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I Have Learned A Few Things Caitlin Johnstone I have learned a few things in my time on this earth. Not many, but a few.…

What is Modern Monetary Theory? William Thomson Every idea, concept or school of thought can be boiled down to its basics. This is useful when…

Australia needs better ways of storing renewable electricity for later. That’s where ‘flow batteries’ can help Maria Skyllas-Kazacos As more and more solar and wind…

Thank you everyone for hanging in with me and the rest of the Hullabahooligans this past year. 2025 is going to be tough but we’ll get through it together! cheers! digby

I think we may have found out why Trump is suddenly talking about territorial expansion. Somebody mentioned a little history over dinner and YMCA at MAL and he got all excited. He thinks it will be his Louisiana Purchase and he’ll go down in history as bigger than Alexander the Great. Apropos of nothing: You’ll be glad to know that his minions are hard at work normalizing this lunacy:

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Not the best of all years. Annus Horriblus.

The NY Times published a fun feature called “11 Data Points and Discoveries That Surprised Us in 2024.” I thought this one was particularly pertinent to Democratic navel gazing about the election: Special elections really were all about turnout, and thus meant little for November Why were Democrats doing so well in special elections, even though polls showed Joe Biden doing so poorly? I collected and analyzed data on who had been voting in special elections, and this chart was my “eureka” moment. On the y-axis: how well Democrats fared in a special election, compared with the 2020 election result. On the x-axis: our estimates for the 2020 vote choice of the same special electorates, based on exactly who voted and our previous estimates for the likelihood that registered voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020. As you can see, there’s a decent one-to-one relationship, implying that these election results were mostly a function of turnout, not persuasion. The biggest surprise, for me, wasn’t simply that there was a decent correlation between turnout and results.

Good Lord. According to the NY Times the Feds have arrested a nut who had what they call the largest cache of finished explosive devices ever found in FBI history: The man, Brad Spafford, was taken into custody at a farm outside Norfolk on Dec. 17 on the basis of a single-count criminal complaint accusing him of illegally possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle. When investigators searched his 20-acre property, in Isle of Wight County, they found in a detached garage more than 150 explosive devices — mostly pipe bombs, some of them labeled “lethal,” prosecutors said. They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading “#NoLivesMatter,” prosecutors said. No Lives Matter is a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is one of six medical workers with the Chicago-based organization MedGlobal who remain in Israeli custody.

The post The Scramble to Find the Gaza Doctor in the White Coat appeared first on The Intercept.

Understanding society via self-discovery Asad Zaman This item is extracted from Asad Zaman’s longer article with the same title [1] If “to know yourself is…

The NY Times reports that Musk has pretty much moved in to Mar-a-lago which explains why Trump was so upset when he didn’t see him around that he mistakenly posted a private text to him on Truth Social telling him he misses him. It’s such a sweet relationship. Trump is elderly, you know, and it’s about time for him to turn over the family business to his son: Elon Musk plays many roles with President-elect Donald J. Trump. He is Mr. Trump’s most important donor, most influential social media promoter and a key adviser on policy and personnel. For most of the time since Election Day, he has also been Mr. Trump’s tenant. Mr. Musk has been using one of the cottages available for rent on Mr. Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago, the former Marjorie Merriweather Post home in Florida that Mr. Trump converted into a members-only club and hotel in the 1990s, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement. The cottage where he has been staying, named Banyan, is several hundred feet away from the main house, according to a person who knows the property. Staying right on the grounds has helped provide Mr. Musk with easy access to Mr. Trump.

Trouble in paradise for Trumpy and Kim: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed Vladimir Putin as his “dearest friend” in a New Year’s letter to the Russian leader praising close bilateral ties, state media said on Tuesday. The two countries have deepened political, military and cultural ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Putin and Kim repeatedly professing their personal closeness. Moscow and Pyongyang signed a landmark defense pact during Putin’s visit to the isolated North in June. The pact obligates them to provide immediate military assistance if the other is invaded and came into effect this month.

Richard Munson’s 3 greatest revelations while writing Ingenious, his biography of Franklin, the scientist.

The post The Genius of Benjamin Franklin appeared first on Nautilus.

Ten books we loved to start your new year off right.

The post Introducing the Nautilus Winter Reading List appeared first on Nautilus.

From H1B to H5N1 We move now from the MAGA civil war over H1B visas to the H5N1 bird flu. (It’s getting hard to keep the abbreviations straight without a bound reference.) CDC: December 18, 2024— A patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of avian influenza A(H5N1) virus (“H5N1 bird flu”) infection in Louisiana. This marks the first instance of severe illness linked to the virus in the United States. The case was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday, December 13. Since April 2024, there have been a total of 61 reported human cases of H5 bird flu reported in the United States. […] A sporadic case of severe H5N1 bird flu illness in a person is not unexpected; avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection has previously been associated with severe human illness in other countries during 2024 and prior years, including illness resulting in death. No person-to-person spread of H5 bird flu has been detected. This case does not change CDC’s overall assessment of the immediate risk to the public’s health from H5N1 bird flu, which remains low. No need to panic.

MAGA GOP in disarray So NOW reparations are on the table. When they’re presumed for Americans of a certain hue (Daily Beast): Steve Bannon escalated the MAGA civil war Monday by calling for ‘reparations’ for Americans for losing out to immigrants on H-1B visas–who should themselves, he said, be deported. Bannon repeatedly railed against the program—and billionaire Elon Musk, who backs the visas—on Monday’s War Room, asking guests including conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and former-Democrat-turned-MAGA-backer Allison Huynh whether Musk understood the visas were a “scam.” H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs, were signed into law as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he supported the program. See, this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part! And Steve Bannon is just the guy to do it.

Long holidays are nice. But sometimes, amid all the relaxation, you can feel your brain getting a bit mushy. What do you do then? Personally, yours truly usually solves crosswords, chess problems, and the occasional mathematical puzzle to keep the grey brain cells active over Christmas and New Year…

We’re counting down our twenty-four most-read articles of 2024. Check back daily for updates to the list, as we make our way to number one. Happy Holidays!

24. We Are Not a ‘School’—We Are a Hospital System with a Football Team
by Andrew Patrick Clark

23. I Am a Boomer’s iPhone and I Will Not Be Silenced
by Julia Bensfield Luce

22. Deciphering Your Daughter’s ‘MOM’ Texts
by Dani Bostick

21. Gen Z Beowulf
by John-Clark Levin