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Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 ‘agent provocateur’ is a huge Tucker fan

Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 ‘agent provocateur’ is a huge Tucker fan

HuffPost reports: Viewers of Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show were presented this week with a very explosive charge: that a man in red face paint and a “Keep America Great” hat at the front lines of the U.S. Capitol attack is “clearly a law enforcement officer” and an “agent provocateur” who infiltrated the Jan. 6 mob to make Donald Trump’s supporters look bad. “Let’s put his picture back on the screen,” Carlson said Monday on his show as an image…

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A promise by big law firms to punish Republicans who voted to overthrow democracy, didn’t last long

A promise by big law firms to punish Republicans who voted to overthrow democracy, didn’t last long

Rolling Stone reports: In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, some of the country’s biggest law firms joined blue-chip corporations and other industry trade groups by halting all political donations and rethinking their giving strategy altogether. In a few cases, law firms vowed they wouldn’t give money to any of the 147 Republican officeholders who had voted against certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, riding the wave of good publicity by coming out strongly against the politicians who’d…

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The pandemic of the vaccinated is here

The pandemic of the vaccinated is here

Rachel Gutman writes: Even before the arrival of Omicron, the winter months were going to be tough for parts of the United States. While COVID transmission rates in the South caught fire over the summer, the Northeast and Great Plains states were largely spared thanks to cyclical factors and high vaccination rates. But weather and the patterns of human life were bound to shift the disease burden northward for the holidays—and that was just with Delta. Enter a new variant…

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The coronavirus attacks fat tissue, scientists find

The coronavirus attacks fat tissue, scientists find

The New York Times reports: From the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus seemed to target people carrying extra pounds. Patients who were overweight or obese were more likely to develop severe Covid-19 and more likely to die. Though these patients often have health conditions like diabetes that compound their risk, scientists have become increasingly convinced that their vulnerability has something to do with obesity itself. Now researchers have found that the coronavirus infects both fat cells and certain immune…

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Birds Aren’t Real: ‘Fighting lunacy with lunacy’

Birds Aren’t Real: ‘Fighting lunacy with lunacy’

The New York Times reports: In Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, “Birds Aren’t Real.” On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren’t Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral. Last month, Birds Aren’t Real adherents even protested outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo. The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits…

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The world is unprepared for the next pandemic, report says

The world is unprepared for the next pandemic, report says

The New York Times reports: Nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the world remains “dangerously unprepared” for the next major outbreak, according to a new report. The 2021 Global Health Security Index, released on Wednesday, ranks 195 countries according to their capacity to respond to epidemics and pandemics. The inaugural version of the index, published just months before the first Covid-19 cases were detected, concluded that no nation was ready for such a crisis. Overall, the world is not…

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What’s next for Covid’s viral evolution

What’s next for Covid’s viral evolution

Nature reports: As the world sped towards a pandemic in early 2020, evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom gazed into the future of SARS-CoV-2. Like many virus specialists at the time, he predicted that the new pathogen would not be eradicated. Rather, it would become endemic — the fifth coronavirus to permanently establish itself in humans, alongside four ‘seasonal’ coronaviruses that cause relatively mild colds and have been circulating in humans for decades or more. Bloom, who is based at the Fred…

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Falsifying Russia’s history is a step toward more violence

Falsifying Russia’s history is a step toward more violence

Anne Applebaum writes: One night in October, a group of masked men burst into the Moscow offices of Memorial, the celebrated Russian historical society and civil-rights organization, and disrupted a screening of Mr. Jones, a film about the Ukrainian famine of 1932–33. They shouted, gesticulated, and chanted “fascists” and “foreign agents” at the audience. Police were called, but they allowed the masked men to escape. Instead of chasing the intruders, officers barred the doors of the building and interrogated members…

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Russian state TV drops deranged love letter to its darling ‘Trumpushka’

Russian state TV drops deranged love letter to its darling ‘Trumpushka’

Julia Davis writes: The shadow of former President Donald J. Trump hovered over talks between the United States and Russia. On Tuesday, as the summit was about to begin, Skabeeva alleged that Trump’s approval ratings were much higher than Biden’s. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out that the special channel used for the video exchange between the presidents was created during Trump’s tenure: “This is a secure channel. It was created according to decisions that were made by previous administrations….

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It’s getting dire in Afghanistan. Biden can’t walk away

It’s getting dire in Afghanistan. Biden can’t walk away

Saad Mohseni writes: In Afghanistan, young babies are now starving to death. Those parents who fear this fate are selling off their children to survive themselves. More than half of Afghanistan’s 39 million people do not have enough to eat and are “marching to starvation,” in the haunting words of the World Food Program. By next year, the United Nations warns, 95 percent of the country could be plunged into poverty. Two months after the Taliban’s takeover, Afghanistan is reeling…

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The threats to mountain ecosystems

The threats to mountain ecosystems

Mountain ecosystems are threatened by: 🚜Expansion of agriculture & settlements upslope🌳Logging for timber & fuel⛰️Replacement of alpine systems by highland pastures🌱#InvasiveSpecies💦#ClimateChange —@IPBES #GlobalAssessment#InternationalMountainDay pic.twitter.com/bqLcVFpJNq — ipbes (@IPBES) December 8, 2021

A stable sense of self is rooted in the lungs, heart and gut

A stable sense of self is rooted in the lungs, heart and gut

Alessandro Monti writes: Think back to a recent episode in which you felt as if you were being true to yourself. How would you describe what you did? Perhaps you would say that you ‘trusted your guts’ or ‘followed your heart’, rather than ‘thinking with your head’. You might also assume that these idioms involving the guts or the heart belong to an outdated folklore – that they are a poetic rather than a scientific expression of what’s happening when…

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The prospect of democratic collapse is not remote

The prospect of democratic collapse is not remote

Barton Gellman writes: Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect. The prospect of this…

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Trump’s new media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, is a $1.6 billion mirage

Trump’s new media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, is a $1.6 billion mirage

Judd Legum writes: On Monday, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced that Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) will be retiring from Congress to become the company’s CEO in January. Nunes has no experience in the media business and once sued a fictional cow for making fun of him on Twitter. Writing in Bloomberg, Matt Levine concludes there is “almost no sign that TMTG is actually building a social network or a streaming platform or anything else.” Nevertheless, TMTG projects 121…

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Trump social-media SPAC deal being investigated by SEC

Trump social-media SPAC deal being investigated by SEC

The Wall Street Journal reports: Regulators are investigating a deal between Donald Trump’s new social-media venture and a special-purpose acquisition company that would take the former president’s company public, according to a Monday securities filing. The Securities and Exchange Commission is probing a potential merger between Trump Media & Technology Group and the SPAC Digital World Acquisition Corp., Digital World disclosed Monday. The SPAC is known by its stock ticker, DWAC. The SPAC said in October that it is taking…

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