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If you’ve spent any time at your local state park, your local body of water, or your local abandoned granite quarry turned rock climbing haven, then I’m sure you’ve seen me. I was probably leading a hiking group, a kayaking expedition, or belaying for a group of middle schoolers on a YMCA-sponsored after-school trip. If so, then you saw me in my element, for I am a guy in a Patagonia UV hoodie, and I have never been indoors.

I was born in the fresh fall air to a mushroom-foraging father and a reiki-healing mother. My parents opted for an outdoor water birth, and I entered into this world in a stock tank on an organic farm where my parents spent the year WWOOF-ing.

Shortly after my birth, my parents embarked on a three-year RV excursion along the entire Pan-American highway from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuego. At fourteen months, I took my first steps at the top of Machu Picchu and climbed my first mountain in Patagonia (the region, not the store) a year later.

For the third year in a row the nations of the world, meeting in solemn climate conclave, have vowed to cook their children and grandchildren alive. COP29, chaired by petro-state Azerbaijan and stuffed to the gills with 1773 oil industry lobbyists, was never going to deliver more than tokenism and lip service to the greatest Continue reading »

Jews in Germany, Bosnians in former Yugoslavia, Tutsis in Rwanda, and now Palestinians in Gaza. In a recent interview, Francesca Albanese posed a rhetorical question: What kind of monsters have we become to see the live-streamed genocide of Palestinians and not act? When you look at Anthony Albanese, who founded the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, Continue reading »

The death of cricketer Phillip Hughes ten years ago to-day (November 27) was one of several hundred workplace fatalities in 2014. The manner of his death raises a key concern for occupational health and safety. Best practice is to remove the source of danger. Second or third best is to minimise its ill-effects. School cricket Continue reading »

COP29 was a failure not because there wasn’t enough money on offer, but because it ignored population. The UN Climate talks COP29 have just concluded in Baku, Azerbaijan. The key issue on the agenda was how much developed countries were going to pay to help alleviate climate change in the developing world. The visuals on Continue reading »

My recent review of the book, Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism, by Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden (H&H) highlighted its ‘convincing, frank and honest account’ in just over 200 pages, and encouraged the Health Department in particular to listen to its lessons. The official COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report by Robyn Kruk, Catherine Bennett and Angela Jackson ( Continue reading »

At least one group of experts is asking why proposed online porn regulation lacks natural justice, damages sexual expression and promotes risky technology. Regulating the content most people describe as ‘pornography’, the Draft Consolidated Industry Codes of Practice for the Online Industry (Class 1C and Class 2 Material) (the Codes) consultation closed last week. They Continue reading »

The Philippines enacted two enabling legislation on 8 November 2024. Known as Republic Act (RA) 12064 or the Philippine Maritime Zones Act; and Republic Act (RA) 12065 or the Philippine Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act, the legislation has attracted a fair number of criticisms from the region among those not familiar with the 1982 UN Convention Continue reading »

A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. As things now stand, the world is trembling on the brink of the abyss. Instead of going over the edge, we need to step back, lower the temperature and the tension, and move to a position in which it is possible to negotiate a Continue reading »

Byline Times speaks to Liberty Director Akiko Hart, after the human rights organisation came out against the Assisted Dying Bill

. Riksbanken har en nästintill oinskränkt makt över penningpolitiken, en politik som i hög grad styr inflation, sysselsättning och ekonomisk stabilitet. Denna makt bör vara föremål för större demokratisk övervakning för att säkerställa att den överensstämmer med vad vi som samhällsmedborgare har för intressen. När man diskuterat  Riksbankens oberoende har man oftast definierat detta i […]

Ownership and control of social media platforms is a first-order concern for both domestic politics and international conflict. The most important battleground in the Russia-Ukraine war is elections in NATO member states. And there, Russia is clearly winning. Trump, obviously, but yesterday saw the stunning success of formerly fringe right-wing candidate C?lin Georgescu. In an […]

Hailed by neoconservatives as a tool to combat antisemitism, new bills championed by AIPAC allies could strip nonprofits of protections, paving the way for a chilling crackdown on free speech.

The post Legislating Silence: How Congress Plans to Target Critics of Israel appeared first on MintPress News.

During this year’s presidential election campaign, I was puzzled and increasingly troubled that the issue of truth-telling — and the spectacular lack of it from one candidate — wasn’t getting the sort of focus or emphasis in the news coverage it should have received. We heard or read about Donald Trump’s specific false statements just about every day (because they happened just about every day). But we didn’t often hear about the deeper questions those falsehoods raised and continue to raise: What will it mean to have a president of the United States who has no regard for the truth and often no idea what it is? What will it do to public life if a president’s words can’t be... Read more

Source: Fact-Checker Alert appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Keynes’s signal contribution was to switch the emphasis from interest rate adjustments to changes in income as the key macroeconomic adjustment mechanism. In so doing, he argued that the interest rate and asset prices adjust to clear balance sheets incorporating stocks, not flows, of financial claims. He pioneered national income accounting which now reveals the […]

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so the saying goes, and for the people of Gaza, times have never been as desperate as they are now. According to The Lancet, a world-renowned medical journal, the death toll in Gaza was estimated, conservatively by their own admission, to be 186,000 in August 2024 — three months […]

So, your father just emailed you a poem he wrote, and he wants your thoughts about it. You’re probably thinking: I still do not like my father. Is it normal for a person my age to still not like their father?

The answer is probably, but probably not. And what you’re also probably thinking (probably) is: I hold (or am about to hold) an MFA. Is this beneath my efforts? The answer is probably, but definitely not. And since you’ve made it here, you’re likely curious about what your tips are, so here’s the best I can do, because I, too, ask these questions:

Be nice.
Seeing as how this is the first time in your life you’ve ever seen your father create anything other than tension at dinner, it has probably taken a lot of effort for him to make this—and even more to send it to you. Even though it’s in all caps and center-aligned. And it kind of looks like a notice to hold down the handle taped above a leaky toilet in a gas station bathroom. Read it for what it is and be nice about it.

Victor Sebastyen, Lenin, Pantheon 2017, 363. In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, Lenin was preoccupied with appointing the people that would run…

Francesca Diluiso, Boromeus Wanengkirtyo and Jenny Chan. This post examines key aspects of climate mitigation policies that could matter for monetary policy, using insights from structural climate macroeconomic models (Environmental Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium). Three main findings emerge: first, mitigation policies – like carbon pricing – can be a direct source of shocks, creating potential … Continue reading Some implications of climate policy for monetary policy →

Boromeus Wanengkirtyo, Francesca Diluiso, Rebecca Mari, Jenny Chan, Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi and Alex Haberis. Climate change is becoming increasingly important for monetary policy as the world transitions into greener economies and climate change’s physical impacts become more prominent. This is complementary, but distinct to, examining how climate change affects financial stability risks (Carney (2015)). This series … Continue reading Climate and monetary policy series →