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Mike Duncan, the mind behind the podcasts The History of Rome (previously) and Revolutions (previously) has a new fictional podcast about the Martian Revolution of the 22nd Century.Duncan brings his considerable historical studies to bear on the SF story of political and economic turmoil. Slightly annoyingly, it does not have its own feed, but can be accessed via the Revolutions podcast on any podcatcher...

The sociologist Matthew Desmond believes that being poor is different in the U.S. than in other rich countries. Why do so many Americans live in poverty? Because so many rich people benefit from it.

These playlists preserve a slight human touch, representing user "folksonomies," or organic, user-generated systems of classifying content compared to boring corporate categories like "mid-20s white woman who likes pop-rock." They set the scene, address the listener, and offer a seductive promise—that however you ended up listening, whether by direct search or through an automated recommendation, this group of songs is bespoke and meant just...

Republicans don't care if women die from abortion bans — but they don't want you to know about it. Even before abortion bans were enacted in 2021 (Texas) and 2022 (trigger laws in multiple states), the US had by far the highest rate of maternal mortality of any high-income nation. Per 100,000 live births, the American rate of maternal mortality was (in 2022) 22.3,...

A health insurance executive assassinated This morning in New York an unknown person shot dead Brian Thompson, the CEO of health insurance company UnitedHealthcare. Early reports describe the killer waiting for the victim, then leaving the scene, pursued by a growing manhunt.UnitedHealthcare is owned by UnitedHealth Group (unpaywalled NYT link)

I first heard about Love Nikki, the mobile dress up game here on metafilter, so thought I would share that the newest iteration is about to start! This is a cozy, open wold fashion dress up game with some surprisingly deep world lore TrailerThis version is a 3d world, with of course an expensive gatcha if you want all the outfits, but you don't...

Global Push for Cooperation as Space Traffic Crowds Earth Orbit - "More than 14,000 satellites including some 3,500 inactive surround the globe in low Earth orbit, showed data from U.S.-based Slingshot Aerospace. Alongside those are about 120 million pieces of debris from launches, collisions and wear-and-tear of which only a few thousand are large enough to track." (/. ;)"There's no time to lose on...

Trans rights case lands at Supreme Court (AP, NYT, WaPo, CNN, SCOTUSBlog, ACLU, HRC)Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson released the following statement ahead of oral arguments: "At its heart, this case is about human dignity. Transgender youth are not political pawns—they are children who deserve compassion, medical care and the same opportunities to thrive as all youth, and their parents deserve the same...

10 Magical Feminist Books to Inspire Creative Resistance. 11 Short Story Collections that Practice Magical Feminism. Nathalie Clavijo's "Mi casa de los Espíritus (My house of spirits): Challenging patriarchy with magical feminism."From Wikipedia: "Magical feminism is a subgenre of the magical realism literary genre. The term was first used in 1987 by Patricia Hart to describe the works of Isabel Allende.[1][2] More recent critical...

And yet in certain respects the area is deadly. Starting with the Clinton administration, the federal government has enforced a policy known as Prevention Through Deterrence, which aims to force crossers into more dangerous terrain. The result has been what the anthropologist Jason De León calls "a killing machine that simultaneously uses and hides behind the viciousness of the Sonoran Desert." Since 1994, Border...

"I'm not a very rageful person," Gatto said, "but for some reason, these lights brought it out of me. And I kind of realized that's why I had to do something about it. Because no one's going to come help us." Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration receives more consumer complaints about headlights than any...

Sex workers in Belgium receive fundamental labour rights in world-first. New legislation gives Belgian sex workers the right to refuse clients, access unemployment support and mandates sweeping safety protocols for employers.