Certain high profile appointees in the Trump administration, think Pete Hegseth or Kash Patel, function as figureheads to distract from the increasing power of what Matt Stoller calls the “Amway oligarchy”. I’ll come back to Stoller’s analysis, but let’s start with Whitney Webb’s diagnosis of what we’re seeing six months into Trump’s second term. Webb

Yves here. On the one hand, this article sets forth a strategy for preserving something approaching serviceable health care in parts of the US, which may wind up being “pockets of the US”: the more affluent, more science-friendly blue states, which are also where the better US med schools are concentrated. On the other hand,

In the United States, the aim of the Current Administration is to support something called “gold-standard science.”  Their clear implication is that American scientists have been publishing something less than the gold standard – perhaps silver or bronze, or maybe even brass, when gold is the standard of the day (here and here).  We have

Evacuations in Japan and US as major earthquake off Russia triggers widespread tsunami warnings BBC. Live blog. Tsunami warning issued for Japan’s Pacific coast, high waves observed NHK Whales have started to wash ashore in Japan as a result of the MASSIVE Tsunami. 🤯🤯🤯 This is NOT GOOD. It’s not a common thing to see

Even more so than usual, in recent weeks Wall Street Journal headlines have been messaging pet beliefs of the capitalist classes. We’ll soon discuss a new article, CEOs Trumpet Smaller Workforces as a Sign of Corporate Health, as further proof that rentierism and short-termism are fattening corporate wallets at the expense of ordinary citizens. These