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The Victoria and Albert Museum is a glittering treasure trove of imperial loot, still named after the conjugal figureheads of one of the bloodiest networks of global subjugation in history. Can it really be the right place to consider the all too brief architectural flowering of an era which laid legitimate claim to the description […]

We are writing to inform you that Your Body (“you,” “yourself,” “your aging body”) has updated its terms of service, which apply to the use of all your Parts and Areas. These terms will apply only to Your Once-Useful Body and may differ from Other People’s Bodies, Which Are Still Normal.

We encourage you to review the updated Terms before you attempt any dangerous activity, such as playing with your dog or walking uphill. Our other legal policies are available in our Depressing Policy Center.

Republicans are surging and Democrats are withering because the parties switched outlooks on political pugilism.

This is a good piece by Sidney Blumenthal in the Guardian about the effects of Trump’s assassination attempt. It’s truly sickening: The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has transformed the theology of Trump. He has long portrayed himself as an innocent lamb falsely accused, the target of slings and arrows to bear the suffering of believers. Now the bullet and the blood of Butler, Pennsylvania, have sanctified him for the faithful and brought forth a new gospel. Earlier this month, the Republican National Committee endorsed the party platform, a document that contained a plank pledging to create a new federal agency to defend Christian nationalism: “To protect Religious Liberty, Republicans support a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias that will investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.” The document casts Christians as though they are a sect still persecuted by the Romans, about to be dragged into the Colosseum to face ferocious beasts. But after the shooting, there was no mention of a platform. There was no reference to the political party.

Das Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW) in Berlin hat Rechnungen für eine Vermögensteuer in Höhe von einem Prozent angestellt, wie sie derzeit politisch diskutiert wird. In dem Modell gilt ein Freibetrag in Höhe von einer Million Euro für Privatpersonen und von fünf Millionen Euro, wenn diese in einem Betrieb stecken. Das bedeutet: Privatleute müssen die […]

The trial and sentencing of the protesters has been described as a "low point in British justice" and an "assault on free speech"

A report by the Climate Change Committee shows just how much action the new Labour Government needs to take to achieve the country's targets

The Midas Cult strikes back Rick Perlstein has been punishing himself reading a copy of Project 2025. He’s plowing through the internal contradictions so you don’t have to. His second installment uncovers needles in that haystack as well as dirty needles in plain view. Among them: “Discrimination is singled out as a bad thing, to be sure,” Perlstein finds. “Heritage would just render it impossible to fight” by not measuring it. Simply “prohibit racial classifications.” Problem solved! Becasue racial tracking of employees is a crime against “the diversity of the American workforce.” There’s plenty of weirdness authored by “the reactionary wing of … the Holy Roman Catholic Church.” Perlstein makes this observation on how the faith insinuates itself into policy.

In part two of his investigation, Nafeez Ahmed reveals how a Government-funded organisation provides a statistically distorted picture of the national crisis of anti-Muslim hate crimes

Attentional humility opens us to sympathetic reading—a willingness to receive from the text on the author’s own terms.

It’s not a happenstance or some sad mistake that, barring a surprise, Americans will go to the polls in November to vote for one of two distinctly ancient men, now 77 and 81, both of whom have clearly exhibited language and thought problems for a significant period of time. To put this in perspective, remember for a moment that, until Ronald Reagan entered his second term in office in 1985 (during which he would get dementia before leaving the White House at age 77), the oldest president was Dwight D. Eisenhower and he was 70 (yes, 70!) not on entering the Oval Office but on leaving it after his second term in 1961.  Of course, that was another America in another... Read more

Source: The Decline and Fall of Presidential America appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

While the republic burns, the press chases clicks Watching Day 3 of RNC convention coverage last night on a couple of channels, I found most of it as horrible as Donald Trump finds Milwaukee. Republican speakers shamelessly spewed lies, distortions and smears. (Daniel Dale deconstructs just a few for CNN.) Republican conventioneers held signs reading MASS DEPORTATION NOW! (CBS reports it was, in part, a deliberate troll intended to “make heads explode.”) The convention’s message is horrible, yes, but so is the coverage. But what made my head spin was a promo during a commerical break on MSNBC, the kind featuring a snappy clips of recent coverage. The montage was all Biden is old, will he or won’t he drop out, etc. Nothing about the stakes in this election for women and for international order and democracy. Nothing about Donald Trump’s incoherence, the GOP’s rejection of the rule of law, Project 2025 plans for terminating our republic (with extreme prejudice), our country teetering on the edge of dictatorship. The days of news divisions being loss leaders for TV networks were gone decades ago.

Been There, Smelled That explores the aromas of places around the world. Travel writer Maggie Downs investigates some of the world’s most potent smells, looks at how odor cultivates a connection to place, and presents how humans engage with smells, from scents that have endured generations to the latest innovations in aroma-making.

On my first full day in Addis Ababa, I head to the basement of the National Museum of Ethiopia, where I spend the morning with the fossilized remains of early hominids.

The attraction here is Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old ancestor to humans. Her Ethiopian name is Dinkinesh, which means “you are marvelous” in Amharic, but she’s commonly known as “Lucy” because “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” played on a cassette tape while paleontologists excavated her bones from the dirt.

Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa "bigenerated" into a wax figure of the Fifteenth Doctor at Madame Tussauds London exhibition. Here's a look!

“Readers weigh in on Biden: Please go, Joe. Most don’t think he can win again and wish he’d make a graceful exit.” — Headline from op-ed in the Boston Globe, 7/17/24

Once upon a time, there was a marvelous king. Well, “marvelous” may be an overstatement, but most reasonable people agreed that he’d done a decent job, considering the pragmatic impossibility of ruling his fractious land and the low bar set by many previous kings. More importantly, four years earlier, he had earned the people’s eternal gratitude by slaying a dragon that had seized the throne and terrorized them.

But now the dragon had come back to life, resurrected by its cowardly minions who could have kept it dead but, tired of putting out numerous fires it had set around the countryside, basically decided it was easier not to. Now, the dragon’s tail itched to smite those who had dared cross it, and flames of the deepest orange spewed out of its puckered maw.

BCTV Daily Dispatch: The Rookie, Shōgun, Cobra Kai, Alien: Earth, True Detective, Peacemaker, X-Men '97, Lanterns, The Boys, Superman & more!

Some news! I have a new book of poems for children coming out in a couple of months – Let Sleeping Cats Lie. It’s a collection of poems about pets (dogs, cats, goldfish, chinchilla, guinea pigs, snakes, budgies, rabbits, blue whales etc). I say it’s for children but it’s also suitable for grandchildren and, who…

Keir Starmer's party has just set our Parliament's agenda for the first time in nearly 15 years

The fallacy of composition basically consists of the false belief that the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts.  In society and in the economy this is arguably not the case. An adequate analysis of society and economy a fortiori can’t proceed by just adding up the acts and decisions of individuals. The whole […]