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These maps show how Republicans are blatantly rigging elections

These maps show how Republicans are blatantly rigging elections

The Guardian reports: It’s the foundational concept of US democracy: voters choose the politicians they want to represent them. Yet the reality in 2021 is much more depressing. As politicians undertake the once-a-decade process of redrawing political districts across the country, they are essentially rigging the system by deciding among themselves exactly which voters in which areas they want to represent. It’s a process called gerrymandering that allows them to virtually choose their voters and guarantee their re-election. The United…

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Covid cases are surging in Europe. America is in denial about what lies in store for it

Covid cases are surging in Europe. America is in denial about what lies in store for it

Eric Topol writes: It’s deja vu, yet again. The pandemic first hit Europe in March 2020, and Americans were in denial, thinking it wouldn’t happen here. Then, later in the year, the Alpha variant wave took hold in the United Kingdom and the United States was unprepared. This recurred with Delta in the summer of 2021. Now, in the fall of 2021, Europe is the outlier continent on the rise with Covid, with approximately 350 cases per 100,000 people and…

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How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

The New York Times reports: In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped…

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Sikh ethics sees self-centeredness as the source of human evil

Sikh ethics sees self-centeredness as the source of human evil

Keshav Singh writes: According to the Sikh worldview, the whole is prior to its parts. The level of reality at which we are all individuals is a less fundamental reality than the level at which we are all One. This is a different worldview from that of most philosophers in the Western canon, who have usually posited the individual as fundamental. Western philosophers tend to think of the parts (us) as prior to the whole (if any whole even exists)….

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Migrants face hypothermia and broken bones in freezing forests as Poland-Belarus crisis deepens

Migrants face hypothermia and broken bones in freezing forests as Poland-Belarus crisis deepens

CNN reports: Migrants trapped on the border between Poland and Belarus have made hundreds of attempts to breach the frontier, but were repelled by 15,000 Polish soldiers deployed to stop them, according to Polish authorities. The thousands of stranded people are caught at the center of an intensifying geopolitical dispute in which the European Union, the United States and NATO have accused Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of manufacturing a migrant crisis on the EU’s eastern frontier to destabilize the bloc…

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China and U.S., at odds on many issues, agree on a surprise climate deal

China and U.S., at odds on many issues, agree on a surprise climate deal

The New York Times reports: China’s top climate change envoy, Xie Zhenhua, apologized as he entered late for a weekend meeting at the United Nations climate summit. “We have quite busy schedules,” Mr. Xie said, according to two people who were present for the exchange. “Especially for me, I have to meet with John Kerry almost every day.” In an unexpected development, the United States and China on Wednesday announced in a joint statement that they will both do more…

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Why Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ reminds me of my years in a Syrian prison

Why Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ reminds me of my years in a Syrian prison

Omar Alshogre writes: A lot of people I know have been watching the Netflix show “Squid Game,” the dystopian drama in which players participate in surreal versions of traditional Korean children’s games. The losers are punished by death — until only one is left alive. My friends see “Squid Game” as a kind of horror movie, a grotesque commentary on the gap between rich and poor in today’s capitalist societies. To them, it’s a fantasy, a frightening fable. But I’m…

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Young people, not college graduates, drive wokeness

Young people, not college graduates, drive wokeness

Olga Khazan writes: Overeducated people are ruining political discourse by embracing “woke” language. If you pay attention to modern fights about language and social justice, you’ve probably heard some version of this complaint. The Democratic patriarch James Carville has bemoaned the idea of “people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges” coming up with “a word like ‘Latinx’ that no one else uses.” John McWhorter, the linguist, Atlantic contributor, and author of Woke Racism, has asserted that “everybody is afraid of…

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$76 billion a day: How Binance became the world’s biggest crypto exchange

$76 billion a day: How Binance became the world’s biggest crypto exchange

The Wall Street Journal reports: The world’s fastest-growing major financial exchange has no head office or formal address, lacks licenses in countries where it operates and has a chief executive who until recently wouldn’t answer questions about his location. Started just four years ago, Binance is the exchange giant that towers over the digital currency world, a crypto equivalent of the London, New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges combined. After a burst of growth, Binance processes more trades for…

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Largest psilocybin trial finds the psychedelic is effective in treating serious depression

Largest psilocybin trial finds the psychedelic is effective in treating serious depression

STAT reports: Eagerly awaited results of the largest-ever study of psilocybin were announced Tuesday, with Compass Pathways revealing the psychedelic drug was highly efficacious as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression. Still, the company’s stock price dropped 16.4% by the close of trading, perhaps because of safety concerns among investors. The Phase 2b study is the largest randomized, controlled, double-blind trial of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms. The company said it found that patients who were given the highest…

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Earth’s first continents may have appeared three-quarters of a billion years earlier than previously thought

Earth’s first continents may have appeared three-quarters of a billion years earlier than previously thought

Inside Science reports: Earth’s first continents may have emerged from the oceans roughly 750 million years earlier than previously thought, rising from the seas in a manner completely unlike modern continents. These early masses of solid rock may have floated buoyantly atop magma welling up from below, a new study finds. Unlike any other known planet, Earth possesses both continents and oceans on its surface. The emergence of land from sea greatly influenced Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, climate and proliferation of…

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Why white voters with racist views often still support Black Republicans

Why white voters with racist views often still support Black Republicans

Hakeem Jefferson and Michael Tesler write: Can white voters who back a Black candidate still hold racist beliefs and views? That question has come to the fore in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial victory in the blueish state of Virginia. Conservatives were quick to counter claims that Youngkin’s win represented the effectiveness of stoking racial fears with results from Virginia’s down-ballot election for lieutenant governor — a contest where the Republican candidate, Winsome Sears, made history by becoming the…

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Swift ruling tests Trump’s tactic of running out the clock

Swift ruling tests Trump’s tactic of running out the clock

Charlie Savage writes: On the surface, a judge’s ruling on Tuesday night that Congress can obtain Trump White House files related to the Jan. 6 riot seemed to echo another high-profile ruling in November 2019. In the earlier matter, a judge said a former White House counsel must testify about then-President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation. In both cases, Democratic-controlled House oversight committees issued subpoenas, Mr. Trump sought to stonewall those efforts by invoking constitutional secrecy…

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Domestic extremists pushing violence against Congress, school and health officials, DHS bulletin says

Domestic extremists pushing violence against Congress, school and health officials, DHS bulletin says

NBC News reports: Domestic extremists continue to exploit false narratives to promote violence online, calling for attacks on members of Congress, public health and school officials, even as they share information about how to build bombs, according to a new intelligence bulletin by the Department of Homeland Security that paints a picture of persistent danger. The new National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin is expected to be released Wednesday afternoon, according to officials familiar with it. It replaces an existing bulletin…

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