I started a TMBG fan club called Church of the Possible Giants around the time this album was released. One of the requirements for membership is that your given first name is John. If you want to join, drop me a line, convince me your name is John, and I will send you a CotPG pencil.
In a Senate hearing today, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said, under oath:
“One of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers. One of the things that I was briefed on very early, senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use. It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration.”
I watched the full debate. The proposition was "Don't Trust the Mainstream Media". On the pro side were Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray; the con side was made up of Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg.
It wasn't great. There were lots of personal attacks on both sides. Biting remarks can add spice to a debate, but this got a little ugly for my tastes. Gladwell went especially foul by intimating Taibbi's fondness for Walter Cronkite and other trusted journalists of his era was due not to these iconic newsmen's integrity, but because they were white men, a suggestion Gladwell made three or four times.
The Pro side brought up several of the big stories of the past few years on which the mainstream media went rather hard, but turned out to be widely accepted as wrong, like Trump-Putin collusion and Hunter Biden's laptop, but the Con team essentially dismissed these as nothingburgers.
Before the start of the debate, the audience is polled on their opinion about the proposition. It was 48% Pro (don't trust the media) and 52% Con. Another poll was taken at the end, and it was determined the Pro side (don't trust the mainstream media) won, with 67% now agreeing with them.
The most impressive person on the stage was the moderator Rudyard Griffiths. He struck me as an educated, composed, and immanently fair man.
I believe the young economist mentioned in the article is simply wrong in his analysis. The most efficient 4-denomination set is {1,5,18,25} (tied with {1,5,18,29}) at 3.89 coins per transaction, better than the economist's {1,3,11,38} at 4.10. This result is from a 2003 paper by Jeffrey Shallit called "What's This Country Needs is an 18¢ Piece". Just before posting, I verified Shallit's result with a Python program.
Worth noting that 2016 election denial (Russia hacked the election!) was never banned. Here's an entertaining compilation of some of it, but there's plenty more where that came from.
Right, as that article explains: The increasing melting of the antarctic ice cap makes it easier for the sea ice to expand because it leads to more fresh water (with a higher freezing point) on the surface of the ocean.
> How does the melting of land ice matter to sea ice formation? The resulting meltwater is fresher than the seawater. As it mixes with the seawater, the meltwater makes the nearby seawater slightly less dense, and slightly closer to the freezing point than the ocean water below. This less dense seawater spreads out across the ocean surface surrounding the continent, forming a stable pool of surface water that is close to the freezing point, and close to the ice onto which it could freeze.
Literally the subhed of the article: "Director has criticised the practice of re-editing older films while expressing remorse over removing guns in a later edition of ET"
