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Our friends at 270 Reasons are gathering a polyphonic orchestra of brilliant writers, teachers, doctors, filmmakers, artists, and citizens of all kinds to weigh in about their plans to vote this November. These opinion essays run the gamut from advocacy for basic human rights to acutely personal mini-manifestoes. Read the rest over at 270 Reasons.

Because Now Is the Time to Fight for Our Planet

The last eighteen months have seen the hottest temperatures in at least the last 125,000 years on our planet. That’s come with fire, flood, storm, drought, and death.

The last eighteen months have also seen—finally—the onset of the renewable energy revolution. We’re now installing a gigawatt of solar panels (about a nuclear power plant’s worth) on this earth every day.

November 5 will play a huge role in which of these trends accelerates fastest.

They don’t tell you this in the Hot Dog Handbook, but hot dogs are hungry for mystery…

There’s something weird leaking from gas station ceilings. What’s dribbling down is not rainwater or condensation from an AC unit or anything gnarly like that—it’s a pink juice we like to call “Mystery D.” Some people suspect the juice is windshield-washer fluid or Mountain Dew Spark. But we know it’s not any of that stuff—it’s Mystery D.

Look for the big hole in the ceiling once you’re inside a gas station. It should be right above the commercial hot dog steamer and the liquid cheese dispenser. And teetering on stilts—in the space between—you will find a stinky old milk crate lined with a garbage bag. The function of this receptacle is to collect Mystery D from the source, presumably so it can be bottled and sold as antifreeze or Pepto Bismol. But who gives a shit about that? We’re here because we want to take the ultimate ride.

You want the ultimate? Drop Mystery D on your hot dog.

Before we ventured into space in 1961, we sent fruit flies, dogs and chimps to pave the way. This is their story

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Applying Descartes’ sceptical puzzle to deepfake videos reveals the challenge they present is one that we can rise to

- by Keith Raymond Harris

Read at Psyche

Ancient Mesopotamians had a profound love of beer: a beverage they found celebratory, intoxicating and strangely erotic

- by Tate Paulette

Read at Aeon

In much of science and medicine, the assumptions behind standard teaching, terminology, and interpretations of statistics are usually false, and hence the answers they provide to real-world questions are misleading … In light of this harsh reality, we should ask what meaning (if any) can we assign to the P-values, “statistical significance” declarations, “confidence” intervals, […]

Regular readers will know I have been a long-time critic of the fiscal rules that successive British governments have invoked as part of a pretence that they were being somehow responsible fiscal managers. The problem was that in trying to keep within these artificial thresholds, governments would do the exact opposite to what a responsible…

The industry aims to expand its reach this election season by promising revenue windfalls and downplaying evidence their services are a bad bet.

Keir Starmer's right hand man throws his weight behind the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, and says inequality played a major factor in the pandemic

Why you should pay attention to Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund Amendment this election.

Eunsong Kim, The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property. Duke University Press Books, 2024. 328 pages. Eunsong Kim is a poet, writer, and…

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I was alerted to Nathan Pinkoski’s “Actually Existing Postliberalism” by N.S. Lyon’s response “The Post-Cold War Apotheosis of Liberal Managerialism” and enjoyed both tremendously.

Pinkosi’s piece is an excellent short history of the public-private partnership currently aiming for absolute global cultural control via the weaponization of finance that he calls postliberalism.

I thought it would be fun to excerpt all the times Antony Blinken’s name appears in the piece.

First mention:

Good God: The crowd started chanting “Daddy’s Home.” Make it stop. Please.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Horror upon unimaginable horror. Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir announce ‘the moral solution’ while the scale of devastation for the besieged Palestinian people in northern Gaza—Jabalia, Beit Lahiya—is incomprehensible. Men shackled and blindfolded, taken away by the Israeli army. Women and children murdered in their homes and subjected to psychological terror under the actions Continue reading »

Besides the Ed Sullivan Theatre, one of the sites in New York City most associated with The Beatles’ first American visit in February 1964 is the Plaza Hotel, which was surrounded by thousands of screaming, chanting teenagers during John, Paul, … Continue reading →

Trump had a “town hall” with a bunch of rightwing Christians today. He’s been doing a lot of those lately. They must be concerned about the evangelical turnout: I don’t know about you but I find it very concerning that he’s talking to Netanyahu every day, no doubt telling him to keep that war going to hurt the Democrats and promising that as soon as he wins he’ll give the green light for Bibi to go wild. How can this be legal? I know it violates the Logan Act but that’s a toothless law that’s been violated many times. But we’ve never seen anything like this before. Trump is running a shadow government from Mar-a-lago. Oh well, I guess that’s no big deal… Sure, he’s fine. By the way, there’s a rumor all over twitter that there’s a video of Trump groping the young daughter of a wealthy donor that’s about to break. The Trumpers are all saying it’s a deep fake. I have no idea if it’s true. But I also doubt that it would make any difference because the right will convince themselves that it’s a Democratic deep fake election interference ploy and who knows, it might even help him.

A damning new Parliamentary report warns that the UK's broken approach to food has created a "public health emergency"