August 30, 2023

Reducing inequality benefits everyone -- so why isn't it happening?

Those urging world leaders to take action on inequality should study why earlier efforts did not translate to changes in policy.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02551-3



EDITORIAL

Last month, researchers from 67 nations wrote an open letter to United Nations secretary-general António Guterres and World Bank president Ajay Banga, urging them to “redouble efforts to address rising extreme inequality”. The move was motivated, in part, by the lack of progress on the 10th of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Nature is examining each goal in a series of editorials.

The aim of SDG 10 is to “reduce inequality within and among countries”. That means narrowing the difference between the incomes of the richest and the poorest, on both a national and an international level. The goal also proposes ensuring equality of opportunity. Unfortunately, the world is clearly failing to meet SDG 10. The letter’s authors go further, saying that the goal is being “largely ignored”.

This is not the first time that researchers have tried to focus the world’s attention on inequality. For a better chance of success, the letter’s authors should study what happened to previous efforts — in particular, the 2009 publication of the influential text The Spirit Level by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They showed that reducing inequality has a cascade of benefits, from better health to lower crime rates and better educational outcomes.

The book was a sensation. It was read avidly and quoted widely; its findings referenced by David Cameron, later UK prime minister, and Christine Lagarde, now president of the European Central Bank, among others. Yet despite being widely respected, the authors’ careful synthesis of evidence on the benefits of equality — and subsequent invites to give talks and policy advice worldwide — did not change governments’ approaches to inequality.

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August 30, 2023

light a candle..........

August 30, 2023

Donald Trump vows to lock up political enemies if he returns to White House

Former president tells Glenn Beck he would have ‘no choice’ but to lock up opponents ‘because they’re doing it to us’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/30/trump-interview-jail-political-opponents-glenn-beck



Donald Trump says he will lock up his political enemies if he is president again. In an interview on Tuesday, the rightwing broadcaster Glenn Beck raised Trump’s famous campaign-trail vow to “lock up” Hillary Clinton, his opponent in 2016, a promise Trump did not fulfill in office. Beck said: “Do you regret not locking [Clinton] up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” Trump said: “The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.” Trump has encouraged the “lock her up” chant against other opponents but he remains in considerable danger of being locked up himself.

Under four indictments, he faces 91 criminal charges related to election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments to a adult film star. He denies wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of political persecution. Trials are scheduled next year. Earlier this month, Politico calculated that Trump faced a maximum of 641 years in jail. After the addition of 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia, Forbes upped the total to more than 717 years. Trump is 77. Both sites noted, however, that if convicted, the former president was unlikely to receive maximum sentences. Nor would convictions bar Trump from running for president or being elected. On that score, Trump dominates national and key state polling regarding the Republican presidential nomination.

In his Tuesday interview on BlazeTV, Trump also said he “never hit Biden as hard as I could have” while in office. Trump’s first impeachment concerned attempts to find dirt on rivals including Biden, related to politics and business in Ukraine. Now, in Congress, Trump’s Republican allies are threatening to impeach Biden over unsubstantiated allegations connected to his surviving son, Hunter. Trump told Beck that Biden was behind the indictments against him. In fact, all were brought by prosecutors independent of the White House: 44 by the justice department special counsel Jack Smith, 34 by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and 13 by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia.

Trump also claimed “the woman that I never met, that they accused me of rape, that’s being run by a Democrat, a Democrat operative, and paid for by the Democrat [sic] party”. That was a reference to civil claims brought by E Jean Carroll, a writer who says Trump sexually assaulted her in New York in the 1990s. Earlier this year, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and fined about $5m. A second trial is due next year. The judge in the case has said Trump has been adjudicated a rapist. Also facing investigations of his business affairs, Trump said Democrats and other opponents were “sick people … evil people”. The twice impeached, four times indicted, 91 times charged ex-president also told Beck he “always had such great respect for the office of the president and the presidency”.

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August 30, 2023

Exposing a Multibillion Dollar FRAUD - Ft. Vivek Ramaswamy for President.

Vivek Ramaswamy *JUST* Responded to Me [Spoiler: It’s BAD]

August 30, 2023

The wheels are coming off

https://progressivepost.eu/the-wheels-are-coming-off/


Brussels implosion

The merits of the von der Leyen Commission have to be recognised. They launched the Green Deal as an emblematic programme, orchestrated the counteroffensive against the coronavirus, and fostered solidarity among EU countries and citizens to ensure that the continent can rise to the challenge of Russian aggression and support Ukraine. However, neither of these issues has been one-dimensional, and the complexity of the current situation in particular seems to be overwhelming for them. It might have just been a bon mot after Jean-Claude Juncker’s ‘political Commission’ for von der Leyen to call her team the ‘geopolitical Commission’ but they really wanted to fill this phrase with meaning, at least for a while. Contrary to what all this discourse promised, however, the ambition started to fade, and the concept of strategic autonomy has been phased out. The whole discourse about strategic autonomy emerged a decade ago from the perception that Europe was punching below its weight in international relations. It seems that finally, the solution to this mismatch is to reduce the weight of Europe to match its punching capacity.

Today, there are great concerns about the future of the European business model and its social model too. Ten years ago, the development of the social model was the greater concern, today it is the survival of the EU’s business model. And the Commission is standing there, before the simultaneous supply and demand side shocks, as Buridan’s donkey: hungry for markets, thirsty for resources, and just perplexed about how out of so many good intentions so worrisome outcomes can follow. In particular, there seems to be a lack of ideas about how to match the global challenge from the US and China in the fields of industrial policy, in response to the US Inflation Reduction Act and in support of the de-risking effort. Clearly, more common tools (and investment capacities) would be needed, but anything new can only come from the next leadership, if at all. Just over one year ago, the Conference on the Future of Europe provided a platform for ambitious endeavours, perhaps even big leaps in the process of European integration. This momentum seems to have been wasted, and the tyranny of the status quo prevails.

Choices of the centre-right

Most observers would say that the right and the far-right are ahead of the left today in terms of strategic answers and choices – even if these are mainly about their own positioning rather than promoting the common interests of the Europeans. However despicable from a progressive point of view, the centre-right has chosen a strategy which is essentially about competing with the extreme right for the right-populist vote by turning against migrants and stepping back from the green agenda. Experience shows that by doing this in most cases the centre-right has actually paved the way for the further rise of the far-right. Not that there would be an obvious recipe against far-right shifts and autocratisation in Europe or elsewhere in the world. However, the EU turned out to be spectacularly ineffective in the protection of the rule of law in Hungary and Poland in the past decade. Jarosław Kaczyński’s government is playing a geopolitical game assuming that by becoming a strong actor in Eastern policy, and a close buddy of Washington, their campaign against the rule of law would not matter anymore. However, the EU would risk losing its identity and cohesion by going down that alley.

The Spanish national election outcome in July might signal that the far right has peaked, but all over Europe it is peaking at a very high level, and generating a large-scale backsliding on rights. Arguably, it is not so much the absolute level of far-right support that is the main concern today, but the nexus between the centre-right and the extreme right-wing forces. Diverse patterns can be observed here. Under pressure from the extreme fringes, the UK Conservatives reprofiled themselves into a populist hard-right party, following the pattern of the US Republican Party. In Germany, the CDU-CSU is leading the polls, but they are in strategic agony, with their current leader Friedrich Merz not being able to outline an unequivocal answer to the AfD challenge. Two parliamentary cycles ago, the flexibility of the centre-right led to the decision to tackle the populist wave by effectively joining it in 2014, and to pretend that by slimming the EU agenda, the source of citizens’ irritation could be removed. These tactics also helped the failed economic policies of the centre-right to survive, and the roofs of the Economic and Monetary Union were not repaired when the sun was shining. Now, they are keen to revive the controversial set of fiscal rules that clearly failed Europe when they were meant to be enforced, and which are considered outright obsolete since the Covid-19 pandemic.

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August 30, 2023

A Rare Blue Supermoon Is Coming This Week, Here's How to See It (tonight, August 30th)

The celestial event won't happen again until January 2037, 14 years from now.

https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/blue-supermoon-august-2023-when-to-see



Hello everyone, and welcome back to one of my favorite summer appointments—sitting outside, looking at the sky, and marveling at cool stuff! This week, we'll be blessed with yet another celestial event, which is actually a combo of two events. On Wednesday, August 30, get ready to look up and marvel not only at what's expected to be a breathtaking supermoon, but also at a blue moon—which makes it a blue supermoon (or super blue moon, if you prefer). Let us break it down for you.

A supermoon is a fairly rare event (there are only four in 2023), and it happens every time a full moon coincides with the moon's closest position to the Earth. Hence the name "supermoon," as these full moons are technically larger and brighter than their regular counterparts. However, you should know that the moon won't, in fact, appear bigger than it normally is, because the difference is not really perceivable with the naked eye. Yet, it will for sure appear brighter—a supermoon, according to EarthSky, exceeds the disk size and brightness of an average full moon by roughly 16%, which is even 30% more when compared to the year's tiniest full moon.

It will also be a blue moon. Before you get too excited about sharing cool photos on Instagram, though, you should know that the moon won't really change its color and match the ocean. The term blue moon, as per the official definition introduced by Sky & Telescope in 1946, refers to the second full moon in a calendar month, Space.com points out. This August, in fact, already witnessed one full moon on August 1, which makes this upcoming one an actual blue moon. This is a pretty rare sighting, too. The next super blue moon is not expected to happen until January 2037, 14 years from now.

Now, you might be wondering when exactly you'll be able to catch this beauty in the sky. At 12 pm ET on August 30 the moon will reach the closest point to Earth in its orbit (which is called perigee). After 9 hours and 36 minutes later, as both Space.com and NASA report, it will become full at exactly (you guessed it) 9:36 PM ET. If you have plans that night or conditions are not ideal to sit outside and look at the moon, there's no need to stress. As NASA points out, the planet will appear for three days around the peak, which means that you'll be able to see it in all of its majestic grandeur from Tuesday through Friday morning.

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August 29, 2023

right now on Joy: Rethugs and Fox are saying that Trump, due to multiple felony indictments, now

has street cred with black voters, who will now flock to him and vote for him.

Plus they are saying Trump is now a victim like a black person in the 1930s.

WTF!!!!!

August 29, 2023

Cliff Road Studios II, Cliff Road, London NW1

“A rare apartment by one of British modernism’s finest practitioners”

https://www.themodernhouse.com/sales-list/cliff-road-studios-ii





This outstanding live/work duplex apartment in Camden has a private courtyard terrace and access to communal gardens. It is located on the ground and first floors of Cliff Road Studios, built in 1968 to a design by the Modernist architect and founding member of Team 4, Georgie Wolton. Originally designed as an artist’s studio, the space is characterised by wonderful levels of natural light, care of double height ceilings and banks of angled skylights. The neighbourhoods of Primrose Hill, Camden Town and Kings Cross are all within easy reach.










The Architect

Georgie Wolton has been described by Jonathan Meades as “the outstanding woman architect of the generation before Zaha Hadid”. In 1963, she was a founding member of the architectural firm Team 4, which comprised a membership of future luminaries, including Richard Rogers, Su Brumwell, Norman Foster and Wendy Cheesman. The firm designed a number of houses, perhaps most notably Creek Vean, which was featured in issue three of The Modern House magazine. As the only qualified architect at the time of the practice’s formation, Wolton was essential in helping the group to establish themselves and accept commissions.







Wolton left Team 4 relatively swiftly and worked on a small selection of projects during the 60s, 70s and 80s, which bear her trademark style of modern classicism. Cliff Road Studios is perhaps her most well-known building, but her pioneering Field House on Crocknorth Farm in Surrey was the first house in the UK to use Corten steel as its primary structure. The house was completed in 1969 but was dismantled in the early nineties. Wolton also designed the gardens for The River Café on the banks of the Thames near Hammersmith, which feature a sunken area of lawn designed for parties and for children to play in, as well as an elevated plinth with a bench for staff and customers at the café to gather with views of the river. Wolton died in August 2021 at 87 and leaves behind an impressive architectural legacy.







The Tour

Cliff Road Studios presents a beautifully reserved façade to the street. Its front elevation is defined by pale concrete render and ribbons of glazing at each of its five storeys. Access to the building is at ground level behind a blue gate. The entrance foyer is bright and tiled with extensive glazing to the rear, with views of the communal gardens and recently reinstalled internal spaces to lock bikes.

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August 29, 2023

Teen killed outside McDonald's in sweet-and-sour sauce dispute, police say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/28/teen-killed-sauce-u-street-mcdonalds/

https://archive.li/zyOlJ

A 16-year-old girl was charged with fatally stabbing another 16-year-old girl outside a McDonald’s on a busy D.C. nightlife corridor this weekend in a fight a police detective said stemmed from an argument about sweet-and-sour sauce, as the city continues its struggle to quell youth violence. Naima Liggon, the slain teen from Waldorf, Md., was the 13th person younger than 18 killed so far this year in Washington, and her accused attacker represents one of hundreds of cases in which minors have been charged with committing a crime of violence.

Both of those numbers have increased since the same time last year, creating what the city’s mayor has deemed an emergency among the city’s children and teenagers. Homicides overall are up 26 percent in the District over this time in 2022. “At the end of the day, someone is dead over a dispute over sauce,” D.C. Superior Court Judge Sherri Beatty-Arthur said, as she ordered the suspect held until another hearing Friday.

City officials have said they are laser-focused on combating youth violence. Last month, the D.C. Council passed emergency legislation that expanded pretrial detention for youths charged with virtually any dangerous or violent crime. In her own legislative proposal, which still could be considered in the fall, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) wanted to allow judges to detain youths for their own protection — signaling the lengths she is willing to go to stop the bloodshed.

All summer, D.C. government officials have touted programming designed to keep youths safe and engaged while school is out. The mayor told community members in June that the city had 13,000 slots for camp and 14,000 places for youth employment. The U Street corridor is among the areas city officials say will see a curfew crackdown starting Sept. 1 to keep youths under 17 off the streets overnight. A nightlife task force designed to reduce violence had been focusing on the neighborhood.

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August 29, 2023

sarcastic tweet of the week contender

https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1696194528842072284