Music: Toco — ‘Meu Rio’
Omer Bartov: Why Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide
Professor Omer Bartov concludes that the word genocide describes Israel’s conduct in Gaza and as such requires the U.S. and Europe to intervene and stop Israel’s destructive path. In his forthcoming book, Israel: What Went Wrong, Bartov unpacks how a country founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust by a marginalized people could now become a pariah state that is occupying and displacing the Palestinians with active support, or indifference, of so many of its Jewish citizens. We discuss…
Masked federal agents have replaced the Proud Boys
Melissa Gira Grant writes: The beatdown in broad daylight in Washington, D.C., on Saturday was caught on video. Two masked men in tactical vests grappled with a delivery worker. One tased him, and he fell to the ground. A third man piled on, and then a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth, all in similar vests with faces covered. Pinning the worker face down on the pavement, agents tased him again and punched him repeatedly in the head. “Get the…
Russia mocks the proposition of security guarantees for Ukraine
Politico reports: Moscow isn’t shifting on what it considers to be acceptable security guarantees for Ukraine, a top Kremlin official said Wednesday. The comments by Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov undercut hopes that any progress has been made toward ending the Ukraine war since Russian President Vladimir Putin met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday in Alaska. Lavrov’s remarks further indicate that the Kremlin has not softened on its maximalist positions on Ukraine: that it becomes a neutral rump…
Trump uses legal threats to push Federal Reserve member — the only Black woman — to resign
Don Moynihan writes: One trademark of an authoritarian regime is the use of the legal system to target political opponents and forgive friends. This has the effect of undermining our basic conception of the law as a set of rules that is fairly and consistently applied. It also centralizes authority and undermines government capacity. Trump’s call for Federal Reserve member Lisa Cook to resign, under the threat of a DOJ investigation, is a clear example of this type of authoritarianism….
Obama applauds Newsom’s CA redistricting plan as ‘responsible’ as Texas GOP pushes new maps
The Associated Press reports: Former President Barack Obama has waded into states’ efforts at rare mid-decade redistricting efforts, saying he agrees with California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response to alter his state’s congressional maps, in the way of Texas redistricting efforts promoted by President Donald Trump aimed at shoring up Republicans’ position in next year’s elections. “I believe that Gov. Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach. He said this is going to be responsible. We’re not going to try to completely…
Phone searches at the U.S. border have hit a record high
Wired reports: United States Custom and Border Protection officials have sweeping powers to search anyone’s phone when they are entering the country—including US citizens. Newly released figures show that over the past three months, CBP officials have been searching more phones and other devices than ever before. From April through June this year, CBP searched 14,899 devices carried by international travelers, according to stats published on the agency’s website. While the figures aren’t broken down by device type, the CBP…
Life on Earth emerged fast — far quicker than we thought
Michael Marshall writes: Here’s a story you might have read before in a popular science book or seen in a documentary. It’s the one about early Earth as a lifeless, volcanic hellscape. When our planet was newly formed, the story goes, the surface was a barren wasteland of sharp rocks, strewn with lava flows from erupting volcanoes. The air was an unbreathable fume of gases. There was little or no liquid water. Just as things were starting to settle down,…
Music: Bill Charlap Trio — ‘I’ll Know’
The Zelensky summit was not as it appeared
Masha Gessen writes: Before the full-scale invasion, the populations of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the two Ukrainian cities on land Putin is demanding, were 200,000 and 100,000, respectively. We don’t know how many people live there now — some people surely fled, some came from occupied territories, some died — but the number is almost certainly tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people. To propose to cede the land to Russia is to propose either subjecting those residents to Russian…
How can Zelensky trust Trump?
Zolan Kanno-Youngs writes: For President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, a lot is riding on how much he can trust President Trump. Mr. Trump offered only vague assurances on Monday that the United States would play a role in guaranteeing Ukraine’s safety if Mr. Zelensky were to cut a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to stop the fighting. “We’re going to make sure it works,” Mr. Trump said at the start of an hourslong meeting with Mr. Zelensky…
The legal basis, or lack of it, for Trump to police the United States
Cristian Farias writes: The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is so short and self-evident that you don’t need a law degree to understand it, or a judge to explain it to you: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” That language had real teeth during Donald Trump’s first Presidency, as states, cities, and localities invoked it to stop…
An Islamophobic marriage of convenience: Cuomo believes he can offer Trump ‘redemption in New York’
Politico reports: Andrew Cuomo’s counting on President Donald Trump and top Republicans to tell the party faithful to vote for Cuomo for mayor if they want to stop Zohran Mamdani, and not to vote for GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa. “We can minimize (the Sliwa) vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate,” Cuomo told the crowd at a Hamptons fundraiser Saturday, according to audio obtained by Playbook. “And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is…
Founders of a white-only community in Arkansas see they have a friend in the White House
The New York Times reports: In the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, nearly an hour from the closest city, a small group of homesteaders is building an exclusive community from scratch. Applicants to the community are screened with an in-person interview, a criminal-background check, a questionnaire about ancestral heritage and sometimes even photographs of their relatives. The community’s two architects — a classically trained French horn player who has livestreamed his own sex videos, and a former jazz pianist arrested but…
The era of degenerative-AI
Charlie Warzel writes: It is a Monday afternoon in August, and I am on the internet watching a former cable-news anchor interview a dead teenager on Substack. This dead teenager—Joaquin Oliver, killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida—has been reanimated by generative AI, his voice and dialogue modeled on snippets of his writing and home-video footage. The animations are stiff, the model’s speaking cadence is too fast, and in two instances, when it…
Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much
The Columbia River running through The Dalles, Oregon, supplies water to cool data centers. AP Photo/Andrew Selsky By Peyton McCauley, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Melissa Scanlan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee As demand for artificial intelligence technology boosts construction and proposed construction of data centers around the world, those computers require not just electricity and land, but also a significant amount of water. Data centers use water directly, with cooling water pumped through pipes in and around the computer equipment. They also…