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A gourmet bottle of peppermint-flavored extra Virgin Mary Olive Oil

A box of edible ornaments that are inedible

Twin-size flannel sheet set patterned with twee cartoon Christmas mice drunk on eggnog

An $11.99 festive patterned puffer coat and matching tiny beanie for your $6.99 bottle of wine

A 120-pack of paper party hats that say HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS

A normal cheese grater with BELIEVE in unreadable cursive

A decorative throw pillow stitched with the Stranger Things cast wearing Santa hats

Candy cane clip-on earrings for an adult dog

A Nutcracker advent calendar filled with one weird nut behind each secret door

A long turquoise nightgown featuring a glittery cornucopia

An eighteen-inch snow globe with a figurine of Ellen Degeneres carrying a Santa sack from the ED by Ellen Degeneres Home Collection

A nativity scene and spice rack combo

Two fifty-four-inch woodgrain reindeer mounting each other

1) partner piece and update to 7 rules.’

1a) what working with china can do for you — industrialization, modernization, one time infrastructure, cheap loans, resources for industry, tech-up your scientists, engineers and designers.

2) Why things have changed – bilateral, post-Ukraine, de-dollarization,

2a) understanding china’s domestic issues — up the value chain, needs resources including food, excess construction/development capacity

3) China’s non-negotiable requirements — Taiwan, Tibet, staying out of core disputes like the south china sea and India/China disputes

4) What it will cost you: good relations with West, reliable Western financial, goods and military access.

5) What types of deals to cut

— bilateral you do this, we do that

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Rick and Morty, DC Studios, Disney's Magical Holiday Celebration, Peacemaker, Euphoria, Doctor Who, and more!

Why is there something instead of nothing? For Henri Bergson, this misguided question leads traditional metaphysics astray

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

In Sufi shrines, rituals offer sufferers a path beyond the fear and isolation of their mental distress

- by Bhrigupati Singh

Read at Psyche

Training is a cheap solution to a hard problem. It is the systems that allow for biased behaviour that need to change

- by Jeffrey To

Read at Aeon

With the Conservatives’ general election strategy in the hands of the ‘Wizard of Oz’, it’s likely to be one of the most vicious campaigns the UK has ever seen. Tom Scott reports

I try to work out how much money would be needed to restore a functioning state. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 22nd November 2023 Many names have been proposed for our pathology: Thatcherism, Reaganism, austerity, Trussonomics. But they are all synonyms for the same ideology, a doctrine hardly anyone in public life can […]

Journalists in Gaza are suffering in ways that are hard to comprehend — with access to little food or water, living in tents, and going about their work on foot — and that is before you consider the extraordinary number who have lost their lives in this conflict. The appeal for help issued on 20 […]

Tightening margins and technology concerns top the list of challenges for community bankers, according to the 2023 CSBS Annual Survey of Community Banks.

EXCLUSIVE: A climate group is planning legal action against the under-sale Telegraph Media Group over the outlet's climate coverage.

Public advocates say telecom companies aren’t meeting standards designed to keep phones and internet working during disasters.

Dr Iain Overton, executive director of charity Action on Armed Violence, reveals new evidence of British-trained cadets from countries that have had military coups or have poor human rights records

Last Wednesday (November 22, 2023), the Tory government in Britain released their fiscal update known as the – Autumn Statement 2023 – which basically sets the course of fiscal policy in the UK for the period ahead. The Tories continue their appalling record. But they have also locked Labor into an austerity mindset. Meanwhile, neither…

Within pretty broad limits[1], I’m an advocate of historical ‘presentism’, that is, assessing past events and actions in the same way as those in the present, and considering history in relation to our present concerns. In particular, that implies viewing enslavers, racists and warmongers in the same light, whether they are active today or died […]

This image is the current logo for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. When, in 1963, Samuel Beckett endorsed “Playwrights…

The Reserve Bank conducted its sixth triennial Consumer Payments Survey (CPS), which provides detailed information on how Australians make their payments. The 2022 CPS provides the first comprehensive snapshot of consumer payment behaviour following the changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey shows that most in-person payments are made by tapping cards or mobile devices, even for small purchases. This means the share of in-person transactions made with cash halved, from 32 per cent to 16 per cent, over the three years to 2022. The demographic groups that traditionally used cash more frequently for payments – such as the elderly, those on lower incomes and those in regional areas – saw the largest declines in cash use. Cash usage has generally been replaced with card payments. While Australians are aware of and use a range of other newer payment methods, such as digital wallets and buy now, pay later services, they still make up a small share of payments.

There is no end to the corruption. The NY Times with an epic tale of pardon abuse: Even amid the uproar over President Donald J. Trump’s freewheeling use of his pardon powers at the end of his term, one commutation stood out. Jonathan Braun of New York had served just two and a half years of a decade-long sentence for running a massive marijuana ring, when Mr. Trump, at 12:51 a.m. on his last day in office, announced he would be freed. Mr. Braun was, to say the least, an unusual candidate for clemency. A Staten Islander with a history of violent threats, Mr. Braun had told a rabbi who owed him money: “I am going to make you bleed.” Mr. Braun’s family had told confidants they were willing to spend millions of dollars to get him out of prison. At the time, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department and federal regulators, as well as New York state authorities, were still after him for his role in an entirely separate matter: his work as a predatory lender, making what judges later found were fraudulent and usurious loans to cash-strapped small businesses. Nearly three years later, the consequences of Mr.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro agrees with me: Josh Shapiro isn’t yet worried about President Joe Biden’s standing. Rather, the governor of Pennsylvania attributes Biden’s recent polling slide behind former President Donald Trump to voter “brain fog” that he thinks will clear once the general election cycle kicks into gear. “I’m not sure folks remember just how chaotic it was, how divisive it was, how he was just in your face in your living room every day,” Shapiro said, referring to Trump. “I don’t think people want to go back to that.” […] “As people are reminded of what it was like and they are forced to tune back in and listen to that during the course of a presidential race, they’re going to reject his extremism, his chaos and his danger,” he said of Trump.  I think he’s right. (I hope he’s right?) But it’s going to take effort to remind people about what it was really like. There is a lot to work with so there’s no excuse for failing to do it.

Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear weapons, which once again surfaced in the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East. (An Israeli minister recently threatened to nuke Gaza.) The second, you won’t be surprised to learn, is what we’ve come to call “climate change” or “global warming” — the burning, that is, of fossil fuels to desperately overheat our already flaming world. In its own fashion, that could be considered a slow-motion version of the nuking of the planet. Put another way, in some grim sense, all of us now live in Gaza. (Most of us just... Read more

Source: A Slow-Motion Gaza appeared first on TomDispatch.com.