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Western China Economic News Is Totally Deranged

https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/niyBMplQItA_qcrKj_Ao5pu9CxXrVx4c
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 02:28
Western China Economic News Is Totally Deranged

So, the New York Times has a headline:

China Deflation Fears Raised By Falling Prices For Food and Cars

No. China’s growth is fine, and some products dropping in price is also fine. Car prices are dropping fast because China has a competitive market for car production: they have hundreds. That is driving tech improvements and price competition. This is a good thing, it is not based on “no one has enough money to spend so everyone has to drop prices” which is what caused the Great Depression (the deflationary episode that makes everyone quake.)

Full Speed Ahead on the Global Titanic

https://tomdispatch.com/full-speed-ahead-on-the-global-titanic/
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 01:31

Yes, the Doomsday Clock keeps ticking — it’s now at 90 seconds to midnight, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — but the ultimate time bomb never gets the attention that it deserves. Even as the possibility of nuclear annihilation looms, this century’s many warning signs retain the status of Cassandras. Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump withdrew the United States from vital pacts between the U.S. and Russia, the two nuclear superpowers, shutting down the Anti-Ballistic Missile, Open Skies, and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaties. And despite promising otherwise, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden did nothing to revive them. Under the buzzword “modernization,” the American government, a thermonuclear colossus, spent $51 billion last year alone updating and sustaining its nuclear arsenal, gaining profligate momentum in... Read more

The Border Is The New Abortion

https://digbysblog.net/2024/02/08/the-border-is-the-new-abortion/
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 01:00
Republicans want their new weapon With the 2022 Dobbs decision abolishing womens’s federal right to an abortion, Republicans lost a campaign issue they’d campaigned on reliably for decades. It was like the Pentagon’s identity crisis after the Cold War ended. The Pentagon spent the 1990s not knowing who it should be planning to fight. Republicans have failed again and again since 2022 to block abortion protection amendments in the states, even as fringe right legislators all but lock women with doomed pregnancies into iron maidens as they bleed out. Abortion is on its way to being a third rail in Republican politics. The issue is now a political loser. To replace abortion, the GOP settled on Great Replacement theory, an isotopic variant of the Southern Strategy. Republicans stoke fears of brown-skinned hordes of immigrants pouring across the U.S. southern border to knock white Americans off the top of the social ladder. It’s not about race as much as power and status. Race is just the icing. Speaking with Sen.


Ben Walker: On VAR

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n04/ben-walker/on-var
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 00:00
Despite the mistakes, video assistant refereeing works. A 2020 study showed that overall decision accuracy improved with the use of VAR from an already high 92.1 per cent to 98.3 per cent. So what’s all the fuss about? Part of the problem is that although the right decisions are being reached more often, it doesn’t feel like they are.


Marina Warner: Multiplying Marys

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n04/marina-warner/multiplying-marys
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 00:00
Devotees often exult in the stripping of her beauty and her wealth; she is imagined as a woman of substance, who owned property in Magdala (hence her name), and when she repents and gives all this up, her reduction becomes the source of great satisfaction to the worthy men who love her in spite of – or because of – their general suspicion of and contempt for women.


Keiron Pim: Diary

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n04/keiron-pim/diary
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 00:00
It was impossible to tell where my ancestors were buried or the location of the mass grave containing five hundred of the town’s Jews, shot in 1942. But few descendants of the Ostjuden who visit Eastern Europe in search of their roots expect more than this; a good result is finding that a supermarket hasn’t been built on top of your relatives.


Aziz Huq: Short Cuts

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n04/aziz-huq/short-cuts
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 00:00
Trump’s misdeeds have been amply documented through two impeachment proceedings, extensive congressional investigations, Mueller’s final report and endless news coverage. Perhaps the liberal principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is at work. If so, it is having distinctly illiberal effects.

Are You Putting Your Newborn Down for Bed or Finishing Your College Paper?

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/are-you-putting-your-newborn-down-for-bed-o…
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 00:00

12 a.m. This is not working out as planned.

12:01 a.m. You toss aside earlier goals; the new goal is to wind this thing up as soon as possible or at least by daybreak.

12:05 a.m. You put on your go-to attire: comfortable and able to absorb sweat and other bodily fluids.

12:30 a.m. It’d be easier to focus if the space around you wasn’t so cluttered.

1 a.m. Prep books you don’t have the energy to read needle you.

1:10 a.m. A little bit of alcohol wouldn’t go amiss, but you don’t dare.

3 a.m. If only you could get some sleep, this might actually come together.

3:15 a.m. Bleary-eyed and desperate, you call your mother. She doesn’t answer.

3:20 a.m. The support group you joined doesn’t respond to your texts; it’s just you and your endurance.

3:30 a.m. You swig down an extra-large tea or coffee; you can’t tell the difference anymore.

3:45 a.m. Uh-oh, you don’t have time to go to the bathroom.