Saul Eslake, the renowned and independent economist, has updated his China chart pack which was last prepared in January 2023. The chart pack gives a bird’s eye view of the economic challenges China needs to address. By using the term ‘Peak China’, he does not mean that China will collapse, but that its future economic Continue reading »
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By Kathleen McClellan - Jesselyn Radack: Salon.com
It happened under Trump — and under Obama: The U.S. is using bad law to crack down on investigative journalism
Though utilizing it recently to promote the long-running show, BBC says that it will no longer use AI to promote Doctor Who moving forward.
Trump gets another break: A New York appeals court agreed to slash millions off of the bond Donald Trump must post to cover a $454 million civil fraud verdict while he appeals it, reducing it to $175 million after the real estate mogul claimed he’d have to sell properties at a loss to raise cash. The ruling Monday comes on the day Trump faced a deadline to either pay the fine or post a bond for 120% of the judgment to put it on hold while he appeals. That would have amounted to nearly $545 million dollars. He has 10 days to post the bond, the court ruled. The decision means Trump may be able to push ahead with his appeal without the risk of his assets being seized by New York Attorney General Letitia James for lack of payment. The appeals court did not offer any explanation behind their decision. Read the order. There’s more. This is a huge win for Trump. They don’t call him Teflon Don for nothing.
Hey there, it’s me. The CamelBak you bought in 2012 before a post-grad backpacking adventure. Remember that? You used to show me off to all your friends. I was a twenty-five-ounce, dishwasher-safe piece of proof of your commitment to the environment. You used to take me on trips. You even took me to work. We were inseparable.
Sure, I’ve been languishing in the back of your cupboard for the better part of a decade, but every relationship has its peaks and troughs, and I figured we’d get through the dry spell eventually. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that there was someone else—a pastel-colored interloper by the name of Stanley. A real blow to my confidence, that was.
We’ve been through a lot together, so I’m giving you an opportunity to be honest: Are you breaking up with me? I just need to know.
Musk made hay of his legal battle against secret surveillance but continued selling X user data to a company that facilitates government monitoring.
The post Elon Musk Fought Government Surveillance — While Profiting Off Government Surveillance appeared first on The Intercept.
MPs are expected to vote for the Investigatory Powers Amendment Bill (IPAB) when it returns to parliament today. The Bill could force tech companies to apply to the Home Office prior to introducing updates that improve the security and privacy of their products. The Home Office could then serve notices preventing the updates from being […]
Never forget This was a common refrain: How about this nonsense? You can’t make this stuff up: This is ridiculous. I don’t know if Pompeo has a larger agenda. They do seem to be looking for a confrontation with China out of this whole thing but it’s unclear exactly what they think they’ll get out of it. But first and foremost, this is being done to appease Little Lord Fauntleroy in the White House who constantly needs to be reassured that his juvenile, re-election “branding” is being carried out at the highest levels of government. I guess it doesn’t matter if they can issue a joint statement. But you would think that international cooperation would be a top priority during a global pandemic. Apparently not. This response was catastrophic. It divided the nation even more than it already was and resulted in a massive number of unnecessary deaths and ongoing trauma which he is making worse each day by refusing to go the fuck away.
No ordinary election, a plebiscite Sunday is not one of our heaviest traffic days at ye olde blog. For any readers who missed Digby’s repost of Brynn Tannehill’s long Twitter thread (sorry/not-sorry, Elon) about what another Trump presidency would mean, take a gulp of strong coffee and go read it. Take the warning seriously. Seen in one place, the detailed string of changes Trump, his MAGA followers, his oligarch backers, and Christian nationalist organizations behind Project 2025 mean to enact to remake this republic into something more resembling Hungary, if not Russia, shook me up. It’s like a murder of a country or a democracy: we see that they have the motive (Christian Nationalist vision for the US requires that democracy die), the means (replacing everyone + Insurrection Act + ignoring the courts), & the opportunity (amoral Trump as President) We have intent, and boy howdy have they telegraphed this one.
In his latest book, Technofeudalism, the maverick academic-turned unlikely Minister of Finance-turned enfant terrible of European politics Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism has ended. It has not, however, been destroyed by the workers of the world – it has been killed by capital itself. The idea, in a nutshell, is the following. As a response […]
Famous for its repression and torture, Teodoro Obiang’s Equatorial Guinea got an aid delivery from U.S. Special Operations forces.
The post Squeezed by African Coups, Biden Cozies Up to the World’s Worst Dictator appeared first on The Intercept.
Murkowski eyes the exit door The Cook Political Report rates three Democrat-held Senate seats in the 2024 toss-up category: Arizona, Montana, and Ohio. Republican-held seats rate solid-R or likely-R. Lose any one of its races and Democrats lose control of the Senate. Maybe. What will Lisa do? (CNN): Sen. Lisa Murkowski, aghast at Donald Trump’s candidacy and the direction of her party, won’t rule out bolting from the GOP. The veteran Alaska Republican, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial amid the aftermath of January 6, 2021, is done with the former president and said she “absolutely” would not vote for him. “I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind,” Murkowski told CNN. “I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.” The party’s shift toward Trump has caused Murkowski to consider her future within the GOP. In the interview, she would not say if she would remain a Republican.
Agnes Callard is among the world’s most famous living philosophers, and certainly the one most likely to trend on your social media feed for a hot take or ill-advised poll (most recently, “Would you prefer to live the life of a slave owner, or the life of a slave?”) The University of Chicago professor is known for her public contrarian stances, like making a case against travel or for divorcing your husband but having him still live with you as you date your grad student.
Exclusive ‘exit data’ obtained by Byline Times suggests that the force has a long way to go in its claimed attempts to 'address valid concerns' about life as a non-white or female employee on the force
CHARLIE BROWN: Hey, Lucy. What’re you doing?
LUCY: I’m going to kill my mother, Charlie Brown.
CHARLIE BROWN: Why would you do something like that?
LUCY: Because the land stinks, Charlie Brown. Nothing but sin grows down here—that’s why folks are so religious. And I figure it doesn’t matter the sort of sin I commit, I’ll be punished in hell for it anyways, the way most preachers talk. Might as well go big.
CHARLIE BROWN: Good grief.
The latest legal claims allege that law-breaking at the Murdoch tabloids has been even more widespread and systematic than previously acknowledged
Drupal 11 development has reached a point where the system requirements are being raised in the development branch. To prepare core developers for this and to inform the community at large, we are announcing the following requirements for Drupal 11.
Webserver
We announced in mid-February that there is an RFC to remove support for Windows in production. Other webserver requirements are unchanged.
PHP
Drupal 11 will require PHP 8.3 and older versions of PHP are not supported. Note that as of Drupal 9.4, a policy was adopted to automatically drop support for PHP versions no longer supported by the PHP maintainers, so future minor versions of Drupal 11 will increase the requirement further.
However much the British government plays fast and loose with our future by treating climate change as a political football, there is a reality it can’t deny: climate action is necessary. That’s why, against all its better instincts, it announced last month that Britain would exit the most climate-wrecking treaty of all — the Energy […]