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Albanese once said his purpose in life was to “fight Tories.” In government he has done little more than surrender to them. The menu for Anthony Albanese over the next few weeks provides good examples of Labor’s problems in controlling the agenda and sticking to the narrative over the lead-up to the next federal election. Continue reading »

Distinguished moral philosopher and public intellectual Raimond Gaita (FAHA), Professor, University College London, and Melbourne Law school, discusses his approach towards a moral understanding of the Israel Gaza war based on the ideas collected in the book ‘Justice and Hope: Essays, Lectures and Other writings’, (Edited by Scott Stephens), Melbourne University Publishing, Paperback edition October Continue reading »

The Australian Government has established 'Measuring What Matters', Australia’s first national wellbeing framework. It follows similar frameworks in SA, Victoria and the ACT, and one under development in NSW. Will these frameworks help to improve psychological wellbeing in Australia? Continue reading »

It is difficult to reconcile new Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s expressions of concern for the security of his country with his advocation of an Asian version of NATO. The two ideas are contradictory to say the least. Even without mentioning China, it is clear that the alleged threat to Japan’s security emanates from China. Continue reading »

Emmy award-winning journalist Bisan Owda who continues to share what’s happening with the world, provides an overview of what’s happening in North Gaza, including maps to show the movement of the displaced people of Palestine and the Israeli army.     View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Bisan Owda (@wizard_bisan1) Continue reading »

Jordana Cutler, Meta’s policy chief for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, repeatedly flagged for censorship posts by Students for Justice in Palestine.

The post Meta’s Israel Policy Chief Tried to Suppress Pro-Palestinian Instagram Posts appeared first on The Intercept.

The 2024 election is just a little over two weeks away now and most Democrats are down to their last nerve with worry. This is nothing new, of course. That’s just the way they roll. Republicans meanwhile are already cracking the champagne strutting around saying they have it in the bag no need to worry. That’s how they roll. Both of these phenomenons are indicative of a certain kind of temperament but they are also real political strategies and it’s worth taking a look at them. I’ve written before about the Republicans’ love of the bandwagon effect which really just holds that if you act like Donald Trump and pretend that you know you’ve got it won, some people will naturally follow because they want to go with the winner. They’ve actually been doing that long before Trump came along but nobody in politics has ever been more naturally adept at deploying it than he is.

SEAN: Happy Monday, everyone. This is me, your boss, pretending that the beginning of your forty-hour work week is a good thing. It isn’t. I will now ask about everyone’s weekend and say, “Hope no one did anything I wouldn’t do.” This won’t make sense, as I’m the most boring person here. Now, I’m going to throw things over to our office manager, Kevin.

KEVIN: Let’s kick things off with this week’s calendar. As you can see, we’re up to our eyeballs with work, but I will ask everyone to stretch their bandwidth and reach goals so unachievable that they’ll strain each of our marriages.

STEPHANIE: I am in HR. I smile too much and have a strange energy about me. Once, when someone brought up roller coaster accidents, I said, “Once you see one, you never really forget it.”

Han kan beskrivas som det svenska inflationsmålets fader.Men i en ny dokumentär kallas 30 år av penningpolitik med fokus på 2-procentig inflation för ”en kyrka” av den före detta vice riksbankschefen.– Det var inte särskilt vetenskapligt underbyggt, säger Thomas Franzén i SVT:s ”Skuldfeber”. Hösten 1990 hade inflationen klättrat till mer än 10 procent och den […]

So Mike Johnson textd with is erstwhile friend Liz Cheney after her appearance on Meet the Press last week. He told Axios they “agreed to disagree.” Liz says, not so much: Cheney disputed Johnson’s characterization of the exchange, telling Axios that she and the speaker “used to be friends, but we did not ‘agree to disagree.'” Johnson said he had not spoken to Cheney in a “very long time,” but decided to text her after “she said some very uncharitable things.”“I do not have faith that Mike Johnson will fulfill his constitutional obligations,” Cheney told NBC on Oct. 13. Johnson told Axios he shared “how disappointed I was in that, to make things personal, because I’ve not done that.

The secret operation was allegedly conducted by former intelligence officials in order to "generate false information" about senior Democrats

First they ignore you…. The Washington Post this morning offers a “narrative busting” poll, says Simon Rosenberg. But still within the margins of error or, as activists put it, within the margin of effort: Among these key-state voters, Harris runs strongest in Georgia, where she has an advantage of six percentage points among registered voters and four points among likely voters, which is within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Harris also is slightly stronger than Trump in the three most contested northern states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — but by percentages within the margin of error. The seventh battleground state, Nevada, is tied among likely voters though Harris is three points stronger than Trump among registered voters. Naturally, the polling from North Carolina has me concerned. I’ve repeatedly made my pitch for turning out more neglected independents in heavily blue urban precincts where they underperform Democrats. But shaving GOP margins in rural areas is also part of a winning equation. Democrats’ state chair Anderson Clayton and friends at groups like Down Home North Carolina are on it.

Six-month battle sees Telegraph forced to correct an inaccurate article about the impact of climate change on rail delays

Amazing (at Appearing High in Your Search Results) Zucchini Bread

Not the Best Zucchini Bread

Pretty Good but Still Kind of Dry and Bland Zucchini Bread

Zucchini Bread Exactly Like the Recipe Above but with a Random Extra Quarter Teaspoon Baking Powder and a Completely Unnecessary “Signature” Ingredient (It’s Paprika)

Zucchini Bread Recipe Stolen from NYTimes Cooking

Easy, Delicious, and Moist Are Words We Are Using to Describe This Zucchini Bread (Even Though It’s Difficult, Mediocre, and Dry)

Zero-Sugar Healthy Zucchini Bread (Aside from Two Cups of Maple Syrup, Shhh)

Five-Star Zucchini Bread Recipe, Based on Ratings from Ten Thousand Bots

Five-Star Zucchini Bread Recipe, Based on Single Rating from Lady Who Clicked “Rate This Recipe” by Mistake

Highly Suspicious Two-and-a-Half-Star-Rated Zucchini Bread Recipe, Which Actually Tastes Totally Fine

Zucchini Bread That Will Look Nothing Like the Improperly Licensed Stock Photo Accompanying the Recipe

Zucchini Bread Recipe Posted by Blogger Who Hasn’t Actually Made It Before, but Is Confident It’s Probably Edible

What a wonderful world it won’t be Noah Smith (Noahpinion) published a grim picture of what the world might look like if Donald Trump regains the U.S. presidency. He’s admittedly not an expert on geoplitics. Neither am I. But you should read it. It’s compelling. So much of our focus is captured by concerns closer to home: to women’s reproductive freedoms in our country, to our economy, to the threat Trump and Project 2025 pose to the future of our adolescent republic, to the horse-race dynamics of our presidential contest, etc. Smith asks us to pull back and consider the global implications of a second Trump presidency on a world threatened by what he calls the New Axis: North Korea, Russia, and China. Smith warns, “The free world is teetering on the edge of a knife.” The United States since World War II has been the indispensable nation, the anchor for the western alliance that held the Soviet bloc in check during the Cold War. That was our pride. That was the problem: But the U.S.’ importance to the democratic alliance system always represented a single point of failure.

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 You Shouldn’t Throw Your Vote Away

I don’t know any “undecided” voters—are they real?—and I don’t think someone like me can convince a right-winger to switch sides. But I know many people to the Left of Kamala who are torn between voting for her, abstaining, and voting for a third-party candidate. Those people have been on my mind a lot.

We’ve raised something over $5,400 since the fundraiser started, meaning we’ve reached the first goal of $4K and our $2,500 out from $7,000 tier, at which point I’ll do 3 reviews of important books. At 10K, which is $4,600 out, I’ll write an article on:

…the fundamental process which keeps society together, how it fails and renews and under what conditions it fails to renew.

And at $13,000, I’ll write:

an article on the weaknesses of North American style police, and how a determined and ruthless opponent could take advantage of those weaknesses to rip them a new one.

I really appreciate everyone who’s given. Donations and subscriptions from readers which have kept this blog alive and running. Times are hard, since Covid each fundraiser has become more difficult, because people are hurting, in particular from inflation.

There are many processes now subsumed under the term “Artificial Intelligence.” The reason we’re talking about it now, though, is that the websites are doing things we never thought websites could do. The pixels of our devices light up like never before. Techno-optimists believe that we’re nowhere close to the limit, that websites will continue […]