Portside

While new labor contracts cover only 140,000 unionized employees at the Big Three carmakers, they could lift pay standards for the nearly 1 million people who work in the U.S. auto industry and may also spur wage gains through the broader labor market. The deals come after a decade without raises for senior workers and lower wages and benefits for new hires--which almost completely eliminated the wage premium autoworkers once enjoyed over the average American worker.

In the 1980s and 90s, science rediscovered the existence of umami and in 2002 identified its taste receptor. And, as they say, the rest was history. Not only has umami been universally recognized in sensory science, it’s become the darling of professionals looking to enhance the taste of savory foods. Umami can be leveraged, not just for tastier foods, but for healthier ones.

After provincial bargaining stalled, 400,000 public sector workers across Quebec walked out in October and November on rolling one-day strikes.

The series is a nice reminder that although comic books are derided as a kids’ medium, their supernatural setups can provide us with clarifying thought experiments that allow us to approach our present dilemmas with fresh perspectives.

A new documentary, Chicago Boys, looks at the Chilean economists who brought neoliberalism from the halls of Chicago to the policies of Latin America.

The New York Times gets a new NSA doc confirming what some had long suspected.

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders came to Allen University Saturday with very different views of the criminal justice system and what should be done to address its failings.

In response to the Congressional declaration of war in April 1917, delegates at a Socialist party convention declared their “unalterable opposition” to it. The federal government began prosecuting Socialist Party leaders. Socialist Congressman Victor Berger, convicted under the Espionage Act, was expelled from the House of Representatives, re-elected by the voters, and then expelled again. Debs responded with a blistering speech at a party rally in Canton, Ohio.

As the oceans continue to become more acidic as they absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, corals are under the dual stress of rising temperatures and acidity.

ISIS (and al-Qaeda) is engaged in a global “danse macabre” with the U.S. and its allies. ISIS attacks, spreading death, chaos, panic, and alarm in our world at next to no cost at all. Washington and its allies respond with big-budget versions of the same, including intensified air campaigns that wreak death and havoc on civilian populations and infrastructure. Each is committed to creating a world where there are no gray zones, only a “clash of civilizations.”