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The other day, after glancing out at their walkup front porch, a family in Wellington, New Zealand, happened upon an adorable scene of peace and tranquility. There, curled up next to their door mat, the family saw a tuckered-out animal — a little fur seal, dozing away without a care in the world. But arriving to that cozy locale, a short ways from the sea, had been no easy task. “[The seal] had been on a bit of a mission,” New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) wrote, “climbing up the seawall stairs, crossing a road, hiking up a footpath, a driveway, and finally another set of stairs, before reaching its nap spot.” While conservation officials note that resting seals may be mistakenly perceived as needing rescue, they evidently agreed that this little guy’s choice of sleeping spot wasn’t so ideal. So, an officer was called out to help him find a better one. “[He was taken] further around the coast, to a safe place away from dogs and traffic,” the DOC wrote. Fortunately, the seal looked to be only slightly groggy following his unplanned awakening.
Today’s mammals would not survive the heat of Earth’s next supercontinent. But in evolution, there’s hope.
The post Pangea’s Second Coming Won’t Be Chill appeared first on Nautilus.
The NY Times: “I’d shut down the government if they can’t make an appropriate deal, absolutely,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Mr. Trump’s view of how shutdowns work was shaped by his own experience as president, when the longest government shutdown in history took place from December 2018 to January 2019. He incurred the public blame for it, as he publicly embraced the idea of a shutdown while holding contentious talks about a budget agreement with two Democratic leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the House speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi of California. “I’ll be the one to shut it down,” Mr. Trump told the leaders in a contentious Oval Office meeting in December 2018 shortly before the shutdown. “I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.” There is no reason to believe that Mr. Biden would be granted outsize blame, if any at all, for a shutdown that a group of Republican holdouts in Congress are encouraging. Mr. McCarthy has privately noted what Mr. Trump said publicly at the time in 2018, according to a person with knowledge of Mr.
The lawyer behind Texas's bounty hunter abortion ban is retaliating against people who get abortions and those who help them.
The post Texas Anti-Abortion Crusader Demands Abortion Patient Information In Court appeared first on The Intercept.
What happens after a discovery hatches.
The post The World’s First Known Deep-Sea Octopus Nursery appeared first on Nautilus.
I realize that people only want to talk about what a terrible loser Joe Biden is, and I hate to burst their bubble, but it’s not actually true: New PPP polls in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin- where wins for Joe Biden next year would be enough to get him to 270 electoral votes- find him leading Donald Trump by 3 or 4 points in each of them. Biden is up 48-44 in both Michigan and Wisconsin, and 48-45 in Pennsylvania. Most recent coverage of the race has focused on Biden’s struggles, and it’s true that he’s not terribly popular with favorability ratings of 42/51, 40/49, and 41/51 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin respectively. But elections are a choice and not a referendum. And Biden is popular in these key swing states compared to his likely opponent of Donald Trump and his likely foil of Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans. Trump’s net favorability rating is -23 in Michigan at 35/58, 14 points worse than Biden’s. It’s -20 at 35/55 in Wisconsin, 10 points worse than Biden’s. And it’s -16 at 38/54 in Pennsylvania, 7 points worse than Biden’s.
It was worse than we expected The House Republicans have been promising that the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden was going to be filled with fireworks from the word go. We would see evidence of bribery and extortion and payoffs from foreign companies in the tens of millions of dollars, the “Biden Crime Family” would finally be exposed as the international gangsters they are Donald Trump would be exonerated. Or something. They held their first hearing yesterday and all those fireworks blew up in their faces. Keep in mind that they decided to hold this preposterous hearing two days before the government is set to shut down because a tiny rump faction of extremists in their party is demanding that they get everything they ever wanted or they’ll hold their breath until they turn blue. Nobody knows exactly what that is other than to torture Speaker Kevin McCarthy and make America miserable again. It’s been reported that they have no plans to table their “inquiry” when the government is shut down even though their staff won’t be paid and all regular business is usually curtailed until an agreement is reached. Not this time.
Cartoonist Geoff Pryor tees off for the weekend on how we were persuaded to allow Northern Australia to become a US military colony. Continue reading »
Besides settling and securing its borders, China has no claims on other nations. Countries with grandiose territorial ambitions make no secret of them. This second article in a three-part series explores why China is not planning to conquer and occupy any other nation. In the first article of this series, exploring how US narratives on Continue reading »
After three years’ pause, the Australia-China High-Level Dialogue held its 7th meeting in Beijing on 7 September. This continues the process of stabilisation in bilateral relations since the Albanese government came to power 16 months ago. A closed-door meeting where no extensive media coverage was possible, it was nonetheless understood that the two sides considered Continue reading »
The world is told a simplistic black and white tale about Hong Kong’s troubles in 2019, with heroic “pro-democracy” activists crushed by Beijing. What really happened was very different and far more complex, says a detailed new book by top Hong Kong academic Daniel F. Vukovich. A daily hail of petrol bombs, scores of destroyed Continue reading »
Why do so many of my fellow non-Indigenous Australians seemingly have such a deep aversion towards the Aboriginal peoples of this land? Sadly, I am compelled to ask that question as we approach a referendum asking for constitutional recognition of Australia’s First Nations and an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to parliament. So little, Continue reading »
One Mike Pezzullo a coup does not make. But a few such characters pose a serious question to the health and ticker of democracy. If Canberra’s most powerful bureaucrat can entertain thoughts about swimming deeply in a political process he should be viewing from the sidelines, then we are no longer dealing with appointees who Continue reading »
Chat GPT can’t tell me which nation now has the most government inquiries running. But it says that common law countries – the Five Eyes, basically – tend to set up more of them than most. Australia must be high in the five. From Yes Minister we learned that governments call for inquiries basically to Continue reading »
My talk, like the conflict in Ukraine, is a long and complicated one. It contradicts propaganda that has been very convincing. My talk will offend anyone committed to the official narrative. The way the American media have dealt with the Ukraine war brings to mind a comment by Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators Continue reading »
The Big Three car companies have authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks over the past year.
Here's what you need to to know about the Doctor Who @ 60: A Musical Celebration, set to broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on Sunday, October 15th.
The senator, who joined striking UAW workers on the picket line this week, no longer accepts money from corporate PACs.
The post Sen. Josh Hawley Received Campaign Donations From General Motors and Ford appeared first on The Intercept.
That was the day Senator Dianne Feinstein first came to national attention and she never left it. She became mayor and then ran for the senate in the 1992 “year of the woman” becoming one of the most powerful women in American government. Dianne Feinstein now has a complicated legacy with many people loathing her for being old and refusing to step down. And she had a centrist viewpoint that often drove progressives crazy. But she was great on guns and really tried to do something about the carnage. And I’ll always be grateful for what she did on the great stain of American torture. Her Senate investigation was serious, so much so that the CIA actually infiltrated it. And she defied President Obama to release the summary of the torture report that exposed the grotesque practices this country perpetrated in the War on Terror. RIP.