Democracy Now! 2025-12-30 Tuesday

• Headlines for December 30, 2025
• "Whatever Israel Wants": Trump Backs Netanyahu's "Colonial" Wars in Gaza, Iran & Beyond
• "Israel Crushed Mohammad Bakri": Gideon Levy & Rami Khouri on Death of Iconic Palestinian Filmmaker
• Trump Set to Garnish Wages for Student Loan Defaults; The Debt Collective Lays Out Other Options
• Over 20M Americans Set to Lose Healthcare Coverage Jan. 1 After Congress Goes on Recess

Download this show

Welcome to Part 1 of our special year-end episode on Soberanía! In this segment, we delve into the top 10 stories about Mexico from 2025, covering stories 10 through 6.

Join us as we discuss the opposition's missteps, the ambitious Plan Mexico, the influence of US actors in Mexico, mass Morena demonstrations, and Claudia Sheinbaum's impactful first year in office. Don't miss this engaging recap with our hosts and special guest, Samuel, as we prepare to reveal the top 5 stories in the next episode.

Stay tuned for part 2 next week!

Chloe Slack presents an Anniversary Special celebrating 81 years of Time Of The Week alongside former host Ruth Paul (special guest Ellie White). Plus: items on Tall Sons, viral dances and we answer the question ‘Do women feel storms more than men?’

Sian Clifford stars as self-important journalist Chloe Slack in this comedy series parodying women’s current affairs and talk shows, surrounded by an ensemble cast of character comedians.

Chloe Slack - Sian Clifford Ruth Paul - Ellie White

Ensemble cast: Ada Player Alice Cockayne Aruhan Galieva Ayoade Bamgboye Caroline Elms Em Prendergast Jodie Mitchell Jonathan Oldfield Lorna Rose Treen Mofé Akàndé

Created by Lorna Rose Treen and Jonathan Oldfield

Writing team: Alice Cockayne Jodie Mitchell Jonathan Oldfield Lorna Rose Treen Priya Hall Will Hughes

Script Editors - Lorna Rose Treen and Jonathan Oldfield Photographer - Will Hearle Producer - Ben Walker

A DLT Entertainment Production for BBC Radio 4

American Exception members on Patreon get first access to new episodes, and paid subscribers enjoy the entire library of the best historical analysis of deep events on the American Exception podcast.

Join our Patreon at https://patreon.com/americanexception

We are also on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@americanexception9407

Aaron and Max Arvo discuss All the President’s Men—the 1976 film directed by Alan J. Pakula, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, and based on a 1974 novel (lol) by Washington Post reporters Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein. We recommend that people watch the film before listening since we don’t attempt to give any organized synopsis, nor do we avoid spoilers. Listen at your own risk!

Follow and support Max Arvo on Substack!

Music: "Old Movies" by Mock Orange

Special thanks to Dana Chavarria for producing the episode!!

UNLOCKED PATREON EPISODE! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

With Daniel in the wind, Matt welcomes returning champions Zachary Foster of Palestine Nexus, and Frotcast/Pod Yourself co-host Vince Mancini to get sorking wet on a deep dive into The West Wing’s Gaza episodes (S5E21, S6E2, available on HBO Max).

Please donate to Pal-Humanity: http://palhumanity.com/

Palestine Nexus: https://palestinenexus.com/

The #Content Report: https://vincemancini.substack.com/

New Bad Hasbara Merch: https://estoymerchandise.com/collections/bad-hasbara-podcast

Subscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbara

What’s The Spin playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/50JoIqCvlxL3QSNj2BsdUR

Skad Skasbarska playlist: http://bit.ly/skadskasbarska

Subscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get your podcasts.

Spotify https://spoti.fi/3HgpxDm

Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/4kizajt

The Dead Ringers team are back to train their festive firepower on the week’s news with an armoury of impressive impressions.

This week: Scrooge is visited by the ghost of a Money Saving Expert, and The Grinch more than meets his match.

This week's impressionists are Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Duncan Wisbey and Jess Robinson

The episode was written by: Nev Fountain and Tom Jamieson, Laurence Howarth, Tom Coles, Sarah Campbell, Sophie Dickson, Peter Tellouche, Jon Holmes, Rachel E Thorn, JoJo Maberly and Cooper, Mawhinny & Sweryt

Created by Bill Dare Producer: Jon Holmes Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Co-ordinator: Caroline Barlow

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4

This week on Soberanía: we report on the demonstration in Zócalo on the seventh anniversary of the Fourth Transformation, the significance of hundreds of thousands taking to the streets, and Claudia Sheinbaum’s push to expand Mexico’s public health system. We break down the proposed shift to a 40-hour workweek, what it really means for workers, and how minimum-wage gains fit into the bigger picture. We then examine the scandal ex-DEA personnel, crypto money-laundering, and weapons for the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel. We close with our Losers & Haters segment calling out the LA Times.

A look into the Portuguese empire in southern Africa and the stirrings of nationalism in Angola.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good grief! After 2 years of being begged by our Canadian listeners to talk about the tragic downfall of their favorite (favourite?) podcast Canadaland, we decided to gift you all an extra long episode all about Jesse Brown. Our guest is Canadian journalist Rachel Gilmore, one of the many journalists who Jesse has attacked for reporting on the pro-Israel blinders of the Canadian political and media class.

Follow Rachel Gilmore on Instagram

Subscribe to Rachel's Substack

Finally, listen to her podcast Bubble Pop with Rachel Gilmore

Some Canadaland links:

"Thunder Bay" series (debuted in 2018): https://www.canadaland.com/thunder-bay-archive/

Jesse Brown's interview with Israeli Ambassador to 🇨🇦 (2024): https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/1035-israel-the-canadaland-interview/

Canadaland staff response to that interview: https://www.canadaland.com/a-response-to-canadalands-interview-with-israels-ambassador-to-canada/

"What Is Happening Here" series (2025): https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/introducing-what-is-happening-here-official-trailer/

Exchange about BDS between Jesse and Robert Jago: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/993-pretendian-publisher-cartoon-cancellation/

New Bad Hasbara Merch: https://estoymerchandise.com/collections/bad-hasbara-podcast

Subscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbara

What’s The Spin playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/50JoIqCvlxL3QSNj2BsdUR

Skad Skasbarska playlist: http://bit.ly/skadskasbarska

Subscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get your podcasts.

Spotify https://spoti.fi/3HgpxDm

Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/4kizajt

I Don’t Do…Christmas! is a brand new, gloriously mischievous panel show for people who’d, well, rather not.

Julian Clary hosts a yuletide celebration like no other, joined by comedians Jo Brand, Glenn Moore and Fatiha El-Ghorri, with special guest Gareth Malone.

Hosted and Created by Julian Clary

Featuring: Jo Brand, Fatiha El-Ghorri, Glenn Moore Special Guest: Gareth Malone

Additional Material: Andrew White

Sound: David Thomas Production Manager: Laura Shaw Producer: Charlie Dinkin Executive Producer: Benjamin Sutton

A Daddy’s Superyacht production for BBC Radio 4

One of the things that never stops fascinating me about Emacs is how deep the rabbit hole goes when your start exploring... well... anything!

You come for a text editor.

You stay because it quietly turns into a laboratory and eventually the custom interface for your entire computer experience.

Most people associate emojis with mobile keyboards, chat apps, or graphical pickers. Emacs takes a completely different approach: Unicode as a first-class citizen. And at the center of this philosophy lives a deceptively simple prefix C-x 8.

Altough not obligatory, In order to explore this feature, try enabling which-key with M-x which-key-mode RET, then issue C-x 8 and wait for the options.

If you've ever wondered how to compose, combine, and bend Unicode inside Emacs, this post is for you.

C-x 8

In Emacs, C-x 8 is the entry point to character composition.

It allows you to:

→ Insert Unicode characters by name

→ Compose accented characters manually

→ Combine multiple code points into a single visible glyph

→ Create emoji sequences using Zero Width Joiners

→ Abuse combining characters in ways that would scare typography purists

This is not about convenience, this is about control.

Inserting Unicode by Name

The most straightforward usage is:

C-x 8 RET

This prompts you for a Unicode character name.

Try typing:

LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE

→ á

Or:

GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMBDA

→ λ

Tip: If you have something like vertico-mode or icomplete-vertical-mode turned ON, you get a preview of your search.

You can also type the code directly, even if Emacs doesn't show it as a preview, like:

274C

Returns:

→ ❌

Composing Accents Manually (Base + Combining Marks)

Unicode doesn’t require precomposed characters like á or ç. Instead, it allows you to build them from base characters + combining marks.

This is where Emacs shines again:

Using M-x compose-region.

Start by tiping a and ' for example, you'll get:

a´

Mark the region (select) with both chars then and use M-x compose-region RET do get:

á

And even more layered:

c¸´

Becomes:

ḉ

These are not “single characters” in the traditional sense.

They are Unicode sequences rendered as one glyph.

If you try to delete from right to left, you'll get it decomposing, like:

ḉ
ç
c

Note: After I first published this post, Eli Zaretskii (Emacs maintainer) was kind enough to share his critique of this approach. Here are his remarks (original here):

The section about composing accents is, in my opinion,
misguided.  Emacs already handles this automatically by
default, without any need to invoke `compose-region`.

The reason the command appeared necessary in the earlier
example is that it used the wrong characters. It should have
used **COMBINING CEDILLA** and **COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT**
instead — which is exactly what the following section does.

I recommend staying away from `compose-region` in Emacs. It
does not fully support all display features and options
(such as bidirectional display), and it may cause problems
in certain corner cases.

Combining Characters

Let’s take a simple letter:

Z

Now, using C-x 8 RET, start adding combining marks:

COMBINING OGONEK
COMBINING TILDE
COMBINING DOT BELOW
COMBINING CEDILLA

→ …repeat as many times as your conscience allows

Result:

→ Ẓ̨̧̧̧̧̧̧̧̧̧̧̧̃

This is valid Unicode.

It may render differently depending on font and platform, but Emacs treats it as a perfectly legitimate text sequence. If you're not inside Emacs, try copying it into some buffer and/or change fonts.

At this point, hopefully you can see how text stops being "letters" and starts being stacked metadata.

Variation Selector-16 (U+FE0F): Forcing Emoji Presentation

Not every emoji-looking thing starts as an emoji.

Many Unicode characters exist in a neutral or text presentation form.

Whether they render as plain text or as colorful emoji depends on an invisible hint called a Variation Selector.

The most important one is:

VARIATION SELECTOR-16 (U+FE0F)

In Emacs:

C-x 8 RET VARIATION SELECTOR-16

VS16 explicitly tells the renderer:

"Treat the previous character as an emoji, not as text."

Let's start with this example:

❤   (HEAVY BLACK HEART)

Adding VARIATION SELECTOR-16, we get:

→ ❤️ (HEAVY BLACK HEART + VARIATION SELECTOR-16)

Same base character. Different semantic intent.

VS16 doesn’t draw anything. It changes meaning.

Another example, insert the digit:

1

That’s just ASCII text.

Now add:

COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP

Result:

→ 1⃣

This might look like a keycap, or it might look broken. It depends on your font. That’s because we didn’t force emoji presentation.

Now do it properly:

Sequence:

1
VARIATION SELECTOR-16
COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP

Result:

→ 1️⃣

Important note: that is not one character.

It’s a sequence of three code points:

→ 1 (DIGIT ONE)

→ U+FE0F (VARIATION SELECTOR-16)

→ U+20E3 (COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP)

Without VS16, renderers are free to choose a text glyph. With VS16, you get the emoji version, consistently.

Zero Width Joiner (U+200D): Emoji Glue

If combining marks alter a single character by adding overlays, the Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ) works at the sequence level, telling the renderer to treat multiple characters as one visual unit — most notably in emoji composition.

Unicode code point:

U+200D

In Emacs:

C-x 8 RET ZERO WIDTH JOINER

ZWJ tells the renderer:

"These characters should be treated as a single semantic unit."

Here's an example:

❤  HEAVY BLACK HEART
❤️  HEAVY BLACK HEART + VARIATION SELECTOR 16
❤️‍🔥  HEAVY BLACK HEART + VARIATION SELECTOR 16 + ZERO WIDTH JOINER + FIRE

The "flaming heart" is not a single character. It’s a sequence:

• ❤️
• ZWJ
• 🔥

Another example is creating "Families" from "Individuals":

This emoji:

👨‍👩‍👦

Actually is the combination of:

• 👨
• ZWJ
• 👩
• ZWJ
• 👦

You can add more members to your "family" and change their appearance, this is only limited by your "font set", meaning some fonts might not render well an specific combination, but many will.

Note: After I first published this post, shipmints suggested that you can also create these sequences via Emacs Lisp (original here), like:

(concat "\N{WOMAN}"
		"\N{ZERO WIDTH JOINER}"
		"\N{HEAVY BLACK HEART}"
		"\N{VARIATION SELECTOR-16}"
		"\N{ZERO WIDTH JOINER}"
		"\N{MAN}"
		" ")

Result:

→ 👩‍❤️‍👨

Inspecting Unicode with C-x = (what-cursor-position)

Typing Unicode is only half the story.

Understanding what you actually typed is the another half.

Lucky us, Emacs users. Just place point over any character and press:

C-x =

You will have a description of the char in your minibuffer, with information like:

→ Character name

→ Unicode code point

→ Script

→ Charset

→ How Emacs internally represents it

This alone is already incredibly useful, but wait! There's more!

Deep Inspection: C-u C-x =

Now add the (universal-argument) prefix:

C-u C-x =

This is where things get serious.

For composed characters and emojis, Emacs will show:

→ The full Unicode sequence

→ Each individual code point

→ Combining characters

→ Zero Width Joiners

→ Text properties and composition details

This is essential when dealing with:

→ Accents built from combining marks

→ ZWJ emoji sequences

→ “Why does this look right but behave wrong?”

→ Copy/paste weirdness across platforms

Some examples:

C-x = on a simple accented character (á)

Char: á (225, #o341, #xe1, file ...) point=7495 of 8976 (83%) column=43

C-u C-x = on a simple accented character (á)

			 position: 7495 of 9102 (82%), column: 43
			character: á (displayed as á) (codepoint 225, #o341, #xe1)
			  charset: unicode (Unicode (ISO10646))
code point in charset: 0xE1
			   script: latin
			   syntax: w	which means: word
			 category: .:Base, L:Strong L2R, c:Chinese, j:Japanese, l:Latin, v:Viet
			 to input: type "C-x 8 RET e1" or "C-x 8 RET LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE"
		  buffer code: #xC3 #xA1
			file code: #xC3 #xA1 (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
			  display: by this font (glyph code):
	ftcrhb:-JB-JetBrainsMono Nerd Font-regular-italic-normal-*-14-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#xA4)

Character code properties: customize what to show
  name: LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE
  old-name: LATIN SMALL LETTER A ACUTE
  general-category: Ll (Letter, Lowercase)
  decomposition: (97 769) ('a' '́')
...

This can be specially usefull in our emojis, let's try it on ❤️‍🔥:

			 position: 8529 of 10012 (85%), column: 61
			character: ❤ (displayed as ❤) (codepoint 10084, #o23544, #x2764)
			  charset: unicode (Unicode (ISO10646))
code point in charset: 0x2764
			   script: symbol
			   syntax: w	which means: word
			 category: .:Base, 5:symbol
			 to input: type "C-x 8 RET 2764" or "C-x 8 RET HEAVY BLACK HEART"
		  buffer code: #xE2 #x9D #xA4
			file code: #xE2 #x9D #xA4 (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
			  display: composed to form "❤️‍🔥" (see below)

Composed with the following character(s) "️‍🔥" using this font:
  ftcrhb:-GOOG-Noto Color Emoji-regular-normal-normal-*-14-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1
by these glyphs:
  [0 3 10084 1537 17 0 18 13 4 nil]
with these character(s):
  ️ (#xfe0f) VARIATION SELECTOR-16
  ‍ (#x200d) ZERO WIDTH JOINER
  🔥 (#x1f525) FIRE

Character code properties: customize what to show
  name: HEAVY BLACK HEART
  general-category: So (Symbol, Other)
  decomposition: (10084) ('❤')
 ...

Fonts Matter (A Lot)

One important caveat: fonts decide how far you can go.

Some fonts handle combining characters and emoji sequences beautifully. Others collapse under pressure.

If you see:

→ Misaligned accents

→ Overlapping glyphs

→ Missing emoji components

It’s almost always a font issue, probably not Emacs, not Unicode.

I'd recommend JetBrainsMono Nerd Font or Maple Mono NF. You can find a lot more fonts on nerd fonts site, or use my custom installer script (post, github).

Final Thoughts

Once you internalize C-x 8, unicode and emojis stop being “special”. If you explored it with which-keys as I recommended at the beginning of this post, you probably saw a lot more than C-x 8 RET, emojis even get the special C-x 8 e e sub-menu for convenience.

And I hope once you use C-u C-x =, special characters, block non visible (non printable with your font choice) chars stops being mysterious.

Unicode is a vast and deeply technical subject, but the goal here wasn't theory, it was to show how Emacs turns it into something you can actually use, inspect, and enjoy.

Thanks!

This is likely my final post for 2025, so it feels like a good moment to say thank you.

Thank you to everyone who read these posts, sent feedback, pointed out mistakes, shared them around, or just quietly followed along. This year was especially fun to write: lots of small discoveries, deep dives into Emacs internals, and many "oh wow, it already does that?" moments.

Happy hacking!

Edit

2025-12-28: Added Eli Zaretskii remarks. Added Shipmints code suggestion, typo fix and font recommendations.

Democracy Now! 2025-12-22 Monday

• Headlines for December 22, 2025
• "Who Are They Protecting?": Rep. Ro Khanna Urges Contempt Charges over AG Bondi's Epstein Redactions
• Rep. Ro Khanna on Venezuela Strikes, Zohran Mamdani, Trump-Kennedy Center & More
• Israel Approves 19 New West Bank Settlements as State-Sponsored Violence Escalates
• "Destroying Knowledge": Michael Mann on Trump's Dismantling of Key Climate Center in Colorado

Download this show

Happy Thanksgiving/taking everyone! As a special holiday bonus, here's an extended highlight reel from our two sold-out live shows at The Gutter in Brooklyn, NY this past October. Our guests were the amazing Briahna Joy Gray (night 1) and Francesca Fiorentini (night 2), with opening standup sets by Jess Salomon and Jeremy Kaplowitz. Special thanks to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. Gobble gobble, y'all!

Subscribe now to skip the ads and get all of our episodes.

Derek is joined by Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute to discuss the Southern Transitional Council’s recent territorial advances in Yemen, what they mean for the country’s already-fractured political order, and why the “internationally recognized government” remains mostly theoretical. They also delve into the history of southern secessionism, the dysfunction of the Presidential Leadership Council, and how Emirati-backed forces have consolidated control over much of former South Yemen.

Follow Annelle on Twitter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Dead Ringers team are back to train their vocal firepower on the week’s news with an armoury of impressive impressions.

This week: Farage goes to a new school, The Snowman takes Keir Starmer on a Christmas journey, and Alan Carr: Special Negotiator.

This week's impressionists are Jan Ravens, Jess Robinson, Kieran Hodgson and Josh Berry.

The episode was written by: Nev Fountain and Tom Jamieson, Laurence Howarth, Tom Coles, Sarah Campbell, Sophie Dickson, Jon Holmes, Alice Bright, Rachel E Thorn, Jennifer Walker, Joe Topping, Alex Buchanan and G Watson.

Created by Bill Dare Producer: Jon Holmes Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Co-ordinator: Caroline Barlow

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4

2025 has been a tremendous year for the artificial intelligence industry. Stock prices for AI companies skyrocketed, soaring beyond expectations and propping up an otherwise stagnant U.S. economy. But everywhere, there’s talk of an AI bubble — one even bigger and more threatening than the 2008 housing bubble or the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.

What makes this bubble so different? When is it likely to pop? And if it does, what does that mean for the rest of us? 

In this episode of Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Ed Zitron and Sruthi Pinnamaneni, journalists covering the AI frenzy, to recap the year of the AI Bubble — and predict what will happen next.

To read Ed Zitron's blog, Where's Your Ed At, click here.

Click here to check out Sruthi Pinnamaneni's two part series on AI data centers.

Got three minutes? Please take our end-of-year survey!

Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becoming a member at levernews.com/join.

To leave a tip for The Lever, click here. It helps us do this kind of independent journalism.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democracy Now! 2025-12-17 Wednesday

• Headlines for December 17, 2025
• A Path to WWIII? Greg Grandin on Venezuela, Trump's "Madman Doctrine" & More
• Chile's Trump? Ariel Dorfman on the Election of Pinochet Admirer José Antonio Kast
• How Did Epstein Get Rich? The New York Times Investigates His "Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons"

Download this show

Subscribe now to ditch the ads.

Chag Sameach! Danny and Derek are joined by independent scholar Joseph Scales to talk about the history of Hanukkah. They discuss the rivalry between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires that preceded the conflict; the Maccabean/Hasmonean revolt and the family's ascension to power within Judea; the Judean expansion; and much more.

Originally published November 27, 2021

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just a quickie today. This post addresses a niche need that most readers probably aren’t facing. Joar Alexander Pablo von Arndt’s girlfriend recently bought a Framework 12 laptop and stylus and wanted to use it to take handwritten notes that she could later organize in Org mode.

That’s the type of thing that sounds like it should be doable with Emacs and, of course, it is. The solution they settled on was to use Xournal++ to take the handwritten notes and org-xournalpp to interface it to Emacs.

Sadly, it didn’t work quite right on the Framework 12 so they wrote a bit of Elisp to do the interfacing. It turned out to be pretty easy. See Pablo von Arndt’s post for the details.

This is another nice example of how you can use Emacs to solve problems with just a little investigation into what’s available and perhaps a bit of Elisp.

Update [2025-12-17 Wed 11:28]: Added link to Pablo von Arndt’s post.

We have Séamus, of Turbulance Podcast, to discuss Trump, Maduro, peace prizes, the middle East and Ada Lluch.

HOW TO SUPPORT US:

https://www.patreon.com/cornerspaeti

HOW TO REACH US:

Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/cornerspaeti.operationglad.io

Twitter https://twitter.com/cornerspaeti

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cornerspaeti/

Julia https://twitter.com/KMarxiana

Rob https://twitter.com/leninkraft

Nick https://bsky.app/profile/lilouzovert.bsky.social

Uma https://bsky.app/profile/umawrnkl.bsky.social

Ciarán https://bsky.app/profile/ciaran.operationglad.io

Support Corner Späti