What springs to mind when we think of Hemingway? “Bullfight,” “war wound,” “shotgun,” and “drinking” — but also, “craft”   - Kraft  

"I only drink Champagne when I'm happy, and when I'm sad. sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. when I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty"
~ Lily Bollinger

Australian musk ducks can imitate sounds including human speech, with one bird recorded repeatedly saying “you bloody fool”, according to a new study.

THE NEW CENSORSHIP:  Federal government using social-media giants to censor Americans.

University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation, Two-Thirds Favor Bolstering IRS Tax Enforcement as Proposed for Reconciliation Budget Plan

RenTec Hedge Fund Executives Agree To Pay $7 Billion To Settle IRS Tax Dispute Over Characterization Of Basket Option Income

Foucault arrived in Warsaw in 1958. A year later, he was ensnared in a secret operation and fled the country. What happened?   Warsaw 

Why Big-Name Writers Are Signing On With Substack

Writers flirting with the Substack idea would be better seen in footballing terms: they are probably going out on loan from their existing publishers, not transferring for good. - The Guardian

Nina Olson (Executive Director and Founder, Center for Taxpayer Rights):

I’m pleased to announce that registration is now open for the 6th International Conference on Taxpayer Rights (ICTR). The theme of the 6th ICTR is Taxpayer Rights, Human Rights: Issues for Developing Countries.

21st-Century Storms Are Overwhelming 20th-Century Cities

Wired: “In just a few hours on Wednesday night, between 6 and 10 inches of rain fell on New York City—more than has fallen on San Jose, California, in the past year. Water rose in basement apartments and leaked through roofs. Rain streamed into subway stations and pooled on the tracks. The remains of Hurricane Ida, which had thrashed the Gulf Coast earlier in the week, brought floods to the Northeast. Across the region, the death toll reached 40 by Thursday evening. Subway delays and suspensions continue. The city’s infrastructure, you see, was built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to withstand the sort of storm that comes every five to 10 years. Now brutal, record-breaking storms are an annual occurrence. What was left of Ida transformed the scene of everyday commutes into a disturbing reminder that climate change comes for us all. Wildfire thunderclouds in the West, blackouts in Texas, hurricanes in the South, torrential downpours in the East: “It’s all the stuff we said would happen 20 years ago,” says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and the director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute. “It’s just a little crazy to see it all happening at once.”…

Climate change did not create Hurricane Ida, but scientists know how climate change is making hurricanes like Ida worse. “It’s one of the most basic physical relationships we have in the climate: For every one degree [Celsius] you warm the atmosphere, you get about 7 percent more moisture in the air, and that means that you can have much heavier rainfall events,” says Hausfather. “Hurricanes have gotten wetter in the last few decades, and that’s projected to continue into the future.” Scientists have also shown that hurricanes have been intensifying more rapidly in recent years, as Ida did, due to warming waters in the gulf…”

Library of Congress Releases Data for Free Download and Discovery

“The Library of Congress announced todayits third release of records in its online catalog for free bulk download for research and discovery. The release supports the Library’s effort to continuously expand open access to its vast collections. This MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging Records) release surpasses previous releases and adds more than 200,000 new records to the existing 25 million record database. Releases of MARC data uniquely exhibit the Library’s mission. They enable researchers to engage with the unparalleled and rich source metadata at the Library, inspire discovery of Library collections and provide resources to inform future discovery within the Library and data communities. The data covers a wide range of Library items including books, serials, computer files, manuscripts, cartographic materials, music, sound recordings and visual materials.  Each record provides standardized information about an item, including its title, author, publication date, subject(s), genre, related names, summary and other notes. The unabridged records are easily accessible through the Library’s Selected Datasets Collection in XML and UTF8 formats. Direct access to each data set is available here…”