The mutated coronavirus variant is a ticking time bomb

The mutated coronavirus variant is a ticking time bomb

Zeynep Tufekci writes: A new variant of the coronavirus is spreading across the globe. It was first identified in the United Kingdom, where it is rapidly spreading, and has been found in multiple countries. Viruses mutate all the time, often with no impact, but this one appears to be more transmissible than other variants—meaning it spreads more easily. Barely one day after officials announced that America’s first case of the variant had been found in the United States, in a…

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Trump’s failure to rise to the Covid challenge

Trump’s failure to rise to the Covid challenge

The New York Times reports: It was a warm summer Wednesday, Election Day was looming and President Trump was even angrier than usual at the relentless focus on the coronavirus pandemic. “You’re killing me! This whole thing is! We’ve got all the damn cases,” Mr. Trump yelled at Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office on Aug. 19. “I want to do what Mexico does. They don’t give you a…

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The unbearable weakness of Trump’s minions

The unbearable weakness of Trump’s minions

Peter Wehner writes: Those hoping for a quick snapback to sanity for the Republican Party once Donald Trump is no longer president should temper those hopes. The latest piece of evidence to suggest the enduring power of Trumpian unreality is yesterday’s announcement by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri that he will object next week when Congress convenes to certify the Electoral College vote. Hawley knows this effort will fail, just as every other effort to undo the results of the…

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Pence urges court to throw out lawsuit aiming to help him overturn 2020 election results

Pence urges court to throw out lawsuit aiming to help him overturn 2020 election results

Politico reports: Vice President Mike Pence has asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit brought against him by Republicans seeking to empower him to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The suit, brought by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and 11 Arizonans who would have been electors for President Donald Trump, was aimed at throwing out the rules of a Jan. 6 session of Congress — with Pence presiding — intended to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory….

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Some Republicans think Trump is trying to sabotage GOP in Georgia Senate races, says Mike Allen

Some Republicans think Trump is trying to sabotage GOP in Georgia Senate races, says Mike Allen

CNBC reports: Axios co-founder Mike Allen told CNBC on Thursday that some Republicans believe President Donald Trump is hurting the party’s chances in next week’s Georgia Senate runoffs. “There’s a big strain of thought among Republicans that President Trump is sabotaging this race. He’s done so much to be unhelpful to those candidates,” Allen said on “Squawk Box,” referring to GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. “I talk to Republicans and they look at what’s happening, and they say,…

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The worst idea of 2020: Natural herd immunity

The worst idea of 2020: Natural herd immunity

Brian Resnick writes: It’s year-end-list season. Usually, the Vox science team has some fun and compiles a year-end list of bad ideas in health and science that ought to die with the end of the year. In the past, we’ve targeted homeopathic medicine, declared it was time to end the relevance of the fatally flawed Stanford Prison Experiment, and dispelled myths about climate change. This year, though, we have only one target for intellectual demolition. With the end of 2020,…

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Microsoft says Russians hacked its network, viewing source code

Microsoft says Russians hacked its network, viewing source code

The Washington Post reports: Russian government hackers engaged in a sweeping series of breaches of government and private-sector networks have been able to penetrate deeper into Microsoft’s systems than previously known, gaining access to potentially valuable source code, the tech giant said Thursday. The firm previously acknowledged that it had inadvertently downloaded a software patch used by Russian cyberspies as a potential “back door” into victims’ systems. But it was not known that the hackers had viewed the firm’s source…

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The surface of the moon is a galactic time capsule

The surface of the moon is a galactic time capsule

Paul Sutter writes: You wouldn’t know it by looking at it, but the moon is a time capsule. Its surface has been completely exposed to vacuum for almost 4.5 billion years; meanwhile, it has been soaked by particles from the sun and beyond the solar system. Those particles remain, buried under the lunar surface, providing a detailed record of the history of our solar system and even our entire galaxy. It’s all right there. We just need to dig it…

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How Congress and coronavirus could quash Trump’s Electoral College gambit

How Congress and coronavirus could quash Trump’s Electoral College gambit

Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s last-gasp bid to overturn his 2020 election defeat appears doomed on Jan. 6, when Congress is set to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. But the byzantine process by which Congress counts and validates the Electoral College results has left gnawing uncertainty about precisely how the final act in Trump’s undemocratic drama will play out. The law that guides the proceedings, the Electoral Count Act — passed in 1887 to address the disastrous election of 1876…

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Trump pardon of Blackwater Iraq contractors violates international law, say UN officials

Trump pardon of Blackwater Iraq contractors violates international law, say UN officials

Reuters reports: U.S. President Donald Trump’s pardon of four American men convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007 violated U.S. obligations under international law, U.N. human rights experts said on Wednesday. Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder, while Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter, over the incident in which U.S. contractors opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The…

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U.S. bomber mission over Persian Gulf aimed at cautioning Iran

U.S. bomber mission over Persian Gulf aimed at cautioning Iran

The Associated Press reports: The United States flew strategic bombers over the Persian Gulf on Wednesday for the second time this month, a show of force meant to deter Iran from attacking American or allied targets in the Middle East. One senior U.S. military officer said the flight by two Air Force B-52 bombers was in response to signals that Iran may be planning attacks against U.S. allied targets in neighboring Iraq or elsewhere in the region in coming days,…

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How getting vaccinated will and won’t change my behavior

How getting vaccinated will and won’t change my behavior

Dhruv Khullar writes: Beyond the dread that I feel for my patients, my work as a physician on the coronavirus wards has instilled in me two related fears. The first fear, which surges each time I learn about another of the nearly two thousand health-care workers who have died of Covid-19, is that I will get infected and fall seriously ill. A second, deeper and more persistent, fear is that I will pass the virus to my family. It’s because…

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The pragmatism of the radical climate Left

The pragmatism of the radical climate Left

Kate Aronoff writes: Even before the 2020 election cycle, centrist Democrats had a habit of portraying leftists and progressives as unflinching ideologues imposing purity tests on their fellow party members. Counter-examples, of course, have abounded. And now there’s a particularly good one in the Georgia runoff election ending January 5. Politicians and organizations that backed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary are now pouring time and resources into electing candidates who have little interest in their platform. Jon Osoff, the…

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Whether slow or fast, here’s how your metabolism influences how many calories you burn each day

Whether slow or fast, here’s how your metabolism influences how many calories you burn each day

Why does it seem like some people can eat anything and not gain a pound while others are the opposite? Heide Benser/The Image Bank via Getty Images Terezie Tolar-Peterson, Mississippi State University It’s a common dieter’s lament: “Ugh, my metabolism is so slow, I’m never going to lose any weight.” When people talk about a fast or slow metabolism, what they’re really getting at is how many calories their body burns as they go about their day. The idea is…

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Reading, that strange and uniquely human thing

Reading, that strange and uniquely human thing

Lydia Wilson writes: The Chinese artist Xu Bing has long experimented to stunning effect with the limits of the written form. Last year I visited the Centre del Carme in Valencia, Spain, to see a retrospective of his work. One installation, Book from the Sky, featured scrolls of paper looping down from the ceiling and lying along the floor of a large room, printed Chinese characters emerging into view as I moved closer to the reams of paper. But this…

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