Costica Bradatan writes: Have you noticed how, when crossing a busy road, you feel a sudden urge to speed up and melt into the crowd? Whether you are in Rio de Janeiro or Bangkok, New Delhi or New York City, your animal instinct tells you that it is safer to venture as part of a herd than on your own. Fear brings us closer together. The evidence is not just anecdotal. When we are herding, neuroimaging experiments show increased activation…
Inside Climate News reports: By training 192 lasers onto a capsule the size of a peppercorn, U.S. government scientists last week were able to ignite fusion with a net energy gain—a long-sought milestone in the quest for a carbon-free energy future. But emphasis was on the word “future,” as the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California on Tuesday announced the breakthrough in replicating the energy that powers the sun. The successful experiment, which built on generations of prior…
Insider reports: An Iranian professional soccer player has been sentenced to death after protesting against the death of Mahsa Amini, according to Iran Wire. Amir Nasr-Azadani, 26, was arrested in November in relation to the killing of a police colonel and two volunteer militia members. He has been accused of “waging war against God” and will be hanged, according to Iran Wire. FIFPRO, the international soccer players union, said in a statement on Monday that it was “shocked and sickened”…
CNN reports: The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine that could be announced as soon as this week, according to two US officials and a senior administration official. The Pentagon’s plan still needs to be approved by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before it is sent to President Joe Biden for his signature. The three officials told CNN that approval is expected. Ukraine has been calling for the US to send the advanced…
The New York Times reports: Over the past two weeks, Elon Musk has shaken up Twitter’s legal department, disbanded a council that advised the social media company on safety issues and is continuing to take drastic steps to cut costs. Mr. Musk appears to be gearing up for legal battles at Twitter, which he purchased in October for $44 billion, according to seven people familiar with internal conversations. He and his team have revamped Twitter’s legal department and pushed out…
Greg Sargent writes: By now it should be obvious that for large swaths of the right-wing media ecosystem, the Triggering of the Libs has become an end in itself. In the brutal competition of the so-called attention economy, provoking large-scale outrage and loathing is not an incidental feature of making controversial arguments. It has become a key marker of success. Over the weekend, Elon Musk called for the prosecution of Anthony S. Fauci, the leading infectious-disease expert in the Biden…
Jana Winter reports: On Dec. 20, 2020, a 21-year-old intelligence analyst went online to search for local Washington, D.C., fishing holes and stumbled upon the blueprint of a plot to storm the Capitol and execute members of Congress and law enforcement officers to prevent the certification of electoral votes to make Joe Biden the next president. The domestic terrorism analyst with the Department of Homeland Security saw a link to a website where people “actively at that moment were discussing…
The New York Times reports: Long before Europeans colonized North America, the Indigenous peoples in the valley where Mexico City would later arise may have followed a natural solar calendar that was so accurate it accounted for leap years. The “horizon calendar,” proposed in a new study, relied on natural landmarks in the valley’s rugged eastern mountains, and was kept in sync with the astronomical year by a temple atop a sacred volcano. The system may have been used by…
Science News reports: Scientists have finally managed to bottle the sun. Researchers with the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif., have ignited controlled nuclear fusion that resulted in the net production of energy. The long-awaited achievement, to be announced December 13 by U.S. Department of Energy officials, is the first time a lab has been able to reproduce the reactions in the sun in a way that leads to more energy coming out of the experiment than going in. “This…
TPM’s Hunter Walker, Josh Kovensky and Emine Yücel report: Based on TPM’s analysis, Meadows received at least 364 messages from Republican members of Congress who discussed attempts to reverse the election results with him. He sent at least 95 messages of his own. The committee did not respond to requests for comment. Some of Meadows’ texts — notably with Fox News personalities and a couple members of Congress — have already been made public by the committee, media outlets, and…
The Washington Post reports: The deal in early 2021 was hailed by advocates for Black farmers as the most significant piece of legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — about $4 billion in President Biden’s massive pandemic stimulus package to rectify decades of discrimination. Minority farmers began investing in new machinery and other improvements, anticipating tens of thousands of dollars in government aid. But today, the landmark deal on behalf of historically disadvantaged farmers is dead — successfully…
The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk escalated his battle of words with previous managers of Twitter into risky new territory over the weekend, allying himself with far-right crusaders against a purported epidemic of child sex abuse and implying that the company’s former head of trust and safety had a permissive view of sexual activity by minors. Musk told more than 30,000 listeners in a live Twitter Spaces audio session Friday night that he recently discovered that child sex abuse material…
The Guardian reports: Iran has publicly hanged a man accused of killing two members of the security forces in its second use of capital punishment against anti-government protesters. Majidreza Rahnavard’s family were woken early on Monday morning to be informed that he had been executed and that his body had been buried in a lot in the local cemetery. Rahnavard, a 23-year-old wrestler, had been sentenced to death by a court in the city of Mashhad for allegedly killing two…
Berliner Zeitung reports: Until February 24th Jessica Berlin was one of many experts on security and defense policy in the Berlin think tank sphere. But shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Berlin put her work on hold to devote herself entirely to helping Ukraine. She vigorously promotes massive support for Kyiv. In an interview with Berliner Zeitung, she calls for an international commission to investigate corruption by German politicians in the energy sector. She talks about Angela Merkel’s fear of Russia…