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A polarisation engine’: How social media has created a ‘perfect storm’ for UK’s far-right riots

A polarisation engine’: How social media has created a ‘perfect storm’ for UK’s far-right riots

Carole Cadwalladr writes: The 1996 Dunblane massacre and the outcry that followed are held up in the US as a textbook example of how an act of terror mobilised a country to demand effective gun regulation. The atrocity, in which 16 children and their teacher were killed, provoked a wave of national revulsion that, within weeks, led to 750,000 people signing a petition demanding a change to the law. Within a year and a half, new legislation had outlawed the…

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What ‘plant philosophy’ says about plant agency and intelligence

What ‘plant philosophy’ says about plant agency and intelligence

Stella Sandford writes: It was once common, in Western societies at least, to think of plants as the passive, inert background to animal life, or as mere animal fodder. Plants could be fascinating in their own right, of course, but they lacked much of what made animals and humans interesting, such as agency, intelligence, cognition, intention, consciousness, decision-making, self-identification, sociality and altruism. However, groundbreaking developments in the plant sciences since the end of the previous century have blown that view…

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What happens in a mind that can’t ‘see’ mental images

What happens in a mind that can’t ‘see’ mental images

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: Two years ago, Sarah Shomstein realized she didn’t have a mind’s eye. The vision scientist was sitting in a seminar room, listening to a scientific talk, when the presenter asked the audience to imagine an apple. Shomstein closed her eyes and did so. Then, the presenter asked the crowd to open their eyes and rate how vividly they saw the apple in their mind. Saw the apple? Shomstein was confused. She didn’t actually see an apple. She…

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$10M cash withdrawal drove secret probe into whether Trump took money from Egypt

$10M cash withdrawal drove secret probe into whether Trump took money from Egypt

The Washington Post reports: Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash. Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags, according to records from the bank. Four…

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How an Elon Musk PAC is using voter data to help Trump beat Harris in 2024 election

How an Elon Musk PAC is using voter data to help Trump beat Harris in 2024 election

CNBC reports: If a voter in Michigan performs a search on Google, a somewhat shocking ad might pop up. The ad shows a young man lying in bed late at night when someone else texts him, “Hey you need to vote,” and then sends the man a video of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The man can hear the gunshots and people screaming in the background. As Trump is rushed off stage with blood pouring down his…

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New ads calling Trump ‘afraid to debate’ to follow him on campaign trail

New ads calling Trump ‘afraid to debate’ to follow him on campaign trail

Reuters reports: The Democratic National Committee’s newest advertising campaign, launched on Friday, taunt Republican rival Donald Trump for not committing to a debate with Kamala Harris and is set to follow him on the campaign trail. The DNC has purchased large ads that dominate the digital homepages of major local newspapers in states where Trump plans to campaign in the coming weeks. The ads say “the convicted felon is afraid to debate” and question whether that is due to his…

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Trump’s stalled Jan 6 election-subversion prosecution revs back to life

Trump’s stalled Jan 6 election-subversion prosecution revs back to life

Politico reports: The stalled criminal case against Donald Trump for seeking to subvert the 2020 election is starting to move. The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity — a breathtaking legal victory for Trump’s bid to sideline his criminal prosecutions — had kept the election-subversion case on ice for months. Even after the July 1 ruling, the high court’s rules required a one-month delay to give prosecutors the chance to ask the justices to reconsider the outcome. On Friday,…

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Harris hires Obama campaign veterans to join 2024 effort, replacing Biden loyalists

Harris hires Obama campaign veterans to join 2024 effort, replacing Biden loyalists

The Washington Post reports: Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris hired a battery of new senior advisers to her campaign this week, moving swiftly to replace lifetime loyalists of President Biden with Democratic campaign veterans, including multiple leaders of Barack Obama’s presidential bids, according to people briefed on the campaign shifts. David Plouffe, a top strategist on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, joins Harris as senior adviser for strategy and the states focused on winning the electoral college. Stephanie Cutter,…

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Israeli leaders celebrate assassinations — and make the living pay the price

Israeli leaders celebrate assassinations — and make the living pay the price

Orly Noy writes: We are now faced with the regional war of Gog and Magog that Benjamin Netanyahu has been so determined to ignite. Every one of us is now trying in horror to guess what the response will be to the recent assassinations — which our leaders are celebrating as a “brilliant achievement” of Israel’s sophisticated war machine — and whether our children will survive it. We are now contemplating the fate of the hostages, afraid to say what…

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Antarctic temperatures rise 10C above average in near record heatwave

Antarctic temperatures rise 10C above average in near record heatwave

The Guardian reports: Ground temperatures across great swathes of the ice sheets of Antarctica have soared an average of 10C above normal over the past month, in what has been described as a near record heatwave. While temperatures remain below zero on the polar land mass, which is shrouded in darkness at this time of year, the depths of southern hemisphere winter, temperatures have reportedly reached 28C above expectations on some days. The globe has experienced 12 months of record…

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The man behind Project 2025’s most radical plans

The man behind Project 2025’s most radical plans

By Alec MacGillis This story was originally published by ProPublica In January 2023, a group of about 15 people gathered for three days at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative Washington think tank a few blocks from the Capitol. Their aim was ambitious and farsighted: to start building the next Republican administration, two years before a Republican president might again take office. The group’s leaders originally cast the initiative as candidate-agnostic, intended to assist the 2024 Republican nominee, whoever that might…

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GOP lawmakers support ‘mass deportations’ but have no idea how the policy would work

GOP lawmakers support ‘mass deportations’ but have no idea how the policy would work

NOTUS reports: Former President Donald Trump is promising “mass deportation” — and Republicans in Congress have been quick to support the promise, even if they’re unsure how such an effort would work. “You’ll have to ask the president,” Sen. Ron Johnson said when NOTUS asked last week what that sort of deportation policy would look like. When NOTUS asked Rep. Troy Nehls a similar question — how the government would go about getting a large number of undocumented people out…

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Democracy will suffer a relatively quiet death. We simulated it

Democracy will suffer a relatively quiet death. We simulated it

Through the Democracy Futures Project, Rosa Brooks led a simulation of a second Trump administration. She writes: Imagine, for instance, something like this in spring 2025: On the surface, America seems stable. For nearly all Americans, life continues as usual. But at the Pentagon, top generals are being forced out for objecting to Trump’s cozy relationship with Russia and his plans to use active-duty troops to round up migrants. At the CIA, the Justice Department, and other agencies, civil servants…

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Kamala Harris embodies the demographic trends that have reshaped America

Kamala Harris embodies the demographic trends that have reshaped America

In 2021, Kim Parker and Amanda Barroso from the Pew Research Center wrote: The swearing-in of Kamala Harris as the vice president of the United States marked several important “firsts”: She became the first female vice president, as well as the first Black person and first Asian American to hold that office. But her ascendance to the second-highest office in the land represented so much more. It held up a mirror to America, revealing how key demographic trends have reshaped…

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