United States of Anxiety

Pick up Charlestown trash on Saturday

Want help with your garden?

URI Master Gardeners awaiting your call (or email)

Kristen Curry

The URI Gardening & Environmental Hotline is now open and in full operation through Nov. 1. (URI Photos / Cooperative Extension)

Have a garden quandary or need some advice before you start planting your 2026 garden? Ready to celebrate spring but don’t know where to start?

The University of Rhode Island Gardening & Environmental Hotline is now open and in full operation through Nov. 1.

Southern New Englanders are welcome to send an email and photos to the University’s Master Gardener volunteer educators or call for science based-answers to their gardening and environmental questions. In-person visits are also available by appointment at URI’s Mallon Outreach Center on the Kingston Campus. Just call 401-874-4836 or email gardener@uri.edu.

Food Companies Backslide on Promises to Reduce Pesticides

Raise your hand if you are surprised

By Lisa Held 

Article Summary

• In an annual report, As You Sow awarded lower scores to 10 out of 17 major food companies on their approach to mitigating pesticide risks.
• Companies are making little progress in reducing the volume of pesticides used in the U.S. food system, despite the increase in public awareness.
• An increase in consumer pressure could push companies to improve; many companies that scored poorly in the report are also seeing their stock prices decrease.

In 2019, food giant General Mills debuted a three-point strategy to reduce synthetic pesticide use within its supply chains. The plan was to implement regenerative agriculture practices on 1 million acres of farmland by 2030, increase the use of integrated pest management (IPM) on farms, and expand organic acreage.

More than six years later, the webpage that outlined that plan redirects visitors to a page on regenerative agriculture, where the word “pesticide” does not appear.

“They are no longer aligning their regenerative agriculture program with pesticide reduction at all, which is obviously concerning, because what the soil science points to is that regenerative without significant pesticide reduction is not regenerating soil health,” said Cailin Dendas, the senior coordinator of As You Sow’s Environmental Health Program.

Dendas is the author of a new report that found General Mills is not alone: It’s one of several food companies moving away from earlier promises to reduce pesticide use.

Thanks to Trump’s Iran War, Big Oil Raking in $30 Million Per Hour in Windfall Profits

Making Trump's friends richer

Brad Reed

Donald Trump’s unprovoked war of choice in Iran has been a goldmine for the fossil fuels industry, which is earning massive windfall profits thanks to the rise in the price of petroleum.

An analysis published by The Guardian estimated that the 100 biggest oil and gas companies have collectively raked in an extra $30 million per hour since Trump launched his war with Iran without any congressional authorization in late February.

In just the first month of the conflict, The Guardian reported, Big Oil made $23 billion in windfall profits, and the industry is projected to haul in an additional $234 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year if the price of oil stays in the $100 range.

The top beneficiaries of the Iran conflict are Saudi Aramco, which is projected to earn $25.5 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year; Kuwait Petroleum Corp., which is projected to earn $12.1 billion; and ExxonMobil, which is projected to earn $11 billion.

Five top psychiatric specialists warn Congress about Trump’s instability and danger

They cite the “Dark Triad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. 

Jeffrey D. Sach, sBandy X. Lee, James Gilligan, Prudence L. Gourguechon and James R. Merikangas in Common Dreams

Editor’s note: The following letter was sent to the bipartisan leadership of Congress on Monday, April 13, 2026 in regard to recent rhetoric and actions taken by US President Donald J. Trump.

Senator John Thune
Senate Majority Leader, US Senate

Senator Charles E. Schumer
Senate Minority Leader, US Senate

Representative Mike Johnson
Speaker of the House, US House of Representatives

Representative Hakeem Jeffries
House Minority Leader, US House of Representatives

Dear Senate Majority Leader Thune, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, Speaker Johnson, and House Minority Leader Jeffries:

We write to you today with a sense of urgency that we do not use lightly. The behavior and rhetoric of President Donald Trump have crossed a threshold that demands the immediate and bipartisan attention of Congress. This is not a partisan assessment. It is a judgment grounded in observable fact, consistent professional assessment, and the constitutional responsibilities that your offices carry.

President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the “Dark Triad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Rather than constituting a clinical diagnosis, this trait-based assessment is grounded in behavioral observation and is particularly useful for assessing the level of danger an individual poses in a political leadership position. We do not offer this as a clinical verdict. We offer it as the considered judgment of a substantial body of professional opinion, based on well-researched evidence that is consistent, accumulating, and impossible to dismiss.

What makes this more than an academic matter is what predictably happens when this personality structure collides with immovable obstacles. The clinical literature is clear: individuals with Dark Triad profiles, when confronted with situations they cannot control or escape, do not recalibrate. They escalate. The psychological imperative to relieve narcissistic collapse overrides strategic calculation, concern for consequences, and ordinary self-restraint. Rage surges to domination. Impulsivity overrides caution. The urgent need to extinguish psychological pain eclipses every other consideration.

We are watching this dynamic unfold in real time.

The President’s recent public communications have been, by any normal standard of political discourse, alarming. His posts demanding that Iran “open the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards” and his threat to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages,” adding that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” are not the rhetoric of calculated geopolitical pressure. They are the expressions of a man in profound psychological distress who is reaching for the most extreme retaliatory threats available to him. That these statements were addressed to an adversary in the context of an active military confrontation makes them not merely shocking but profoundly dangerous.

President Trump has now ordered a US naval blockade of Iran — an action that has sent world oil prices soaring and placed the United States in direct opposition to the international community. His ongoing actions carry the potential to trigger a global economic catastrophe, draw in regional and great powers, and ignite a wider conflict with consequences that no one can bound. These orders are being issued without adequate deliberation, without congressional authorization, and in a context in which the President’s judgment is, by every visible measure, severely compromised.

We urge three specific actions.

Trump does it again. Can't help himself.

Celebrate diversity, April 18

Make $105 BILLION and pay NO taxes

Two new studies could change critics’ opinions about how many birds die from wind turbines

Trump, wrong again

By Diana Resnik, EuroNews

Critics say wind turbines endanger birds but two new studies have now analysed the risk in more detail. What they have found could change the debate.

The energy company Vattenfall and the tech company Spoor have analyzed the extent to which wind turbines endanger birds at the offshore wind farm in Aberdeen. Over a period of 19 months - from June 2023 to December 2024 - video recordings of a wind turbine were made with the help of AI-supported analyses. A total of 2,007 bird flight paths near the monitored turbine were examined.

"By combining AI-powered detection and detailed expert analysis, we can replace assumptions with concrete observations and measure actual behavior in the immediate vicinity of wind turbines," says Ask Helseth, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Spoor.

The study found that there was not a single collision, "The results from Aberdeen Bay show that modern offshore wind farms can be operated with low risk to wildlife," says Dr Eva Julius-Philipp, Director Environment and Sustainability BU Wind at Vattenfall.

German Offshore Wind Energy Association (BWO) study: Over 99 per cent of migratory birds avoid wind turbines

New Study Reveals a Simple Life Is the Real Secret to Happiness

You don’t need to be rich although poverty is not fun 

Not to mention, life in New Zealand is different than here

By University of Otago

At a time when displays of extreme wealth dominate headlines and social media feeds, a new study suggests that more consumption does not necessarily translate into a better life.

Research from the University of Otago indicates that stepping away from material excess may be linked to greater day-to-day satisfaction and stronger social connections.

The team set out to examine how consumption relates to well-being. Their findings indicate that people report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction when they adopt more sustainable lifestyles and resist consumer-driven habits.

The researchers analyzed data from a representative sample of more than 1,000 New Zealanders. The group included 51 percent men and 49 percent women, with a median age of 45 and a median annual household income of $50,000.

They found that embracing simple living, formally known as ‘voluntary simplicity,’ supports well-being by creating more opportunities for social interaction and meaningful connection. These benefits often arise in settings such as community gardens, shared resource systems, and peer-to-peer lending platforms, which differ from traditional market exchanges.

Tax the Corporations Cashing in on War

The least war profiteers can do is pay taxes

By Meghan Schneider, Cass DiPaola

Our dependence on fossil fuels does more than pollute our air. It destabilizes the world and empowers the ultra-wealthy to profit off of that volatility, leaving working families to pay the price.

This dynamic has been on full display since Donald Trump’s attack on Iran.

Trump’s invasion of one of the world’s most oil-rich regions jolted energy markets, sending gas prices soaring to the highest level in either of his terms. In 2024 he campaigned on cutting them in half. Instead, Americans are now on track to pay roughly $720 more for gasoline this year.

The full cost to working families will be much steeper as high gas prices drive up prices on consumer goods across the board. We’re already seeing that ripple effect take hold, as the U.S. Postal Service has proposed a temporary 8 percent fuel surcharge on package deliveries to offset rising transportation costs tied directly to the war-driven spike in oil prices.

At the same time, the oil and gas companies that invested at least $75 million in Trump’s reelection are cashing in on this instability. A recent Financial Times analysis estimates that U.S. oil companies could collect an additional $63 billion in revenue this year if crude prices remain at these wartime levels. In March alone, the industry is expected to generate $5 billion in extra cash flow.

This type of windfall isn’t a fluke. We’ve seen this pattern for decades.

Oil has a way of appearing in the background of every chapter of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and beyond. Iran nationalized its oil industry in the 1950s and a CIA-backed coup followed. Iraq, sitting on some of the world’s largest reserves, was invaded in 2003. And earlier this year, the U.S. invaded Venezuela and immediately began plans for a taxpayer-backed oil industry takeover.

Surprising truths about America’s tax history

"The Price of Democracy"

By Gerald Scorse

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Taxes, for instance, have been changing and staying the same ever since Reagan and the 1980s: They’ve been heaven for corporations and the rich, purgatory or worse for everybody else.

Now comes a groundbreaking book that looks back not just decades but centuries. It’s Vanessa A. Williamson’s The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History. The surprises never stop coming.

Surprise No. 1, the Boston Tea Party. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that taxes were the cause. Not so; the Sons of Liberty were actually opposing the bailout of the “too big to fail” East India Company. As Samuel Adams warned, the bailout was “introductive to Monopolies.” 

Williamson says the colonists never objected to paying taxes. “To the extent the American Revolution was about taxation,” she writes, “it was about the desire of Americans to tax themselves…"

Come 1787, the new America had to decide what its own tax policies would be. Next surprise, the framers of the Constitution agreed that the wealthy few had to be protected from the masses. Listen to this from Alexander Hamilton: 

“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people.” As Hamilton saw it, the people “seldom judge or determine right.”

Thomas Paine saw things the other way around.  

Everybody knows that Paine helped ignite the American Revolution. Not many know that he wanted a tax revolution as well. Paine worried about the “overgrown influence” of wealth, calling it “one of the principal sources of corruption at elections.” He wanted marginal income tax rates, topping out at 100%.  Echoing Paine, an early New York newspaper proposed that “men should by every fair means be legally prevented from becoming exorbitantly rich”.

THANK YOU!

 

Says it all

On top of that, "Doordash Grannie" is a phony