Reading

Only novels can plumb the depth of human consciousness.

The post Why Novels Are a Richer Experience Than Movies appeared first on Nautilus.

Roy Edroso breaks it down — and everything he says is right on: Back when I did a regular “rightbloggers” column for the Village Voice, I covered a few of the loonier rightwing conspiracy theories those folks promulgated. I didn’t make a habit of running them down, though. I thought the bloggers’ and web propagandists’ ridiculous interpretations of major events were loony enough themselves, and also more germane to way conservatives were polluting our political discourse and indeed our politics, than the occasion crackpot cock-and-bull story about, for example, Barack Obama’s secret gay life. Back then, despite what Tommy Lee Jones said in Men In Black, what one might read in the supermarket tabloids or their web equivalents was not considered the best investigative reporting on the planet.

Set for September, Big Finish's four-part audio drama Doctor Who - Doom's Day: Dying Hours finds the assassin encountering the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann), Charley (India Fisher), Jackie Tyler (Camille Coduri), the Silence, and more.

I get what I want, and this summer, I want Emily Dickinson. She is the hottest girl in Amherst. Did you see that white dress she insists on wearing every day? It reaches all the way to the floor, baby.

Mark it down, before I leave Massachusetts, I’m going to bang that lady poet. She’ll be so out of her mind, she’ll be like, “I’m nobody, who are you?” And I’ll be like, “I’m the dude who just fucked your brains out.” And she’ll make me leave because she has chores. People don’t realize she can’t get out of chores just for being a poet.

I’ve hooked up with many sexy ladies in the past, and let me tell you, man oh man, every single one of them had seen volcanoes. I’m looking for a girl, who’s like, “We could talk about whatever you like, but I want to talk about death.” Aw, yeah, only us in this carriage, baby—and immortality.

An abandoned—or abandoning—god might also reappear.

Despite climate-denying spin, almost 50% of voters rank reaching net zero carbon emissions highly important for the country – new polling for Byline Supplement by Omnisis reveals

A softly-softly approach to the newspaper’s reckless journalism has failed – now the ‘regulator’ has been challenged to make a landmark choice, writes Brian Cathcart

God knows why… Donald Trump stepped on to the stage in Des Moines Iowa on Friday night to the ubiquitous GOP rally song called “Only in America” just as the lines, “one could end up going to prison, one just might be president” were blaring over the loudspeakers. Everyone in that room has probably heard the song a thousand times, Trump included, but never have the words been more relevant. If they were mad at Gov. Reynolds they shouldn’t have been. The song was played for every candidate who spoke. It’s just that those particular lyrics only apply to one of them. The crowd cheered lustily for the former president and current front runner for the Republican nomination anyway ,as they always do. It’s doubtful any of them even heard those lyrics, and if they did they no doubt saw it as more evidence of the massive conspiracy against Donald Trump. We know this because earlier in the evening one lone Republican candidate tried to tell them the truth: Reporters inside the room said the booing was much louder and more energetic than what appears on the video.

During the time period from 1925 to 1933 — when he still considered himself a ‘central-theoretician’ and a ‘pure economic theorist’ — Gunnar Myrdal wanted to apply to economic doctrines an ‘immanent method’ of criticism. His main interest was to criticize the received economic theory that had preserved structures of normative speculation built upon the […]

Storing dead people at -196°C

Explaining the decision to reporters, he said, “Elon Musk is an O.K. name, but WTF fits me better.”

If they vote Democrat, stop them! The outrage meter here in The Cesspool of Sin is pegging this morning. Brad Friedman‘s X-post-factoid Sunday was pretty eye-catching. Ohio Republicans really, really don’t want the majority of state voters to cast ballots in the Aug. 8 special election. Their ultimate goal is to prevent a popular constitutional amendment securing abortion rights from passing in November. Ohio Capitol Journal: Early voting is ongoing for the upcoming Aug. 8 special election on Issue 1 that asks voters to make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution by raising the threshold to 60%. To get to the ballot box, voters need to keep in mind changes made to voter ID laws last year, in a late-night legislative move approved by Gov. Mike DeWine at the beginning of 2023. Those changes, made through House Bill 458, mean different identification allowed at the polls, and limits to the absentee ballot dates. While a driver’s license with a different address is still allowed (as long as it’s not expired), voters must be registered with the Ohio Secretary of State at the correct address before voting.

Only someone ignorant, stupid or on the payroll could deny climate change before 2023, but this is the year where to remain in denial you have to be 5-sigma stupid or on the payroll.

So, boys and girls, let’s look at some of the highlights of what will be one of the coldest years of the rest of your life.

Let’s start with Antarctic sea ice extent. Remember, this is during WINTER.

Aisha Jung, who had worked for Amnesty International for 17 years, told Byline Times that she took on legal action after objecting to the award of the prisoner of conscience status

Despite the next Government being presented with a task every bit as daunting as in 1945, Chris Painter argues that it will face qualitatively different constraints and challenges.

All things Cold War are new again An old joke from the Cold War comes to mind this morning. At the risk of telling it badly, here goes: American: We have freedom of speech in my country. I’m free to criticize my president as much as I want. Russian: But is true in Soviet Union! I too am free to criticize your president as much as I want. Now let’s back up to another Cold War tale I recalled at the very beginning of the Donald Trump administration (1/26/2017). Programmers and scientists across the country were rushing to back up climatic data in fear that the new administration would delete it and other research that conflicted with the administration’s chosen view of reality. They hoped to head off a MAGA Dark Age. Oh, right. My other Cold War story (see update below): Hedrick Smith in “The Russians” (1984) recounted a visit to Moscow’s Lenin Library. (Memory must serve, as I cannot locate the text online.) Smith, the New York Times’ Moscow Bureau Chief from 1971–74, had gone to one of the world’s great libraries to do some research. He needed a back copy of Time(?) magazine.

With Israel's diplomatic missions in Africa expanding from forty to fifty and possibly beyond, it gradually gains control over the entire continent. Regrettably, Palestine is losing ground even in regions where it naturally finds support.

The post Africa: Untapped Ally for the Palestinian Cause – Israel’s Awareness and Africa’s Orphaned Status appeared first on MintPress News.

In Doctor Who, the sonic screwdriver is a deus ex machina and, in a Freudian sense, totally the Doctor's magic wand in so many ways.

During MagicCon: Barcelona, Wizards of the Coast game us more previews to the Doctor Who set coming for Magic: The Gathering.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Some people are wising up and removing this bawdy board book from impressionable kindergarten classrooms. The title alone is filthy. It encourages kids to join orgies, which is obviously how all those letters got injured up there in the so-called “coconut tree.”

The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Normalizes binge eating and obesity. All this does is teach little kids—even girls!—that it’s okay to consume food when you’re hungry. To make matters worse, the caterpillar doesn’t go on a diet, doesn’t hate itself, and doesn’t even get properly shunned by society for its gross and destructive dietary choices. Instead, it turns into a literal butterfly. Not only is this the opposite message we should be sending children, but it’s completely unrealistic.

The Giving Tree
A story of handouts. Flat-out socialism. Not to mention the climate-thumper extremism of giving the tree feelings. “Oh no, a tree is sad. It turns into a pathetic little stump. Whatever will we do?” Ridiculous.

The genome sequencing company also administers China’s National Gene Bank, which is part of the state surveillance of minorities that facilitates the mass detention of Uyghurs