Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Everyone’s welcome here, no special handshake required. Just check your meta at the door.
Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Breakfast News
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Latest Jobs and Housing Reports Show Americans are Struggling More than Ever
The latest nationwide jobs and housing statistics released this week suggest that America is no longer a country where-for most people-the future is going to be better than the past.
The percentage of people in most age and education levels in jobs compared to 2008 is down. The number of people holding multiple jobs is up. Average hourly wages have barely grown, compared to 2008. The number of people who are willing to leave their job for a new one is down. All of those trends are in the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)-and there are even more depressing economic signs.
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Jawdropping Breakthrough! Scientists Discover How to Turn Light Into Matter
Physicists at the Imperial College London have thought up a way to convert light directly into matter in a new type of high-energy physics experiment, using technology already available in the UK.
“As we are theorists, we are now talking to others who can use our ideas to undertake this landmark experiment,” said Professor Steve Rose at the Department of Physics, Imperial College London.
The proposed experiment would recreate a process that was important in the first 100 seconds of the universe.
The process also is seen in gamma ray bursts, which are the biggest explosions in the universe and one of physics’ greatest unsolved mysteries.
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A Powerful Long-term Alliance Between China and Russia Is Unnerving Washington
A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass — at the expense of the United States.
And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to NATO; inside the G20; and via the 120-member-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain. Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia’s Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile, Russia is about to sell dozens of state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters to the Chinese as Beijing and Moscow move to seal an aviation-industrial partnership.
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Nobel Peace Laureates to Human Rights Watch: Close Your Revolving Door to U.S. Government
Human Rights Watch characterizes itself as “one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.” However, HRW’s close ties to the U.S. government call into question its independence.
For example, HRW’s Washington advocacy director, Tom Malinowski, previously served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton and as a speechwriter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In 2013, he left HRW after being nominated as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights & Labor under John Kerry.
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Climate change threatens 30 U.S. landmarks: science advocacy group
Climate change is threatening U.S. landmarks from the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the César Chávez National Monument in Keene, California with floods, rising sea levels and fires, scientists said on Tuesday.
National Landmarks at Risk, a report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, highlighted more than two dozen sites that potentially face serious natural disasters. They include Boston’s historic districts, the Harriet Tubman National Monument in Maryland and an array of NASA sites including the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
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Must Read Blog Posts
Hellraisers Journal: Ludlow Women at Chicago’s Hull House with Jane Addams, Tell of Day of Terror
by JayRaye
Unconfused and Unrepentant
by rserven
Daily Kos’s Blind Spot on Reality
by psychodrew
Feminism Has Just Started-There’s No Stopping It Now
by Rebecca Solnit
6 Signs You Could Be a Highly Sensitive Person
by Lynn Stuart Parramore
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The Daily Wiki
Firefly (They are all over down here this year!)
Lampyridae is a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They are winged beetles, and commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous crepuscular use of bioluminescence to attract mates or prey. Fireflies produce a “cold light”, with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies. This chemically produced light from the lower abdomen may be yellow, green, or pale red, with wavelengths from 510 to 670 nanometers.[2]
About 2,000 species of firefly are found in temperate and tropical environments. Many are in marshes or in wet, wooded areas where their larvae have abundant sources of food. These larvae emit light and often are called “glowworms”, in particular, in Eurasia. In the Americas, “glow worm” also refers to the related Phengodidae. In many species, both male and female fireflies have the ability to fly, but in some species, females are flightless.[3]
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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. ~Mark Twain
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Breakfast Tunes
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Stupid Shit by LaEscapee
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