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Sharmine Narwani shares her insights on the targeted killings of Fuad Shukr and Ismail Haniyeh, which have sent shockwaves through the Middle East and raised the specter of a broader regional conflict.

The post Israel’s Short-sighted Political Assassinations with Sharmine Narwani appeared first on MintPress News.

The story of how the Conservatives exempted their media supporters from laws against spreading dangerously false information online

Robinson has been blamed for stoking the unrest, but the tentacles of disinformation are global. Nafeez Ahmed uncovers a worrying nexus of tech platforms and far-right conspiracy – with links to Europe, Russia and the January 6 insurrection

In a transfixing melding of art and science, a pianist improvises to a star system’s ‘unusually harmonious’ ratios and rhythms

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Though a tramp and a misfit, Chaplin’s world fit him like a glove. His life of contingency appealed to the émigré Benjamin

- by Eli Friedlander

Read at Psyche

Generative AI has lately set off public euphoria: the machines have learned to think! But just how intelligent is AI?

- by Deepak P

Read at Aeon

The promise of social mobility is broken for many people. This makes it tempting to blame meritocracy, claiming that the ideal merely serves to uphold an unjust system. But if taken seriously, this remedy would have disastrous effects. A world in which top positions are not even supposed to go to the most deserving would […]

The politics of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant hatred pushed by the Reform leader and his supporters has been tolerated for far too long

Kamala Harris' choice of running mate has been praised as a 'top of the leader-board pick'

“This appears to be a clear attempt to stifle both journalistic activities and pro-Palestine speech.”

The post The Outrageous Case of a Journalist Charged With a Hate Crime for Recording a Gaza Protest Action appeared first on The Intercept.

The financial markets around the world have over the last week demonstrated, once again, that they are subject to wild swings in irrationality despite mainstream economists holding out the idea that these sorts of transactions exhibit pure rationality. Some of the capital movements are explained by a shift in the interest rate spread between Japan…

If I were an American, I’d be pretty happy about the guy, unless I have a problem with mass murder of foreigners.

Before Tim Walz became a politician, he was a high school teacher. One of his passions as a teacher was the subject of the Holocaust. Walz wrote his masters’ thesis on “Improving Human Rights and Genocide Studies in the American High School Classroom.” It argued that the way we teach the Holocaust and genocide in school was mistaken. Walz pushed for an approach that didn’t separate the Holocaust from other genocides and human rights abuses. He also insisted that it was a mistake to focus on the maniacal character of Hitler and the Nazis. Instead he argued for a more integrated, comparative, and historicist approach, incorporating factors such as colonialism, economics, and civil war, and connecting the Holocaust to the […]

I have a letter in The Chronicle of Higher Education responding to Steven Teles’ call for more conservative college professors. It’s a shortened version of a longer piece I wrote, which I’m posting here. The fact that conservatives are thin in the humanities and social sciences departments of US college campuses is well known. A […]

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Australia has reacted strongly to news overnight that an Olympic hockey player has been caught trying to purchase cocaine. With the majority of people stunned to learn that the athlete could actually afford the cocaine. ”Mate, aren’t these guys always... Read More ›

Brian Beutler says moderates should stop worrying that the Real Americans are going to run for the hills: The implicit premise, familiar to every Democrat in politics, is that Republicans will declare all progressive ideas “socialism” whether their contents or proponents are socialist or not. One school of liberal thought holds that Democrats should thus downplay these kinds of ideas—avoid bad-faith GOP backlash and seize the center through the absence of controversy. Another holds that Democrats can defeat Republicans in a contest to define the issues. As a liberal politician, you can run away from the idea of universal school lunch, because Republicans will call it socialism, or you can run toward it, while persuading people that it isn’t socialism, it’s neighborliness. If you opt for the latter, you can go a step further by noting that stripping free lunch from hungry children, or making school lunch programs a source of stigma for the children of poor parents, are ideas that only animate people of troubling character.

Providing tampons for high school students is something the Trump people seem to think is very weird. I think most people probably think it’s weird not to. Why do they care about this stuff so much? Former President Trump’s campaign and supporters are going after Vice President Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), dubbing him “Tampon Tim” in reference to a bill he signed last year requiring schools to provide free menstrual products in all public school bathrooms. The Minnesota law, which went into effect Jan. 1, mandates menstrual products — including pads, tampons and other items — “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district.” State Republican lawmakers pushed back on the legislation at the time, but ultimately failed to amend the bill to apply only for girls’ bathrooms. […] The primary super PAC supporting Trump called Walz a “weird radical liberal,” as part of a new campaign ad against the governor.

Silicon Valley’s right-wing history goes back over 100 years; Donald Trump is a perfect avatar for their power play.

The post Tech Billionaires Love Trump Now — Because He’s One of Them appeared first on The Intercept.

15 human space oddities.

The post The Weirdest Stuff We’ve Sent into Orbit appeared first on Nautilus.