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Xi Jinping doubles down on his Putin bet. ‘I have a similar personality to yours’

Xi Jinping doubles down on his Putin bet. ‘I have a similar personality to yours’

The Wall Street Journal reports: China’s leader Xi Jinping has in recent months tried to put public distance between Beijing and Moscow as Russia has suffered defeats in its war on Ukraine. Behind the diplomatic appearances, however, Mr. Xi is deepening his long-term bet on Russia. In recent weeks, he has instructed his government to forge stronger economic ties with Russia, according to policy advisers to Beijing, building on a trade relationship that has strengthened this year and become a…

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How Tucker Carlson became a war propagandist for Russian state-owned media

How Tucker Carlson became a war propagandist for Russian state-owned media

The New York Times reports: As Russian tanks were stuck in the mud outside Kyiv earlier this year and the economic fallout of war with Ukraine took hold, one part of Russia’s government hummed with precision: television propaganda. Spinning together a counternarrative for tens of millions of viewers, Russian propagandists plucked clips from American cable news, right-wing social media and Chinese officials. They latched onto claims that Western embargoes of Russian oil would be self-defeating, that the United States was…

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Musk suspends his commitment to free speech

Musk suspends his commitment to free speech

I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022 The New York Times reports: Twitter suspended the accounts of roughly half a dozen prominent journalists on Thursday, the latest change by the social media service under its new owner, Elon Musk. The accounts suspended included Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan…

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Biden moves ahead on Trump plan to build Israel embassy on stolen Palestinian land

Biden moves ahead on Trump plan to build Israel embassy on stolen Palestinian land

The Intercept reports: Nearly five years after President Donald Trump broke with decades of U.S. policy and international consensus to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. Embassy there, the Biden administration is moving ahead with plans to build a permanent embassy compound in the city. Israel’s government has its headquarters in Jerusalem, but, because Palestinians also claim the city as their capital and because the city’s status remains disputed under international law, the U.S. Embassy, like those…

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Britons’ growing buyer’s remorse for Brexit

Britons’ growing buyer’s remorse for Brexit

Matthew Goodwin writes: The conventional wisdom after the two major populist revolts of 2016—the United Kingdom’s referendum vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president—was that few, if any, of their respective supporters would have a change of heart. Contrary to the classic understanding of populism as an ephemeral protest, this view insisted, the votes for Brexit and for Trump reflected a profound and enduring clash over identity. Six years later, the argument…

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How the brain distinguishes memories from perceptions

How the brain distinguishes memories from perceptions

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: Memory and perception seem like entirely distinct experiences, and neuroscientists used to be confident that the brain produced them differently, too. But in the 1990s neuroimaging studies revealed that parts of the brain that were thought to be active only during sensory perception are also active during the recall of memories. “It started to raise the question of whether a memory representation is actually different from a perceptual representation at all,” said Sam Ling, an associate professor…

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QAnon, adrift after Trump’s defeat, finds new life in Elon Musk’s Twitter

QAnon, adrift after Trump’s defeat, finds new life in Elon Musk’s Twitter

The Washington Post reports: Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme. The billionaire has spread bogus theories about the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to his 120 million followers, and he called for the criminal prosecution of infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci. He has thrown around…

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Inside the jury room for the Trump Organization criminal trial

Inside the jury room for the Trump Organization criminal trial

The Daily Beast reports: To avoid letting their personal feelings toward Donald Trump cloud their judgment, jurors for the criminal tax fraud case against the Trump Organization had a novel strategy: They referred to the former president as “Joe Smith.” “I constantly fought my knee-jerk belief that of course anything with the name Trump on it is crooked,” one juror told The Daily Beast this week. “I shocked myself in mid-November when I realized that I wasn’t sure I could…

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James Block helped take down crypto exchange, FTX, in his spare time

James Block helped take down crypto exchange, FTX, in his spare time

Charlie Warzel writes: The world of cryptocurrency is rich with eccentric characters and anonymous Twitter personalities. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the early figures who called attention to the problems with Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, is a 30-year-old Michigan psychiatrist who investigates financial crimes as a hobby. James Block, who runs a crypto newsletter called Dirty Bubble Media, has gotten overlooked in the swift and spectacular collapse of FTX. On November 2, a report…

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The supply chain that keeps tech flowing to Russia

The supply chain that keeps tech flowing to Russia

Reuters reports: In March this year, a new firm appeared in Turkey’s corporate registry. Azu International Ltd Sti described itself as a wholesale trader of IT products, and a week later began shipping U.S. computer parts to Russia. Business was brisk, Russian customs records show. The United States and the EU had recently restricted sales of sensitive technology to Russia because of its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, and many Western tech companies had suspended all dealings with Moscow. Co-founded…

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New research upends conventional wisdom about how we burn calories

New research upends conventional wisdom about how we burn calories

Herman Pontzer writes: We’re often told our metabolism speeds up at puberty and slows down in middle age, particularly with menopause, and that men have faster metabolisms than women. None of these claims is based on real science. My colleagues and I have begun to fill that gap in scientific understanding. In 2014 John Speakman, a researcher in metabolism with laboratories at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shenzhen, organized an international effort…

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Grant Wahl’s wife: There was ‘nothing nefarious’ about his death

Grant Wahl’s wife: There was ‘nothing nefarious’ about his death

Dr Céline Gounder writes: First and foremost, on behalf of myself and our family, I want to express our deepest gratitude for the outpouring of support, love, and sympathy from around the world. This continues to be a very difficult and painful time as we grieve a beloved husband, brother, and friend. It is some comfort to know that so many people Grant reached—countless colleagues, readers, athletes, coaches, friends, and fans—are grieving alongside us. Grant arrived home Monday, December 12,…

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Why we need to be seen and not herded

Why we need to be seen and not herded

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…

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After fusion energy breakthrough, ‘a few decades of research’ before commercial application

After fusion energy breakthrough, ‘a few decades of research’ before commercial application

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…

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