For Schopenhauer, happiness is a state of semi-satisfaction

For Schopenhauer, happiness is a state of semi-satisfaction

David Bather Woods writes: On 13 December 1807, in fashionable Weimar, Johanna Schopenhauer picked up her pen and wrote to her 19-year-old son Arthur: ‘It is necessary for my happiness to know that you are happy, but not to be a witness to it.’ Two years earlier, in Hamburg, Johanna’s husband Heinrich Floris had been discovered dead in the canal behind their family compound. It is possible that he slipped and fell, but Arthur suspected that his father jumped out…

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Trump: Americans who died in war are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

Trump: Americans who died in war are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

Jeffrey Goldberg writes: When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true. Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people…

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Most Americans think Trump’s response to the protests across the U.S. is making the situation worse

Most Americans think Trump’s response to the protests across the U.S. is making the situation worse

ABC News reports: A significant majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the unrest in parts of the country is making matters worse — with even members of his own party divided on his approach — a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday finds. Trump’s attempt to reframe the race against former Vice President Joe Biden around “law and order,” does not appear to be breaking through. Over half of the country — 55% — in the new…

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Michael Forest Reinoehl, suspect in Portland shooting, is killed during arrest

Michael Forest Reinoehl, suspect in Portland shooting, is killed during arrest

The New York Times reports: Law enforcement agents shot and killed an antifa supporter on Thursday as they moved to arrest him in the fatal shooting of a right-wing activist who was part of a pro-Trump caravan in Portland, Ore., officials said. The suspect, Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, was shot by officers from a federally led fugitive task force during the encounter in Lacey, Wash., southwest of Seattle, according to four law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation. As part…

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Will Americans ever learn the full story about Trump’s relationship with Russia?

Will Americans ever learn the full story about Trump’s relationship with Russia?

Anne Applebaum writes: Fate offered Peter Strzok a place in history that he never sought. The son of an Army officer, Strzok also served in the United States military before joining the FBI’s counterintelligence operation in 1996. He excelled at his job: In 2001, he was part of the team that tracked and arrested a network of Russian “illegals” who had been living in the U.S. for many years under deep cover. But those were not the cases that brought…

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Women are more effective leaders than men in tackling the pandemic, the data shows

Women are more effective leaders than men in tackling the pandemic, the data shows

By Supriya Garikipati, University of Liverpool and Uma S Kambhampati, University of Reading Over the last few months, there has been much discussion of leadership during the pandemic. What constitutes good leadership? Who has performed better and which countries have been worse? One pattern that emerged early on was that female leaders were seen to have handled the crisis remarkably well. Whether it has been New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern or Taiwan under the presidency of Tsai Ing-Wen or Germany…

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Here’s why BuzzFeed News is now calling QAnon a ‘collective delusion’

Here’s why BuzzFeed News is now calling QAnon a ‘collective delusion’

BuzzFeed News reports: What is QAnon? It’s not easy to describe, but one thing we know to be true: It’s not a conspiracy theory — it’s bigger. What started as a thread on the anonymous message board 4chan has long since entered the mainstream: Questions about QAnon have been asked in the White House press room, and a Q follower is poised to be voted into Congress later this year. When QAnon started appearing several years ago, journalists fumbled to…

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U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

Reuters reports: Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful – and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth. In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans’ telephone records violated the Foreign…

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The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis

The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis

Rosa Brooks writes: We wanted to know: What’s the worst thing that could happen to our country during the presidential election? President Trump has broken countless norms and ignored countless laws during his time in office, and while my colleagues and I at the Transition Integrity Project didn’t want to lie awake at night contemplating the ways the American experiment could fail, we realized that identifying the most serious risks to our democracy might be the best way to avert…

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Seven out of ten new coronavirus cases are emerging in red states

Seven out of ten new coronavirus cases are emerging in red states

Philip Bump writes: It’s hard to overstate the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic has been saturated with partisan politics. Simple recommendations like wearing a face mask have been recast as acts of devout patriotism or as mandates for fealty to an insidious federal government. It’s a direct and indirect function of the president: Everything President Trump touches becomes partisan, both intentionally and not, and Trump’s got his hands all over the pandemic. We are therefore no longer surprised when…

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Trump’s encouragement to vote twice could cause election day chaos

Trump’s encouragement to vote twice could cause election day chaos

Richard L. Hasen writes: President Donald Trump on Thursday repeated his encouragement to his supporters to vote twice, first by mail and then—if election officials allow—in person. Voting twice—as the president requests—is not only illegal, but a recipe for chaos in November. Perhaps that is exactly the point. Trump defended his call as a way to test the system against voter fraud, but it’s like encouraging his supporters to try to rob the 7-Eleven to make sure that the police…

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Trump silent as world leaders call for answers from Putin on Navalny poisoning

Trump silent as world leaders call for answers from Putin on Navalny poisoning

CNN reports: The Trump administration remained largely silent Wednesday as leaders around the world expressed concern and demanded answers from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government over the revelation that a leading opposition figure had been poisoned by a Soviet-era chemical nerve agent. The German government announced Wednesday that Alexey Navalny had been poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group — the same agent the Kremlin used to poison ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the…

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Russia is ‘amplifying’ claims of mail-in voter fraud, intel bulletin warns

Russia is ‘amplifying’ claims of mail-in voter fraud, intel bulletin warns

ABC News reports: Russia has sought to “amplify” concerns over the integrity of U.S. elections by promoting allegations that mail-in voting will lead to widespread fraud, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News, again echoing a frequent and unfounded complaint raised by President Donald Trump. Analysts with the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch issued the warning on Thursday to federal and state law enforcement partners after finding with “high confidence” that “Russian malign influence actors” have targeted…

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A freelance writer learns he was working for the Russians

A freelance writer learns he was working for the Russians

The New York Times reports: Colin Munro Wood was not shocked when he learned that federal investigators believed the new website he had been writing for was a facade for a Russian troll operation looking to sway Americans ahead of the November election. It explained the strange emails and writing prompts he had been receiving from his mysterious editor, an individual who admitted he was not based in the United States but wanted to weigh in on the presidential race….

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