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The disastrous blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea

The disastrous blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea

Jonathan Watts writes: A short bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean is about to change the world. Few people are aware of its potential consequences, but the impacts are certain to be far-reaching. The only question is whether that change will be to the detriment of the global environment or the benefit of international governance. In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority…

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Clean hydrogen could replace fossil fuels for almost everything. But should it?

Clean hydrogen could replace fossil fuels for almost everything. But should it?

Grist reports: As countries around the world firm up their commitments to cut carbon emissions, many are turning to an emerging solution with an uncertain future: hydrogen gas. This lesser-known fuel has been called the “Swiss Army knife” of climate solutions. It has the potential to replace fossil fuels in industrial processes, transportation, buildings, and power plants, and does not emit any greenhouse gases when it’s burned. But this idea of an emissions-free hydrogen-fueled world is a long way off….

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The transformation of Greta Thunberg

The transformation of Greta Thunberg

Simon Hattenstone writes: Three years ago Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg was an unknown 15-year-old terrified that we were destroying the planet and furious that adults were letting it happen. Her fury was particularly directed at those with power. She decided to take unilateral action, and tweeted her plan. “We kids most often don’t do what you tell us to do. We do as you do. And since you grownups don’t give a damn about my future, I won’t either….

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What if 2020 was just a rehearsal?

What if 2020 was just a rehearsal?

POLITICO Magazine interview: Rick Hasen isn’t getting much sleep these days. One of the nation’s foremost experts on the laws that hold together democracy in America, Hasen used to be concerned about highly speculative election “nightmare scenarios”: the electrical grid being hacked on Election Day, or the pandemic warping turnout, or absentee ballots totally overwhelming the postal service. But now, what keeps him up at night aren’t fanciful “what if” exercises: It’s what has actually happened over that past nine…

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Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA’s secret war plans against WikiLeaks

Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA’s secret war plans against WikiLeaks

Yahoo News reports: In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation. Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the…

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Supreme Court observers see trouble ahead as public approval of justices erodes

Supreme Court observers see trouble ahead as public approval of justices erodes

The Washington Post reports: The Supreme Court’s approval rating is plummeting, its critics are more caustic and justices are feeling compelled to plead the case to the public that they are judicial philosophers, not politicians in robes. All of this as the court embarks Oct. 4 on one of the most potentially divisive terms in years. Cases already docketed concern gun control, the separation of church and state, and the biggest showdown in decades on the future of Roe v….

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She bought her dream home. Then a ‘sovereign citizen’ changed the locks

She bought her dream home. Then a ‘sovereign citizen’ changed the locks

The New York Times reports: The official-looking letters started arriving soon after Shanetta Little bought the cute Tudor house on Ivy Street in Newark. Bearing a golden seal, in aureate legalistic language, the documents claimed that an obscure 18th-century treaty gave the sender rights to claim her new house as his own. She dismissed the letters as a hoax. And so it was with surprise that Ms. Little found herself in her yard on Ivy Street on a June afternoon…

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Cargo piles up as California ports jostle over how to resolve delays

Cargo piles up as California ports jostle over how to resolve delays

The Wall Street Journal reports: Nike Inc. doesn’t have enough sneakers to sell for the holidays. Costco Wholesale Corp. is reimposing limits on paper towel purchases. Prices for artificial Christmas trees have jumped 25% this season. Despite mounting shipping delays and cargo backlogs, the busiest U.S. port complex shuts its gates for hours on most days and remains closed on Sundays. Meanwhile, major ports in Asia and Europe have operated round-the-clock for years. “With the current work schedule you have…

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Afghanistan’s Taliban warn foot soldiers to behave themselves, and stop taking selfies

Afghanistan’s Taliban warn foot soldiers to behave themselves, and stop taking selfies

The Wall Street Journal reports: Rank-and-file Taliban fighters have been having too much fun in Kabul after seizing the Afghan capital without a fight last month, and the Taliban leadership has now issued a stern order to stop. Thousands of young Taliban men from all over the country, many of whom have never been to a big city before, were deployed in Kabul after the Afghan republic collapsed Aug. 15. When not on duty, they sightsee, picnic and visit amusement…

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Charles Sanders Peirce was America’s greatest thinker

Charles Sanders Peirce was America’s greatest thinker

Daniel Everett writes: The roll of scientists born in the 19th century is as impressive as any century in history. Names such as Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, George Washington Carver, Alfred North Whitehead, Louis Agassiz, Benjamin Peirce, Leo Szilard, Edwin Hubble, Katharine Blodgett, Thomas Edison, Gerty Cori, Maria Mitchell, Annie Jump Cannon and Norbert Wiener created a legacy of knowledge and scientific method that fuels our modern lives. Which of these, though, was ‘the best’? Remarkably, in the brilliant light…

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‘Stop the Steal’ movement races forward, ignoring Arizona humiliation

‘Stop the Steal’ movement races forward, ignoring Arizona humiliation

The New York Times reports: After all the scurrying, searching, sifting, speculating, hand-counting and bamboo-hunting had ended, Republicans’ post-mortem review of election results in Arizona’s largest county wound up only adding to President Biden’s margin of victory there. But for those who have tried to undermine confidence in American elections and restrict voting, the actual findings of the Maricopa County review that were released on Friday did not appear to matter in the slightest. Former President Donald J. Trump and…

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Maybe we should be talking more about the Trump coup memo

Maybe we should be talking more about the Trump coup memo

Tim Murphy writes: There was big news this week on what is known ominously and euphemistically as “the democracy beat,” and like all such news, it was bad. On Tuesday, CNN published a two-page memo written by a lawyer for then-President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign during the run-up to the January 6 certification of the Electoral College results. In six concise bullet-points, the memo outlined a process by which Vice President Mike Pence could use his powers on January 6…

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The lab-leak debate just got even messier

The lab-leak debate just got even messier

Daniel Engber and Adam Federman write: As the pandemic drags on into a bleak and indeterminate future, so does the question of its origins. The consensus view from 2020, that SARS-CoV-2 emerged naturally, through a jump from bats to humans (maybe with another animal between), persists unchanged. But suspicions that the outbreak started from a laboratory accident remain, shall we say, endemic. For months now, a steady drip of revelations has sustained an atmosphere of profound unease. The latest piece…

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The roots of Democratic disarray

The roots of Democratic disarray

Jeff Greenfield writes: If anyone tells you they know how the battle among congressional Democrats will be resolved, wish them a good day and walk away very quickly. They managed to pass an infrastructure bill in the Senate — with Republican support! — and are now in total disagreement on whether to vote on it in the House, not to mention what to put in a massive social spending bill, and whether one can pass without the other. There’s a…

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