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And, while ongoing rumours swirl about Trump's alleged (and really, indisputable) ties with Russia, France faces it's own battle with the far right.
Two links that should make you think:
Link: http://time.com/4627780/russia-national-front-marine-le-pen-putin/
and the ongoing speculation over the French election: http://live.reuters.com/Event/French_Elections_2017
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Russia seems to have had a big hand in subsidizing the far right in a lot of countries at the moment. Of course, Xenophobia is the natural result of allowing too much immigration/change too quickly, bound to fuel nationalist sentiments, but the Russians are capitalizing on that. They are - generally - "Walking softly and carrying a big stick", and like it or not we're mirroring their politics and oligarchy time and again through increasingly corrupt democracies, while they remain suspiciously in the shadows. Which makes me suspect that maybe America isn't the superpower it thinks it is, and if Russia is merely biding it's time in the wings until opportunity presents itself, what should we expect?
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It's a curious thing, but scientists have identified 208 eight new minerals, frequently at mining sites where exposed to the elements (water, air, etc) entire new minerals are formed.
Link: http://www.mining.com/human-activity-creates-208-new-mineral-species/
Imagine the chemistry that occurs when you're space probes drop into places like Jupiter and Saturn, completely foreign environments and conditions. Curious.
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A brief article on how little Darwin worked, to extraordinary results.
Link: http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/darwin-was-a-slacker-and-you-should-be-too
Which kind of struck a chord, as I'm (when not at work) a bit of a slacker, only nowhere near as productive. I mean, I don't even manage the walks, let alone the wife, the reading, the rest of it, yet I still get nothing done, and I've planned for all of the above...clearly there's something is wrong...
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Via The Awl - A Complete Taxonomy of Internet Chum, dissecting those awful banner ads that appear too frequently in the margins of "reputable" news sites, Clickbait that lures you onward and downward into the abyss that has become the internet.
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A thought experiment along the ilnes of "If you could go back in time and stop world War 2 by killing Hitler"... but instead, we'll only back a couple of decades to George W. Bush. We don't need to look to the deep past for villains. Now, the consequences of the Iraq War - unjustly, arguably illegally instigated - have been well documented. They include (by some estimates) over a million casualties, many of which were civilian - women and children. Other consequences include the destabilization of the Arab World, it's unlikely that Egypt, Syria and Turkey would have faced the revolutions they faced without the US's intervention, and it's arguable that the current rise of ISIS and Islamic Fundamentalism in large part was fueled by the power vacuum left in Saddam's absence.
So, knowing the consequences and ongoing catastrophes that have resulted from the Iraq invasion, if you could go back in time and Assassinate George W. Bush, would you? Would you take it into your hands to take one life to save a million? Or is it too uncomfortable to recognize that in many - even most - of the world's narratives, we are the villains?
Something to think about. Because Democracy is failing, and very soon we all may well be looking back to the "good old days" of Bush...