The Kremlin says it is fighting a "special military operation" to defend Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and casts it as a conflict with an "absolutist" West led by the United States which wants to destroy Russia and its culture.Kyiv and its Western backers note that many Russian speakers have fled the Russian invasion, which they say is an imperial-style land grab that has given the biggest boost to Ukrainian nationalism in a century.

Two centuries ago, long before there even was a nation state called Germany, romantic philosophers such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte espied German exceptionalism in the unique spirit or soul of the “Volk” — the people or tribe. These ideas led to the rise of nationalism in Europe.

The GOP also defeated Democratic efforts to allow taxpayer funding for abortions, legalize marijuana in the District of Columbia and extend the wider eligibility for free school lunches instituted during the pandemic. 

Within five years, I believe that almost every form of organized social behavior will be fully abstracted into a speculation layer made up of 1) objects: a set of symbols representing real world entities formerly at the heart of those organized behaviors, 2) protocols: a government-sanctioned and oligarchy-established set of rules for a virtual betting market in those symbols, and 3) tokens: a similarly sanctioned and established set of casino chips providing liquidity for the betting market in those symbols.

Many American employers continue to make their job offers contingent on fine-print conditions, such as noncompete clauses and forced arbitration, that can make it almost impossible to jump to a better workplace or hold management accountable when things go wrong. They seek out foreign workers who often, in theory or practice, lack the legal protections of U.S. citizens. They argue that they aren’t liable for any mistreatment of their subcontracted staff by the companies that technically employ those workers. And they charge staff for equipment or training essential to their duties, establishing a cycle of debt that, in conjunction with low wages, tends to build on itself

many of the forces driving rent inflation are either beyond the reach of or not immediately responsive to monetary policy. Among them is household formation, which initially dipped during the Covid-19 recession, but came roaring back soon thereafter as employment rebounded along with the economy.

When the downturn hit, the Federal Reserve loosened monetary policy aggressively, while the Treasury engaged in an unprecedented level of income replacement for workers who had lost their jobs.

Anyone who expects the Fed to blink, as it did after the last pre-pandemic selloff in late 2018, is misreading the economy, Jensen said. Things were different then. Inflation was below the Fed’s 2% target and big companies were buying back shares instead of adding capacity, stockpiling supplies and raising wages.

as the Fed tightens

Propaganda—communication designed to manipulate thought or behavior—is the opposite of persuasion. It’s running amok, juiced by social media clicks, dopamine hits, cable TV, and, as always, advertising.