Browsed by
Month: April 2018

Corruption, not Russia, is Trump’s greatest political liability

Corruption, not Russia, is Trump’s greatest political liability

Jonathan Chait writes: “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” declared Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.” To the extent that Trump’s candidacy offered any positive appeal, as opposed to simple loathing for his opponent, this was it. He was a brilliant businessman, or at least starred in a television show as one, and he would set…

Read More Read More

The strange tale of the man who pretended to be a Trump representative

The strange tale of the man who pretended to be a Trump representative

Anne Applebaum writes: In the weeks after the 2016 election, European media, and especially British media, were desperate to find someone who could speak for Donald Trump. The transition team in Washington seemed to have no European links or contacts. The embassies knew nothing. Into this void stepped an American businessman and academic Ted Malloch. He was initially promoted by a publicist, according to the BBC television producer who first booked him on a program. He claimed he would be…

Read More Read More

Poisoned door handle hints at high-level Russian government plot to kill spy, U.K. officials say

Poisoned door handle hints at high-level Russian government plot to kill spy, U.K. officials say

The New York Times reports: British officials investigating the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian double agent, believe it is likely that an assassin smeared a nerve agent on the door handle at his home. This operation is seen as so risky and sensitive that it is unlikely to have been undertaken without approval from the Kremlin, according to officials who have been briefed on the early findings of the inquiry. This theory suggests that an assassin, who…

Read More Read More

Russian bots are tweeting their support of embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham

Russian bots are tweeting their support of embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham

The Washington Post reports: Embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham has found some unlikely allies: Russian bots. Russian-linked Twitter accounts have rallied around the conservative talk-show host, who has come under fire for attacking the young survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. According to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks the spread of Russian propaganda on Twitter, the hashtag #IstandwithLaura jumped 2,800 percent in 48 hours this weekend. On Saturday night, it was the top trending hashtag among Russian…

Read More Read More

America still needs a radical revolution of values

America still needs a radical revolution of values

William J Barber II writes: In the summer of 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. visited homes in the hamlet of Marks, Mississippi. Later he remembered the hundreds of children who lacked shoes. A mother told King that her children had no clothes for school. The Nobel laureate wept openly. “They didn’t even have any blankets to cover their children up on a cold night,” he recalled. “And I said to myself, God does not like this.” Then he vowed, “We…

Read More Read More

Are today’s teenagers smarter and better than we think?

Are today’s teenagers smarter and better than we think?

Tara Parker-Pope writes: Today’s teenagers have been raised on cellphones and social media. Should we worry about them or just get out of their way? A recent wave of student protests around the country has provided a close-up view of Generation Z in action, and many adults have been surprised. While there has been much hand-wringing about this cohort, also called iGen or the Post-Millennials, the stereotype of a disengaged, entitled and social-media-addicted generation doesn’t match the poised, media-savvy and…

Read More Read More

How do you deal with your brother becoming a huge star in the white supremacy movement?

How do you deal with your brother becoming a huge star in the white supremacy movement?

Gabriel Thompson writes: On a Saturday evening in April of 2017, Josh Damigo was home in Oxnard, California, about 50 miles up the coast from Los Angeles, when he received a text message from a friend. “Are you OK?” she asked. “Kinda,” he texted back. “Why do you ask?” “Um, your brother is all over Twitter right now.” Josh went online. “Oh shit,” he wrote back. That morning, a motley collection of people—from mainstream Donald Trump supporters to helmeted militia…

Read More Read More

AggregateIQ: The obscure Canadian tech firm and the Brexit data riddle

AggregateIQ: The obscure Canadian tech firm and the Brexit data riddle

Carole Cadwalladr reports: “Find Christopher Wylie.” That instruction – 13 months ago – came from the very first ex-Cambridge Analytica employee I met. He was unequivocal. Wylie would have answers to the two questions that were troubling me most. He could tell me about Facebook. And he would know about Canada. What Christopher Wylie knows about Facebook, the world now knows. Facebook certainly knows – its market value is down $100bn. But the Canadian connection remains more elusive. What it…

Read More Read More

The interstitium, the largest organ we never knew we had

The interstitium, the largest organ we never knew we had

Tanya Basu writes: What is an organ? Anatomy textbooks are rather fuzzy about what defines an “organ,” requiring one to have primary tissue—parenchyma—and “sporadic” tissue, called stroma, which can be nerves, vessels, and other connective tissue. Organs are the necessary building blocks of organisms (hence, the name), and can be gigantic or microscopic. So long as cells clump together to form tissues, and these tissues organize themselves into organs that perform specific functions in the survival of an organism, that…

Read More Read More