Reading

I’ve been working a bit on inflation and the highly problematic concept of the ‘cost of living’ (shorter JQ: what matters is the purchasing power of wages, not the cost of some basket of goods). As part of this, I’ve been looking at how particular prices have changed over time, focusing on basics like bread […]

I finished two more chapters this week in my book about ActivityPub. Chapter 2 is about Activity Streams 2.0, the social network data standard we use for ActivityPub. Appendix 1 is a reference for all the types in Activity Streams. Next up is Chapter 4, federation protocol, and Chapter 5, extensions. I’m on a tight … Continue reading Two more chapters →

This week I’ll just share some cute little videos that came across twitter this week. (These are necessary to cleanse your brain from all the Nazis.)

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

The cultural forces that fueled our success now threaten to end it.

The post Evolution Led Humans into a Trap appeared first on Nautilus.

I finished it for him. This was the opening speech of Biden’s campaign and he is making it clear how he sees the stakes and he is 100% right. Unfortunately, we are clearly going to have to fight much of the media at the same time we will have to fight Trump and the MAGA cult. CNN’s commentary after the speech was dismal. Gloria Borger complained that it was “very personal” ignoring the fact that it’s a presidential campaign and Biden is running against Trump! Of course it’s personal. And all he did was use Trump’s own words. (He didn’t even call him old or fat or make fun of him, which I think is the actual definition of “getting personal.”) Then former Republican Charlie Dent said that people are sick of all the “extremistm” and are looking for something different than Trump who they think is crazy and Biden who is too old. Then he brought up No Labels at which point I changed the channel. *sigh* Some more highlights: Some other highlights: There’s a lot of work to do to get people to pay attention to what Trump has in store if he gets elected again. This was a good start.

Did Millie Gibson signal that her run as Rudy Sunday on Doctor Who will wrap up after two series or are we reading too much into things?

That alone should have disqualified him from ever running for office again. Now, he should be held liable for millions of dollars from families whose loved ones followed his advice: Nearly 17,000 people may have died after taking hydroxycholoroquine during the first wave of Covid-19, according to a study by French researchers. The anti-malaria drug was prescribed to some patients hospitalized with Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, “despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits,” the researchers point out in their paper, published in the February issue of Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. Now, researchers have estimated that some 16,990 people in six countries — France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. — may have died as a result. That figure stems from a study published in the Nature scientific journal in 2021 which reported an 11 percent increase in the mortality rate, linked to its prescription against Covid-19, because of the potential adverse effects like heart rhythm disorders, and its use instead of other effective treatments.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m done with this,” investigative reporter David Neiwert told us,...

This speech was delivered by MintPress founder Mnar Adley in Chicago at the Sirat Conference on December 25th, 2023. Adley was invited to give a keynote address to talk about corporate media’s complicity in Israeli war crimes and Israel’s attack on journalists.

The post How Corporate Media Whitewash Israeli Crimes: A Personal Narrative appeared first on MintPress News.

Yesterday I wrote about Trump’s right hand gal, Alina Habba saying she’d rather be pretty than smart because she can fake being smart. She’s not faking it very well: Aaron Blake writes: There is saying the quiet part out loud, and then there’s what Trump lawyer Alina Habba just did. Addressing the Supreme Court’s looming 14th Amendment decisions on whether Donald Trump can be disqualified from state ballots for engaging in insurrection, Habba decided it would be a good time to remind people of just how much Trump has done for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court; I have faith in them,” Habba saidon Fox News.“You know, people like Kavanaugh who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up.” She tried to clean it up but please. Let there be no doubt about what she was saying: [D]espite Habba’s cleanup effort, she was clearly pointing in the direction of Kavanaugh (and potentially others) being beholden to Trump; there is no other reason to invoke the supposed favors Trump did for Kavanaugh.

Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa thanked fans for their love & support, shared some fan art, and dropped a tease about what RTD has in store.

Anti-abortion zealots are using the fractured health care system to erase all reproductive rights.

The post Far-Right Judges Are Coming for Lifesaving Abortions appeared first on The Intercept.

Thanks to all our contributors for another funny year of satire.

1. AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PAIR OF GEN-Z MEN IN THE NORTHEAST REGIONAL QUIET CAR LOUDLY DISCUSSING PITCHFORK’S 100 BEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME
by Elizabeth Bastos

Donald Trump uploaded the following to his Truth Social feed. Sure, he’s mentally stable. Nothing megalomaniacal about this at all: This is so delusional it sends chills down my spine. How can this country survive when almost half the country believes something this batshit crazy?

2024 is here, the year of the election. As the world begins to tune in to the greatest show on X, the question on everyone’s lips is: Why the hell is everybody so old?? In the summer of 2022, I published a book predicting this: elite electoral politics will see a clear and extremely high-profile generational […]