Reading

Created
Thu, 16/11/2023 - 04:00
The Republican Party has viciously turned on itself You know how it is when toddlers get tired. They get cranky. They cry and they pout and sometimes they even try to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don’t get their way. When this happens you know it’s time to give them a bottle and put them to bed. When they get older there can be the problem of how to handle an unruly teenager, defiant and hostile, challenging every rule and boundary and refusing to acknowledge any authority. Sometimes it’s enough to take away the car keys and ground them for a while but in other cases, intense therapy or even military school, as in the case of young Donald Trump, is seen as the only way to get through to them. But what do you do when elected officials suddenly start behaving like screaming toddlers and teenage bullies in the halls of congress? Is there any authority that can step in and quiet the tantrums? And when this increasingly anti-social behavior is happening in the shadow of a party leader and presidential candidate who exalts violence and cruelty, can we really just chalk it up to frustration and fatigue?
Created
Thu, 16/11/2023 - 03:48
Itzhak Gilboa, Andrew Postlewaite, Larry Samuelson and David Schmeidler (2022) describe a practice that … is not uncommon among theorists: “[O]ne may suggest a model with a descriptive interpretation in mind, but, when facing an aggressive audience, one might take a step back and rather than promoting the model as an explanation of a real-life […]
Created
Thu, 16/11/2023 - 02:30
Benefits from Biden’s infrastructure bill sinking in Voters’ choice next year is not just between preserving our experiment in government of, by, and for the people or creeping fascism. It’s also a choice of whether to improve Americans’ lives today and for our children’s future or to squander more energy and treasure on playground brawls, revenge, and punching down. Is returning to middle school any mature adult’s idea of “great”? Navigator this morning finds what Americans prefer: More: By a 43-point margin, Americans continue to support the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation that President Biden signed into law two years ago today. When asked about a new infrastructure plan that would “improve roads and bridges, expand power infrastructure, increase passenger and rail access, and improve water infrastructure,” 65 percent of Americans support this legislation with only 22 percent opposed.
Created
Thu, 16/11/2023 - 01:00

What is it about Alice Oswald’s poetry that is so immensely compelling? It could be the tautness, the hard brightness, of the language, the sense that every word in every line is earned, desperately necessary, a matter of urgency. It could be the fact that the poems are consistently so beautiful, so flinty and beautiful. They have the flexibility and the rangy toughness of plant life—and more often than not, Oswald seems inclined to work in book-length poems or sequences, letting an entire environment take root, out of which voices and lyrics flourish and emerge, both unexpected and inevitable. Though she loves the natural world, and loves to work in it—as a professional gardener—and write about it, Oswald is not a Romantic poet, at least not in the Wordsworthian sense. She doesn’t want to let her own voice smother the world in a cataract of discourse. Wants, rather, to let her syntax let her listen, to be a tool of a listening that is not only a getting out of the way, but also a record of boggling diversity of possibility in the created world. This means that poetry in her hands is intelligent but not intellectual, sometimes slow-burning but never slack.

Created
Thu, 16/11/2023 - 01:00
Not even pretending Speaker Mike Johnson did it. He passed a stopgap spending measure through the House meant to prevent a government shutdown on Friday. With Democrats’ help. With all but two House Democrats. With more Democrats than Republicans. Now as it heads to the Senate, we await the MAGA fallout in the House. The Washington Post and CNN will give you the bill’s details. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reacted to Johnson’s accomplishment and its potential blowback on “The Late Show.” “I’m sure Mr. Johnson is very … smart,” she began ironically, because “the previous guy was driven out with torches and pitchforks.” “We all know how this ends. This is not a party that is trying to govern.” The two parties are doing two very different things. So now we are going to keep the government open. It is because the Democrats came to the rescue and said that we should. But this is the Republican Party still not even wanting to keep the government going because they don’t believe that governance is what we need in this country.
Created
Thu, 16/11/2023 - 00:35
1. Ideology Silicon Valley’s ideology is this: Libertarianism for me. Feudalism for thee. In more detail: • Surveillance, manipulation and coercion; at first, just for profit, later by necessity, and ultimately for the hell of it • Disruption and capture, not competition; monopoly or at least duopoly in each industry it envelops. • Oligarchy to […]
Created
Thu, 16/11/2023 - 00:00

We all know that women are burdened with a litany of unrealistic beauty standards: thin waists, big lips, smooth skin, silky hair, and the most egregious, vaginas that look like big, sensual flowers.

It’s like how one celebrity decided that low-cut jeans were a thing, and then we had to deal with them for years. Once the standard is out there, it can feel impossible to escape it. You can’t walk into any venerable art museum without becoming insecure about your genitals (and boobs—those Greco-Roman statues are so damn perky).

Created
Wed, 15/11/2023 - 23:24

Yusof and his two older siblings counted themselves lucky. Their dad, a radiographer at the local hospital, had installed solar panels at their house, so even when their neighbourhood lost power, they could still watch their favourite cartoons. That’s what they were doing when an Israeli airstrike hit. Miraculously, Yusof’s older brother was unhurt. His […]

Created
Wed, 15/11/2023 - 19:23

As Israel assaults Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, the Biden administration claims that “Hamas does use hospitals” as military bases. Once again, Washington appears to be relying on dubious Israeli propaganda rather than independent analysis. With Israeli troops storming Gaza’s Al-Shifa and Al-Rantisi hospitals, the United States and Israel are doubling down on discredited claims that Hamas has been maintaining “command centers” out of the basements of hospitals in Gaza, even after so-called evidence produced by Tel Aviv was thoroughly debunked. “I […]

The post Biden admin justifies Israel’s assault on Gaza hospitals with recycled Israeli ‘intelligence’ first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Biden admin justifies Israel’s assault on Gaza hospitals with recycled Israeli ‘intelligence’ appeared first on The Grayzone.