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The sordid origin story of Max Blumenthal’s cadre of pseudo-journalists

The sordid origin story of Max Blumenthal’s cadre of pseudo-journalists

Joshua Collins writes: Professional liars, conspiracy theorists and old-fashioned fanatics have existed since the dawn of civilization, but in a digital age where clicks are driven by outrage and sensational headlines, these bad actors find themselves in possession of a megaphone with global reach that has never before been seen in human history. But not all grifters and yellow journalists are created equal. That is to say, in media platforms prone to consolidation and driven by outrage, the most extreme…

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Bernie’s secret weapon

Bernie’s secret weapon

Russell Berman writes: If Senator Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday, it’ll likely be thanks to voters who are—like him—not actually Democrats. The Vermont senator’s lead in several public polls is bolstered by his strong support among independent, or undeclared, voters, who are welcome to participate in New Hampshire’s primary and could make up as much as 40 percent of the electorate. Beyond New Hampshire, Sanders’s advantage among independent voters could be his secret weapon…

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Iceberg twice the size of Washington cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a sign of rapid warming

Iceberg twice the size of Washington cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a sign of rapid warming

The Washington Post reports: An iceberg about twice the size of the District of Columbia broke off Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica sometime between Saturday and Sunday, satellite data shows, confirming yet another in a series of increasingly frequent calving events in this rapidly warming region. The Pine Island Glacier is one of the fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica, and along with the Thwaites Glacier nearby, it’s a subject of close scientific monitoring to determine whether these glaciers are in…

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Virus epidemic rocks China’s political elite

Virus epidemic rocks China’s political elite

Asia Times reports: Deserted streets, eerily quiet shopping malls and empty buses. For most people, this evokes images of quarantined Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. But, in fact, this is Beijing, home to the ruling Communist Party elite, the Great Hall of the People and the iconic yet infamous Tiananmen Square. “It is a ghost city, hardly any people out and very few vehicles. Six buses passed me today and, with the exception of the drivers, they were…

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We might have to impeach Trump again

We might have to impeach Trump again

George T. Conway III writes: “So we’ll probably have to do it again.” So said the already-once-impeached President Trump on Thursday in the East Room, musing about the possibility he could become the first president to be impeached more than once. And on the very next day, as though he were competing for it, Trump showed precisely why he could be destined to achieve that ignominious fate. With essentially no pretense about why he was doing it, the president brazenly…

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War in the Arctic?

War in the Arctic?

Michael T. Klare writes: In early March, an estimated 7,500 American combat troops will travel to Norway to join thousands of soldiers from other NATO countries in a massive mock battle with imagined invading forces from Russia. In this futuristic simulated engagement — it goes by the name of Exercise Cold Response 2020 — allied forces will “conduct multinational joint exercises with a high-intensity combat scenario in demanding winter conditions,” or so claims the Norwegian military anyway. At first glance,…

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This election shows Ireland has moved on from Sinn Féin’s past

This election shows Ireland has moved on from Sinn Féin’s past

Siobhán Fenton writes: For almost a century, political power in Ireland has been held by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The two centrist parties have ruled in some form or another, be it through coalitions or confidence-and-supply arrangements with other smaller parties. Saturday’s general election has upended this political duopoly. Sinn Féin topped the poll in first-preference votes for the first time, with a share of 24.5%. Fianna Fáil received 22.2%, while Fine Gael, in government since 2011, came third…

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The loss of the extended family

The loss of the extended family

David Brooks writes: If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give…

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Rapid permafrost collapse is underway, disintegrating landscapes and our predictions

Rapid permafrost collapse is underway, disintegrating landscapes and our predictions

AFP reports: Permafrost in Canada, Alaska and Siberia is abruptly crumbling in ways that could release large stores of greenhouse gases more quickly than anticipated, researchers have warned. Scientists have long fretted that climate change – which has heated Arctic and subarctic regions at double the global rate – will release planet-warming CO2 and methane that has remained safely locked inside Earth’s frozen landscapes for millennia. It was assumed this process would be gradual, leaving humanity time to draw down…

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Is Pete Buttigieg the ‘get-to-yes’ candidate?

Is Pete Buttigieg the ‘get-to-yes’ candidate?

Matt Bai writes: For months now, a lot of Democrats have been telling us that Buttigieg inspires them. They love the idea of a Rhodes scholar with military credentials, a gay candidate who doesn’t let identity define him, a candidate who came of age with social media and isn’t pushing 80. They just wish Buttigieg were even five years older or that he was the mayor of, you know, a real city. They’d like to be able to vote for…

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What happens when QAnon seeps from the web to the offline world

What happens when QAnon seeps from the web to the offline world

The New York Times reports: A city council member in California took the dais and quoted from QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory about “deep state” traitors plotting against the president, concluding her remarks, “God bless Q.” A man spouting QAnon beliefs about child sex trafficking swung a crowbar inside a historic Catholic chapel in Arizona, damaging the altar and then fleeing before being arrested. And outside a Trump campaign rally in Florida, people in “Q” T-shirts stopped by a tent…

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The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the deep flaws of Xi’s autocracy

The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the deep flaws of Xi’s autocracy

Disturbing from Communist China. Chinese government are only suspecting these people have been exposed & therefore are going to quarantine them w/ people who have #coronavirus. They are fighting because they don’t want to be quarantined w/ the infected. pic.twitter.com/6Lvnr2Cj7o — Nat Shupe (@NatShupe) February 7, 2020 Richard McGregor writes: Soon after Li Wenliang succumbed to the coronavirus in Wuhan early on Friday morning, a drawing of the Chinese doctor appeared on the internet, sleeping and being hoisted gently into…

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Tired of a two-party system, Irish voters have made Sinn Féin mainstream

Tired of a two-party system, Irish voters have made Sinn Féin mainstream

Rory Carroll reports: Sinn Féin’s breakthrough in Ireland’s general election was decades in the making, but not even Sinn Féin saw it coming. Once a revolutionary party associated with guns and balaclavas, a toxic brand, it slowly edged from the fringe into the mainstream, inch by inch, and then on Saturday made a giant leap. An exit poll gave Sinn Féin 22.3% of the vote, a statistical dead heat with Fine Gael on 22.4% and Fianna Fáil on 22.2%, two…

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Why walking helps us think

Why walking helps us think

Ferris Jabr writes: In Vogue’s 1969 Christmas issue, Vladimir Nabokov offered some advice for teaching James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.” He drew a charming one himself. Several decades later, a Boston College English professor named Joseph Nugent and his colleagues put together an annotated Google map that shadows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step by…

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