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The ‘dark matter’ inside your gut

The ‘dark matter’ inside your gut

Jonathan Jarry writes: There is a kind of dark matter inside our intestinal tract. “Dark matter” is the phrase coined for the matter that is implied to be present in the universe based on physicists’ calculations but that cannot be seen yet. Scientists who study tiny living things are facing their own type of dark matter: invisible microbes that are indirectly detected. They call it “microbial dark matter.” Much has been written about the bacteria that live inside our gut….

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In Washington, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is coming to be understood as a human rights issue

In Washington, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is coming to be understood as a human rights issue

Yasmeen Serhan writes: In a conflict where words matter (so much so that even using the word conflict invites disagreement), it’s notable when the words used begin to change. And when it comes to discussing Israel and Palestine in the United States, the words have changed. The first, most obvious shift has come from Congress, where more and more (predominantly progressive) voices have criticized Israel’s human-rights abuses, as well as the U.S. government’s role in sustaining a status quo that…

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Jewish Americans are at a turning point with Israel

Jewish Americans are at a turning point with Israel

Arielle Angel writes: On Nakba Day, 15 May, amid the outbreak of war in Israel/Palestine, I attended a rally in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from the new Israeli state in 1948, and to protest against the oppression of the Palestinian people in the land between the river and the sea. From the signs I saw as part of that crowd – “This Jew will not stand by” or “Another Jew for…

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Antisemitic incidents heightened across U.S. amid Israel-Gaza fighting; mosques were damaged, too

Antisemitic incidents heightened across U.S. amid Israel-Gaza fighting; mosques were damaged, too

NBC News reports: Rabbi Shaoul Hamaoui’s synagogue, the Persian Hebrew Congregation in suburban Chicago, had never been defaced while he’s served as spiritual leader for more than a decade. But that changed Sunday afternoon when a window was shattered and surveillance video captured two people, one carrying a stick and another holding a “Freedom for Palestine” sign. No one was at the synagogue at the time, and police in Skokie, Illinois, said they are investigating the vandalism as a hate…

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World’s worst pandemic leaders: 5 presidents and prime ministers who badly mishandled COVID-19

World’s worst pandemic leaders: 5 presidents and prime ministers who badly mishandled COVID-19

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko visits a hospital for COVID-19 patients, unmasked, in Minsk on Nov. 27, 2020. Andrei Stasevich\TASS via Getty Images By Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University; Dorothy Chin, University of California, Los Angeles; Elizabeth J King, University of Michigan; Elize Massard da Fonseca, Fundação Getulio Vargas; Salvador Vázquez del Mercado, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, and Scott L. Greer, University of Michigan COVID-19 is notoriously hard to control, and political leaders are only part of the calculus when…

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Republicans move to restrict a grass-roots American tradition of direct democracy

Republicans move to restrict a grass-roots American tradition of direct democracy

The Wall Street Journal reports: In 2008, deep-blue California banned same-sex marriage. In 2018, steadfastly conservative Arkansas and Missouri increased their minimum wage. And last year, Republican-controlled Arizona and Montana legalized recreational marijuana. These moves were all the product of ballot initiatives, a century-old fixture of American democracy that allows voters to bypass their legislatures to enact new laws, often with results that defy the desires of the state’s elected representatives. While they have been a tool of both parties…

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Green finance goes mainstream, lining up trillions behind global energy transition

Green finance goes mainstream, lining up trillions behind global energy transition

The Wall Street Journal reports: Some of the world’s biggest companies and deepest-pocketed investors are lining up trillions of dollars to finance a shift away from fossil fuels. Assets in investment funds focused partly on the environment reached almost $2 trillion globally in the first quarter, more than tripling in three years. Investors are putting $3 billion a day into these funds. More than $5 billion worth of bonds and loans designed to fund green initiatives are now issued every…

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Antarctica is headed for a climate tipping point by 2060, with catastrophic melting if carbon emissions aren’t cut quickly

Antarctica is headed for a climate tipping point by 2060, with catastrophic melting if carbon emissions aren’t cut quickly

The big wildcard for sea level rise is Antarctica. James Eades/Unsplash By Julie Brigham-Grette, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Andrea Dutton, University of Wisconsin-Madison While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken draws attention to climate change in the Arctic at meetings with other national officials this week in Iceland, an even greater threat looms on the other side of the planet. New research shows it is Antarctica that may force a reckoning between the choices countries make today about greenhouse…

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America’s bluest state loves its Republican governor

America’s bluest state loves its Republican governor

Russell Berman writes: For a politician who’s never lost an election, Phil Scott is not much for campaigning. He didn’t formally announce his candidacy last year for a third term as Vermont’s governor until the state filing deadline in May. Scott ran his race, such as it was, out of a small garage on the outskirts of town that he rented to keep his motorcycles. The space had internet but no plumbing, so his two campaign staffers used porta-potties outside….

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The values that drive Biden

The values that drive Biden

David Brooks writes: Some people get their worldviews from ideological constructs or philosophical movements like “conservatism” or “progressivism.” Biden derives his worldview from lived experience, especially the world of his youth, and how his parents taught him to see that world. It created the moral underpinnings of the big legislative packages he is proposing. The story about his father includes the key elements of the Biden worldview. First, a social location. What matters is not only how a person sees…

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Israel is falling apart, because the conflict controls us

Israel is falling apart, because the conflict controls us

Dahlia Scheindlin writes: For a few days in early May, Israel appeared close to establishing a new government. After four elections in two years that failed to produce a decisive result, the country was poised for a surprising partnership of ideologically diverse parties including, for the first time, an independent Arab party — Raam. Such a government would have been fraught, even shaky, but it would have ended the two years of political chaos and replaced Israel’s right-wing prime minister,…

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Hamas breaks out of its Gaza cage

Hamas breaks out of its Gaza cage

Amjad Iraqi writes: A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was finally announced Thursday night after 11 days of devastating bombardment and indiscriminate rocket fire that killed over 240 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and 12 people in Israel. As far as many observers are concerned, this deal — which, if it holds, will undoubtedly prevent countless more deaths, injuries, and wanton destruction — should finally put an end to the vicious saga. This desperate return to “calm,” however, remains a…

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Bitcoin mining is giving new life to old fossil-fuel power plants

Bitcoin mining is giving new life to old fossil-fuel power plants

The Wall Street Journal reports: Across America, older fossil-fuel power plants are shutting down in favor of renewable energy. But some are getting a new lease on life—to mine bitcoin. In upstate New York, an idled coal plant has been restarted, fueled by natural gas, to mine cryptocurrency. A once-struggling Montana coal plant is now scaling up to do the same. The lofty price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has investors pouring money into power generation—and risking a backlash. Elon…

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Why conservatives want to cancel the 1619 Project

Why conservatives want to cancel the 1619 Project

Adam Serwer writes: Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning Black journalist. She is also one of the developers of the 1619 Project, a journalistic examination of slavery’s role in shaping the American present. Last year, that work won her a Pulitzer Prize. Now it appears to have cost her a tenured chair at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism. The news outlet NC Policy Watch reported on Monday that the university’s dean, chancellor, and faculty had backed Hannah-Jones’s…

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