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

August 28, 2023

CNN Host Forces Vivek Ramaswamy to Admit Comparing Ayanna Pressley to KKK Grand Wizard Was 'Fringe'

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-host-dana-bash-forces-vivek-ramaswamy-to-admit-comparing-ayanna-pressley-to-kkk-grand-wizard-was-fringe (video at the link)

https://archive.li/gdGEL





Vivek Ramaswamy dove headfirst into his controversial comments on Sunday, defending his comparison of Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) to a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. The entrepreneur, who is running for president in the GOP primary, said he was merely attempting to debate the issue of racism. Ramaswamy had blasted the congresswoman, who is Black, on Friday for her 2019 comment that Democrats “don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice.” He said her words were “the words of the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.” Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, he double downed on it—all while trying to dismiss it as a “fringe comment.”

“The Grand Wizard of the KKK would be proud of what they would hear her say because there’s nothing more racist than saying that your skin color predicts something about the content and your viewpoints to support your ideas,” he said. Host Dana Bash pushed back at the candidate, asking him, “How on earth is she a modern grand wizard of that kind of an organization?” The Ku Klux Klan, a racist organization, has a long history of subjecting Black people to lynchings, murders, and sexual assault. Ramaswamy tried to brush the question off entirely, arguing his inflammatory comment was an attempt at having an “intellectually honest” debate about race relations in the country.

Still, Bash said, that ignored how the KKK “lynched people, they raped people, they murdered people, they burned their homes.” “And that was obviously wrong,” he responded. Pressley’s team seized on the comments in a fundraising email last week, saying “ a line was crossed” in his remarks. “A GOP candidate referred to Ayanna as ‘a modern grand wizard of the KKK’ because she speaks out against racial injustice,” the fundraising pitch read, according to Politico. “This is backwards and harmful, but that is the point.” Bash continued to press Ramaswamy: Could his comparison of a Black congresswoman to a KKK grand wizard maybe have been a step too far?

“I stand by what I said to provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,” Ramaswamy said. “Because there is a gap, Dana, between what people will say in private today and what they will say in public. I think we need to close that gap. We need to have real open, honest, raw conversations as Americans.” Ramaswamy then complained that Bash, like “what many in the media do,” was pulling a “fringe comment” out of context to attack him, giving Bash an easy retort. “So you just said that your comment was fringe,” she said.

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August 27, 2023

Questions linger after 2 women were shot at Guaranteed Rate Field during White Sox game

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-sox-park-shooting-20230826-hcpdrc5xqfhkzdxp4ywx5evfse-story.html



A day after two women were wounded by gunfire while sitting in the outfield seating area at Guaranteed Rate Field on Friday night, questions remained on whether the shots were fired inside or outside the stadium and why the game continued despite a request from a high-ranking officer to halt play.

Both women, 26 and 42, were expected to recover from the unusual incident at the Armour Square ballpark that occurred during the fourth inning. Officials on Saturday described a delayed police response as a result of the incident initially appearing to be a fan who needed first aid for an undetermined wound.

“No one understood it was a bullet or gunshot. So there was this time delay as that person got treatment,” Scott Reifert, the Sox senior vice president of communications, told reporters Saturday. “Then as they investigated a little bit more, we started to understand what may have happened.”

Officials said no one knows exactly where the gunshot came from. The game was not interrupted despite the incident taking place yards from the outfield and the White Sox bullpen. Stadium grounds crew members had already begun installing crowd control barriers on the field, meant to keep fans in place during the postgame concert, when the announcement came through that the concert was canceled.

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https://twitter.com/whitesox/status/1695316970764157279

August 25, 2023

Trump's Arrest in Georgia Shows a Two-Tier Justice System

LaShawn Thompson and Donald J. Trump were both booked at the Fulton County Jail—but their experiences of the criminal justice system couldn’t have been more different.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-arrest-in-georgia-shows-a-two-tier-justice-system

https://archive.li/PLl6u



LaShawn Thompson shared something in common with former President Donald J. Trump. Both were defendants charged in Fulton County, Georgia, and booked at the Fulton County Jail—known as “Rice Street.” But that is their only shared commonality with the criminal justice system. On Thursday, with TV cameras overhead and behind his motorcade following every moment of his journey, Trump arrived with an armed U.S. Secret Service escort, and sped through the process of paperwork and having his fingerprinting and mug shots taken like a VIP being let into a night club. It took only 24 or so minutes for him to be booked and leave the jail. His height was logged at 6-foot-3, his weight at 215 pounds, and his hair color as “blond or strawberry.”

The newly minted Inmate No. Po1135809 was back on his private jet within a matter of moments, after claiming again he had done “nothing wrong.” But LaShawn Thompson never got to leave after his booking at Rice Street. He died there at the age of 35. Thompson died at the Fulton County Jail after being held there for three months. According to his autopsy, contributing factors to his death included dehydration, malnutrition, untreated schizophrenia, and severe insect infestation on his body from lice and bed bugs. His family’s attorney said he “was eaten alive by insects and bedbugs.” Thompson was charged with a misdemeanor.

By contrast, Trump is charged with racketeering crimes in a 41-count felony indictment and facing a total of four different criminal cases brought by prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and now the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. But the Fulton County case is the first time that Trump will experience the normal booking procedures of fingerprinting and likely be photographed for his “mug shot.” He also has release conditions that include bail. Trump did not go through the same booking processes as other defendants in either of the two DOJ criminal and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Nor did he have any bail or bond requirements in those cases. Perhaps the difference in Georgia is due to the fact that both the New York and federal systems were deferential to a defendant who once led the executive branch while Fani Willis feels no such obligation.

Or perhaps the difference is Trump is now a defendant facing a total of 91 criminal counts. But whatever the reasons behind Georgia’s decision, Trump and his supporters will continue to claim that he is the victim of political persecution and that there are “two systems of justice”—a supposedly lenient one for liberals and a supposedly harsh one for conservatives. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real two systems of justice in our country is that the influential and wealthy experience one system while those with no influence and little wealth experience a wholly different one. Both systems can result in some measure of justice, either through a conviction for crimes or an acquittal, but in only one system—the one for those who lack influence and wealth—is the system itself a tool of punishment.

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August 25, 2023

Average global temperatures per year since 1880 until 2023

https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/status/1694250973386993837