Reading

Created
Fri, 17/03/2023 - 00:00
More self-serving outrage from the GOP Without getting overly wonky here, I’ve studied the Electronic Registration Information Centers (ERIC) efforts at voter roll maintenance for several years. Multiple red states in recent weeks have exited the ERIC network. The consortium of over two dozen states (it was over 30) share voter registration data in a coordinated effort to eliminate multi-state registrants, to identify registrants who have moved within and between states, to identify those who have died, and to identify people who vote in more than one state in an election. There seem to be quite a few of the last group in Florida, one of several red states that exited ERIC last week. Readers who remember Kansas’ Kris Kobach’s defunct Interstate Crosscheck system and its history of bad data matching, take note. Originally a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, ERIC is what Interstate Crosscheck purported to be and was not. Kobach’s real project was not election integrity but promoting the notion that voter fraud was widespread and photo IDs necessary to combating the phantom menace. Republicans loved it.
Created
Fri, 17/03/2023 - 00:00

EDITED BY PETER ORNER AND LAURA LAMPTON SCOTT

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Jean Marseille recorded these dispatches on his phone while surviving on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from October through December 2022. As the chaos that followed the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 devolved into further lawlessness, Jean witnessed firsthand a city in free fall.

Created
Fri, 17/03/2023 - 00:00
The problem is that democracy and capitalism don’t much like each other any more. Their underlying affinities have got lost in the miserable business of coexisting day to day. Businesspeople don’t want to be hectored by politicians who have never run a whelk stall. Politicians don’t want to be patronised by businesspeople who have never won a vote (‘Fuck business,’ as Boris Johnson neatly put it).
Created
Thu, 16/03/2023 - 23:23
China Leads A Successful Middle East Summit

Something which has slipped past most people’s radar is that China recently acted as the intermediary for peace talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The two countries have been at each other’s throats for decades, funding and running operations and proxies against each other. Elijah Manjier has a decent summary (part is behind a subscriber wall) from a pro-Iranian point of view.

It’s also interesting that in this conference no English was used!

Now it’s obvious why the US couldn’t be involved: it hates Iran and doesn’t intend to change that any time soon. But that China was reached out to indicates that it has good relationships with Iran and Saudi Arabia and that it’s considered powerful and prestigious enough to be involved a region far from its core.

Created
Thu, 16/03/2023 - 23:00

Studies have found that alphabet books are helpful and fun tools to promote literacy and teach life lessons to children. But studies also show that kids’ lives are ridiculously easy. They don’t have to pay rent or run errands or wonder whether it’s time to start thinking about freezing their eggs. Adults, on the other hand, are faced with all kinds of unwritten rules every day—and we need to have them spelled out. Literally. Here are twenty-six experiences that define being twenty-six and beyond.

A is for Adulthood, its trials and tribulations…
B is for the Babysitter—whose rates outpace inflation.

C is for Cups covering your nightstand and desk…
D is for the rush you’ll get Depositing mobile checks.

E is for Escaping your home friend’s MLM biz…
F is for FICO score, whatever that is.

G is for Grocery shopping—AGAIN—for moldy berries…
H is for HBO to cure the Sunday scaries.

Created
Thu, 16/03/2023 - 22:26
Advocacy groups and human rights organisations have written to the Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, and the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Stephen Watson, to ask them to investigate discriminatory police practices in the wake of the conviction of ten young Black men, known as the Manchester 10. Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy BurnhamGreater Manchester Combined […]
Created
Thu, 16/03/2023 - 21:11

Iain Barbour first noticed something was wrong when he started choking on a burger. ‘I realised I couldn’t swallow. And I had these chest pains that I thought was a heart attack,’ he recalls.  When he went to the doctor in July 2020, he was told it was acid reflux. After weeks with no progress […]