I thought I would share some good stuff I read this morning with gift links. This article in the NY Times is well worth reading in full. In fact, it’s delicious: Late in the summer of 2003, a team of television producers stepped off the elevator on the 26th floor of Trump Tower eager to survey the set of their next reality show. After years filming “Survivor” in jungles around the world, training cameras on exotic spiders and deadly snakes to evoke danger, they came looking for a different set of sensory clues, the tiny details that would convey wealth and power. Right away, they knew they had a problem. The first thing they noticed was the stench, a musty carpet odor that followed them like an invisible cloud. Then they spotted scores of chips in the finish of the wooden desks and credenzas. The décor felt long out of date, making the space seem like a time capsule from when Donald J. Trump opened the building early in his first rise to fame. The place did not exactly buzz with energy either. Fewer than 50 people worked at Trump Organization headquarters in midtown Manhattan. At the office’s spiritual center, Mr.
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The husband had been a conspiracy theorist even before COVID came along. His wife described him as almost “cultlike” in his anti-vax beliefs. It’s clear he had untreated mental illness but the anti-Vax movement sent him into a spiral that resulted in this terrible tragedy. Via The Atavist: Over the course of their marriage, Hu had watched as her now ex-husband, Stephen O’Loughlin, became obsessed with pseudoscience, self-help gurus, and conspiracy theories, spending long nights watching videos online, then sharing the details of fantastical plots with Hu, their friends, and people he barely knew. The COVID-19 pandemic had only made things worse. O’Loughlin huddled for hours at his computer streaming YouTube clips and poring over right-wing websites—what he called “doing research.” One of O’Loughlin’s fixations was vaccines. He believed that Pierce had been damaged by the routine inoculations he received as a baby. O’Loughlin was adamant that the boy be given no more shots—not for COVID-19, when a vaccine was eventually authorized for kids, nor for any other disease.
1. How many of you think the Atlantic Alliance (NATO) needs reformation in some way?
2. How many of you think it is just fine the way it is?
3. How many of you think it should just be abolished?
If you could please limit your answer in the comments to 1, 2 or 3 I would be very appreciative. There will be a ful post for a full discussion of the issue soon. I want to get a sense of how everyone is thinking on this issue before I complete to essay.
Last night, Bill Maher made a joke about Trump and Laura Loomer having an affair. (It was cruder than that but basically that was it.) That theme was all over social media yesterday, starting with the big kahuna. above. Loomer was very, very upset about it: She should know about defamation and character assassination. It’s her entire brand: Uh huh:
Ok. It’s Donald Trump who believes he can change reality simply by saying something over and over again. And for about 46% of voters, it appears that he can. Not even a 3 point lead. Yes, I still think Harris will pull out a narrow win. But what do we do about the 46% of our fellow Americans who think that bigoted conman should run the country? Their willingness to believe his lies (or rationalize them) makes them monsters too, doesn’t it? (Or dangerous fools, if we want to be generous about it.) I knew we had been a racist, violent people. But I thought we had progressed further than this, I really did.
How can people vote again for this clown?
Another family feud over a GOP candidate in AZ Most of us have them, family members who for reasons unfathomable have gone full red-hat. For other unknown reasons a lot of them run for office in Arizona. Six members of Rep. Paul Gosar’s (Ariz.-R) family made a point of asking people not to vote for him. Several appeared in attack ads against him and after Jan. 6 called for his ouster from Congress: “I consider him a traitor to this country. I consider him a traitor to his family,” Gosar’s brother, Dave, a Wyoming attorney, said. “He doesn’t see it. He’s disgraced and dishonored himself.” Now it’s Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter’s turn, reports Mother Jones. Her sister, Pamela, “an activist prayer warrior,” is running for a state house district in suburban Maricopa County. Lynda’s distancing herself: In their quest to hold onto the legislature, Republicans have turned to a member of a famous Arizona family—Pamela Carter, older sister of the original Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter.
Plus, mental health comes for the people, more states fight the big tax scam, and busting union busters makes workers feel good.
Compiled for sharing If you’re in the mood for a breathless summary of superconmisogynisticextrabragadocious Trumpy lowlights, Seth Meyers has you covered. Bookmark it for Thanksgiving. This Zak Kimball guy has a set of explainers on his TikTok page, but this one answers The Donald’s debate challenge to Vice President Kamala Harris about why she hasn’t accomplished the things she proposes in 3-1/2 years in that office. For the civics-challenged. Tom Bonier explains why the polls are so screwed up and why they now overestimate Repunblicans’ support. And for those of you paying attention, voter registration has been way up since Biden handed Harris the baton. Voter registration has been spiked insanely since Harris trounced Trump in the debate and Taylor Swift’s endorsement. Enjoy. Update: Knew Rosenberg had these but could not find them earlier
I Tidningen Näringslivet kunde vi för några år sedan läsa en intervju med ekonomiprofessor Daniel Waldenström, där denne gång på gång bagatelliserade den ökade inkomst- och förmögenhetsklyftan i Sverige under de senaste 40 åren. Enligt Waldenström har efter 00-talet ”inkomstskillnaderna faktiskt inte ökat särskilt mycket alls.” De som påpekar att ojämlikheten de facto ökat kraftigt även […]
With Jodie Whittaker and Jo Martin signing to star in new Doctor Who audio dramas at Big Finish, it's time for their Doctors to team up again.
Konjunkturen vill inte riktigt vända, arbetslösheten ökar, tillväxtprognoserna har redan förbytts i stagnationsprognoser. De närmsta åren kommer med stor sannolikhet att bjuda på en långvarig konjunktursvacka. I detta minst sagt svåra läge har det blivit allt tydligare att penning- och räntepolitiken inte längre är verkningsfull. Men vad regeringen med manisk envishet vägrar inse är att […]
Personally, I would not accept an endorsement from a world-historic war criminal.
The post Do Kamala Harris’s Neocon Supporters Just Hate Trump, or Is There Something More to Her Appeal? appeared first on The Intercept.
Personally, I would not accept an endorsement from a world-historic war criminal.
The post Do Kamala Harris’s Neocon Supporters Just Hate Trump, or Is There Something More to Her Appeal? appeared first on The Intercept.
Cooking time: 30 mins.Preparation time: 20 mins.Main cooking utensils: 3 saucepans For 4 people you need:1 cup ricewatersalt¼ cup flour2 tablespoons butter1¼ cups chicken stock⅔ cup milk2 egg yolks3 tablespoons creamcooked breasts of 2 young chickens or 1 large chicken divided into 4 piecessqueeze lemon juice1 – 1½ cups mushrooms2-4 tablespoons butter Garnish:1 hard-cooked egg […]
by Bruce Wilder
(Ian–this is an elevated comment from my post on Breakout Societal Power. It fills in much of the gap elided to in this phrase “Small groups in competition have the chance, though not the certainty, of fast progress, stuck as they are in a cauldron. It doesn’t always happen…” but does so better than I would have. It’s not just about why some societies in sharp competition don’t make it, however.)
The Wolves of Yellowstone Gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995, resulting in a trophic cascade through the entire ecosystem. After the wolves were driven extinct in the region nearly 100 years ago, scientists began to fully understand their role in the food web as a keystone species. TRANSCRIPT: In 1995, something really exciting happened in the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone. 41 wild wolves are reintroduced here by scientists. After 100 years of being hunted, wolves could once again call this place home. The wolves thrived, but something else very surprising happened. Their return had a spectacular effect on the landscape, an effect that spread wider than anyone thought possible. So how did this all happen? In the past, wolves were seen as a risk to people and livestock, and they were exterminated from the Yellowstone area in the 1920s. The elk’s main predator was gone, and their population more than doubled. Elk are both grazers and browsers, so they eat grass, shrubs, and trees. They overgraze the entire park, upsetting the natural balance of the ecosystem.
Politico takes a look at the movement behind Vance’s ascent to power: Now that Vance is accompanying Trump on the top of the Republican ticket, this paradox has opened Republicans up to fresh criticisms. How populist can Vance really be while cozying up to billionaires in Silicon Valley? What does a Yale-educated attorney and ex-venture capitalist understand about the lives of Trump’s blue-collar voters? Is a guy who owns not one but two million-dollar houses a credible mouthpiece for the GOP’s fledgling economic populism? But the deeper I’ve dug into the conservative world Vance comes from — often referred to as the “New Right” — the more I’ve come to see Vance’s split identity as a feature rather than a bug for his ideological supporters. In fact, Vance embodies an archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to).
Two theoretical physicists have a lively conversation about how abstract concepts can feel down-to-Earth.
The post Feeling Gravity’s Pull appeared first on Nautilus.
Based on our interviews, heterodox economics appears to be a positive project, inevitably defined somewhat in terms of the mainstream but not exhaustively so. It is also efficacious, with policy and real-world impact. It is a complex object, not amenable to definition by a single criterion. Its dimensions are partly intellectual, in terms of what […]
There is an underlying dynamic of solidarity and surplus that seldom gets the attention it deserves.