Jim Davies's blog

About a year ago, front and center on the STR home page appeared an appeal for $9,000 to bring Drupal up to date. It's the software driving this site.
 
Quite quickly someone pledged $2,000, and ever since the notice has appealed for the remaining $7,000.
 
But some time this month that notice disappeared. Does that mean the money has been found? In that case, might not the benefactor(s) be named and thanked? Or if it hasn't, what consequences follow?
 
I notice also that last week, the site's response performance was very poor, and this morning that comments about a "misfortune" said to have struck Samarami have appeared and disappeared, as if the site is unstable. Are these events related to an obsolescence in Drupal?
 
Inquiring minds would like to know.

In a recent STR Comment thread, Will Groves suggested that automation will deprive low-skilled people of rewarding work opportunities. A lively exchange of views followed.
 
Neither he nor the author of the original article about this on mises.org considered the much larger effect of taking government out of the equation, so today's Zero Government Blog attempts to do so. It suggests that on the contrary, the outlook is very bright - so enjoy Low Skills in the ZGS.

I just learned that Bradley Manning is to be released next May; outgoing President Obama has commuted 28 years of his vicious sentence. So at long last and in the very nick of time, Obama did something right!
 
Bradley was the subject of the very first edition of the Zero Government Blog, back on July 31st 2010 - so I'm particularly pleased. He had inter alia blown the whistle on the FedGov's funneling of taxpayer dollars to its alleged enemies, so as to prolong war and with it, the illusion that we need it for "defense".
 
The incredible stress he must have suffered since has messed him up so badly that he now calls himself Chelsea and wants to be a woman. I would like to see the Clinton Foundation pay for a course of gender-confusion treatment after his release, but it looks as if Trump may have missed an opportunity to cause that to happen - see #5 here. Snowden and Assange, meanwhile, have been passed over. But if one out of three is the best Obama can do, it's better than nothing.

Many myths are homely and harmless, as anyone who has read a bedtime story to a child is aware; but others are immensely damaging and in dire need of a bust.
 
One fast way to do that is to ask the mythologist to define his principal terms. Today's ZGBlog offers a couple of examples, so please enjoy "God" and "Income".

Probably the worst thing that can happen to someone is to lose a child.
 
That experience happened to anarchist writer Kent McManigal, when a drunk driver took Cheyenne's life. The whole of today's ZGBlog is given over to what Kent did next. Here's Letter to a Daughter's Killer.

After government has vanished there cannot be any laws nor therefore any punishments, so a reasonable concern is that a few aggressors may cause havoc.
 
A good response is that such malefactors will be shunned, by all in the free society. But will that deter enough? Today's zero government blog reasons that it will be much more than enough. See whether you agree, in The Boycott.
 
And a happy new year, to all who thirst for liberty!

With all the admirable recent talk of peace and goodwill towards men, it's easy to suppose that there is not much harm in religion and no need to beware of it in the coming zero government society.
 
Out today is Religion in the ZGS, to show why that isn't necessarily so.

Today's Zero Government Blog considers the state of slaves before emancipation, and imagines some who learned what anarchists have learned: that each of us is actually sovereign. While enjoying that realization just like us, sadly they could do nothing more about it. We can.
 
So I hope you'll enjoy Slaves, Half Free.

Libertarianism is under attack!  And by a group that wants to abolish the Fed!  Nothing as queer as people.
 
Today's Zero Government Blog attempts to unscramble the strange hostility to lending money at interest. Please enjoy Usury.

Every election produces a winner, but it also produces losers. The losers this time are especially sad, because the media had led them to expect a triumphant victory.
 
Today's ZGBlog points out that democracy, along with all other styles of government, always leads to discontent in society; that all government is necessarily divisive and destructive. I hope that after reading it, you may find it fit to send on to your statist friends, expecially Democrats. So, enjoy Sore Losers.