Reading

A trove of investigative files reveals that the Department of Justice almost never prosecutes grizzly bear killers under the powerful law.

The post Grizzly Bear Poachers Flout the Endangered Species Act — and Get Away With It appeared first on The Intercept.

‘Ideally controlled experiments’ tell us with certainty what causes what effects — but only given the right closures. Making appropriate extrapolations from (ideal, accidental, natural or quasi) experiments to different settings, populations or target systems, is not easy. ‘It works there’ is no evidence for ‘it will work here.’ Causes deduced in an experimental setting […]

Byline Times has been unravelling the dealings behind the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the UK since the very early days of the pandemic. Here’s what we learnt – and what we still need answers to...

Adam Barnett wonders why the Reform Party and its leader are treated as mainstream when they're not

Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill and journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous discuss the U.S. role in Israel’s scorched-earth campaign to annihilate Gaza.

The post Watch: A Conversation on the Horrors in Gaza With Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous appeared first on The Intercept.

Your right to vote: Use it or lose it Antidemocratic actions in Republican-led legislatures. Militias gearing up for a second civil war (and staging to go weapons-hot on Jan. 6). Donald Trump echoing the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini. An economy and an ecology that’s left younger Americans with grimmer prospects than their parents’. Is it any wonder many younger Americans lack enthusiasm for a gridlocked politics that has not served them well? Winston Churchill said (but did not originate the phrasing): Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.

Sunak had eight meetings with senior media executives over the Summer - compared to just one meeting with health professionals.

No, not a Tom Hanks sequel The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 4-3 that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a dead letter. The court found Donald J. Trump ineligible to appear on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot. The Jan. 6 violence was consciously encouraged by Trump, that the violence constituted an insurrection, that his actions are disqualifying, and that no legislative action is required to make it so. The provision is self-executing. The case brought by several Republicans and one independent voter charged that it would violate state election law if Secretary of State Jena Griswold placed an ineligible candidate on the Colorado primary ballot. Specifically, that Trump is ineligible (Washington Post): “A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the decision reads.

The Thomas Salto, Timmy Straw’s debut collection, offers what very little poetry in our time seems to manage: work that is both overtly political and unflinchingly aesthetic. Ben Lerner, Brenda Hillman, Jay Wright, Anne Boyer, Chris Nealon are others whose work comes to mind. But Straw’s work marries politics and aesthetics in a way maybe not seen since George Oppen, and the gift of this collection is both the lyric mystery it generates and the position of moral clarity from which it operates. To do this, Straw refuses any neat resolutions that pay lip service to the fashionable pieties—these poems, like Hillman’s or Oppen’s, take those pieties for granted, as background noise, as a starting point at best:

Occasionally,
our freedom intrudes on us

like real sunlight thru a snowglobe
like real sunlight on a painted sun

hot as a fresh-cut tree

as a flung side dappled saw

To turn and see it face to face,
to be

both sight and self
it swings upon

ABBOTT: Since it has historically caused us heartache, I’m going to grab a program with all the players’ names printed in it.

(Abbott leaves)

COSTELLO (to the Grinch, seated next to him): Hey, do you know who is playing today?

GRINCH: Of course I know. They all are. They’re on first, second, the outfield. Everywhere.

COSTELLO: Who is?

GRINCH: Yes. Look at those Whos all dressed in their hats, with their balls and their gloves and their dumb wooden bats.

COSTELLO: Who is dressed in little hats?

GRINCH: I know, I hate it.

COSTELLO: Well, do you know who that is on first?

GRINCH: Sort of. I took his Christmas presents one year.

COSTELLO: You took whose Christmas presents?

GRINCH: Yes, but the Whos got them back.

COSTELLO: Who gave them back?

En orsakt till bankernas läge är framgångsrik lobbyism, vilket syns särskilt tydligt i betalningsutredningen som just nu behandlas av regeringen. Utredningens huvudfråga var: Ska staten ge ut kontanter och digitala e-kronor – eller ska svenska kronan bli utkonkurrerad av privata alternativ? När vi går igenom utredningen ser vi att den oförblommerat tar bankernas parti … […]

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Avatar, Section 31, Star Trek: Prodigy, Doctor Who, Superman, Stranger Things 5, Percy Jackson & lots more!

Plus, the best books for an introduction to politics.

In May 2021, former prime minister Boris Johnson announced a public inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, to be chaired by Baroness Hallett, a crossbench peer and retired former judge. Work for the inquiry began in the spring of 2022, and the first public hearings took place earlier this year.  The inquiry has […]

‘They are pure mathematics – they’re like stars’: an experimental sculptor reflects on the lessons he’s learnt from cacti

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Fearing the unknown is only human. But positive thinking can reduce your unease and help you see welcome opportunities ahead

- by Arie Kruglanski

Read at Psyche

Net interest margins, cybersecurity and liquidity have been top of mind for many community banks as they navigate their industry in 2023.

Ollie Newham, of the Rewilding Britain charity, argues that a more focused approach is vital to delivering nature's recovery in the UK's national parks

Andrew Kersley takes a close look at the register of interests for Members' Secretaries and Research Assistants and finds some have surprising other roles

Daniel Albuquerque and Jamie Lenney Rent prices have risen by 9% on average in England since the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) started raising interest rates in December 2021. Alongside this rise in prices has been a widening in the gap between reported supply and demand in the rental sector, with tenant demand … Continue reading Is UK monetary policy driving private housing rents? →