Reading

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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 04:55
As a quick study in the psychology of Australia-US relations, last week had it all. There was the sound of cash registers ringing in Washington as Canberra handed over the first cheque for the US nuclear submarine production base. There was the self-aggrandisement of Richard Marles at the Pentagon, chuffed at being the first defence Continue reading »
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 04:54
The decline in manufacturing jobs is common to most developed economies and is not unique to the US. Further, Donald Trump is nothing if not delusional, and his tariffs will only damage both the US economy and others as well. Employment in US manufacturing peaked a long time ago back, in June 1979. Since then, Continue reading »
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 04:54
Recently, US President Donald Trump spoke about the displacement of Gaza’s residents to Egypt, Jordan, and a group of neighbouring countries, as well as turning Gaza into an area under US control. This proposal sparked a wave of criticism and condemnation at various levels. International reactions to the proposal At the international level, the proposal Continue reading »
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 04:53
With this year’s federal budget supposedly brought forward to 25 March, the seasonal peak in business bulldust has come early. Last week, Canberra kicked off an annual ritual little noticed in real-world Australia, the call for “pre-budget” submissions on what the government should do in its budget. I’ve never known any of that free advice Continue reading »
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 04:52
The editorial authorities at The Australian newspaper have splendid senses of humour if their indulgence of the laugh-a-line contributions of Peter Jennings, Greg Sheridan and Henry Ergas are anything to go by. Jennings, who boasts his writings are “piquant”, recently said Donald Trump’s idea about clearing people out of Gaza “has about as much chance Continue reading »
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 04:51
Evolution works by conserving traits that carry value for the species, but more often it is perceived as “survival of the fittest” or in “social darwinism”. These are literary licences: scientifically, they are close to misinformation. A look at the Grandmother Effect will show you why. Before Homo became sapiens, after the end of the Continue reading »
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 04:00
President Trump took some questions yesterday as he finished yet another round of golf and wound up another long weekend at his Florida resort. Elon Musk was a big topic which appeared to get on his nerves especially when a reporter wanted to know what position the multi-billionaire actually held now that the White House has said that he is not actually running the DOGE department after all. He responded, “So, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want… but you know what? Ukraine’s a bigger deal.” He sounded quite irritated that they were asking him about such trivialities when he is the one who has world leaders quaking in their boots as he re-makes the whole world in his image. He’s clearly delegated the wrecking of the federal government to Musk, to which he’s only peripherally paying attention, so that he can concentrate on wrecking the world order. Both men are doing a bang-up job so far.
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 03:25

To determine whether your body will fit our pants, please use this sizing guide.

Our pants are measured in cubits. The cubit is a unit of measurement less ancient than legs, but more ancient than the notion that we should clad them somehow. It’s equal to the distance between someone’s elbow and their longest fingertip.

Whose elbow and fingertip? That’s proprietary. But it’s definitely not yours.

To find your size, pull out your favorite pair of pants and figure out how many cubits they are. If you don’t have a favorite pair of pants, pick the pair that makes you least likely to scream into a balled-up cardigan.

Then, divide the total number of cubits by 3.5 to account for our European sizing. Don’t ask where in Europe; that’s also proprietary.

Next, you need to select one of our several “cuts” to ensure a tailored fit. All of our cuts are named after your worst bullies from middle school.

To determine whether you’re a Maldon, a Caleb, or a Sertraline, you’ll need to find your natural waist.

Created
Thu, 20/02/2025 - 02:30
What Bernie knows in his bones This TokTok is a week old, but if you’re not one of the almost 10 million who have watched it, devote 10 minutes. @bernie Oligarchs are waging a war on the working class, and they are intent on winning. But this is what I know:   The worst fear that the ruling class in this country has is that Americans come together to demand a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthy few. ♬ original sound – Bernie Sanders Bernie as a presidential candidate struck me as a one-trick pony: class struggle. But he knows that trick in his bones. “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats,” entrepreneur Nick Hanauer wrote over a decade ago To: My Fellow Zillionaires: But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 02:25

Mahmoud Darwish called clarity the greatest mystery. Matthew Zapruder writes poems that are precise in their architecture and mysteriously limpid in their meanings. And full of avowals, resistances to any final conclusiveness, open to—even when saddened by—the endless mutability of things. A mutability that seems to call up in him an energy of doubt, and because he seems at heart a poet of praise, there is a gorgeous melancholy to the pictures of the world he paints in words. And that’s only part of why they are so deeply pleasurable to read. This is the kind of reading that’s a physical pleasure, a pleasure in the mind and in the way the language unfolds in the imagination of the senses. I Love Hearing Your Dreams, the poet’s fifth collection, is not really about dreams but about the ways human beings relate and connect, or miss the connection, or long for it, or work at its toils and hallucinations, and sometimes even find a fleeting peace in the pressures of time. Here’s how “For Young Poets” begins:

Created
Thu, 20/02/2025 - 01:00
Abandoning Ukraine and NATO Even as Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger saboteurs bleed federal agencies of skilled public servants and threaten nuclear stockpile security at the National Nuclear Security Administration, Donald Trump is selling out Ukrainian allies to Russia and again trying to shake down NATO. Trump on Tuesday blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky for presiding over a country “that has been blown to smithereens” in a war he falsely accused Ukraine of starting. Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago. Zelensky responded, “Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.” As do we all. Nice country you got there The Telegraph of London reports on the $500 billion “deal” Trump’s agents dropped on Ukraine in exchange for its strategic minerals. The Telegraph obtained a Feb.
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Thu, 20/02/2025 - 00:00

Any scientist worth their salt eventually becomes accustomed to unpredictability. The unfortunate reality is that the majority of experiments fail—lab rats explode, bacteria escape the petri dish, etc. Still, I never anticipated that things could ever go this awry.

For the past decade, I have been conducting a highly expensive and groundbreaking experiment: confining a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters until one of them, through sheer random chance, produces a perfect facsimile of Hamlet. But rather than the unsullied words of the immortal bard, the chimps are writing nothing but copies of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Which, don’t get me wrong, is still impressive, kind of. But I was really hoping for Shakespeare. And Plath is such a bummer.

At first, I thought it was a fluke. Hamlet is a complex work layered with ghost dads and revengeful soliloquies. Surely, the chimps are working their way up to it via a momentary detour into twentieth-century confessional literature.

Created
Wed, 19/02/2025 - 23:43

Attending conferences is essential for refueling and recharging your business —  and DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 is the perfect opportunity to do just that. Taking place 24-27 March, this event is a must for agency and business owners looking to gain fresh insights, connect with industry peers, and explore potential partnerships. 

DrupalCon gathers nearly 1,500 participants from the global Drupal community — people who use Drupal or build digital experiences with it. Whether you already have a Drupal-powered website or are searching for a robust enterprise-level open-source CMS, DrupalCon Atlanta will offer valuable perspectives. You’ll hear from Drupal leaders about the latest advancements and how they can enhance your online impact.

Created
Wed, 19/02/2025 - 23:33
This is how Labour’s war on regulations will stymie its own policies. It is irrational and self-destructive. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  11th February 2025 This might sound astonishing, but the UK government’s core programme now appears to be the same as Donald Trump’s: dismantling the administrative state. There’s less theatre, but the […]