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Striking slow-motion footage captures the awesome evolutionary diversity – and handy usefulness – of a lizard’s tongue

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

When political regimes fail us, don’t turn to optimism. It’s disappointment that holds the radical potential for change

- by Rafael Holmberg

Read at Psyche

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination

- by Danny Robb

Read at Aeon

Danny Walker, Dong Lou, Gabor Pinter and Semih Üslü Government bond yields tend to drift higher in the days before monetary policy or data news in the UK. Over the past two decades this tendency – which we label ‘pre-news drift’ – has pushed up on yields by 2 percentage points in total over that … Continue reading Why do government bond yields drift when news is on its way? →

And lo, there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of hair.

Trump’s human garbage, of course. A bully, probably a rapist, suffering from some sort of mental disability, incoherent and mean.

And those are his good points.

Trump’s destroying the remains of America’s empire. He’s probably accelerating America’s decline, though there’s a possibility he might slow certain aspects of it, if others (like the EU) let him.

But most of what Trump is doing is creating opportunity. Let’s take the cuts to science funding: they’re going to leave a lot of scientists out of work.

There are repeating episodes in world macroeconomics that demonstrate the absurdity of the mainstream way of thinking. One, obviously is the recurring debt ceiling charade in the US, where over a period of months, the various parties make threats and pretend they will close the government down by failing to pass the bill. Others think…

Match Group dominates the online dating market — and critics say it’s forcing users to look for love in all the wrong places.

The Jewish Council of Australia has said it opposes many of the recommendations made by a Parliamentary panel into antisemitism released on Wednesday. It said it was strongly opposed to universities being asked to adopt a definition of antisemitism based on the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Association Working Definition of Antisemitism. The Parliamentary joint panel Continue reading »

“The president also repeated suggestions that the U.S. could come to control Gaza, but he said that it wouldn’t require committing funds and would come to fruition. He also said that would be possible ‘under the U.S. authority,’ without elaborating what that actually was… ‘We’re not going to buy anything. We’re going to have it,’ Mr. Trump said of U.S. control in Gaza.” – CBS News

Come on, how many times does he need to do this before you liberal birdbrains get it? Trump only threatens to do the stupidest, most globe-destabilizing stuff you’ve ever heard as a terrible negotiation tactic.

They shipped him to Gitmo This is a horrible story and one which I believe is probably just the tip of the iceberg: Luis Alberto Castillo, a father of one from Venezuela, entered the United States on Jan. 19, one day before Donald Trump became president for a second term — swept into office on a promise to treat undocumented migrants with a heavy hand. By Feb. 4, Mr. Castillo was on a plane to a U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, best known for a detention center that has long held terrorism suspects accused of launching the deadliest attack on American soil. That day, the Department of Homeland Security declared that those who had been transferred to the island represented “the worst of the worst” and were all members of a Venezuelan criminal group, the Tren de Aragua. But in an interview from her home in Colombia, Mr. Castillo’s sister Yajaira Castillo said her brother was not a gang member to be feared, but rather an everyday Venezuelan who had fled his country because of its economic crisis.

Trump is starting an economic war to settle political debts. Economist Brad Setser explains why this could be a very bad idea.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

H5N1 is a human creation

The post The Unnatural History of Bird Flu appeared first on Nautilus.

Trump used to say on the campaign trail that the markets were going up and inflation was coming down in anticipation of his arrival to save the country. Guess what? Inflation heated up more than expected in January, as prices for groceries, housing and energy all picked up for Americans in early 2025, potentially complicating President Donald Trump’s agenda. A key gauge of inflation — the consumer price index — showed Wednesday morning that prices rose by 3.0 percent in January from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. That’s hotter than the 2.9 percent annual gain reported in December, underscoring economic concerns of Americans who voted out incumbents in federal elections last fall… Wednesday’s data showed that consumer prices rose 0.5 percent on a monthly basis from December, the biggest increase since August 2023. Shelter costs, which grew 0.4 percent, accounted for nearly 30 percent of the monthly gain. I’m going to guess that all this talk of tariffs has prices going up in anticipation of whatever daft declaration he’s going to make next.

He’s giving Ukraine to Vlad as we knew he would. Here’s Hegseth (after he got booed by middle schoolers) today: I think we all expected this but watching the cable newsers like Dana Bash excitedly announce this as a “historic” moment that will change the world, as if that’s a good thing. But then I suppose they said the same thing when Neville Chamberlain declared “peace in our time” too…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is trying to eliminate all Defense Department DEI efforts. It hasn’t been entirely successful.

The post Pentagon Official: Hegseth’s Campaign to Scrub DEI History Is a “Dumb” Distraction appeared first on The Intercept.

Australian Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, will today mark the anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generation by reenacting his infamous walk out and boycott of the initial apology. ”I stand by my boycott of the initial apology and... Read More ›