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Money is something you can (sometimes) exchange for wealth, but it’s not wealth itself.

When I say sometimes I mean that there are things you can’t buy: what those things are change from place to place and time to time. The classic formulation of the preconditions for capitalism includes the ability to buy land, labor and capital. In most places and times you couldn’t actually hire most people to work–they were bound to the land, their clans, or whatever or they could support themselves and sure didn’t want to work for someone else.

Likewise most land was inherited or in the commons and definitely not for sale. You couldn’t buy it.

Wealth is what you control (not own, control) that can be used to make something, grow something or support violent people.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

The Government's commitment to build more homes, while protecting wildlife from deadly pollutants is "failing to deliver for either side"

All is not lost: The Republican Party’s increasing Trump-era tendency toward more extreme nominees and its struggles to account for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade have already cost it plenty. It’s quite possible that these things cost it control of the Senate in both the 2020 and 2022 elections. If unpopular GOP nominees in key states had merely matched the political fundamentals, Republicans might have held the Senate for the duration of Joe Biden’s presidency and had a much more significant House majority with which to work today. Now, these same things may have cost Republicans control of a state. New Hampshire on Tuesday became the latest state in which Democrats over-performed in a special election — a trend that has held very steady ever since Roe was overturned last summer. Democrat Hal Rafter won by 12 points in a state House district that went narrowly for Donald Trump in 2020.

Seahorses don’t care if there’s plenty other fish in the sea.

The post Seahorse Love Works in Mysterious Ways appeared first on Nautilus.

Many animals suffer from seasonal affective disorder. Scientists are just figuring out what that means.

The post Pandas Feel “SAD” Too appeared first on Nautilus.

MSNBC framing of today’s hearing: Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared before the House judiciary Committee for the first time since Donald Trump and Hunter Biden’s separate indictments and it went about how you would expect it to go. House Republicans accused AG Garland of politicizing the Department of Justice to protect President Biden. Democrats accused Republicans of politicizing Judicial Oversight to benefit Donald Trump and AG Garland, well, he just tried to defend himself. Oh those crazy Republicans and Democrats. They’re all full of shit, amirite? Just playing politics. Waddaya gonna do? This is the problem, folks. It’s not “both sides.” It’s Republicans. It’s not hard to make a judgment about this. It’s called reality.

Claire Potter talks about the Lauren Boebert “situation” in her newsletter today making the point that while it’s not nice to slut-shame women, it’s something that Boebert and her erstwhile buddy Marjorie Taylor Greene actually embrace as a big part of their MAGA image: … I do not feel inclined to lecture other people who slut-shame Lauren Boebert. I think it is misguided, and it isn’t because of the unproven allegations that she actually worked as an escort on a sugar-daddy website. It’s because she has spent a lot of time and energy polishing her reputation as a Gun Chick, a popular erotic figure on the right who we might tentatively define as “the slutty girl next door—with a gun.” It’s not an accident that Boebert looks and acts slutty; it’s calculated. It is something you are supposed to notice, and it is supposed to cause Republican dicks to lead the male voters they are attached to into the voting booth on election day.

Speaking in New York on Tuesday during the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, Foreign Minister Penny Wong called for negotiations to begin on a treaty that would halt the production of fissile material – the basic ingredient for nuclear bombs. “We all want a world without nuclear weapons,” she said, and Continue reading »

Increasingly I keep finding myself singing, even humming or whistling the old Graham Nash song, ‘Military Madness,’ sometimes hardly aware that I am doing so. ‘Military madness is killing my country Solitary sadness comes over me, War, war, war, war, war, war.’ Of course Australia has always been obsessed with war. While still ‘opening up Continue reading »

According to independent observers who visited the region, Beijing has implemented policies to help Uygurs after crushing terrorist threat. We have all heard the “genocide” narrative from the mainstream news media about Xinjiang. Four independent German sinologists and an international law specialist investigated on site on their own initiative in May and returned with their Continue reading »

Shadow boxing around “universal health coverage” instead of “universal access to healthcare” in the UN General Assembly reflects deeper tensions around the direction of the world economy. At the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly on Thursday, 21 September the delegates will consider a compromise document on universal health coverage (the 1 September draft Continue reading »

The Australian public needs to know why persecution of the principled, courageous ATO whistle blower Richard Boyle has dragged on for six years. He blew the whistle on the ATO in October 2017, the AFP raided his home in April 2018, in March 2023 a judge in South Australia decided he was not immune from Continue reading »

Australians have been able to witness the voter remorse that can arise when a nation votes on a specific question of policy in a referendum that has the potential to set their country on a new course. Referendum questions with that level of significance don’t come along very often for democratic nations but when they Continue reading »

We believe the right and best course of action would be for the United States’ Department of Justice to cease its pursuit and prosecution of Julian Assange.” As a cross-party delegation of Australian politicians headed to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday to pressure the U.S. government to end its yearslong pursuit of jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Continue reading »

The questioning of Merrick Garland before the House Judiciary Committee is enough to make you give up on democracy if this is what we have as leaders BIGGS: Is it consistent with DOJ policy to give people a heads up so they can move boxes of information? GARLAND: You’re asking me to comment on a particular case BIGGS: Forget Delaware and what they did GARLAND: I’m sorry, I thought you were asking about Mar-a-Lago pic.twitter.com/WUmgxVQo6O — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 20, 2023 Jim Jordan’s latest galaxy-brain conspiracy theory is that Biden decided to let a Trump-appointed US attorney stay on as part of a plot to protect Hunter Biden pic.twitter.com/yco8QkqR9l — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 20, 2023 Huh? This makes no sense. Massie asked how many. How does indicting Epps give the answer to how many? My gawd this is so stupid. https://t.co/Dkt0Ao4nVa — Armando (@ArmandoNDK) September 20, 2023

Inspired by the original game, of course.

Click puzzle for the solution.

Codenamed GAMECHANGER, an AI program helps the military make sense of its own “byzantine” and “tedious” bureaucracy.

The post Pentagon’s Budget Is So Bloated That It Needs an AI Program to Navigate It appeared first on The Intercept.

Speaker McCarthy: “It’s hard to pass anything in this place. We started out in a five-seat majority. I got one member who’s now resigned, we’ve got a couple of members who are out as well. Anything we do is pretty tough” pic.twitter.com/bYkJcjsjvc — Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) September 18, 2023 It seems like only yesterday that we were on the cusp of defaulting on the debt and many of us were predicting that the kamikaze Freedom Caucus was going to make it happen. They sure sounded serious. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was unable to keep that extremist right flank under control and they were threatening to unseat him under the rule they insisted he adopt in order to get the votes he needed to attain office if he didn’t meet their demands. With a four vote margin he had almost no room to maneuver. After the interminable 15 rounds of voting and all the backroom deals he had to make to get the gavel back in January the prospects for a deal looked very slim.