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Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 07:30
He discussed what high school kids all want to talk about This is just sad: Scott Kercher, a beloved history teacher in New Jersey, dared to tackle some of the tough issues of our times, hosting frank conversations about racism and gender identity when he came to the 85% white school district of Sparta in Republican Sussex County. He won an award and statewiderecognition for his efforts as head of the district’s diversity council, but make no mistake: This is a cautionary tale. Now an effective leader who knew how to connect with kids is gone, thanks to an intrusion of right-wing politics that is threatening the quality of education in Sparta. It’s a powerful example of the kind of atmosphere that we do not want to build in our schools, where teachers are scared to speak up and nobody wants this job because of the political lurch that we’re living through right now. But let’s start at the beginning. In 2020, more than 400 former students wrote a letter in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, saying they didn’t think Sparta was doing enough to prepare them for a diverse world.
Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 06:00
He didn’t just attack liberals. He attacked the whole state. I guess he figured that he would impress everyone in California by telling us that his state is so much better. I suppose he probably did impress those at the Reagan library — they were the usual California GOP masochists who love to be humiliated by red staters. He’ll probably get some money out of it. But still, this seems like a poor way to introduce yourself : As he moves toward entering the 2024 presidential race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made a pilgrimage to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Sunday, where the Republican accused leaders in blue states such as California of being “lockdown politicians” and charged that the nation’s coronavirus crisis created “a great test in governing philosophies.” Speaking to a sold-out audience, with some 1,300 tickets sold and nearly 1,100 in attendance, according to organizers, DeSantis touted how Florida has led the nation in net migration — even though that is a trend set into motion long before he became governor.
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Tue, 07/03/2023 - 05:00

“Live Free or Die.”

Since 1945, I’ve been the Granite State’s official motto. I’m rugged. Independent. I don’t bend to authority. Naturally, New Hampshire residents look to me for guidance. And to be sure, many who draw inspiration from my words live long, liberated lives. But some, admittedly, do not.

So I’d like to take a moment and reiterate this: You can most definitely die while living free.

I thought this was common knowledge, but apparently not. Certain people are clearly under the impression they can do whatever the hell they want here and nothing bad will happen. They climb Mount Washington—alone in January. They ride their motorcycle down the Kancamagus highway–at 2 a.m. with no helmet. They go water skiing in Lake Winnipesaukee—alone in January at 2 a.m. with no helmet.

And guess what happens to these folks? They live free and die.

Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 04:57
In a recent article, the Hon. P.J. Keating berated the wretched Greg Sheridan for manifold errors in a typical The Australian Newsrag opinion piece. Only a fool provokes PJK on spurious grounds. Though enjoyable to witness the public dissection of a noxious Murdoch apparatchik, there is much more to note in Keating’s article. A phrase Continue reading »
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Tue, 07/03/2023 - 04:54
Major General Kathryn Campbell, currently sitting in a fairly empty office in the Department of Defence on a miserly $900,000 plus a year, seems set to become, by acclamation as much as by the weight of the evidence so far available the chief bureaucratic victim of the Robodebt affair. Indeed, apart from the several hundred Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 04:53
Last week 4.8 million people contracted Covid-19 and 39,000 died as a result. The pandemic rages on around the world with, globally, cumulative cases of 675,565,574 and 6,873,798 deaths documented. In the USA right wing politicians desperately want wicked China to have created the virus and/or deliberately or carelessly let it loose from a laboratory Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 04:51
Over the last week or so, Australian politicians and representatives of the university sector got busy pressing flesh in India, hoping to open avenues that have largely remained aspirational. It was timed to coincide with G20 talks in New Delhi, which has seen a flurry of contentious meetings traversing security, economics and education, all taking Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 04:40
The Chinese currency has outperformed the greenback by volume of trading on the Moscow Exchange for the first time on record.
RT — Question More (Russian state-sponsored media)
Yuan squeezing out dollar on Russian market – Kommersant
The Chinese currency has outperformed the greenback by volume of trading on the Moscow Exchange for the first time on record
Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 04:00
Is CPAC done? Last Friday I took a look at the first day of this year’s CPAC gathering where it was obvious that the attendees were overwhelmingly Trump followers but the crowds were also thinner than usual, which says something —but nobody can agree on exactly what it is. Since that dispatch reporters and other observers of the event have characterized this CPAC as an unusually desultory affair that didn’t improve much as the days wore on. Speeches were sparsely attended and the presentation was lackluster. Everyone seemed bored with the outrage. Could it be that after seven long years of Trump-style politics, they’re finally getting worn out? According to this report from Laura Jedeed at The New Republic, attendees she spoke with felt that having the event in Washington was a mistake. They suggested that instead it should have been held in Orlando, as it was last year.
Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 03:38
By replacing thousands of equations with just one, ecology modelers can more accurately assess how close fragile environments are to a disastrous “tipping point.”…
A recent breakthrough in the mathematical modeling of ecosystems could make it possible for the first time to estimate precisely how close ecosystems are to disastrous tipping points. The applicability of the discovery is still sharply limited, but Jianxi Gao, a network scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who led the research, is hopeful that in time it will be possible for scientists and policymakers to identify the ecosystems most at risk and tailor interventions for them.
Last August in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Gao and an international team of colleagues showed how to squish thousands of calculations into just one by collapsing all the interactions into a single weighted average. That simplification reduces the formidable complexity to just a handful of key drivers.
Created
Tue, 07/03/2023 - 02:30
‘Crazier and crazier’ supplemental Gov. Wokety-woke DeWoke, the guy who dumps any woman who dares contradict him (see Pt. 1), means to bully Floridians into submission to his (they really are fascist) policies. That’s not BDE, as Kari Lake suggests, it’s a coward compensating (with lift shoes and or/bronzer). “DeSantis says ‘woke’ so often it begins to lose all meaning,” says John Oliver. Clearly. If there isn’t a Misanthropes Anonymous, there should be. With fewer than 12 steps. Digby covered some of this ground last night, but this Florida Man seems dangerous to more people than himself. Anyone ready to follow a guy like him might do anything. Other Florida Men already have.