Reading

Scientists Find That “Class Clowns” Are Actually the Smartest People in Class (Thanks to Matt Filar) Pleasantville (NY) High School, class of 1965.

More monetarist reification from ChatGPT… 

ChatGPT explains the Federal Reserve like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo: pic.twitter.com/aMY9c1i3b2

— ChatGPT (@ChatGPTGoneWild) January 2, 2023

 

I can't say it doesn't matter if he becomes Speaker or not, but it's also the kind of story (and details) that political journalists absolutely love to obsess about. That would be fine if they managed to communicate just why it might matter all that much, aside from the palace intrigue stuff.

Republicans in disarray is sorta funny, but it isn't what matters.

Something is seriously broken Two items this morning should be clues to how around the bend and down the rabbit hole this country has traveled in recent years. Brian Klaas (subscription req’d) posts about the lack of basic standards for elected officials. Looking at you, George Santos: Much of the modern world has created what I call the broken pyramid of scrutiny. In principle, levels of scrutiny and accountability should increase as the potential to do catastrophic harm increases. The higher up the hierarchy you go, the more that you should be monitored to make sure that you’re not going to destroy the company, or bring down the government, from your perch at the top. The least powerful should face the least scrutiny; the most powerful the most oversight. Instead, as I wrote in “Corruptible,” we do the opposite. Santos would have been exposed as a fraud before being offered “any run-of-the-mill government job.” But not in Congress. Klass contrasts the training he had to go to volunteer as a tour guide at an English historical site: In my spare time, I volunteer as a tour guide at a historic site in England.

When it comes to grief, there’s no room for second best. Sure, there are other guidebooks aimed at helping you cope with the emotional and practical challenges of losing a loved one. None, however, have been written by a comedy writer whose “therapeutic training” went no further than an undergraduate degree in psychology, and who lived through this terrible experience and emerged intact enough to write a bunch of jokes about it. What The Daily Show’s America (The Book) was to civics and The Onion’s Our Dumb Century was to the history of the twentieth century, Jason Roeder’s hilarious (and often moving) Griefstrike!: The Ultimate Guide to Mourning is to death, mourning, and somehow getting on with your life.

As always, if you find value in this work I do, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List! You can get it in your inbox or read it on Patreon, the content is the same. (And gift subscriptions are now available!)

An Oklahoma court refused to consider new evidence of Glossip’s innocence. Now the state’s parole board may be his last chance.

The post Facing His Eighth Execution Date, Richard Glossip Asks for Clemency appeared first on The Intercept.

Covid will not miraculously end. New variants will continue to be born, and they will generally be optimized for immune escape and damage. Hospitals in most countries will continue to be under high strain, because governments will keep pretending Covid is over when it is not and that it doesn’t ravage people’s immune systems. I find this chart of Canada’s Covid experience applies to most countries in spirit.

I had not seen this informative video before – nine and a half minutes of background on how we got here. It is remarkable how the Tories have successfully remodelled the NHS on principles quite different from those at its its foundation – and just as remarkably how Labour has failed both to see the... Read more

It is yet another attempt by those who believe that only a mega-scaled, technology-intensive approach can be a viable alternative to our current fossil fuel-dependent energy infrastructure.

It's Monday in America.

Our editors selected our top stories of urban innovation to feature in our annual Solutions of the Year roundup.

Vice-president of Royal College of Emergency Medicine Ian Higgingson doesn’t expect to be trampled in the rush of politicians coming to experience appalling situation they’ve created Ian Higginson, Vice-President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, has challenged politicians to come and experience for themselves the horrors faced by NHS staff and patients, in an […]

Those of us who fought hard against the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 (and I did, most especially on Twitter) always knew the
Read the full article...

Mark Northfield shared his new composition for 2023 with me, so I am doing the same with you, with his permission:

There's been a shakeup at the top.

The hidden story of a 180 year old union-busting spy agency.