Music: Tigran Hamasyan — ‘Fides Tua’
Ocean warming is accelerating faster than thought, new research finds
The New York Times reports: Scientists say the world’s oceans are warming far more quickly than previously thought, a finding with dire implications for climate change because almost all the excess heat absorbed by the planet ends up stored in their waters. A new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that the oceans are heating up 40 percent faster on average than a United Nations panel estimated five years ago. The researchers also concluded that ocean temperatures have…
Trump and the Brexiters must own the mess they lied us into
Gary Younge writes: We start a new year in a state of transatlantic political paralysis. In Britain, parliament has taken back control from a flailing government in pursuit of the least bad option. Brexit, it transpires, does not mean Brexit; it means whatever we can agree on, which may be nothing at all. In the US, it turns out, not only will the Mexicans not pay for the wall, but the Americans aren’t too keen on stumping up for it…
Before Trump, Steve King set the agenda for the wall and anti-immigrant politics
The New York Times reports: Years before President Trump forced a government shutdown over a border wall, triggering a momentous test of wills in Washington, Representative Steve King of Iowa took to the House floor to show off a model of a 12-foot border wall he had designed. And long before Mr. Trump demonized immigrants — accusing Mexico of exporting criminals and calling for an end to birthright citizenship — Mr. King turned those views into talking points, with his…
Turkey issues ultimatum to Trump: Pull out of Syria or we strike
Haaretz/Reuters reports: A military operation against the Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey has pledged to carry out in northern Syria, is not dependent on a U.S. pull-out from the region, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday. “If the [pullout] is put off with ridiculous excuses like Turks are massacring Kurds, which do not reflect the reality, we will implement this decision,” Çavuşoğlu said, referring to Turkey’s threat to launch an incursion into Kurdish controlled Syria. In an interview…
U.S. will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, says Mike Pompeo
The Guardian reports: The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has vowed the US and its allies will “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria as he sought to reassure Middle Eastern nations it was not withdrawing from the region despite Donald Trump’s call for troops to return home. In a keynote speech delivered in Cairo, pitched as the centrepiece of his nine-country regional tour, Pompeo called for a common stand against Tehran. “It’s time for old rivalries to end,…
The Saudi engine of repression continues to run at full speed
David Ignatius writes: One hundred days after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pressing ahead with anti-dissident campaigns and remains in regular contact with Saud al-Qahtani, the media adviser whom the CIA believes helped organize Khashoggi’s killing, according to U.S. and Saudi sources. The Saudi crown prince, far from altering his impulsive behavior or signaling that he has learned lessons from the Khashoggi affair, as the Trump administration had hoped, appears instead to be…
Music: Toco — ‘Instalação Do Samba’
Trump is the wall
Jorge Ramos writes: The wall has become a metaphor to Mr. Trump and his millions of supporters. It represents a divide between “us” and “them,” a physical demarcation for those who refuse to accept that in just a few decades, a majority of the country will be people of color. This is about more than just a wall. Mr. Trump promised it in 2015, in the same speech in which he announced his candidacy, the same speech in which he…
Attorney General pick Barr expresses confidence in Mueller
The Associated Press reports: The incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that Attorney General nominee William Barr has confidence in special counsel Robert Mueller and will let him complete his Russia investigation. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said after meeting with Barr, who led the Justice Department under President George H.W. Bush, that Barr has a “high opinion” of Mueller. Barr was spending most of Wednesday on Capitol Hill, meeting senators on the committee before his confirmation hearing…
Facebook’s ‘cult-like’ workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to always be happy
CNBC reports: At a company-wide town hall in early October, numerous Facebook employees got in line to speak about their experiences with sexual harassment. The company called the special town hall after head of policy Joel Kaplan caused an internal uproar for appearing at the congressional hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh. A young female employee was among those who got up to speak, addressing her comments directly to COO Sheryl Sandberg. “I was reticent to speak, Sheryl, because the pressure…
The periodic table is 150 – but it could have looked very different
Theodor Benfey’s spira table (1964). DePiep/Wikipedia By Mark Lorch, University of Hull The periodic table stares down from the walls of just about every chemistry lab. The credit for its creation generally goes to Dimitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist who in 1869 wrote out the known elements (of which there were 63 at the time) on cards and then arranged them in columns and rows according to their chemical and physical properties. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of this pivotal…
Music: Toco — ‘Outro Lugar’
The blind spot of science is the neglect of lived experience
Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson write: The problem of time is one of the greatest puzzles of modern physics. The first bit of the conundrum is cosmological. To understand time, scientists talk about finding a ‘First Cause’ or ‘initial condition’ – a description of the Universe at the very beginning (or at ‘time equals zero’). But to determine a system’s initial condition, we need to know the total system. We need to make measurements of the positions and…
U.S. carbon emissions surged in 2018 even as coal plants closed
The New York Times reports: America’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years, according to a preliminary estimate published Tuesday. Strikingly, the sharp uptick in emissions occurred even as a near-record number of coal plants around the United States retired last year, illustrating how difficult it could be for the country to make further progress on climate change in the years to come, particularly as the Trump administration pushes to roll back…
The suicide of a great democracy
George Packer writes: A constant theme runs throughout Lincoln’s writings, from his years as a young Illinois politician to the last great speeches of his life: the supreme value of self-government. Everything depended on this idea, “our ancient faith,” which itself was “absolutely and eternally right.” But its endurance was never guaranteed. From the start of his career, Lincoln foresaw how American democracy might end—not through foreign conquest, but by our own fading attachment to its institutions. “If destruction be…