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Trump lawyer, John Eastman, blamed Pence for violence as rioters stormed Capitol

Trump lawyer, John Eastman, blamed Pence for violence as rioters stormed Capitol

The New York Times reports: As a mob was attacking the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” a lawyer who plotted with President Donald J. Trump and his allies to try to overturn the 2020 election sent a hostile message to the vice president’s top lawyer, blaming Mr. Pence for the violence. The email, reported by The Washington Post and confirmed by a person briefed on its contents, shows the extent to which Mr. Trump and his advisers sought to pressure…

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Technology is designed to make its users to believe in human obsolescence

Technology is designed to make its users to believe in human obsolescence

Jaron Lanier writes: [W]hat we need to talk about is the dominant business model. This model spews out horrible incentives to make people meaner and crazier. Incentives run the world more than laws, regulations, critiques or the ideas of researchers. The current incentives are to “engage” people as much as possible, which means triggering the “lizard brain” and fight-or-flight responses. People have always been a little paranoid, xenophobic, racist, neurotically vain, irritable, selfish and afraid. And yet putting people under…

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Trump’s real-estate empire pays the price for poisonous politics

Trump’s real-estate empire pays the price for poisonous politics

Reuters reports: Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s slashing rhetorical style and divisive politics allowed him to essentially take over the Republican Party. His supporters are so devoted that most believe his false claim that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. But the same tactics that have inspired fierce political loyalty have undermined Trump’s business, built around real-estate development and branding deals that have allowed him to make millions by licensing his name. Trump’s business brand was once…

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Detainee ‘was raped at the hands of the U.S. government,’ court is told

Detainee ‘was raped at the hands of the U.S. government,’ court is told

The New York Times reports: A suburban Baltimore high school graduate turned Al Qaeda courier, speaking to a military jury for the first time, gave a detailed account this week of the brutal forced feedings, crude waterboarding and other physical and sexual abuse he endured during his 2003 to 2006 detention in the C.I.A.’s overseas prison network. Appearing in open court, Majid Khan, 41, became the first former prisoner of the black sites to openly describe, anywhere, the violent and…

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The search for people who never get Covid

The search for people who never get Covid

Nature reports: Imagine being born naturally resistant to SARS-CoV-2, and never having to worry about contracting COVID-19 or spreading the virus. If you have this superpower, researchers want to meet you, to enrol you in their study. As described in a paper in Nature Immunology this month, an international team of scientists has launched a global hunt for people who are genetically resistant to infection with the pandemic virus. The team hopes that identifying the genes protecting these individuals could…

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How to fix social media

How to fix social media

Nicholas Carr writes: There are several ways to decipher intent in social media communications. Some are straightforward. Certain platforms, like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Clubhouse, operate largely as broadcasting channels, while others, like Messenger, Zoom, and Facetime, are used mainly for personal conversation. Many platforms, Snapchat being a prominent example, offer users different modes of communication, some geared to personal speech, others to public speech. On platforms where personal and public speech are intertwined, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram,…

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Facebook understands the metaverse all too well

Facebook understands the metaverse all too well

Ian Bogost writes: In science fiction, the end of the world is a tidy affair. Climate collapse or an alien invasion drives humanity to flee on cosmic arks, or live inside a simulation. Real-life apocalypse is more ambiguous. It happens slowly, and there’s no way of knowing when the Earth is really doomed. To depart our world, under these conditions, is the same as giving up on it. And yet, some of your wealthiest fellow earthlings would like to do…

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Facebook’s rebrand ‘does not affect how we use or share data,’ says Zuckerberg

Facebook’s rebrand ‘does not affect how we use or share data,’ says Zuckerberg

The Verge reports: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday at his company’s Connect event that its new name will be Meta. “We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.” “To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he added. He said the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass everything the company does now,…

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Why I still believe Covid-19 could not have originated in a lab

Why I still believe Covid-19 could not have originated in a lab

By Wendy Orent Where did the Covid-19 pandemic come from? Almost since the beginning of the outbreak, a bitter and explosive controversy has raged over the origins of the novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. The rapid shut-down of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan immediately suggested to Western observers that the Chinese government itself thought that the market was the source, especially since 26 out of 47 of the original cases could be linked to it. An article published…

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Gain of function research

Gain of function research

Derek Lowe writes: The NIH has not been doing itself any favors recently when it comes to questions about coronavirus research. Ever since the advent of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, there have been questions about coronavirus work conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. My own view hasn’t really changed since the last time I wrote about that particular issue: I think a natural origin for the current virus is very much more likely than it being some sort of engineering…

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World’s ‘greenest city’ will be totally unaffordable because of climate change

World’s ‘greenest city’ will be totally unaffordable because of climate change

Vice News reports: Five winters ago, one of the biggest local storm surges in 50 years hit Vancouver, a city on the front lines of climate change that’s also among the world’s most expensive places to own a home. “I got scared: ‘Oh, my God, we’re gonna flood,’” recalled Ricky Point, a member of Musqueam First Nation and part of the public works department. Point had good reason to be frightened. The Musqueam reserve is located in southeast Vancouver on…

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Spiders are much smarter than you think

Spiders are much smarter than you think

By Betsy Mason People tend to associate intelligence with brain size. And as a general guideline, this makes sense: more brain cells, more mental capabilities. Humans, and many of the other animals we’ve come to think of as unusually bright, such as chimpanzees and dolphins, all have large brains. And it’s long been assumed that the smallest brains simply don’t have the capacity to support complex mental processes. But what if they do? The vast majority of Earth’s animal species are…

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An open letter in defense of democracy

An open letter in defense of democracy

In a letter co-signed by luminaries across the political spectrum from Noam Chomsky to Francis Fukuyama, Todd Gitlin, Jeffrey C. Isaac, William Kristol write: We are writers, academics, and political activists who have long disagreed about many things. Some of us are Democrats and others Republicans. Some identify with the left, some with the right, and some with neither. We have disagreed in the past, and we hope to be able to disagree, productively, for years to come. Because we…

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Trump-backed QAnon candidates launch group to ‘control the election system’

Trump-backed QAnon candidates launch group to ‘control the election system’

Vice News reports: A coalition of right-wing MAGA candidates, including multiple Trump-backed candidates, are seeking to take control of elections in states across the U.S.—and one says they’re formally working with a group of conspiracy theorists, as well as with a QAnon influencer who some in the conspiracy movement believe is John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise. The group consists of five GOP candidates running for the key election position of secretary of state in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and…

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