Maybe … Ian Millhiser watched today’s first Supreme Court arguments and they were apparently as nutty as the shenanigans taking place on the House floor today, where the MAGA kooks have decided to oust their own speaker and the NY Courthouse steps where Trump is babbling incoherently during every break. Imagine that the Supreme Court of the United States spent an entire morning debating whether penguins are the primary cause of colon cancer or whether John F. Kennedy was assassinated by aliens from the planet Venus. That’s more or less the quality of arguments that former Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco presented to the Court on Tuesday, as part of a quizzical effort to convince the justices to declare an entire federal agency unconstitutional. The good news is that the Court appears unlikely to buy what Francisco is selling.
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One of the things I’m interested in is gardening with native plants. So, I love following the #NativePlants hashtag on the fediverse. I get to see people using native plants in their gardens, talking about interesting species, and showing great gardening photos. However, the native plant gardening community is pretty big. And the social web … Continue reading Ecoregion Hashtags
So, this map tells you about half of what you need to know about the war in Ukraine this year:
With a population of 1.4 million, Chinese-Australians are the largest ethnic minority community in Australia and our say has weight. From the perspective of that community, an important objective must be playing our part in seeing Australia lift its game to match world standards of acceptance of minorities and particularly of its indigenous peoples. We Continue reading »
On 11 November the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, (AFOPA), based in Adelaide, will host the nineteenth Edward Said Memorial Lecture (ESML), at the Hawke Centre in Adelaide. The event is news-worthy particularly as the Australian Labor Party (ALP) struggles with the issue of Palestine at this time. Edward Said was a Palestinian American academic Continue reading »
At the heart of David Marr’s new book, Killing for Country, is a crucial question. How should we deal with old, ugly secrets within our own families? Should we ignore them as excesses of the past, when and where things were done differently, or should we examine them closely for clues and lessons that might Continue reading »
Sooner or later – many hope sooner – people will decide that the scourging and self-flagellation of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the big consultancies has gone far enough. A few penances – perhaps if the AFP are up to it, a few prosecutions – and government departments can resume the business of outsourcing most of its thinking Continue reading »
Any roadmap to Australia’s future labour market must be based on an accurate analysis of skills. Sadly, the employment white paper reflects the slant imposed by the ‘tech is tops’ narrative. Now, let’s be clear here: I’m not disputing the impact of technology and automation on society and work, the need to be digitally literate Continue reading »
It has often been suggested that the LNP have always used an underlying fear and insecurity in the general public as a means of securing voting support on the basis that they offer better protection against external and internal threats. Typically, these threats are left vague, yet it is wholly evident that the main stream Continue reading »
The last week in September saw the much delayed (due to Covid) opening of the 19th Asian Games. This event which is held on a four-year cycle involves participants from 45 nations, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the enormous populations in this part of the world sees a larger number of athletes taking part than even Continue reading »
There’s been much less coverage of this actual thing that happened than there was of Trump’s various suggestions that he would do it (followed by him not doing it). https://t.co/qU9h9AWR8Y — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 3, 2023 President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that the manufacturers of all of the first 10 prescription drugs selected for Medicare’s first price negotiations have agreed to participate, clearing the way for talks that could lower their costs in coming years and give him a potential political win heading into next year’s election. The drugs include the blood thinner Eliquis, which the White House said was used by more than 3.7 million Medicare enrollees from June of last year through this past May and had an average out-of-pocket cost of $608 per enrollee for 2022. Also included is diabetes treatment Jardiance, which was used by nearly 1.6 million Medicare enrollees and had a 2022 out-of-pocket cost per enrollee of $490.
Yours truly, of course, feels truly honoured to find himself on the list of the world’s 20 Best Econometrics Blogs and Websites. 2. Bruno Rodrigues 7. Eran Raviv Blog Statistics and Econometrics 9. How the (Econometric) Sausage is Made 14. Lars P Syll Pålsson Syll received a PhD in economic history in 1991 and a PhD […]
Stardate 59963.2
Welcome to a new school year. In the coming days, a cohort of cadets will begin arriving on campus, and I look forward to continuing our centuries-long tradition of preparing students to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no one has gone before.
There was much positive news for the Academy over the summer break. In the newest QS rankings, we improved by two positions and are now in a three-way tie for sixty-third in the Alpha Quadrant with the Pakled Institute of Technology and Cornell. We also broke ground on the construction of a new dormitory and satellite campus to serve students in the growing Borg Collective market, thanks to the generosity of a record number of anonymous donors.
QOTD: John Kelly CNN reports: “What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. Of course we knew all this. Kelly has now confirmed it. MAGA cultists believe that all these people who worked for Trump are liars. All of them Tens of millions of deluded people believe it. As Kelly says, “God help us.”
As GOP-gerrymandered legislatures vie for Most Authoritarian North Carolina Republicans held the state budget and Medicaid expansion hostage to a failed attempt to expand casino gambling for three months. They finally passed the budget on September 22. Gov. Roy Cooper allowed it to become law without his signature. A veto and inevitable override vote would have been a pointless additional delay. We sounded the 🚨 on this when the NC budget dropped with this hidden language. Now the national media are paying attention. Thanks to @JuddLegum and @tesszeeks for putting some ☀️on what’s happening here in NC. https://t.co/vnl6425yhP — Sen. Graig Meyer (@GraigMeyer) October 2, 2023 There was one teensy rider added. Judd Legum reports in a thread: In other words, something like National Security Letters provided for in the Patriot Act (for those who ain’t). 5. Gov Ops is dominated by Republicans and pursues partisan investigations. It is co-chaired by Senate Leader Phil Berger (R) and House Speaker Tim Moore (R).
UsForThem is linked to controversial anti-vax campaign figures and organisations believing in a global socialist 'Great Reset' led by powerful capitalists
Consider another problem of motivation in the house of fiction: why characters write.
On August 28th, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks chose the occasion of a three-day conference organized by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), the arms industry’s biggest trade group, to announce the “Replicator Initiative.” Among other things, it would involve producing “swarms of drones” that could hit thousands of targets in China on short notice. Call it the full-scale launching of techno-war. Her speech to the assembled arms makers was yet another sign that the military-industrial complex (MIC) President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about more than 60 years ago is still alive, all too well, and taking a new turn. Call it the MIC for the digital age. Hicks described the goal of the Replicator Initiative this way:... Read more
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