The NY Supreme Court allows the Democratic majority to draw the congressional maps Whew! New York’s highest court ordered the state to redraw its congressional map on Tuesday, delivering a ruling that immediately threw New York’s political landscape into chaos and reopened a process with sweeping national implications. State Democrats are now widely expected to try to shift anywhere from two to six Republican-held seats, from Long Island to Syracuse, toward their party — a major pre-election intervention in the 2024 fight for the House that could alter a key battleground. Powered by a new liberal majority, the State Court of Appeals effectively wiped out the highly competitive map that helped Republicans flip four seats and win the House majority. It said the neutral lines, which it had imposed just last year, were meant only to be a temporary fix. By a four-to-three vote, the court directed the state to restart a mapmaking process that would ultimately return control over the state’s 26 congressional districts to the Democratic-controlled State Legislature. The court had stripped away that power in 2022 after an attempted gerrymander.
Reading
The Reserve Bank of Australia has taken a break from kicking mortgage holders in the groin to call on the Nation’s defamation lawyers to reign in their spending as inflation is on the rise. ”These millionaire defamation lawyers need to... Read More ›
At a key meeting, U.S. stage management stops the world from hearing critics of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The post How Biden’s State Department Conceals Its “Human Rights Black Hole” in the Middle East appeared first on The Intercept.
Western hypocrisy nearly scuppered global climate negotiations. But now the direction of travel is clear. Byline Times' columnist sums up his conclusions after addressing the Dubai summit
The Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction recognizes an emerging fiction writer who is experimenting with form and expanding the boundaries of storytelling. Our first runner-up is Maz Do with “When the Moths Came” published in issue 72 of McSweeney’s Quarterly.
- - -
August when the moths came. The air: murky, damp, shimmering. Everything clung to everything. Everything tasted of everything else. The streets smelled of piss, a dirty finger pressed to the back of your throat. They smelled of rot, which flared and inflamed the nostrils. And we were alone, even though we were together. Us and the moths.
The moths nested in the double-paned windows that overlooked an old teak tree. There they nursed their larvae, milky, swaddled by light and time. In those long, fading days, the hours stretched like taffy.
Huzzah! Maybe that’s a little bit dark. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and read the papers and turn on the news and it takes a while for my sunny disposition to reassert itself. (Ok, maybe I’m not that naturally sunny…) But I have to say after being on this earth for a long time now and writing about politics every single day for over 20 years, I do think I’ve developed a pretty good sense of when the political culture is going off the rails and when it’s business as usual. This may be the worst period I’ve experienced. I have some recollection of the 60s but I was a little kid and mostly absorbed it through my older brothers, one of whom went into the navy and the other who was a draft resistor and activist — along with my father the military man. It was fraught, to say the least. The 70s were my coming of age period and they were not pretty. Economically it was just awful. But I was young and having fun and somehow I just thought that scrambling for coins in the couch cushions was the way it was. The 80s were what I think of as my coke, MTV and Reagan years. I spent much of them travelling and then trying to build a career.
The world’s largest rodent is a jaguar's favorite snack.
The post How Capybaras Outwit Big Cats appeared first on Nautilus.
The Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction honors the extraordinary work and life of long-time McSweeney’s author Stephen Dixon. The prize recognizes emerging fiction writers experimenting with form and expanding the boundaries of storytelling. The inaugural winner of this year’s award is Kristina Ten for her story “Adjective.” We’re also pleased to announce Maz Do as the first runner-up for her story “When the Moths Came.”
1 tablespoon butter¼ pound dried beef, shredded1 can (10½ ounces) condensed cream of mushroom soup¼ cup white wine½ cup shredded process American cheese2 tablespoons snipped parsley1 tablespoon chopped pimientoPopovers (below) Melt butter in saucepan; cook and stir meat in butter 3 minutes. Mix soup and wine; stir into saucepan. Cook , stirring constantly, until creamy. […]
Vivek Ramaswamy’s candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination might seem idiosyncratic and incoherent, but it...
He doesn’t have the requisite gaudy glamour but he’s got something else. Just look at the arrogance of this conspiracy addled freak show saying that someone else isn’t living in reality: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Monday dug into Sen. JD Vance’s (R-Ohio) recent remarks against sending further aid to Ukraine, calling the Ohio Republican’s comments “total and unmitigated bull‑‑‑‑.” Vance, in an interview with former White House aid Steve Bannon earlier Monday, claimed some lawmakers are looking to cut Social Security benefits for more aid to Ukraine that he argued will be used so one of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ministers “can buy a bigger yacht.” When asked about Vance’s remarks later on Monday, Tillis told reporters, “I think it’s bull‑‑‑‑.” “If you’re talking about giving money to Ukrainian ministers — total and unmitigated bull‑‑‑‑,” Tillis continued.
A provision in the annual defense bill would have the Pentagon run clinical trials for members of the military with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The post Congress Is Pushing Revolutionary Research on Psychedelic Treatments for the Military appeared first on The Intercept.
Ingredients
- 425 ml of Marley’s Spirit or Dandelion & Burdock Fizz
- 225 grammes of jellied eel blood (harvested by the muck swallows and mud larks that live under the Thames; if you can’t harvest fresh eel, store-bought is fine)
- 50 grammes of strong flour
- 50 grammes of piddling flour
- 110 grammes of charming foppish stutter
- 1 ml of dried mayonnaise soaked in Pimms
- Candied rummy jubblers
- 225 ml of Posh Spice
- 110 grammes of London copper saying, “What’s all this then, eh?” (crumbled by hand by a chimney-sweep)
- 110 grammes of upper lip (stiffened into peaks)
- Zest of blood sausage
- 275 ml of bovine spongiform beef suet (In a pinch, Artful Dodger grease will do)
- A sprinkling of Welsh corgi
- Sultanas
Instructions
Known as plum puddly-dunks or Christmas pudding, “figgy” pudding is a traditional British dessert served on Bonfire of St. Clive’s Day. (“Pudding” in the United Kingdom is what “dessert” is called elsewhere.
The nearly unanimous vote in the UN Security Council on Friday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza is a moment of honour for the United Nations and shame for the United States. By voting to stop Israel’s war on Gaza by a vote of 13 yes, 1 no (US), and 1 abstention (UK), the Continue reading »
A visceral emphasis on fear over engagement has marked Australia’s approach to China since 2015. Only 17 Australians graduated with Honours degrees in China Studies between 2017 and 2021 across the entire country. This year no grants were awarded by the Australian Research Council for China-related research or collaborative research involving Chinese institutions. Will the Continue reading »
For truly effective measures to counter climate change, governments need to break from the ideological clutches of classical free market economics. Systemic change must be led by governments with requisite political power and intent, well-defined objectives, and authority to act without fear. Just a week before Cop28, global “one-day temperatures” breached the 2 degrees Celsius Continue reading »
At a minimum Australians expect ministers in the Defence portfolio to display a basic knowledge of defence matters. The Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy’s address to the National Press Club is particularly worrying as justification for “the greatest industrial undertaking Australia has ever attempted”. Conroy’s comments on the AUKUS submarines (SSN-AUKUSs) are simplistic to Continue reading »
Pearls and Irritations’ weekly roundup this week commented on the paucity of analysis regarding the House of Representatives Select Committee’s report Rebuilding Employment Services. This is not surprising given the number and complexity of its recommendations. However, it is hard to pin down many specifics in the report other than the current system is useless. Continue reading »
“The world looked away during the World War, and Jews, 6 million of our people, were murdered in that looking away… It is incumbent upon humanity to look at what is happening in Gaza now and to say we will not accept this. We will say no. Not in our name.” – Louise Adler The Continue reading »
The revelations in recent weeks of Indian government involvement in the assassination in Vancouver of a Sikh separatist – and in a conspiracy to murder another in New York – may turn out to be what those in the diplomatic business call “manageable.” The United States and India need a relationship in working order. But Continue reading »