Author: nick

[ad_1] Good news — things have finally stabilized for CJ & his family, & he has finally fully recovered from the illnesses that caused him to be hospitalized in March! He’s now back at the podcasting game full-force, hard at work on upcoming Dangerous History material, & this week he also returned Brave the New World, the weekly current events & media analysis show that he cohosts with Matt Carano. This DHP episode features the audio of CJ’s triumphant return to BTNW after a few months’ absence. Join CJ & Matt as they discuss the low- & even-lower-lights of current…

Read More

[ad_1] Image by Mitchell Luo. Dispatches from the Terminal Ward of the Western Echo Chamber From the Edge of the Confirmation Bias Abyss Something is cosmically wrong with the primordial ooze. For years, decades, maybe longer, maybe since the first cable news anchor discovered that outrage was more profitable than information, a certain subspecies of political creature has been evolving in the lightless, pressurized depths of the ideological swamp. Deep down there in the fetid dark, nourished by the warm thermal vents of their own inane certainties, surrounded by the bioluminescent glow of sycophantic media organs pulsing in perfect, validating…

Read More

[ad_1] Stewart Brand has spent decades shaping how we think about technology, the environment, and the future. He first came to prominence in the 1960s as co-creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, the counterculture bible that helped inspire personal computing, the hacker ethic, and the modern environmentalist movement. Since then, he’s launched the Long Now Foundation, championed nuclear power and de-extinction, and pushed us to think in 10,000-year time spans. In his new book, Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One, Brand argues that the real work of civilization isn’t flashy invention but the long, patient care of complex systems. In March, he spoke with Nick Gillespie about what…

Read More

[ad_1] A brash, expansionist Donald Trump returned from two days in China, having been schooled by Xi Jinping in what global stability looks like. By Joe LauriaSpecial to Consortium News In his January 2025 inaugural address, Donald Trump blared the trumpets of the American Empire, putting the world on notice that the William McKinley era of U.S. territorial expansion was back. Not that the American imperium had gone anywhere under preceding presidents. But Trump would no longer hide it. “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our…

Read More

[ad_1] The Chiaroscuro Quartet. Photo: Josh McKinley. The Chiaroscuro Quartet was founded in 2005 at London’s Royal College of Music by four young string players who shared a fascination with and commitment to playing on gut rather than wire strings and using bows like those of their 18th- and early 19th-century predecessors. The group deployed earlier technologies and materials not simply to buttress claims of authenticity but rather to explore sonorities and textures that could reanimate the classic string quartet repertory. The name the ensemble chose for itself forecast this mission of discovery. Old tools can shed light on the…

Read More

[ad_1] In recent years, observers have closely tracked the rise of pro-union sentiments on the political right. During his reelection campaign, President Donald Trump garnered headlines for skipping a presidential debate to visit United Auto Workers (UAW), who were on strike in Michigan, while officials like Vice President JD Vance and Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) have made waves for their pro-union bent. Perhaps most prominently, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien was featured as a speaker at the GOP convention. But to this point, any actual legislation emanating from the pro-labor right has failed to go anywhere in Congress. That may soon change. A Hawley-backed bill, known…

Read More