Reading

Print Edition 48

https://nautil.us/print-edition-48-302030/
Created
Wed, 03/05/2023 - 01:42

Issue 48 of the Nautilus print edition combines some of the best content from our January and February 2023 online issues. It includes contributions from science writer Amanda Gefter,  astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter,  physician Rahul Parikh, author Philip Ball, and more. This issue also features a new illustration by Deena So’Oteh.

The post Print Edition 48 appeared first on Nautilus.

'So Many Steves: Afternoons with Steve Martin' Audiobook

https://www.stevemartin.com/2023/05/so-many-steves-afternoons-with-steve-martin…
Created
Wed, 03/05/2023 - 00:55
Available Now: http://audible.com/stevemartin. This new audiobook incorporates a year's worth of conversations between Steve Martin and his friend and New Yorker writer, Adam Gopnik. In the audiobook, Steve talks (more candidly than ever) about magic, comedy, art collecting, writing, and music. Plus, it includes an original banjo score.

Careful Now

https://www.monbiot.com/2023/05/02/careful-now/
Created
Wed, 03/05/2023 - 00:30
Should we blow up pipelines? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th April 2023 There’s a fundamental principle that should apply to every conflict. Don’t urge others to do what you are not prepared to do yourself. How many wars would be fought if the presidents or prime ministers who declared them were obliged […]

Katie Porter wants “to fix some shit”

https://digbysblog.net/2023/05/02/katie-porter-wants-to-fix-some-shit/
Created
Wed, 03/05/2023 - 00:30
“It’s a teaching and learning job” Candidates and officials could be using powers they don’t know they have for doing good, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) argues. The American Prospect profiles the candidate for U.S. Senate from California: The tough-as-nails single-mom image caters to the legions of suburban parents in the Golden State. But what actually differentiates Porter from her main opponents in the California Senate race—progressive antiwar hero Rep. Barbara Lee and Trump impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff—is that she’s been able throughout her career to make progress without carrying institutional authority. Porter acknowledged that she, Lee, and Schiff would likely take the same votes, at least on the major issues. But there’s more to politics than that. “I just want to fix some shit,” Porter writes in her book.

The Pandemic Portal View

https://tomdispatch.com/the-pandemic-portal-view/
Created
Tue, 02/05/2023 - 23:27

“In order to fully recover, we must first recover the society that has made us sick.” I can still hear those prophetic words, now a quarter-century old, echoing through the Church Center of the United Nations. At the podium was David, a leader with New Jerusalem Laura, a residential drug recovery program in North Philadelphia that was free and accessible to people, no matter their insurance and income status. It was June 1998 and hundreds of poor and low-income people had gathered for the culminating event of the “New Freedom Bus Tour: Freedom from Unemployment, Hunger, and Homelessness,” a month-long, cross-country organizing event led by welfare rights activists. Two years earlier, President Bill Clinton had signed welfare “reform” into law,... Read more

The weird turn pro

https://digbysblog.net/2023/05/02/the-weird-turn-pro/
Created
Tue, 02/05/2023 - 23:00
When governing is not your agenda If Jared Leto in “a head-to-toe, mascot-style cat costume” at the Met Gala doesn’t satisfy your appetite for weird, there are always Republican governors. Jamelle Bouie gazes upon attempts by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to make a trip to Florida the next best thing to vacationing on another planet. Be warned: Planet Ron is fighting an outbreak of the “woke mind virus.” DeSantis warns Ronians with little exposure to Earth 1 that the infection is “a form of cultural Marxism that tries to divide us based on identity politics.” Bouie wonders what Ronians make of that (New York Times): Now, I can follow this as a professional internet user and political observer. I know that “woke mind virus” is a term of art for the (condescending and misguided) idea that progressive views on race and gender are an outside contagion threatening the minds of young people who might otherwise reject structural explanations of racial inequality and embrace a traditional vision of the gender binary. I know that “cultural Marxism” is a right-wing buzzword meant to sound scary and imposing.

One of Us Always Tells the Truth, the Other Always Lies. Also, Contrary to What You May Have Heard My Penis Is Not Small

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/one-of-us-always-tells-the-truth-the-other-…
Created
Tue, 02/05/2023 - 22:00

Good morrow, traveler. Ah, it appears your long and arduous journey has reached a most perilous fork in the road. Your only way forward is through one of these two doors.

One leads to freedom, the other certain death. But which to choose?

You may ask us a single question. Although, be warned. One guard always lies, the other always tells the truth.

Oh, and uh, this next part is unrelated to the door bit. Someone’s been spreading this totally unfounded rumor that I have a small penis. And I just want to assure you this is not true.

Now, choose wisely, dear traveler, for your ver—

No, as I said, my penis has nothing to do with the doors. Let’s not get stuck on this. Remember, your life hangs in the balance. I was only saying that if, during your time in the Village of Sorrow, you had spoken to, say, a vindictive Bal maiden or her twin sister, and they said I had an unusually small and odorous member, they are liars. My penis is a good size and smells of jasmine. Besides, most peasant women I have known biblically say the big ones hurt.