We honor The Avengers' early years & Honor Blackman's Cathy Gale, one of the first live-action heroines to grace our television screens.
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Every Sunday, I blog about the geek-friendly radio shows the BBC are putting out in the forthcoming week! All of the following can be either listened to live or downloaded afterwards for free on the BBC Sounds app, no matter where you are in the world. Please note: I don’t include later episodes of most […]
Kentucky’s 1st District sent this idiot to Congress Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, insisted to CNN’s Jake Tapper this morning that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is improperly conducting a federal investigation. “He’s investigating a presidential candidate, not to mention a former president of the United States, for a federal election crime,” Comer said repeatedly. In fact, Bragg is investigating Donald Trump for falsification of business records under New York state law. “It should be done by the Department of Justice on the federal level,” Comer insisted. BS. Comer Bragg doesn’t believe Trump should be investigated at all. He has a B.S. in Agriculture, BTW. As Aaron Rupar tweeted, the interview did not go well. “We just want the government out of our elections,” Comer said later without recognizing how that sounded. “We believe the local DAs need to be focused on business crimes, on burglary, on theft …” Again, Bragg is investigating Trump for falsification of business reords.
The Federal Reserve is shielding banks from the interest rate hikes it’s inflicting on workers — and the banks couldn’t be happier.
“Fiction is just as good, maybe better, in the attention economy” The attention economy powers the internet. It made cable news a 24-hour affair. It makes talk radio infotainment. It makes “influencer” a job description. It makes YouTubers money. It makes TokTok TikTok. It makes Trump Trump. It makes us all stupider and more vulnerable to those who would deceive for their own ends. It killed Ashli Babbitt. God knows how A.I. will metastasize the attention economy. We can see it coming and as feel powerless to stop it as we were to learn from its past predations. Michael Kruse interviews Abraham Josephine Riesman on the release of Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America on how professional wrestling has, as someone else observed of the New Age Movement, dissolved external reality. The result in liberal “choose your own spiritual journey” circles was to make conflict impossible, or at least unlikely. The result among black-and-white thinkers is just the opposite.
En gång i tiden var ledstjärnan för den ekonomiska politiken att mildra konjunktur-svängningarna och kapa de djupa dalarna och höga topparna. Nu vill Riksbanken skapa en ekonomisk nedgång för att få ner inflationen samtidigt som finanspolitiken passivt ser på. Penningpolitiken ser ut att kunna sänka den svenska ekonomin. Riksbanken balanserar kort sagt på en knivsegg. […]
"A nation can’t be bombed, humiliated and sanctioned, then bombed again, and then told to become a democracy,” writes Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.
The post After Tide of Memoirs From Americans, an Iraqi Journalist Offers Inside Account of War’s Destruction appeared first on The Intercept.
In a passage near the crescendo of Book I of The Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume writes, “the intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion […]
"What am I missing in thinking that it’s cruel to make a medicine that people can’t afford?"
Poker machines have destroyed livelihoods and they also deprived up-and-coming bands of a start in pubs and other venues, writes John Longhurst. read now...
Is Israel going to dodge Bibi’s bullet? Maybe … The Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, called on Saturday night for his government to suspend its contentious plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary, arguing that the turmoil it has unleashed within Israeli society and the military has become a threat to Israel’s national security. “The rift within our society is widening and penetrating the Israel Defense Forces,” Mr. Gallant said in a televised speech. He added: “This is a clear and immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state. I shall not be a party to this.” Mr. Gallant’s announcement set the stage for what is expected to be one of the most dramatic weeks in Israeli history. The far-right governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has a majority of just four seats, is expected to hold a final vote in Parliament early next week on the first step in its overhaul plan: a bill that would give the government greater control over appointments to the Supreme Court.
Citizen journalism on the Ukraine invasion via YouTube is filling a much-needed gap to inform young people, reports Chris Hall. read now...This is some chilling stuff from Oklahoma. A minority of state Supreme Court Justices make it clear that there is no constitutional right to life for women — only their fetuses. They say that if the state wants to protect the vessels they’re going to have to write a law demanding it. Otherwise, it doesn’t exist: Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, dozens of reports from red states have told of hospitals withholding care from pregnant patients until they are hemorrhaging or suffering catastrophic infections, lest the doctors be prosecuted for providing an illegal abortion. When confronted with these effects of abortion bans, anti-abortion advocates often blame the doctors for misinterpreting the law. There are exceptions for medical emergencies, they say, and it should be easy enough for a doctor to tell when a patient is in deep enough danger to protect her medical team from possible prison time. This is a mealy-mouthed attempt at misdirection. Health crises are never so predictable and containable; they do not progress in linear fashion, with easy off-ramps at every level of endangerment.
The smart move would be to wait until 2028 Unfortunately, he’s already cast himself as the smart man’s Trump (an oxymoron) and I don’t know if he’d be able to shed it. His donors are already getting antsy: A number of the Florida governor’s donors and allies are worried his recent stumbles suggest he may not be ready for a brutal fight against Donald Trump. Some feel DeSantis needs to accelerate his timeline to run for the GOP presidential nomination and begin directly confronting Trump if he’s to have any chance of thwarting the former president’s momentum. Others believe DeSantis should sidestep Trump altogether and wait until 2028 to run. At a Sunday luncheon following the annual Red Cross ball in Palm Beach, Florida, a group of 16 prominent Republicans, described by one attendee as a mix of DeSantis backers and Trump “skeptics,” discussed misgivings about the governor’s standing for the future if he tussles with the former president. “They liked him — many of them might even support him,” the person who was at the event said of DeSantis.
Another Message Board Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’ve moved my irregular email news from Mailchimp to Substack. You can read it here. You can also follow me on Mastodon here I’m also trying out Substack as a blogging […]
Undisciplined yes, unconventional? Not anymore: Just a week ago, former President Trump’s team was touting his more disciplined approach to campaigning. But now there’s a more familiar Trump: an angry, scorched-earth force on social media, trying to rally his base by casting himself as a victim. Trump’s tirades on Truth Social over his potential indictment in New York were filled with the type of incendiary rhetoric that preceded the Jan. 6 insurrection — and symbolized the colliding forces inside his campaign. Those forces pit a fiery candidate who’s a social media bulldozer when he feels wronged, vs. the more measured, policy focused ex-president his staff has been hoping to show voters. “The Trump campaign team knows the former president’s candidacy has to be more than a stream of consciousness and listing of grievances,” said Ken Spain, an adviser to George W. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign.
New IPCC report documents a threatening climate-present and a bleak climate-future. Alcoa failing to rehabilitate the lands it has destroyed once mining stops. Shortage of integrity not gas behind our gas problems. IPCC’s climate change synthesis report As a (lapsed) sociologist, I am well accustomed to non-sociologists scornfully saying, ‘I could have told you that Continue reading »
The challenge of 2045 Australia will have access to American nuclear submarines in the early 2030s and by 2045 will have been building its own. But it is not clear what problem will be solved when Australian long-range nuclear submarines are able to traverse the northern Pacific. Nobody seems to have asked these fundamental questions Continue reading »
A war in East Asia provoked by American intransigence would be no less disastrous for Australia than one caused by China’s ambitions. While China’s intentions and plans are inaccessible and should generate prudent caution, the well-researched drivers of America’s strategic policy should also produce grave reservations within the Albanese government. Suggestions of the deeper ideational Continue reading »