Music: Yussef Kamaal — ‘Remembrance’
Maria Butina is just the tip of the Russia iceberg
Anne Applebaum writes: By day, he ran a travel agency. Off hours, Jacob Golos worked for the Soviet Union. Unlike some of his fictional successors, he did not pretend to be a native. But from the time of its founding in 1927 until his death in 1943 , Golos did use the agency — “World Tourists” — as a front for his real activities: funding and enabling the activities of the American Communist Party. Though he also engaged in activities…
Actually, Republicans do believe in climate change
Leaf Van Boven and David Sherman write: It is widely believed that most Republicans are skeptical about human-caused climate change. But is this belief correct? In 2014 and 2016, we conducted two national surveys of more than 2,000 respondents on the issue of climate change. We found that most Republicans agreed that climate change is happening, threatens humans and is caused by human activity — and that reducing carbon emissions would mitigate the problem. To be sure, Democrats agreed more…
Bush claimed power to override a torture ban. What did Brett Kavanaugh think about that?
The New York Times reports: When Brett M. Kavanaugh came before the Judiciary Committee in May 2006 for his nomination to be an appeals court judge, senators pressed him on his role in President George W. Bush’s use of signing statements to claim the power to bypass new laws — like a much-disputed assertion the previous December that he could override a ban on torture. Judge Kavanaugh, who at the time was the White House staff secretary, acknowledged handling draft…
Inside Google’s shadow workforce
Bloomberg reports: Every day, tens of thousands of people stream into Google offices wearing red name badges. They eat in Google’s cafeterias, ride its commuter shuttles and work alongside its celebrated geeks. But they can’t access all of the company’s celebrated perks. They aren’t entitled to stock and can’t enter certain offices. Many don’t have health insurance. Before each weekly Google all-hands meeting, trays of hors d’oeuvres and, sometimes, kegs of beer are carted into an auditorium and satellite offices…
Conflict reigns over the history and origins of money
Bruce Bower writes: Wherever you go, money talks. And it has for a long time. Sadly, though, money has been mum about its origins. For such a central element of our lives, money’s ancient roots and the reasons for its invention are unclear. As cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin multiply into a flock of digital apparitions, researchers are still battling over how and where money came to be. And some draw fascinating parallels between the latest, buzzworthy cryptocurrencies, which require only…
In order to remember, it’s necessary to forget
Dalmeet Singh Chawla writes: Past theories about forgetting mostly emphasized relatively passive processes in which the loss of memories was a consequence of the physical traces of those memories (what some researchers refer to as “engrams”) naturally breaking down or becoming harder to access; those engrams may typically be interconnections between brain cells that prompt them to fire in a certain way. This forgetting process could involve the spontaneous decay of connections between neurons that encode a memory, the random…
Geoffrey West: What is complexity in the cosmos?
Extreme global weather is ‘the face of climate change’ says leading scientist
The Guardian reports: The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of global warming now “playing out in real time”. Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to on the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern…
What the payoff tape reveals about Trump
Andrew Sullivan writes: The leaked tape recording of Michael Cohen and Donald Trump discussing how to handle the payoff to silence yet another extracurricular paramour, Karen McDougal, is more important, it seems to me, than has been generally acknowledged. It’s only a shade under three minutes long. But unlike the Billy Bush tape, Trump is not performing or bragging or trying to charm someone he doesn’t know that well. He’s at work, with an intimate, trusted wingman, every single guard…
The case for a Trump-Russia conspiracy just got a little stronger
Natasha Bertrand writes: CNN’s bombshell scoop Thursday night shined a bright light yet again on the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan and raised the specter that President Trump and his surrogates may have been lying about one of the most significant Russia-related episodes of the 2016 election. According to CNN, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is willing to testify that Trump approved the meeting between his son, son-in-law, campaign chairman, and a Russian lawyer—despite Trump and…
Can Imran Khan really reform Pakistan?
Steve Coll writes: In 2011 and 2012, when Imran Khan, the former international cricket star and London night-club Lothario, first emerged from Pakistan’s political wilderness, he rode an Arab Spring-inspired wave of urban middle-class hopes for cleaner politics and better government. If Khan, a celebrity with his own income, came to power, the thinking went, then he might sweep away the family-based nepotism and corruption that had so curtailed Pakistan’s progress since independence, in 1947, and perhaps also loosen the…
Immigrant youth shelters: ‘If you’re a predator, it’s a gold mine’
ProPublica reports: Just five days after he reached the United States, the 15-year-old Honduran boy awoke in his Tucson, Arizona, immigrant shelter one morning in 2015 to find a youth care worker in his room, tickling his chest and stomach. When he asked the man, who was 46, what he was doing, the man left. But he returned two more times, rubbing the teen’s penis through his clothing and then trying to reach under his boxers. “I know what you…
Facebook and YouTube give Alex Jones a wrist slap
The New York Times reports: The digital walls are closing in on Alex Jones, the social media shock jock whose penchant for right-wing conspiracy theories and viral misinformation set off a heated debate about the limits of free speech on internet platforms. Facebook said on Friday that it had suspended Mr. Jones from posting on the site for 30 days because he had repeatedly violated its policies. The social network also took down four videos posted by Mr. Jones and…
Jaron Lanier on how social media ruins your life
Iran’s General Soleimani warns Trump war would ‘destroy all you possess’
BBC News reports: An Iranian special forces commander has warned President Donald Trump if the US attacks Iran it “will destroy all that you possess”. Major General Qassem Soleimani vowed that if Mr Trump started a war, the Islamic Republic would end it, Iranian news agency Tasnim reported. It follows Mr Trump’s all-caps-lock tweet warning Iran’s president to “never, ever” threaten the US. Tensions have risen since the US withdrew from the 2015 Iran deal. Maj Gen Soleimani – who…