Reading

Created
Wed, 18/10/2023 - 22:42

“That England that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself” – William Shakespeare, ‘Richard II’    The making of the Black working class in Britain was a long process reflecting essential changes in Britain’s labour needs over time, both at home and abroad. Difference has always been a feature of […]

Created
Wed, 18/10/2023 - 22:27

DrupalCon, the main event about the digital experience platform Drupal, is being held this year in Lille, France. Over 1,200 digital experts and Drupal professionals are getting together to exchange ideas and work on the Drupal project. KitKat and Jägermeister are giving a showcase of their online platforms, and many other Drupal users are present. On 17 October, founder and project lead Dries Buytaert gave an inspiring keynote about Drupal's impact on creating a safe and secure web for everyone and about new opportunities and developments happening with Drupal. 

Created
Wed, 18/10/2023 - 17:50

Bug Smash is a community initiative started in May 2020 to reduce the number of bugs in Drupal core.

This post follows Quietone’s Bug Smash Initiative 3-year update a few months ago by providing an update on the decisions of the Bug Smash community about the future of the initiative.

What are Bug Smash’s stats?

Here’s the raw data:

Priority

Initial - 2020-04-21

Goal

% Diff

Recent – 2023-10-13

Actual Reduction

% Diff

Minor

338

300

-11%

308

-30

-9%

Normal

6205

6000

-3%

4401

Created
Wed, 18/10/2023 - 14:15

This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.

Cashless sales at KFC

Created
Wed, 18/10/2023 - 10:30
They think it’s perfectly normal This is the way wingnuts used to sound back in the dark ages when I was growing up. I guess it’s what they mean by “making American great again.” In August, reporter Yanqi Xu heard her name called from a stage in Philadelphia for a national award recognizing Our Dirty Water, her series examining Nebraska’s high nitrate levels and their potential connection to childhood cancer. Weeks later, she published a piece looking at the environmental impact of Pillen Family Farms,  Gov. Jim Pillen’s company. She found that 16 Pillen hog farms have recorded nitrate levels higher than 50 parts per million – five times higher than is considered safe to drink. One farm recorded a reading of 445 parts per million.  Yanqi combed through hundreds of government records to find that a dozen Pillen operations violated state regulations. Employees at one farm constructed a PVC pipe to drain pig waste into a freshwater channel. Four days after we published that story, Governor Jim Pillen called into KFAB radio from a trade mission in Japan.
Created
Wed, 18/10/2023 - 09:00
Will Mike Pence or Tim Scott drop out first? Scott’s Super-Pac pulls ads: The super PAC supporting Tim Scott’s presidential bid is canceling most of its remaining TV spending, reversing course after reserving $40 million in ads for him ahead of the Iowa caucuses. The retreat from TV is the latest sign of how dire the primary has become for a candidate who once anticipated outside help from big donors — but who is now polling in low single digits and hasn’t yet qualified for the third debate. Pence reports a dismal fund-raising haul: Former Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly facing an “existential cash squeeze” that could bring an end to his 2024 run for the White House. Pence’s campaign told NBC News that filings due at the Federal Election Commission by the end of Sunday will reflect some $620,000 in debt, and that Pence has resorted to putting $150,000 in personal funds to the low-polling effort.
Created
Wed, 18/10/2023 - 08:00
Paul Krugman thinks we dodged that bullet but nobody’s noticed Krugman ‘s newsletter today lays out the data: Until quite recently there was a near consensus among forecasters that the U.S. economy was headed for a recession. In fact, it’s been exactly one year since Bloomberg declared that, according to its models, the probability of a recession by October 2023 — that is, now — was 100 percent. Oops. OK, it’s possible — barely — that a recession has begun but isn’t in the data yet. Economists of a certain age remember that for much of 2008 some commentators denied that there was a recession underway, but the official business cycle chronology now says that the worst slump since the 1930s began in December 2007. That said, warning indicators like the Sahm rule, which looks at the unemployment rate compared with its previous low, were flashing red by the summer of 2008, in a way they aren’t now: And forecasters, most of whom were very gloomy at the beginning of this year, have been backing off, with slightly fewer than half in a recent survey still predicting recession.