Posts

Posted on

Marketplace All-in-One - Putting China’s economic figures in context

From the BBC World Service: New data shows that China's economy grew by 5% last year. While positive, it’s not anywhere near the stellar growth figures China has had over years past, and the economy faces a weak housing market, a falling population, and ongoing trade tensions with the U.S. Plus, we examine what's driving the wealthy to the United Arab Emirates and how a boom in luxury real estate is changing Dubai.

Posted on

Start the Week - Rethinking politics

If trust in politicians is broken and the political system isn't delivering, then how might we go about fixing things? Can we revive faith in democratic government by doing things differently? The political scientist Hélène Landemore argues that electoral politics is broken and that the answer lies in doing away with career politicians. She imagines dismantling a system that is biased in favour of the special interests of big money, propelled by the constant quest for re-election and the jaded proffering empty promises. In her new book, Politics without Politicians she posits that, among other solutions, we need Athenian style participation through mechanisms such as civic lotteries. More people need to be involved first hand in decision making if everyone is to feel heard.

Author and broadcaster Phil Tinline explains why he thinks politicians need to start thinking and talking about power again if they are to stand a chance of delivering on their promises. He argues that if nothing ever changes, then we need to understand who has too much power and who has too little and be prepared to do something about it.

Michael Gove is the editor of The Spectator and a member of the House of Lords. He has extensive experience of government, serving in cabinet under four prime ministers between 2010 and 2024. It is widely acknowledged among, both his admirers and his critics, that he rapidly got to grips with his department's brief and knew exactly how to drive an agenda for change. He reflects on his experiences.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Posted on

Marketplace All-in-One - The ‘biohacking’ trend that has tech workers experimenting on themselves

In an industry known for pushing the bounds of human innovation, tech elites are now trying to push the bounds of their own bodies. The hot new biohacking trend is injectable peptides — similar to the ones found in GLP-1 medications like Ozempic. But these are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.


These gray-market peptides, largely from Chinese manufacturers, are being used by tech workers and founders. Not just to lose weight, but to optimize their health and performance in all manner of ways. “Marketplace Tech” host Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with independent journalist Jasmine Sun, who recently wrote about this for the New York Times.

Posted on

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know - Strange News: The US Raids Reporters, the Death of von Däniken and Dilbert, Apps Want to Know if Your Loved Ones Die, and Much More

The FBI crosses an historic Rubicon by raiding the home of a journalist. Ben, Matt and Noel miss Erich von Däniken. In China, an app renames itself. All this and more in our weekly strange news segment.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

array(3) { [0]=> string(150) "https://www.omnycontent.com/d/programs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/2e824128-fbd5-4c9e-9a57-ae2f0056b0c4/image.jpg?t=1749831085&size=Large" [1]=> string(10) "image/jpeg" [2]=> int(0) }
Posted on

Up First from NPR - Troops Stand By For Minnesota, Greenland NATO Tensions, Gaza Peace Board

Minnesota braces for a possible escalation as federal troops stand by amid protests against immigration enforcement and renewed threats to invoke the Insurrection Act.
Tensions rise with European allies as the White House pressures Denmark and other NATO countries over Greenland, prompting warnings of damage to transatlantic relations.
And world leaders are being asked to buy into a new U.S.-led “Board of Peace” for Gaza and other conflicts, with billion-dollar commitments and President Trump at the helm.

Want more analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.

Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Padma Rama, Ben Swasey, Gerry Holmes, Mohamad ElBardicy, HJ Mai.

It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.

We get engineering support from Simon-Laslo Janssen. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.

(0:00) Introduction
(01:57) Troops Stand By For Minnesota
(05:47) Greenland NATO Tensions
(09:34) Gaza Peace Board

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Posted on

Start Here - Sources: Soldiers on Standby to Deploy to Minneapolis

The Pentagon has ordered 1,500 active duty troops to be ready to potentially deploy to Minneapolis, sources tell ABC News. President Trump threatens tariffs against European countries who oppose his plans for Greenland. And Prince Harry heads to the U.K. to testify in his lawsuit against the publishers of the Daily Mail.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Posted on

The Daily Detail - The Daily Detail for 1.18.26

Alabama

  • President Trump endorses Barry Moore in GOP Senate primary race
  • AL House passes post-election audit bill, now heads over to state senate
  • APLS has voted to not send more state funds to Fairhope Public Library
  • USDA Secretary appoints 5 Alabama farmers to Farm Service Committee
  • An Alabama farmer is nationally recognized by the Farm Bureau

National

  • Anti ICE protestors with Don Lemon invade Minneapolis church service
  • Trump Admin. has 1.5K troops prepare to deploy to state of Minnesota
  • Treasury Secretary says SCOTUS not likely to rule against Trump tariffs
  • Federal judge in AZ rules in H-1B Visa case and the gaming of lottery system
  • Covid 19 memo shows Fauci had data on natural immunity being better but still pushed for useless vaccine
  • US House to offer SAVE Act Plus and send to US Senate where John Thune is being blasted for failing to get the SAVE Act onto the floor for a vote
Posted on

What A Day - A Brief History of ICE

Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn't some storied government agency from the 19th century. ICE was invented back in 2003 — but now it has a multi-billion-dollar budget and many officers who are undertrained at best. So, how did we get here? To find out, we spoke to Garrett Graff. He's a historian and journalist who has covered federal law enforcement for 20 years.

And in headlines, President Donald Trump threatens fresh tariffs on America's NATO allies over Greenland, the Pentagon ordered 1,500 National Guard troops to prepare for possible deployment to Minnesota, and a seat on Trump's Board of Peace reportedly has a $1 billion price tag.

Show Notes:
 


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Posted on

Strict Scrutiny - Will SCOTUS Keep Trans Kids Out of Sports?

Melissa, Leah, and Kate kick off by discussing the functional suspension of the Constitution in Minneapolis and Trump’s targeting of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Then they dissect the arguments in a pair of cases that came before the Court last week about whether state laws barring trans girls and women from their schools’ sports teams violate the Constitution or Title IX. Finally, they break down new opinions from SCOTUS involving criminal law, the Fourth Amendment, and mail-in ballots.

Favorite things:

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 

  • 3/6/26 – San Francisco
  • 3/7/26 – Los Angeles

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Order your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Posted on

Python Bytes - #466 PSF Lands $1.5 million

Topics covered in this episode:
Watch on YouTube

About the show

Sponsored by us! Support our work through:

Connect with the hosts

Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.

Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.

Brian #1: Better Django management commands with django-click and django-typer

Michael #2: PSF Lands a $1.5 million sponsorship from Anthropic

  • Anthropic is partnering with the Python Software Foundation in a landmark funding commitment to support both security initiatives and the PSF's core work.
  • The funds will enable new automated tools for proactively reviewing all packages uploaded to PyPI, moving beyond the current reactive-only review process.
  • The PSF plans to build a new dataset of known malware for capability analysis
  • The investment will sustain programs like the Developer in Residence initiative, community grants, and infrastructure like PyPI.

Brian #3: How uv got so fast

  • Andrew Nesbitt
  • It’s not just be cause “it’s written in Rust”.
  • Recent-ish standards, PEPs 518 (2016), 517 (2017), 621 (2020), and 658 (2022) made many uv design decisions possible
  • And uv drops many backwards compatible decisions kept by pip.
  • Dropping functionality speeds things up.
    • “Speed comes from elimination. Every code path you don’t have is a code path you don’t wait for.”
  • Some of what uv does could be implemented in pip. Some cannot.
  • Andrew discusses different speedups, why they could be done in Python also, or why they cannot.
  • I read this article out of interest. But it gives me lots of ideas for tools that could be written faster just with Python by making design and support decisions that eliminate whole workflows.

Michael #4: PyView Web Framework

Extras

Brian:

  • Upgrade Django, has a great discussion of how to upgrade version by version and why you might want to do that instead of just jumping ahead to the latest version. And also who might want to save time by leapfrogging
    • Also has all the versions and dates of release and end of support.
  • The Lean TDD book 1st draft is done.
    • Now available through both pythontest and LeanPub
      • I set it as 80% done because of future drafts planned.
    • I’m working through a few submitted suggestions. Not much feedback, so the 2nd pass might be fast and mostly my own modifications. It’s possible.
    • I’m re-reading it myself and already am disappointed with page 1 of the introduction. I gotta make it pop more. I’ll work on that.
    • Trying to decide how many suggestions around using AI I should include.
      • It’s not mentioned in the book yet, but I think I need to incorporate some discussion around it.

Michael:

Joke: Reverse Superman