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The post Austin Air HealthMate Review 2024: A Detailed Look by Sara Seitz appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com. Click to Skip Ahead About Austin Air HealthMate Overview Key Features Is It A Good Value? FAQ Our Experience Our Final Verdict We give the Austin Air HealthMate a rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars. Effectiveness: 5/5 Build Quality: 5/5 Options: 4/5 Value: 4.9/5 Check Price on Austin Air There’s nothing better than snuggling with your kitty after a long day. Unless, of course, you happen to be allergic to that loveable feline.  For every cat owner out there whose love of kitties is at odds with their immune system’s disdain for cat hair and dander, I give you the Austin Air HealthMate. This medical-grade air purifier was made for homeowners who are serious (and I mean SERIOUS) about clean air. And for cat owners who happen to be allergic to cats, it may just be the remedy you didn’t know you needed. With a particulate prefilter, true medical HEPA filter, and carbon and zeolite biofilter, this purifier can handle more than cat hair. It’s also been proven to remove over 99% of all airborne particulates, including viruses, bacteria, allergens, and VOCs. I, thankfully, am not allergic to my cat, but I do have an incredibly reactive respiratory system made worse by all the colds my daughter brings home and any impurities in the air. That’s why I wanted to try out the HealthMate.  Keep reading to find out how this supercharged air purifier helped me and to see my full Austin Air HealthMate review. About Austin Air Austin Air got its start decades ago when founder Richard Taylor set out to help his wife with her chronic respiratory symptoms. Drawing on the fact that his wife only felt relief when in her hospital room, Richard designed a home air purifier with the same medical-grade filters used in hospitals.  Austin Air was born after Richard saw how much relief this home air purifier offered his wife. Now, over thirty years later, millions have benefited from these purifiers and half a dozen clinical studies have proved their effectiveness. Where Are Austin Air Purifiers Manufactured? Austin Air boasts the largest air purifier manufacturing facility in the world. Every one of their air purifiers is made in-house in their Buffalo, New York, facility. The company controls the manufacture of all parts of the units, including the filters and finish paint. Who Will Benefit Most from Austin Air’s HealthMate? Austin Air’s purifiers are the only clinically proven air purifiers available for home use. Their powerful filter is effective against 99% of airborne contaminants under 0.1 microns and even more effective against larger particles like cat hair and dander.  All this is to say that this powerful machine is perfect for anyone who is dead-set on improving their air quality. Whether you have a cat you’re allergic to, want relief from chronic respiratory infections, or just want to vastly improve the air quality in your home, this unit is an excellent choice. HealthMate Overview Check Price on Austin Air Here’s an overview of Austin Air’s most popular air purifier, the HealthMate. We’ll look at what’s inside this unit, the different settings, the technical specs, maintenance costs, and your ordering options. The Filter Each HealthMate unit contains a massive, cylindrical filter with three primary layers. The first is a prefilter meant to capture any large particles that make it through the metal grate on the outside of the unit. This filter removes things such as cat hair, dander, dust, and any other visible particles in the air. The second layer is made up of a mix of carbon and zeolite. These two biological materials actively capture and absorb gasses, odors, and chemicals in the air. The innermost layer consists of a true medical-grade HEPA filter. This powerful filter captures 99.97% of particles over 0.3 microns and 99% of particles down to 0.1 microns. It effectively removes bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic allergens and pathogens in the air. Austin Air’s filters have been clinically tested with some amazing results. For example, one trial done by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital showed that using a HealthMate air purifier in the bedrooms of asthmatic children overnight reduced hospital visits by 20%. Settings To call the HealthMate “simple to operate” would be an understatement. This purifier has only four settings: high, medium, low, and off.  The single dial on the front controls the speed of the motor. There are no auto settings, filter reminders, or other fancy settings you’re likely to find on other home purifiers.  For those looking for a purifier that knows a lot of tricks, this is not the unit for you. But if you’re serious about cleaning your air, the downsides of the HealthMate’s simplicity are easily overshadowed by the air-cleaning power it delivers.  Technical Specifications The HealthMate is a beast among home air purifiers. It’s made entirely of powdered coated steel and weighs a hefty 47 pounds. It’s about as durable an air purifier as you’re likely to find. At 14.5″ long by 14.5″ wide and 23″ tall, this is a sizable unit. But none of that space goes to waste. The intake vent extends over all four sides of the base and the filter inside is large enough to thoroughly clean every molecule of air that’s sucked inside. The unit sits on four sturdy castors so it can easily be rolled around as needed. The high-efficiency motor is extremely powerful, a fact that is obvious the second you turn this beast on high. Maintenance Costs One thing you must always consider before purchasing an air purifier is the maintenance costs associated with it. This means taking a hard look at both the cost of running the unit as well as the cost of replacing the filter. I tested my unit using an electricity usage meter. Here are my readings and cost calculations (based on the national average cost of electricity): Low Medium High Watts 54.63 68.33 85.60 Cost to run 8 hours per day  $0.05 per day; $1.57 per month; $19.14 per year $0.07 per day; $1.97 per month; $23.94 per year $0.08 per day; $2.47 per month; $30 per year Cost to run 24 hours per day $0.16 per day; $4.72 per month; $57.43 per year $0.20 per day; $5.90 per month; $71.83 per year $0.25 per day; $7.40 per month; $89.98 per year The average air purifier costs about $10 a month or $120 per year to run 24/7. Considering this, the HealthMate is actually very cost-effective to use. This is true even if you crank it up to high and leave it running all day and night. Another place where the HealthMate shines in terms of value is in the filter replacement department. The massive cylindrical filter on this unit lasts 5 years. This kind of lifespan is unheard of in the air purifier world. Most filters for home use only last 3 to 9 months. When it’s time to replace this filter, you will have to fork over some cash. The HealthMate series filters cost about $290 each.  However, if you break this down by cost over time, you’d be paying less than $15 every three months. Considering the average cost of a three-month air purifier filter is about $30, this filter is actually fairly affordable. Check Price on Austin Air Options The HealthMate model is available in four colors: white, black, sandstone, and midnight blue. I opted for the midnight blue option and it matches the accents in my home perfectly.  If you’re looking for a unit that’s a little smaller or one that has an even more powerful filter, Austin Air offers some additional options in other models.  The HealthMate Plus model does everything the original does plus it better captures chemicals like formaldehyde thanks to the addition of potassium iodide. This option is a great choice for those affected by wildfires and airborne toxins. For those with intense allergy issues, Austin Air’s Allergy Machine might be the best option. This unit improves upon the base design of the original with increased airflow to reduce airborne allergens in half the time.  Lastly, Austin Air offers all of their HealthMate units in the “Junior” size. These purifiers are about 7 inches shorter and less than half as heavy as the originals.  Pros & Cons Pros Clinically proven effectiveness Powerful motor Effectively removes large and small particles Filter lasts five years Cost-effective to run and maintain Cons Limited settings Fairly large Noisy Key Features Clinically Proven Air Cleaning Abilities Many air purifier manufacturers claim their units are effective at cleaning the air, but only Austin Air has the clinical trials to prove it.  Through six different clinical trials the HealthMate has been shown to reduce asthma and COPD symptoms, effectively clean air in homes with smokers, and reduce pollution associated with airplane traffic. Simple Functionality When allergies are ruining your life, you don’t have time for fancy settings and a long list of features. What you need is powerful filtration that works fast without all the glimmer and glam. And that’s what the HealthMate delivers. With three speeds and no additional buttons, this machine was made to be turned on to quickly and effectively clean the air. Cost Effective Given how powerful this machine is (and, yes, you can hear that power the moment you turn it on), you might be surprised to find out it’s also impressively cost-effective to run and maintain. Even on the highest setting, this unit only costs about 25 cents per day to run nonstop. On the lowest setting, it will only cost you 5 cents per day to run overnight. Just as impressive, the filter lasts five years and costs about half as much to replace as the average home air purifier filter, when you take lifespan into account. Is the HealthMate a Good Value? Check Price on Austin Air The HealthMate is a sizeable investment, with new units costing just over $700. However, if you compare it to the competition and consider the performance and power of this model, it’s an impressive value. Not only does it deliver better performance than most purifiers in this price range, but the maintenance costs are much lower. Most competitor purifiers feature filters that last only 9 months or less and cost, on average, about $100 to replace each time. The HealthMate, by comparison, has a filter that lasts five years and costs only $290 to replace (this equates to about $44 every nine months). Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) What is the square footage rating for the HealthMate? In general, the square footage rating of the HealthMate is about 1500. However, Austin Air doesn’t like to look at performance in terms of square footage or CADR since there are too many variables that affect these numbers. They suggest using the HealthMate in large bedrooms and spaces and the Junior model in small bedrooms and offices. Does the HealthMate produce any harmful substances? No, the HealthMate does not use any chemical or ionizing filters and therefore does not release any ozone, ions, or toxins. How noisy is the HealthMate? Short answer, fairly noisy. On high it produces a considerable amount of noise (about 60.5 decibels according to my measurements). On low, it has a nice white noise sound and puts out about 37 decibels. This level is not too noticeable but it is noisier than most home air purifiers set to the lowest setting. Our Experience With Austin Air’s HealthMate I have reviewed a lot of air purifiers throughout my career. I’ve tested everything from itty bitty countertop units to purifiers made to combat chemical warfare toxins. One look at the HealthMate and I knew I was dealing with a unit closer to the latter end of the purifying spectrum. This thing is a beast. The full-steel body and massive filter make clear this unit is built for powerful air purification. In my opinion, this is a good thing, though it did leave me wishing my bedroom was on the first floor! While I don’t have any allergies to my cat, Makoa, or the other pets in my house, I do have chronic respiratory issues. I have something called “reactive airway,” a type of asthma with no clear cause. Mine seems to be most affected by viruses, but any irritant in the air can make my symptoms worse. And that’s why it was worth it to haul my HealthMate up the stairs to my bedroom.  This powerful purifier filters not just cat dander and other allergens, but also 99% of pathogens like viruses and bacteria. I hoped that the unit would help reduce my exposure to everything and hopefully improve my chronic cough and congestion. I have been using the unit nightly for the last week and have already noticed improvement. Most specifically, I’ve woken up consistently with less stuffiness and have slept more soundly through the night with fewer cough attacks.  I use the low setting most of the time. It has a pleasing, though not entirely quiet sound. My husband loves it and uses it in place of our white noise machine at night.  The higher settings are loud enough that they make it hard to watch TV, but I rarely have to use these settings. I typically only crank the unit up after cleaning the cat box, vacuuming, or doing anything else that kicks up a lot of dust. After about fifteen minutes on high, the air quality noticeably improves. As far as Makoa, my kitty, is concerned, this metal box is a mystery. However, he does seem to enjoy sticking his face in front of the air outlet and letting his whiskers blow in the breeze. For me, though, this purifier is life-changing.  It has already helped reduce my respiratory symptoms and I’m hopeful it can help prevent me from catching every single virus my kindergartener brings home. I also really love the blue color! Conclusion Whether you’re allergic to your cat or just want your kitties and the rest of your family to enjoy better quality air, the HealthMate from Austin Air delivers.  This powerful air purifier is clinically proven to reduce respiratory symptoms and clean household air of pathogens, pollutants, and allergens. It’s far more utilitarian than your average household purifier but also more effective while still being affordable to run and maintain. For anyone serious about seriously clean air, the HealthMate is worth a look. The post Austin Air HealthMate Review 2024: A Detailed Look by Sara Seitz appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com.

News The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum Andy Serkis to Direct and Star in New Film, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 9, 2024 Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery Where’s Gollum? Has anyone seen Gollum? Warner Bros. Discovery was certainly looking for him (or, more precisely, a way to cash in on their The Lord of the Rings’ intellectual property rights). Today, during the corporation’s first-quarter earnings conference call (via The Hollywood Reporter), CEO David Zaslav announced that New Line and Warner Bros. Pictures are in the “early stages of script development” for a LOTR movie tentatively titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum and is eying the film to come out sometime in 2026. There are, of course, six existing features set in the fantastical world that J.R.R. Tolkien created—the three Lord of the Rings films and the three Hobbit films, all of which were spearheaded by Peter Jackson. For those having feelings about a LOTR film without Jackson being involved, I’ve got news for you: According to Zaslav, Jackson and his writing partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens “will be involved every step of the way” in the upcoming film, with Boyens and Walsh penning the script. For those wondering if this Gollum movie will be a one-and-done endeavor, I have more news for you: Jackson et al signed a two-film deal with Warner Bros., so the odds are very good that this is only the first of many additional LOTR movies coming our way. “It is an honor and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that stinker—Gollum!,” Jackson, Boyens and Walsh said in a statement. “As life long fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with [Warner Bros. Discovery film execs] Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy and the entire team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!” Serkis, who of course played Gollum in the previous films, also expressed his excitement about the project in the same statement: “Yesssss, Precious. The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle-earth Peter, Fran and Philippa. With Mike and Pam, and the Warner Bros. team on the quest as well, alongside WETA and our film making family in New Zealand, it’s just all too delicious… .”  [ed. note: if it’s not too forward of us, we have a suggestion for Mr. Serkis that can be best communicated via a reference to The Simpsons:] Image: 20th Century Fox The movies, of course, are completely separate from the Prime Video series that Amazon has developed, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. We’ve also seen Gollum recently in a much-maligned video game, but here’s to opening this upcoming film will be more entertaining to experience. [end-mark] The post Andy Serkis to Direct and Star in New Film, <i>The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books book review The Time Traveller’s Bridge: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley A review of Kaliane Bradley’s new time travel novel. By Jenny Hamilton | Published on May 9, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share I am never going to watch the AMC television program The Terror (I am a fraidy-cat), but if the fandom for the AMC television program The Terror were incarnate in a single person, I would kiss that little weirdo right on the face. Every time my fannish life overlaps a little bit with The Terror fandom, I experience warm and fond feelings for a group of people who are fannishly insane in much the same way as me (the kind that comes with a lengthy bibliography). And now it has given us Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time. With textureless hetfic escaping fandom containment left and right recently and making its way into romance novels, I feel duty-bound to report on a few things that The Ministry of Time is not: a romance novel (I would classify it as “romantic tragedy with jokes” a la Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia) The Terror fanfic with the serial numbers filed off While author Kaliane Bradley does thank The Terror in her acknowledgements, she elsewhere describes the first iteration of her book as “a daft story about what it would be like if your favorite polar explorer was [sic] your housemate.” In other words, The Ministry of Time is undisguised, unreconstructed polar exploration RPF (Real Person Fic), which frankly is a great idea and more people should be doing it. The story follows an unnamed civil servant who gets a new position working with “refugees of high interest status and particular needs.” Once she accepts the job, she finds out that the refugees in question are expats not from other countries but from other centuries. They’ve been yoinked out of their own time—where they were doomed to die via things like guillotine, witch-burning, and freezing to death in the Arctic—and now require careful monitoring to determine the impact of time travel on the human body. Our protagonist is assigned as minder to Lieutenant Graham Gore, lately of the Franklin expedition, but as time goes on and the expats settle into their new world, she and Graham begin to suspect that the government has not been truthful about the goals and methods of the time travel project. There is also a certain amount of the two of them staring at each other’s mouths. At first, Graham and the narrator are curiosities to each other. Graham has two centuries of history to catch up on, and the narrator—his “bridge,” as she’s called—has been coached to record his every movement, as well as to find “teaching moments” in which to get him up to speed on modern-day norms. Other bridges are able to—or choose to—maintain their professional distance, to think of their expats as test subjects rather than people. Our narrator doesn’t, or can’t. Graham becomes a person to her, a person with “a willow line” of eyelashes and a habit of smoking in the bath. (He also uses a combination of charm and the newly acquired phrase “quality of life” to acquire things he wants, like an endless supply of cigarettes and an air rifle for hunting pigeons in the London suburbs.) Buy the Book The Ministry of Time Kaliane Bradley Buy Book The Ministry of Time Kaliane Bradley Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Through him, she also grows to love his fellow expats Arthur (a traumatized World War I escapee) and Maggie (my heart, my world, my everything). The community that blossoms among the expats, especially perfect angel Maggie Kemble who has never done one single thing wrong in her entire life, provides an elegant way to shift the reader’s perspective on what the narrator owes to her job and her country’s future, and what she owes to these all-too-real human people. If the bridges don’t care for them as people, then nobody will, because the project certainly does not. At one point, another bridge, Semellia, tries to advocate for the expats to receive mental health care, and she’s shut down with a curt “Thanks for your input.” In her 1962 novel Love and Friendship, Alison Lurie wrote, “The power of society is such that, no matter how much we despise it, our crimes are always against individuals.” The Ministry of Time cares deeply about the individuals. Though our narrator doesn’t know the aims of the time travel project, she keeps hoping that there might be a way to fix the world that she lives in, and the world that’s to come. Her near-future London suffers battering heat waves, and global warming, surely, could have been averted? Surely the small moral compromises that get made along the way, the unease she feels in conversations with her colleagues, would be worth it, then? Bradley makes the case that there can be no future separate from the people that comprise it. If you’re writing a book that asks the reader to support a burgeoning romantic relationship between a modern-day woman and a time-traveling polar explorer, the British Empire is the inevitable elephant in the room. Available options include depicting said explorer as a uniquely enlightened snowflake who had the correct opinions all along; dedicating an ungodly amount of narrative space to leading the explorer character to embrace the appropriate liberal shibboleths; or not talking about empire at all and hoping the reader won’t worry too much about it. As someone who would worry so much about it, I was relieved to find that Bradley ignores the third option and finds a stellar tight-rope balance between the first two. Our narrator is the daughter of a white British father and a Cambodian refugee mother, and her position as a white-passing biracial agent of the British government allows the book to take a refreshingly nuanced approach to discussions of race, power, and empire. Graham Gore’s life and opinions are less exhaustively documented than, say, Shackleton’s, so Bradley has some leeway to make her own decisions about what kind of person he is. But she doesn’t avoid the blameworthy points of his biography, either: In real life, Gore saw action in the Aden Expedition, which suppressed Arab resistance to the British takeover of Aden. The book baldly describes this event as a “bloodbath,” and its significance in the arc of Gore’s life—whether in his own time or ours—arises repeatedly over the course of the book. Bradley threads a difficult needle here. She gestures at the ways in which—like Graham, and frankly like the reader—the narrator contributes to deeply immoral societal structures, but she resists the impulse to glib absolution for either of them, or for the reader. Graham is guilty; the book’s narrator is guilty; we are guilty. If that sounds grim to read, I promise you that somehow it is not. It’s accomplished with wry humor and a light hand, via kicky dialogue that illustrates the growing connection between Gore and the narrator. We assume a particular outcome from the temporal disconnect between the book’s two central characters. Graham will be forced to question his assumptions. Maybe along the way he’ll remind the narrator about some of the structural injustices we tolerate and rationalize, even. Eventually, though, Graham will arrive at the correct moral conclusions as understood by our more morally enlightened modern age. It’s not historical chauvinism if we here now really are better than all the generations of people who came before us! That is, at least, how the narrator thinks about it. But she’s writing in first-person, which means she’s writing from the future, which means that the her who is writing knows more than the her being written about. “I exist at the beginning and end of this account simultaneously, which is a kind of time-travel,” she reminds us. The her who is writing keeps urging the reader—and we keep ignoring her, because we also think we know best—to set down our assumption of superiority. It isn’t just wrong, it’s dangerously wrong. Those who forget the past—rather, those who believe they have nothing to learn from it, only things to teach—are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps inevitably, the book’s attention to character, relationship, and theme comes at a cost to the nuts-and-bolts of how time travel works and what everyone’s goals for it are. A friend of mine is worryingly prone to reading time travel books I’ve recommended her and then closely questioning me on the logistics, and I could hear her voice in my head as I was reading The Ministry of Time: “Remind me where they got the time machine in the first place? And why did Adela say that killing the protagonist wouldn’t matter? And can you remind me what the mole character was hoping to achieve?” On the first read, there is simply no chance I’d have been able to answer these questions. On a second read, I was prepared to make a stab at them, but did not feel that my answers would readily withstand cross-examination. Bradley is simply not as interested in the science, the spying, or the government conspiracy; and at times that disconnect really shows. This was fine by me. So the antagonists never fully come into focus—who cares? Aren’t the real villains the friends we make along the way? Bradley’s such a master of the tiny moments between people that it’s hard to focus on the exact mechanics of the betrayal; it’s enough that the creeping trickle of unease has now crescendoed into a tsunami that leaves devastation in its wake. “This was one of my first lessons in how you make the future,” says the narrator. “Moment by moment, you seal the doors of possibility behind you.” I thank The Terror fandom once again for opening the doors of possibility to this funny, sexy, melancholy, postcolonial, completely unhinged time travel story. [end-mark] The Ministry of Time is published by Avid Reader Press. The post The Time Traveller’s Bridge: <em>The Ministry of Time</em> by Kaliane Bradley appeared first on Reactor.

Americans consistently voice their disapproval on the state of the economy in recent polls, largely because of the stratospheric cost of living. But apologists for the Biden administration point to the low unemployment rate of 3.9% in April as proof of the economy’s strength. Yet this is a hollow talking point, since the real unemployment rate is likely between 6.5% and 7.7%. The unemployment rate is the percentage of people in the labor force who don’t have a job. That means the unemployment rate can change if either the number of people unemployed or the total size of the labor force changes. The shocking reality is that somewhere between 4.7 million and 7 million people who aren’t working today are not included when calculating the unemployment rate. That artificially reduces the figure. The reason these millions of Americans are uncounted began with the events of 2020. When the government instituted draconian lockdowns across most of the economy in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, more than 17 million people became unemployed, and an additional 8 million people immediately left the labor force. As the economy slowly reopened across the country, millions of people began returning to work. That, of course, drove down the unemployment rate by reducing the number of unemployed people. Some of those who left the labor force also returned and eventually found jobs, further reducing the unemployment rate. But there were also millions who left the labor market entirely and never returned. As such, they were no longer counted among the unemployed, nor in the labor force. This pushed the unemployment rate down even more. If those millions of people were to suddenly look for work again, it would greatly increase the labor force, but it would also increase the unemployment rate, at least until those jobseekers found work. Official government data point to just how many workers are missing from the labor market today. Several metrics show a large gap between their current reading and their pre-pandemic trends. These include the employment level, the number of nonfarm payrolls, the employment-to-population ratio and those not in the labor force. The gap is between 4.7 million and 7 million people, all of whom are not working, but are excluded from the unemployment rolls. If they were still counted as jobless members of the labor force, the unemployment rate would jump to between 6.5% and 7.7%. The latter figure is almost twice the official unemployment rate. Even 6.5% would represent a significant spike. Looking only at the unemployment rate can give a distorted view of the labor market. If unemployed people are looking for work and then get jobs, that causes the unemployment rate to fall. But, if those same people give up looking for work and leave the labor force, it has precisely the same effect on this metric. Using additional data provides a better gauge of the labor market’s health and workers’ jobs satisfaction. Real, or inflation-adjusted, earnings are a good example—and they have plummeted. While the average American worker’s weekly paycheck has increased $147 from January 2021 through April 2024, those earnings buy $47 less because prices have risen so much faster than incomes. This has caused many Americans to work extra hours or pick up a second job. Among renters, more than one-fifth of them have taken on another job in order to pay their rent on time in the past few months. That’s noteworthy because whenever someone is hired, whether it’s that person’s first or fourth job, it’s still counted as an additional payroll in the government’s monthly job statistics. With millions of Americans picking up additional work to try and make ends meet for their families, the number of jobs has risen much faster than the number of people employed. Simply touting a low unemployment rate provides a view of the labor market that is at best incomplete and at worst deceptive. A comprehensive view of economic conditions for the working class shows why they are so unhappy: Inflation has made it impossible for them to get ahead, no matter how many jobs they work. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Here’s What Biden Admin Apologists Aren’t Telling You About Jobless Rate appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The United States government is not appropriately addressing the threat posed by growing Chinese ownership of American land, according to a report released by The Heritage Foundation Thursday. The federal government is woefully ill-equipped to track Chinese-owned real estate in the country, despite the serious threat these Chinese Communist Party-affiliated entities can pose to critical U.S. infrastructure, according to the report. The report calls on federal and state leaders to take action, such as increasing transparency and conducting more critical reviews of land purchases. “China’s ownership of American land is nontransparent and unscrutinized, and the federal government has failed to address potential threats even as Chinese ownership of U.S. real estate increases,” Bryan Burack, a senior policy adviser for The Heritage Foundation and author of the study, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. (The Heritage Foundation founded The Daily Signal in 2014.) The federal government lacks an adequate system in place to broadly monitor Chinese ownership of U.S. real estate, due to ownership of real estate being overseen by state and local governments, the report notes. For this reason, the U.S. government has no clear picture on China’s total land holdings in the country. “The United States should be watching land and real estate transactions from our top adversary, not ignoring them,” Burack said. The Daily Caller News Foundation has reported extensively on Chinese companies’ land purchases in the U.S. For instance, the parent company of  battery maker Gotion, which plans to build factories in Michigan and Illinois, participated in Chinese Communist Party programs that acquire technology for China’s military, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. The Daily Caller News Foundation also exposed the CCP ties of companies attempting to set up shop near military bases in Kansas. Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork producer, is owned by a Chinese firm and exported massive quantities of pork to its China-based “sister company” as that company stockpiled food for the Chinese military, the Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively reported. Chinese entities have spent over $100 billion acquiring American companies since 2010, with many of these businesses owning real estate across the country, according to the report. In 2020, the National Association of Realtors confirmed that China was the top foreign buyer of American real estate. The Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act does give some insight into the amount of agricultural land being purchased by foreign entities. The latest Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act report indicates that Chinese investors own a relatively small fraction of the country’s privately held agricultural land, holding only 346,915 acres, or roughly 1%, of foreign-held acres of private land, as of Dec. 31, 2022. However, Chinese-owned agricultural acreage grew over fivefold between 2011 and 2021, the report found. This trend is worrisome because the Chinese government has made numerous, well-publicized attempts to gain access to key locations within the U.S. Examples the report highlights include China’s attempt to equip a pagoda with signal collection technology and gift it in Washington, D.C., an attempt by a Chinese billionaire to build a wind development project near Laughlin Air Force Base in Val Verde County, Texas, and an attempt by a Chinese agribusiness to develop a cornmeal project just 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Base. “In both the Val Verde and Grand Forks cases, existing federal government mechanisms proved manifestly unable to contend with threats that were clearly perceivable to the Americans living nearby—as well as, seemingly, to the Defense Department itself,” the report says. “Frighteningly, China’s threat to U.S. military infrastructure only continues to evolve.” The Heritage Foundation recommended the federal government and state lawmakers enact laws to better equip the country for this growing threat. “The threat posed by Chinese entities purchasing real estate in the U.S. and using it for malign purposes is real,” the report concludes. “As China presents the United States’ greatest national security threat and has a history of particular threats to real estate and agricultural land, measures to counter those threats must be a priority.” Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post US Is Failing to Counter Threat of Chinese Land Ownership, Report Finds appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The public schools in the state of New York doled out $29,284 per pupil in “current expenditures” in fiscal year 2022, according to a report published this week by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. “Current expenditures comprise expenditures for the day-to-day operation of schools and school districts for public elementary and secondary education, including expenditures for staff salaries and benefits, supplies, and purchased services,” the National Center for Education Statistics says. “General administration expenditures and school administration expenditures are also included in current expenditures,” it says. The $29,284 that New York spent per pupil on these items was more than any other state. So, what did taxpayers get in return for this investment? Not much. In the mathematics test of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 28% of eighth graders in New York state public schools scored proficient or better. Only 32% scored proficient or better in reading. In our capital city of Washington, D.C., which the NCES lists with the states, the public schools had $28,128 in “current expenditures” per pupil. That was more than any state except New York. So, how did the students do in D.C. public schools? Only 16% of eight graders in the D.C. school system scored proficient or better in math. Only 22% scored proficient or better in reading. New Jersey had the next-highest level of per-pupil spending in its public schools in fiscal 2022. In that state, it was $25,550. The students there scored a little better in reading and math than those in New York or the District of Columbia. But they did not do great. Only 33% of New Jersey eighth graders were proficient or better in math, while 42% were proficient or better in reading. Vermont, the state represented by Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, finished slightly behind New Jersey in per-pupil spending in its public schools. It spent $25,073. Vermont also finished behind New Jersey in its NAEP test scores. Only 27% of eighth graders in Vermont public schools scored proficient or better in math, and only 34% scored proficient or better in reading. Connecticut, another New England state, came in fifth—behind New York, the District of Columbia, New Jersey and Vermont—in per-pupil sending. It spent $23,868 per student. Only 30% of its eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and only 35% scored proficient in reading. Connecticut was followed by three other New England states when the 50 states are ranked by per-pupil spending. Massachusetts spent $22,778; Rhode Island spent $20,498; and New Hampshire spent $20,424. Yet only 35% of eighth graders in Massachusetts public schools scored proficient or better in math; only 40% scored proficient or better in reading. In Rhode Island, only 24% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math; only 31% scored proficient or better in reading. In New Hampshire, only 29% scored proficient or better in math; only 33% scored proficient or better in reading. Did the results significantly improve if a state spent less money per pupil in its public schools? No. Utah spent $9,496 per pupil in its public schools in fiscal 2022. That was less than any other state. Only 35% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and only 36% scored proficient or better in reading. Similarly, Idaho finished next to last in per-pupil spending in its public schools, putting up $9,662. Only 32% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and 32% scored proficient or better in reading. As this column has noted before, students at Catholic schools score better on these NAEP tests than students at public schools. In 2022, eighth graders in Catholic schools had an average score of 288 on the math test, while eighth graders in public schools had an average score of 273. Similarly, eighth graders in Catholic-schools had an average score of 279 on the reading test, while public-school eighth graders had an average score of 259. The average tuition at Catholic elementary schools in 2023, according to U.S. News and World Report, was $4,840. The average tuition at Catholic high schools was $11,240. In the upcoming school year, DeMatha Catholic High School—in Hyattsville, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.—will have a tuition of $22,700, according to its website. That is $5,428 less than the $28,128 that D.C. public schools spent per pupil in 2022. Parents in the District of Columbia and every other community in this country should not be forced to send their children to government-run schools. All parents should be given a voucher equal to the per-pupil expenditures in the local public schools and they should be free to redeem that voucher at any school—public or private, religious or secular—that they choose. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM  The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. The post They Spent $29,284 per Pupil, but Only 28% of Eighth Graders Rated Proficient in Math appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A judicial decision that has sparked international concern over free speech, Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal has outlawed the protest song “Glory to Hong Kong,” a piece that gained prominence during the 2019 pro-democracy protests. The court’s ruling described the song as a tool used to incite the protests, marking a significant move in the ongoing suppression of dissent in the region. The appeal court’s judgment, delivered on Wednesday, overturned a previous High Court decision that had denied a government injunction against the song, citing potential negative impacts on third parties. Appeal judge Jeremy Poon asserted that the song’s composer had crafted it to serve as a weapon in the protests, stating, “It had been used as an impetus to propel the violent protests plaguing Hong Kong since 2019. It is powerful in arousing emotions among certain fractions of the society.” The government’s successful appeal means the song can no longer be legally broadcast, performed with intent deemed criminal, or shared across internet platforms, though exceptions are made for academic and journalistic purposes. This decision is part of a broader crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong, which has included the incarceration of numerous pro-democracy activists and the shuttering of independent media outlets. Critics argue that this ruling further erodes the city’s once-vaunted rule of law and freedoms. The United States has expressed disapproval, with State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller remarking that the decision is “the latest blow to the international reputation of a city that previously prided itself on having an independent judiciary protecting the free exchange of information, ideas, and goods.” The anthem, recorded anonymously by an orchestra, intertwines lyrics that echo key slogans from the 2019 protests, like “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” Its popularity has extended beyond Hong Kong, often being confused for the city’s national anthem at international sports events, a misconception that has repeatedly irked local authorities. This legal move comes after Hong Kong officials previously sought to have the song removed from online platforms like Google, which largely resisted the requests until backed by a court order. Justice Secretary Paul Lam stated, “The government … will communicate with relevant internet service providers, request or demand them to remove relevant content in accordance with the injunction order.” This song ban is not an isolated incident but follows a series of measures aimed at tightening control under the guise of national security, including expansive laws imposed by Beijing that target the city’s autonomy and freedoms. These developments have drawn sharp criticism from international observers and further complicated Hong Kong’s global standing. The post Hong Kong’s Anthem Ban Sparks International Free Speech Concerns appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

British Columbia Re-Criminalizes Public Use of Drugs