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So much political coverage does involve reporters pretending to believe whatever bad faith nonsense Republicans are coming up with.

Ah well nevertheless… https://t.co/4QwwRNw1GS

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) January 10, 2023

Museum of Sex to open new outpost in Miami (Thanks to Carlos Montage)

800 kilo ball filled with Swiss gin stolen from bottom of Lake Constance (Thanks to Alberto)

Scientists are freezing thousands of human POOS to create a 'vault of microbiota' that could one day bring humanity back from the brink of extinction (Thanks to Emily, Leslie and w)

Residents raising funds for memorial park and community hub A Liverpool community is coming together to raise funds to create a local memorial park named after Olivia Pratt-Korbel, who was tragically shot and killed aged nine when a gunman forced his way into her family’s home in the West Derby constituency last August. The planned […]

California National Guard general fired after he allegedly made troops take his mom shopping (Thanks to John Lobert)

New York University has launched a new interdisciplinary program to support, coordinate, and disseminate research about the well-being of wild animals. Co-directed by Becca Franks (environmental studies) and Jeff Sebo (environmental studies, philosophy, bioethics, law), the Wild Animal Welfare Program “aims to advance understanding about what wild animals are like, how humans and wild animals interact, and how humans can improve our interactions with wild animals at scale.” Of particular interest are questions such as “How much positive welfare (pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, and other such states) do wild animals experience, and how much negative welfare (pain, suffering, frustration, and other such states) do they experience? To what extent is humanity helping and harming wild animals at present?

            Only God and Kevin McCarthy know how long George Santos, the disgraced Republican freshman congressman from Long Island whose antipathy for the truth stands out even by politician standards, will be able to remain in office. If and when he is forced to step down, say, after an explanation for his mysteriously improving financial...

The post May the Second-Best Person Win first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

A consultation closing next week has raised concerns with campaigners over the ‘hugely regressive’ plans Campaigners have attacked Government plans they say will turn bedsits and hostels into accepted housing for vulnerable older children in the care system. The Department for Education launched a public consultation last month on new rules for so-called ‘supported accommodation’ […]

 

Now we got'em on the ropes!

Russia’s budget deficit widens to a record as revenues plunge amid oil export restrictions and spending on the invasion of Ukraine grew https://t.co/duUhiufXzP

— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) January 10, 2023

As union laws become more draconian, activists are getting innovative. It's giving right-wingers the jitters

Opponents of free universal healthcare hope the current crisis will open the door to killing off the NHS altogether, writes Adam Bienkov

A project is underway to study self-control in contexts of poverty in the Global South, directed by professor of philosophy Juan Pablo Bermúdez (Universidad Externado de Colombia & Imperial College London). The project is supported by a $300,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Professor Bermúdez provides the following description of it: Research suggests that poverty reduces our ability to pursue long-term goals, but it is yet unclear how this effect occurs. Does poverty make temptations greater, and self-control failures more frequent? Or do agents respond to poverty’s harsher conditions by abandoning their longterm aspirations, choosing shorter-term goals instead? To our knowledge there is no direct test of these two possible mechanistic explanations. Using a method that allows us to take ‘psychological snapshots’ of everyday experiences, we will map out the influence of context on people’s decision-making process, in order to better understand the mechanisms of self-control in contexts of poverty. Our study will include the most diverse population yet in self-control studies: people from high and low SES backgrounds in urban Colombia.

The invasion of the capitol gives Lula the perfect justification for cleaning house, most importantly in the civil service, judiciary and military. It has also, however briefly, united the governments of Latin America against right-wing authoritarianism

As nurses from two New York hospitals fight for better treatment, the executives in charge have been boosting their own pay and slashing charity care.

In ten years from 2000, a decade of sustained investment by a New Labour government managed to repair much of the damage done to the NHS by twenty-one years of underfunding. Then, in 2010, David Cameron’s government threw that into reverse with a new decade of austerity. That’s why the performance of England’s NHS is […]

Stark contrast to treatment of Ukrainian refugees News has emerged today that the UK government has not accepted a single refugee under the Afghan Resettlement Scheme in the past twelve months. The scheme is meant to help Afghans and their familes who assisted western forces during the Afghan conflict, yet the complete absence of successful […]

Is the only way for a victim’s family to heal for the perpetrator to hurt? Revisiting a notorious teenage murder from 1990

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

A new beginning.

Asia’s rise to economic power and food security has been powered not by rice but by American maize, the ultimate flex-crop

- by Peter A Coclanis

Read at Aeon

What do we know about the role of ‘ego death’ and other transformative experiences in psychedelic therapies?

- by Natasha Mason, Athena Demertzi & Johannes G Ramaekers

Read at Psyche