Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Yes, the Georgia election law is that bad

Yes, the Georgia election law is that bad

Zack Beauchamp writes: Georgia’s new election law SB 202, which many experts decried as an attack on the fundamental fairness of the state’s elections, was compared to Jim Crow by many leading Democrats. Now some observers are pushing back, arguing the bill falls well short of a democratic apocalyptic. In the New York Times, Nate Cohn concluded that “the law’s voting provisions are unlikely to significantly affect turnout or Democratic chances.” Slate’s Will Saletan notes that some provisions really are…

Read More Read More

The forgotten history of the western Klan

The forgotten history of the western Klan

Kevin Waite writes: The Ku Klux Klan was on the rise in the spring of 1869. Vigilantes could measure their success that season by the carnage they left behind: marauded homesteads, assaulted politicians, a church burned to the ground. According to a local report, insurance companies considered canceling their policies, “owing to the Ku Klux threats.” A school serving students of color was supposedly next on the Klan’s hit list. Such havoc could describe almost any southern state in the…

Read More Read More

Trump and his allies abandon Gaetz

Trump and his allies abandon Gaetz

Politico reports: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) built a public profile as an unapologetic, unambiguous, omnipresent booster of President Donald Trump. But as his own political career skids toward disaster amid allegations that he had sex with a minor and paid for sex with women of legal age, neither Trump nor anyone in the ex-president’s orbit is rushing to Gaetz’s defense. A group that often instinctively decries any such charge as part of some nefarious, coordinated witch hunt from deep-state operators…

Read More Read More

Does consciousness come from the brain’s electromagnetic field?

Does consciousness come from the brain’s electromagnetic field?

Johnjoe McFadden writes: Some 2,700 years ago in the ancient city of Sam’al, in what is now modern Turkey, an elderly servant of the king sits in a corner of his house and contemplates the nature of his soul. His name is Katumuwa. He stares at a basalt stele made for him, featuring his own graven portrait together with an inscription in ancient Aramaic. It instructs his family, when he dies, to celebrate ‘a feast at this chamber: a bull…

Read More Read More

Biden effort to combat hunger marks ‘a profound change’

Biden effort to combat hunger marks ‘a profound change’

The New York Times reports: With more than one in 10 households reporting that they lack enough to eat, the Biden administration is accelerating a vast campaign of hunger relief that will temporarily increase assistance by tens of billions of dollars and set the stage for what officials envision as lasting expansions of aid. The effort to rush more food assistance to more people is notable both for the scale of its ambition and the variety of its legislative and…

Read More Read More

Virus variants threaten to draw out the pandemic, scientists say

Virus variants threaten to draw out the pandemic, scientists say

The New York Times reports: For weeks, the mood in much of the United States has been buoyant. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus have fallen steeply from their highs, and millions of people are being newly vaccinated every day. Restaurants, shops and schools have reopened. Some states, like Texas and Florida, have abandoned precautions altogether. In measurable ways, Americans are winning the war against the coronavirus. Powerful vaccines and an accelerating rollout all but guarantee an eventual return…

Read More Read More

Half of Republicans believe false accounts of deadly U.S. Capitol riot, poll finds

Half of Republicans believe false accounts of deadly U.S. Capitol riot, poll finds

Reuters reports: Since the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have pushed false and misleading accounts to downplay the event that left five dead and scores of others wounded. His supporters appear to have listened. Three months after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try to overturn his November election loss, about half of Republicans believe the siege was largely a non-violent protest or was the handiwork…

Read More Read More

How social media turns online arguments between teens into real-world violence

How social media turns online arguments between teens into real-world violence

Comments and livestreams can lead to physical fights, shootings and even death. Photo illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images By Caitlin Elsaesser, University of Connecticut The deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January exposed the power of social media to influence real-world behavior and incite violence. But many adolescents, who spend more time on social media than all other age groups, have known this for years. “On social media, when you argue, something so small can turn…

Read More Read More

Satellite images show huge Russian military buildup in the Arctic

Satellite images show huge Russian military buildup in the Arctic

CNN reports: Russia is amassing unprecedented military might in the Arctic and testing its newest weapons in a region freshly ice-free due to the climate emergency, in a bid to secure its northern coast and open up a key shipping route from Asia to Europe. Weapons experts and Western officials have expressed particular concern about one Russian ‘super-weapon,’ the Poseidon 2M39 torpedo. Development of the torpedo is moving fast with Russian President Vladimir Putin requesting an update on a “key…

Read More Read More

LexisNexis to provide giant database of personal information to ICE

LexisNexis to provide giant database of personal information to ICE

The Intercept reports: The popular legal research and data brokerage firm LexisNexis signed a $16.8 million contract to sell information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to documents shared with The Intercept. The deal is already drawing fire from critics and comes less than two years after the company downplayed its ties to ICE, claiming it was “not working with them to build data infrastructure to assist their efforts.” Though LexisNexis is perhaps best known for its role as…

Read More Read More

Amazon illegally fired activist workers, labor board finds

Amazon illegally fired activist workers, labor board finds

The New York Times reports: Amazon illegally retaliated against two of its most prominent internal critics when it fired them last year, the National Labor Relations Board has determined. The employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, had publicly pushed the company to reduce its impact on climate change and address concerns about its warehouse workers. The agency told Ms. Cunningham and Ms. Costa that it would accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company did not settle the case,…

Read More Read More

Biden’s jobs plan is also a climate plan. Will it make a difference?

Biden’s jobs plan is also a climate plan. Will it make a difference?

Elizabeth Kolbert writes: Last week, as the [cherry] blooms in Kyoto were prematurely fading, President Joe Biden travelled to Pennsylvania to pitch his latest spending plan, aimed, in part, at combatting global warming. The proposal, which the Administration has dubbed the American Jobs Plan, includes eighty-five billion dollars for mass-transit systems, another eighty billion dollars for Amtrak to expand service and make needed repairs, and a hundred billion to upgrade the nation’s electrical grid. It would allocate a hundred and…

Read More Read More

Interview: Larry Brilliant has a plan to speed up the pandemic’s end

Interview: Larry Brilliant has a plan to speed up the pandemic’s end

Steven Levy writes: What happens to Cassandras when their warnings become reality? If you are epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, you work to mitigate a situation that would not have been so terrible if people had listened to you in the first place. Pre-Covid Brilliant, along with many of his peers, had been ringing the alarm on pandemics in op-eds, a much-viewed TED talk, and a tragically prophetic horror movie he advised on called Contagion. In the last year, Brilliant—best known for…

Read More Read More

How Emergent BioSolutions put an ‘extraordinary burden’ on the U.S.’s troubled stockpile

How Emergent BioSolutions put an ‘extraordinary burden’ on the U.S.’s troubled stockpile

The New York Times reports: A year ago, President Donald J. Trump declared a national emergency, promising a wartime footing to combat the coronavirus. But as Covid-19 spread unchecked, sending thousands of dying people to the hospital, desperate pleas for protective masks and other medical supplies went unanswered. Health workers resorted to wearing trash bags. Fearful hospital officials turned away sick patients. Governors complained about being left in the lurch. Today the shortage of basic supplies, alongside inadequate testing and…

Read More Read More