Music: Fœhn Trio — ‘Seolane’
Modern ‘sixth mass extinction’ event will be worse than first predicted, says report
GrrlScientist writes: Tragically, the global mass extinction event that we find ourselves in the midst of will be even worse than originally predicted, according to a recent study (ref). The international team of scientists came to their conclusion after analyzing population trends data for more than 71,000 animal species — including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and insects — from around the world to see how their numbers have changed since record-keeping first began. Generally, scientists agree that an extinction…
Trump faces major new charges in documents case
The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors on Thursday added major accusations to an indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with mishandling classified documents after he left office, saying he told a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago that he wanted security camera footage there to be deleted. The new accusations were revealed in a superseding indictment that named the maintenance worker, Carlos De Oliveira, as a new defendant in the case. The revised indictment also added three serious charges against…
Trump needed $225 million. A little-known bank came to the rescue
The Washington Post reports: As Donald Trump considered another White House run last year, his company’s finances were at risk of spiraling into crisis. The former president’s longtime lender and several banks with his deposits had cut ties in the days around the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, at a time when Trump had hundreds of millions in loans coming due. In February 2022, the accounting firm that had worked for him for two decades dropped…
Moms, a target of the right, lean heavily left
Philip Bump writes: To hear prominent Republicans tell it, theirs is the party of parents. This is somewhere downstream from Donald Trump’s eagerness to turn the corner on the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, which intertwined with parents’ frustration about their kids not being in school. After President Biden was inaugurated, the party and its media allies elevated and stoked parental discontent about how race was taught and gender addressed in schools. Stephen K. Bannon advocated that conservatives run for local…
Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
Reuters reports: In March, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles on a fully charged battery. He soon realized he was sometimes getting less than half that much range, particularly in cold weather – such severe underperformance that he was convinced the car had a serious defect. “We’re…
U.S. intel report details increasing importance of Chinese technology to Russia’s war in Ukraine
CNN reports: China is providing technology and equipment to Russia that is increasingly important to Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to a newly released report compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The report, titled “Support Provided by the People’s Republic of China to Russia” and dated 2023, is unclassified and largely cites open-source data and western press reporting to support its claims. But it includes the US intelligence community assessment that China “has become an increasingly…
U.S. recovered non-human ‘biologics’ from UFO crash sites, former intel official says
NPR reports: Three military veterans testified in Congress’ highly anticipated hearing on UFOs Wednesday, including a former Air Force intelligence officer who claimed the U.S. government has operated a secret “multi-decade” reverse engineering program of recovered vessels. He also said the U.S. has recovered non-human “biologics” from alleged crash sites. But while the topic of “little green men” did come up, much of the discussion centered on improving processes for reporting unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs — the military’s term…
Music: Fœhn Trio — ‘Call of the Mountains’
A return to the White House offers Trump his best opportunity to avoid legal accountability
Paul Rosenzweig writes: If, as seems likely, Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee next year, the 2024 elections will be a referendum on several crucial issues: the prospect of authoritarianism in America, the continuation of a vibrant democracy, the relationship between the executive branch and the other two branches of government, and much else of grave significance. It will also be a referendum on whether Trump will ever be held legally accountable for his actions. Trump faces multiple civil…
The myth of the effective dictator
Brian Klaas writes: Last week, at a Fox News town hall (where else?), former President Donald Trump called China’s despot, Xi Jinping, a “brilliant” guy who “runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” Lest anyone doubt his admiration, Trump added that Xi is “smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy.” Trump is not alone. Many in the United States and around the globe see the allure of a dictator who gets things done and makes…
Rising number of Americans say political violence is justified
The Guardian reports: The June federal indictment of Donald Trump is “radicalizing” support for the use of force on behalf of the former president and current presidential candidate, according to the author of a recent survey about threats to democracy. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, support for violence to restore the federal right to an abortion has also increased over the last few months, researchers found, although there’s little indication that any organized groups support acting on…
Russians see Ukrainian progress where others don’t
Michael Weiss and James Rushton write: One of the difficulties in covering the Russo-Ukraine War as a journalist is the tendency of so many in this profession to assemble facts in favor of whatever the prevailing narrative of the day is. Sixteen months ago, it was hard to find many people in prominent Washington think tanks or at major broadsheets who did not think Kyiv would fall in three days. When it didn’t, those wedded to the notion that Russia…
Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show
The Guardian reports: The human-caused climate crisis is undeniably to blame for the deadly heatwaves that have struck Europe and the US in recent weeks, scientists have shown. Both would have been virtually impossible without the global heating driven by burning fossil fuels, their analysis found. Another searing heatwave, in China, was made 50 times more likely by the climate crisis. The results make it crystal clear that human-caused global heating is already destroying lives and livelihoods across the world,…
South Korea emerges as key partner for America’s energy transition
Inside Climate News reports: On June 22, the U.S. The Department of Energy announced that it will grant a $9.2 billion loan to BlueOval SK LLC (BOSK), a joint venture between Ford and SK On, a Korean battery manufacturer. The loan will be used to construct three manufacturing plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. Once operational, the facilities have the potential to displace 455 million gallons of gasoline annually by propelling the shift toward low-carbon transportation. The loan, dubbed the “biggest…
Robert Bellah, a socialist who insisted that democracy needs religion
Matthew Rose writes: If Émile Durkheim helped Bellah understand American ideals, the German sociologist Max Weber helped him confront American realities. Bellah’s deepest criticism of individualism was that it undermined the very conditions that make it possible. Its vision of human beings as free to choose their own identities and commitments had not brought about a more creative or reflective society. It had resulted in people who were lonely, disoriented, and servile to the power of markets, states, and public opinion….