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With no disrespect intended to you freaks.

Today's News:

Leaving aside the particulars of the current situation, I do find it odd that many people think that Supreme Court Justices are actually supposed to die in office. That they are for life if they want them (whatever the wisdom of that) does not mean they are obligated to stay until the end! Retirement isn't a punishment!

Brace for new GOP efforts to stop younger Americans from voting The Financial Times offers data showing how the Great Recession reset how Millennials view the world. Something odd appears to be overturning an old paradigm about political views and aging. Unlike the generational cohorts before them, they are not getting more conservative with age. “The shift has striking implications for the UK’s Conservatives and US Republicans, who can no longer simply rely on their base being replenished as the years pass,” writes John Burn-Murdoch. “[C]oncepts from public health analytics” suggest the old predictions do not apply to Millennials: Let’s start with age effects, and the oldest rule in politics: people become more conservative with age. If millennials’ liberal inclinations are merely a result of this age effect, then at age 35 they too should be around five points less conservative than the national average, and can be relied upon to gradually become more conservative. In fact, they’re more like 15 points less conservative, and in both Britain and the US are by far the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history.

Katie Halper's experience is but one example of the blacklisting that progressive voices face in the media, and she cites the influence of the pro-Israel lobby as one reason for this censorship,

The post The Truth Will Not Be Televised, with Katie Halper appeared first on MintPress News.

My dog is getting high on cane toads. Should I be worried? (Thanks to Ralph)

Man opens fire after waiting wife honks horn at him, Colorado sheriff say (Thanks to EricY)

Australia is being eaten by termites. (Thanks to The Perts)

Depois de quatro anos de ódio, violência, golpismo e terror, surge uma luz no fim do túnel de uma democracia que agonizava.

The post Posse de Lula não é o começo do paraíso, mas a saída do inferno appeared first on The Intercept.

t is time for Morocco and others to reconsider their ties with Israel, as they risk political isolation and social instability, a far greater price to pay than the empty promises of Washington and Tel Aviv.

The post The Price of Betraying Palestine: Morocco Challenges Normalization with Israel appeared first on MintPress News.

New York approves composting of human bodies (Thanks to Bill Hudgins, who says "What's that smell? Joisey?")

This wildlife rehabilitator rescued over 1,600 bats during Houston cold snap (Thanks to B&C)

Burst sewage pipe destroys $134K Audi on camera (Thanks to pharmross and Unholy Slacker, who says "It got turned into a Porta-Audi.")

Scientists Find That “Class Clowns” Are Actually the Smartest People in Class (Thanks to Matt Filar) Pleasantville (NY) High School, class of 1965.

More monetarist reification from ChatGPT… 

ChatGPT explains the Federal Reserve like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo: pic.twitter.com/aMY9c1i3b2

— ChatGPT (@ChatGPTGoneWild) January 2, 2023

 

When it comes to grief, there’s no room for second best. Sure, there are other guidebooks aimed at helping you cope with the emotional and practical challenges of losing a loved one. None, however, have been written by a comedy writer whose “therapeutic training” went no further than an undergraduate degree in psychology, and who lived through this terrible experience and emerged intact enough to write a bunch of jokes about it. What The Daily Show’s America (The Book) was to civics and The Onion’s Our Dumb Century was to the history of the twentieth century, Jason Roeder’s hilarious (and often moving) Griefstrike!: The Ultimate Guide to Mourning is to death, mourning, and somehow getting on with your life.

I can't say it doesn't matter if he becomes Speaker or not, but it's also the kind of story (and details) that political journalists absolutely love to obsess about. That would be fine if they managed to communicate just why it might matter all that much, aside from the palace intrigue stuff.

Republicans in disarray is sorta funny, but it isn't what matters.

Something is seriously broken Two items this morning should be clues to how around the bend and down the rabbit hole this country has traveled in recent years. Brian Klaas (subscription req’d) posts about the lack of basic standards for elected officials. Looking at you, George Santos: Much of the modern world has created what I call the broken pyramid of scrutiny. In principle, levels of scrutiny and accountability should increase as the potential to do catastrophic harm increases. The higher up the hierarchy you go, the more that you should be monitored to make sure that you’re not going to destroy the company, or bring down the government, from your perch at the top. The least powerful should face the least scrutiny; the most powerful the most oversight. Instead, as I wrote in “Corruptible,” we do the opposite. Santos would have been exposed as a fraud before being offered “any run-of-the-mill government job.” But not in Congress. Klass contrasts the training he had to go to volunteer as a tour guide at an English historical site: In my spare time, I volunteer as a tour guide at a historic site in England.

An Oklahoma court refused to consider new evidence of Glossip’s innocence. Now the state’s parole board may be his last chance.

The post Facing His Eighth Execution Date, Richard Glossip Asks for Clemency appeared first on The Intercept.

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Covid will not miraculously end. New variants will continue to be born, and they will generally be optimized for immune escape and damage. Hospitals in most countries will continue to be under high strain, because governments will keep pretending Covid is over when it is not and that it doesn’t ravage people’s immune systems. I find this chart of Canada’s Covid experience applies to most countries in spirit.

I had not seen this informative video before – nine and a half minutes of background on how we got here. It is remarkable how the Tories have successfully remodelled the NHS on principles quite different from those at its its foundation – and just as remarkably how Labour has failed both to see the... Read more

It is yet another attempt by those who believe that only a mega-scaled, technology-intensive approach can be a viable alternative to our current fossil fuel-dependent energy infrastructure.