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“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday ordered the civil arrest of Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to block a vote on a Republican-backed congressional redistricting plan, escalating a standoff that has stalled the legislative session.” — CBS News

President Trump has asked me to redraw the Texas congressional district map to secure five more House seats for Republicans. Texas has always been a state defined by our rugged independence. That’s why, as governor of Texas, it is my job to do whatever President Trump thinks will protect our liberties. I can’t think of anything more Texan than obeying a powerful man in Washington, DC, in the name of individual freedoms.

Sadly, Texas Democratic legislators are trying to undermine these efforts by fleeing the state in order to break quorum. It’s despicable that these elected officials would hightail it out of Texas right when the electorate needs them the most. A Republican would never do that.

Monuments to racism license racist violence. White supremacists, for their part, know this well.

The post Trump Is Putting Confederate Statues Back Up. Here’s Why They Must Fall Again. appeared first on The Intercept.

“In this human-made paradise, entertainment reigned supreme, and all forms of leisure had their whispered, rum-breathed price.”

A semi-regular guest column about regularly ignored places

Each year, as many as twenty-five million people visit the sacrificial landscape of Pattaya, Thailand. If visitors don’t arrive by air, then they likely take the eight-lane motorway that zips them along the eastern Thai seaboard from Bangkok to the shores of Chonburi province.

They come for rest and relaxation, purportedly. Frantic development over the decades has put Pattaya at a far remove from its past as a pristine, natural coastline. It’s a place made to concede itself. Disuse does not define the area’s state of wild abandonment, but rather the hedonistic exploitation and exhaustion of land and sea in a bargain for economic prosperity.

Many don’t realize that The Gilded Age, the very grand and expensive HBO/Max/HBOMaxAgain show, was actually devised for a very specific audience: quirky early millennial women who studied theater in college and briefly tried their hand at acting before ultimately becoming writers.

That the show seems to have mass appeal is surprising because it was definitely created for that very niche subset of people.

How did HBO/Max/WhatAreWeDoing achieve this? They set the show in 1882. Because they know quirky Xennial women can’t resist a lush period drama. Most of them own at least one corset, though they’re not sure why.

And, of course, quirky Xennial women are here for the historical references. That young artist you just saw onscreen? That was John Singer Sargent. And they knew it. They reached over to poke their husbands, “Do you know who that is? Stanford White! The Jeffrey Epstein of his time!”

Mental health awareness may be having unintended consequences – the conversation needs to shift from vibes to precision

- Video by the Royal Institution

Watch on Psyche

Many hope that AI will discover ethical truths. But as Gödel shows, deciding what is right will always be our burden

- by Elad Uzan

Read on Psyche

Shame swamps any redeeming traits you might have thought you had. Slow down to interrupt the loops that cause self-hatred

- by Troy Seagraves

Read on Psyche

The International Rescue Committee’s Bob Kitchen unpacks how Israel’s war and aid restrictions, not food shortage, are driving Gaza’s hunger crisis.

The post “A Purely Manmade Famine”: How Israel Is Starving Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.

What a formative period in Plato's life tells us about US politics today

The post The Philosophy of Tyranny appeared first on Nautilus.

Dinosaur teeth are unique windows into Earth’s ancient air

The post The Data in a Dino’s Smile appeared first on Nautilus.