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A 2023 Column Contest grand-prize winner, Laurence Pevsner’s Sorry Not Sorry investigates why we’re sick of everyone apologizing all the time—and how the collapse of the public apology leaves little room for forgiveness and grace in our politics and culture.

Last month, a Korean pop star and a legendary MMA fighter found themselves doing the same thing: apologizing for their apologies. BTS’s Suga had drunk driven an electric scooter, while Ronda Rousey had shared a Sandy Hook conspiracy video. They both immediately apologized—and then they both had to apologize again, for the shortness and shallowness of their initial apologies.

1. Are you sure you’re really trapped? You don’t look that trapped.

2. But you’re too smart to be trapped in a well.

3. Yeah, I was trapped in a well once too. It was pretty dank. But the well just went away when I made sure to sleep more every night, eat protein at breakfast, and cold plunge every ninety minutes.

4. Are you sure this is even a well?

5. It could be worse. You should do some gratitude journaling.

6. Have you tried getting out once in a while? Call a friend. Go to a movie. Rent a luxury sedan, drive yourself to a remote Airbnb in the woods, and go on a three-day-long hiking adventure searching for the perfect gnarled walking stick.

7. Nobody wants to be around you if you’re just gonna dwell on this well stuff.

8. Have you even bothered to look outside of the well? It’s beautiful out. The sky is cyan, the sun is shining, and the dewpoint is a perfect fifty-four degrees. All of us out here love how it’s just sultry enough to skip the lip balm but not so much that our hair’s all frizzy.

9. Maybe there’s something you need to learn from this well, like resilience?

Cash-strapped local authorities across Britain are teetering on the brink of financial collapse. Here are the ones most at risk

Black police chief says the shortfall shows 'why our members feel that things have got worse over the last four years'

A damning new report reveals growing numbers of small businesses and retail outlets have used a series of scams to evade paying tax

Love is a daily act of devotion for two brothers – one mentally, the other physically disabled – in a shared apartment

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Sailors, exiles, merchants and philosophers: how the ancient Greeks played with language to express a seaborne imagination

- by Giordano Lipari

Read at Aeon

‘Sugaring’ involves the commodification of romance – presenting a puzzle of love, labour and autonomy for those involved

- by Brynn Valentine

Read at Psyche

When racist pogroms flared up across Britain in the Summer, many people highlighted the similarity to the riots which broke out in 1919 in British port cities. But they were alike in other ways too, not least the role that sections of the labour movement’s leadership played in promoting the racist tropes which motivated the […]

The Reserve Bank of Australia has certainly attracted headlines this last week or so starting with the claim by the Federal Treasurer that the monetary policy stance is “smashing the economy” (Source), while a past Labor Treasurer and now Labour Party National President (Wayne Swan) was much more openly critical of the RBA conduct over…

We took a five-minute scroll through X this morning and this is what we saw in relation to issues impacting the world today, in Gaza…. Great Britain’s 1 million person protest for Palestine – the largest protest in their history One of the biggest protests in the history of Great Britain 1 MILLION people pic.twitter.com/H3XVPNi6xc Continue reading »

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

The idea of the unaccountable criminal president began that day. Look where it brought us.

In 2019, a group of homeless folks were living on a deserted piece of land along the Chehalis River, a drainage basin that empties into Grays Harbor, an estuary of the Pacific Ocean, on the coast of the state of Washington. When the city of Aberdeen ordered the homeless encampment cleared out, some of those unhoused residents took the city to court, because they had nowhere else to go. Aberdeen finally settled the case by agreeing to provide alternative shelter for the residents since, the year before, a U.S. court of appeals had ruled in the case of Martin v. Boise that a city without sufficient shelter beds to accommodate homeless people encamped in their area couldn’t close the encampment.... Read more

Source: Where Can We Live? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

I’m sure you’ve heard Trump bellowing his fatuous nonsense about how everyone always wanted Roe overturned so it could go back to the states where people can vote on it and “it’s a beautiful thing.” I’ll admit that I was derelict in seeing where this was going. Leave it to Ron DeSantis to show the way: Florida voters who signed a petition to place a pro-choice abortion referendum on the ballot this November say they have been visited by police who are investigating claims of fraud at the behest of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, the Tampa Bay Times reported Saturday. Last year, DeSantis, a Republican, signed into a law a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. In response, pro-choice campaigners gathered and submitted nearly one million signatures to place on the ballot Amendment 4, a referendum that would overturn the ban and restore reproductive rights in the state. Now Florida’s Department of State is claiming it suspects fraud in the signature-gathering process.

Trump excited the crowd yesterday with promises of bloodshed with his mass deportation policy. They wouldn’t have it any other way. Just as a reminder: Two former officials who handled immigration issues for then-President Donald Trump say that a “whole of government” approach costing billions would be needed to mount the “largest deportation effort in American history” promised in the Republican convention platform if Trump is re-elected. The exact number of people who would be deported in a second Trump administration is hard to pin down. During the June 29 presidential debate, Trump claimed there were 18 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. One of the two former Trump officials said it could be as high as 30 million. The last official estimate in 2022 was under 11 million, but when you count the American children and other Americans caught up in the raids by mistake, they can probably get to 20 million or so.

Our World gets worse and worse, reflected in inhumane, racist, behaviour. And what for us – Australians – is really bad is that we, as represented by our political leaders, and our media, are totally complicit in genocide. We can start with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and its advisory opinion of 19 July. Continue reading »

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 8 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Justice Alito reports German princess gave him $900 concert tickets

Associated Press, September 06, 2024 [via DailyKos]

Justice Samuel Alito reported Friday that he accepted $900 worth of concert tickets from a German princess, but disclosed no trips paid for by other people, according to a new financial disclosure form.

The required annual filing, for which Alito has often sought an extension, doesn’t include details of the event tickets gifted by socialite Gloria von Thurn und Taxis of Germany….

Not that it matters. The “vibe” remains horrifically negative and the economy is what people point to to explain it. The reality is that for half of America, the world is going to shit because Donald Trump is telling them to believe his lies instead of their lyin’ eyes, and they love him so much that they’re happy to do it. For the rest of us, the world is going to shit because the other half worships that orange imbecile and it simply defies all sense and logic leading to a sense of dread about the future that is beyond disorienting. How can it be that half the country has succumbed to this addled demagogue? I don’t know, but it does help explain how some very bad things happened in the 20th century. It’s got something to do with mass communications, propaganda and groupthink and it’s terrifying.

From polling expert Larry Sabatp: The oracle of Delphi NY Times poll dropped today and that is what it showed. Ok. That’s that. The race, as I’ve been saying all year, is about two coalitions: the fascists vs the anti-fascists. And it’s a shockingly, disturbingly tight race.

Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter, described by some in Congress as a “warlord,” is seeking to expand cooperation with the U.S.

The post Top U.S. General Meets With Alleged War Criminal in Libya appeared first on The Intercept.