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I don’t know how many of you care about this but it really seems to have reached critical mass over this past weekend and I suspect the end is nigh. You will notice that my twitter feed on the sidebar is gone and I don’t have an explanation for it except that twitter is now so fubared that it isn’t picking up the feed. I’m still there @digby56 but the writing is on the wall I’m afraid. I’m trying out all the new platforms, Mastadon, BlueSky, Post etc. I’ve kept my handle digby56 at all of them so you can probably find me (or possibly one of the imposters that have crept on some of them…) They all have their good and bad points but they just don’t have the scale. Supposedly Meta is rolling out its new twitter-like platform tomorrow (it’s somehow associated with Instagram) so we’ll see how it goes. I’ll let you know if I land in a particular spot. It’s a shame. I loved twitter and it was an important resource for my work. But Elon bought it as a toy and he’s smashed it to pieces as spoiled little bully boys tend to do.
How the wager between a neuroscientist and a philosopher will keep paying off.
The post Finding the Neural Correlates of Consciousness Is Still a Good Bet appeared first on Nautilus.
Is this about privatizing social security to further enrich Wall St? Or maybe they want Donald Trump to be president again? I can’t think of another reason why they wouldn’t just say, “raise taxes on rich people” and leave it at that. (That is the answer to this problem if, in fact, there is one.) After all, other countries are somehow able to provide universal health care and retirement benefits for their citizens. France is experiencing massive protest right now over a proposal to raise the full retirement age from 62 to 64. We should be so lucky. The usual suspects are talking about raising our retirement age to 72! Maybe they should have a chat with Professor Paul Krugman, their own columnist, who exposed the Deficit Scolds just last May (for the hundredth time) during the debt ceiling negotiations. It’s all nonsense.
By measuring inflated helium nuclei, physicists have challenged our best understanding of the force that binds protons and neutrons.
The post A New Experiment Casts Doubt on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus appeared first on Nautilus.
.id has recently launched a new tool to help communities understand and promote their strategic industries. In today’s blog, we explore the insights we found from exploring the Creative and Cultural sector in Sydney’s inner...Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman have the story. All these right wingers bellowing about free speech all the time are beyond hypocritical: At first glance, the plight of Katherine Rinderle, a fifth-grade teacher in Georgia, might seem confusing. Rinderle faces likely termination by the Cobb County School District for reading aloud a children’s book that touches on gender identity. Yet she is charged in part with violating policy related to a state law banning “divisive concepts” about race, not gender. This disconnect captures something essential about state laws and directives restricting classroom discussion across the country: They seem to be imprecisely drafted to encourage censorship. That invites parents and administrators to seek to apply bans to teachers haphazardly, forcing teachers to err on the side of muzzling themselves rather than risk unintentionally crossing fuzzy lines into illegality. “Teachers are fearful,” Rinderle told us in an interview.
The dangerous chemistry of cheaply made lithium batteries.
The post Why E-Bikes Catch Fire appeared first on Nautilus.
Opposition leader (for now) Peter Dutton has demanded that Indigenous Australians apologise to the Nation’s mortgage holders over the rise in interest rates seen over the last year. ”Before we started talking about the Voice interest rates were low and... Read More ›
The January 6th invasion of Congress included people with zip ties and paramilitary equipment. While there were a lot of idiots there, there was a core which had a plan of capturing important people like Pelosi, and they came fairly close. There’s no question that Trump abetted it, but the Secret Service refused to drive him to the capital and the effort failed.
As it happens, I know and like someone who was there, though obviously they have different politics than I do. I talked to them briefly about it and one thing was clear.
Crazy state parties are on their own Reuters reports that GOP donors are getting sick of throwing good money after bad to the Trump kooks who have taken over various state parties: Real estate mogul Ron Weiser has been one of the biggest donors to the Michigan Republican Party, giving $4.5 million in the recent midterm election cycle. But no more. Weiser, former chair of the party, has halted his funding, citing concerns about the organization’s stewardship. He says he doesn’t agree with Republicans who promote falsehoods about election results and insists it’s “ludicrous” to claim Donald Trump, who lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, carried the state. “I question whether the state party has the necessary expertise to spend the money well,” he said. The withdrawal of bankrollers like Weiser reflects the high price Republicans in the battleground states of Michigan and Arizona are paying for their full-throated support of former President Trump and his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
OK, I’m a crazy person. AN ABSOLUTE CRAZY PERSON! It is just now, JUST NOW! As I am writing this goddamned post that I realize that in 2021 I ALREADY MADE THIS DINNER!!! And I do not have another hot dog dish to offer for the first Wiener Wednesday of 2023. So this is anContinue reading Wiener Wednesday: 207. Deviled Hot Dogs
Over the next two months, two crucial meetings, indicating the massive changes the geo-political order is undergoing, are taking place. The first of these saw India host a summit of the Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in a virtual format on July 4. A month later the 15th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, Continue reading »
The aftermath of Ukraine’s ailing counter-offensive may be the country’s last chance to avert the utter destruction of a senseless forever war. So far, Ukraine’s month-long ‘counter-offensive’ has been a very costly failure. Attacks on Russian forces in the southern province of Zaporozhe have yet to achieve any significant strategic success, and the same is Continue reading »
In spite of undergoing several name changes and employing shrewd repackaging strategies under the pretext of human rights advocacy, the notorious School of the Americas remains actively committed to training foreign fighters, steadfastly advancing the cause of the American empire.
The post How a Notorious Georgia Army School Became America’s Training Ground for Global Torture appeared first on MintPress News.
Although Gladys Berejiklian’s intervention to fund projects in her boyfriend’s electorate may not have been illegal, it should have been. The legislation and rules governing the financial management of public programs should be tightened to prevent such pork barrelling. Last week the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) found that the former NSW Premier, Gladys Continue reading »
Treasuring old stuff and old stories is something the Australian War Memorial does a lot of. Recently, the Memorial made much of an artefact from the Dam Busters Raid of May 1943. The artefact was a model of a dam with surrounding countryside. The suggestion was that RAF Bomber Command had studied it or something Continue reading »
The overall capture of the meaning of “health” by the medical industrial complex and its hospital systems and departments has helped to hide the absence of policy and structures to specifically address the health of the public. It’s time we named our health departments to describe what they actually do – provide illness care -and Continue reading »
Why oh why is anyone surprised by English reaction to the Bairstow stumping? After all it is no secret that the entire history of England has been marked by deep-seated hypocrisy. That Bairstow had tried the same thing unsuccessfully in the same Test. That coach McCullum had done the same – claiming the wicket in Continue reading »
The manufactured ‘China threat’ is really about Taiwan’s hidden drive for independence and America’s need to preserve regional dominance. Magic and politics, if you think about it, are very similar. Both involve making ostentatious moves to distract their audiences from seeing what really happens on stage to produce the desired trick. That’s why “sleight of Continue reading »
TPM reports: As Trump-appointed judges vie to see who can produce the most nakedly partisan rulings completely divorced from precedent and case law, a new contender has thrown his hat in the ring. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty on Tuesday barred Biden administration officials — everyone from Heath and Human Services to the Centers for Disease Control to the FBI — from flagging posts that spread misinformation to social media companies. Doughty ruled that such contact is a violation of the First Amendment. The companies include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, Instagram and many more. The judgment bans the named officials from meeting with the companies, flagging worrying content, emailing or calling the companies about content, following up with the companies or even collaborating with groups like the Election Integrity Partnership to identify troublesome posts. “Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario,” Doughty writes.