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The cruel logic of the Republican Party, before and after Trump

The cruel logic of the Republican Party, before and after Trump

Adam Serwer writes: Donald Trump has claimed credit for any number of things he benefited from but did not create, and the Republican Party’s reigning ideology is one of them: a politics of cruelty and exclusion that strategically exploits vulnerable Americans by portraying them as an existential threat, against whom acts of barbarism and disenfranchisement become not only justified but worthy of celebration. This approach has a long history in American politics. The most consistent threat to our democracy has…

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WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as delta Covid variant spreads

WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as delta Covid variant spreads

CNBC reports: The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe. “People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing from the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “Vaccine alone won’t…

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Canada puts U.S. Three Percenters militia on terror list, cites risk of violent extremism

Canada puts U.S. Three Percenters militia on terror list, cites risk of violent extremism

Reuters reports: Canada officially named the U.S. right-wing militia group Three Percenters a terrorist entity on Friday, saying it posed a “significant threat” to Canadian domestic security. Earlier this month U.S. prosecutors obtained a conspiracy indictment against six men associated with the Three Percenters, the latest in a series of such charges arising from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by former President Donald Trump’s supporters. Canadian officials cited the Jan. 6 riot in their listing. Public Safety…

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IQ tests can’t measure it, but ‘cognitive flexibility’ is key to learning and creativity

IQ tests can’t measure it, but ‘cognitive flexibility’ is key to learning and creativity

Einstein thought imagination was crucial. Robert and Talbot Trudeau/Flickr, CC BY-NC By Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, University of Cambridge; Christelle Langley, University of Cambridge, and Victoria Leong, University of Cambridge IQ is often hailed as a crucial driver of success, particularly in fields such as science, innovation and technology. In fact, many people have an endless fascination with the IQ scores of famous people. But the truth is that some of the greatest achievements by our species have primarily relied on…

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Our most abstract concepts emerged as solutions to our needs

Our most abstract concepts emerged as solutions to our needs

Matthieu Queloz writes: ‘Ideas, Mr Carlyle, ideas, nothing but ideas!’ scoffed a hard-headed businessman over dinner with Thomas Carlyle, the Victorian essayist and historian of the French Revolution. The businessman had had enough of Carlyle’s endless droning on about ideas – what do ideas matter anyway? Carlyle shot back: ‘There was once a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas. The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first.’ Ideas…

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On dream sharing and its purpose

On dream sharing and its purpose

Matthew Spellberg writes: Among certain philosophers it is a commonplace that dreams are radically private, that no one can follow you into them. A fragment from Heraclitus distills the problem: “The universe for those who are awake is single and common, while in sleep each person turns aside into a private universe.” Hegel, commenting on this same fragment, says that “the dream is a knowledge of something of which I alone know.” Consider how you might teach a child to…

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Where did the coronavirus come from? What we already know is troubling

Where did the coronavirus come from? What we already know is troubling

Zeynep Tufekci writes: There were curious characteristics about the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 1977-78, which emerged from northeastern Asia and killed an estimated 700,000 people around the world. For one, it almost exclusively affected people in their mid-20s or younger. Scientists discovered another oddity that could explain the first: It was virtually identical to a strain that circulated in the 1950s. People born before that had immunity that protected them, and younger people didn’t. But how on earth had it…

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When a good scientist is the wrong source

When a good scientist is the wrong source

Thomas Levenson writes: Six weeks ago, a reporter, Nicholas Wade, published what seemed to be a blockbuster story, one that, if true, would expose the greatest scandal in recent history. SARS-CoV-2, he wrote, or SARS2 for short, the virus that has driven the global COVID-19 pandemic, had likely been modified in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from which it then escaped into the wild. “Neither the natural emergence nor the lab escape hypothesis can yet be ruled…

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Before condo collapse, rising seas have long pressured Miami coastal properties

Before condo collapse, rising seas have long pressured Miami coastal properties

The Washington Post reports: The 12-story condo tower that crashed down early Thursday near Miami Beach was built on reclaimed wetlands and is perched on a barrier island facing an ocean that has risen about a foot in the past century due to climate change. Underneath its foundation, as with Miami Beach, is sand and organic fill —over a plateau of porous limestone — brought in from the bay after the mangroves were deforested. The fill sinks naturally and the…

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Government report can’t explain UFOs, but offers no evidence of aliens

Government report can’t explain UFOs, but offers no evidence of aliens

Politico reports: A new intelligence report sent to Congress on Friday concludes that virtually all of the 144 sightings of unidentified flying objects documented by the military since 2004 are of unknown origin, in an extremely rare public accounting of the U.S. government’s data on UFOs that is likely to fuel further speculation about phenomena the intelligence community has long struggled to understand. The report — the government’s first unclassified assessment in half a century — does not offer any…

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They seemed like Democratic activists. They were secretly conservative spies

They seemed like Democratic activists. They were secretly conservative spies

The New York Times reports: The young couple posing in front of the faux Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas fit right in, two people in a sea of idealistic Democrats who had arrived in the city in February 2020 for a Democratic primary debate. Large donations to the Democratic National Committee — $10,000 each — had bought Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca tickets to the debate. During a cocktail reception beforehand, they worked the room of…

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Justice Department is suing Georgia over voter suppression law

Justice Department is suing Georgia over voter suppression law

Mother Jones reports: In its first major action to combat GOP voter suppression laws, the Biden Justice Department announced on Friday that it is suing the state of Georgia over its new voting restrictions. The lawsuit was first reported by Mother Jones. “Today the Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia,” Attorney General Merrick Garland announced at a press conference at the Justice Department headquarters. Gov. Brian Kemp has said “there is nothing Jim Crow” about the Georgia…

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Discovery of ‘Dragon Man’ skull in China may add species to human family tree

Discovery of ‘Dragon Man’ skull in China may add species to human family tree

The New York Times reports: Scientists on Friday announced that a massive fossilized skull that is at least 140,000 years old is a new species of ancient human, a finding that could potentially change prevailing views of how — and even where — our species, Homo sapiens, evolved. The skull belonged to a mature male who had a huge brain, massive brow ridges, deep set eyes and a bulbous nose. It had remained hidden in an abandoned well for 85…

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Nearly all Covid deaths in U.S. are now among unvaccinated

Nearly all Covid deaths in U.S. are now among unvaccinated

The Associated Press reports: Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine. An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19…

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