Reading

Your face is covered in thousands of living mites closely related to spiders and ticks (Thanks to Matt Filar)

Christmas package containing frankincense and myrrh prompts bomb squad investigation (Thanks to Geoff Scott and pharmaross)

Our 11th most-read article of the 2022.

Originally published November 15, 2022.

This is an excerpt from the author’s funny new collection, which you can buy here.

New links for the Heap… The Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board has proposed a plaque to commemorate Philippa Foot and the house where she lived from 1972 to 2010 — a decision will be made on the proposal in mid-January New Work In Philosophy: The YouTube Channel — videos about recent philosophy Lecture notes—pretty much a textbook—for a course entitled “Belief, Desire, and Rational Choice” — from Wolfgang Schwarz (Edinburgh) One philosophy professor’s experience with a student who cheated by having ChatGPT write their essay — “proving the paper was concocted by ChatGPT was nearly impossible,” said Darren Hick (Furman) A Medievalist notices that an academic extensively plagiarized his blog in her book, and contacts her to object.

The music we are making is a new tranche of art rock music - every bit as valid as The Velvet Underground, The Sex Pistols, The Beatles ... but with women evolving new themes and sounds.

I recently listened to the new book by Anand Giridharadas, who is well-known for his previous book Winner Takes All. That book was about how (some of) the superrich are happy trying to contribute to some of the world’s problems, but never ask any questions related to why the world is so unequal as it […]

This past year, The Lever launched several podcasts, taking its independent journalism to the next level.

Reading novels is my life-blood; I can’t go more than a few hours between books. That said, this year was a slightly odd one in my reading career. First, the year leading up to August represented the home strait of a self-enforced 12 months of not buying books. So lots of reliance on the not-especially-good […]

Annoying non-holidays days of holiday week.

2022 has been a tumultuous year for Digital Rights in the UK. Ebbs in the Political chaos resulted in a flow of unhelpful domestic legislation. Measures that protect us from Data Discrimination are being eroded as the Government amends UK GDPR Data Protection laws with their Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, aka the Data Discrimination Bill.  […]

An analysis of state-level economic growth suggests that a certain number of contracting state economies could signal the start of a national recession.

A critique yours truly sometimes encounters is that as long as I cannot come up with some own alternative to the failing mainstream theory, I shouldn’t expect people to pay attention. This is however to misunderstand the role of philosophy and methodology of economics! As John Locke wrote in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: The […]

Yeah, it is mostly this simple:

This is pretty much the map for UN resolutions aimed at Russia, too.

The Journal of the History of Philosophy (JHP) has announced the winner of its 2022 Book Prize. The prize, awarded for the best book written in history of philosophy published in 2021, goes to Arthur Ripstein (university of Toronto) for his Kant and the Law of War (Oxford University Press, 2021). Here’s the publisher’s description of the book: The past two decades have seen renewed scholarly and popular interest in the law and morality of war. Positions that originated in the late Middle Ages through the seventeenth century have received more sophisticated philosophical elaboration. Although many contemporary writers appeal to ideas drawn from Kant’s moral philosophy, his explicit discussions of war have not yet been brought into their proper place in these debates.

While Zelensky hypnotizes Western governments into forking over vast sums to finance his war effort, he has appointed a literal hypnotist (and part-time sexologist multi-level marketer) to a high-level diplomatic position. High end jewelry, hypnotism and multi-level marketing are not qualifications typically associated with international diplomacy. But these skills are featured prominently on the resumé of Ukraine’s new ambassador to Bulgaria, Olesya Ilashchuk. Since her December 23 appointment by Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky as Bulgarian ambassador, Olesya Ilashchuk has locked […]

The post Zelensky appoints sexologist pyramid schemer as ambassador to Bulgaria appeared first on The Grayzone.

A decade ago, when the issue of Republican anti-science bias was raised, a common response was to point to attitudes to vaccination, where, it was claimed, Democrats were the anti-science party. I observed at the time that this claim wasn’t justified by the available evidence. A little later, I noted the likelihood of the Republicans […]

The post Video of the Day – The Luminaries Magazine, 2013 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

The misrule of Scott Morrison ended in 2022, yet the widespread public disgust with his profound maladministration continued, as the popularity of Michelle Pini's March article showed. read now...

It’s Wednesday and also a holiday period, so just a few things today. First, I discuss a research paper that has concluded that central bankers have been using the wrong model for years which has resulted in flawed estimates of…

Rock on.

Our 12th most-read article of the 2022.

Originally published September 15, 2022.

As of this date, the citizens of Spirit Falls approve the following resolutions:

1. Any ex-lovers of residents of Spirit Falls must file, in writing, their intent to enter city limits ninety days before an intended visit. The paperwork must include a notarized affidavit of intent to not participate in, instigate, or be the recipient of romantic gestures.

2. We, as a community, no longer have boutique small businesses that require saving. The following businesses have been brought back from the brink of corporate take-over and/or foreclosure and/or family disagreement threatening financial ruin:

But their quarry may not be dead It looks like the GOP race for the presidential nomination is on. Trump is probably fine with a bigger crowd since it may work for him in the long run. With winner-take-all primaries, if he does end up politically crippled by all his baggage, he could slip under the wire with his solid 30% of the GOP base. (He didn’t start winning majorities until the very end of the process in 2016.) The Washington Post reports: Potential contenders are well into laying groundwork for campaigns, as more than a dozen have signaled interest or have declined to rule out a run amid speculation. Yet it’s unclear how many will actually take the plunge. A crowded field could play to Trump’s advantage, as it did in 2016 when the rest of the party did not unite around a single alternative as Trump won key early contests with a plurality of the vote. “We figured by the first quarter next year, we need to be hard at it if we’re going to do it,” said Pompeo in a recent Fox News interview. Pompeo’s political action committee did not respond to a request for comment. Nikki Haley, the U.N.