This week, I have been mostly reading comics, because reality has been very disappointing:

• How long after this week's Gaza massacre are we going to continue pretending that the Palestinians are non-people? — Robert Fisk, the Independent: Monstrous. Frightful. Wicked. It’s strange how the words just run out in the Middle East today. Sixty Palestinians dead. In one day. Two-thousand-four-hundred wounded, more than half by live fire. In one day. The figures are an outrage, a turning away from morality, a disgrace for any army to create. And we are supposed to believe that the Israeli army is one of “purity of arms”? And we have to ask another question. If it’s 60 Palestinians dead in a day this week, what if it’s 600 next week? Or 6,000 next month? Israel’s bleak excuses – and America’s crude response – raise this very question. If we can now accept a massacre on this scale, how far can our immune system go in the days and weeks and months to come?
• Excelsior! — Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:
  
• A Travesty of Protectionism — Michael Hudson: The idea of industrial protectionism, from British free trade in the 19th century to U.S. trade strategy in the 20th century, was to obtain raw materials in the cheapest places – by making other countries compete to supply them – and protect your high-technology manufactures where the major capital investment, profits and monopoly rents are. Trump is doing the reverse: He’s increasing the cost of steel and aluminum raw materials inputs. This will squeeze the profits of industrial companies using steel and aluminum – without protecting their markets.
• Not Available — xkcd:
  
• The Victorians portrayed paedophiles as strangers – and the myth persists today — Ailise Bulfin in the Conversation: The Victorians portrayed paedophiles as scary strangers and social outsiders. By portraying them in this way, it was possible to avoid the unthinkable reality that children could be abused in respectable middle-class homes. This myth of the stranger paedophile is still persistent today. And even though the evidence shows that most child sexual abuse is perpetrated by close family members, the stranger myth continues to distract our attention from the most common type of abuse.
• There’s electricity in the air! But it’s not for sale — The FRED® Blog:
  The graph above shows that electricity production in the United States has steadily grown; and, about 10 years ago, it plateaued. Electricity sales, however, have barely increased in the past decades. What’s happening? The divergence between the two measures is, to a large extent, due to more and more electricity production never hitting the market. Many firms and even households produce their own energy for their own use. This could be energy extraction from byproducts of production such as biogas or burning waste or running one’s own wind or solar farm. The recent flattening of electricity production reflects the fact that electricity demand is not increasing as it has in the past, thanks to improved energy efficiency all around.
• I Win — Jake Likes Onions: