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ABC only did the right thing when it could no longer get away with ignoring Roseanne’s racism

ABC only did the right thing when it could no longer get away with ignoring Roseanne’s racism

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Roxane Gay writes: On Twitter on Tuesday, Roseanne Barr wrote that if “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby =vj.” The message referred to President Barack Obama’s former senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, and in it Ms. Barr traded on age-old racist ideas about black people and primates. Then she shared some incorrect nonsense about Chelsea Clinton marrying into the Soros family. It was the kind of thing Roseanne Barr has been doing online for years. This time,…

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The Standard Model of particle physics: The absolutely amazing theory of almost everything

The Standard Model of particle physics: The absolutely amazing theory of almost everything

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How does our world work on a subatomic level? Varsha Y S, CC BY-SA By Glenn Starkman, Case Western Reserve University The Standard Model. What dull name for the most accurate scientific theory known to human beings. More than a quarter of the Nobel Prizes in physics of the last century are direct inputs to or direct results of the Standard Model. Yet its name suggests that if you can afford a few extra dollars a month you should buy…

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The role of liberals in the rise of authoritarianism

The role of liberals in the rise of authoritarianism

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John Gray writes: The denial by liberals of any responsibility for the conditions that have fuelled rising anti-liberal movements is the cardinal fact of contemporary politics. What this denial presages is not any higher phase of history – a revamped liberal order, or some purer version of socialism – but a new authoritarian era. The world has reverted to a condition not dissimilar to that which prevailed towards the end of the 19th century. Harnessing unchanging human needs for security…

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Britain has replaced welfare with destitution

Britain has replaced welfare with destitution

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The New York Times reports: A walk through this modest town [Prescot, near Liverpool] in the northwest of England amounts to a tour of the casualties of Britain’s age of austerity. The old library building has been sold and refashioned into a glass-fronted luxury home. The leisure center has been razed, eliminating the public swimming pool. The local museum has receded into town history. The police station has been shuttered. Now, as the local government desperately seeks to turn assets…

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A correlation between Republicanism and racism apparent among the judiciary

A correlation between Republicanism and racism apparent among the judiciary

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The New York Times reports: Judges appointed by Republican presidents gave longer sentences to black defendants and shorter ones to women than judges appointed by Democrats, according to a new study that analyzed data on more than half a million defendants. “Republican-appointed judges sentence black defendants to three more months than similar nonblacks and female defendants to two fewer months than similar males compared to Democratic-appointed judges,” the study found, adding, “These differences cannot be explained by other judge characteristics…

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Syria’s army is on a path to victory after ousting rebels from Damascus

Syria’s army is on a path to victory after ousting rebels from Damascus

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The Washington Post reports: After seven years of war, Syrian government forces have taken full control of the area around their capital, Damascus, freeing up an overstretched military to move against the country’s few remaining rebel pockets. The battle for Damascus ended this week with an offensive against the Islamic State group among the ruins of a former Palestinian refugee camp in the southern suburbs after other rebel forces were defeated in a nearby enclave. More than 1,000 civilians were…

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What are the limits of manipulating nature?

What are the limits of manipulating nature?

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In Scientific American, Neil Savage writes: Matt Trusheim flips a switch in the darkened laboratory, and an intense green laser illuminates a tiny diamond locked in place beneath a microscope objective. On a computer screen an image appears, a fuzzy green cloud studded with brighter green dots. The glowing dots are color centers in the diamond—tiny defects where two carbon atoms have been replaced by a single atom of tin, shifting the light passing through from one shade of green…

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The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism

The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism

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Noah Berlatsky writes: Since the founding of the United States, politicians and pundits have warned that partisanship is a danger to democracy. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, worried that political parties, or factions, could “allow cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men” to rise to power and subvert democracy. More recently, many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions. A new study, however,…

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A triumph for women and for Ireland

A triumph for women and for Ireland

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Barbara Wesel writes: It is such a resounding victory that campaigners in Ireland are weeping with joy. After a tense last few days when the referendum seemed too close to call, it turned out to be a landslide result. Irish people voted overwhelmingly in favor of abolishing the total abortion ban in the constitution. And with this amendment, the last part of an oppressive system that subjugated women in Ireland for centuries has gone. They have achieved what has long…

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Ending the dead end in North Korea

Ending the dead end in North Korea

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James Clapper writes: As control of the regime passed from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un, my assessment of the threat posed by the Hermit Kingdom never changed. The “Dear Leaders” didn’t want a fight but kept the mechanics of war set on a hair trigger, and any sane policy on North Korea needed to respect that dynamic. There is a sacred writ of intelligence officers never to get involved in creating policy. Our job is to present…

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North Korea wants to end up like Pakistan, not Libya

North Korea wants to end up like Pakistan, not Libya

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Dominic Tierney writes: When Donald Trump canceled his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—before hinting that it might happen anyway after all, as the South Koreans moved into damage-control mode on Saturday with an impromptu summit of their own—it followed days of discussion over a historical parallel: Libya. U.S. National-Security Adviser John Bolton said the basis for a deal with North Korea was the “Libya model” from 2003 to 2004, when Muammar Qaddafi essentially handed over his…

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Climate change warriors’ latest weapon of choice is litigation

Climate change warriors’ latest weapon of choice is litigation

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Bloomberg reports: In the global fight against climate change, one tool is proving increasingly popular: litigation. From California to the Philippines, activists, governments and concerned citizens are suing the biggest polluters and national governments over the effects of climate change at a break-neck pace. “The courts are our last, best hope at this moment of irreversible harm to our planet and life on it,” said Julia Olson, an attorney for Our Children’s Trust, a legal challenge center in the U.S….

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How John Bolton scuppered the Kim Jong Un-Trump summit

How John Bolton scuppered the Kim Jong Un-Trump summit

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Ankit Panda writes: In a letter released on Thursday morning, President Trump declared that the scheduled 12 June summit meeting in Singapore between him and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un – a meeting that would have been the first of its kind – would no longer take place. Trump justified his decision based on the “tremendous anger and open hostility” shown in a statement released by North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency this week. Choe Son-hui, a vice minister…

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After summit pullout, South Korea and China have little appetite for Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’

After summit pullout, South Korea and China have little appetite for Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump credited his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions and threats with bringing North Korea to the negotiating table to discuss its nuclear weapons program. Now, having abruptly decided to call off an unprecedented summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore next month, Trump looks poised to revert to a hard line approach. There’s just one problem: “The multilateral pressure coalition has fallen apart,” says Mira Rapp-Hooper, an East Asia expert at Yale…

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