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You may have heard the news that high schoolers will have to take the SATs if they plan to attend college. The temporary break from standardized tests is over.

The New York Times recently posted an interactive test featuring a few questions from the reading and writing section of the SATs. If you haven’t needed to take a standardized test for the past twenty to sixty years, you could try taking it, or you can just hit yourself over the head with a large plumber’s wrench.

We’re not saying you have to do that; you’re an adult who doesn’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Certainly, you don’t have to retake the SATs. Even if your child is currently applying to college, there’s simply no reason you also have to take the test that was the bane of your existence as a teen. You also don’t have to hit yourself in the face with a big steel wrench.

For the feds, ISIS-K as the new domestic terrorism threat avoids dealing with the politics of the Gaza war.

The post Terror Hunters Trade Hamas for ISIS-K, Perhaps With Some Relief appeared first on The Intercept.

The bots who shit in your sandbox are bigger, brassier, and better than ever!

The post Akismet means never having to say you’re sorry appeared first on Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design.

Recently, you may have noticed that the hot weather is getting ever hotter. Every year the United States swelters under warmer temperatures and longer periods of sustained heat. In fact, each of the last nine months — May 2023 through February 2024 — set a world record for heat. As I’m writing this, March still has a couple of days to go, but likely as not, it, too, will set a record. Such heat poses increasing health hazards for many groups: the old, the very young, those of us who don’t have access to air conditioning. One group, however, is at particular risk: people whose jobs require lengthy exposure to heat. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that... Read more

Source: Republicans Have Plans for Working People appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Swamp or bog? Guilt or shame? Club soda or sparkling water? From food to fashion, ethics to architecture, there are thousands of words and ideas that we tend to collapse, conflate, or confuse. For hairsplitters and language lovers, Tendency contributor Eli Burnstein’s Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning explores the world of the vanishingly small, offering up witty deep dives and lively illustrations by Liana Finck to help sharpen these differences and bring us clarity at last.

Today, we offer a small sample of the many important (and funny) distinctions that can be found in this important (and funny) book.

From 2006 to 2016, Sarah Walker offered excellent and specific instructions for essential activities of everyday life, like bullfighting and performing tracheotomies. Thanks to her, our standards of living were improved by 100 percent. Today, to help celebrate our twenty-five (and a half) years of online existence, she returns with more valuable advice.

First, don’t panic.

You’ve been in this exact same situation before, which begs the question: Why? Why did you come back to the lonely roadside diner on a stretch of desert highway that the motorcycle gang frequents? And how, having lived through this nightmare once, did you manage to knock over an entire row of their motorcycles again?

Well, earlier in the afternoon, your mom woke you up and said, “You need to lose your fear of motorcycles, motorcycle gangs, and sometimes Vespas.”

From 2006 to 2016, Sarah Walker offered excellent and specific instructions for essential activities of everyday life, like bullfighting and performing tracheotomies. Thanks to her, our standards of living were improved by 100 percent. Today, to help celebrate our twenty-five (and a half) years of online existence, she returns with more valuable advice.

First, don’t panic.

You’ve been in this exact same situation before, which begs the question: Why? Why did you come back to the lonely roadside diner on a stretch of desert highway that the motorcycle gang frequents? And how, having lived through this nightmare once, did you manage to knock over an entire row of their motorcycles again?

Well, earlier in the afternoon, your mom woke you up and said, “You need to lose your fear of motorcycles, motorcycle gangs, and sometimes Vespas.”

- by Megan Kang

Read at Aeon

- by John Bagby

Read at Psyche

On a cool London day in 1928, the towering African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson sat down for a much-anticipated lunch. Seated with him were his new acquaintances: a Miss Douglas, the Irish playwright Bernard Shaw, and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, the wife of American President Calvin Coolidge. Robeson witnessed a heated debate ensue between Shaw […]

An analysis suggests that commercial real estate exposures may have been a relevant driver of bank holding company stock returns in 2023.