Reading

Age 65 is no longer relevant to define older people in a new Aged Care Act. It was introduced by Bismarck in Prussia in the 19th century at a time when life expectancy was less than 50 and few people lived past 65. It was reinforced by the US Social Security Act under Roosevelt in Continue reading »

One of the what-ifs that the Albanese government should be asking itself is; what would it mean if America invaded Mexico in 2025? If the leading Republican presidential candidates are to be taken at their word this is not a foolish question. Could anything have a greater impact on the foundations of Australia’s foreign and Continue reading »

President Joe Biden’s decision to skip Asean-related summits in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Sept 5-7 in favour of the G-20 leaders’ meeting in India just two days later has been greeted with howls of disappointment and criticism around Southeast Asian capitals and elsewhere that are concerned about America’s role in the region. Mr Biden’s Continue reading »

Brett Baier spreading doubt about the new vaccine. He doesn’t have to do this but it’s what his audience wants to hear so that’s what they’re serving up. BRET BAIER (HOST): There’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know really the stats. They don’t seem to match up, even today after all that we’ve been through.  DR. MARTY MAKARY (CONTRIBUTOR): That’s right. There’s a lot subject to interpretation because some people point to statistics that are massively inflated. We know that the hospitalization numbers are not real. We know the COVID death numbers are not real.  BAIER: Why do you say that?  MAKARY: Well, maybe half of those are real numbers because we don’t know who’s in the hospital for COVID versus an incidental COVID positive test. And when you test positive in the hospital when you’re in there for another reason, like heart failure, you get a stigma, you get a label. And so that goes down as a COVID hospitalization.  BAIER: And we as a country have not delved into the problems with vaccines, right? Other countries have, I know Germany had a big study.

China and the U.S. are collecting the same proportion of their populations’ DNA profiles — and the FBI wants to double its budget to get even more.

The post FBI Hoovering Up DNA at a Pace That Rivals China, Holds 21 Million Samples and Counting appeared first on The Intercept.

ONE STAR. If I could, I’d give it zero stars. I cannot believe I wasted six hours making this so-called banana bread. I did everything right. I followed the recipe exactly, except for changing every single ingredient.

All I did was swap the all-purpose flour for whole wheat—no big deal. And I think eggs are gross, so I used soaked chia seeds instead, which was a major improvement to this recipe I had never made before. Then for the vanilla, butter, and sugar, I added these in the EXACT AMOUNTS, except instead of vanilla, I used almond extract; instead of butter, I used coconut oil; and instead of sugar, I used raw chicken breast.

Also, I didn’t have bananas, so I used boiled celery mush leftover from when I swapped the sugar in that revolting angel food cake recipe.

I just watched Andrea Mitchell attempt to interview the fast-talking hustler Vivek Ramaswamy. It wasn’t pretty. Anyway, this is making the rounds today: Philip Bump has this interesting take: This Oct. 27, 2003, exchange between Sharpton and Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC show “Hardball,” has reentered circulation in the past few days because there was a 2024 Republican presidential candidate in the room. The event was hosted by the Harvard University Institute of Politics and, at the time, Vivek Ramaswamy was a Harvard student. So when Matthews turned to the audience for questions soon after the event started, Ramaswamy was the first to offer one. “Rev. Sharpton, hello, I’m Vivek,” he began. “I want to ask you — last week on the show we had Sen. [John] Kerry and the week before we had Sen. [John] Edwards, and my question for you is: Of all the Democratic candidates out there, why should I vote for the one with the least political experience?” And right there, you can probably see why the clip has gained new attention.

Things have now become so bad for the UK economy that almost no one disagrees it is time for radical change. On the rare occasion that public debate turns to issues of political economy, you almost never hear the question, ‘But how are we going to pay for it?’ Much as doctors in most private […]

The party's accounts suggest there is "significant doubt" about whether it can continue as a "going concern" due to a series of legal challenges.

“A man hears what he wants to hear….” Judd Legum wonders why President Joe Biden gets no credit for what on paper is a good economy: 1. The unemployment rate is 3.5% The U.S. has added an average of 312K jobs every month for the last year GDP growth has been 2.0% or higher for a year Inflation is down to 3.2% If the U.S. economy is doing well, why do so many Americans say it’s terrible? 2. But an August survey by Quinnipiac University found that 71% of Americans describe the economy as “not so good” or “poor.” Just 3% say the economy is excellent. What explains this discrepancy? If the U.S. economy is doing well, why do so many Americans say it’s terrible?The leading economic indicators show the U.S. economy is performing well, but most Americans still believe economic conditions are extremely poor — as if the country was mired in a deep recession. Wha…https://popular.info/p/if-the-us-economy-is-doing-well-why 3. One factor is partisanship. More people today will rate the economy as poor if they don’t like the person in the White House, regardless of economic conditions.

Isn’t it the mark of a successful theory of a range of phenomena that it unites and embraces the causally relevant parameters and state variables within a single theoretical perspective? This question suggests that if our theories are successful, then they should produce descriptions of systems according to which the systems are interactionally simple. I […]

A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war — the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically — there is a hidden benefit. As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking about planetary climate disruption. This technique of distraction obeys the familiar mechanism that psychologists have called displacement. An apparently new thought and feeling becomes the substitute for harder thoughts and feelings you very much want to avoid. Every news story about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest demand for American or European weaponry also serves another function: the displacement of a story about, say, the Canadian fires which this... Read more

Source: Living on a War Planet appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

James Bedford Forrest Crow III Well, you can’t accuse Tennessee Republicans of not being transparent about their contempt for democracy (The Tennessean): The House Democratic caucus on Monday walked off the floor of the lower chamber to protest a disciplinary vote against Rep. Justin Jones, sparking a scene remarkably similar to legislative protests earlier this year in which the freshman Democrat was expelled from the General Assembly. Lawmakers voted 70-20 to discipline Jones, D-Nashville, after House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, twice ruled Jones out of order during the House floor session Monday afternoon for what Sexton saw as Jones speaking off topic on the bills at hand. The disciplinary vote meant Jones was silenced for the remainder of the floor session, though he could cast votes. A second vote during this special session could lead to a three-day silencing. The Democratic caucus left the floor en masse in what they said was solidarity and frustration with unfair application of House rules. It’s not as if Jones, a freshman since April, is trying to maintain a low profile.

Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson privately backed the same road-pricing schemes the Conservatives are now attacking the London mayor over.

What’s that, Mikey? A piece of playground mulch? Nice. Let’s put that in our bucket, okay?

Oh, and who’s this? Hey there. Mikey, it looks like he has a piece of mulch for your bucket too. Can you let him drop it in? Very nice. Oh, and now you both want to keep collecting pieces of mulch, meaning I’ll get to keep standing next to this other adult, who I assume is your new friend’s dad, for the next few minutes and make awkward small talk with him instead of finishing my Counting Crows podcast? Terrific.

So, uh, hi. Yeah, I’m Mikey’s dad. I mean, I have a first name, but that doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you need to know right now. I guess we don’t really have to talk at all while our toddlers collect mulch together, but we are going to be physically adjacent to each other for a little while, right? So we might as well break up staring at our kids to make sure they don’t eat the mulch with the occasional comment about how important it is to mostly stare at them to make sure they don’t eat the mulch. That would be fun, or at least polite.

Born into a family of legendary Bedouin musicians, the Palestinian actor, DJ and filmmaker Mo’min Swaitat is also a son of Jenin, the most northerly West Bank city that has faced some of the most brutal Israeli military operations in recent years — including the 2002 invasion, bombing and massacre of a refugee camp during […]

Big questions remain about Russia's attempts to interfere in US elections

The MVC team discusses the 2017 climate change drama.

Elevated funding costs and tightening credit markets point to the need for bankers and bank supervisors to remain vigilant.

The pandemic has revolutionised how an entire generation see work, education and society