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On Democrats freshening up the brand Thank goodness Syria’s autocratic regime collapsed before Bashar al-Assad “suck-up,” Tulsi Gabbard, had a chance to prop him up as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, quips Michael Tomasky. Our unstable world is about to become more so. Here at home, Democrats still smart at losing the presidency to a criminal imbecile and walking advertisement for the Dunning-Kruger effect. How they pull the country and the world back from the brink of Idiocracy will occupy them until the next general election, if that long. Perhaps Democrats’ biggest obstacle to freshening up their brand, aside from institutional lethargy, is a media ecosystem owned and operated by reactionary billionaires. Democrats’ post-mortem spitballs over how to regain market share with the American electorate are so many trees falling in the forest if no one hears the sound. Perhaps more star power could break through? Vanity Fair‘s Chris Smith suggested last week that perhaps “Democrats need their own demagogue,” to break through the right-wing noise. The good kind, of course.

The former MP, who was appointed as a Government adviser by Boris Johnson, faces calls to quit over his potential conflicts of interest

South Lebanon is a lesson in steadfastness — an obstinate and determined testament to the willingness of an indigenous people to confront their occupier and…

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Chris Chibnall and the Big Finish team discuss Jo Martin's return as The Fugitive Doctor for Doctor Who: The Fugitive Doctor: Most Wanted.

I dreamt of being a music icon, but instead, I’m sweating through my clothes inside a mobile edit bay somewhere in South America, soundtracking an argument between a software salesperson from Bakersfield who’s looking for “someone to settle down with” and a Dallas marketing coordinator “hoping to, like, do something different in terms of dating.”

I supervise the music for Netflix’s multiverse of reality dating shows.

You could say this job chose me—much like the balaclava-clad men who snatched me from that derelict warehouse masquerading as a tropipop songwriters meetup.

You know those songs you like? The ones those syndicated coastal radio guys play in between invasive studio interview segments with artists half their age? I make shitty imitations using an ancient Pro Tools installation, a guitar once owned by a deceased former contestant, and smartphone vocal recordings from our longtime production assistant, who’s an aspiring singer but nevertheless still a production assistant.

I write what I see, and what I see is madness.

After decades of bloody and brutal dictatorship, the Assad regime in Syria has been toppled in a matter of days.

The post End of Assad’s brutal rule opens new space for Syria’s popular movement first appeared on Solidarity Online.

Reviving the nearly lost printing processes of Shakespeare’s day is a labour of love and an act of connection with the past

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

It was thought that science could tell us about the origins of the Universe. Today that great endeavour is in serious doubt

- by Daniel Linford

Read at Aeon

By the time an adult learns they’re autistic, they have often been covering up for years. A period of self-discovery awaits

- by Leonie Mercedes

Read at Psyche

Trump’s attorney, Emil Bove, may be No. 3 at DOJ. A judge blamed him for “grave derelictions of prosecutorial responsibility.”

The post Trump Justice Department Appointee Oversaw “Systemic” Misconduct in Previous Job appeared first on The Intercept.

Critics must reclaim their roles as navigators of meaning – not algorithmically-rewarded pastiche provocateurs, writes Iain Overton

A few weeks ago, seven political philosophers at my department, who regularly meet to discuss issues related to sustainable futures, met to discuss Hannah Ritchie’s book Not the End of the World. That book quickly appeared on the bestseller’s lists. For everyone who read her book, or is perhaps thinking about reading her book, here’s […]