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Created
Mon, 11/08/2025 - 22:01

Q: You were laid off from the National Weather Service amid all the DOGE cuts, correct?

A: Yes. And they haven’t hired anyone new to do my job.

Q: Which was?

A: The National Weather Service’s Director of “Feels Like.” You know how when there’s a heat wave, you hear that the actual temp is eighty-five degrees but it “feels like” it’s ninety-nine? That was me. Since the 1980s, the “feels like” temp was based on my determinations.

Q: And how were these determinations reached?

A: By considering a variety of factors: heat index, wind chill, dew point, solar intensity, the director’s discretion…

Q: Discretion? So you’re saying “feels like” is partially a subjective measure?

A: No, I am saying that the Weather Service, until this administration came along, entrusted me with the job because I have a decades-long track record of empathic temperature-vibing. A single-digit January day in Chicago may be no colder than a single-digit November day. But in January, the Christmas lights have come down, and the Bears are washed. So you know for damn sure that it feels like it’s twelve below.

Created
Mon, 11/08/2025 - 21:34
The Economist, having surveyed the current state of European higher education, has decided that the most significant problem is that the specialized graduate school where I work is insufficiently “relevant.” Two objections so far. First, please please please let’s move on from the Harry Potter references. We’re talking about a campus headquartered in an abbey in Florence, the real-life birthplace […]
Created
Mon, 11/08/2025 - 17:00
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August 11th, 2025next

August 11th, 2025: I took these numbers from

Created
Mon, 11/08/2025 - 07:23

Last year, a TV listing in The Guardian described the glossy Second World War drama series Masters of the Air as ‘an addition to the Band of Brothers universe’. Intentionally or not, the phrase was oddly penetrating. Masters of the Air is instantly recognisable as the product of a franchise, one taking place in a […]

Created
Mon, 11/08/2025 - 04:13
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 10, 2025 by Tony Wikrent   They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals UNLOCKED: The Epstein/Trump/Israel Connection Unpacked (w/ Whitney Webb) (YouTube Video) Briahna Joy Gray interviews Whitney Webb, July 30, 2025 [Bad Faith podcast] [TW: Webb does an extraordinary job detailing the organized crime backgrounds of Trump and […]
Created
Mon, 11/08/2025 - 00:38
One evening last week, having woken up earlier and, as usual, turned on the Jeremy Vine show (with guest host), I turned, again, to BBC Sounds to find… nothing. They’ve been threatening to turn it off for non-UK listeners for months, pretty much without explanation, and telling users that there is an exciting new and […]
Created
Sun, 10/08/2025 - 22:28
Mainstream economics has sadly made economics increasingly irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Trying to contribute to making economics a more realist and relevant science, yours truly launched this blog in March 2011. Now, fourteen years later and with millions of page views, yours truly’s blog is ranked on Top 100 Economics Blogs […]