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Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 03:30
Ron DeSantis: “The idea that he’s entitled to this, especially, you know, we had the Biden-Trump in 2020 and Biden’s president. The idea that he’s just entitled after that doesn’t make any sense.” What a dolt. Until; he’s ready to stand up like an adult and admit that the election wasn’t stolen and the The Big Lie is a big lie, then most Republicans still believe he IS entitled to the nomination because the presidency was stolen from him. This mealy mouthed “… and Biden’s president” instead of “and Biden won” plaintive wail is just weak, weak, weak.
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 03:00

A generous salary, a hybrid work schedule, robust PTO, and the ability to put that anthropology degree to use at long last. The commute: minimal. The employer: focused on work-life balance and making a difference. The work: rewarding and enjoyable. In short, I thought I had found my dream job, that is until I learned about the cover letter.

Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 02:12
To criticise/oppose the current mathematical modelling emphasis is to adopt an antiscience stance. It is not. Mathematics is not essential (or inessential) to science; science involves using tools that are appropriate to the given task. A science of economics is perfectly feasible, and the current emphasis on mathematical modelling in economics serves, given the nature […]
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 02:00
Here we go again Fergwadsakes: House Republican leaders are now betting they can come up with 218 GOP votes for the FY2024 defense authorization bill after essentially ending any hope of a bipartisan deal with Democrats. Speaker Kevin McCarthy is giving the House Freedom Caucus and other conservative hardliners what they’ve demanded all week — dozens of “culture war” amendment votes on the $886 billion NDAA package. Conservatives threatened to derail the defense-authorization bill unless they got these votes. The House will take up these amendments today in what promises to be a long and bitterly partisan slugfest. McCarthy wants to vote on final passage for the NDAA bill by Friday. You can see the list of NDAA amendments here. These GOP amendments run the gamut of conservative talking points. They cover everything from the Pentagon’s abortion policy, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives, Covid-19 vaccines, critical race theory and transgender-related medical services. Ukraine, China and Taiwan are also key amendment topics.
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:30
Keeping women’s mistreatment in the headlines It may be a stunt, but one with a point (New York Times): Democrats in Congress are making a fresh push for the nearly century-old Equal Rights Amendment to be enshrined in the Constitution, rallying around a creative legal theory in a bid to revive an amendment that would explicitly guarantee sex equality as a way to protect reproductive rights in post-Roe America. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Representative Cori Bush of Missouri are set to introduce a joint resolution on Thursday stating that the measure has already been ratified and is enforceable as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The resolution states that the national archivist, who is responsible for the certification and publication of constitutional amendments, must immediately do so. […] “In light of Dobbs, we’re seeing vast discrimination across the country,” Ms. Gillibrand said in an interview. “Women are being treated as second-class citizens.
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:10
by Greg Mikkelson

Something new and troubling is happening as economies grow across much of the globe. In contrast to prior decades, when human health improved as global GDP swelled, the link to health progress has been broken. No longer is economic growth delivering a health dividend, it seems.

Meanwhile, another metric, the health of the environment, has continued to deteriorate with economic growth. We now face a  “ghastly” global environmental crisis,

The post Guess What Has Decoupled from Economic Growth? appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:00
The austerity of the mid-1950s constantly stymied possible British preparations on the home front, though plenty of money was found for bombs and submarines: deterrence by means of a policy of mutually assured destruction. The government couldn’t even find the resources to fund the national provision of steel ID tags, to allow for the identification of incinerated bodies in the event of an attack. 
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:00
J. Edgar Hoover liked to say he didn’t hire policemen but investigators. Agents were university graduates, only to be seen in dark suits and ties (hats were required when outside). Until 1934, they weren’t allowed to carry guns. ‘I want the public to look upon the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice as a group of gentlemen,’ he said in a magazine interview.
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:00
Giovanni Amendola had been attacked by fascists on a number of occasions, receiving a savage beating in Rome in December 1923; armed blackshirts hung around outside his flat. But he continued to publish and speak out against Mussolini. He probably thought they wouldn’t go so far as to murder him, that a second Matteotti case was a step too far, even for the fascists.
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:00
Both sides of Edward Coke’s reputation have endured. Not long ago the benchers of the Inner Temple refused to name a new building after him because of his brutal prosecution of Walter Raleigh. Yet Coke’s law reports, many of them his own cases, continue to be uniquely relevant to the modern law governing the use and extent of prerogative powers and much else beside. Francis Bacon is a more elusive character.
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:00
Fashion, the It-girl Alexa Chung once said, is just what happens when you have been wearing one thing for ages, then get bored with it. Is this the reason Fleur Jaeggy has become so fashionable, because readers are tired of big books and humanist fiction, all that inwardness that isn’t really inward, all those vulgar, boring families with ‘all of the advertising’, as Jaeggy once put it, ‘on their side’?
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:00
St Francis wrote poetry, tamed a wolf, received the stigmata on a mountainside, and if you love a kitsch Nativity figurine, you have St Francis to thank. He was a poor scribe and a worse artist, but great works have been made in his name, by Botticelli, El Greco, Caravaggio and Mickey Rourke (who took the title role in Liliana Cavani’s Francesco).
Created
Fri, 14/07/2023 - 00:00
All three of Jean Giono’s books are crowned, in their different ways, by killings, done by the hero or heroine and not against them or for them to tackle. An intriguing choice for a pacifist, and a choice that underlines an important strain in Giono’s work. He invites us to pause over phrases such as ‘larger than life’ and ‘getting away with murder’.