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In ice age Siberia, a meeting of carnivores may have given us dogs

In ice age Siberia, a meeting of carnivores may have given us dogs

The New York Times reports: Twenty-three thousand years ago, in the cold of the last ice age, some humans found a place where the climate was marginally better: Siberia. While many people associate the region that is now in Russia with forbidding cold today, climate data as well as archaeological and DNA evidence show that this was where horses, mammoths and other prey animals found enough to eat, which attracted humans and other carnivores. Hemmed in by worse conditions, the…

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World’s largest wealth fund withdraws from oil sector

World’s largest wealth fund withdraws from oil sector

Bloomberg reports: Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has sold its entire portfolio of companies focused on oil exploration and production, marking a major step away from fossil fuels for the investing giant. The portfolio, worth about $6 billion in 2019, was fully exited by the end of last year, Trond Grande, the fund’s deputy chief executive, said by phone on Thursday. The move completes a years-long process to reduce the giant investor’s exposure to a sector that has defined Norway’s economy…

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Republican ties to extremist groups are under scrutiny

Republican ties to extremist groups are under scrutiny

The New York Times reports: The video’s title was posed as a question, but it left little doubt about where the men who filmed it stood. They called it “The Coming Civil War?” and in its opening seconds, Jim Arroyo, who leads an Arizona chapter of Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, declared that the conflict had already begun. To back up his claim, Mr. Arroyo cited Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, one of the most far-right members of Congress. Mr….

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Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP

Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP

Politico reports: Three weeks ago, Donald Trump was radioactive, even in the top quarters of his own party. Now, those same Republicans are convinced they can’t live without the energy he gives off, even if it proves toxic. “We need each other. We certainly need him and his input and his voters,” said Jonathan Barnett, an Arkansas RNC committee member. “But again he needs us too. Together, we gotta work this thing out.” Trump’s hold on the Republican Party over…

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The conservative case against the boomers

The conservative case against the boomers

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: Everyone’s fed up with the baby boomers. Younger progressives charge them with a form of generational hoarding—of titles and power but mostly of money. The richest generation in the history of the world, the story goes, has squandered its wealth on vanity purchases and projects while leaving younger Americans with a debased environment and crazy levels of debt. During the Presidency of Donald Trump—a boomer himself, who drew some of his strongest support from other boomers—the generation’s…

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From Michael Lewis, a ‘superhero story’ about the pandemic

From Michael Lewis, a ‘superhero story’ about the pandemic

Alexandra Alter writes: In his 2018 book, “The Fifth Risk,” Michael Lewis posed an unsettling question: What if the government agencies tasked with managing catastrophes — natural disasters, climate change-induced food shortages, epidemics — failed to prepare for some unanticipated, looming crisis? “Many of the risks that fell into the government’s lap felt so remote as to be unreal: that a cyberattack left half the country without electricity, or that some airborne virus wiped out millions,” he wrote. Last year,…

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The hard lessons of modeling the Covid-19 pandemic

The hard lessons of modeling the Covid-19 pandemic

Jordana Cepelewicz writes: For a few months last year, Nigel Goldenfeld and Sergei Maslov, a pair of physicists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, were unlikely celebrities in their state’s COVID-19 pandemic response — that is, until everything went wrong. Their typical areas of research include building models for condensed matter physics, viral evolution and population dynamics, not epidemiology or public health. But like many scientists from diverse fields, they joined the COVID-19 modeling effort in March, when the response…

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The Biden administration’s landmark day in the fight for the climate

The Biden administration’s landmark day in the fight for the climate

Bill McKibben writes: January 27th was the most remarkable day in the history of America’s official response to the climate crisis, at least since that June afternoon in 1988, when nasa’s James Hansen told a congressional committee that the planet had begun to heat. On Wednesday, in the course of a few hours, the Biden Administration took a series of coördinated actions that, considered together, may well mark the official beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era. The Biden…

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Inside the secret chat where far-right extremists devised their post-Capitol plans

Inside the secret chat where far-right extremists devised their post-Capitol plans

ProPublica reports: When the FBI arrested Edward “Jake” Lang on Jan. 16 for his alleged role in the U.S. Capitol attack, court documents show agents had followed a seemingly straightforward trail from his public social media to collect evidence. “THIS IS ME,” Lang wrote over one video that showed an angry mob confronting police officers outside the Capitol. The same post showed him trashing a police riot shield. The government charged Lang with committing assault and other crimes, but the…

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Merrick Garland wants former Facebook lawyer to top Justice antitrust division

Merrick Garland wants former Facebook lawyer to top Justice antitrust division

The American Prospect and The Intercept report: As the fight over the direction of the Biden administration’s antitrust policy intensifies, a new figure has entered the fray, scrambling the calculus: Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland. The battle so far has largely been fought out between lobbyists for Big Tech and their allies on the one hand and skeptics of monopoly power on the other. But according to three sources familiar with the discussions, Garland is hoping to install as the…

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GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed wildfires on secret Jewish space laser

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed wildfires on secret Jewish space laser

Jonathan Chait writes: Axios has a small squib about “The Mischief Makers,” a handful of idiosyncratic congressional backbenchers who make trouble for their respective party leadership. The leading Democratic mischief-maker is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who advocates some left-wing views I consider simplistic and impractical and, in some cases, poll badly. The top example of a conservative mischief-maker, presented in perfect symmetry, is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene’s views are just a bit more controversial. They include, but are no means limited to,…

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Capitol forces plead for permanent barrier as Pelosi warns ‘the enemy is within’

Capitol forces plead for permanent barrier as Pelosi warns ‘the enemy is within’

Politico reports: The Capitol needs permanent fencing and backup forces continuously stationed nearby, the Capitol Police chief said Thursday, immediately sparking objections from lawmakers concerned about creating a fortress that distances the public from the Legislative Branch. In a lengthy statement, acting chief Yogananda Pittman pledged to work with lawmakers to permanently beef up security in and around the complex, where thousands of National Guard troops have been deployed since the Jan. 6 insurrection. “In light of recent events, I…

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Why is Big Tech policing speech? Because the government isn’t

Why is Big Tech policing speech? Because the government isn’t

Emily Bazelon reports: In the months leading up to the November election, the social media platform Parler attracted millions of new users by promising something competitors, increasingly, did not: unfettered free speech. “If you can say it on the streets of New York,” promised the company’s chief executive, John Matze, in a June CNBC interview, “you can say it on Parler.” The giants of social media — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram — had more stringent rules. And while they still…

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N.Y. severely undercounted virus deaths in nursing homes, report says

N.Y. severely undercounted virus deaths in nursing homes, report says

The New York Times reports: For most of the past year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has tried to brush away a persistent criticism that undermined his national image as the man who led New York through the pandemic: that his policies had allowed thousands of nursing home residents to die of the virus. But Mr. Cuomo was dealt a blow when the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, reported on Thursday morning that Mr. Cuomo’s administration had undercounted coronavirus-related…

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