Author: nick

There’s a quiet revolution happening in K-12 education, driven by parents and teachers who say they’ve had enough. Jessica Zivkovic knows the feeling. “Ultimately I got to a point where I knew that we needed a whole overhaul,” she says, “and I could not bring about the change within the system.” A handful of states are pushing school choice to the max. “There are a lot of eyes on Florida right now,” says Tiffany Thenor. “We are kind of the pioneers of this universal voucher.” In the Sunshine State, about 14 percent of students attend a charter school and roughly…

The machinery of American empire is beginning to buckle under the weight of its own wars. With weapons stockpiles dwindling, military bases damaged and exhausted service members enduring extended deployments and deteriorating conditions, the gulf between Washington’s ambitions and its actual capabilities is becoming impossible to conceal. On The World This Week, Consortium News Editor-in-Chief Joe Lauria speaks with former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat Ann Wright and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern about the human cost of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, the corruption hollowing out the military establishment and whether America’s latest defeat could finally force a…

With Senator Rand Paul releasing over 1,000 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private diary, readers are getting an unprecedented look behind the curtain. Many might expect the private reflections of the nation’s most influential public health official to be dominated by the scientific and public health challenges confronting the country. Instead, something else becomes evident. Amid meetings, phone calls, and official duties, Fauci repeatedly paused to catalogue glowing newspaper profiles, television appearances, and celebrity praise. The pattern began on 29 January 2020, when television host Lou Dobbs called to say that President Trump would soon be in touch. Dobbs told…

In 1896, a daring journalist covering the Cuban revolution against their colonial masters crossed the Spanish lines three times to interview insurgent leaders. William Francis Mannix’s final trip into the Cuban interior was made at the request of the leader of the insurgent government, Salvador Cisneros Betancourt. El Presidente Cisneros wanted the intrepid correspondent to carry back an appeal begging for support from the American people. Mannix’s riveting reports appeared on the front page of the New York Times and other leading newspapers. After the Spanish expelled Mannix from Cuba, he was invited to speak to the National Geographic Society…

GLP-1 meds—perhaps better known by brand names like Ozempic and Wegovy—have become widespread as weight loss tools. But there’s evidence that links their use to to a range of positive health outcomes, and now researchers say they may “alter social and economic outcomes” too. Specifically, relationship outcomes. In a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, the Harvard economist Rebecca Diamond found GLP-1 use linked to higher likelihood of marriage or cohabitation. You are reading Sex & Tech, from Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Get more of Elizabeth’s sex, tech, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture coverage. Using data from the…

Fariba Amini Informed Comment  In the 1975 film Three Days of the Condor, the late Robert Redford played Joe Turner, a disenchanted CIA field officer who was being chased by rogue higher-ups within the Company. The Redford character asks Joubert, the CIA man who was pursuing him, “So it was all about oil?” Joubert says in reply, “Yes of course it always has been.” They wanted Turner dead. August 19, 1953, brings back memories.  The CIA and MI6, in an unholy alliance, staged a coup d’etat in Iran. They brought down Mossadegh’s government.    In March 1953, in preparation for…

Anthropic has put itself at odds with nearly the entire AI industry. In a conspicuous break with its peers, the frontier lab declined last month to sign an open letter supporting a permissive policy toward open-weight AI models, which anyone can download, modify, and run on their own devices. Anthropic says it acted out of concern for public safety, offering its customary warnings about AI-enabled catastrophe. But its real motives may be considerably more self-serving. If Anthropic were serious about being the AI company with a conscience, it would have no shortage of public concerns to address. It could devote…

Texas is now slated to pass California in population, driven both by both immigration and domestic migration. Source link

The new law attacks barriers to housing construction. The president still has enormous power to determine who can afford to own. Source link

Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Media outlets often claim Americans are wealthier than Europeans, but it’s not true. Average wealth looks high, but is skewed by extreme inequality. US median wealth is quite low. This is the real data. It is often said that the United States is the richest country on Earth. This is a myth. It is certainly true that, in the United States, there are some very, very rich people, including the wealthiest billionaires on Earth, and the first ever trillionaire (Elon Musk). However, when you look at the country as a whole, you see that the US…