'We Put Sharp Knives in the Hands of Children'

Few Americans are shedding tears for Kevin McCarthy. The former House speaker engendered little public sympathy as he tried, and ultimately failed, to wrangle a narrow and fractured Republican majority into a functioning governing body. His ouster on Tuesday has, in the short term, paralyzed Congress and increased the likelihood of a prolonged government shutdown in the coming weeks.Republicans are only now beginning to contemplate the significant political ramifications of tossing McCarthy. Retaining their narrow majority in the House next year was already going to be a challenge. But the GOP will now have to defend its four-seat advantage without a leader who, for all of McCarthy’s political shortcomings, was widely recognized as its best fundraiser, candidate recruiter, and campaign strategist. “They just took out our best player,” a rueful Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma told me on Thursday, referring to the eight renegade Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy.

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The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith

“There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things.”

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'No' campaign is dominating the Voice debate among Chinese Australians on WeChat: new research

Some 1.4 million Australians are of Chinese ancestry, or about 5.5% of the population. Given the size of the community, it will be an important voting bloc in the upcoming referendum on a Voice to Parliament for First Nations people.But while the government and the “yes” and “no” campaigns are translating some information into Chinese, it appears very little is gaining traction in the Chinese Australian online community.

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Nobel peace prize 2023: award for Iranian women's rights protester highlights fight against declining democracy around the world

One hundred days after Iranians first protested the killing of 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini for wearing her hijab incorrectly, Narges Mohammadi sat down in her prison cell to write a letter to the country’s women. She promised: “We shall not back down until the moment of victory, meaning the establishment of democracy, peace, human rights and an end to tyranny”. In recognition of her indomitable spirit – and the bravery shown by thousands of Iranians at the forefront of the woman-life-freedom movement – Mohammadi has won the 2023 Nobel peace prize.

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Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, in prison for speaking up against human rights violations, has been a voice for women for almost two decades

“Woman, Life, Freedom,” the slogan adopted by Iranians to protest the unjust death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 is, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the most suitable way to describe the work of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Narges Mohammadi.Mohammadi is the second Iranian woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, exactly 20 years after Shirin Ebadi was awarded the prize for her work to promote democracy and initiate legal reform under Islamic law in 2003. Mohammadi is the fourth Nobel Peace Prize laureate to be chosen while still incarcerated, joining the ranks of Aung San Suu Kyi and Ales Bialiatski.

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After a shocking Hamas assault on Israel, both sides brace for the devastating fallout

Almost 50 years ago to the day, Israel had failed to anticipate the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur war – a shock attack on its borders by a coalition of Arab states. Now, it appears the country’s intelligence apparatuses have fallen victim to a false sense of security once again.

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A 'no' win will make it harder for government to tackle Indigenous disadvantage: Albanese

The government’s efforts to tackle Indigenous disadvantage will not be as effective if Saturday’s referendum fails, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said.Albanese has also reconfirmed that if there is a “no” vote he will not seek to legislate a Voice.

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Ecowas rules to protect pastoralists discourage investments in modern livestock farming

A common sight around west Africa is to see cattle grazing freely, even in major cities, on highways and in airports. Every year, about 300 million head of livestock (mostly cattle) move across west Africa. Based on seasonal factors, they leave their usual grazing areas in search of water and pasture.

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South Africa's surveillance law is changing but citizens' privacy is still at risk

In a ringing judgment for the right to privacy, the South African Constitutional Court declared sections of the country’s main communication surveillance law unconstitutional in February 2021. The court gave parliament three years to pass a new law remedying the areas of unconstitutionality. The February 2024 deadline for these amendments is looming fast.

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The Atlantic Ocean's major current system is slowing down - but a 21st century collapse is unlikely

Whether the water at your local beach is being roiled by nasty weather or is a perfectly calm expanse of blue, there’s always a great deal going on under the surface. The ocean is composed of various currents and water masses; those currents flow around the world through what is called thermohaline circulation. This circulation drives the distribution of heat, salinity and nutrients throughout the world’s oceans, ensuring that our whole planet is habitable for life.

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The Land of Trump and Gaetz

Has there been a politician both as broadly despised, including in his own party, and yet as improbably effective as Matt Gaetz? When the Florida congressman—previously best known for his unflinching support of Donald Trump’s election denialism and for being investigated over allegations of sex trafficking (he denied them, and the Department of Justice declined to bring charges)—engineered the removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, last week, he had the support of exactly seven other House Republicans, out of two hundred and twenty-one. McCarthy’s supporters denounced Gaetz’s faction on the floor as “chaos” agents “running with scissors.” Even Newt Gingrich, a spiritual grandfather of Gaetz’s intraparty Molotovism, later called for him to be ejected from the Republican caucus. In a sense, Gaetz was doing what Trump has been doing this month as he contests a court case: testing whether the MAGA movement can operate simply as an ongoing insurrection against whatever it is that its principals don’t like.And yet, in the decisive hour-long debate over vacating the Speakership on Tuesday afternoon, Gaetz also demonstrated a keen eye for political weakness. McCarthy’s supporters rose in waves, protesting that it wasn’t fair to fire a Speaker who had made such progress in passing bills and in oversight. Gaetz kept asking, What progress? Many of the bills that the McCarthy faction was bragging about (some proposing steep cuts to social spending and unwinding the Biden Administration’s energy policies), having been dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate, “are not law,” Gaetz said. “It is difficult to champion oversight when House Republicans haven’t even sent a subpoena to Hunter Biden,” he added. “It sort of looks like failure theatre.” As the chamber braced for the final vote, Gaetz, standing in front of a bank of Democrats who were regarding him skeptically but would nonetheless be voting with him, laid down his notes and stopped speaking, almost totally friendless and yet the central figure in Washington.

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Waking to an Attack from Hamas

At seven this morning, our son and daughter waded into our bedroom, a sleepy Saturday in Tel Aviv, the tail end of the long Sukkot holiday. We all snuggled together in bed, bleary-eyed. The kids started a game that soon turned into low-grade squabble, when, suddenly, an air-raid siren blared. We ducked into our building’s stairwell, our “safe space” for lack of any other in this old area of the city. Some neighbors were already there, in their pajamas, everyone smiling at one another awkwardly. We spoke of previous rounds of rocket fire, all of which had been intercepted by the Israeli military to a high degree, so panic was not in the air; even the kids were acting blasé. But then we opened our phones.Surreal sights and early reports from around the country began to trickle in: Israeli vehicles had been taken over by Palestinian militants, and were barrelling through southern Israeli cities; ski-masked terrorists were shooting indiscriminately at oncoming cars and into homes in Israeli towns. Several gunmen were seen paragliding across the border, and there were news reports that an Israeli military base had been commandeered by Hamas. Friends posted about their relatives living in kibbutzim on the Gaza border whose homes had been raided while they were huddled inside with small children, pleading for help. Images emerged purporting to show four Israeli men, stripped down to their underwear on a sidewalk of an unspecified southern city, militants standing next to them, holding rifles over the Israelis’ heads. The coming hours and days will tell us the details, the facts, the numbers—but the fear is immediate.

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Notes from Your Home Inspection

The back yard is currently infested with people hoping your offer falls through so that they can spring in with offers of their own and finally get a godforsaken house. None of them know you. All of them hate you.The refrigerator may look brand new and top of the line, but it’s actually an extreme threat to your safety for reasons we can’t get into right now. We would be willing to take it off of your hands for the low price of three hundred dollars.

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Amazon's Most Ambitious New Sci-Fi Movie Had One Major Hurdle

Foe is a unique story. In Iain Reid’s original novel, readers are dropped into the lives of Hen and Junior, a couple living on a remote farm in the near future. But their marriage is threatened by a stranger who announces that Junior has been selected to travel to an orbital space station. To keep Hen company while Junior is on his two-year assignment, the aerospace corporation the stranger works for will create a biomechanical duplicate of Junior, right down to his personality and memories. Readers of Foe will notice a structural quirk: only some characters get quotation marks with their dialogue. It’s a clever narrative trick the author uses to reveal a jaw-dropping twist.But in Garth Davis’ feature adaptation of Foe, the filmmaker had to figure out a different way to lay out this twist. Davis, who co-wrote the script with Reid, solved the problem by shifting the story’s point of view.

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Do Cats Need To Exercise? A Veterinarian Reveals The Ultimate Feline Workout

From apex predators and kings of the jungle (savannah, actually) to goblin babies unable to kill a cockroach, cats have near-perfect physiques. The latter, however, likely doesn’t need to hunt for its food. Even if today’s house cat doesn’t need to work to survive, keeping their body healthy is still critical to a long, healthy life with their human. Indeed, exercise for cats is indeed necessary.Feline exercises, however, shouldn’t feel like a chore for you or your cat. In fact, you’re probably helping your cat exercise every day already. Dr. Jardayna Werlin, a veterinarian and the medical director at Veterinary Centers of America (VCA) City Cats Hospital in Massachusetts, suggests how much time your kitty needs to frolic every day to stay in good health.

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More Than 100 Years Later, Physicists Still Haven't Cracked Superconductivity

Superconductivity at room temperature remains elusive a century after a Nobel went to the scientist who demonstrated it. On April 8, 1911, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes scribbled in pencil an almost unintelligible note into a kitchen notebook: “near enough null.”

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The Real Reason Science Can't Explain Why People Lose Their Sense Of Smell

The pandemic brought attention to an overlooked condition. Researchers are still fighting to show smell matters.Growing up, Julian Meeks knew what a life without a sense of smell could look like. He’d watched this grandfather navigate the condition known as anosmia, observing that he didn’t perceive flavor and only enjoyed eating very salty or meaty foods.

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Amazon Released These Awesome Early Deals Ahead of its Prime Big Deals Days & They're Selling out Fast

Amazon’s fall Prime sales event starts October 10, and it’s happening just in time for the holidays. Smart shoppers can expect incredible discounts on entertaining essentials, cozy home decor, cool tech, and genius gift ideas — but some deals dropped early. Inverse editors are already rounding up some of the best live pre-sale deals, so you can save more than 50% before the event even starts. Act fast, though, because even if the sales last, the stock won’t.This cool mist humidifier can run for up to 50 hours straight, humidifying rooms up to 430 square feet in size. Turn the dial to tweak the mist output to your exact liking, and utilize the timer to have the machine turn off automatically after one, two, four, or eight hours.

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The 50 Coolest Things With Near-Perfect Amazon Reviews That You Never Knew Existed

If you don’t already own an indoor s’mores maker and reusable coffee pods, prepare to meet your new fave buys. There are plenty of unique and useful things on Amazon that have been racking up near-perfect reviews from products to make your home (and car) cleaner and more comfortable to genius personal items like a flexible flaxseed hot and cold compress. These clever products start at just $6 and everything is less than $40.You no longer have to worry about your bottle (or even mug) being too large to take on the road. This car cup holder expander has an adjustable diameter to accommodate almost any drink you’re enjoying. Plus, it has a thick base pad and rubber side tabs to keep everything secure. A cutout on one side accommodates mug handles.

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'Ahsoka' Episode 8's Underwhelming New Villains Reveal A Bigger Star Wars Problem

In The Mandalorian Season 2 finale, Din Djarin and his allies strap on their invincible body armor, board Moff Gideon’s flagship, and promptly massacre everyone inside, effortlessly gunning down the Imperial villains who try to stop them. According to the good folks at listofdeaths, our heroes kill 107 people, who collectively put up about as much of a fight as children playing paintball against commandos. If we saw their families back on Coruscant weeping over their bloody bodies this would be utterly horrifying, or at least a scene more befitting Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Gideon. But they’re stormtroopers, so we’re supposed to forget about them the moment they vanish from the screen.That’s why stormtroopers are faceless, interchangeable goons, and why previous Star Wars antagonists have included clones and droids. Our heroes need hordes of baddies they can kill en masse without feeling guilty, or even acknowledging at all. We’d say Ahsoka killed Morgan Elsbeth in the finale, but we wouldn’t say she killed 100 space farmboys who saw Imperial propaganda and joined up to escape their two-bit planets because they didn’t have their own personal Obi-Wans to guide them. Those were just natural obstacles with limbs.

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This Dangerous Infectious Disease Could Radically Change Over the Next Century

Back at the turn of the 21st century, Valley fever was an obscure fungal disease in the United States, with fewer than 3,000 reported cases per year, mostly in California and Arizona. Two decades later, cases of Valley fever are exploding, increasing more than sevenfold and expanding to other states.And Valley fever isn’t alone. Fungal diseases, in general, are appearing in places they have never been seen before, and previously harmless or mildly harmful fungi are turning deadly for people. One likely reason for this worsening fungal situation, scientists say, is climate change. Shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns are expanding where disease-causing fungi occur; climate-triggered calamities can help fungi disperse and reach more people; and warmer temperatures create opportunities for fungi to evolve into more dangerous agents of disease.

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The World's First Dog-Fox Hybrid Species Reveals A Hard Truth About Domestication

Next time you see a fox when out walking with your dog, pause for a moment and ponder their relatedness. Dogs and foxes are distinct but distantly related canine species.Until recently, scientists thought it was impossible for them to breed. However, the discovery of a dog-fox hybrid in Brazil suggests that The Fox and the Hound might sometimes be a little more Lady and the Tramp.

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Supporting Decarbonization Efforts in Every Link of Your Supply Chain - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

“Many barriers have prevented businesses from decarbonizing, including a lack of awareness, a dearth of pragmatic tools, and limited access to resources and tools to design and execute their own effective decarbonization programs,” said Steve Wilhite, president of Schneider Electric Sustainability Business.

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How 1% Performance Improvements Led to Olympic Gold

When Sir Dave Brailsford became head of British Cycling in 2002, the team had almost no record of success: British cycling had only won a single gold medal in its 76-year history. That quickly changed under Sir Dave’s leadership. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, his squad won seven out of 10 gold medals available in track cycling, and they matched the achievement at the London Olympics four years later. Sir Dave now leads Britain’s first ever professional cycling team, which has won three of the last four Tour de France events.Sir Dave, a former professional cycler who holds an MBA, applied a theory of marginal gains to cycling — he gambled that if the team broke down everything they could think of that goes into competing on a bike, and then improved each element by 1%, they would achieve a significant aggregated increase in performance.

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