looks great for someone who's already being investigated for organizing a coup!)
A dumbass with a gun tried to break into an FBI office and it ended with his death after a standoff with police
Feel free to add or elaborate shit I didn't word right
in conclusion: There is an absolute shitstorm going down and you should be interested
Some context for the destruction of that Aboriginal site:
When indigenous ppl complain that their sacred sites are being destroyed and they say stuff like "we have a cultural connection to this place" "if we can't come here it's like ripping off our roots" "we need this place to communicate with our ancestor spirits" etc., white australians are conditioned to handwave statements like that away with shit like "oh well they're just saying that, it's just a random tree, they'll get over it, obviously ancestor spirits aren't real, sacredness of trees isn't real", and that is total bullshit.
Aboriginal sacred sites are integral parts of highly sophisticated mnemonic techniques that have been proven to preserve information for (i know this sounds hard to believe but) at least ten thousand years (they accurately describe coastlines that are now underwater, or dry areas that have since been rainforests for 7000 years, or extinct megafauna etc.)
Physical features (either in one place, or along a track known as a songline) work as subheadings in an encyclopaedia. Ritualised teachings tell people what rituals or song cycles (like subheadings in an encyclopaedia) to associate with specific visual cues, and then those songs all contain stories that have (for example) systematised knowledge of every local animal and plant, contained in songs for easy memorisation. White anthropologists mostly handwave these techniques away as "animist beliefs" and "ancestor worship" but in reality it's this extremely sophisticated system of knowledge that's something like a cultural encyclopaedia, and that's why it's such a big deal when this fucking anglo settler state and its profiteers destroy these locations like it means nothing bc "oh it's just a tree" or "what it's a rock they'll just go to another rock"
Have you ever heard of the memory technique of having a giant house inside your head where you "store" bits of knowledge associated with household items in specific locations & to remember it you can mentally walk yourself to where it is and supposedly never forget anything again? Their physical walks are exactly that, and as the above states, wondrously accurate. Destroying the path and features destroys vital cues for priceless ancestral knowledge preserved for millennia.
ice cream listeria outbreak. again. did you know that illness due to listeria has a 20-30% mortality rate?
family dollar recalling a bunch of drugs and supplements because they stored them wrong
lucky charms and cheerios continue to make children and adults sick, the cause is still under investigation, and no recall has been issued. terrifying. that means it is almost definitely not one of the common causes like salmonella...
daily harvest said tara flour made customers sick. FDA is mad they announced that because the exact cause has still not been found. daily harvest products have given people liver damage so bad they needed to have their gallbladders removed. while the current FDA investigation only involves the leek + lentil crumbles, there are many reports of other daily harvest foods like the flatbreads also harming people. if you have been affected by daily harvest's bullshit, there is now a subreddit for it.
revive superfoods also pulling products with tara flour, for also giving people severe liver damage
several honey products are being recalled for having undisclosed, get this...VIAGRA in them. and cialis. sildenafil and tadalafil.
CVS is recalling lemon flavored magnesium-based laxatives due to contamination with gluconacetobacter liquefaciens, which can cause life-threatening infections in immunodeficient people.
some more from july 2022. everything in this post is VERY recent.
the FDA is the US food & drug administration. I am not tracking recalls in other countries.
unsafe levels of fucking lead in natierra organic freeze dried blueberries which were sold across the country. these were labeled incorrectly on the FDA website which is why I missed them
organic amaranth grain being recalled across the country due to salmonella
the CVS recall of potentially life-threatening contaminated laxatives applies to over 30 different lemon flavored laxative products, this one manufacturer is responsible for the bulk of the supply
over a dozen different enjoy life & trader joe's soft baked cookies and chewy bars are being recalled because they may contain shards of plastic. enjoy life cookies are advertised as "free from 14 allergens" and as non-GMO and gluten free. the amazon variety pack is included. trader joe's recall is limited to snickerdoodle.
no FDA link for this one but apparently factor 75 meal delivery service is recalling some of their rice products for containing shards of GLASS. emails are being sent out to affected customers
the family dollar recall affects HUNDREDS of different products to the point you have to click a PDF to see them all. this includes products like: midol, toothpaste, sunscreen, lidocaine, soap, deodorant, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, benadryl, nyquil, pepcid, pepto bismol, medication for children, zyrtec, lib balm, cough drops, rash ointment, baby products, prilosec, advil, epsom salt, imodium, miralax, claritin, mouthwash, eye drops, dish soap, and MORE. if you have shopped at family dollar recently, you are going to want to check this HUGE FUCKING LIST (scroll down to "list of recalled products")
august 11, 2022. all listings are either recent (past few months) or ongoing since the previous post unless otherwise dated. some of these recalls are now worldwide. if you want to link this information off of tumblr, then use the provided FDA links rather than the post itself. I am not the FDA, this is not official FDA communication, this is not a comprehensive list of regulatory activities (there are WAY more than what I posted), this is not a comprehensive summary of all links. my goal is to encourage you to keep up to date with recalls and share regulatory activities from their official sources, which I have provided.
there might be mistakes because I probably have food poisoning right now. go figure.
food:
dozens of nutritional shakes, plant-based drinks, oat milk, almond milk, coconut milk, dairy-based drinks, and coffees have been recalled due to contamination with invasive illness-causing microbes. infants, the elderly, and people with reduced immune function are more likely to be severely impacted. affected product brands include lyons ready care, pirq, glucerna, aloha, intelligentsia, kate farms, oatly, premier protein, MRE, stumptown, and imperial. these products were sold online and in stores nationwide.
and then the nutrition shake recall was expanded again to include fucking pediatric, lactation, and tube feeding formulations. ensure harvest, pediasure, sweetie pie organics, rejuvenate, sated, tone it up, uproot, cafe grumpy, multiple types of barista products, optimum nutrition, pediasure harvest, and more. if you drink any kind of meal replacement, protein shake, plant-based 'milk' drink, or nutritional beverage, check this recall. these microbes can kill.
revive superfoods is now being investigated by the FDA as a part of the daily harvest investigation (#1076) for ingredients that caused severe liver damage and emergency gallbladder removal.
everything else is under a cut because this got really fucking LONG. below contains information about drugs, warnings, sunscreen containing cancer-causing ingredients, worldwide recalls of laxatives, cancer medication being pulled from the market, pulse oximeters not working on darker skin, UV disinfectant wands containing unsafe levels of radiation, updates on previously posted investigations, products causing neck injuries in babies, and a lot more.
categories listed below the cut:
dietary supplements,
drugs
warnings, communications, shortages, and more
updates
misc
resources
dietary supplements:
more dietary supplements (usually advertised for sexual health) have been recalled for containing undeclared prescription drugs. at least one of these recalls affects products sold in canada. you should probably make a habit of searching "[supplement name] site:fda.gov". maybe slightly a funny, one of them was called "launch sequence"...as in...for your pocket rocket.
dietary supplements, including ones sold in stores such as vitamin supplements, are not approved or inspected by the FDA before sale and are not regulated the same way as food and drugs. the FDA tells dietary supplement companies to investigate themselves before selling any given product, which inevitably often contain undeclared allergens, undeclared ingredients, undeclared drug ingredients, undeclared prescription ingredients, contamination, and even lie about the potency of their supplements. and this is only when these companies get CAUGHT by the FDA, which can be years after a product launches on the market. these issues are not exclusive to aphrodisiacs sold on aliexpress, and even apply to over the counter vitamin C.
biotin (vitamin b7) can make you false negative covid-19 tests, and can make many other medical tests inaccurate.
drugs:
banana boat 30spf spray-on sunscreen has been recalled due to testing positive benzene, a cancer-causing substance
the recall of magnesium citrate based laxatives due to contamination with dangerous bacteria has expanded beyond just lemon flavors. there have been multiple reports of severe illness. this bacteria usually only harms those with reduced immune function.
even more magnesium citrate laxative recalls, and this recall is WORLDWIDE. repeating again, the magnesium citrate laxative recall is worldwide
plakiston healthcare expands june recall of milk of magnesia, magnesium hydroxide, aluminum hydroxide, simethicone oral suspension due to microbial contamination.
june 6: lymphoma medicine ukoniq (umbralisib) had its FDA approval removed and has been taken off the market due to being unsafe, after several months of investigating reports of increased risk of death.
back in april a nationwide recall was issued due to injections for testosterone, tacrolimus, cyclosporine, gonadorelin, and gonadoraline acetate from APS pharmacy/drug depot llc due to not being sterile. these recalls affected both human and animal supplies.
warnings, communications, shortages, and more:
june 21: FDA announces a committee meeting later this year to address how pulse oximeters (usually finger clamps) are WAY less accurate on darker skin due to not being calibrated for darker skin. incorrect pulse oximeter readings continue to prevent patients from receiving adequate and sometimes life-saving care, because the devices claimed the patients were doing better than they actually were. the racial bias in these devices is very dangerous.
june 30: FDA issued a warning that cancer drug copiktra (duvelisib) can cause severe side effects, including death.
FDA issued a medical device safety communication about UV disinfectant wands having unsafe levels of radiation and do not abide by safety regulations. these are sold nationwide and potentially worldwide, in stores and online. they can cause injury within a few seconds. one familiar included brand is sharper image.
stop using neck floats on babies. "Neck floats are inflatable plastic rings that can be worn around a baby’s neck and allow babies to float freely in water. Some neck floats are marketed for babies as young as two weeks old or premature babies and are designed to cradle a baby's head while their body moves freely in the water." these can decapitate your baby
when testing for monkeypox, use swabs from the skin lesions (boils, cuts, etc). do not use tests taken from saliva, blood, or anywhere other than the skin. there is not enough data showing that tests swabs from places other than lesions are accurate.
april 2022 but still important: FDA has found a link between pediatric iodine contrast exposure and hypothyroidism.
FDA's website lists over 120 drugs currently experiencing shortages, many of them due to increased demand. the FDA website is also experiencing technical difficulties.
there are also shortages of medical devices, equipment, and protective gear for reasons such as increased demand and products being discontinued
updates:
the investigation into cheerios and lucky charms is still open, active, and ongoing. no cause has been found yet. it is unclear how many products have been affected and no products have been recalled. reports of illness continue. investigation #1064
if you did not get sick from cheerios or lucky charms, congratulations, you just found out that not everyone gets sick from many types of food poisoning. the investigation is still ongoing and active with no indication of how many products are affected, or what they are affected with.
the FDA has not issued an updated statement on why daily harvest or revive superfoods are giving people liver problems to the point of needing surgery.
I am never fucking shopping at family dollar again unless I feel like consuming dead rat juice. it is absolutely repulsive how many times they get caught doing unsafe and potentially deadly things with their products.
misc
covid-19 tests have a significant chance of false negative, sometimes ABOVE 50%. yes, even PCR tests can tell you that you do not have covid-19 when you actually do, which is what a false negative is. a positive result means you probably have covid-19. negative result on a covid-19 test means you probably have a nose. at home tests (rapid antigen testing, aka RATs) cannot detect the majority of asymptomatic covid-19 cases. over a 60% false negative rate what the absolute shitting fuck. false negatives will increase as covid-19 continues to mutate.
30% of covid-19 survivors, including those which are asymptomatic and vaccinated, get long covid. link is from dysautonomia international, which is a worldwide leader in researching, treating, and educating about causes and triggers of autonomic dysfunction like coronaviruses. they recently wrapped up an international medical conference with a heavy focus on the many long-term effects of covid-19 and how to diagnose and treat them. I attended this conference, and I will post when the dysautonomia international presentations become available to the public.
my tag for food and drugs is #fo&dr. I keep forgetting to add things to it, though.
resources:
report and track local cases of food poisoning: iwaspoisoned
report unsafe practices, adverse effects, food poisoning: FDA
subscribe to alerts for recalls
safe food handling
food information by topic
USDA foodkeeper app
not directly related to FDA stuff, but if you are feeling overwhelmed, I curated a reading list to learn about stationery.
whew! this took a long time to write.
if you want to toss me a coin for compiling this information, please only do so if you are financially stable, comfortable, and will not otherwise be negatively impacted by giving me money. food poisoning has played a big role in my health being eviscerated, so I am glad just to know I have been able to help others.
thank you to everyone who has helped affirm the need for posts like this or has reached out to let me know I was able to help you, and I hope I have convinced you to keep up to date with FDA activities!
To some, civilization's collapse promises a social and economic reset. But historical disasters show us that society is surprisingly resilient.
If you heard today that a plague was coming that would rapidly kill between 30 and 50% of the general population, you might reasonably expect this to lead to the collapse of society. It’s hard to see how obligations and social accounting could survive such a massive event. Some might even see it as a chance for a new beginning.
But this catastrophe actually happened in the historical record, and when it did, the direct ancestor of our own society continued a remarkable level of its day-to-day functioning. The bibliography of any book about the Black Death in England is laden with references to tax receipts, court cases, and parish death records. Much of what we know about the plague comes from records generated by the continuous operations of the very institutions that one might expect to completely fall apart in a super-mortality event.
The English law courts sat with only minimal interruptions even during the brutal first wave of the Black Death from 1348 to 1349. The Court of Common Pleas conducted its full end-of-year term in 1348, while the Court of King’s Bench sat uninterrupted at York. In 1349, the Court of Common Pleas continued regular operations at Westminster. The King’s Bench operated at Lincoln, remaining “surprisingly busy.” It appears that the courts were forced to adjourn only for May and June of 1349, the very peak of the epidemic.
Evidently, the courts had busy dockets even as litigants, judges, and attorneys succumbed to the plague left and right. In fact, the very pace of the death was likely driving much of the litigation: property changed hands at an accelerated rate, heirs sued each other over their shares of unexpected windfalls, debtors died, and creditors disputed over who would seize the silver and furniture.
Arguments, legal nitpicking, and the cross-examining of claimants to estates went on as usual, even as the wagons of the municipal corpse collectors creaked past the courthouse windows. At the end of the process, the only result was paper in the form of writs and orders, bearing the wax seal of the court. The successful litigant would have taken these papers away, and traveled home through a surreal scene of fresh graves, shuttered homes, and people wandering the roads proclaiming the end of days. In all likelihood, the winner of the case would himself die later that year or in the next spring, and the process would repeat.
What is missing from this grim picture is the expected widespread anarchy. If a manor house is still standing in 2022, the current occupant’s chain of title likely traces back to orderly inheritance proceedings conducted during the Black Death.
Law and governance did not just persist as usual during the Black Death. The power of both the state and the courts actively increased in response to the challenge, much as they have during modern disasters. The ancestors of today’s credit securement processes evolved rapidly during this time: “Penal bonds, punitive remedies under detinue of charters, and uses all came into vogue because their utilization encouraged more members of the upper orders to stand by their commercial obligations.” Records show that by 1352 “the use of penal bonds increased dramatically, and they were also used to enforce debts.”
The executive function of government also remained largely unimpaired by the Black Death. Between 1348 and 1349 it was recorded that many laborers, expecting the imminent end of the world, had absconded from their jobs into idleness, or were demanding greatly increased wages to do any work.
In response to this disaster-holiday mentality, the Council of Edward III issued the Ordinance of Laborers in the June of 1349, which decreed that everyone under age 60 must work, and workers may not receive wages higher than pre-plague levels. The ordinance also imposed price controls on food and prohibited alms for able-bodied beggars. By 1351, a strengthened version of this ordinance was being actively enforced through legal prosecutions against violators, and the English state was largely successful in imposing mandatory employment, along with wage and price controls, during the remainder of the economic crisis.
The Black Death did not bring on any great social reset—in fact, survivors experienced the very opposite. In the chaos of mass death, the state enforced obligations to work and fulfill debts with increasing stringency. Eventually, laborers did gain financially from their increased bargaining power. But this was a slower process that took a generation or two to fully make itself felt, with no immediate dramatic reordering of society.
There was only one road to escaping financial and social debts during the Black Death, and it was traveled by plague carts carrying bodies….
It is very difficult to specify any death toll or infrastructure destruction that would, in itself, make fundamental or lasting changes to our systems of governance. Even nuclear war may not reach the threshold.
There are a number of counterexamples to the persistence of mundane economic life, property rights, trade, and governance. One might ask about the fates of East German landlords. Or pre-1949 debts in China. What about paper farm deeds in Cuba? What about French Ancien Regime estates after 1790?
These counter-examples quite neatly answer the question of what events are actually known to radically change society. The real force that reorders society is always human action, driven by political or ideological coordination. Disaster becomes a moment for organized political actors to upset the existing order in a given place, either by foreign conquest or by revolution.
Without some human force ready to make use of disaster, neither plague nor destruction are sufficient in themselves to rewrite how society functions. Where these things occur without a strong existing revolutionary ideology, the status quo recovers with amazing speed. On the other hand, revolutions have succeeded repeatedly without requiring major physical disruptions at all, such as those of Cuba and Iran.
In this sense, the apocalyptic cults and radical militias may actually be closer to the truth than the docile pessimist who fantasizes about getting to leave his office job. The former, at least, understand that collapse is only ever an opportunity for motivated actors whose power survives or even increases after a disaster. But such people are rarely found among society’s malcontents. As history shows, those who benefit from collapse are often already among its heights.
