Conspicuous by its absence in much of the mainstream news coverage of Venezuela’s political crisis is the word “socialism.” Yes, every sensible observer agrees that Latin America’s once-richest country, sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, is an economic basket case, a humanitarian disaster, and a dictatorship whose demise cannot come soon enough. But … socialist? Perish the thought.

This is the fundamental problem every country in the world is facing to varying degrees, even the US. An over supply of labor. No one knows what to do about the problem and it's only going to get worse as automation increases.

The children fell ill, one by one, with cancers that few families in this suburban Indianapolis community had ever heard of. as cases mounted, parents started to ask: Could it be something in the air or water?Their questions led them to an old industrial site in Franklin, the Johnson County seat, that the federal government had ordered cleaned up decades ago. Recent tests have identified a carcinogenic plume spreading underground, releasing vapors into homes.

The Russia operation is staggering in its scale, precision and deceptiveness. Pages generated by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency elicited nearly 40 million likes and more than 30 million shares on Facebook alone, reeling in susceptible users with provocative advertisements and then giving them propaganda to spread far and wide. The aim was not to toss the country into tumult, but to put the preferred candidate of a foreign adversary in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump is nearly as unpopular in small towns as he is in suburban areas and cities, signaling potential trouble for his re-election prospects, according to a survey that highlights the Republican president’s vulnerabilities. In rural areas -- not including those living in small towns -- 46 percent say they’ll definitely vote for him for a second term. But in all other geographic areas, there’s much higher skepticism about a second Trump term. Just 33 percent of those in small towns definitely plan to vote for him, while 27 percent in suburbs and 24 percent in cities say they will.

Lets face it. All male groups be it all male schools, sports teams, fraternities etc. tend to let the worse impulses of masculinity flourish. Not just among the most aggressive of the boys/men. Even those who wouldn't behave so sexually aggressively are pushed towards sexual aggression and if not actively involved at least tolerate and encourage their more aggressive brothers. This article is a bit of information about that basic reality as it manifests in elite prep schools.

The new rule was taped onto doorways around town: Officials were limiting what a groom-to-be could pay for a bride.The going rate was about $38,000, or five times the average annual salary in this village about a four-hour drive north of Beijing. Now, families were told to keep it below $2,900.  Ask Liang, a pear farmer in Da’anliu. He has one daughter. When it comes time for her to marry, “I will ask whatever amount I want,” he said. “It’s not fair otherwise.” “It’s the market,” he said. “I’m allowed to charge what the market will bear for my pears. Why not my daughter?”

Democratic Party officials voted Saturday to strip superdelegates of much of their power in the presidential nominating process, infuriating many traditionalists while handing a victory to the party’s left flank.

The measure’s overwhelming approval – met by cheers in a hotel ballroom here – concluded a tense summer meeting of the Democratic National Committee, which had labored over the issue since 2016. Superdelegates that year largely sided with Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, enraging Sanders’ supporters.

This article about China's use of computer monitoring of nearly everybody in the country just fucking blew me away. I knew of the possibilities and the danger but I had no idea it was so far along. Imagine what could happen if Google, Facebook, your debit or credit card purchases, Amazon purchases, every bit of data every company collects on you is in the hands of a single entity and the government. That's pretty much what is happening now in China. Absolutely must read article. Very long but totally worth the time.

Somewhere in the U.S. today, a child will find a loaded gun in a home. They won’t have to look hard. It will be unlocked and stored in an easily accessible place. The child will pick up the firearm, and soon enough, it will go off exactly like it’s supposed to. The bullet will strike a friend, or a sibling, or the child who found the gun in the first place. Someone will be injured or killed. If it’s an average day in America, this scene will play out seven more times somewhere. It will repeat itself tomorrow.

NATO spends more than 13 times as much as Russia on defense. Even if you didn’t count U.S. spending, the other members combined spend more than four times as much as Russia. And that’s without most of them reaching the 2 percent of GDP goal. 

Five years ago, my husband and I bought a house in the emptiest county in America. There are three types of people in our rural area: amateur astronomers, ranchers, and illegal aliens. If you climb the mountains behind our house and look south, you look into Mexico. If you climb those mountains to the top, you are on one of the major drug trafficking routes into America. If you stay in the desert at the foot of the mountains, you are in rattlesnake country—the greatest biodiversity of rattlers in America, and the night path of illegal aliens.

In this past March, Portugal not only generated enough electricity from renewables to power the whole country for the whole month, it actually produced extra electricity this way. Scotland, with over 5 million people, got 68.1 percent of its electricity from renewables last year. Costa Rica, a country of nearly 5 million, ran on renewables for 300 days of the past year.

Want to freak yourself out? I’m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Interesting article that makes the case that AA brought up. That the students speaking on gun control are so articulate because Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school is an exceptional school.

Interesting article comparing poll results of Trump's approval rating from several different sources. I posted this article because some people are posting poll results as if they are irrefutable evidence. Polls need to be thought about and critiqued as much as any other article. They can't be taken at face value. This article gives us some idea why polls on the same question might produce different results and some of the ways one might thoughtfully consider the results to get more accurate information than simply taking the results of a poll at face value.

The career of Dinesh D’Souza is indicative of the downward trajectory of conservatism. As he wrote in his 2002 book “Letters to a Young Conservative,” “One way to be effective as a conservative is to figure out what annoys and disturbs liberals the most, and then keep doing it. That, in a nutshell, is the credo of today’s high-profile conservatives: Say anything to “trigger” the “libtards” and “snowflakes.” The dumber and more offensive, the better.

the backlash to #MeToo has shown us anything, it’s that people don’t much like it when women refuse to settle for the bare minimum. The current criticism of the movement – sparked in earnest by accusations against Aziz Ansari – really comes down to outrage that women would dare ask for more.  But #MeToo is not about what’s legal, it’s about what’s right.