Members of the White Rose student group who resisted the Nazis:

I’ve had this old wacom tablet in the closet for years that someone gave me, and never tried to use it. I don’t know how. Now I think it might be useful! Here’s my very first attempt at making a drawing with it:

I recently got a booklet of Safeway coupons on “earth-friendly products.” Conserving natural resources is “at the heart of” their business, it says. If I were a trusting sort, I would think this must obviously mean they don’t sell anything the production of which harms the planet. But alas, I would be disappointed. In the business world, conserving just means destroying not quite as wantonly as usual, and feeling deserving of congratulations for that restraint.

Safeway celebrates the fact that since 1990, more than 150 billion Pepsi containers have been recycled. “That’s a big number but we know it can be much bigger,” the booklet says. It’s big, all right — real big! 150 billion! With a “b”!

They generously offer $1 off of two twelve-packs, so we can recycle even more Pepsi cans. Don’t you feel all green and fuzzy now? Let’s get out there and buy plenty of Pepsi!

More from the Safeway coupon booklet. Did you know that Campbell’s soup is good for the environment? As implied by the accompanying photograph of a happy family running on grass, it makes people healthy (you’d be less likely to run and laugh if you’re not well-nourished, or if your soup had toxins in it, wouldn’t you?), and good health is of course a function to environmental sustainability, so…. we’re left to figure out that connection ourselves. Presumably the cans don’t have that poisonous plastic lining that most cans have? We don’t know. The ad doesn’t mention this. What it DOES say is that because the soup is condensed, the cans are smaller than they would be if it wasn’t, so 130 million pounds more of metal per year would have been used if the soup already contained the water that customers add at home. But they put it a different way. They say this 130 million pounds of metal was “saved.” (Left in the ground? The mining companies said, “let’s not mine this last 130 million pounds of metal because Campell’s soup doesn’t need it”?) Let’s not think about how much metal was USED, more metal that would have been “saved” if people made soup from ingredients not purchased in cans. Let’s focus instead, as we’re supposed to, on all the metal that *wasn’t* used, that could have been, if Campbell’s was not condensed. Let’s focus on the drawing of the Earth with leaves coming out of it behind the image of the soup can, and the words “earth-friendly” at the top of the ad. $1 off on 4 cans!