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At summer’s end, if we’re lucky, we may find ourselves with bare feet and sun-warmed skin; our senses soothed, our bodies attuned to nature’s rhythms. A recent study found that more than half of American adults are traveling for Labor Day this year, leaving the hustle behind to squeeze the last golden drops of summer at beach, lake, park, and mountain; savoring deep memories and anticipating future pleasures. This time of year reminds us of so much to be grateful for in the natural world.

This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.

Varroa mite is a small parasitic mite that attaches itself to honey bees. By feeding, it weakens the bees and can spread harmful viruses. Until 2022, Australia was believed to be free of the mite. In June of that year, the mite was detected in so-called “sentinel hives” at the Port of Newcastle. And it […]

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by Yiran Cheng

China, as the world’s second-largest economy and a rising superpower, is an integral part of the discussion if a steady state economy is ever to be achieved at a global scale. China’s environmental impact grows by the day, yet serious consideration about intentionally slowing economic growth has seldom occurred, let alone the possibility of a sustained 负增长, the Mandarin translation of “degrowth”.

This is not to say China is oblivious to its environmental toll.

The post Prospects for 负增长 Toward a Steady State Economy in China appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

In 1991 Margaret Thatcher accepted an invitation to speak in the city that had just ceased to be Leningrad and was now St. Petersburg again. As a demonstration of the ruthlessness that has made it so good at holding on to power, her own Conservative Party had deposed her the previous year as prime minister […]

The post The Party’s Over appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

We took another clip from one of our live Twitch Channel songwriting sessions we did and posted it on our YouTube channel.

We just turn on the camera and try out new ideas and see what we come up with.

Hey Ocarina (Live Stream Clip)

Sometimes to come up with an idea I just look for a sound on my keyboard by just spinning the dial it has to scroll through sounds and use what it lands on.

What if we tried an Ocarina sound?

This time it landed on the Ocarina sound. 

I only know the Ocarina from the Legend of Zelda game Ocarina of Time. 

Over the last four decades, the US economy has done quite well for the top 1%, but it has been stagnant for most Americans. This was not an accident, nor the natural workings of the market and certainly not an inevitability. US policies have been deliberately structured since 1980 to redistribute income upwards. In other words, the system has been rigged.

The post Grandpa’s Silly Mustache appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Small-dollar mortgages can address housing insecurity and racial inequity in housing, but several challenges must be overcome to increase access to them.

Is it good for your wallet? A climate bill in disguise? Landmark action or nothingburger? Economic experts assess the Democrats’ legislative victory for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Now that Democrats have finally passed their much-touted legislation, key experts go beyond the hype to weigh in on how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will likely impact your wallet in the short and long term, what it means to climate change, and what more is required to improve the lives of Americans and save the planet. Hint: the bill may not be all it's cracked up to be -- especially when it comes to curbing inflation.

On Climate, a Meaningful Small Step: Servaas Storm, Senior Lecturer of Economics, Delft University of Technology

Between dodging viruses and pondering fascism and climate disasters, I have been re-reading a truly uplifting book which I hadn't visited for many years. It's the masterpiece of the French historian Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, first published in 1940. I have a 2-volume paperback of the English translation, which I bought as a student for the terrifying price of 3 dollars and 60 cents.

It's social history or historical sociology, whichever you like. Bloch set himself the austere task of anatomizing a whole society, tracing the basic relationships that made it a distinct social formation. But it is also full-blooded history, concerned with the conditions that brought this society into being, its attitudes, its divisions, its conflicts, its laws; with how it survived in western Europe for five hundred years or so, and how it changed.

In late 2017, the European Commission asked us to research innovation in the digital economy. Our earlier work, including Virtual Competition, raised the concern of policymakers around the world as we uncovered several significant risks of the digital economy including algorithmic collusion. But on innovation, we, like many others, were optimistic and trusted in the market’s ability to deliver. As we dug into the data over the next few years, however, we found multiple fallacies about innovation in the digital economy. Our counterintuitive findings were unsettling.

As always, if you find value in this work I do, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List! You can get it in your inbox or read it on Patreon, the content is the same.

We have been working on a song idea that we came up with during a live-stream songwriting session.

How Republicans Could Steal The Next Presidential Election

The latest Republican plot to sabotage our elections could remove American voters from the process of selecting their president. 

You heard that right. A case headed to the Supreme Court could let Republican controlled state legislatures overrule the will of the people and pick the next president without you.

This all hinges on a radical idea called the “independent state legislature theory.” It’s at the heart of a case the Supreme Court will decide called Moore v. Harper.