Reading

Created
Fri, 20/09/2024 - 02:30

Dear Parent or Guardian,

Despite our laughably small budget, the district insists we keep up with tech trends. As a result, you must manage a shit ton of cheap, hard-to-use apps and websites this year.

Classroom Assist
Students use this platform to chat with teachers and submit assignments outside of school hours. To enroll your child, click here and answer three ancient Babylonian riddles, each more difficult than the last. Failure to correctly answer each riddle will lock you out of the site for forty-eight hours—plenty of time to consider homeschooling your student.

Volunteer Wizard
A reminder that you’re required to volunteer at one super-stressful school event per semester. (FYI, we need someone to cover a vape-patrol shift at the homecoming dance.) Sign up on this overly complicated app that’ll make you wonder why we didn’t just use a Google Doc.

Created
Fri, 20/09/2024 - 00:30
ICYMI Wednesday I took a little license in the title. Here’s what you may have missed (NYT): More than 100 former national security officials from Republican administrations and former Republican members of Congress endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday after concluding that their party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, is “unfit to serve again as president.” […] The 111 signatories included former officials who served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Many of them had previously broken with Mr. Trump, including two former defense secretaries, Chuck Hagel and William S. Cohen; Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank; the former C.I.A. directors Michael V. Hayden and William H. Webster; a former director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte; and former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts. Miles Taylor and Olivia Troye, two Trump administration officials who became vocal critics, also signed. Here’s the link.
Created
Thu, 19/09/2024 - 23:32

Once upon a time in America, we could all argue about whether or not U.S. global power was declining. Now, most observers have little doubt that the end is just a matter of timing and circumstance. Ten years ago, I predicted that, by 2025, it would be all over for American power, a then-controversial comment that’s commonplace today. Under President Donald Trump, the once “indispensable nation” that won World War II and built a new world order has become dispensable indeed. The decline and fall of American global power is, of course, nothing special in the great sweep of history. After all, in the 4,000 years since humanity’s first empire formed in the Fertile Crescent, at least 200 empires have... Read more

Source: What Does It Take to Destroy a World Order? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Thu, 19/09/2024 - 23:09

A shadowy Hungarian firm is at the center of Israel’s lethal pager explosions in Lebanon. With 26 dead, the incident highlights Israel’s covert operations and foreign involvement in the Middle East conflict.

The post Israel’s Lebanon Attack: Hungarian Shell Company Linked to Deadly Pager Blasts appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Thu, 19/09/2024 - 23:00
In a sane world Board of elections officials and supervisors take oaths before starting their public service jobs, both in my state and in Georgia. Here’s Georgia Code § 21-2-70: (B) In the case of a board of elections, each member of the board shall take an oath in the following form upon becoming a member of the board which shall apply to all primaries and elections conducted by the board throughout such person’s tenure on the board: I, __________________, do swear (or affirm) that I will as a member of the board of elections duly attend all ensuing primaries and elections during the continuance thereof, that I will to the best of my ability prevent any fraud, deceit, or abuse in carrying on the same, that I will make a true and perfect return of such primaries and elections, and that I will at all times truly, impartially, and faithfully perform my duties in accordance with Georgia laws to the best of my judgment and ability. Now, like the presidential oath (Article II, Section 1, Clause 8) and the Foreign Emoluments Clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8), try enforcing it.
Created
Thu, 19/09/2024 - 23:00

Sean Görman works as the villainous “Manager of Champions” in New England Championship Wrestling. A graduate of Emerson College’s creative writing program, he’s the author of wrestling memoir Until We’re Strangers Again and numerous articles and essays about wrestling.