post the best picture you have ever taken of your pet
(idk! they look like a 90s indie rock album cover)

Two French companies that process gum arabic are fueling the war in Sudan. See film below. Sudan produces 80% of the world's gum arabic used to produce candy, soft drinks, cosmetics etc...it's the one Sudanese product that was never placed under Euro-American sanctions. 3ayin.com/en/gum-arabi...

man, i sure wish lenny bruce were alive today. because he'd be like 100 years old. i bet i could kick his wrinkly ass

Hungary, Romania and Uruguay are around that level today, do we think their standard of living is equal to the richest countries in the 1980s?

My contribution to today's discourse it is that no one can convince me any society in history have had a higher standard of living than Sweden in the late 80s. GDP per capita was around 25 000 USD, less than half what it is today

I think that as economists we should be a lot more concerned that everyone feels like they've got poorer when the data show they haven't. We certainly shouldn't just be assuming that the customers are wrong, rather than that we're no longer measuring things that are most relevant to wellbeing

Oh god, I'm so sorry chelsey. I watched the video, he seems like such a lovely man

12. Is the US Navy really going to open fire on and/or forcibly board Chinese commercial ships if they refuse to comply with our declared blockade of a strait that, legally, must be open to all neutrals? In the presence, perhaps, of a single Chinese naval frigate in the area?

It's not just that Orbán losing inspires hope in other competitive-autocratic countries ruled by right-wing nationalist authoritarians. It's that his loss materially changes things in those other countries, because he's been operating as a headquarters and funding source...

My dad to the dog while making a snack, “I know you're excited, so am I. But there is no need to bark. I'm not barking. No one else here is barking”

Boston Globe mock front page from April 9, 2016. Date says April 9, 2017, with giant headline “DEPORTATIONS TO BEGIN” and “Markets sink as trade war looms.”

Ten years ago today, in April 2016, the Boston Globe printed a satirical front page imagining a future Trump administration. The page was called "alarmist," "hyperbolic," "dystopian." But we’ve put up with so much since then it now looks like . . . a slow Thursday?

Yeah an intellectual with racism is not a hard cheese with mold situation it’s a soft cheese with mold situation, you gotta throw the whole thing away now

Solar power in Africa is heating up — thanks in part to chili peppers | CBC News They're the chili peppers in the spicy chicken at a restaurant you might know. And they were an ingredient used by a Canadian company to build the first solar power plants in Malawi.

>Canadian company builds solar panels in Malawi
>is paid in Malawi's (volatile) currency
>invests those payments in local farmers growing chili peppers
>sells chili peppers to Nando's, in USD
>builds sustainable business model on Cheeky Nando's

This is my favourite news story of the year so far.

🎶 I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
I'm pretty good at rhyming
But my meter is bad

Seems like a good day to re-up this post from some years ago on why we have free universal services. Which I realize, now, anticipates a core argument of Against Money: We can't understand the purpose of public services if we think of them as equivalent to money payments. jwmason.org/slackwire/wh...

They Pay $34 for Burgers. Should Their Child Care Be Free?

yes you fucking morons free preschool for everyone or it becomes just "free preschool for the poors" and then you call them leeches and ask for tax breaks when really we want free preschool for everyone because we want smart well adjusted kids why is this so hard?

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/n...

a cool thing the ruling class does is run articles like this to convince you the wealthy are undeserving of a free resource, and therefore it shouldn't be universal. then they switch to convincing you that the poor are cheating, and also don't deserve it

buggs bunny's carrot & 'what's up doc?' where a refernce to a well known actor at the time, the parody endured but its object of refernce slipped from memory

sinilarly, there was an archetype the Oringonal Poasters were mimicking

An apparition appears in your room, alongside a more successful looking doppelganger of yourself. Apparition: " - and THIS is what you would be!" Doppelganger: "Oh my god! Spare me these twisted visions, specter! I've learned my lesson!" (both vanish) You: Hey what the fuck

My fave

The word blurb was coined in 1906 by American humorist Gelett Burgess (1866–1951).[2] The October 1906 first edition of his short book Are You a Bromide? was presented in a limited edition to an annual trade association dinner. The custom at such events was to have a dust jacket promoting the work and with, as Burgess' publisher B. W. Huebsch described it, "the picture of a damsel—languishing, heroic, or coquettish—anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel". In this case, the jacket proclaimed "YES, this is a 'BLURB'!" and the picture was of a (fictitious) young woman "Miss Belinda Blurb" shown calling out, described as "in the act of blurbing." The name and term stuck for any publisher's contents on a book's back cover, even after the picture was dropped and only the text remained.

The original Belinda Blurb

It brings me great pleasure to inform you the word "blurb" is named after a made-up woman named Belinda Blurb whose job is to tell everyone how great a book is

Bazooka Joe is the mystical master of space and time and Leon Russel is the normal master of space and time

You have to admit Igor Tudor is an amazing name

a fun fact that I will never tire of is that the brits cooked up the idea of a “vote of no confidence“ specifically to ditch the govt that lost the war against the US colonies, which is why our constitutional tradition doesn’t benefit from their innovation

Hm. It feels like the entire world economy is hanging on that number going up, and up, and it's not

Eric Idle faved this arguably rather tonedeaf but well meant comment on one of his post. All the 30k journalist accounts that are always complaining about their mentions could learn from his example imo

So the same week my mom broke her foot and ended up in a wheelchair, possibly never fully healing, my dad told us he thinks he has bladder cancer. Kind thoughts appreciated

This is completely unbearable. But also like… why are his insane ramblings never summarized like this in the media? We gotta wait for a substack guy to put it together like this?

This also marks the unambiguous end of Khamenei's (the elder's) self-imposed 2,000 km missile range limitation—a message that'll also be received in Europe.

In 2022, some European governments tried to cut dependence on fossil fuels. But many soon focused on finding new fossil fuel suppliers instead, said Pauline Heinrichs, who studies climate and energy at King’s College London. Germany rushed to build LNG terminals to replace Russian gas with mostly American fuel while the energy transition, including efforts to cut demand, slowed, she said. Europe’s excess spending on fossil fuels since the Russia-Ukraine War amounted to about 40% of the investment needed to transition its power system to clean energy, according to a 2023 study. “In Europe, we learned the wrong lesson,” Heinrichs said.

fuckin Germany man apnews.com/article/midd...