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Speculative fiction has an important place in critical pedagogy and in the pursuit of healing and building hope in the field of education. The term “speculative fiction” has many conflicting definitions that have changed over time, but for the purpose of this project, one of the most expansive definitions fits best. Marek Oziewicz, in his 2017 article for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, discusses the difficult task of defining speculative fiction, calling it a “fuzzy super-set category that houses all non-mimetic-genres—genres that in one way or another depart from imitating conscious reality” (p.2). Genres typically housed under the speculative fiction umbrella include science fiction, fantasy, dystopian/utopian fiction, and horror. These genres, in contrast to other forms of fiction, “construct models of reality” rather than transcribe it directly and can also be understood as a “thought experiment that embraces an open-ended vision of the real” (Marek, 2017, p.3). Because it is such an expansive category, I have chosen to include scholarship that analyses the use of speculative fiction works that have specific connections to themes of justice and liberation. These works are most often written by people of color, women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, [dis]abled authors, and authors that experience life at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities and many of these works of speculative fiction serve as critiques and responses to oppression.

A recent surge in justice oriented speculative fiction has also given birth to new terms and definitions. For example, the authors of Octavia’s. Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements developed the term “visionary fiction” to distinguish science fiction that has “relevance toward building new, freer worlds from the mainstream strain of science fiction, which most often reinforces dominant narratives of power” (Imarisha, 2015, p.4). This constant process of challenging and creating new definitions speaks to the ways that speculative fiction has evolved and the ways that it has gained increasing acceptance and legitimacy in both academic and popular culture, making space for new and emerging storytellers to join in conversation with seminal voices in the tradition. Speculative fiction usually deals with imaginary or fantastical worlds, but many subjects and themes are rooted in the writers’ lived experiences, often incorporating thoughts and feelings about the worlds they live in, the worlds that they desire living in, as well as the worlds that they fear living in. The reflective, analytical, critical and constructive qualities of speculative fiction are what make the genre a useful tool for critical pedagogy. Engaging with the genre through reading, writing and performance can uplift the voices people from marginalized communities, facilitate generative conversations about systems of oppression and how they manifest in our daily lives, and provide a space for experimentation with ideas about the future, all of which have the power to aid in the cultivation of critical hope in the classroom. Studies by S.R Toliver (2020, Sarah E. Truman (2019), Julie Doyle (2020), and Leigh Anne Howard (2019), have shown that students of all ages are capable of creative, critical, and self-reflective thinking through the lens of speculative fiction and the practice has potential to aid in the healing of collective and individual trauma by moving beyond critique and imagining more just worlds. These studies also show how speculative fiction can be an effective tool in engaging students in various, often difficult topics such as police violence, white supremacy, climate crisis, gender binary, and other topics related to identity and oppression. Because we know that the persistent attack on hope affects teachers as well as students, it follows that teachers would also benefit from the opportunity to engage with speculative fiction in the classroom. Through exposure to speculative fiction centered curriculum, teachers can practice cultivating critical hope through self-reflection and experimentation with ideas about the future. This process has the potential to inspire teachers to incorporate speculative fiction into their curriculum by building teachers’ confidence in working with the genre and themes and focusing on strengthening their ability to create safe spaces of reflection and experimentation for their students. Using speculative fiction in the classroom is a form of arts integrated pedagogy that many teachers may not be familiar with, which is why learning guide should offer background on the genre and support teachers’ understanding as well as student understanding.

The act of naming the expectations of economic actors “fictional” draws attention to their literary features and implies that lessons can be learned from literary theory about the nature and function of the imaginaries involved. In particular, fictional expectations generally adopt a narrative form that helps make sense of the world and generates the required conviction and social legitimacy for action. Such narratives combine due-diligence assessments of known constraints and causal mechanisms with imaginaries of how the future might look that go well beyond observable facts. They may take the form of “new era” stories, promised fortunes, or dystopias that must be avoided. They may be influential in their own right or become embedded in the assumptions of algorithms or other calculative technologies. As Harro van Lente and Arie Rip demonstrate in empirical studies of innovation processes, narratives assign roles to economic actors and technological objects and develop a “plot” – a storyline of how an imagined future may unfold. Such stories motivate by delineating an emotionally charged vision of the future. They provide a road map that helps counter anxiety in the face of uncertainty by simulating possible outcomes and making them feel tangible. In short, narratives provide a logic of action and populate the present with imagined futures that seem worth investing in. Aptly, David Tuckett speaks of “conviction narratives.”

One of the main reasons that fictional expectations adopt a narrative form is to ensure that an imagined future can be conveyed to others. In so doing, they ape literary texts by following social conventions of language and narrative structure but also by occasionally departing from these conventions in original and enlightening ways, thereby casting a new and unexpected light on current reality and economic possibilities. For example, the fictional expectations of economic actors may use surprising metaphors to illuminate novel possibilities or express abstract ideas, and they often experiment with different counterfactual images of reality. Whenever fictional expectations are promulgated to others, their originators – like the authors of literary texts – also rely on various rhetorical devices such as plot consistency and verisimilitude to render their imaginaries credible and secure the authority needed to convince their audience.

Despite their significant differences (e.g. The Machine Stops, 1919; Fahrenheit 451; Uglies; Matrix; Cloud Atlas; Children of Men, The Handmaid’s Tale; Logan’s Run), many of our texts are united by the sense that no social transformation is possible without: 1) connectedness with others, building more humane, collective relations; 2) connectedness with the self, promoting awareness, freedom and self-determination; and 3) connectedness with nature, recognising the aesthetic and spiritual value of living-systems and recovering a capacity for human embodied experience. These three forms of connectedness often combine in representations of spaces and resilient communities rebelling against the forces of the established social order, held together by motivations, values and aspirations with transformational potential. These three forms of connectedness link to what Scharmer and Kaufer (2013) call the three divides - ecological, social, and spiritual-cultural –, which need to be faced to address the pathologies that characterize our current systems for inner, social and ecological transformation. In this regard, they provide resources for the reconstruction of dominant techno-imaginaries. As such they represent glimpses of hope, counter-discourses that can expand our imagined futures and the terms of our relationship with urban landscapes beyond the constraints (and reductionist traits) of techno-utopian urban imaginaries. As examples they are, of course, far from an exhaustive catalogue of the representations of resistance, political, social, humane (and ecological) alternatives to techno-utopianism that exist in speculative fiction. For present purposes, however, they illustrate the ways in which fiction can frequently reflect prevailing dystopian orientations whilst still holding open and exploring the possibility of alternatives existing in and against hegemonic social relations. In this regard, fictional explorations have a sophisticated capacity to combine critique and construction in ways that critical social science often struggles to realise (e.g. Sayer, 2009; Urry, 2016). As a result, fiction may provide a means not just of reinforcing the warning signals that dominate critical social scientific accounts of the SCI but can also supplement emerging imaginaries of resistance to techno-utopianism, exploring seeds of transformative social change and contributing powerfully to the education of desire for alternative ways of knowing, living and being.

For revolutionaries, visionaries, and malcontents, utopian texts illuminate alternatives to the stultifying and suffocating realities of their present. The best of these utopian works engage in ‘the persistent attempt to imagine alternatives to the present state of affairs while remaining assiduously of the world’.4 They not only construct and envisage such alternatives, but educate their readers, showing them the ways in which alternative futures might become concrete utopian presents. In utopian theorist Ernst Bloch’s work, this core quality of utopian literature is described as docta spes, ‘comprehended hope’, while for contemporary utopian critic Tom Moylan, utopian literature forms the ‘seeds for changing the present society’ through ‘willed transformation’, serving ‘to stimulate in its readers a desire for a better life and to motivate that desire toward action by conveying a sense that the world is not fixed once and for all’.5

This attachment of utopias to their present is a double-edged sword. The instantiation of a utopia is necessarily always coupled with the question ‘utopia for whom?’. As readers and theorists, we must consider who in the late capitalist present is seeking most desperately to create better societies, and who the ultimate subjects of historical change will end up being. With social inequality exposing more of the planetary population to a variety of contemporary crises from within which the creation of a better world seems impossible, these two groups are by no means bound to intersect. Utopian literature is well placed to address the concerns and desires of a diverse range of readers, and in so doing, help shape social transformation, even in a speculative mode. And yet, while utopias can be uniquely immediate and powerful in their transformational, pedagogical energy, as society and culture change, their relevance invariably decreases. This is particularly apparent at times of crisis which violently shift societies from their tracks, including global protests, natural and anthropogenic disasters, and, indeed, global pandemics. So, Marge Piercy’s utopian classic Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) can still be appreciated for its literary style and historical value, but both the social issues with which it grapples and the utopian alternatives it proposes now seem notably outdated. The US government no longer incarcerates people with mental health conditions in asylums whole- sale, yet the American prison-industrial complex has expanded to transform these and many other minority segments of the US public into a cheap labour force to an extent beyond what could be imagined possible in the 1970s. There is little argument that tiny electronic devices broadcasting radio waves can be used to manipulate people’s behaviour, although the way in which smartphones and the corporations operating through them effect such manipulation is very different from what Piercy had in mind. Finally, a future utopian society would have to contend not with a state military presence entrenched in Antarctica and on the Moon, but with the arguably far deadlier threats of global climate change and a host of deadly viruses.

Drawing on Abensour and Bloch, Ruth Levitas (2010, p. 542) argues utopianism can be a potent form of speculative sociological thought, capable of enabling both critical analysis of social desires and the reconstruction of alternatives: ‘… by thinking about utopia as a method, and specifically in thinking about it as a method rather than a goal, we can think more effectively about alternative futures… a capacity for the education of desire that only utopia can offer.’ Levitas (2017) therefore considers the ‘Utopian approach’, core to the pursuit of radical and transformative change, ‘allow[ing] us not only to imagine what an alternative society could look like, but…to imagine what it might feel like to inhabit it, thus giving a greater potential depth to our judgments about the good’. Contemporary utopian theory therefore offers an analytical method for extending prevailing approaches to the analysis of urban imaginaries like the SCI, moving beyond common-sense anti-utopian critiques or denunciations of techno-dystopias, to explore the dialectics of utopia and dystopia, critique and construction. In the next section below, we introduce the value of speculative fiction to futures studies before going on to explore how fictional representations of future urban worlds, read through the lens of heuristic utopianism might inform and extend critical understanding of the SCI. 2.2. Fictional representations and the extension of social scientific critique As SCI illustrate, the ways we think about futures are capable of framing and shaping the development of societies and settlements in their names. Since, following Graham (2016), then there can be no straightforward binary between the “fictional” and the “factual” city, urban scholars have long explored fictional and imaginary representations of the city and urban life and their roles in shaping urban change (Abbott, 2016; Bassett, Steinmueller & Voss, 2013; Dunn, Cureton, & Pollastri, 2014). Fictional representations are equally widely acknowledged to have important roles in future studies, whether by conveying future ‘possibilities’ and ‘warning signals’ or embodying, imagining and symbolizing futures (1993, Bergman, Karlsson, & Axelsson, 2010; Miles, 1990; Popper, 2009) that can provide alternative views on how the future is being understood and framed (Lawler, 1980; Miles, 1990). Fiction in future studies provides essential diversity and multidimensionality in ‘ways of knowing’, which are, by their very nature, ‘imaginary’ (Stableford, Clute, & Nicholls, 1993): ‘Sensing and making-sense of fictional worlds covers not just the physical or institutional contours of imagined tomorrows but also the emotions, colours, sounds, tastes, etc’ (Miller, 2018b, p. 28). Fiction is also seen as a means to tap into often unconsciously held assumptions (Miller, 2018a; Slaughter, 1998) and the ‘implicit understandings that lay beneath the surface of society, and even our scholarship’ (Abbott, 2007, p. 123). Fictional representations of future worlds may therefore illuminate not-yet imagined or realised possibilities and trajectories for change offering a means of interrogating existing social scientific imaginaries and prompting deeper reflection on the present. In the rest of the paper we therefore go on to explore the potential benefits of bringing critical social scientific analysis of the techno-utopianism of SCI (Section 3) into conversation with utopianism and speculative fictional representations of techno-futures (Section 4): in doing so, we seek to assess the potential contribution that both might make towards a simultaneously critical and reconstructive reading of SCI, examining both the desires they project and how we might come to ‘desire in a different way’. We thus seek to illustrate the value of both utopia as method and speculative fiction in contributing to an expanded, multi-disciplinary approach to the education of desire for SCI (Section 5). 3. Social science critique of SCI: an overview and assessment Our analysis of the social-scientific critique of the techno-utopianism of SCI is based on a systematic review and categorization of existing literature. To conduct the review we performed a search (first in 2017, followed by an update-end of 2018) through ‘science direct’ and ‘google scholar’ using a range of keywords: ‘smart city’, ‘smart urbanism’, and ‘smart planning’, which were then combined with qualifiers arising from the literature, including: ‘big data’, ‘technology/ ICT’, ‘urban development’. We identified and selected texts according to their relevance to the overall theme, including peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and documents by major ICT companies. Additional texts were then identified by following up relevant references found within the original sample. In total we examined 42 sources. The range of Journals includes: Cities; City; Dialogues in Human Geography; Environment and Planning A & D; Futures; GeoJournal; International journal of urban and regional research; Journal of Cleaner Production; Journal of Urban Technology; Nature; Urban Research and Practice; Urban Studies. Content analysis was used to identify and define key categories through a simultaneous process of reviewing data, coding and analyzing (Glaser & Strauss, 2017). The analysis of existing social scientific critique is presented in Table 1: it reveals two broad dimensions of focus on the techno-utopianism of SCI, providing an overview of the categories identified in the SCI literature, including selected authors we consider representative of each constituent part and impact type.

Speculative fiction is key to actualizing new political figures Imarisha & brown 15 [Walidah Imarisha is an American writer, activist, educator and spoken word artist; adrienne maree brown is a writer, activist and facilitator. From 2006 to 2010, she was executive director of the Ruckus Society. She also co-founded and directed the United States League of Young Voters. Octavia’s Brood : Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements. AK Press; 2015. Accessed July 10, 2023. . Bfinzer)

This chapter demonstrates how economics can learn lessons and draw useful analogies from literature and literary theory. These lessons apply at two levels: they help illuminate the everyday behavior and belief systems of economic agents, and they also have implications for the nature of economics as an academic discipline. We argue that, to understand behavior and the formation of expectations in modern economies, it is necessary to examine the role of imagined states of the world in helping people construct and navigate the uncertain future. Modern capitalism is a quintessentially creative and imaginative system: it is driven as much by dreams, emotions, and dystopias as by calculation; it is structured by language and narratives; and it has novelty and radical uncertainty at its heart. This has implications at a meta level for the nature of economics: economists need to engage in metaphorical thinking – the imaginative transfer of concepts from one domain to another – to shine new light on the dynamism and innovation that are central to economic activity but poorly explained by current economic models. They must take seriously the role of imagined futures and other forms of fiction in guiding the expectations and behavior of economic actors. Indeed, we argue for a new form of “narrative economics” and the use of analytical imagination to help “read” and “interpret” the stories, imagined futures, social frames, and calculative practices that structure economic decision-making. Suggesting a central role for fiction and imagination jars with the conception that most economists have of their discipline as the most precise and empirically grounded of the social sciences: they focus on using mathematical models to analyze and predict the market behavior of economic agents. These models are frequently sophisticated and incorporate vast data sets of relevant factors. But at their core is a simple assumption that economic actors rationally optimize their utility within given constraints in the light of “rational expectations” (or informed predictions of the future) with the result that economic outcomes tend to a predictable equilibrium. Since markets are fiercely competitive, economists assume that anyone behaving irrationally would tend to lose out to those who internalize the correct model of how the economy works and have a firm grasp of objective probability functions. From their perspective, it would be retrograde to assume that market participants in practice imagine the future and attempt to convince others of their fictions. Why would it make sense to replace (or complement) the dominant “rational expectations” hypothesis with one of “fictional expectations?”  Our theory of fictional expectations is founded on two pillars: firstly, empirical observation of actual economic decision-making; and secondly, epistemological theory about the problems of knowledge facing economic actors, especially in relation to the future. There is now a growing body of empirical studies demonstrating the large role played by narratives in structuring behavior and guiding expectations in the economy. Robert Boyer has detailed how successive phases of recent capitalist history characterized by increasing levels of uncertainty have been structured around a series of beguiling “grand narratives” (or overarching stories) – such as “Japan number one, the new economy, and the omniscience of financial markets” – each of which has served for a time to coordinate investment and increase confidence. David Tuckett has likewise shown that stock-market investors rely on investment stories to give them the necessary conviction to act. At a policy level, Douglas Holmes has demonstrated how far central banks rely on rhetoric and communication to achieve the goals of policy: a central bank’s public statements seek to persuade market participants to internalize policy goals as their own expectations. So, for example, when Mario Draghi said in  that the European Central Bank would do “whatever it takes” to rescue the euro, these three words did more than anything else to calm market expectations and solve the euro crisis. At the level of consumption, we are frequently influenced by imaginaries of future pleasure that we project onto the next generation of new goods, under the influence of a constant stream of marketing images and narratives.

To understand why narratives and imagined futures seem to have such a significant effect in structuring expectations and behavior, we need to understand the problems that economic actors face in knowing enough to make the sort of rational calculations that economic models assume are possible. In all walks of life, human beings face barriers to knowledge and struggle to make sense of multifaceted reality. But economic actors face an additional problem: a large part of the economic activity typical of modern capitalism is geared to the future. People save for a retirement that may never happen; they invest in new products or processes that they expect will deliver useful service in the future; or they buy assets in the hope they will rise in value. But, crucially, the future envisaged is not – as is commonly assumed by economists – a straightforward statistical shadow of the past: it is neither predictable according to well-understood laws of motion like the future of planetary orbits; nor, for the most part, is it predictable in objective probability terms (like the incidence of road deaths) on the basis of past data and observed factors. To use Frank Knight’s terminology, the future is often a matter of radical uncertainty rather than calculable risk.

The June jobs report showed that hiring remained solid, as employers added 209,000 payroll positions. While it wasn't the red-hot report investors feared, the unemployment dipped and wage growth showed unexpected strength. The S&P 500 fought its way into positive territory in early Friday stock market action after the jobs report, though odds of multiple additional Fed rate hikes eased a bit.Employment gains came close to Wall Street's 213,000 forecast. However, the private-sector added just 149,000 positions, well below estimates of 199,000. Meanwhile, government payrolls rose by 60,000.

The average hourly wage rose 0.4% on the month, topping 0.3% forecasts. Annual wage growth of 4.4% exceeded 4.2% forecasts. May's gain was revised up to 4.4% from 4.3%.

A solid employment report with stronger-than-expected wage growth for June keeps the Federal Reserve on track to raise interest rates this month and mull another hike as soon as September.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 209,000 last month, less than economists expected, and job gains over the prior two months were revised lower, a Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed Friday. The unemployment rate fell to 3.6%. Average hourly earnings rose 4.4% from a year earlier, and the average work week edged up.

Conscious of the big growth in state debts over the pandemic and energy crisis periods this decade, there is some wish by governments to control spending and borrowing a bit better. This is supplemented by new flexibilities over definitions of state-debt controls, and suspension of old debt ceilings. US President Joe Biden got away with lifting the debt ceiling for the rest of this term of his presidency. The European Union has suspended enforcement of the Maastricht Treaty requirements to keep running deficits to under 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) a year and to keep the stock of state debt below 60% of GDP. Both regions think climate transition is a good reason to have substantial subsidy and debt programmes to channel more investment into renewables and the electrical revolution they favour. The need to support many business and family incomes over Covid lockdowns and the Ukrainian-led energy price spike has embedded higher spending in some budgets. A softening of EU spending rules The European Union (EU) has set out its wish to have a new control framework for debt and deficits to replace the clear treaty demands. It is favouring abandoning the treaty requirements and going over to national negotiated targets for debt and deficits. Member states would be entitled to exceed the targets where they had good cause and the EU agreed. The European Central Bank (ECB) is not entirely happy about this development. It has stated that: “It is important that the vulnerability of euro area public finances is addressed through both growth-enhancing reforms and a gradual reduction of the GDP debt ratios. This will require a swift implementation of the investment and structural reform plans under the Next Generation EU programme and prudent fiscal policies for years to come.” The Bundesbank is even more worried about policy drift on deficits. It says the current proposals are “off the mark”. “They would soften the fiscal limits and make the process of determining them almost entirely opaque.” The US Supreme Court is an exception to the general trend to more government intervention and spending. The EU itself is more understanding of the way most member states kept their borrowings well above the 60% of GDP limit and have pushed them much higher this decade. The EU is keen to get in on the borrowing act, now moving ahead with substantial bond issues on its own covenant to finance preferred EU programmes. It had given itself the permission to borrow to help finance the NextGenerationEU programmes, SURE, the Macro Financial assistance programmes, Euratom and the European Fiscal Stability Mechanism. Whilst it moves ahead with new EU taxes, it remains unable to take over major income and employment taxes that are still largely the preserve of member states, so borrowing is a useful safety valve to pay for its increasingly expensive policies. The largest newer commitment is the Next Generation EU programme with a multi-year price tag of €800bn. US pressure to spend less The US Supreme Court is an exception to the general trend to more government intervention and spending. This body is coming to have a bigger influence on US policy given its disagreements with the incumbent president. It came to a judgement that has a direct effect on US budgets and borrowing. The Justices decided that President Biden’s expensive student loan forgiveness programme exceeds his powers under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act 2003. If he wants a general programme of relief for many students, totalling an estimated $430bn, he needs to legislate for major changes to the student loans programme, which would not meet with Republican approval in the House of Representatives. The administration is now working on rescuing what they can of student debt relief under the defined powers. The president makes public criticisms of the Supreme Court, seeing some of its recent judgements as political. The court has a majority of 6 conservative judges to 3 liberal judges following President Trump’s appointments, They are appointments for life. The court upset Democrat opinion with its Roe v Wade judgement limiting abortion rights. More recently it has upheld the right of a weddings website designer to decline service tailored to same sex couples on the ground that the First Amendment to the Constitution upholds the right to free speech. The court also ruled against affirmative action by colleges and universities to influence their admissions procedures. Some Democrats would like to change the numbers of judges or other features of the court, but it is a central institution laid down in the Constitution. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic have expensive habits, recognising the need for substantial subsidies and tax breaks to accelerate the electrical revolution. Energy policy and industrial policy are becoming more government-led and controlled. The problem is the era of ultra-low rates and readily available borrowings for governments has passed. With each increase in interest rates to curb inflation governments face climbing interest charges on the new debt they borrow and the old debt that they must roll over and refinance. Markets as a result must live with rates that are higher for longer, given the impact of government and Central Bank interventions. Share investors must live with a more volatile climate for individual sectors and companies as governments do more directly to tax the successful or subsidise those that will do most to help governments and to speed the route to net zero.

The current federal budget deficit and the accumulated debt result from Congress spending more than they are willing to raise in taxes. Ultimately, the question of which is more to blame—steady taxes or ballooning spending—will depend on our priors: should the government consume an ever‐​increasing share of private resources, or should its growth be constrained? However, the recently updated makes clear that the causes of the future budget deficit is not a question of normative judgment. Tax increases cannot fix the underlying growth of health and retirement spending. Even if tax revenues permanently increased to the levels collected when the United States had a budget surplus in 2000, projected deficits would still rise above 9 percent of GDP by 2053. Tax cuts are not to blame for the demographic and benefit‐​formula‐​fueled growth in mandatory spending. This short piece will begin with context on U.S. fiscal trends and then discuss the two distinct issues in budgetary sustainability—the growth rate of future spending and the desired level of government spending. Fixing the unsustainable growth rate of federal spending is necessary regardless of the desired level of government spending and preferred tax rates. However, without spending restraint, any tax relief will necessarily be short‐​lived.

Beijing aims to boost confidence in Chinese history and culture at home, while to the outside world it pushes respect for ‘diversity of civilisations’

Analysts say the rhetoric resonates in some developing nations, but most want to avoid picking sides

When Group of Seven leaders gathered in the Bavarian Alps in June, they pledged to stand with Ukraine for the long haul.

Their Group of 20 counterparts are proving less supportive.

Stagnant gas prices have evolved into falling gas prices to kick off the month of July—and they could go lower.

A gallon of regular gas was $3.52 on average Wednesday, July 5, according to AAA. Stacker compiled statistics on gas prices in Ann Arbor, MI metro area using data from AAA.

HOUSTON, July 5 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) on Wednesday signaled second-quarter operating profits fell sharply on lower natural gas prices and weaker oil refining margins, according to a regulatory filing.

Operating earnings dropped to about $7.8 billion from $17.85 billion a year earlier, when surging oil and gas prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine boosted global energy results to record levels.

Reasons include a stronger supply of oil and weaker-than-expected demand, energy experts say. Some people are saving hundreds of dollars on fuel.

Americans who fill up their cars this Memorial Day weekend will catch a break — at least compared with a year ago, when gasoline prices were soaring.

Did you know that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, billionaires have made unimaginable, record-breaking fortunes? Today, every dimension of inequality - across wealth, income, gender and race - is rising around the world. Every year, the gap between rich and the rest of us widens.

Such extreme inequality isn’t only standing in the way of ending global poverty. Inequality kills. Our economy must stop excessively rewarding those at the top and start working for all people.

Roughly 38,000 U.S. veterans eat from garbage cans every day. So Fox News reported back in January, advocating a helping hand for homeless veterans. It was nice to see the news outlet that’s usually so hostile to those who lack shelter take up their cause, even if it was only because these luckless destitute had performed military service. Any compassion for any segment of the millions of vagabonds among us is welcome, especially from an organization, one of whose hosts, Jesse Watters, hates homeless people. He even called them “bags of flesh mutating on the sidewalk,” on June 16. Very likely some of those people regarded by Watters as garbage are veterans. But maybe Watters missed the Fox memo about showing care for that subset of the unhoused, whom he also described as “urine-soaked junkies.”

But then Watters – who is ascending to Tucker Carlson’s punditry spot – has demonized the homeless for years. Back on September 22, 2022, Watters averred that “It was more civilized when we banished them to asylums and put them in strait jackets.” More civilized because then “nice people” wouldn’t have to see them. Not, nota bene, because penniless people in mental agony were at least receiving psychiatric and medical care. Watters does not seem particularly concerned about treating psychotics, he just wants them out of sight, preferably incarcerated. A lot like Donald “Camps for the Homeless” Trump, who promises that if re-elected president, he will remove this so-called human blight from city centers to peripheral “camps.” As in concentration camps.

Amid the onslaught of text and email scams, there’s a new tactic targeting your bank account, the Internal Revenue Service warns, and it uses old-fashioned physical envelopes. The choice of a mailer is likely by design as the IRS doesn’t contact taxpayers by email, text message or social media channels to ask for personal or financial information. The scam mailer shows up in a cardboard envelope from a delivery service, and the letter inside has the IRS masthead and the wording “in relation to your unclaimed refund.” However, instead of getting you a refund, the letter goes on to request detailed information that identity thieves themselves can use to file for a tax refund or access other financial information. “This is just the latest in the long string of attempts by identity thieves posing as the IRS in hopes of tricking people into providing valuable personal information to steal identities and money, including tax refunds,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in a news release. The IRS says that one unusual aspect of the scam is that it uses a physical mailer to lure taxpayers into emailing or calling to provide sensitive information under the guise of “filing information.” That information includes one’s driver’s license number, cellphone number, Social Security number, bank account type and bank routing information.

Let’s not forget the IRS. House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) has been joined by Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) in seeking testimony from IRS, Justice Department and Secret Service personnel over whistleblower allegations that Biden administration officials meddled in the tax probe of Hunter Biden. Not to be outdone, lawyers for President Joe Biden’s son have intensified their pushback. In case you missed it, one of Hunter Biden’s attorneys, Abbe Lowell, late last week sent Smith a blistering 10-page rebuttal that questioned the credibility of the whistleblowers and the propriety of his investigation. “Releasing the transcripts of and exhibits from interviews of self-styled IRS ‘whistleblowers’ who may be claiming that title in an attempt to evade their own misconduct was an obvious ploy to feed the misinformation campaign to harm our client, Hunter Biden, as a vehicle to attack his father,” Lowell wrote. “It is no secret these interviews were orchestrated recitations of mischaracterized and incomplete ‘facts’ by disgruntled agents who believed they knew better than the federal prosecutors who had all the evidence as they conducted their five-year investigation of Mr. Biden,” Lowell added. Lowell didn’t provide any evidence to back up his suggestions about the whistleblowers’ motives. Smith hit back with a statement defending the whistleblowers and the conduct of his investigation. “It’s little surprise that Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to chill our investigation and discredit the whistleblowers who say they have already faced retaliation from the IRS and the Department of Justice despite statutory protections established by law,” Smith said. “Worse, this letter misleads the public about the lawful actions taken by the Ways and Means Committee, which took the appropriate legal steps to share this information with rest of Congress,” he added. Smith and his colleagues could face other pushback — from within their own party. As Jordain wrote, “conservative efforts could backfire, instead exposing tension with centrist and more establishment Republicans who have bristled at their colleagues’ growing attacks on law enforcement — jabs that would have been unthinkable before Trump’s presidency. “The fault lines have already emerged during closed-door House GOP spending meetings in recent weeks, with some lawmakers warning colleagues to think twice about how they use spending bills to target specific agencies. In one session, conservative Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) said he privately urged his colleagues to ‘be careful’ about how they talk about Justice Department funding, adding: ‘I’m not in favor of cutting DOJ.’”-

Early this year, I reported that on a project called “Make Sunsets,” which would have used sulfur-based compounds to counter what “experts” assert is man-caused global warming. Congress had ordered the White House to review the core geoengineering approach of the Mexico project, the blockage of solar radiation. The report, produced by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, initially seemed to offer measured support for the idea of The controversial concept known as solar radiation modification is a potentially effective response to fighting climate change, but one that could have unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, some scientists say. The White House report released late Friday indicates that the Biden administration is open to studying the possibility that altering sunlight might quickly cool the planet. But it added a degree of skepticism by noting that Congress has ordered the review, and the administration said it does not signal any new policy decisions related to a process that is sometimes referred to — or derided as — geoengineering. The report provided all sorts of grandiose ideas on how to achieve solar radiation modification (SRM), all of which come with potentially destructive. One method would be to significantly increase the amount of aerosols in the stratosphere, which would reflect the sun’s rays from the planet. Other ideas floated included increasing cloud coverage over oceans, or reducing the amount of cirrus cloud formations, which reflect solar radiation back to the Earth. The report noted that undertaking the mammoth task could have severe ramifications weather patterns and food supplies, which would in turn impact biodiversity, geopolitics, and health. …While insisting that it was not definitively moving ahead with the plan, the Biden administration insisted in its report that the idea appeared promising. It said a ‘program of research’ into the practice would ‘enable better-informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits’ of blocking the sun. There has been a lot of graft and wealth transfer that still has yet to be tapped into. Watts Up With That contributor Francis Menton crunched the numbers and determined that the world is now wasting over .” …[T]he massive investments in wind and solar additions for electricity generation were not even sufficient to keep up with demand growth, let alone displace even a bit of existing fossil fuel generation. Even in the electricity sector, fossil fuels continued to grow. And the electricity sector is only about a quarter of primary energy consumption. Here’s the big picture: Primary energy demand . . . in 2022 increas[ed] 1.1%. . . . Global electricity generation increased by 2.3% in 2022 . . . . Fossil fuel consumption as a percentage of primary energy remained steady at 82%. . . . Carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, industrial processes, flaring and methane (in carbon dioxide equivalent terms) continued to rise to a new high growing 0.8% in 2022 to 39.3 GtCO2e, with emissions from energy use rising 0.9% to 34.4 GtCO2. Bottom line: it’s now $1 trillion per year, plus or minus, invested in wind and solar “renewables” plus grid upgrades and energy storage needed to accommodate them. And for that vast sum of money, the percent of primary energy from fossil fuels does not budge by even a tenth of a percent. And, as world energy consumption increases, carbon emissions just continue to increase. The trillion is just completely wasted. Just imagine how much more money might be wasted on these SRM technologies. However, there are a few upsides to this news. I have always maintained that the biggest driver of climate was the Sun. The SRM approach aligns with that assertion. Additionally, more people are questioning The Science and the “experts.” There was a great deal of pushback on social media on the announcement of the report, based on real science. Now it is being reported that the Biden administration stressed, in a separate statement, there was no “comprehensive research” . In a separate statement after the release, the White House said, “There are no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.” Hopefully, no power-mad, climate-crusading, morally righteous Big Tech billionaire will decide to fund SRM privately.