Reading

Labour's attempt to mimic Nigel Farage's Reform on immigration is a fundamental misunderstanding of its electoral base, argues Neal Lawson

Any scientist worth their salt eventually becomes accustomed to unpredictability. The unfortunate reality is that the majority of experiments fail—lab rats explode, bacteria escape the petri dish, etc. Still, I never anticipated that things could ever go this awry.

For the past decade, I have been conducting a highly expensive and groundbreaking experiment: confining a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters until one of them, through sheer random chance, produces a perfect facsimile of Hamlet. But rather than the unsullied words of the immortal bard, the chimps are writing nothing but copies of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Which, don’t get me wrong, is still impressive, kind of. But I was really hoping for Shakespeare. And Plath is such a bummer.

At first, I thought it was a fluke. Hamlet is a complex work layered with ghost dads and revengeful soliloquies. Surely, the chimps are working their way up to it via a momentary detour into twentieth-century confessional literature.

This is how Labour’s war on regulations will stymie its own policies. It is irrational and self-destructive. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  11th February 2025 This might sound astonishing, but the UK government’s core programme now appears to be the same as Donald Trump’s: dismantling the administrative state. There’s less theatre, but the […]

Let’s take a look at this in more detail. First, a summary of Secretary of State Rubio’s

In this immersive portrait of play, children transform the streets of Havana into a racetrack with handmade ‘chivichanas’

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Existential psychology offers specific ways to find meaning, giving you a buffer against despair in these anxious times

- by Steven Heine

Read at Psyche

Czech billionaire, Karel Komárek's Swiss-based KKGC company, Allwyn had pledged to give £38 billion to charitable causes over the next ten years

The stories brought to life on the stage in the past allowed people to understand that politics is something that impacts on their lives, writes playwright Tim Walker

Tom Fiebig looks at the famous Freedom Ride in NSW, which saw students expose the racism and segregation against Aboriginal people across the state

The post The Freedom Ride 60 years on first appeared on Solidarity Online.

Childcare educator Ealaf Al-Easawi was brutally bashed by a stranger in a shocking Islamophobic incident. She told her story to Solidarity.

The post ‘I was attacked for wearing a hijab’ first appeared on Solidarity Online.

IN an initiative to address rates of youth crime in regional areas, the State Government has partnered with the National Rugby League (NRL) and the Police Citizens Youth Club (PCYC) on a youth engagement program. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message us. Phone us – (02) 4981...

The post NSW Gov partners with NRL and PCYC on youth program appeared first on News Of The Area.

Yesterday, the RBA cut interest rates for the first time since November 2023. They claimed that further rate cuts would at least require further evidence of wage restraint, which tells you how the public debate has been so thoroughly taken over by fiction. Australia is experiencing a drought, not the regular paucity of rainfall, type…

In case you aren’t up on the latest internet lingo ASMR is defined: Note that the original tweet came from the official White House feed. We are dealing with sociopaths. They don’t try to hide it. And because of that it is rational to be horrified and enraged right now about what these people are willing to do to us. Normalizing this level of sadism and cruelty can only lead in one direction. I just assume now that all Republicans agree with these sentiments since none of them have said a peep about any of this.

Francesca Albanese addresses a group in Berlin amidst challenges from the police. The City of Sydney passes a motion for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS), while Patricia Karvelas calls out the facts on Angus Taylor. Francesca Albanese speaks in Germany 🗣️ German police entered a venue in Berlin to intimidate people gathered for an event Continue reading »

“Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration…. Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.” — CNN, 2/14/25

“The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees… just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.” — AP, 2/17/25

“The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), in a post on its website, says it has found $55 billion in savings through a combination of efforts, including a reduction in the federal workforce.” — The Hill, 2/18/25

Dear shareholders,

Never forget that even as President Musk is destroying the government agencies and Trump’s henchmen are taking apart the Department of Justice piece by piece, when he isn’t pretending to be Alexander the Great and playing golf he’s making money for himself and his family. This term they aren’t even trying to hide it: The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service over its attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said Monday. The Oval Office meeting convened by President Trump brought together the most important leaders in the world of professional golf: Jay Monahan, the top executive at the PGA Tour, and, via telephone, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of the Saudi Arabia-backed league known as LIV Golf. The stated goal was to figure out a way to eliminate roadblocks preventing the planned merger between the rival two groups. But the gathering earlier this month said something even more important about the Trump administration itself. Mr.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

John Dean, famous Watergate whistleblower, speaks with David Sirota about Trump’s grab for unitary executive power.

The NY Times has a good piece today (gift link) looking at the inside workings of the Adams case at SDNY. It is truly astonishing. What this case proves is that what’s happening is truly the complete corrupt Trumpification of the DOJ that goes way beyond just seeking retribution for the Special Counsel prosecutions. This is a remaking of the department as a full-fledged political arm of the president and this case was chosen in particular to demonstrate to the lawyers and the public that they plan to use that power. By choosing to protect a Democrat who made an appeal directly to Donald Trump, licking his boots and promising to do his bidding, they have shown that it’s not about the past, it’s about the future. By choosing the SDNY, the flagship office of the DOJ, they prove that no office has any independence. This is the conclusion of the piece: Across the department, dismay has set in over the standoff in the Adams case, which echoes a grim moment during the Watergate scandal known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Rather than carry out an order from President Richard M.

2 pounds rhubarb1 pound sugar3 tablespoons lemon juice3 tablespoons butterThin slices of white breadGolden custard sauce or whipped cream Wash and trim young rhubarb stalks, and cut into 1-inch segments. Combine rhubarb, sugar, lemon juice and butter in thick-bottomed saucepan; bring gently to a boil, stirring continuously; lower heat and simmer, stirring all the while, […]

“They get the one starving kid in Sudan that isn’t going to have a USAID bottle, and they make everything DOGE has done about the starving kid in Sudan.” — a White House official. I’ve been a USAID contractor for most of the last 20 years. Not a federal employee; a contractor. USAID does most […]