'Not kissing the ring or bending the knee'

'Cassidy has failed the people of Louisiana'

Brown University announced on Wednesday its plan to increase diversity on campus despite the Supreme Court’s ruling banning affirmative action admission practices. The school follows in the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) footsteps, which publicized its attempts to skirt the Court’s ruling in ways that may open it up to lawsuits, some experts believe. […]

'Pete Hegseth likely will be out'

Prayers go out to Trevor Lawrence

A post shared on Facebook claims podcaster Joe Rogan is purportedly replacing Rachel Maddow as prime-time host at MSNBC. Verdict: False The claim is false and originally stems from a Nov. 23 post made by the satirical Facebook page “SpaceX Fanclub.” Fact Check: Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” was the number one most-listened-to podcast […]

A post shared on social media purportedly shows a video of a riot during a Black Friday sale. Verdict: False The video is from a riot after the death of George Floyd. Fact Check: Sales over the holiday weekend saw almost 200,000,000 shoppers, The National Retail Federation reported. Black Friday was the most popular day of shopping in both […]

From Texas comes a bio-technology interface nearly impossible to believe: tattoos that double as brain sensors. The engineers of this technology explain how for almost 100 years, the electroencephalogram (EEG) has been the standard method for monitoring brain activity, but along with being prohibitive to long or dense hair, it loses efficacy after about 6 […] The post Spray-on ‘e-Tattoos’ Are Easily Attached for Making Brain Scans, Replacing Outdated EEGs appeared first on Good News Network.

Books Backlist Bonanza Backlist Bonanza: 5 Underrated Books That Take You Down The Witches Road Something something maiden mother crone… By Alex Brown | Published on December 5, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Will you join me on a journey down, down, down the road, down the Witches’ Road? Where all that’s wrong is right and all that’s bad is good? I’m sure you can tell, but I’m a wee bit obsessed with wicked witches as of late. I wandered high and low to find these five witchy titles—sorry not sorry about all the Agatha All Along references, you’re just gonna have to deal with it. These books don’t feature any actual circles sewn with fate or unlocked hidden gates, but there will be blood and tears and bone… and a little romance to balance out the darkness. Something something maiden mother crone. The Lost Coast by A. R. Capetta A. R. Capetta always manages to write queer young adult fantasy so lovely yet so devastating that I can’t help but be impressed. Their novel The Lost Coast feels as haunted and atmospheric as its Northern California setting. That part of my home state, on the northern coast and nestled in the towering redwoods, is a place where fog is more common than not and it’s easy to feel isolated and lost. Danny moves there from Michigan, not entirely by chance—the coven cast a spell that pulled her and her family west. She ends up in a queer coven, the Greys, and discovers her power as a dowser. They enlist Danny’s help searching for their missing leader, Imogen, but instead she finds the corpse of a local boy, murdered with a tree branch. Something terrible haunts the woods, and it has its sights set on the coven. (Candlewick Press, 2019) The Factory Witches of Lowell by C. S. Malerich Witches go on strike! I’m into it. Unions forever. This historical fantasy is set in Lowell, Massachusetts in the mid-19th century. It is loosely inspired by the real textile mills there and the “mill girls” who went on strike for better working conditions. In the novella, the real history gets a witchcraft twist. Hannah is a secret witch, and Judith, who is a strike veteran, knows a good opportunity when she sees one. Hannah casts a spell to unite the striking women, but her magic is put to the test when Mr. Booty, the agent overseeing the mill, brings in scabs and threatens their lives. Magic and class solidarity aren’t the only things keeping Hannah and Judith in each other’s orbits; a romance blooms between the two women and they strive for something better. (Tordotcom, 2020) How to Succeed in Witchcraft by Aislinn Brophy How about a young adult contemporary fantasy with Pride & Prejudice vibes? Shay Johnson is a junior at T.K. Anderson Magical Magnet School and doing everything she can to prove herself worthy of a full-ride scholarship to a magical university. Getting a degree from one of those elite schools opens a whole new world of professional and economic opportunities to her as a witch, and not getting in means being relegated to “lesser” jobs. The only person standing in her way is Ana Alvarez, her (very cute) competition. To impress the head of the scholarship committee, Mr. B, she agrees to perform in his school play. She doesn’t agree to put up with his increasingly creepy behavior. Shay and Ana put their rivalry aside and decide to take down their teacher, no matter what the cost to their futures. (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2022) The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna Cozy fantasy is all the rage right now, and for good reason. Sometimes you want to read a book that makes you feel like you’re wrapped in a fuzzy blanket and sipping on a cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day. Mika Moon is a loner. She’s an orphan and a witch who, by necessity, keeps away from other British witches. When she gets an invite to a secret house to teach secret magical children how to control their witchcraft, she jumps at the chance. There she meets a host of strange and kooky characters, but it’s Jamie, the attractive librarian, who she can’t stop thinking about. Sangu Mandanna’s book is as charming as it is romantic. (Berkley, 2022) VenCo by Cherie Dimaline Lucky St. James, a Métis woman living in Toronto and taking care of her grandmother Stella, discovers a magical spoon. The spoon is one of seven needed for a prophecy about a coven of witches regaining their lost power. Myrna is one of those witches. She has been looking for Lucky for a while now. Lucky and Stella are sent to New Orleans to locate the final spoon, and they better do it before Jay Christos, notorious witch-hunter and general asshole, gets it. Both Christos and VenCo try to use Lucky as a means to their own ends, but she has her own plans. Cherie Dimaline is one of those authors who should always be on your TBR. Her books center Métis characters and culture in a way that feels both bracing and revelatory. (William Morrow, 2023) [end-mark] The post Backlist Bonanza: 5 Underrated Books That Take You Down The Witches Road appeared first on Reactor.

This week, I visited Buenos Aires, Argentina, to speak about free markets and socialism at the Conservative Political Action Conference. It was a fitting location: Argentina is now ground zero for the revitalization of capitalism in the West. In a time when the Right often laments “late-stage capitalism” in terms reminiscent of Noam Chomsky, while the Left laments the very existence of billionaires in the manner of Stalin targeting the kulaks, Argentina’s experiment in liberty represents an audacious foray into the world of economic dynamism and innovation. Argentina has been, for decades, a basket case. In the early 20th century, thanks to a plethora of natural resources and a burgeoning Western constitutional structure, Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries on earth on a per capita basis. But from the 1940s on, Argentina began to pursue a policy of nationalist socialism—interior redistributionism and external protectionism, along with corrupt expropriation of property. The result was decades of stagnation. Dictator Juan Peron declared himself in favor of a “social market, putting capital to the service of the economy and the well-being of the people”—pretty words that should sound familiar to economic populists of the Left and Right, and that should scare the hell out of everyone, given that Peronism led to the complete economic meltdown of the country. In fact, between 1980 and 2023, Argentina was one of the few countries in the West that saw a relative decrease in living standard. The time it takes to work to buy basic goods actually increased during that period. Finally, the Argentine people had enough. They elected as their president Javier Milei, an audacious and magnetic Austrian school economist dedicated to free markets. “Viva la libertad, carajo!” he shouted while wielding a chainsaw—signifying proposed cuts to government spending—on the campaign trail. As Milei told the arrogant interventionists at Davos, Switzerland, “Economic freedom, limited government, and unlimited respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth. The impoverishment produced by collectivism is not a fantasy, nor is it an inescapable fate. It’s a reality that we Argentines know very well.” Milei has pursued his vision with alacrity. And the results are nothing short of astonishing. While shouting “afuera!” he has cut the number of ministries from 18 to eight, fired members of the bloated public sector en masse and dumped the corrupt intermediaries in the welfare system. He has slashed the budget by 32%, brought a fiscal surplus for the first time in years, and brought inflation down from a month-on-month rate of 25% to 2%. The stock market has skyrocketed. Investors are once again looking at Argentina as a target for their money. That’s because Milei understands the power of liberty. Now the rest of the West must follow. For too long, the West has followed the fallacy-ridden economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes, who preached government interventionism and redistributionism as a corrective to the animal forces of free markets. And the result has been stagnation, unsustainable debt and, finally, radical inflation. Milei shows it doesn’t have to be this way. So do Argentines. Perhaps the most astonishing element of Milei’s presidency is his continuing popularity. Tough economic measures often deliver short-term pain in favor of long-term health, and that’s what makes them so difficult to sustain in a democracy. But Argentines are clearly willing to take their medicine in order to ensure the possibility of a brighter future. Now it’s time for the rest of the West to follow suit. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post How Milei’s Free-Market Revolution Is Transforming Argentina appeared first on The Daily Signal.