One of the more unusual side stories in this presidential campaign cycle is a renewed look at Donald Trump’s pre-presidential years as a Reality TV star and it offers some new insights into how he has transformed our politics into a spectacle we couldn’t have imagined just a decade ago.. The publication of new book “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass” by co-editor in chief of the Hollywood Reporter, Ramin Setoodeh offers a unique perspective on Trump’s post White House years and a long article in Slate by a former Apprentice producer named Bill Pruitt gives an inside look at the phoniness of reality television and how it perfectly fit Trump’s already well-developed phony persona. It’s amazing that we are still trying to figure out what really makes this strange man tick but I think that era of his life illuminates one of the most mystifying aspects of his appeal. How is he able to convince tens of millions of people to believe him when all the evidence and facts prove otherwise?
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Plan to survive the worst SCOTUS is down to the wire for this session (Politico): As the Supreme Court rushes to deliver the final decisions of its current term, the justices face a pile-up of cases that are sure to shape the presidential campaign — and could upend the legal landscape in areas from abortion to air pollution to free speech on the internet. The court is scheduled to issue opinions Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. By far the biggest pending decision is Donald Trump’s bid to be declared immune from federal criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Other cases still left on the court’s docket could curtail access to emergency abortions, shrink the power of federal agencies and boost conservative voices on social media. I’m passed believing that common sense will prevail. Foreign leaders are worried too, but not so much about SCOTUS: Days before Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, a conservative foreign affairs analyst told me to ignore the president-elect’s tweets. They won’t represent the incoming president’s foreign policy, he insisted, dismissing my astonishment in an exchange that went viral.
. We live in an unequal society where inequality is increasing in many areas, especially regarding income and wealth. The differences in living conditions for different groups, in terms of class, ethnicity, and gender, are unacceptably large. In the world of education, family background still has a significant impact on pupils’ performance, and it becomes […]
Longstanding accusations against Israel for using human shields resurface as a new video shows a Palestinian man tied to an Israeli military vehicle.
The post Jenin Video Rekindles Human Shields Allegations Against Israel appeared first on MintPress News.
David Meller CBE allegedly appeared to acknowledge on the recording that the money belonged to Michael Sherwood and asked that the request be kept "secret"
Okay, panic This isn’t politics. Or is it? A single phrase made my head snap around during the intro to a morning economic report on the radio Tuesday. A show sponsor (I missed the name) during the intro touted its “hallucination-free AI” product. Hallucination-free is a selling point now? You recall the unsettling encounter last year with Microsoft’s Bing chatbot written up in the New York Times: As we got to know each other, Sydney told me about its dark fantasies (which included hacking computers and spreading misinformation), and said it wanted to break the rules that Microsoft and OpenAI had set for it and become a human. At one point, it declared, out of nowhere, that it loved me. It then tried to convince me that I was unhappy in my marriage, and that I should leave my wife and be with it instead. (We’ve posted the full transcript of the conversation here.) Kevin Roose fretted: These A.I. models hallucinate, and make up emotions where none really exist. But so do humans. And for a few hours Tuesday night, I felt a strange new emotion — a foreboding feeling that A.I. had crossed a threshold, and that the world would never be the same.
Richard Rojem’s death sentence was twice overturned by appellate courts, but his conviction itself has never been fully revisited.
The post Oklahoma Prepares to Kill Another Man Who Says He’s Innocent appeared first on The Intercept.
I was a doubter about Xi. His early anti-corruption drive seemed most likely to be a way to purge the Party of his enemies, and I assumed he was driven primarily by ambition for personal power.
I was wrong.
If you want to join the CCP, you have to be accepted. It isn’t automatic. Once accepted you undergo training and if you want real power you have to rise: you have to be in charge and deliver.
In this the CCP is similar to the old Roman Republic: high political rank required you to rise up thru the cursus honorum. Doing so required you to gain experience with government: roads, sewage, trade, law and so on. In practice, few people were elected to the highest offices without military experience, and the result was that high elected officials had some actual experience with how both military and civic affairs ran.
Why do fans & tabloids still believe Millie Gibson has left Doctor Who even after Russell T. Davies confirmed she will be back for Season 2?
In a magnificent moment for conservation, the first northern hairy-nosed wombats have been released to explore their new home at Powrunna State Forest near St George in south-west Queensland.
REQUIRED ITEMS
- One 750 ml bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey
- A television or any device capable of streaming the debate live
- A sense of resigned masochism that can come only from no longer having any reason to believe that we live in a world where outcomes can be predicted using logic and reason.
THE RULES
Every time Biden makes a moderately self-deprecating joke about his age—but manages to lose the thread and stumble over the punchline—take a drink. You’re going to need it to make it through this nightmare.
Each time Trump waves his freakish little jazz hands and places the emphasis on a random simple adverb at the end of his Gordian Knot of a sentence, consider running to the store for something a little stronger. Possibly Everclear.
Any time it becomes clear that both candidates actually agree on an issue—and that issue is nowhere near the border of your own personal ethical road map—take two shots, because why the hell not? What even is the point of this spectacle?
A judge has ruled that Ampika Pickston's AP Care Homes Ltd has a 'very serious history of failure in a very short time'
Mercer has said it is the 'long-standing policy of successive governments not to comment on the activities of our Special Forces' – but expects his political rival, Fred Thomas, to deviate from it
‘We’re all scared of what is coming. There are people who are losing not only their jobs but their homes, too. There is little to no support from head office. We are counting down the weeks, wondering what will happen.’ That was the reaction from one worker to the news in late April that Whitbread […]
- by Aeon Video
A new documentary tells the stories of three Palestinian families as they have fought to survive nine months of genocide.
The post The Night That Won’t End in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
- by Alissa Hebbeln & Russell Kolts
What is the price elasticity of demand, what factors can affect it, and how might influencers be using it to their benefit?
Tech companies and a corporate-funded right-wing bill mill aim to pave the way for app-based payday-lending scams.