It’s overdue A big revision from the BLS today: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday revised down its estimate of total employment in March 2024 by a whopping 818,000, the largest such downgrade in 15 years. That effectively means there were 818,000 fewer job gains than first believed from April 2023 through March 2024. So, instead of adding a robust average of 242,000 jobs a month during that 12-month period, the nation gained a still solid 174,000 jobs monthly, according to the latest estimate. The revision is based on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which draws from state unemployment insurance records that reflect actual payrolls, while the prior estimates come from monthly surveys. However, the estimate is preliminary and a final figure will be released early next year. These numbers might not be exactly right, however: Some economists, however, are questioning the fresh figures. Goldman Sachs said the revision was likely overstated by as much as 400,000 to 600,000 because unemployment insurance records don’t include unauthorized immigrants, who have contributed dramatically to job growth the past couple of years.
Reading
It’s Wednesday and so a few topics that have interested me over the last week plus some promotion etc. I have been going back in time lately re-reading some of the classic books that spawned the environmental movements in the 1970s. At that time, researchers were predicting doom because they foresaw that the population growth…
We recently posted a survey seeking community feedback on what features and contrib modules to include in Drupal CMS out of the box, in order to deliver on the vision of getting from install to launch really fast. We were looking for features and modules that align with the Drupal Starshot strategy and consider the primary persona, which is ambitious marketers.
The survey got 60 submissions, with a wide variety of suggestions. Many of these were already on our radar, and closely align with our existing initiatives and work tracks. But it also raised a lot of new and interesting ideas for the leadership team and track leads to consider. We will also likely be posting new work tracks in the next few weeks based on the results, since there are some great suggestions that are not yet covered.
Lawyers with deep connections to the Supreme Court dark-money operative are attacking voting rights in battleground states in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
It’s not just “Uncommitted” activists who are pressuring Kamala Harris on Gaza policy. Her own delegates are speaking out.
The post Democrats Attacked a Muslim Woman for Protesting Biden’s Speech. She’s a Harris Delegate. appeared first on The Intercept.
The mass arrests occurred at a protest outside the Israeli consulate. Earlier arrests left protesters hospitalized and without access to lawyers.
The post More Than 70 DNC Protesters Arrested, Including Several Journalists appeared first on The Intercept.
Last week, our friends at The Believer sent a trio of novelists, poets, and critics to the Windy City to report from inside and around the Democratic National Convention. Daily installments of this limited series, which is inspired by Esquire’s 1968 coverage, will run on The Believer’s website for the rest of the week. Today, we’re catching you up on recent events with a new installment by acclaimed author Jeffery Renard Allen, who chronicles his first day on the convention floor.
The NY Times reported: Two other women shared their stories as well and the whole segment was incredibly moving: Against a black background on the convention stage in Chicago, Amanda Zurawski and her husband, Josh Zurawski, described how she nearly died after going into premature labor at 18 weeks of pregnancy. Doctors at a hospital in Texas, which has a near-total abortion ban, sent her home, deeming her not sick enough to qualify for an abortion under the law’s exception for life-threatening emergencies. “Every time I share our story, my heart breaks,” Ms. Zurawski said. “For the baby girl we wanted desperately. For the doctors and nurses who couldn’t help me deliver her safely. For Josh, who feared he would lose me, too. But I was lucky. I lived. So I’ll continue sharing our story, standing with women and families across the country.” Kaitlyn Joshua told of being in the middle of a miscarriage and being old to go hom by two different hospitals because they feared being held liable for an unauthorized abortion in Louisiana. Hadley Duvall, in the video above,brought gasps from the audience when she said: Ms.
Progressives and moderates came together to support Kamala Harris by largely ignoring the most pressing moral issue of our time.
The post Democratic Party Unites Under Banner of Silence on Gaza Genocide appeared first on The Intercept.
Characters from the best selling children’s book “The Super Competitive Parent Who Has To Be Best At Everything” are once again the most popular choice of costume for Book Week. “We’re expecting to see heaps of students turning up dressed... Read More ›
Donating clothes is a common practice for many. When people no longer have use for their clothes, when they no longer fit, or when they simply no longer like them, donating seems like a much better option than throwing them out. We think that by donating our clothes, we are contributing to both an environmental, and a social good. However, this seemingly altruistic practice may in fact be doing more harm than we realise.
Most donated clothes are never resold locally and are instead exported to other countries, with countries in the Global North being the largest exporters, and countries in the Global South being the largest importers. While some garments are then resold within the importing country, an estimated 40% of second hand clothing imports are declared to be unsuitable for reuse or resale, subsequently ending up in landfill, and worsening already struggling waste management systems. This begs the question of whether this practice is best described as ‘dumping’ rather than ‘donating’.
Yes there is such a thing Probably my favorite part of the election season is stuff like this. Here’s one for Trump from 2016:
Western Australia Senator Linda Reynolds is already embroiled in a bruising defamation fight against her former staffer Brittany Higgins. Now, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is reportedly considering suing independent MP Zali Steggall after she told him to “stop being racist”. It has become impossible to miss the fact that our political class – including some who invoke freedom of speech while Continue reading »
The headline in the Weekend Australian said it all: NT Bases Key to American War Plans. Republican Congressman Michael McCaul, the Chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Australian, after a ten day visit to Australia that our geography offered key advantages to the US “as it sought to deter Chinese Continue reading »
As Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza continues unabated, the Israeli economy is facing a catastrophe. The physical destruction in Israel from the war has been minimal, but one thing has been destroyed: its future. It is unheard of when the headlines of Israel’s mainstream newspapers and the slogans of the BDS movement are almost identical. Continue reading »
Pillar 2 is a thing that AUKUS created: it appears at different times and with different meanings and possibilities and yet is not entirely, or even at all, predictable because the initial conditions and predicate logic on which it depends are themselves illusions or fabrications of the collective mind of those who constructed it in Continue reading »
“Everything begins with a dream” – Rumi This dream stays with me as we observe more days this week in which the decisions of various leaderships, who seem never to meet each other, kill other people and their children; destroying homes and communities. Through the UN Secretary General there is to be a UN Summit Continue reading »
ABC chair Kim Williams reckons the Corporation should focus more on hard news than lifestyle fillers. While purging the pap, he might also look at how some stories get told, particularly to international audiences. This is a competitive market, with the US, Brits, French, Russians, Chinese, Qatar, South Korea, the Japanese and others telecasting in Continue reading »