Overthrowing democracy is not like a health care debate or a highway bill A good piece by Mark Z Barabak in the LA Times: Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. That is an incontrovertible fact. And yet for many Republicans — including most of those seeking the party’s 2024 nomination — Trump’s irrefutable loss and direct responsibility for the Jan. 6 insurrection are a verity they dodge and duck. At least right now. Florida’s flailing governor, Ron DeSantis offers a prime example. The won’t-back-down-culture warrior, who gleefully stoops to swat at teachers and transgender people, meekly tucks his tail when it comes to Trump’s Big Lie and Jan. 6. DeSantis won’t say if he believes President Biden was duly elected and suggests it’s wrong to call the assault on the Capitol “a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States” — though how else would you define a violent attempt to overturn the result of a free and fair election? South Carolina Sen.
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If Albanese is such a buddy of Biden’s, why is Assange still in jail? Especially after our titanic strategic favours. Julian Assange is in his fourth year in Britains Belmarsh Prison. If the current appeal fails, he will be shackled and driven off in a prison van and flown across the Atlantic on a CIA Continue reading »
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have published serious allegations about millions of dollars of Australian government funding for Offshore Processing Centres finding their way through contractors to bank accounts controlled by South Pacific politicians. This comes on top of a history of criticism by the Auditor-General on how providers were selected and contracts Continue reading »
One of the great claims for representative democracy and federations is that they provide a uniquely successful way of dynamically negotiating, rather than suppressing, social differences and tensions. So, when it appears to be failing to do that in one of the world’s oldest and most successful democracies it is worth asking “why has this Continue reading »
Imagine encountering an enemy and, as it starts to reveal its full array of tactics and capabilities, a feeling of ice-cold fear runs through your chest. In an instant, you realise that you are out-matched; you’ve been out-witted, and defeat is a real possibility. As has occurred so often in military history, the threat assessment Continue reading »
Australia’s climate and energy minister Chris Bowen says the extreme weather events of recent years, and the heatwaves sweeping the globe in this northern summer, show that the world has already failed to prevent a climate emergency. “To be frank, it’s too late to avoid the climate emergency,” Bowen said in a speech to the Continue reading »
Due to the entrenched English class system, research has shown that the strong familial persistence of social status across generations has not changed in the UK across 400 years of accumulated data. With growing inequality and the emergence of ultra-wealthy and privileged classes in Australia – are we following the same path? Over the past Continue reading »
“It’s like arriving at a bus station at five minutes to midnight, in the middle of a bustling city, dressed only in your undies”. That’s my friend’s rather odd male-centric take on reaching seventy years of age. But let’s go with it – for now. I’m not sure you arrive anywhere really, only in the Continue reading »
China is eschewing the former European Central Bank chief’s pledge to ‘do whatever it takes’ to stabilise via monetary easing. For weeks now, global markets have ricocheted between excitement over a Chinese stimulus boom and disappointment that Beijing was taking its sweet time to jolt a slowing economy. It’s now clear that Xi Jinping’s team Continue reading »
At the time of the 2022 survey, 60.5 percent of our staff identified as white and 35 percent identified as people of color.
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He sounds a little uhm — over-stimulated to me. Meanwhile, one of the most right wing members of congress doesn’t care for this idea that slavery was actually beneficial for the enslaved: And …. DeSantis, of course, goes after Donalds: Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. affirmed to superintendents Wednesday afternoon that the standards will be approved in their current form. Responding to Donalds, Diaz slammed the congressman as “supposedly conservative” and part of the federal government trying to “dictate Florida’s education standards.” “This new curriculum is based on truth,” he said. “We will not back down from teaching our nation’s true history at the behest of a woke @WhiteHouse, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.” Jeremy Redfern, the press secretary for Gov. Ron DeSantis, also called Donalds a “supposed conservative.” “Supposed conservatives in the federal government are pushing the same false narrative that originated from the @WhiteHouse,” Redfern said.
Drupal's contribution credit system plays an important role in fostering contribution. It is crucial that we protect the integrity of that system.
Because contribution credit can impact an organization's marketplace position, there is a financial incentive for contribution. This is by design, and helps promote sustainable contribution in Drupal. Unfortunately, whenever a financial incentive is created, there is a risk that some organizations will try to game the system by making superficial contributions in bulk, or using automation or AI to try and boost contribution numbers.
This gaming behavior undermines the true goal of the credit system, which is to grow meaningful and authentic contributions to the Drupal project and community.
What steps are we taking?
To help discourage the temptation of superficial contribution, we've implemented additional updates to our systems and policies:
We realize there are a lot of educational toys out there, particularly those that teach STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, and math). In today’s crowded marketplace, it can be tough to know what will keep your children entertained and on track to become the next engineer, chemist, coder, or tech CEO.
But what if they want to grow up to be a writer, artist, lawyer, therapist, or—dear god—a teacher? Not on our watch. Our new line of toys will keep your little Musks from falling into the hands of Big History and Social Work.
As I write this, CNN is reporting that Trump’s lawyers are meeting with the Special Counsel today as the Grand Jury has convened in DC. Buckle up. Meanwhile, here’s Trump caterwauling last night. It would appear he knew …. something: Lol! “We’ll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn’t Rigged and Stollen. THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY!!!” he declared, spelling “stolen” as he often does, as “stollen,” which is actually a popular German Christmastime dessert.
“To serve Man,” indeed “The Beat with Ari Melber” on Wednesday featured a segment in which astrophysicist Adam Frank offered skeptical commentary on the congressional UFO/UAP hearings. In her wrap-up, MSNBC’s Katie Phang quipped that she got her information on aliens from a “documentary” called Independence Day. I like a good movie about aliens as much as the next person, but they are movies. The Twitter/Xitter/whatever comments on the hearings were withering. Most ran along the lines of, “So aliens travel here possibly from hundreds of light years away only to crash? Repeatedly?” Perhaps what we need more than a congressional hearing on UFOs/UAPs is one on the credulity pandemic.
The mood in Kyiv is mixed. The war is not over, but it has receded. People are beginning to think about how it might end, and what kind of Ukraine might come afterwards. What will happen when the soldiers come home?
Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 16 (Friday 28 July 2023)
Fiction can do without all sorts of things that seemed essential to 19th-century novelists: it doesn’t need to comment on society, or provide descriptions of settings and scenery, or a linear chronology, or a fixed point of view. So why are characters so stubborn?
Diplomats are often quite isolated from the societies to which they are posted. Their central task is not statecraft but the promotion of their country’s ‘interests’ – reducible to the arms industry and a few other national giants. What would Unilever do? Did his excellency bring the brochure? The diplomat: an honest person sent to hawk stuff abroad for the good of his country.
Richard Mosse seeks what can’t be seen. He employs military or industrial camera technologies sensitive to light spectra invisible to the eye; his subjects are ignored or remote catastrophes.
In the middle of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, a character makes a horrible discovery about reality: it keeps changing. This may seem obvious and is only part of the truth anyway. One of reality’s other problems is that it doesn’t change enough. But we understand the horror.
Ian Fleming once said that ‘James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He’s not a Sidney Reilly, you know.’ But it’s just as true that Sidney Reilly wasn’t James Bond: in Fleming’s novels (and even more in the films based on them), 007’s individual actions make all the difference.
Stephen Vaughan’s life reminds us that there is no sweeping historical change that cannot also be measured in the small, incremental, often painful adjustments of everyday life. His political service, and his dedication to business, came at a high personal cost.
There are good reasons why some progressives tolerated racial affirmative action without feeling much enthusiasm for it, or are even quietly pleased that it has ended, hopeful that something better, more equitable and far-reaching can be put in its place. More disturbing than the loss of affirmative action itself are the circumstances that led to its demise.