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Two philosophers were given honorary titles as part of the UK’s 2023 New Year Honours, which recognize people who have “made achievements in public life [and] committed themselves to serving and helping the UK”. John Finnis (Oxford, Notre Dame) was named a “Commander of the Order of the British Empire” for “services to Legal Scholarship”. Edward Harcourt (Oxford, Arts and Humanities Research Council) was named a “Member of the Order of the British Empire” for “services to Interdisciplinary Research”. You can check out the full list of those honored here.

If anyone still labors under the impression that Donald Trump invented the shitshow that is the modern Republican Party, Tuesday’s performance on Capitol Hill will have disabused them of that notion. It was déjà vu all over again, just like in 2015 when Kevin McCarthy was humiliated by far right bomb-throwers simply because he was so easy to humiliate, thus giving them leverage and pleasure in equal measure. Poor McCarthy spent the next seven years groveling and genuflecting to these extremists under the foolish impression that they would reward him for his fealty. As Salon’s Rae Hodge lays out in detail, on Tuesday afternoon they simply laughed in his face and humiliated him again. Back in 2015, the newly formed Freedom Caucus, born out of the Tea Party class that came into Congress five years before in the 2010 “shellacking,” managed to force then-Speaker John Boehner to resign for having the temerity to make deals with the Democrats in the Senate and the White House in order to keep the government functioning.

With A&E in crisis and emergency care in a state of emergency, Sian Norris speaks to a GP about the knock-on effect to primary care

The Lever’s new video reveals how lax regulation and government missteps led to the air travel crisis that stranded a million travelers over the holidays.

The November jobs numbers came in stronger than most economists had expected. There is considerable evidence from regional Fed surveys, unemployment insurance claims, and elsewhere that the labor market is weakening. Nonetheless, the payroll data has been showing strong job growth through the fall. The big question is whether evidence of labor market weakening will […]

The post Preview: What to Expect in the December Jobs Report appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Mike's right that Santos was on his way to be an "Attack Queer" - Richard Goldstein's term for right wing LGBT people who easily obtain media prominence to attack other LGTB people/communities

Musafir, a young member of the Taliban, conscripted into the organisation when he was still a child

With no room at the pediatric ICU, or no pediatric ICU A friend is a retired neonatal ICU doctor. It’s a tough gig watching premies struggle for life. Even tougher when she lost one. Tougher still for the parents. Alexander Stockton and Lucy King produced a video diary for the New York Times about how COVID, RSV and flu are hitting young kids especially hard this winter. My connection to RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) is modest but memorable. So when it pops up in the news I notice. This year it’s a tripledemic (Yale Medicine): “What we are seeing is record levels of RSV in young children. Usually, we see a spike in December or January, but it’s earlier this year,” says Scott Roberts, MD, a Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist.  Meanwhile, as of early December, RSV cases reported by Yale were beginning to go down and COVID-19 and flu cases were increasing. A big part of the flu increase, he explains, is our lack of immunity from having not been exposed to the virus for several seasons due to masking and other precautions, many of which have fallen to the wayside.

I just posted these comments on Twitter having watched Sunak speak to the nation on his 'vision':  

Thanks largely to the violence meted out by the Israeli government, 2022 was likely the most violent year for the West Bank since 2005. Yet a new hope lies on the horizon in the form of a slew of new, well-disciplined Palestinian resistance groups.

The post For Palestinians, 2022 Was a Year of Renewed Tragedy and New Hope appeared first on MintPress News.

Just because the weather gods are now smiling on Europe does not mean its energy crunch is over.

Após prejuízos de R$ 117 milhões com multas ambientais não recolhidas, Secretaria de Meio Ambiente acelerou andamento de processos.

The post Mato Grosso zerou uma década de multas ambientais após farra das prescrições appeared first on The Intercept.

Stuart Spray reports on the inspiring work being done to restore the UK's seas and coastlines and the bad news threatening to undermine this

It seems reasonable to hope that a successful explanation of wage rigidity would contribute to understanding the extent of the welfare loss associated with unemployment and what can be done to reduce it … Many theories of wage rigidity and unemployment include partial answers to these questions as part of their assumptions, so that the […]

High on Life can trap players inside Applebee's forever (Thanks to Ralph)

On this week’s Lever Time Premium: David speaks with a leading expert in airline history and regulation; and discusses the shadowy power wielded by our country’s largest law firms.

Photos from space show 11,000 beavers are wreaking havoc on the Alaskan tundra as savagely as wildfire (Thanks to Robert Moats)

Cow gets lost in shopping centre, stuck in mud, during 24 hour emergency streak (Thanks to Fabian Marson)

Chaos on Lake Union hot tub boat ends in finger pointing (Thanks to Allen at Division)

More links… If you’re using MTurk to run surveys, you probably should consider an alternative — Florian Cova (Geneva) with an experimental philosophy cautionary tale A private firm is planning on using genetic engineering to de-extinct the woolly mammoth — Andy Lamey (UCSD) has some questions “I had been involved in actions that seemed deeply wrong to me, though perhaps necessary in the conduct of the war, and parts of my soul were at war with each other” — Paul Woodruff (Texas) on how philosophy helped him put his “soul back together” “It is a strange thing… that the more time and pains men have consumed in the study of philosophy, by so much the more they look upon themselves to be ignorant and weak creatures” — George Berkeley is “interviewed” at 3:16AM “Prohibitions aren’t enough. We need a positive moral vision that guides us towards securing a better future.

Not to sound like an old Carson joke setup, but…. It is a mystery just how much of their own BS the hardest right among the Republican House caucus believes. They really, really dislike their own party establishment. That’s something activists on both sides of the aisle can appreciate. What they do about it is something else. Especially with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is now backing Rep. Kevin McCarthy in his failing bid for Speaker. McCarthy failed to secure the votes to win three times on Tuesday. There is more fun to come this afternoon. CNN’s Jake Tapper offered some praise for Greene’s willingness to back the majority of her caucus, while contributor Jonah Goldberg condemned the holdouts (Mediaite): “They’re nihilists,” he said before ripping Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a leading anti-McCarthy voice. “Most of these guys are performative people. Matt Gaetz is an illiterate.” Dana Bash asked Goldberg if the speakership drama speaks to a broader problem with the Republican Party.

The problem, you see, is extremists on Both Sides.

Sian Norris reports from the incel forums on their reaction to the Tik-Tok influencer’s arrest – and the reaction is not what you would expect