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Dear Citizens,

In light of recent political parlance, we are announcing that we are no longer trying to keep our city “weird.” We realize that this statement contradicts the campaign we have spent the past two decades and thousands of taxpayers’ dollars advocating for our city’s weirdness via novelty bumper stickers that look great on the back of a Subaru. But we didn’t mean it like that.

We could never have foreseen that the word we chose to affirm our city’s quirky charm in the battle against corporate gentrification would be lobbied at a convicted felon and his spineless running mate. The early aughts were a much simpler time, when “weird” simply meant putting bacon on everything and not having sex with a sofa. We certainly didn’t have that one on our predictive bingo cards, and we were really into bingo, in a counterculture sort of way.

How we learned to sort true from false in medicine.

The post Placebo Science Is Rooted in Witch Hunts appeared first on Nautilus.

The Department of Homeland Security wants to use face recognition technology on drivers and passengers approaching the border.

The post Homeland Security Still Dreams of Face Recognition at the Border appeared first on The Intercept.

New York University students who speak out against Zionism will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.

The post College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests appeared first on The Intercept.

Why Kamala Harris might get coattails from the N.C. governor’s race As well as Vice President Kamala Harris performed in delivering her acceptance speech at the DNC convention last Thursday night (introduced by North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper), I could not help feeling it might be Harris who benefits in North Carolina from coattails provided by Democrats’ candidate for governor, Attorney General Josh Stein. Pundits touted the race to replace term-limited Cooper as the must-watch governor’s contest in the country. Stein is as competent a public servant as his MAGA Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark “some folks need killing” Robinson, is a train wreck. Robinson’s own statements are sinking him fast in the polls. So much so that veteran Democratic operative Thomas Mills wonders when his own party will stop throwing good money after Robinson’s floundering candidacy. A lobbyist told Mills last summer that Republicans were giddy at having Robinson, a Black man, atop their statewide ticket. He would draw off enough Black votes in this narrowly divided state to make their retaking of the governor’s mansion a cinch.

I’ve had a few great interviews in the last couple of weeks. I decided I wanted to track them on a media page on my own site. I’m going to try to keep them more organized, but for now I just want to get them linked.

Been There, Smelled That explores the aromas of places around the world. Travel writer Maggie Downs investigates some of the world’s most potent smells, looks at how odor cultivates a connection to place, and presents how humans engage with smells, from scents that have endured generations to the latest innovations in aroma-making.

My guesthouse in Naxos looked better in the Airbnb listing. In reality, the room was tiny. The beds were thin and dorm-room-like, covered with flat sheets, no blankets. The air smelled slightly mildewy.

But just outside the hotel door was a world transformed. Each morning the sun painted the sky gentle gold and pink, while flowering trees bent like a billowy awning over the slender, cobbled path. As I made my way to the sea, mere steps away, blossom petals stuck to my feet. The perfume of night-blooming jasmine clung to the air. In those early hours, while the surrounding village stirred awake, there was a magic to the quiet, an intimacy with the landscape that felt sacred.

MAGA finds it easier to rig elections than win them Is there a term for an entire political party suffering a case of flop sweat? The GOP’s brows are gleaming. Stuck with their degenerate (and degenerating) candidate for president and faced with an energized Democratic ticket raking in millions by the hundreds and volunteers by the tens of thousands, Republicans are engaged in a frenzied effort not to prop up their own slates but to strip the right of fellow Americans to express their will at the polls. Republicans have long neglected serious efforts for turning out the vote in favor of suppressing the votes of people they perceive as lower-caste interlopers. Irresponsibles, I’ve called them (ironically). David Frum famously (and belatedly) declared in 2018, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” Frum was years late with that realization. The voter integrity “boot camp” I attended in 2013 was a white-knuckled exercise in “protecting a demographic patch of electoral turf that’s shrinking” beneath Republicans’ feet.

The 2024 Doctor Who Prom concert took place on Bank Holiday Monday, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. Here are some of the highlights...

Adventure Log Main Quests

It’s Time to Sign Up

A pulsing light startles you as you pack another underwhelming school lunch into a backpack. A voice calls out, soft but urgent: “It’s time for The Child to play a Youth Sport.” In the local village, rumors are swirling. The Child’s Best Friend wants to play too. It seems that Youth Sports Registration will open soon, but no one knows where, when, or how.

Convince Tina, the villager with four kids, to send you the registration email from last season that she’s pretty sure is still in her inbox somewhere.

The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair.

The post Dynamism & Discipline appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

A report last week suggested 115 journalists and media workers had been killed since 7 October 2023, but others say the number is as high as 171

Few issues in politics and economics are nowadays more discussed — and less understood — than public debt. Many raise their voices to urge for reducing the debt, but few explain why and in what way reducing the debt would be conducive to a better economy or a fairer society. And there are no limits […]

Our third episode introduces the architect behind the master plan’s original blueprint, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

by Andrea Maurer* This article showcases the development of economic sociology and the vibrant activities and achievements within the Economic Sociology Research Network at the European Sociological Association. Even though the development has not been continuous, there has been a successful rediscovery of economic topics in sociology. The accomplishments have allowed the Network to have […]