Reading

Created
Fri, 02/02/2024 - 01:28

Amid ongoing emergencies, including a would-be autocrat on his way to possibly regaining the American presidency and Israel’s war on Gaza (not to mention the flare-ups of global climate change), the U.S. has slipped quietly toward an assault on civil liberties as an answer to plummeting mental health. From coast to coast, state lawmakers of both parties are reaching for coercive treatment and involuntary commitment to address spiraling substance use and overdose crises — an approach that will only escalate despair and multiply otherwise preventable deaths while helping to choke the life out of America. In December, we wrote about how loneliness has become a public-health crisis, according to the Surgeon General, and the ways in which it drives widespread... Read more

Created
Fri, 02/02/2024 - 01:00
Biden-Harris HQ goes after Donald Trump. Hard. While we were reading accounts of the latest GOP insanities in D.C. and in the states, and about the Fox/MAGA conspiracy freakout over Taylor Swift, plus a random, MAGA-inspired(?) beheading straight out of Se7en, Team Biden was going hard at getting under Donald Trump’s skin. And rubbing his nose in it on Truth Social (Huffington Post): President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign flipped former President Donald Trump’s excuses for his verbal stumbles right back at him in a new ad. The 60-second spot features multiple Trump stumbles and the Republican front-runner’s claims that he does it “purposely” or because he speaks “in long, complex sentences.” “Have you noticed he’s a little confused these days?” Biden asks in speech footage that is featured towards the end of the clip. The video concludes with reports that Trump is “rattled by Biden’s efforts to get under his skin.” Yup, this one: The ad above posted at 1:03 p.m. Wednesday on Formerly Twitter, the Now Muskian white-nationalist cesspool. It was only one of a flurry of ads from Biden-Harris HQ.
Created
Fri, 02/02/2024 - 00:01

I am falsely accused of a crime and find myself at an intense trial that could end in jail time. The judge tells me that he will drop all the charges if I can give him information about five men spotted at the scene of the crime. He shows me the pictures of the suspects. They are the members of One Direction.

- - -

I go to the bank to make a withdrawal, and they tell me they have new safes to hold large sums of money. I overhear the employees talking about how the code for the safe is the phone number sung at the beginning of “Kiss Me Thru The Phone” by Soulja Boy. There is also a fingerprint scanner that will only unlock if the person’s fingers have evidence of using an iPod shuffle to listen to the song “Kiss Me Thru the Phone” by Soulja Boy.

Created
Thu, 01/02/2024 - 22:16

I met Rosemary in February 2016 in Berlin, where we inaugurated DiEM25. After weeks of frantic emailing, in which she had made clear her determination to be part of our pan-European movement from its beginning to her very last breath (as it turned out), I first held her hand in mine fittingly in the Red […]

The post In celebration of Rosemary Bechler 1951-2021 (text & video) appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Thu, 01/02/2024 - 15:41
Click below to read the latest post from FrameLab, the newsletter co-founded by Dr. George Lakoff: The latest target of the Republican Party’s feverish and conspiratorial wrath: 34-year-old pop music megastar Taylor Swift. Why do Republicans see Swift as a threat? The simple answer: She is a powerful young woman who challenges the traditional social […]
Created
Thu, 01/02/2024 - 11:35
by Asaf Darr* The ongoing and fierce conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs is a daily reality in Israel, the country where I reside. As a sociologist of work and economic sociologist, I became increasingly interested in the ways in which the broader conflict is manifested in daily socio-economic encounters on the shop floor between […]
Created
Thu, 01/02/2024 - 11:30
“The election was rigged, I won in a landslide!” This is how Trump convinces his cult that up is down and black is white. He just says something that’s outrageously false, the polar opposite of the truth, with total confidence, over and over again. In fact, his deluded followers often tell reporters that the thing they admire about him the most is that he always tells the truth. Has there ever been a demagogue in history who was so willing to lie so blatantly about clear, observable facts? They always lie, of course. And they are outrageous in their rhetoric. But this brazen defiance of reality seems to me to be pretty unique. I think religious cult leaders do this and get away with it with their flock. But I don’t know that political leaders have been able to get away with it like this. Obviously, it takes a supporting propaganda infrastructure and a monstrously stupid following. But still, give Trump his due. I think he may be the most flagrant, obvious liar in world political history and he’s succeeded in making tens of millions of people believe everything he says.