News
CLARISSA Social Protection Intervention: preliminary findings
“This note documents preliminary findings from the trial of an innovative social policy intervention for tackling poverty, improving well-being, and addressing the causes of the worst forms of child labour (WFCL). The Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) social protection intervention is a universal and unconditional cash-plus programme, combining intensive community mobiliser […]
CLARISSA Social Protection Intervention: preliminary findings
Stop Reporting On Biden’s Angry Feelings Toward Israel. It’s Not News. It’s Not Interesting.
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/3f75afbf81e6e79bbf38c73f6d9608f1/href
The imperial media cannot stop babbling about how angry President Biden’s feelings are feeling toward Israel like it’s some kind of actual news story, even as this administration cheerfully pours mountains of weaponry into backing Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza.
If you haven’t been following the mass media’s coverage of Biden and Gaza for the last six months, the entire thing can be summed up by the headline of a new Politico article, “‘Angry’ Biden not changing Israel policy after deadly strike on aid workers”.
This is in reference to the Israeli military’s deliberate assassination of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, which conveniently resulted in multiple humanitarian aid organizations ceasing their operations in Gaza out of fear of being attacked themselves. The attack has been drawing widespread condemnation throughout the western world, because six of the workers killed came from western nations and are therefore considered real human beings by the western empire. Biden released a statement saying how “outraged and heartbroken” he is about the incident, drawing a fresh deluge of frenzied reporting about how the president’s feelings are feeling about Israel.
Dave DeCamp on Twitter: ""I'm so angry I can barely sign off on this 2,000 pound bomb shipment" https://t.co/43YpqqlVuI / Twitter"
"I'm so angry I can barely sign off on this 2,000 pound bomb shipment" https://t.co/43YpqqlVuI
But as the aforementioned Politico article illustrates, none of this actually matters because this administration’s Israel policy has not changed. Biden is reportedly set to greenlight a sale of fighter jets to Israel in a deal worth $18 billion, and this is just a few days after we learned that this administration has quietly signed off on the delivery of more of the 2,000-pound bombs with which the IDF has been obliterating so many civilians in Gaza. The Biden White House still adamantly refuses to acknowledge that Israel has even once violated humanitarian law these past six months.
So why are we being told by the news media over and over and over again that Biden is super duper upset with the government of Israel? It doesn’t matter. At all. It’s not a news story. It’s not interesting. Nobody with functioning gray matter between their ears gives the tiniest sliver of a fuck. But they’ve been hammering and hammering and hammering on this idiotic narrative for months.
The answer of course is because the western news media are propaganda services for the western empire of which Washington is the central hub, and their job is therefore to make the US government look good. By emphasizing the point over and over and over again that the US president strongly disapproves of the Israeli regime’s behavior in Gaza, the imperial spinmeisters are distancing the White House from one of the darker chapters in the history of the United States even as Biden signs off on this mass atrocity day after day despite being fully capable of ending it at any time.
Eli Valley on Twitter: "Israel used an automated system called "Where's Daddy?" to ensure it killed AI-designated targets while the targets were at home with their spouses and children:https://t.co/E18lbV8Dif / Twitter"
Israel used an automated system called "Where's Daddy?" to ensure it killed AI-designated targets while the targets were at home with their spouses and children:https://t.co/E18lbV8Dif
This fuzzbrained nonsense is happening at the same time a major report from +972 reveals that Israel has been using an AI system to compile kill lists of suspected members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad which have been carried out with hardly any human verification. One automated system, psychopathically named “Where’s Daddy?”, tracks suspects to their homes so that they can be killed along with their entire families. The IDF has been knowingly killing 15 to 20 civilians at a time to kill one junior Hamas operative, and up to 100 civilians at a time to take out a senior official.
This is the kind of murderous depravity that the Biden administration has been giving the thumbs up to day after day for half a year now while the imperial media prattle on like preschoolers about the president’s feelings.
Stop telling us about the president’s feelings. Stop telling us he’s “angry” and “frustrated” with Israel. No one cares. Nobody gives a shit how Biden’s feelings feel about the government he’s helping carry out a genocide. All that matters is that he’s helping them commit genocide.
This six-month mass atrocity has been one nonstop insult to our intelligence.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
New Report on Cambridge MA Guaranteed Income Pilot
“In September 2021, Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and the Cambridge Community Foundation launched the Cambridge Recurring Income for Success & Empowerment (RISE) guaranteed income (GI) pilot. Designed to address growing economic disparities and racial inequities, Cambridge RISE provided $500 recurring monthly payments for 18 months to 130 randomly selected single-caretaker households living below 80% of the […]
22nd Annual Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) Conference July 22-23, 2024
“The Basic Income Guarantee Conference (BIG!) is the only annual conference in the U.S. focused on building and supporting the thriving basic income movement as we drive towards national policy. The BIG Conference is a BIG TENT event that includes pilot participants, policy analysts, pilot administrators, community based organizations, activists, artists, researchers and more as we share […]
22nd Annual Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) Conference July 22-23, 2024
Launch of Indian Basic Income Coalition (iBIC)
“While India is a rich site of several Basic Income Pilots held by Research and Governmental agencies, there is a recent uptrend in the number of cash-based social policies in several states, especially with evidence that shows a marked increase in several indicators of a better life. The time has come in India when the […]
Universal Basic Income: The Truth Explained by a Top Expert
As a leading expert on the topic of unconditional/universal basic income (UBI), a subject area I’ve been focused on now since 2013, I’m constantly trying to correct the same misunderstandings and incessantly debunking misinformation/disinformation spread about the concept and the evidence behind it. I created a slide deck earlier this year for a webinar I […]
Israel Keeps Getting More Murderous
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/aa838fbf8a21b41d9e33613a2cf3c215/href
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In the span of just a few hours we learned that Israel committed a horrific massacre at al-Shifa hospital, struck an Iranian consulate in Syria killing multiple Iranian military officers, and killed a vehicle full of international aid workers in an airstrike. This murderous regime is out of control.
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Israel is so dedicated to protecting civilian life that it’s deliberately gunning down unarmed Palestinians whenever they walk within firing range and then adding them to its “Hamas terrorists killed” tally. Haaretz reports that the IDF has set up “kill zones” in Gaza where they just shoot anything that moves, with an IDF reserve officer saying the number of Hamas members Israel claims to have killed is massively inflated because “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” Haaretz notes that the three escaped Israeli hostages the IDF gunned down in December had wandered into one of these kill zones.
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A Doctors Without Borders physician went on Sky News to talk about Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, and the Murdoch shill anchor who was interviewing her asked her if Hamas was active in al-Shifa hospital fighting Israelis. The doctor, Tanya Haj-Hassan, told him “I am just shocked that we’re still having this conversation” and went on to describe how Israel’s assault on Gazan healthcare workers is so methodical that Gazan hospital staff have been changing out of their scrubs before leaving work because Israeli troops are picking off anyone in scrubs.
Saul Staniforth on Twitter: ""Do you know if Hamas were there [in Al Shifa hospital]?"@Tanyaalih: "I am just shocked that we're still having this conversation. [The Israelis] executed tens of people point blank, including one of our colleagues, Dr Ahmed Almaqadma, & his mother, who's also a physician" pic.twitter.com/zqImcL5MH2 / Twitter"
"Do you know if Hamas were there [in Al Shifa hospital]?"@Tanyaalih: "I am just shocked that we're still having this conversation. [The Israelis] executed tens of people point blank, including one of our colleagues, Dr Ahmed Almaqadma, & his mother, who's also a physician" pic.twitter.com/zqImcL5MH2
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At the beginning of the year I tweeted, “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex. Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.” Since then we’ve learned that the IDF has been experimenting with new military robots in its Gaza assault, and that Israeli startups are now looking to start exporting new AI-powered war machinery marketed as having been “battle-tested” in Gaza.
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Israel is a synthetic, artificially created state. It did not arise organically from the naturally existing conditions of the land and its people; it was unnaturally forced into existence by outside powers. It is more synthetic than meth. It is more synthetic than Pete Buttigieg.
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Normal person: Stop doing genocide
Crazy person: But the TV told me rape happened six months ago
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Netanyahu: [livestreams himself kicking a Palestinian baby off a cliff]
Netanyahu: [staring into camera] I kicked a Palestinian baby off a cliff because I hate Palestinians and I want to genocide them.
State Department press corps: Any comment on the video of Netanyahu kicking a Palestinian baby off a cliff and saying he wants to commit genocide?
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller: [smirking] Uh, I have seen that video, and I can say that we’re looking into it and we’re in touch with our counterparts in Israel on this issue. Beyond that I would only reiterate our position that claims that Israel is committing genocide are unfounded and anti-semitic in nature, and I have nothing further to add at this time.
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I’ve been mentally referring to Matthew Miller as “Smirkula”.
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Another one of the extremely stupid things Israel apologists ask us to believe is that Israel was right on the cusp of agreeing to give Palestinians a state before October 7, but because of October 7 that generous prospect is now off the table.
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Rightists who see through the empire propaganda on the Ukraine proxy war but unquestioningly swallow all empire propaganda about Gaza are even dumber than people who’ve swallowed both, because they’re just letting their favorite political faction do their thinking for them.
They’re also dumber because they saw and understood that the mass media churn out propaganda constantly, but still assumed we’re being told the truth about Gaza. They broke out of the propaganda matrix, then jacked their minds right back into it. They’re like someone who pulled his head out of his ass, looked around, and then shoved it right back in.
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If only the Democrats who rallied so aggressively against a fictional conspiracy between Trump and Russia could harness that same energy to oppose a real genocide by Biden and Israel.
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Just ignore anyone who condemns Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza but still supports Biden. Their Israel-Palestine rhetoric is just for show.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Israel’s Savage Destruction Of Gaza’s Healthcare System Is Exactly What It Looks Like
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/af7576a80c5367fc347ec21df4f3b449/href
Israel has ended its assault on the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, because there is nothing left to assault. The facility — the largest medical complex in Gaza where hundreds of civilians had been sheltering — is now an empty, unusable, burnt-out husk. Witnesses report hundreds of corpses in and around the complex, with video footage showing human body parts protruding from the earth and bodies with zip ties on their wrists.
Israel is currently doing its usual song and dance where it claims the hospital was a Hamas headquarters and everyone it killed there was a “terrorist”, but at this point the only people buying that schtick are the ones who desperately need to. This was a massacre of profound savagery. It’s as plain as day to anyone who isn’t deeply invested in pretending otherwise.
Israel, which at the beginning of the Gaza onslaught had adamantly denied that it would ever attack a hospital, has since launched hundreds of documented attacks on Gaza’s healthcare services and has destroyed most of its healthcare system. Just today the director-general of the World Health Organization announced that an Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s al-Aqsa Hospital compound killed four people and injured seventeen.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Twitter: "A @WHO team was on a humanitarian mission at Al-Aqsa Hospital in #Gaza, when a tent camp inside the hospital compound was hit by an Israeli airstrike today. Four people were killed and 17 injured. WHO staff are all accounted for. The team was at the hospital assessing the needs... / Twitter"
A @WHO team was on a humanitarian mission at Al-Aqsa Hospital in #Gaza, when a tent camp inside the hospital compound was hit by an Israeli airstrike today. Four people were killed and 17 injured. WHO staff are all accounted for. The team was at the hospital assessing the needs...
Oxford University professor Nick Maynard, who spent time working at al-Aqsa Hospital earlier this year, recently accused the IDF of “systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system” in Gaza.
“It’s not just about targeting the buildings, it’s about systematically destroying the infrastructure of the hospitals,” says Maynard. “Destroying the oxygen tanks at the al-Shifa hospital, deliberately destroying the CT scanners and making it much more difficult to rebuild that infrastructure. If it was just targeting Hamas militants, why are they deliberately destroying the infrastructure of these institutions?”
Why indeed? If the objective is to target Hamas, why trash the hospital’s medical equipment? If the objective is to target Hamas, why destroy the whole complex and make it unusable as a healthcare facility?
Logically we can only conclude that it isn’t about targeting Hamas at all. It’s about destroying Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure.
Dr. Mads Gilbert on Twitter: "Today, we witness the total ISraeli destruction of the most important, 700 beds specialty hospital in Gaza, Al Shifa Medical Complex. It was established 78 years ago during the British Mandate, the name Shifa meaning 'The House of Healing'; now turned into a 'House of Death' by... pic.twitter.com/l53luccMtz / Twitter"
Today, we witness the total ISraeli destruction of the most important, 700 beds specialty hospital in Gaza, Al Shifa Medical Complex. It was established 78 years ago during the British Mandate, the name Shifa meaning 'The House of Healing'; now turned into a 'House of Death' by... pic.twitter.com/l53luccMtz
Why would Israel want to destroy Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure? The answer to that question has been clear for months: to make the land uninhabitable for the Palestinians. The same reason they’re deliberately starving Gazans, destroying their homes, continually moving them from place to place and bombing every “safe zone” they create.
This is naturally giving rise to a situation in which the inhabitants of Gaza will either die or flee to some other country — which just so happens to be exactly what Israel wants them to do.
It’s so obvious what’s happening here. Painfully obvious. Poke-you-in-the-eyeballs obvious. But we’re still subjected to a western political-media class who keeps forcefully telling us that this blatant ethnic cleansing campaign is not what it looks like. Telling us that all this starvation and destruction and elimination of healthcare services and the way it directly places pressure on the Palestinians to leave their homeland is just a series of coincidences arising from Israel’s “war” of “defense”. That only by pure happenstance does it look exactly the same as the advancement of an agenda that Israelis have sought to advance for generations.
Well I personally am through with having my intelligence insulted, and I hope you are too. The sky is blue, a spade’s a spade, the emperor has no clothes, and Israel is conducting a very obvious ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Rolling Stone cites Fred Ledley’s INET working paper on the NIH seed funding of pharmaceuticals
A Rolling Stone article by Andrew Perez cited Fred Ledley’s INET working paper on the NIH seed funding of pharmaceuticals.
"Republicans rely on the wrong data to try to justify repealing Biden’s Medicare drug negotiation plan."
...
“According to a recent RAND Corporation study, drug companies charge 278 percent higher prices for medicines in the United States than in other wealthy countries. The primary reason for this is that Congress for decades barred Medicare from negotiating drug prices, something virtually all other countries. Adding insult to injury, the U.S. government helps fund research and development on all drugs that are approved for sale.”
Israel Lies About Being A Victim So That It Can Victimize
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/2e593fae37a0fe0965453de107ccc0c3/href
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The Washington Post reports that in recent days the Biden administration has quietly signed off on sending Israel billions of dollars worth of fighter jets and the 2,000-pound bombs that have been causing so much death and destruction in Gaza, even as Israel prepares to launch a bloody assault on the strip’s densely-populated southernmost point.
Literally just completely ignore every single thing US officials say about the need to protect civilians and how Biden’s feelings are privately “frustrated” with Netanyahu. Just ignore their entire narrative about what their goals are in Gaza. Their actions make it clear.
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Protesters from Palestine Action have forced Israel-based arms dealer Elbit Systems to permanently close one of its factories in the UK as demonstrators have made it too difficult for the factory to operate. We’ll never vote the empire away, but we might someday be able to direct action it away.
Lowkey on Twitter: "Israel's largest arms company, Elbit Systems, has permanently vacated its weapons factory in Tamworth, Staffordshire, following a relentless campaign by Palestine Action.This is the third Elbit Systems site in the UK to be shut down permanently by Palestine Action. / Twitter"
Israel's largest arms company, Elbit Systems, has permanently vacated its weapons factory in Tamworth, Staffordshire, following a relentless campaign by Palestine Action.This is the third Elbit Systems site in the UK to be shut down permanently by Palestine Action.
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Video footage has surfaced of IDF troops murdering two unarmed Palestinians in cold blood and then burying their bodies with bulldozers to conceal their crime. This is surely not anywhere close to the first time such a thing has happened in Gaza, and is yet another sign that the death toll from this onslaught is probably a massive undercount.
Israel’s assault on Gaza features heavy earth-moving equipment more extensively than any other military operation anyone’s ever seen. One reason is because it’s a great way to destroy Palestinian homes. Another reason is because it’s a great way to hide dead Palestinian bodies.
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An IDF commander has told Israeli media that on October 7 he made the decision to fire on vehicles he knew could have Israelis in them because “it’s better to stop the abduction and that they not be taken,” adding more weight to the mountain of evidence that Israeli troops fired on Israelis on October 7 to prevent them from being taken hostage. Israeli bombs and blockades have been picking off the remaining hostages ever since, with Israel now estimating that only 60 to 70 of the 134 hostages are still alive.
Whenever you run into an Israel apologist who is defending against criticisms of Israel’s actions in Gaza by saying “Hamas just needs to release the hostages and this all ends,” maybe go ahead and remind them of this.
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: ""This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."~ Aaron Bushnell https://t.co/OHnIH4OPRn / Twitter"
"This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."~ Aaron Bushnell https://t.co/OHnIH4OPRn
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ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt just went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and compared wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh to wearing a Nazi armband. The mass media keep having this lunatic on as an expert analyst and he keeps saying the most bat shit insane things imaginable. Any screaming schizophrenic off the street would be just as qualified as Greenblatt.
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A former ranking IDF officer has told Haaretz that Israel is conducting “a war of cruel rich people” which is causing many times more destruction than necessary to accomplish its stated objectives against Hamas.
“In principle, it would be possible to arrive at similar achievements with 10 percent of the destruction we have caused,” the unnamed source told Haaretz.
Ten percent. Israel is causing ten times more damage than it needs to to achieve its stated objectives because its stated objectives are false — Israel’s real goal is not to defeat Hamas, it’s to grab a bunch of land from a Palestinian territory.
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: ""This is all Benjamin Netanyahu's fault" has swiftly become the mantra of the western liberal political-media class. The idea is to pretend one guy was singularly responsible for the multinational effort to commit genocide in Gaza so that no big systemic changes need to be made. https://t.co/7JllUMun1Q / Twitter"
"This is all Benjamin Netanyahu's fault" has swiftly become the mantra of the western liberal political-media class. The idea is to pretend one guy was singularly responsible for the multinational effort to commit genocide in Gaza so that no big systemic changes need to be made. https://t.co/7JllUMun1Q
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Of all the pants-on-head idiotic things Israel and its apologists ask us to believe, “The UN just hates Israel for no good reason so all its claims should be dismissed” is definitely among the dumbest.
Israel apologists constantly claiming the UN is antisemitic and treats Israel unfairly remind you of a boy who never does any homework and keeps saying his bad grades are because his teacher hates him. The UN talks about Israel a lot because Israel is a murderous criminal regime.
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If you still have any doubt that we live in a profoundly sick dystopia as deranged as anything that’s ever been imagined in fiction, take note of the fact that the most powerful empire in history is currently trying to propagandize you into thinking an obvious genocide is fine.
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They lied about decapitated babies so that they could kill babies.
They lied about rape so that they could rape.
They lied about Hamas using civilians as human shields so that they could use civilians as human targets.
They lie about being victims so that they can victimize.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.