Russian President Vladimir Putin (Image: Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik, Kremlin pool photo via AP)

NEW APPROACHES TO ANIMALS

The evidence is unassailable that the animals we farm and feed off have personalities and emotions similar to our own. The astonishing waste of the farmed animal industry — and its grisly toll of animals slaughtered just to be discarded. Fatima Measham on our “love” of native fauna and colonialism. And the American meat industry — one of the most brutal industrial-scale creators of misery on the planet — is being targeted by the Biden White House for its lack of competition.

CRIME

Did you see those pictures of a railroad outside Los Angeles covered in litter from the plague-like theft of parcels from Union Pacific trains? While some conservatives insisted it was all because California is too soft on criminals, others pointed out that there are lots of other factors at play — including how Union Pacific slashed its security spending to increase profits. In the wake of revelations about Joseph Ratzinger’s role in covering up child sexual abuse by German clerics, it’s time to make sure the German state polices the Catholic church properly. And can we forgive clergy who covered up abuse?

Meanwhile an attempt by the New York state government to require nursing home operators to pay staff better wages (similar to a Gillard government scheme that was axed under Abbott) is being opposed by corporations as an illegal seizure of private property — the property being their massive profits made from understaffing aged care and ripping off the elderly. Meantime, over 100,000 senior Americans are dying every year because of particulate pollution.

RIGHT

Once upon a time it was the left, reviling Western liberal societies, that fell for the illusions of Russian dictatorship. Now it’s the right, convinced that the West is corrupted, that looks to Russia with rose-tinted glasses. Lessons from Canadia: American democracy is in real danger of collapse and other countries should prepare for that eventuality (including us, I’d suggest). How American extremism is driving Canadian discourse to extremes. There are no heroes riding to the rescue of American democracy — the hard work of fixing it is everyone’s job. Meanwhile in Poland, women are dying because of that country’s horrific new abortion bans.

LIARVILLE

Has the UK establishment, via the Metropolitan Police, saved Boris Johnson’s bacon via the old “police investigation” shtick (one well-known to politics watchers in Australia)? Opinions are divided: one says yes and one says no. Despite penning op-eds together, BoJo and his chancellor Rishi Sunak have very, very different ideas about fiscal policy. Plus: an essay on one of the most influential British voices on nationalism within the UK.

WOULD YOU LIKE SCIENCE WITH THAT?

Where is the James Webb Space Telescope actually going? To a cool spot in space called the Lagrange Point (well, one of them). Lagrange points seem to have great potential as metaphors for a place to occupy so that you’re not pulled too close to a couple of other things, but alas no one outside physics will know what you mean. How to spot new particles: know your sound waves. And watch some insects take flight, slowed down so you can see every moment of their sometimes eccentric lift-offs.

FINALLY

How QAnon adherents are turning on each other, plus some extra reading suggestions. Greil Marcus’ Real Life Rock Top Ten for January. And bonus canine content: even mops can get the zoomies in the snow.