How Elon Musk, an erstwhile ‘free speech absolutist,’ became Trump’s chief propagandist

How Elon Musk, an erstwhile ‘free speech absolutist,’ became Trump’s chief propagandist

The Washington Post reports: The top political accounts on X have seen their audiences crumble in the months before the election, a signal of the platform’s diminishing influence and usefulness to political discourse under billionaire owner Elon Musk, a Washington Post analysis found. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have struggled to win the attention they once enjoyed on the platform formerly known as Twitter, according to The Post’s review of months of data for the 100 top-tweeting congressional…

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Without chaos theory social science will never understand the world

Without chaos theory social science will never understand the world

Brian Klaas writes: On 30 October 1926, Henry and Mabel Stimson stepped off a steam train in Kyoto, Japan and set in motion an unbroken chain of events that, two decades later, led to the deaths of 140,000 people in a city more than 300 km away. The American couple began their short holiday in Japan’s former imperial capital by walking from the railway yard to their room at the nearby Miyako Hotel. It was autumn. The maples had turned…

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‘Today we are all Puerto Ricans’

‘Today we are all Puerto Ricans’

  Rolling Stone reports: Ana Navarro and Sunny Hostin did not hold back when discussing the racist jokes made during Donald Trump‘s rally in New York City on Sunday. During Monday’s episode of The View, the two Latina hosts slammed Tony Hinchcliffe’s jokes as he opened for Trump with a horrid comedy set. During Sunday’s rally, Hinchcliffe made headlines for describing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” saying that Latinos “love making babies,” and joked that Black people…

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Trump is psychologically preparing Americans for an assault on the electoral system

Trump is psychologically preparing Americans for an assault on the electoral system

Anne Applebaum writes: In the final week of this election season, the Republican Party is running two different campaigns. One of them is an ugly and angry but conventional political enterprise. Donald Trump and other Republicans make speeches; party operatives seek to get out the vote; money is spent in swing states; television and radio advertisements proliferate. The people running that campaign are focused on winning the election. Last night, in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, we caught a…

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LGBTQ+ voters in these 4 states could swing the 2024 presidential election

LGBTQ+ voters in these 4 states could swing the 2024 presidential election

LGBTQ+ voters lean heavily Democratic, and they tend to turn out in high numbers. Dani VG via Getty Images By Dorian Rhea Debussy, The Ohio State University Victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election may come down to LGBTQ+ voters. Polling data shows that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are running in a near-dead heat in four states – Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. And as a scholar of LGBTQ+ politics, I suspect that LGBTQ+ voters could play an…

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Over 200,000 subscribers flee Washington Post after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement

Over 200,000 subscribers flee Washington Post after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement

NPR reports: The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure…

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Israeli parliament votes to ban UNRWA from Israel within 90 days

Israeli parliament votes to ban UNRWA from Israel within 90 days

The Guardian reports: Israel’s parliament has voted to ban the UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) from the country within 90 days, in defiance of US and other international pressure to maintain the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to the country’s Palestinian population. In a 92-10 vote late on Monday, the Knesset banned the agency, which operates in Israel according to a 1967 treaty, from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, including the areas of annexed East…

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Poll shows Israelis massively favor Trump over Harris in U.S. election

Poll shows Israelis massively favor Trump over Harris in U.S. election

The Times of Israel reports: A poll published by Channel 12 TV shows that Israelis massively favor Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris, in the upcoming US presidential elections. Asked who they prefer to be the next US president, 66 percent chose the former president, while only 17% say they want to see the US vice president win the election. A further 17% said they did not know. The channel noted that US President Joe Biden was briefly favored…

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Kama muta: the powerful emotion you didn’t know how to name

Kama muta: the powerful emotion you didn’t know how to name

David Robson writes: I am about 20 minutes into my conversation with the psychological anthropologist Alan Fiske when he starts talking about a lost kitten. “If you saw it outside, you would go pick it up and stop it getting run over by a truck, check if it’s hungry, and make sure it’s warm and safe,” he says. “Your heart goes out to it.” I’m not an ardent cat lover, and I don’t consider myself to be an especially soppy…

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What Elon Musk really wants from Trump

What Elon Musk really wants from Trump

Franklin Foer writes: Musk’s public affection for Trump begins, almost certainly, with his savvy understanding of economic interests—namely, his own. Like so many other billionaire exponents of libertarianism, he has turned the government into a spectacular profit center. His company SpaceX relies on contracts with three-letter agencies and the Pentagon. It has subsumed some of NASA’s core functions. Tesla thrives on government tax credits for electric vehicles and subsidies for its network of charging stations. By Politico’s tabulation, both companies…

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Billionaire cowards at the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are obeying fascism in advance

Billionaire cowards at the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are obeying fascism in advance

Will Bunch writes: In a famous monologue [in the Watergate movie, All The President’s Men], [Washington Post executive editor, Ben] Bradlee (played by Jason Robards, who won an Oscar) tells Woodward and Bernstein to keep reporting the story, that “nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country,” adding his trademarked newsroom cynicism, “not that any of that matters.” Yet perhaps an even more revealing scene occurs…

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Jeff Bezos killed WaPo Kamala Harris endorsement through ‘quid pro quo’ with Trump, asserts ex-columnist

Jeff Bezos killed WaPo Kamala Harris endorsement through ‘quid pro quo’ with Trump, asserts ex-columnist

The Daily Beast reports: The Washington Post’s outgoing editor-at-large and longtime columnist has made explosive claims that its owner Jeff Bezos struck a deal with Donald Trump in order to kill the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Robert Kagan, who resigned from his position on Friday after more than two decades at the publication, told the Daily Beast that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazon founder killed a plan to…

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Agents of foreign powers may gain major positions in Trump administration

Agents of foreign powers may gain major positions in Trump administration

The New York Times reports: A memo circulating among at least half a dozen advisers to former President Donald J. Trump recommends that if he is elected, he bypass traditional background checks by law enforcement officials and immediately grant security clearances to a large number of his appointees after being sworn in, according to three people briefed on the matter. The proposal is being promoted by a small group including Boris Epshteyn, a top legal adviser to Mr. Trump who…

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Republican battleground-state legal blitz falters ahead of election

Republican battleground-state legal blitz falters ahead of election

Reuters reports: Donald Trump’s Republican allies have suffered a string of courtroom setbacks in battleground U.S. presidential election states as Election Day draws closer, losses which could boost voter turnout and speed certification of the eventual winner. In the past three weeks, Trump’s allies have been dealt at least 10 court losses in battleground states that could decide the outcome of the Nov. 5 contest between Republican former President Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. On Friday,…

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