Today (January 16, 2025), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Labour Force, Australia – for December 2024. Employment growth was relatively strong but concentrated on part-time employment, which suggests the quality of employment fell. Employment growth was also unable to keep pace with the underlying population growth and the rising participation rate…
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Just before the president’s executive order, his own administration sounded the alarm about data centers’ energy consumption, water use, and emissions.
Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire deal on almost entirely the same terms as a proposal that fell apart in the summer.
The post A Deal Too Late: Israel Agrees to the Ceasefire It Rejected Months Ago, Thousands More Died appeared first on The Intercept.
Of course: Oil executive Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Energy Department, has argued that climate change has not fueled more frequent and severe wildfires — a claim at odds with the scientific consensus. Wright’s arguments drew scrutiny from Senate Democrats during his confirmation hearing Wednesday, as deadly wildfires continue to ravage the Los Angeles area, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 25 people. In a 2021 appearance on the PetroNerds podcast, Wright criticized mainstream media outlets for drawing a connection between wildfires and warming. Wildfires are “a major thing in the news now,” he said. “‘It’s climate change. It’s climate change.’ … The short answer: It is not.” Wright, head of the fracking company Liberty Energy, has also disputed this connection in more recent LinkedIn posts, according to a review of his comments conducted by the environmental group Evergreen Action and shared with The Washington Post.
In their confirmation hearings, John Ratcliffe, Pam Bondi, and Tulsi Gabbard gave government mass surveillance two thumbs up.
The post Trump Decried This Law as a Deep State Spy Weapon. His Nominees Sure Seem to Love It. appeared first on The Intercept.
What do Trump voters really want: the perennial question. The Pew poll asked the question. They also asked what they really think. Let’s just say, it’s not reassuring: They are also liars, at least to themselves: That is nuts. He was clear as mud about everything but immigration and tariffs. The rest was just the usual bluster and bullshit. Utter nonsense. They will meltdown like the wicked witch of the west if he shows even the slightest concern for the Americans who didn’t vote for him. Luckily for them, he’s never going to do that.
Re-posted with permission from https://dri.es/drupal-cms-1-released.
We did it: Drupal CMS 1.0 is here! 🎉
Eight months ago, I challenged our community to make Drupal easier for marketers, content creators, and site builders. Today, on Drupal's 24th birthday, we're making history with the launch of Drupal CMS 1.0.
With this release, you now have two ways to build with Drupal:
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Russell Vought downplayed Trump’s moves to strip protections from civil service employees.
The post White House Budget Office Nominee Tries to Whitewash Trump’s First Term appeared first on The Intercept.
Let me spare you the suspense: Yes, the Democrats will someday come to be ashamed...
Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease fire and the release of at least some of the hostages: Some people are not happy. Not happy at all: Ooopsie! Meanwhile, the press is doing its usual thing. Regardless of American politics, this is good news for Gaza and the families of the hostages. I don’t doubt that Trump’s impending inauguration had something to do with it but I sincerely doubt that he had some magic pixie dust that made it happen. It just makes sense to get it done now before the new regime. Nobody thinks this can go on forever.
How to solve biology’s chicken-or-egg dilemma
The post The Incredible Conundrum of Life’s Origin appeared first on Nautilus.
Low rating news and opinion channel, Sky News Australia, has anointed alleged racist, Peter Dutton, as the white man to lead Australia. ”Enough of this Albanese chap,” said Sky News’ only reporter to be found guilty of breaching the racial... Read More ›
There was a time not all that long ago when confirmation hearings were at least slightly meaningful. Sure, they were mostly just pro forma since the new president is always presumed to have the prerogative to appoint his own cabinet. And even judicial nominees, including those for the Supreme Court, only became contentious when the Republicans started nominating extremist judges. But things have changed. The Republicans have learned that there is no price to pay for appointing unqualified and unfit sycophants and far right ideologues and so that’s what they are doing. In this current round the nominees aren’t even meeting with the Democrats before their hearings as it’s assumed that only Republican votes matter and they know they have enough of those going in because they’ve successfully intimidated anyone who might have had an objection. Jane Mayer’s latest piece in the New Yorker is about the pressure campaign to confirm Pete Hegseth: At the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, on Tuesday, the most telling feature may be the voices from whom the senators won’t hear.
These are such loathsome people I can hardly contain myself. I would say that we should withhold aid from them when the inevitable disaster hits their states but what good would that do? They simply have no understanding of the social contract or even what the definition of a nation is. They are horrible liars and corrupt criminals and I just don’t see how we can survive with people like this running the government. I hope that every Democrat in the country runs ads with these people making these grotesque comments and ask if that’s what America is really all about. Abstract paeans to democracy obviously can’t get people off their couches. Maybe this will. (Sadly, I’m not optimistic.) And then there’s this lunacy: He hates windmills because he hates the way they looked in the ocean outside his Scottish golf course and they wouldn’t remove them.
1. You own music in so many formats that your collection could be housed in an audio museum.
2. Back in your day, people feared measles more than the vaccine that prevents it.
3. You were too young to go to the first Woodstock and too old to deal with Woodstock ’99.
4. You’ve lived through several waves of feminism, and they’ve culminated in two women who were among the most qualified candidates in US presidential history losing to the same misogynistic con artist.
5. You remember when even the cheapest chocolate candy bars actually tasted like chocolate.
6. The “millennial whoop” sets your teeth on edge—and at your age, you can’t afford to lose any more enamel.
7. You are on more medications than your eighty-nine-year-old mother, whose suspicions during your teen years that you were on drugs have finally panned out.
8. The lyric “I want to fuck you like an animal” hits differently when you realize that Trent Reznor, like you, is turning sixty.
9. A hill you will die on is that Doug Emhoff is smoking hot. Maybe not “Michael Hutchence in the 1980s” hot, but close.
Wildfires in California replicate the massive fire storms in the boreal forest in Canada and Siberia, the lungs of the earth. Our addiction to fossil fuel has ignited an age of fire. The apocalyptic wildfires that have erupted in the boreal forest in Siberia, the Russian Far East and Canada, climate scientists repeatedly warned, would inevitably move southwards as rising Continue reading »
A dramatic escape was cited by Israeli media as the reason that Yuval Vagdani, a soldier in the Israeli army, managed to escape justice in Brazil. Vagdani was accused by a Palestinian advocacy legal group, the Hind Rajab Foundation, of carrying out well-documented crimes in Gaza. He is not the only Israeli soldier being pursued for similar crimes. According Continue reading »
A recalcitrant US government could turn-off Australia’s ability to defend itself within days. In 1932, the wonderful Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted a “Self-portrait along the Borderline between Mexico and the United States”. With due alteration for detail, Kahlo’s passionate political statement of self-respect and independence can be seen as foreshadowing the abject nature of Continue reading »
Some Australian media recently provided a platform for false Taiwanese views about the one-China policy. Here are the reasons they are wrong. In recent years, the authorities of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have been trying hard to promote so-called “incremental independence”, while certain external forces have taken the opportunity to interfere, propagating the “Taiwan’s Continue reading »
Americans were shocked by two fatal events in the United States on New Year’s day 2025, and one was quickly called ‘Islamist terrorism’. Yet the US supports Muslim terrorist groups in Syria. At 3.15 on 1 January 2025, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, aged 42, an army veteran and an American-born Muslim convert, drove around security barriers and Continue reading »