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When ‘creatives’ turn destructive: Image-makers and the climate crisis

When ‘creatives’ turn destructive: Image-makers and the climate crisis

Bill McKibben writes: Past sins are past no more: an overdue historical recalibration is under way, with monuments being pulled down, dorms renamed, restitution offered. People did things, bad things; even across the span of centuries, they’re being held to account, and there’s something noble about that. The Reverend Robert W. Lee IV, for instance, recently backed the removal of his famous ancestor’s statue from Richmond, Virginia. The memorial, he wrote, “is a hollow reminder of a painful ideology and…

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Right-wing social media finalizes its divorce from reality

Right-wing social media finalizes its divorce from reality

Renée DiResta writes: When Fox News called Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden shortly after the polls closed there on Election Night, right-wing social media erupted in fury. Fox is the most conservative of the nation’s major news outlets, and its aggressive Arizona call—which most other national outlets did not follow for days—left true believers on the right feeling betrayed. On the social-media app Parler, which has been gaining popularity among supporters of President Donald Trump, posts alleging electoral irregularities mixed…

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Scientists uncover the universal geometry of geology

Scientists uncover the universal geometry of geology

Joshua Sokol writes: On a mild autumn day in 2016, the Hungarian mathematician Gábor Domokos arrived on the geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack’s doorstep in Philadelphia. Domokos carried with him his suitcases, a bad cold and a burning secret. The two men walked across a gravel lot behind the house, where Jerolmack’s wife ran a taco cart. Their feet crunched over crushed limestone. Domokos pointed down. “How many facets do each of these gravel pieces have?” he said. Then he grinned. “What…

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How Trump hopes to use party machinery to retain control of the GOP

How Trump hopes to use party machinery to retain control of the GOP

The New York Times reports: As President Trump brazenly seeks to delay the certification of the election in hopes of overturning his defeat, he is also mounting a less high-profile but similarly audacious bid to keep control of the Republican National Committee even after he leaves office. Ronna McDaniel, Mr. Trump’s handpicked chairwoman, has secured the president’s support for her re-election to another term in January, when the party is expected to gather for its winter meeting. But her intention…

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Trump threatens to wreak havoc on GOP from beyond the White House

Trump threatens to wreak havoc on GOP from beyond the White House

Politico reports: President Donald Trump has spent the three weeks since he lost the election savaging a pair of GOP governors for not backing his claims he was robbed. Republicans are worried it’s just the start of what’s in store from the soon-to-be-former president. Trump’s attacks on Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Mike DeWine Ohio — both of whom are up for reelection in 2022 — has led to broader concerns within the party that he will use his…

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Brad Raffensperger: Georgia’s election results are sound

Brad Raffensperger: Georgia’s election results are sound

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, writes: Georgia’s elections have received a lot of unfair and unwarranted criticism over the past two years, much of it spurred by disinformation. The successful November election and the smooth hand recount have proved our critics wrong. Since I took office, we have made great strides in improving election security, reliability and efficiency in Georgia. After years of disastrous elections in Fulton County, we effectively eliminated voting lines. This Election Day, voters waited on…

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Newsmax, once a right-wing also-ran, is rising, and Trump approves

Newsmax, once a right-wing also-ran, is rising, and Trump approves

The New York Times reports: Flanked by aides in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Trump dialed up a friend in the news media with a message: Keep up the good work. “He said that it’s just incredible, the ratings you’re getting, and everyone’s talking about it,” recalled Christopher Ruddy, the owner of Newsmax, a niche conservative cable network that has yet to declare a winner in the 2020 presidential election. Based in Boca Raton, Fla., the network features lo-fi…

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Tiny liquid droplets are driving a cell biology rethink

Tiny liquid droplets are driving a cell biology rethink

By Alla Katsnelson, Knowable Magazine, November 18, 2020 The fluid inside a living cell bustles with activity. Proteins, RNA, lipids and other molecules wiggle, zip, glide and drift through this broth — catalyzing reactions, activating receptors, relaying messages, marking viruses and other foreign molecules for destruction and performing a gazillion other tiny but crucial tasks. It all adds up to keep cells — and the life forms they’re a part of — running smoothly. Biologists have studied these cellular processes…

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How European sailors learned celestial navigation

How European sailors learned celestial navigation

Margaret Schotte writes: During the 16th to 18th centuries, Europeans embarked on thousands of long-distance sea voyages around the world. These expeditions in the name of trade and colonisation had irreversible, often deadly, impacts on peoples around the globe. Heedless of those consequences, Europeans focused primarily on devising new techniques to make their voyages safer and faster. They could no longer sail along the coasts, taking their directional cues from prominent landmarks (as had been common in the preceding centuries)….

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Federal judge throws out Trump’s bid to ‘disenfranchise almost seven million’ Pennsylvania voters

Federal judge throws out Trump’s bid to ‘disenfranchise almost seven million’ Pennsylvania voters

Law & Crime reports: The Trump campaign cannot block certification of Pennsylvania’s election results, which made Joe Biden President-elect of the United States, based on nothing more than “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusation,” a federal judge ruled in a blistering opinion on Saturday night. “In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters,” U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann wrote in a 37-page opinion. “This Court has been unable to find any case in…

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Trump using last days in office to lock in policies and make Biden’s task more difficult

Trump using last days in office to lock in policies and make Biden’s task more difficult

The New York Times reports: Voters have decided that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. should guide the country through the next four years. But on issues of war, the environment, criminal justice, trade, the economy and more, President Trump and top administration officials are doing what they can to make changing direction more difficult. Mr. Trump has spent the last two weeks hunkered down in the White House, raging about a “stolen” election and refusing to accept the reality of…

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Trump has revealed the fragility of the electoral system — and shaken it

Trump has revealed the fragility of the electoral system — and shaken it

The New York Times reports: For the next three weeks, the integrity of American democracy is in the hands of people like Norman D. Shinkle, a proud Michigander who has, until recently, served in relative obscurity on the state board that certifies vote results. But now Mr. Shinkle faces a choice born from the national election turmoil created by President Trump, his preferred candidate, for whom he sang the national anthem at a campaign rally in Lansing last month. Mr….

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Communities of color continue to die from the coronavirus at much higher rates than Whites

Communities of color continue to die from the coronavirus at much higher rates than Whites

The Washington Post reports: Dennis Bannister’s daughter, Demi, was the first to die. She was only 28, a beloved third-grade teacher who likely caught the virus during a training at her Columbia, S.C., school district. Doctors diagnosed her with a bladder infection, and by the time they realized their mistake, it was too late. Not long after, the family’s matriarch, Shirley, 57, complained of difficulty breathing. She was twice sent home from the emergency room before returning by ambulance and…

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World leaders discuss help for poorest nations in post-Covid world, while Trump golfs

World leaders discuss help for poorest nations in post-Covid world, while Trump golfs

Reuters reports: Leaders of the 20 biggest economies are debating this weekend how to distribute Covid-19 vaccines, drugs and tests around the world so that poorer countries are not left out as nations look for ways to manage a post-coronavirus recovery. The leaders are holding a two-day virtual meeting via video-conference due to the pandemic, under the chairmanship of Saudi Arabia, which holds the rotating presidency of the G20 until the end of November. The Covid-19 pandemic, which will throw…

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