‘Before more E15 reaches the pump, boaters deserve a real warning’
David Kennedy at The Hill
An E15 ethanol “blend, although approved for many cars and trucks, is not for boats,” and “using higher ethanol blends can damage fuel systems, create performance problems, increase safety risks and even void warranties,” says David Kennedy. “Clearer labeling at the pump could have saved me that expense and time lost on the water,” and it is a “warning for policymakers to inform their constituents of potential risks to their boats as E15 becomes more widely available.”
‘An HBCU has banned durags and bonnets. That reinforces anti-Blackness.’
A.D. Carson at The Guardian
Tuskegee University’s bonnet and durag ban “has produced polarized responses,” says A.D. Carson. The “policy is ultimately rooted in politics of respectability.” One of the “damaging implications of such a dress code is the reinforcement of anti-Black standards that have been externally and internally imposed on Black people in the United States for decades and have never equaled success or safety.” Debates “about ‘proper attire’ have polarized the country throughout its history” and are “tied to violence.”
‘How science fiction hijacked our political imagination’
David Albertson and Jason Blakely at The Boston Globe
The “most extravagant sci-fi utopians today are also the richest men on the planet,” say David Albertson and Jason Blakely. But it is “not only the billionaires and Marxists who dream of sci-fi abundance.” It is “high time to dispense with outdated nostrums that assume utopianism is either silly or dangerous.” Utopianism “ought to be considered a plausible politics, alongside progressivism, libertarianism and neoliberal realism.” But the “contemporary menu of futuristic imaginings offers rather limited and bizarre fare.”
‘America’s manufacturing future starts with industrial hemp’
David M. Klein at Newsweek
America is “making a costly mistake by treating industrial hemp as just another crop,” says David M. Klein. It is an “industrial material that can strengthen manufacturing, create jobs, reduce dependence on imported raw materials and help build more resilient supply chains.” If Americans “keep limiting hemp to an agricultural debate, we will hand another major manufacturing opportunity to other countries.” If “we build the industries that process and manufacture hemp-based products here at home, America wins.”