Trump enters the Capitol Rotunda on Monday.
22 Jan
Politics

Trump Moving Politics to the Center, Bringing Dems With Him

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As Donald Trump returns to the White House, he has built the most formidable foundation of Republican electoral strength since the Ronald Reagan era in the 1980s. Over the course of his political career, 25 states have voted for Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns. That’s the most states either party has won in three consecutive presidential elections since 38 states backed Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and his vice president and successor, George H.W. Bush, in 1988. Trump’s two wins (and one defeat) haven’t approached the heights Bush and especially Reagan reached in their consecutive victories: Trump has won the national popular vote only once (and has never crossed 50%), while Bush and Reagan crossed that threshold each time, with Reagan even nearing 60% in 1984. But Trump has surpassed Reagan and Bush in consolidating...
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The strange loophole that transformed Berlin from tenant’s paradise to landlord’s playground | Tim White
22 Jan
Politics

The strange loophole that transformed Berlin from tenant’s paradise to landlord’s playground | Tim White

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From London and other overpriced cities, we often look to Berlin as a beacon of progressive housing politics. Renting in the capital, as some 84% of households do, is associated with secure, unlimited, rent-controlled tenancies. Berliners have rallied behind moves to freeze rents and expropriate hundreds of thousands of apartments from corporate landlords. But in the last few years, Berlin’s housing crisis has escalated to unprecedented proportions, with median asking rents across the city rising by 21.2% in 2023 alone. Far from “poor but sexy”, as it was once dubbed by its own mayor, Berlin now has one of the most overheated property markets in the world. The reasons for Berlin’s housing crisis are complex, yet there is one simple and resolvable mechanism driving the stratospheric rent increases of recent years: the large-scale exploitation by landlords...
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The Wonder of Word Origins
22 Jan
Lifestyle

The Wonder of Word Origins

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Lifestyle Lifestyle It’s estimated that we speak around 16,000 words a day, but have you ever thought about where they came from?Etymology shows that language has an amusing if not downright laugh-inducing sense of humor at times. Here are just a few examples of curious word origins. DudeThis is a word that has certainly done a 180-degree turn: in the 1880s, instead of referring to a laid-back man, it described one overconcerned with his appearance. FreelanceCredited to Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel Ivanhoe, this was a name for a warrior who fought for whoever was the highest bidder (presumably using whatever free lance was available for battle). GeniusIn fourteenth-century Rome, this moniker belonged to a person’s guardian spirit—a force that watched over them from birth and guided them through life. MuscleMusculusthe Latin word muscle comes from, literally means “little...
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