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Can cult studies offer help with QAnon? The science is thin

Can cult studies offer help with QAnon? The science is thin

By Michael Schulson, Undark, February 24, 2021 Days before the inauguration of President Joe Biden, at a time when some Americans were animated by the false conviction that former President Donald J. Trump had actually won the November election, a man in Colorado began texting warnings to his family. The coming days, he wrote, would be “the most important since World War II.” Trump had invoked the Insurrection Act, the man believed, and he was arresting enemies in the Vatican…

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Nine reasons to believe the worst of the pandemic is over

Nine reasons to believe the worst of the pandemic is over

Chas Danner writes: There has recently been a lot of good news about the pandemic, notwithstanding the fact that it has now killed more than a half-million Americans. The horrifying surge of coronavirus cases that began last fall has now abated. Two months after the first two COVID vaccines began going into American arms, studies continue to emphasize how remarkably effective they are. And after a haphazard start, the country’s mass-vaccination effort is continuing to ramp up. Suddenly, the latest…

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Massive Google-funded Covid database will track variants and immunity

Massive Google-funded Covid database will track variants and immunity

Nature reports: An enormous international database launched today will help epidemiologists to answer burning questions about the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, such as how rapidly new variants spread among people, whether vaccines protect against them and how long immunity to COVID-19 lasts. Unlike the global COVID-19 dashboard maintained by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and other popular trackers that list overall COVID-19 infections and deaths, the new repository at the data-science initiative called Global.health collects an unprecedented amount of anonymized information…

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Texas electric bills were $28 billion higher under deregulation

Texas electric bills were $28 billion higher under deregulation

The Wall Street Journal reports: Texas’s deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to provide reliable power at a lower price, left millions in the dark last week. For two decades, its customers have paid more for electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a Wall Street Journal analysis has found. Nearly 20 years ago, Texas shifted from using full-service regulated utilities to generate power and deliver it to consumers. The state deregulated power generation, creating the system…

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Sheryl Sandberg and top Facebook execs silenced an enemy of Turkey to prevent a hit to the company’s business

Sheryl Sandberg and top Facebook execs silenced an enemy of Turkey to prevent a hit to the company’s business

ProPublica reports: As Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish minorities in neighboring Syria in early 2018, Facebook’s top executives faced a political dilemma. Turkey was demanding the social media giant block Facebook posts from the People’s Protection Units, a mostly Kurdish militia group the Turkish government had targeted. Should Facebook ignore the request, as it has done elsewhere, and risk losing access to tens of millions of users in Turkey? Or should it silence the group, known as the…

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A solar panel in space is collecting energy that could one day be beamed to anywhere on Earth

A solar panel in space is collecting energy that could one day be beamed to anywhere on Earth

CNN reports: Scientists working for the Pentagon have successfully tested a solar panel the size of a pizza box in space, designed as a prototype for a future system to send electricity from space back to any point on Earth. The panel — known as a Photovoltaic Radiofrequency Antenna Module (PRAM) — was first launched in May 2020, attached to the Pentagon’s X-37B unmanned drone, to harness light from the sun to convert to electricity. The drone is looping Earth…

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How to know when the pandemic is over

How to know when the pandemic is over

Alexis C Madrigal writes: In the middle of January, the deadliest month of the pandemic, one day after inauguration, the Biden administration put out a comprehensive national strategy for “beating COVID-19.” The 200-page document includes many useful goals, such as “Restore trust with the American people” and “Mount a safe, effective, and comprehensive vaccination campaign.” But nowhere does it give a quantitative threshold for when it will be time to say, “Okay, done—we’ve beaten the pandemic.” A month later, it’s…

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The most likely timeline for life to return to normal

The most likely timeline for life to return to normal

Joe Pinsker writes: The end of the coronavirus pandemic is on the horizon at last, but the timeline for actually getting there feels like it shifts daily, with updates about viral variants, vaccine logistics, and other important variables seeming to push back the finish line or scoot it forward. When will we be able to finally live our lives again? Pandemics are hard to predict accurately, but we have enough information to make some confident guesses. A useful way to…

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California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous: ‘The devil is already here’

California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous: ‘The devil is already here’

The Los Angeles Times reports: A coronavirus variant that emerged in mid-2020 and surged to become the dominant strain in California not only spreads more readily than its predecessors, but also evades antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines or prior infection and is associated with severe illness and death, researchers said. In a study that helps explain the state’s dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths — and portends further trouble ahead — scientists at UC San Francisco said the cluster…

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti changed American culture forever

Lawrence Ferlinghetti changed American culture forever

Fred Kaplan writes: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who died on Monday at the age of 101, was one of the key figures in 20th-century American culture. He was as responsible as any single other person for the rise of the Beats, the end of obscenity laws, and, not least, the transformation of San Francisco from a backwater province to a vibrant artistic center. He did all this through the creation and flourishing of a bookstore, City Lights—which, seven decades after its founding,…

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How Assad’s worst chemical weapon attack changed history

How Assad’s worst chemical weapon attack changed history

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: In the early hours of Aug. 21, 2013, Scott Cairns was struggling to sleep in his room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus. Cairns was part of a United Nations mission headed by the Swedish scientist Åke Sellström to investigate the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons. The mission included representatives from the World Health Organization and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). As the head of the OPCW contingent, Cairns had…

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Pankaj Mishra’s reckoning with liberalism’s bloody past

Pankaj Mishra’s reckoning with liberalism’s bloody past

Kanishk Tharoor writes: For nearly three decades, Mishra has skewered the pieties of politicians and intellectuals in the Anglophone world (including India, which boasts more English speakers than the United Kingdom), while also bringing his spirited attention to the histories and imaginations of people outside circles of wealth and power. The scales first fell from his eyes during his travels and reporting in Kashmir in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the disputed Indian-administered territory, he saw firsthand the…

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Why does the pandemic seem to be hitting some countries harder than others?

Why does the pandemic seem to be hitting some countries harder than others?

Siddhartha Mukherjee writes: On December 2nd, Mukul Ganguly, an eighty-three-year-old retired civil engineer in Kolkata, India, went to the Salt Lake Market to buy fish. The pandemic was surging around much of the world, and he wasn’t oblivious of the risks of spending time at a wet market. His wife, a former forensic analyst, protested vehemently. But Mr. Ganguly wouldn’t be deterred. He picked up his fabric shopping bag, tucked a doubled-up handkerchief in his pocket, and stepped out. Mr….

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