RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?
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Keep up to date with all the interesting blog posts, editorials, videos and social media activities that relate to RationalWiki's mission here. The most popular entries are found at Best of the blogosphere and the older entries found in the archives. |
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December 2024
   | 18 | From the American Indian genocides to the Nazi Holocaust, "self defense" has been a ubiquitous excuse for mass murder. Israel is telling the same lie today. |
| 7 | What Cuba and Ecuador Can Teach Us About Energy Crises. Or, how a dictatorship and a democracy differ in their simultaneous handling of similar energy crises. |
| 15 | The doctators: why are so many tyrants medically qualified? |
| 27 | From May 2024: West Virginia is the future of red states. This is the paradigm example of how conservative ideology makes true believers’ lives worse |
November 2024
| 23 | "Now that Trump has escaped punishment for his many crimes, the lesson is clear: He can do whatever he wants, and get away with it." |
| 21 | The origins and history of the Christian nationalist movement. |
| 14 | Nazis on Aisle Nine: why do so many companies today have sordid histories with the Nazis, and why were they never really held to account? |
| 23 | Trump hoodwinked voters about his plan to implement Project 2025. |
| 12 | FiveThirtyEight: How the immigration issue fueled Trump's major gains with Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American voters. |
| 34 | The difference in American reactions to the arrest warrants issued out by the ICC against Netanyahu and Putin showcases American hypocrisy when it comes to the application of international law. |
| 28 | "I'm 16. On November 6th, the girls cried and the boys played Minecraft." |
| 18 | What to expect from the next four years? Two words: political theater. |
| 21 | Who does the Democratic party actually represent?. |
| 48 | If Trump were to go through with his mass deportation scheme, it would be ludicrously expensive. |
| 22 | Private prisons are set to profit massively off of Trump's mass immigrant deportation scheme. |
| 18 | Defectors from the US military and federal agencies are pushing for an end to the war in Gaza. |
| 11 | Andy Beshear: "I'm the Governor of Kentucky. Here's How Democrats Can Win Again." |
| 21 | Unlike for genocide and war crimes, there is no international treaty making crimes against humanity legally actionable. This needs to be changed pronto. |
| 34 | The media is blaming the left for the Democrats' 2024 electoral defeat, rather than their own fear-based business model, FAIR reports. |
| -17 | Political lesbianism is seeing a comeback in the US after Trump's election. |
| 22 | Science-Based Medicine replies to RFK Jr's intentions to remove fluoride from the drinking water supply as Trump's health czar. (See his page: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And buckle up, because he's set to "go wild on health" in many ways.) |
| 44 | Senator Bernie Sanders' take on the election result: "It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right." Unsurprisingly DNC Chair Jaime Harrison disagrees |
| 8 | Trump is planning a third Red Scare. |
| 16 | I am unconvinced by the leftist arguments for withholding votes from Kamala Harris. |
| 17 | ‘He’s like a gangster’: How Tommy Robinson became leader of Britain’s far right. |
October 2024
| 30 | ProPublica reports on the case of Josseli Barnica, a Texas woman who died of an infection during a protracted miscarriage. Contrary to the opinion of every medical expert interviewed by ProPublica, under Texas' new abortion law, Barnica was required to wait to deliver until after there was no detectable fetal heartbeat. The resulting 40 hour delay exposed her uterus to bacteria, resulting in an aggressive infection that killed her. |
| 26 | The New York Times lied about a study on puberty blockers, claiming the study's author is refusing to publish negative research because of the results. This is not true. Azeen Ghorayshi, the British NYT writer who wrote the piece, is a well-known anti-trans activist. |
| 34 | JD Vance says immigration is to blame for high housing costs. In fact, since the housing crisis is caused by longstanding lack of new housing, and since about 1 in 3 workers in the construction industry are immigrants, anti-immigration policies could even make the situation worse. |
| 23 | US crime stats still show a decline since 2020 |
| 22 | US public schools burned up nearly $3.2bn fending off rightwing culture attacks – report |
| 23 | How the rich get away with tax evasion |
| 44 | The US is required by domestic law to cut off aid to Israel not only for its violations of international humanitarian law and committing of genocide, but also because it is a rogue nuclear state. |
| 23 | Make no mistake: the Trump-Russia connection is still active. |
| 23 | Mehdi Hasan: Israel is a rogue nation that has declared war on the United Nations. It cannot continue to get away with this. |
| 8 | Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell reviewed as 'out of ideas' in New York Times. |
| 18 | Despite Trump's claims, his agenda has a lot of overlap with Project 2025. |
| 22 | Where have all the Metaverse and Web3 executives gone? They're now AI executives. |
| 6 | Harvard astronomer's "alien spherules" are actually just the result of boring old human pollution. |
| -21 | Some Hispanic U.S. Voters Fear Socialism, and the Messaging and Symbols From the Democrats Aren't Helping. Focusing more on "pro-democracy" politics and less on "progressivism" as well as having a favorable foreign policy in Latin America can help Democrats push back GOP red-baiting propaganda and maintain their advantage with Hispanic and Latino voters. |
| 26 | After a Freedom of Information Act request from Gizmodo, the Federal Trade Commission has revealed that lots of Truth Social users have been losing ridiculous amounts of money to scams. Like, six figures for some of them. |
| 15 | Although AI streamlined image manipulation misinfo, its use for political propaganda is really at least as old as the Nazis. (From September.) |
| 25 | What the US Did to Haiti. How the American public's ignorance of the country's destructive policy towards Haiti fuels racialized narratives about the supposed threat of Haitian immigrants. (shorter paywalled version) |
September 2024
| 20 | The Internet Archive’s Fight to Save Itself: The web’s collective memory is stored in the servers of the Internet Archive. Legal battles threaten to wipe it all away. |
| 14 | Young men in the US are probably more liberal than recent media attention suggests. |
| 41 | Turning everyday gadgets into bombs is a horrendous idea, and not just for moral reasons. |
| 52 | Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake. The evidence is convincing: The betting industry is ruining lives. |
| 18 | Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from the antidemocratic Electoral College |
| 10 | "Your Cynicism Isn’t Helping Anybody". George Carlin fans will love it! |
| -10 | Talking to ChatGPT for the First Time is a Surreal Experience |
| 27 | After South Carolina woman Amari Marsh miscarried in May 2023, state authorities arrested her, held her in prison for 22 days, charged her with homicide, and then held her in house arrest for 13 months. Thankfully, a federal jury recently cleared her of wrongdoing. |
| 21 | Mark Robinson and the Republican whackjob problem: this is what happens when a party stops trying to keep out the kooks. |
| 31 | They were jubilant after the fall of Roe v. Wade two years ago, but now the US anti-abortion movement is divided and demoralized. |
| 16 | Sarah Huckabee used a July traffic stop to demonize immigrants. What the footage actually shows is a cop torturing an undocumented migrant. |
| 43 | Because of the indiscriminate nature of the blasts and the prohibition on booby traps, Israel's exploding pagers attack might just be a war crime. |
| 31 | What JD Vance and Donald Trump don't want you to know about Springfield: Immigrants are making red America great again |
| 30 | Media like the New York Times implicitly legitimized Holocaust denial by referring to Tucker Carlson's non-historian guest with terms like "Holocaust revisionist" instead of "Holocaust denier". |
| 32 | Global study shows 'go woke, go broke' incorrect - at worst it is ineffective, at best increases sales and brand loyalty. |
| 37 | Donald Trump is a national security threat. That he can be so easily manipulated by Harris in a debate using completely obvious tactics shows that America's enemies can do the same. |
| 52 | Research suggests there's an easy way to reduce suicide rates: increase the minimum wage. |
| 27 | Politico reporters weigh in on why Harris performed so much better than Trump in the presidential debate. |
| -10 | Decolonizing our understanding of extraterrestrial life: what we think about aliens tends to reflect our own thoughts on humanity, or rather a specific slice of humanity. Many mainstream narratives about aliens reflect a colonial lens. It's commonly argued, for instance, that alien civilizations would see each other as threats and seek to dominate or destroy the other. This thinking can be rooted in how human empires in our own time have dominated other human civilizations in this way. However, not all humans have sought to dominate another. Likewise, a belief that civilizations inevitably destroy themselves can be a reflection of the unsustainable practices of modern capitalist societies. However, many indigenous societies understand that by taking care of our environment, resources can be renewable indefinitely. Our labeling of space as terra nullius likewise reflects age old colonialist practices. |
| 27 | WSJ: College Grades Have Become a Charade. It’s Time to Abolish Them. An essay on educational inflation. |
| 18 | What's wrong with technocracy? Plenty, it turns out, as it leads to an unjust concentration of power based on a flawed concept of knowledge. |
| 35 | How demographics have changed in key US swing states since 2008, and what implications that could have for 2024. |
| -23 | Price controls: good intentions, bad outcomes Although they are sometimes used as a tool for social policy with the best intentions in mind, price controls can dampen investment and growth, worsen poverty, productivity and inequality; can cause chronic shortages of goods as well as the formation of black markets with higher prices, and lead to the substitution towards lower-quality alternatives. They also cause countries to incur heavy fiscal burdens, and complicate the effective conduct of monetary policy. This one is about Kamala by the way. |
| -6 | How open trade saved us from a global food crisis. This is the same trade that Donald Trump wants to disrupt in case you haven't guessed. |
| 43 | The voices of Palestine: the story of Gaza and colonialism by Palestinian journalist and storyteller Bisan. |
| -3 | How China's Internet police went from targeting bloggers to targeting their followers |
August 2024
| 32 | Trump Betrays the Pro-life Movement; he deserves the disapprobation of evangelical Christians, not their vote. |
| 17 | Kamala Harris' DNC speech shows that she isn't repeating the mistakes Hillary Clinton made in 2016. |
| -10 | For the first time ever, political influencers like Hasan Piker have press credentials at the DNC. |
| 14 | No Pride without solidarity. |
| 61 | Richard Dawkins lied about the Algerian boxer, then lied about Facebook censoring him. |
| 17 | The Latin American left is smart not to pick a side over Venezuela’s contested election result. Attempts to get Nicolás Maduro back to the negotiating table highlight the influence of a younger generation of voters. |
| 65 | Journal of Virology commentary: "The harms of promoting the lab leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 origins without evidence". |
| -8 | Five different ways authoritarian governments such as Venezuela rig elections |
| 66 | Naivety about Trump threatens all our futures. Most important of all for the world’s future might not be Trump the would-be tyrant, Trump the betrayer, Trump the protectionist or Trump the devaluer, but Trump the man who pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate. |
| -22 | Following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Jeremy Scahill and Mehdi Hasan share their thoughts on the future and past, respectively, of Israel's relationship with the Palestinian people. |
July 2024
| 42 | Meet the conspiracy theorist and anti-LGBTQ extremist pulling the strings at major American corporations. |
| -1 | The poverty of economic growth. How a "simplistic focus on growth" is "blinding us" to the social and ecological destruction growth requires. |
| -4 | The unbearable anthropocentrism of Our World In Data: How Max Roser glosses over social and ecological realities to make the case that progress is driven by for-profit enterprise alone. |
| -13 | Was the global decline of extreme poverty only due to China? The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has never declined as rapidly as in the past three decades. Tankies claim that this is because of China and that the rest of the world didn't really perform that well. What does evidence say? |
| -21 | "Kamala Harris and the Threat of a Woman's Laugh". |
| 17 | We Hunted The Mammoth is back as a YouTube channel! If WHTM is going where the misogyny is ... |
| 27 | Inside 'Project 2025': The plan to reprogram the US Federal Government. |
| 32 | ‘Google says I’m a dead physicist’: is the world’s biggest search engine broken? |
| 30 | McGill University philosopher: Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we’re determined to change that. Giant publishers are bleeding universities dry, with profit margins that rival Google’s. So we decided to start our own. |
| 50 | Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR): "Media Boosted Anti-Trans Movement With Credulous Coverage of ‘Cass Review’". |
| 28 | The House of Mouse, Disney, is suffering from a growing crisis as young people are increasingly turning off many of its avenues including TV, films and themes parks. Instead, the company's popularity is growing among older folk including boomers. |
| 35 | Most fentanyl is smuggled into the US by American citizens, not by migrants. |
| 19 | "I watched groypers descend on Detroit — where they were no longer pariahs among mainstream Republicans." |
| 25 | JD Vance's opportunism and phony populism. |
| 22 | School vouchers were supposed to save taxpayer money. Instead they blew a $1.4 billion hole in Arizona’s budget. |
| 22 | The MAGA plan to abolish free weather reports: Project 2025 aims to dissolve the National Weather Service. |
| 21 | David Frum: "The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator". |
| 24 | Propublica reports on a New Apostolic Reformation linked "charity" called Ziklag. The purpose of this "charity" is to "redirect the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by bringing back Biblical structure, order and truth to our Nation." Backed by the plutocrats that run such businesses as Hobby Lobby, Uline, and Jockey, the "charity" helps fund organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom and Turning Point USA, and (likely illegally given its "charity" status) supports actions in order to help Donald Trump and other Republicans get elected for 2024. |
| 31 | Project 2025 calls for dramatically increasing the tax burden on middle- and low-income Americans. |
| 14 | Why the (British) Conservative Party will keep losing if they chase Reform UK. |
| 29 | Life dissatisfaction linked to supporting far-right parties in Europe. "Dissatisfied individuals were more likely to distrust political institutions and view immigration negatively, which in turn increased their likelihood of voting for right-wing populist parties." Cutting edge work on what water is continues. |
June 2024
| 15 | Since Tommy Robinson revealed in Canadian immigration papers that he is Irish after he was arrested, there has been a number of right-wingers questioning the whole schtick, accusing him of being a grifter. |
| 25 | More than 10 years later, the Senate torture report is still secret. |
| -12 | How people are influenced by political propaganda they initially discard. |
| 12 | From April: "Do conservatives really have better mental health? Perhaps not." Basically, it seems they may simply admit to mental health struggles less. However separate from political beliefs, this does find better mental health with frequent church attendees compared to non-attendees and infrequent attendees. (Entry writer's speculation: could have to do with having a consistent third place more than religion per se.) |
| 24 | 'The disturbing online misogyny of Gamergate has returned – if it ever went away'. |
| 32 | Why Trump's tariff proposals would harm working Americans. The tariffs would reduce after-tax incomes by 3.5 percent for those in the bottom half of the income distribution and cost a typical household in the middle of the income distribution about $1,700 in increased taxes each year. If executed, these steps would increase the distortions and burdens created by the rounds of tariffs levied during the first Trump administration (and sustained during the Biden administration), while inflicting massive collateral damage on the US economy. |
| 10 | The rise and rise of Reform UK. |
| 17 | First Came ‘Spam.’ Now, With A.I., We’ve Got ‘Slop’ Slop, at least in the fast-moving world of online message boards, is a broad term that has developed some traction in reference to shoddy or unwanted A.I. content in social media, art, books and, increasingly, in search results. |
| 18 | What happened to liberal conservatism? It has been silenced by the far right. |
| 28 | How India's opposition parties went from complete disarray to a major election upset performance that destroyed the BJP majority. |
May 2024
| -42 | How the Kremlin uses comics to glorify its war in Ukraine |
| 46 | Why Is the Rent So Damn High? The Real Reason Will Shock You |
| 45 | Vox on the US State Department's obscure intelligence agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which has made correct predictions about e.g. Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine where other agencies failed. One reason cited in the article for the INR's possible relative success in making foreign policy predictions where e.g. the CIA failed, is simply the INR's reliance on more experienced experts, often recruited from academia. |
| 17 | An old clip from 1980s sitcom Yes Prime Minister has been going around on social media, since the Conservatives announced they were planning to introduce national service for 18-year-olds in their 2024 general election manifesto. |
| 25 | The Economic Implications of Housing Supply. Housing prices have been increasing in the US in recent years because regulation has made it much more difficult in cities like San Francisco, but the prices but haven’t increased everywhere. In Atlanta, for example, houses prices are about the same as they were in 1990 despite a big increase in population, because Atlanta has built more housing. But if empirical investigations of the local costs and benefits of restricting building
conclude that the negative externalities are not nearly large enough to justify the costs of regulation the welfare and output gains from reducing regulation of housing construction are large, then why don’t we see more policy interventions to permit more building in markets such as San Francisco? The great challenge facing attempts to loosen local housing restrictions is that existing homeowners do not want more affordable homes: they want the value of their asset to cost more, not less. They also may not like the idea that new housing will bring in more people, including those from different socioeconomic groups. |
| 4 | The central struggle in the world right now is between liberalism and authoritarianism. It’s between those of us who believe in democratic values and those who don’t — whether they are pseudo-authoritarian populists like Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Narendra Modi or Recep Tayyip Erdogan or straight-up dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping or theocratic fascists like the men who run Iran and Hamas |
| 20 | Who ran this derogatory prison meme page? A prison guard. |
| 25 | NYC mayor Eric Adams falsely smeared a grandmother as an "outside agitator" to justify the NYPD assault on Columbia he ordered. |
| 26 | Why is a 6-week abortion ban nearly a total ban? It's about how we date a pregnancy. |
April 2024
| 15 | On the 20th anniversary of Polish accession to the EU, PM Donald Tusk has said within five years time, Polish GDP per capita would be higher than the UK’s. [Currently, the UK’s is US$46,125.26] |
| 19 | QAnon was born out of the sex ad moral panic that took down Backpage.com. |
| 7 | "Little home market": The Connecticut company accused of fueling an execution spree. |
| 21 | How the GOP is struggling on the abortion issue. |
| -30 | American Generation Z is 'unprecedentedly rich'. This appears to be down to a myriad of factors; less likely to attend college (careers starting earlier), if they do it's more for 'practical' subjects (higher starting pay) and enjoying the tightest labour markets since the 1950s (ditto). However, this is also partly down to the poor showing in the 'life stage' of previous generations; Millennials and Xers both in the same period were in an America in a recession. Even more importantly, the stats do not take into account this 'Generations' huge debt pile. |
| 14 | Since October, Sen. John Fetterman has been building a roster of Republican donors. |
| -20 | The pro-Kremlin troll who (incorrectly) claimed the Sydney attacker was Jewish. |
| 15 | GenderGP's critique of the UK's Cass review. (About transgender medicine.) |
| 16 | Meet George McJunkin, the black cowboy archaeologist who discovered the Folsom culture. |
| 25 | The Daily Mail published an article claiming a new "landmark" study showed that being trans is "usually just a phase". The study does not, in fact, show that. |
March 2024
| 18 | GB News' Paul Marshall, his links to evangelical branch of the Church of England, and its drive to evangelize a secular Great Britain. |
| 37 | The slow death of Twitter is measured in disasters like the Baltimore bridge collapse Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone. |
| 19 | How Bellingcat geolocated anti-government militant Ammon Bundy, after he fled from Idaho to Utah to escape from an arrest warrant issued for him in Idaho. |
| 49 | Pro-Israel advocates are weaponising the notion of "safety" on college campuses to suppress criticism of Israel. |
| 48 | Israeli soldiers are Tiktoking their war crimes in Gaza. |
| -47 | Why Is Trump Trying to Make Ukraine Lose? |
| -40 | Donald Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine: Handing Vladimir Putin an unearned and undeserved victory will only hurt the US. Ukraine has fought Putin’s revanchist dictatorship behemoth to a standstill over two heroic years, despite being outmanned and outgunned and has achieved this at minimal cost to western countries. The war has done far more than inflict great damage on Russia’s military. It has also revitalised Nato itself. Yet now, Trump and his acolytes seem set on handing Putin an unearned and undeserved victory. |
| 12 | Owen Jones: The Labour party is in my blood. Here’s why I’ve just cancelled my membership. |
| 49 | Even mentioning "occupation" at the Oscars is antisemitic, some Jewish Hollywood figures say. |
| 24 | Friendly Atheist: Evangelicals are using a data-harvesting app to target new potential converts |
| 24 | Friendly Atheist: Researchers say Christian leaders will embezzle an estimated $86 billion in 2024. |
| 32 | Skeptical Inquirer: The Wikipediatrician Susan Gerbic publishes a scathing take-down of celebrity medium Thomas John, imploring people to talk more about his criminal record and to raise awareness of his conman tactics. |
| 51 | Jacobin: "No One’s Rights Should Depend on Where Their Ancestors Lived". This is about Israel/Palestine, if you hadn't instantly guessed. |
| 53 | Michael Shellenberger's "WPATH Files" contains 216 instances of factual errors regarding transgender healthcare. |
| 23 | Paper book or e-reader: Which is better for the planet? Readers beware: Digital books save forests but also create toxic e-waste. Paper, meanwhile, is a renewable resource, though billions of hard copy books produce a high carbon footprint. |
February 2024
| 40 | 2024 is a giant test of nerves for democracy. |
| 38 | While countries around the world have struggled to recover from the economic setbacks brought on by the pandemic, one has emerged particularly strong. With a fast-growing economy, a strong labour market and falling inflation, the US has outpaced its counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. |
| 26 | We have entered an era of war crime social media influencers. |
| 23 | Hillsdale College sincerely wants to know what you think about the idea of abolishing the US electoral college system for electing the President. Have your say here! |
| 53 | "I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation" |
| -33 | ‘Humanity’s remaining timeline? It looks more like five years than 50’: meet the neo-luddites warning of an AI apocalypse. Eliezer Yudkowsky is at the forefront of techno-pessimists (doomers). Luddites generally have different concerns about ethics and labor. |
| 41 | Tennessee law forbids abortion in nearly all circumstances, but provides little care for children after birth. ProPublica followed one family as they struggled to provide for their newborn child that Tennessee forced them to carry to term. |
| 24 | Quantitative analysis shows that shows major newspapers skewed their coverage toward Israeli narratives in the first six weeks of the assault on Gaza. |
| 21 | Mayo Clinic promotes Reiki, one of those "energy healing" things. |
| -27 | ‘Ukraine fatigue’ is unpardonable. Western countries have the resources but now must display the will to ensure Russia does not prevail. No western soldiers are at risk. The sums to be agreed this year amount to less than 0.25 per cent of the combined GDP of the EU, UK and US, while Baltic countries have spent as much as 2 per cent of their GDP helping Ukraine. The argument that this is unaffordable is ridiculous. |
| 56 | Book bans and political meddling in the educational system are causing an escalating literacy crisis in America. |
| 40 | Amid the lingering trauma of Trump’s executions, a new project brings families to federal death row. |
| 16 | Rapper and Jewel Runner Killer Mike suggests having black people lead the legal cannabis industry as a form of reparations. |
| 19 | King Charles, who now has cancer, has previously advocated drinking fruit juice and sticking coffee up one's anus to treat cancer. Another Steve Jobs case perhaps? We'll see if he's come to his senses, but at the moment his doctors haven't specified what kind of care he's receiving. |
| -32 | The Republicans refusal to supply arms is sabotaging Kyiv’s war effort. Some of the Republican reluctance to pass new aid for Ukraine is driven by genuine scepticism about the war. But most of the foot-dragging is simply about Trump’s refusal to give Biden anything that looks like a “win” ahead of the presidential election. |
| 30 | Separatist feminism in South Korea: "The Women of South Korea’s 4B Movement Aren’t Fighting the Patriarchy — They’re Leaving it Behind Entirely" |
| 56 | That recent anti-trans Pamela Paul NYT article is full of pseudoscience. |
January 2024
| 45 | On the widescale destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza. |
| 40 | Here are the laws plausibly broken by Israel in its Jenin hospital raid where Israeli forces killed several Palestinians while dressed as hospital workers. |
| 22 | A summary of how just how incompetent Trump's lawyer for the E. Jean Carroll case, Alina Habba, was. |
| 35 | Research shows that economic inequality in the Aztec Empire helped pave the way for the Spanish conquest. |
| -41 | Why building more homes won’t solve the affordable housing problem—The problem isn't the supply of housing; it's that millions of people lack the income to afford what’s on the market. |
| -25 | Electric cars are not the future |
| 62 | Repeat after me: building any new homes reduces housing costs for all |
| 67 | The implosion of a legacy sports magazine perfectly encapsulates the ugly, ongoing collapse of US journalism, being steadily replaced by a parade of automated gibberish, clickbait, well-funded propaganda, and marketing |
| 26 | China is unable to invade Taiwan according to most American and Taiwanese experts |
| -14 | The dirty truth about our clean energy future |
| 43 | Fears grow that Trump will use the military in ‘dictatorial ways’ if he returns to the White House |
| 30 | Police refuse to label Brianna Ghey's murder a hate crime despite clear evidence that transmisogyny was a motivating factor behind her murder |
| 45 | Why war with Iran would be a grave mistake |
| 34 | "There is a certain ghoulish irony that after facilitating deadly starvation and disease in Yemen by cutting off its maritime trade, the West has bombed Houthi targets in the name of protecting commercial shipping." |
| 36 | Anonymous CNN worker explains how CNN's coverage of Israel-Palestine gives heavy credulity to Israel, and acts extremely skeptical of Palestine. |
| 53 | Bizarre conspiracy-laden messages about secret societies keep showing up in food boxes in central Pennsylvania |
| -19 | Liberalism is battered but not yet broken. Societies based on liberal principles are the most successful in world history. But both they and their ideas are also embattled. |
| 42 | Extremists keep trying to trigger mass blackouts across the US |
| 33 | What happens when veterans can't access the psychiatric care they need. |
| 30 | Who are the Tyre Extinguishers? A night out with climate activists sabotaging SUVs |
| 22 | Child labor laws are under attack across the US |
| -2 | What Oakland, California tells us about why police reform is so hard |
| 25 | So anti-Tesla militancy is a thing now, as environmentalist activists in Germany firebombed 15 Tesla cars. (Back in 2021 a Finnish Tesla owner also blew up his own Tesla rather than pay $22k for a faulty battery repair. This repair for some stupid reason also needed permission from Tesla to be done in the first place.) |
December 2023
| 14 | LGBT rights journalist Patrick Strudwick reports on the growing internal war within Conservative Party about LGBT rights, and the small number of Tories criticising their party’s “woke” war saying it's not working. |
| 44 | Non-fungible tokens died a slow, painful death in 2023 as most are now worthless |
| 26 | Elon Musk is a threat to democracy |
| 3 | Courts aren't impartial or apolitical: How Trump is using that to his advantage. |
| 33 | Everyone expected a recession. The Fed and White House found a way out. |
| 10 | Who are the newly revealed Jeffrey Epstein associates? |
| 25 | Artificial intelligence has all the classic hallmarks of a tech bubble |
| 16 | "I worked in Antarctica for three years, and my sexual harasser was never caught." |
| 16 | A swift debunking of that terrible Wall Street Journal article about trans kids actually being gay. |
| 15 | A brief history of the Netanyahu-Hamas alliance. |
| 7 | Why only Earth has fire |
| 21 | The Hindu nationalists using the pro-Israel playbook. Inspired by Zionist groups falsely equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, Hindu nationalist groups in the US have started casting criticisms of India as "Hinduphobia." |
| 46 | Human Rights Watch republishes Byline Times article arguing that selling weapons to Israel could make the UK complicit in war crimes. Likewise, back in October New York magazine also argued that the US is giving Israel carte blanche permission to commit war crimes. |
| -15 | Meet the Russian rebel groups waging war within Putin's own borders |
| 14 | Trump's plot against American democracy |
| 10 | From the Mountains to the Mailbox: I spent a weekend with a deep web drug dealer |
| 17 | On the front line: how Jake Hanrahan changed the face of modern war reporting |
| 21 | Henry Kissinger: How his diplomacy in Africa prolonged apartheid in South Africa |
| 12 | West bank settler violence: a photo essay |
| 16 | Indigenous climate activist Jacob Johns speaks out for the first time after being shot by a MAGA terrorist at a climate justice rally back in September. |
| 12 | Substack has a Nazi problem. |
| 12 | A "mass assassination factory" - Inside Israel's calculated bombing of Gaza |
| 14 | The threat to both the US and the wider world of 'Trump 2.0', by UK ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. |
| 11 | How a Maine businessman turned the AR-15 into America's best selling rifle |
| 19 | Science-Based Medicine discusses a recent Pew Research report that pro-science attitudes have declined over the past few years, and what to do about it. |
| 17 | A list of all 105 Republicans that voted to kick George Santos out of Congress. |
| 16 | A list of all 112 Republicans that voted to save George Santos from expulsion. |
| 23 | The bogus historians who teach evangelicals they live in a theocracy. |
November 2023
| 45 | Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity. |
| 14 | More than two-thirds of the Palestinians proposed for release by Israel under the truce have not been convicted of any crimes. Most were arrested as children. |
| 13 | "It was all worth it to hear Bernie say 'Kissinger is not my friend' five years ago" (from 2021 but relevant especially now) |
| 21 | How Bellingcat geolocated a gym in Los Angeles hosting neo-Nazi groups' fighting training. |
| 14 | The Hitten "refugee camp" for Palestinians in Jordan has existed for generations as an effectively permanent settlement. NPR reporters visited its inhabitants to discuss their despair over the ongoing war in Gaza—and their anger at the United States. |
| 20 | A breakdown of Elon Musk's frivolous lawsuit against Media Matters, in which the filing admits to Media Matters' claims being true. |
| 19 | It's time to end counterproductive US involvement in Yemen (from February) |
| 19 | Hillary Clinton is lying about the history between Hamas and Israel. |
| 21 | There's not really a trend of gen-Z-ers turning into Jihadists and supporting Osama bin Laden after reading his 2002 Letter to America. The story is bigger than the actual "trend" itself. |
| 8 | This is what a CNN reporter saw inside a children's hospital basement in Gaza. |
| 22 | The Mormon Church is staying silent about members of its clergy raping children in Arizona, and the state's legislature refuses to take action. |
| 11 | What David Cameron’s return says about British politics. |
| 23 | The ADL is adding pro-Palestine protests organised by progressive Jews to their antisemitic incident database. |
| 21 | Stonewall's statement on the U.K. government's failure to ban conversion therapy. |
| 29 | The world's first ever eye transplant has taken place. The eye isn't seeing yet, but the optical nerve has clearly connected, as the eye isn't rotting. So now it's a waiting game as to if the brain will recognise a signal. |
| 8 | Some of the best K–12 schools in the US may be run by the military. Funding is one big reason, though not the whole picture. |
| 11 | Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza conflict |
| 18 | How new satellite tech could grant some more North Koreans internet access someday. |
| 20 | Sam Bankman-Fried and the effective altruism delusion: Will the idealist philosophy survive the conviction of its crypto king? |
| 21 | The father of modern libraries was a serial sexual harasser |
| 29 | The ADL continues to be a Zionist organisation, calling support of Palestinian relief antisemitism. (originally published in May 2022) |
| 21 | Does new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have a bank account?: Speaker Mike Johnson has never listed a bank account on his financial disclosure. In fact, on his newest disclosure he doesn’t list a single asset at all. |
October 2023
| 13 | Three expert shoemakers say Ron DeSantis is probably wearing height boosters. |
| 32 | Evidence of Israel’s unlawful use of white phosphorus in southern Lebanon as cross-border hostilities escalate. |
| -14 | On Russia's pillaging of Alaska. |
| 17 | We are witnessing a drive to wipe trans and non-binary young people from NHS waiting lists and deny them treatment. |
| 6 | According to gossip website Popbitch, before he retired Murdoch says is keen to buy GB News and merge it with his TalkTV. It is said among insiders that offer it still on the table. |
| 5 | Have we already discovered evidence of alien civilizations? Scientists say that we need to change our search strategies to comb the mountains of data that's already been uncovered. |
| 11 | IDF volunteers are criticising Benjamin Netanyahu's son for staying in Miami, Florida, instead of moving to Israel to fight against |
| 15 | Owen Jones writes for The Guardian: Israel is clear about its intentions in Gaza – world leaders cannot plead ignorance of what is coming. |
| 14 | Fact-checking the Hamas-Israel War: What we know about three widespread Israel-Hamas war claims. |
| 17 | Secret report on UK modern slavery the Home Office didn’t want you to see: Foreign workers on British farms were allegedly starved, abused, denied medical care and financially exploited — so why did the Home Office try to cover up damning evidence from its own inspections? |
| 13 | How the GOP keeps gerrymandering alive in secret. |
| 10 | Media Matters for America chronicles: Sean Hannity's Jim Jordan faceplant. |
| 22 | "This is the most powerful and emotionally mature commentary I’ve seen on the Israel Gaza war. And it comes from an Israeli teenager who survived the Hamas attack. What she wants more than anything else is peace. Please watch and listen to her words." |
| 16 | Joe Biden's Gaza strategy appears to be standing staunchly beside Benjamin Netanyahu in public while trying his darnedest to hold him back in private. |
| 15 | Hundreds of books have been banned in schools across Iowa due to the law targeting depictions of "sex acts". Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse-Five, Ulysses, and Forrest Gump have been banned in some schools. |
| 12 | Is Netanyahu walking into Hamas' trap? |
| 16 | Bad science videos full of AI-generated bullshit are flooding YouTube, and strangely enough one of their largest audiences are children. The BBC found that such videos were effective at convincing children that aliens can generate electricity using the Giza pyramids. |
| 23 | Are we witnessing the beginning of an LGBTQ genocide? You can look to Russia and Uganda to see where the U.S. and Canada could be heading. |
| 17 | Fake news Falun Gong outlet Epoch Times grows its revenue 685% in two years after courting conservative wingnut politicians |
| 17 | Employers steal billions from workers’ paychecks each year. Survey data show millions of workers are paid less than the minimum wage, at significant cost to taxpayers and state economies. |
| 22 | Twitter is now actively counterproductive, if your aim was to stay informed about the Israel war. |
| 25 | Democrats need to pick up the pace on putting judges on the bench. |
| 46 | A reminder as to how Netanyahu propped up Hamas for years. |
| 43 | Omar and Tlaib Are Condemned in the US for Saying What Prominent Israelis Are Saying: The White House is ripping Squad members for proposing de-escalation and diplomacy to stop the killing of Israelis and Palestinians. |
| 36 | Reports of Hamas "beheading babies" are (currently) unverified and without credible evidence. |
| 32 | The US library system, once the best in the world, faces "death by a thousand cuts". |
| 42 | Ukraine's ongoing battle for survival: a report from the front line in Zaporizhia. |
| 21 | The field of economics has long excluded women, and it goes back to basic theories developed by men |
| 15 | Economics is a disgrace - or something is rotten in the state of economics, with serious systemic issues of racial and gender-based discrimination, toxic environments, problems with replicability of research, elitism, and rejection of diversity and inclusitivity. |
| 26 | Sexual Harassment and Violence against Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons |
| 27 | "Gaza’s shock attack has terrified Israelis. It should also unveil the context. The dread Israelis are feeling after today's assault, myself included, has been the daily experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long." |
| 21 | Thanks to paid verified accounts on Twitter, doctored and flat out fake news stories about the Hamas/Israel conflict are shooting to the top of Google searches. |
| 25 | Recently, right-wing media has been posting about a study that supposedly shows HRT increases the chance of getting heart disease by 95%. The study does not, in fact, show that. |
| 10 | What post-Armenia Nagorno-Karabakh looks like, now that Azerbaijan has conquered it. |
| 11 | The British Conservative Party's "final descent" into absurdity. |
| 49 | Neoliberal trash Politico (acquired by Axel Springer SE in 2021, by the way) peddles the clean Waffen-SS myth, because "history is complicated" in reaction to the Hanka scandal in the Canadian parliament. |
| 19 | Scientists say finding alien life in the universe is 'only a matter of time' |
September 2023
| 10 | A poll done by consumer marketing firm Consumer Science and Analytics has found out 41% of French 18-24 year olds would support a lifetime limit of 4 flights, due to effects of climate change by aviation. Not surprisingly, Twitter had a meltdown, including a certain Bjørn Lomborg. |
| 17 | An article in the Guardian discusses heightened suicide rates among doctors, especially surgeons. |
| 18 | The Band of Debunkers Busting Bad Scientists. On the work of Leif Nelson, Uri Simonsohn and Joe Simmons, who run the blog Data Colada, and whose work has led to a great many paper retractions. |
| 19 | Crowdfunding a war: the money behind Myanmar's resistance. (from December 2022) |
| 10 | Consciousness theory, or more specifically, integrated information theory (IIT), is slammed as pseudoscience |
| 18 | Letter suggests Pope Pius XII knew about Nazi atrocities but remained on the sidelines. |
| 34 | New research reveals how the Nazis targeted transgender people. This grew out of a court case that concluded with official recognition that trans and queer people were persecuted by the Nazi Party. |
| 32 | The Right-Wing Conspiracy-Fest Is More Openly Bloodthirsty Than Before |
| 23 | British TERFs have criticised BBC Radio 6Music, after the station played the punk/riot grrrl band Dream Nails' song They/Them. As it contains the line; “kick terfs all day, don’t break a sweat,”.
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| 21 | Bremerton's praying football coach got what he wanted, so now he may quit for good. |
| 20 | How Warren Buffett’s billionaire son took over a U.S. city and made it his personal playground. |
| 16 | The Atlantic: The World Will Never Get the Truth About YouTube’s Rabbit Holes. Did the site radicalize Americans in 2016? At this point, it’s impossible to know. |
| 13 | Inside-out 'alternative' thought and teaching – its psychology and nature. Thoughts on how cranks and cults accuse their opponents of what they are themselves about. |
| -23 | How Russian diplomacy died under Putin. |
August 2023
| 43 | Contemporary journalism is failing to accurately convey the rise of American authoritarianism and the threat it poses to democracy. The media needs to focus on the underlying issues and stakes rather than traditional election coverage. |
| 18 | Taxpayers are often left in the dark by politicians who have spent more than $3 billion to settle claims of police misconduct involving thousands of officers, among them many that have been repeatedly accused of wrongdoing. |
| 22 | EFF: ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech—No Matter How Awful It Is. |
| -31 | Humanity is potentially on the brink of major scientific breakthroughs. Examples include artificial intelligence (AI), room-temperature superconductors, and nuclear fusion. |
| 24 | Undercover With the New Alt-Right: on how a network of young neo-Nazis and fascists have infiltrated the Republican Party to the congressional level. |
| 21 | Let's pour one out for Mike Lindell: MyPillow Guy wasn't important enough to get his own indictment |
| 23 | Bernie Sanders writes for The Guardian: The U.S. and China must unite to fight climate change, not each other. |
| 25 | You are not a cactus - or how "building up heat tolerance" to resist climate change is willfully malicious bullshit. |
| 14 | Labour is woefully out of touch with its own voters on trans rights. |
| 15 | Trump plans to skip the GOP primary debate for an interview with Tucker Carlson. |
| 35 | More and more Christian radicals are starting to reject the teachings of Jesus. |
| 23 | Donald Trump has gone off the deep end for real: He's a danger to humanity. Even by his standards, Trump has gone berserk on social media since the last indictment. Drop this guy, America |
| 16 | A new leader of the QAnon cult that believes John F. Kennedy is still alive has emerged: A 13-year-old girl, who's announced plans to indoctrinate more children into it. |
| 24 | The Lost Boys of the American Right Since the ascendance of Donald Trump, with depressing regularity, right-wing men have been outed for using the most vile rhetoric. In private chats and sometimes in full view of the public on social media, they’ll engage in blatantly racist, sexist and homophobic speech, flirt with fascist imagery and then often disavow their words and actions the instant they’re caught |
| 14 | Netflix: How did it know I was bi before I did? |
| 31 | No, we haven't lived with diseases for millions of years - before modern medicine every waking hour was a struggle with death. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling you a lie. |
| 16 | Moral panics and the bigoted subversion of biology |
| 19 | Why do Nazis keep getting arrested for possessing child sexual abuse material? Answer: because they're Nazis. |
| 22 | How 6 Mississippi Officers Tried to Cover Up Their Torture of 2 Black Men |
| 19 | Some properly good investigative journalism: Two of three big members of Andrew Tate's "War Room" |
| 27 | Language Is a Poor Heuristic For Intelligence. Karawynn Long argues people greatly overestimate intelligence in LLM chatbots like ChatGPT for the same reason they underestimate it in people with disabilities who struggle with communication. |
| 28 | Republicans publicly bash Bud Light, quietly pocket Bud Light money |
| 47 | Wisconsin's dairy industry relies on undocumented immigrants, but the state won't let them legally drive |
| 34 | Senate Democrats blocked Ukraine funding watchdog bill from passing, ignoring vital lessons from Afghanistan |
| 30 | The Kids Online Safety Act is a censorship bill in disguise. Its supporters continue to deny it'll affect queer people at all, but it's also supported by a flurry of hate groups, who explicitly say it will, and that's why they want it to pass. |
| 21 | Republicans desperately want to prove Democrats are trying to promote atheism globally. By attempting to prove this, they put the lives of atheists in Nepal and Sri Lanka in danger. |
| 63 | The COVID-19 lab leak theory is dead. Here’s how we know the virus came from a Wuhan market. |
| 21 | Here Are the 78 Charges Trump Now Faces, and All the Prison Time |
| 16 | Books-A-Million is stocking Nazi literature |