This piece by Paul Waldman takes up one of my longest standing pet peeves, this notion that somehow rural and small town America is not only more authentically American, its values are far superior to those who live in urban America (where most of the people are.) This is taken as a given and is so accepted that they are allowed to bash cities mercilessly while screaming like wounded harpies if anyone criticizes their “way of life.” I’m sick of it. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum did not announce his bid for the GOP presidential nomination by grabbing a guitar and crooning out the chorus to John Mellencamp’s “Small Town,” but he came awfully close. “I grew up in a tiny town in North Dakota,” he says at the opening of the video meant to introduce him to voters. After touting his business success, he concludes, “A kid from small town North Dakota: That’s America.” Burgum is practicing a version of small-town identity politics. “Small-town values have guided me my entire life; small-town values are at the core of America,” he says.
Reading
Today, on a special bonus episode of Lever Time Premium exclusively for supporting subscribers, we’re re-releasing David Sirota’s 2018 interview with Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who exposed the U.S. government's lies about the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg just passed away at the age
Researchers uncover striking parallels in the ways that humans and machine learning models acquire language skills.
The post Some Neural Networks Learn Language Like Humans appeared first on Nautilus.
Either way, L’état c’est lui More on the subject of my earlier post. William Saletan at the Bulwark catalogues all the ways in which the right endorses his status as an autocrat: Once again, Trump is testing America’s tolerance for autocracy. And once again, his allies on the right are backing him up with extreme and dangerous theories of vast presidential power. Here are some of their arguments. 1. A former president is entitled to obstruct investigators if he doesn’t trust them. John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general, says Trump’s lawyers can argue that “he didn’t initially cooperate with DOJ or the FBI because of the way he’d been mistreated by them.” Alan Dershowitz, who represented Trump at his second impeachment trial, goes further. According to Dershowitz, it doesn’t matter whether Trump was truly mistreated; his subjective perception is enough. In defense of Trump’s defiance of the FBI, Dershowitz asserts: “A president doesn’t have to cooperate with people he believes are trying to get him.” 2.
“He is not believed to be carrying a weapon, but he could be carrying documents indicating the location of weapons,” a police spokesman said.
A tale of two blowhards The Brits show that a political party doesn’t have to blindly back its leader even when he’s popular: An angry, aggrieved former leader attacks the institutions he once led for accusing him of flouting the rules and lying about it. His allies whip up supporters against what they call a witch hunt. A country watches nervously, worried that this flamboyant, norm-busting figure could cause lasting damage. There are obvious parallels in the political tempests convulsing Britain and the United States, but also stark differences: Former President Donald J. Trump faces federal criminal charges while Boris Johnson was judged to be deceitful about attending parties. And yet, Britain’s Conservative Party has regularly stood up to Mr. Johnson while the Republican Party is still mostly in thrall to Mr. Trump. Conservative lawmakers in Britain form the majority on a committee that found Mr. Johnson, a former prime minister, had deliberately misled Parliament over lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street during the coronavirus pandemic. Mr.
Jinkx Monsoon (RuPaul’s Drag Race) offered an update on how production is going with the upcoming new series of Doctor Who adventures.
Sperm whales learn patterns of clicks and other social behaviors from their clans.
The post Do Whales Have Culture? appeared first on Nautilus.
Opposition to the AUKUS deal among rank and file Labor supporters and similarly aligned voters is increasing by the day. It’s not simply because AUKUS is a malignant inheritance from the Morrison government that people who voted Labor at the last election are expressing their alarm about it today. On every level it is so obviously Continue reading »
My first article published here at Pearls and Irritations, titled Built on a tower of lies, described how positive feedback loops have created at a societal level an enormous tower of lies that guide public discourse. I further warned that if we failed to dismantle this tower the consequences would be traumatic. Unfortunately, the horrifically Continue reading »
In Asian Media this week: Chinese see Biden Admin as ‘incompetent and ignorant’. Plus: China ready to sign no-nuke zone treaty; spending on nuclear weapons surging; Beijing, Delhi expel each other’s journalists; ambassador slams Seoul’s foreign policy; China passes 50pc non-fossil fuel power supply Anthony Albanese warned of the dangers of the diplomatic deep freeze Continue reading »
Having witnessed the last days of my parents and in-laws, I don’t delude myself – as they did – that I’ll be able to avoid being carted off to an old people’s home. Sorry, an aged care residential facility. Actually, I dream of dying in the saddle. My last, half-finished column would be the announcement Continue reading »
The recent Stan Grant controversy threw up a host of important issues, among them the way in which the ABC supports its staff, diversity in the newsroom and racism. But it also raised the tricky issue of where the ABC draws the line between analysis and opinion, and whether ABC journalists are being given too Continue reading »
Another 60,000 houses needed; It’s corporate power, not wages, driving inflation; and, Why would anyone want to migrate to Australia? Read on for the Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Economics We need another 60,000 houses, we have the resources to Continue reading »
The late writer, broadcaster and wit Clive James formulated what he called the ‘Barry Manilow Law’: ‘Everyone you know thinks Barry Manilow is absolutely terrible. But everyone you don’t know thinks he’s great.’ (James, cited Martin Amis, ‘Inside Story,’ Vintage, 2020, e-book, p.74) A Media Lens version of this might read: ‘Everyone you know thinks Continue reading »
If you ever wondered how it came to be that people loathed and despised Hillary Clinton on such a visceral level, this is how. They did this over and over and over again for eight years screeching about “the rule o’ law!” and calling them the Clinton Crime Family. It’s very effective. It makes people who don’t have strong feelings about the person or knowledge of the facts figure there just must be something to it. In the face of Trump’s obvious criminality, it also has the effect of feeding into the cynical “they all do it” attitude which leads to apathy. The Republicans spent decades degrading Clinton and it was only by a fluke that she lost the election in 2016. And, yes, misogyny played a part. But the constant drumbeat that she was a criminal going all the way back to the 90s took its toll and Donald Trump, the instinctive asshole that he is, took advantage of it. And too many Democrats and independents bought into it. Luckily Biden is an incumbent president and Trump is going to be on the ballot so those dynamics are not going to be very strong. But never think it’s just a reflexive reaction to the charges against Trump.
In an interview before his death, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower urged the media and the government to be more honest about America’s bombing of civilians.
The post Daniel Ellsberg Wanted Americans to See the Truth About War appeared first on The Intercept.
Donald Trump gave them an opening It stands to reason that once the Republicans succeeded in corrupting the Supreme Court confirmation process to pack it with far right justices they would turn their attention to the Justice Department. What good is having a partisan High Court if the Justice Department is going to refuse to do the bidding of whatever Republican is in the White House? If you want to corrupt a democracy you need to do it holistically to ensure that all the levers of power are working together. It’s been a long time coming but it looks like they believe they’ve finally found their moment. They’re openly announcing their intention to discard all the rules and norms that have governed the arms length relationship between the president and the DOJ for the past 50 years. Donald Trump made that clear in his speech at his Bedminster Golf Club on Tuesday night: Donald Trump has always said he intended to do this, of course.
1. You totally have a beautiful and famous girlfriend, but she’s not around at the moment for far-fetched reasons.
2. The animals are too cute to hunt.
3. You can start a fire, but you catch on fire too.
4. Your idea of a sporting good time is prancing around on a horse you call Sir Haunches.
5. You don’t know how most of your tools work, and they break as soon as you try them.
6. Your handiwork is just a bunch of shit glued together.
7. You can get to where you’re going but only by checking the map every twenty seconds.
8. You run away from fights to spend the day looking for new clothes everyone is talking about.
9. You boil steak.
10. When you see a flower you say, “Oooh!” and run to pick it.
11. You listen attentively to everyone’s whining and moaning without telling them what to do.
12. You change outfits four times per day.
13. You float from job to job and transport others to make extra on the side.
14. You’re a freegan.
- - -
Zelda: 1-14
Disappointing your father: 1-14
One problem in applying skepticism and critical investigation equally is that heterodox and mainstream theories use extremely different methodologies. Generally speaking, mainstream macro uses math, while heterodox macro uses literary text with no math … Which means that if we judge each theory using its own methodology, mainstream macro will have to pass rigorous quantitative […]
Next week’s primaries will show whether progressive populists can win the same way they did four years ago: by rejecting corporate cash.
The post Virginia’s Democratic Party Is Letting Energy Money Back In appeared first on The Intercept.
“Scientists and sailors say orcas, also known as killer whales, are stepping up ‘attacks’ on yachts along Europe’s Iberian coast, with one skipper who’s been pursued by the marine mammals on two separate occasions suggesting that their tactics are becoming more stealthy.” — NPR
- - -
Congratulations, seafarer. You’ve taken a crucial step in protecting your already excessively costly and least reliable asset by investing in supplemental yacht insurance for orca revenge attacks.
In these uncertain times and unfamiliar waters, it’s prudent to hold on to what’s important: being rich, listening to Seals & Crofts, and acting with complete disregard for the world around you.
That’s why we at Sons of Ahab Insurance are proud to provide comprehensive yacht coverage designed to keep you afloat—come whale or high water. Here’s what’s included with the orca attack supplemental package:
2012? Bring back 1220, bro! If you follow The Daily Wire, you may know this guy. I don’t, but David Simon of The Wire does. This clown below would like to see western civilization return to the customs and mores of 1220. Because only RINOs want to return to the 1950s. Only fauxnies like Grover Norquist (he married a Muslim!) want to return to the McKinley era. Real men, ball-tanning men, men who embody manly virtues (Tucker Carlson? Josh Hawley?) want to “get medieval on your ass,” America. So much of the reactionary right is fueled by performative, over-the-top, in-your-face rejection of what the rest of us in Well-Adjusted America™ consider normal. MAGAs and incels tune in to shows like this for the rhetorical equivalent of WWE, monster trucks, and nitro-powered funny cars. Anything to get a rise (pun intended). The problem is, as with professional wrestling and Trump rallies, some of the fans take the kayfabe seriously.
During a visit to Chile in 1976, Kissinger met the dictator Augusto Pinochet and offered no objection to his violent rule.
The post How Henry Kissinger Paved the Way for Orlando Letelier’s Assassination appeared first on The Intercept.