Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

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

Biden steps up federal efforts to combat domestic extremism

Biden steps up federal efforts to combat domestic extremism

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration is stepping up efforts to combat domestic extremism, increasing funding to prevent attacks, weighing strategies historically used against foreign terrorist groups and more openly warning the public about the threat. The attempts to more assertively grapple with the potential for violence from white supremacists and militias are a shift from President Donald J. Trump’s pressure on federal agencies to divert resources to target the antifa movement and leftist groups despite the conclusion…

Read More Read More

Test flight for sunlight-blocking geoengineering research is canceled

Test flight for sunlight-blocking geoengineering research is canceled

The New York Times reports: A test flight for researching ways to cool Earth by blocking sunlight will not take place as planned in Sweden this June, following objections from environmentalists, scientists and Indigenous groups there. The Swedish Space Corporation said this week it had canceled plans for the flight, in which it would have launched a high-altitude balloon, on behalf of researchers, from its facility in the Arctic. It would have been the first flight of a long-planned experiment…

Read More Read More

If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

The Wall Street Journal reports: A bidding war broke out this winter at a new subdivision north of Houston. But the prize this time was the entire subdivision, not just a single suburban house, illustrating the rise of big investors as a potent new force in the U.S. housing market. D.R. Horton Inc. built 124 houses in Conroe, Texas, rented them out and then put the whole community, Amber Pines at Fosters Ridge, on the block. A Who’s Who of…

Read More Read More

Amazon counterpunch results in ‘own goal’

Amazon counterpunch results in ‘own goal’

The Guardian reports: Say what you will about the relative merits of the continued existence of Amazon, the humble online bookstore that might end up being the last company in the world at this rate, you might expect all of that accumulated wealth to afford them access to the best and brightest communications professionals in the world. The behavior of the Amazon News corporate account and of executive Dave Clark on Twitter over the past week, lashing out at prominent…

Read More Read More

How Trump led supporters to feel scammed into making unintentional donations

How Trump led supporters to feel scammed into making unintentional donations

The New York Times reports: Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500. It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn…

Read More Read More

One Republican’s lonely fight against a flood of disinformation

One Republican’s lonely fight against a flood of disinformation

The New York Times reports: Denver Riggleman stood virtually alone. It was Oct. 2, on the floor of the House of Representatives, and he rose as one of only two Republicans in the chamber to speak in favor of a resolution denouncing QAnon. Mr. Riggleman, a freshman congressman from Virginia, had his own personal experiences with fringe ideas, both as a target of them and as a curious observer of the power they hold over true believers. He saw a…

Read More Read More

Georgia’s election law, and why turnout isn’t easy to turn off

Georgia’s election law, and why turnout isn’t easy to turn off

Nate Cohn writes: There’s nothing unusual about exaggeration in politics. But when it comes to the debate over voting rights, something more than exaggeration is going on. There’s a real — and bipartisan — misunderstanding about whether making it easier or harder to vote, especially by mail, has a significant effect on turnout or electoral outcomes. The evidence suggests it does not. The fight over the new Georgia election law is only the latest example. That law, passed last week,…

Read More Read More