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California firefighters ‘stretched to limit’ as devastating blazes become the norm

California firefighters ‘stretched to limit’ as devastating blazes become the norm

The Guardian reports: Before the ravenous Caldor fire laid siege to South Lake Tahoe, California’s top firefighting priority lay just to the north, where the Dixie fire scorched more land than any other single fire in state history. Together, the two behemoths have already blackened more than 1m acres (4,000 sq km) along the Sierra Nevada range. And fire season in the American west is just heating up. The climate crisis has helped create extreme fire emergencies, with huge, rapid-moving…

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How racism warps science

How racism warps science

Alice B. Popejoy writes: Of the ten clinical genetics labs in the United States that share the most data with the research community, seven include ‘Caucasian’ as a multiple-choice category for patients’ racial or ethnic identity, despite the term having no scientific basis. Nearly 5,000 biomedical papers since 2010 have used ‘Caucasian’ to describe European populations. This suggests that too many scientists apply the term, either unbothered by or unaware of its roots in racist taxonomies used to justify slavery…

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The complex truth about ‘junk DNA’

The complex truth about ‘junk DNA’

Jake Buehler writes: Imagine the human genome as a string stretching out for the length of a football field, with all the genes that encode proteins clustered at the end near your feet. Take two big steps forward; all the protein information is now behind you. The human genome has three billion base pairs in its DNA, but only about 2% of them encode proteins. The rest seems like pointless bloat, a profusion of sequence duplications and genomic dead ends…

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White supremacy, with a tan

White supremacy, with a tan

John Blake writes: Cutting taxes for the rich helps the poor. There is no such thing as a Republican or a Democratic judge. Climate change is a hoax. Some political myths refuse to die despite all evidence the contrary. Here’s another: When White people are no longer a majority, racism will fade and the US “will never be a White country again.” This myth was reinforced recently when the US Census’ 2020 report revealed that people who identify as White…

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Trump’s long ongoing campaign to steal the presidency

Trump’s long ongoing campaign to steal the presidency

Ed Kilgore writes: The House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol Riot and the various media ticktocks explaining what Donald Trump and his allies were doing in the days immediately leading up to it are casting new light on an important threat to American democracy. But the intense focus on a few wild days in Washington can be misleading as well. Trump’s campaign to steal the 2020 presidential election began shortly after the 2016 election, and arguably the moment of…

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How a small town silenced a neo-Nazi hate campaign

How a small town silenced a neo-Nazi hate campaign

The New York Times reports from Whitefish, Montana: Richard B. Spencer, the most infamous summer resident in this town, once boasted that he stood at the vanguard of a white nationalist movement emboldened by President Donald J. Trump. Things have changed. “I have bumped into him, and he runs — that’s actually a really good feeling,” said Tanya Gersh, a real estate agent targeted in an antisemitic hate campaign that Andrew Anglin, the founder of the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi…

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Anti-Defamation League head: We were wrong to oppose location of Manhattan Islamic center

Anti-Defamation League head: We were wrong to oppose location of Manhattan Islamic center

Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the ADL writes: Around the world Jews are celebrating the High Holy Days. During this time, Jews focus on the need for Teshuvah, or self-examination and repentance. But self-examination need not be limited to individuals. Institutions, especially century-old institutions like ADL, also can commit to the practice of self-examination and Teshuvah. And it is in this spirit that I have been reflecting on a stance ADL took 11 years ago when we…

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Taliban fighters crush a women’s protest amid flickers of resistance

Taliban fighters crush a women’s protest amid flickers of resistance

The New York Times reports: Taliban fighters violently suppressed a women’s protest Saturday in Kabul, while 70 miles to the north ex-Afghan army and militia members battled the Islamist group in Panjshir Province, as pockets of anti-Taliban resistance continued to flare up. Several of the women, who were demanding inclusion in the yet-to-be named Taliban government, said they were beaten by Taliban fighters — some of the first concrete evidence of harsh treatment of women by the group. Since they…

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The lessons of America’s defeat in Afghanistan

The lessons of America’s defeat in Afghanistan

Steve Coll writes: At the end of last week, all of Afghanistan’s airports remained closed to commercial flights. Neighboring countries had shut their borders. Long after the world’s attention turns away, the great majority of the population will “remain inside Afghanistan,” Filippo Grandi, the current U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said. “They need us.” Drought, economic collapse, and covid have left millions of Afghans “marching towards starvation,” David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Programme, warned. On 9/11,…

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How computationally complex is a single neuron?

How computationally complex is a single neuron?

Allison Whitten writes: Our mushy brains seem a far cry from the solid silicon chips in computer processors, but scientists have a long history of comparing the two. As Alan Turing put it in 1952: “We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge.” In other words, the medium doesn’t matter, only the computational ability. Today, the most powerful artificial intelligence systems employ a type of machine learning called deep learning. Their algorithms…

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The justices are telling us what they think about Roe v. Wade

The justices are telling us what they think about Roe v. Wade

Mary Ziegler writes: The five justices who upheld Texas’s anti-abortion law in the middle of the night this week insisted that their hands were tied: Texas had invoked sovereign immunity, and abortion providers had not proved that the state was wrong. Above all, the majority warned people not to overreact. Women in Texas might not be able to get an abortion anymore, and abortion providers might have already shut down, but worry not. The Supreme Court had not drawn “any…

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All of those ‘hysterical’ women were right

All of those ‘hysterical’ women were right

Laura Bassett writes: Last night, the Supreme Court quietly green-lit the most extreme abortion ban the United States has seen in half a century: a Texas law that prohibits abortions at six weeks from a woman’s last period, even in cases of rape or incest, and that deputizes citizens to spy on women and sue anyone who helps someone obtain a prohibited abortion. The rest of the states now have a road map to ban abortion almost entirely and put…

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Overlapping disasters expose harsh climate reality: The U.S. isn’t ready and it’s only going to get worse

Overlapping disasters expose harsh climate reality: The U.S. isn’t ready and it’s only going to get worse

The New York Times reports: In Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly one million people lack electricity and drinking water after a hurricane obliterated power lines. In California, wildfire menaces Lake Tahoe, forcing tens of thousands to flee. In Tennessee, flash floods killed at least 20; hundreds more perished in a heat wave in the Northwest. And in New York City, 7 inches of rain fell in just hours Wednesday, drowning people in their basements. Disasters cascading across the country this summer…

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Another study promoting ivermectin has suspect data

Another study promoting ivermectin has suspect data

BuzzFeed News reports: For anti-vaccine activists, the clinical trial results couldn’t have been better. The drug ivermectin, scientists in Argentina announced last year, prevented 100% of COVID-19 infections. That glowing finding helped spark a craze for the decades-old medication, which is normally used to delouse people and deworm livestock, and drive the perception that it is a silver bullet against the pandemic. “If you take it, you will not get sick,” an ivermectin-boosting physician told a Senate committee in December,…

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