State of the Union preview. I go off on a tangent. It’s tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET. Pfeiffer: Tonight, Joe Biden will stand before Congress and the nation to give what will almost certainly be his most important speech of 2023. Last year, 38 million people tuned in to watch President Biden deliver his constitutionally mandated report on the state of the union. A similar number will watch tonight’s speech. Absent a major national event on par with the Space Shuttle Challenger crash or the operation to take out Osama Bin Laden, the audience tonight will be more than ten times larger than that of any other speech Biden will give this year. The speech will also receive a ton of press attention. It has already been the subject of approximately one million thumb-sucking think pieces. The State of the Union really is a tradition like no other. The State of the Union is also a weird speech. It’s a grand venue with a big audience in the room and across the nation. Even the least presidential Presidents look somewhat presidential giving the speech. In many ways, the State of the Union is a high-floor, low-ceiling speech.
Reading
If writers write about what puzzles them, Ross Gay is puzzled by joy. His oeuvre is a gorgeous, open-hearted, lyrical response to that puzzlement. Joy, by the way, that’s always in the context of suffering, in the context of pain. His style is a kind of restless exuberant unfolding, a thinking and feeling that feels like it’s happening as you read it, like an ice cube melting on a stovetop. You can hear it in his debut collection, Bringing the Shovel Down, which comes with an epigraph from Audre Lorde, all the way through his most recent book-length poem on and around and about the late great Dr. J, who conducted on basketball courts around the country “his extended course of study / on gravity and grace, / which has so enthralled the throngs.” That book is called Be Holding, probably the best long poem on sports since Kenneth Koch’s Ko, or a Season on Earth. Many people are familiar with Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. That book of poems, published in 2015, includes such wonders as “Feet”:
TO: Household members
FROM: Human Resources/Leadership
SUBJECT: Dinner Policy Changes
The Human Resources/Leadership committee has enacted a new one-bite rule. All household members with 4+ years experience are now required to take one bite of the prepared meal at the dinner table before additional food options are enabled.
Please note that no requests for alternate meals or meal components will be approved until the requirement is met.
We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.
Thank you,
Human Resources/Leadership
- - -
TO: “Heinous” Resources/Dictators
FROM: Reese, Star Employee and “Best Girl”
RE: Dinner Policy Changes Memo
I am writing in response to this egregious policy change. I, for one, am immensely disappointed you made a decision like this without employee consideration.
I absolutely refuse to comply with this preposterous demand and loudly request further explanation.
Sian Norris speaks to The White Helmets about the challenges Syria faces in rescuing and supporting survivors of the devastating earthquake that hit the region
In a rare turn up for the books, the head of state of Latin America's largest economy just accused three of the country's four richest men of engaging in blatant accounting fraud.
The Lever’s new movie podcast launches on Feb. 7.
By Art27 Mr. Fish recently did a podcast with Art27, which can be listened to here. We start 2023 off with a long anticipated guest, the political cartoonist and artist Dwayne Booth, better known as Mr Fish. Fish’s incendiary political artwork and relentless truth-seeking has been a recurring topic around the art27 office, and we […]
The post Laughing at Power with Mr Fish appeared first on scheerpost.com.
By Alfred de Zayas / CounterPunch The war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022, but already in February 2014. The civilian population of the Donbas has endured continued shelling from Ukrainian forces since 2014, notwithstanding the Minsk Agreements. These attacks on Lugansk and Donetsk significantly increased in January-February 2022, as reported by […]
The post The Ukraine War in the Light of the UN Charter appeared first on scheerpost.com.
A month before the Feb. 24, 2022 Russian invasion, CN wrote that the U.S. was laying a trap to lure Russia into an economic, information and proxy war. All three have failed for the U.S.
The post US-Laid Trap for Russia Has Trapped West Instead appeared first on scheerpost.com.
Victory for Ukraine is not just about defeating Russia but avoiding the path Putin's country has taken with its economy, write Gerhard Schnyder and Simon Deakin
US sanctions are specifically designed to prevent Syria's reconstruction.
The post After Earthquake Devastates Syria, US Shows No Interest in Lifting Sanctions appeared first on scheerpost.com.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to Palestine offered a paltry aid package to Palestinians and a gift to Israel’s far-right in the form of the removal of the Jewish Defense League from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.
The post The US Is Legitimizing Jewish Terrorism Against Palestinians appeared first on scheerpost.com.
- by Aeon Video
- by Priya Basil
- by Robert D Zaretsky
While still facing pressure to attract and retain workers, firms in the Eighth Federal Reserve District reported some easing in their pay and hiring plans for 2023.
Fiscal policy can play an important role in limiting hysteresis – a term coined in the 1980s – particularly by promoting government and private investment. However, the political economy of fiscal policymaking typically trades off long-term benefits for short-term gains
None of the solutions to the Government's concerns about migrant boats crossing the Channel require the UK's withdrawal from the ECHR, writes Brad Blitz
While we are on the subject of universities, it’s worth noting the likely acquisition of the so-called University of Phoenix by the University of Arkansas System. After a string of similar acquisitions, closures and conversion to non-profit status, this is pretty much the end of explicitly for-profit university education in the US. It’s a striking […]
What enables and yet constrains research? What is both medium and outcome of research? What do researchers reproduce without even knowing it? What is supposed to unite researchers but may divide them? What empowers researchers to speak but is never fully articulated? What is played out in the routine of research but can never be […]
Those breaching 'persons unknown' injunctions face an unlimited fine and up to two years in prison, with the potential for their assets to be seized. Their quiet roll-out goes far further than the Policing Act passed last year, Josiah Mortimer reports
The Association for Symbolic Logic has awarded its 2022 Shoenfield Logic Book and Article Prizes. The Shoenfield Prizes are “awarded for outstanding expository writing in the field of logic” and were established honor the late Joseph R. Shoenfield, a influential logician who died in 2000. The Shoenfield Book Prize was awarded to Paolo Mancosu (University of California, Berkeley), Sergio Galvan (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart), and Richard Zach (Calgary) for their book, An Introduction to Proof Theory—Normalization, Cut-Elimination, and Consistency Proofs (Oxford University Press, 2021). Here’s a summary of their book: Proof theory is a central area of mathematical logic of special interest to philosophy. It has its roots in the foundational debate of the 1920s, in particular, in Hilbert’s program in the philosophy of mathematics, which called for a formalization of mathematics, as well as for a proof, using philosophically unproblematic, “finitary” means, that these systems are free from contradiction.
Det handlar om en gästföreläsning på masterprogrammet i sexologi vid Malmö universitet … Gästföreläsaren visade rasistiska nidbilder, som så kallade blackfaces och yellowfaces, och använde flera gånger n-ordet. Till saken hör att ordet och nidbilderna var en del av en medveten pedagogisk strategi. Eller som tre ansvariga vid universitetet skrev i ett svar på en […]
So much for the Biden commitment to XI after a 2 1/2 hour phone call to improve relations.....