Events

Ordinance Survey, the UK's equivalent to our US Geological Survey, recently discovered that 77% of Brits can't read a map: Just how far is it to the pub? Three-quarters of UK adults are in danger of never finding out, according to a poll commissioned by Ordnance Survey to mark National Map Reading Week (11-17 July). It found that 77% of respondents couldn’t recognise the most basic OS map symbols, such as viewpoints and pubs. (The latter is marked with a classic pint “jug” glass with handle, so could...

The euro has fallen below parity with the dollar for the first time since 2003: Sterling has fallen to $1.18, just days before I fly there. The pound dipped down to this level briefly just as the pandemic hit in March 2020, but you have to go back to 1985 to see it at those levels. I may have to stock up while I'm there. Euros too.

On this day in 1787, the Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, dividing up all the land west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River, into those little boxes you see when you fly over Illinois: In 1781, Virginia began by ceding its extensive land claims to Congress, a move that made other states more comfortable in doing the same. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson first proposed a method of incorporating these western territories into the United States. His...

I will definitely make time this weekend to drool over the recent photos from the James Webb Space Telescope. It's kind of sad that no living human will ever see anything outside our solar system, but we can dream, right? Closer to home than the edge of the visible universe: Josh Marshall highlight's a reader's note explaining how the historic conservatism of the Executive Branch legal team won't work any more. The President's conservatism doesn't work either, as recent polls and Democratic-party...

Josh Marshall shares a couple of emails from attorneys dismayed by the politicization of the right-wing Supreme Court majority. One of them gets to the root of the problem: I don’t believe laypeople really understand what a a heavy, heavy emotional lift it is for the vast majority of attorneys generally, and law professors in particular. The belief that we are serving rule of law and that that while decisions will always be shaped by human weakness, judges can and will render rulings contrary to their...

The town of Croydon, N.H., had a serious problem with its libertarians earlier this year, when extremists took advantage of low voter turnout to cut the school budget in half: On a snowy Saturday this past March, the 2022 meeting began in the two-century-old town hall, where the walls are adorned with an 1876 American flag made by the “women of Croydon” and instructions to reset the furnace to 53 degrees before leaving. Residents approved the town budget in the morning. Then they turned in the afternoon...

So I have queued up stuff to read later: How can anyone believe the Republican Party's "freedom" rhetoric in light of their current behavior? Millions of Canadians have yet to regain Internet and telecoms services after monopsony telecom provider Rogers suffered a catastrophic outage yesterday. Speaking of Canada, the Court of Appeal for Ontario heard three weeks of testimony about the struggling Ottawa Light Rail project, one of a slew of Canadian transport projects that hasn't gone as planned....

No one seems sad that Boris Johnson has resigned his role as Conservative Party Leader, but many worry what he's going to do before he finally leaves Number 10. Some other reactions: Both Michelle Goldberg and Dan Balz compare the UK Conservatives' response compared with the US Republicans. Sarah Lyall wonders how it took so long for the rules of gravity to apply. Jonathan Freedland hopes Johnson's defenestration leads to a reverse of the disastrous policy that brought him to office—Brexit. In part...

In case you needed more things to read today: Have we become a nation of hostages? Impeach Justice Thomas (R) if you want, but that won't solve the real problem with the Court. European leaders will miss President Biden. Researchers can now explain how climate change affects your weather. Amtrak's plans to expand in the South might derail because of opposition from freight lines. British Airways has cancelled 10,000 flights through October because of staff shortages. There are others, but I've still got...

On Tuesday, when my white-hot rage at right-wing gun nuts and the politicians that support them had cooled a little, I proposed taxing ammunition and magazines as one of a set of options available to states to reduce gun violence through economic friction. After sharing a link to the post on social media, I got a response from an experienced hunter I've known for years: "Military style weapon?" The Henry lever action rifle, maybe the most popular deer rifle ever used, was designed as a "Military...