Reading

Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 23:00

Though her family sometimes received food stamps and occasionally had their utilities cut off, Marcie Alvis Walker’s parents led her to believe that they were an average middle-class Black family. They encouraged her to pursue her dreams and told her that if she worked hard enough, she’d achieve them. The small catch was that Walker’s dream was an elusive one for any cash-strapped and undereducated Black woman: being a New York Times–bestselling author. Now, as a published non-bestselling author, she wishes she’d had a backup plan.

- - -

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

— W. B. Yeats, “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 23:00
As I Was Saying…. Another apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump occurred Sunday. A keen-eyed Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel poking through the perimeter fence of Trump’s West Palm Beach, Fla. golf club and opened fire. The gunman, 58, fled in his car and was captured alive miles away. The suspect has a criminal history and a “quixotic past.” Scrambled eggs where his brain should be, by multiple accounts. Trump is safe. Prominent political figures expressed their relief and condemned political violence. Again. We’ll know more about the guy in due course. He’s “all over the map.” Ironically, I wrote hours earlier that “Between now and Jan. 20 anything might happen.” A wrong turn in Sarajevo touched off WWI. Events like this assassination attempt, J.D. Vance and Trump stoking hate against immigrants, and more devious political shenanigans from MAGA Republicans before and after the election are what I had in mind. Political tensions were already running high. People like Elon Musk mean to dial them up to 11.
Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 22:10

Thank you for granting me a moment of your precious time, Dread Lord Nyarlathotep. Especially given how busy you are during these final days of your gruesome campaign to reascend the Gore Throne. Very pleased to hear you dodged yet another banishment spell from your enemies—and so proud to see you standing up to the fearsome Swiftie zealots.

Look, you must know I am as committed as the next Death Cultist to getting you back in office. I’ve been an Anti-God advocate ever since that shrieking rip in space-time first vomited you onto the golden escalator. But I… well, honestly, I don’t know how to say this politely. It’s probably best that I just put it out there before you turn my tongue inside out or what have you.

Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 22:06
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), while useful in some contexts, are often overvalued in economics and social sciences. My critique centres on the following key points: 1. Lack of External Validity RCTs often suffer from problems of external validity, meaning that their results cannot easily be generalized beyond the specific experimental conditions. In the controlled environment […]
Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 21:37

On 12 August, Daniela Grudsky, Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to Britain, tweeted a fireside snap with Scotland’s External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson, professing her excitement for Israel and Scotland ‘cooperating in the fields of technology, culture and renewable energy’. The photo prompted shock and condemnation from figures at the fringes of the governing Scottish National Party, […]

Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 17:00
archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about
September 16th, 2024next

September 16th, 2024: This comic was inspired by food!

Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 16:52
In an article published last year, I tried to show that our moral judgement is heavily biased when it comes to migration. For instance, an action that we regard as a minimum moral obligation towards compatriots becomes, towards migrants or foreigners, non-obligatory and even forbidden. I tried to show that even ethicists well disposed towards […]
Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 09:54

Before he was caught with an AK-47 on a golf course near Trump, Ryan Routh went to Kiev to fight for Ukraine’s military and recruit for its International Legion. In a book-length manifesto, Routh wished for assassinations of Putin and Trump, and urged nuclear war with Russia. Ryan Routh was arrested today with an AK-47-style rifle fitted with a sniper scope several hundred yards from Donald Trump while the former president was golfing. According to the Washington Post, the “Trump […]

The post Alleged would-be Trump assassin recruited for Ukraine’s International Legion first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Alleged would-be Trump assassin recruited for Ukraine’s International Legion appeared first on The Grayzone.

Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 08:00
Jamelle Bouie and (Adam Serwer) have some choice words about JD Vance and his crusade against Haitian immigrants: In his speech accepting the Republican nomination for vice president, Vance rejected a creedal notion of American identity. America, he said, “is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” He went on to add that America is a “homeland” and that “people will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.” To some overly credulous commentators, this was nothing more than respect for place and a call to assimilate. But as Adam Serwer observes in The Atlantic, Vance’s argument was more radical than it appeared at first glance. To reject creedal nationalism, Serwer says, is to embrace, in its stead, a blood-and-soil nationalism that hold some Americans as more American than others. It is to say that there are some people who, on account of their origins or those of their parents and grandparents, cannot be full and equal members of the national community.
Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 07:49

The most pressing environmental crisis of these times, our heating of the Earth through carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution, is closely connected to our excessive energy consumption. And with many of the ways we use that energy, we’re also producing another less widely discussed pollutant: industrial noise. Like greenhouse-gas pollution, noise pollution is degrading our world — and it’s not just affecting our bodily and mental health but also the health of ecosystems on which we depend utterly. Noise pollution, a longstanding menace, is often ignored. It has, however, been making headlines in recent years, thanks to the booming development of massive, boxy, windowless buildings filled with computer servers that process data and handle internet traffic. Those servers... Read more

Created
Mon, 16/09/2024 - 04:59
US attack submarines operating from Australia could be armed with US nuclear weapons at the stroke of a presidential decision; and US strategic bombers based in Australia could be nuclear-armed, as in fact USAF nuclear safety regulations permit in crisis already. I was asked to speak today about ‘AUKUS and non- proliferation’ – which is Continue reading »