Reading

I think the most viral animal videos this year came from Mo Mountain Mutts which is a dog sitting and training outfit in Alaska that picks up the “students” in its puppy bus every day. It’s just the cutest series ever: You’ve just gotta love it.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

This is sheerest stupidity:

Nothing will change about Iran’s policy, or to how well it is carried out. Not a thing.

Here’s the former Great Whitebread Hope still flailing around trying to prove that he’s just as much of an authoritarian monster as Donald Trump: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in a Thursday interview that, if elected president, he would fire special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two indictments against former President Trump, on “day one” of his hypothetical term in office. DeSantis made the case for why he was the best candidate to win the GOP nomination in 2024 in a Fox News interview with Jason Chaffetz. After referencing Trump’s legal battles in the upcoming year, DeSantis said he would be able to keep focused on holding people accountable, including Smith.   “I think that a guy like me as the nominee will be able to keep the focus on Biden, keep the focus on the Democrats’ failures,” DeSantis said, “but then, more importantly, after you win the election, start holding these people accountable, who have weaponized the legal system to go after their political enemies.” “And that starts with day one, firing somebody like Jack Smith.

Catherine Rampell has done a good service by laying out for her colleagues what they need to do to fulfill their responsibilities in 2024. Here are the two I think are most important: Spend less time reporting on who’s likely to win an election and more on what they’d do if elected. The point of winning elections is, ostensibly, to govern. Yet a voter could spend hours watching or reading presidential election coverage and come away with only a vague understanding of what any of the contenders would do as president. Too often journalists ask candidates questions like “Why are you so far down in the polls in Iowa?” rather than “What would your position on [food stamps/tariffs/banking] mean for Iowans?” Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, has pithily boiled down our mission as “Not the odds, but the stakes.” These days, Rosen’s refrain is usually quoted in the context of the stakes for democracy (specifically, under another Trump administration), but it’s a good principle for any substantive matter that affects the lives of everyday Americans.

Specialized underwater photographers reveal secrets of the sea’s flamboyant babies.

The post Night Swimming appeared first on Nautilus.

You’ll note that Trump’s lower number was in November 2019, before the pandemic hit and the numbers surged. Biden’s low number, on the other hand, is from hard work digging out of the carnage that was left behind. Those high numbers for Reagan and Obama improved dramatically in the last year and there is every reason to believe that Biden’s numbers are going to go lower still. After this segment, Dana bash said to the reporter something to the effect of, “that’s nice but nobody’s feeling it so that’s bad news for Biden.” The reporter explained that since prices are higher than they were five years ago you can’t expect people to feel good about anything. Americans need to get some perspective. It always takes some time for this stuff to catch up but there’s no reason for the mainstream media to be so relentlessly negative. Anyway, here’s your hit of hopium for the day to counterbalance that kind of coverage if you’ve happened to be exposed to it: Update — And lookie here: Detroit is on track to record the fewest murders since the 1960s.

Our 13th most-read article of 2023.

Originally published February 13, 2023.

Amid doomsaying pronouncements that the publishing industry is dead, we are proud to bring the written word into the future with revolutionary technology that delivers the one thing readers are most passionate about: efficiency. The purpose of writing is to take up space, and this AI does that even faster than our previous method of dozens of kittens set loose to scamper about on our keyboards. Plus, we don’t have to feed our patented AI-writing application, The Crap Machine (ChatTCM).

Investors must act fast; this is the most exciting get-rich-quick opportunity since Bitcoin started accepting Bitcoin in transactions for Bitcoin. Without writers, editors, photographers, and photo editors, our company will incur almost no expenses when putting out Total Crap.

Once again, thanks so much to everyone who has supported Hullabaloo this year. It’s such a blessing to have such generous readers and I sincerely appreciate it. I’m particularly grateful right now because I know this next year is going to be a doozy and I’m girding myself for months of angst and worry— tempered by focus, hope and determination. It’s not going to be an easy one. In fact, I absolutely believe this is a make or break election for this country. If we don’t get this right, it’s hard to see how we recover in time to keep the entire world from turning into chaos as we face out-of-control climate change in a time of authoritarian strongmen dedicated to their own self-preservation. (See: Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Orban etc…) It’s hard not to sound crazy when you talk about it… but we have to talk about it. I hope that many of you were able to take the whole week off and get some down time to rest up and get ready. It’s going to be a very tumultuous 2024.

Has there ever been a bigger narcissist in the history of the world? Ever? And this lunacy is feeding it.Imagine how much that cost? Donald Trump has denied claims made by the director Chris Columbus that he “bullied his way into” appearing in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The former US president said on his social media platform Truth Social, that the film’s production team were “begging me to make a cameo appearance”. Trump said of the 1992 film: “They rented the Plaza hotel in New York, which I owned at the time. I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent. “I agreed, and the rest is history! That little cameo took off like a rocket and the movie was a big success, and still is, especially around Christmas time. People call me whenever it is aired.” The sequel to the 1990 comedy Home Alone, Home Alone 2 made $359m (£280m) and was the third-highest grossing film of 1992. In 2020, Columbus, who directed both movies, told Business Insider that Trump’s cameo was a condition of being able to film inside the Plaza hotel, on top of the usual fee.

America is falling into a trap. It thinks the future will be decided by military dominance, despite losing one war after another. China, on the other hand, recognises that the future will be decided by economics. (A repost from October 2023). Pearls and Irritations has posted an outstanding series of articles by Percy Allan on Continue reading »

In January, 2023, Ezra Klein from the New York Times interviewed Yuen Yuen Ang. Professor Ang is a widely published, China scholar at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Towards the end of this long interview, Ang provided an acute summary of what US-China competition came down to. What matters most, she argued, is: Which Continue reading »

A major problem for a settler society like Australia is to reconcile our history and our geography. In the last 10 years  we’ve lost ground in reconciling the two. Editor’s Note: In 2023, the world continues to witness significant changes and turbulence. As we approach 2024, we conducted in-depth interviews with leading strategists from various Continue reading »

Events of the last three months or so will shape the way large cohorts of the Australian population assess the character, integrity and fitness for office of federal politicians and parties on issues of fundamental importance to them, much as happened during the years of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. But whereas the Vietnam Continue reading »

“He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible tidings…”.  A collection of stories from the late, great, veteran political reporter Mungo MacCallum: Australia’s true journalistic believer.   MUNGO MACCALLUM. The patience of our first nation, while remarkable, is not inexhaustible.   MUNGO MACCALLUM. Cook and the continuing culture wars.   MUNGO MACCALLUM. In the Continue reading »

The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has surged to 20,674, the Health Ministry in the territory said yesterday. Some 1,000 children have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its brutal bombing campaign on 7 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said. It Continue reading »

Catholic and independent schools had the biggest declines in the OECD’s Programme of Student Assessment (PISA) test results since 2009. Their students lost 1½ to nearly two years of learning in reading, mathematics and science. The falls in test scores were far bigger than for public schools. The learning loss in Catholic and independent schools Continue reading »