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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 […]

An evidence-led, long-called for, but under-used programme of checks for people with a learning disability has the potential to help ease health inequalities more widely, Saba Salman reports

Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation

Speaker: Ben Spies-Butcher

Thursday 7 November 2024, 12-1:30pm

Room 441, Social Sciences Building (A02), The University of Sydney

Neoliberalism has transformed work, welfare and democracy. However, its impacts, and its future, are more complex than we often imagine. Alongside growing inequality, social spending has been rising. This seminar draws on Ben’s recent book to ask how we understand this contradictory politics and what opportunities exist to create a more equal society. It argues an older welfare state politics, driven by the power of industrial labour, is giving way to political contests led by workers within the welfare state itself. Advancing more equal social policy, though, requires new forms of statecraft, or ways of doing policy, as well as new models of organising.

Amid mounting authoritarianism and widespread allegations of election-rigging, will Georgia’s democracy survive parliamentary polls scheduled for 26 October?

Why you should pay attention to California's Proposition 6 this election.

The recent wave of far-right fuelled rioting has hit our country’s most deprived area the hardest, but despite Salford sitting as one of the most deprived local authorities, we thankfully did not see any disorder. It’s debatable why rioting didn’t arrive here; in recent years, Tommy Robinson has held several rallies in Salford. But one […]

A Bible, a piece of wood, a song – a poignant portrait of the everyday family keepsakes that can bridge generations

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Our culture works hard to keep sex and death separate but recharging the libido might provide the release that grief needs

- by Cody Delistraty

Read at Aeon