Why the empty atom picture misunderstands quantum theory

Why the empty atom picture misunderstands quantum theory

Mario Barbatti writes: The camera zooms in on the person’s arm to reveal the cells, then a cell nucleus. A DNA strand grows on the screen. The camera focuses on a single atom within the strand, dives into a frenetic cloud of rocketing particles, crosses it, and leaves us in oppressive darkness. An initially imperceptible tiny dot grows smoothly, revealing the atomic nucleus. The narrator lectures that the nucleus of an atom is tens of thousands of times smaller than…

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Prigozhin’s death heralds even more spectacular violence

Prigozhin’s death heralds even more spectacular violence

Anne Applebaum writes: Vladimir Putin’s Russia has long been a land of mysterious deaths. In 1998, soon after he had been appointed head of the security services, Galina Starovoitova, a parliamentarian who believed in bringing democracy to Russia, was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment building in St. Petersburg. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had learned too much about the Chechen wars that Putin used to propel himself to power, met the same fate in the…

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Wagner boss Prigozhin killed in jet ‘crash’ in Russia

Wagner boss Prigozhin killed in jet ‘crash’ in Russia

Brian Klaas writes: Initial reports suggest that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the ruthless mercenary leader of the Wagner Group, has been killed. Although confirmed details are scant, his private plane has allegedly crashed or been shot down, an event that many have interpreted as an assassination. Prigozhin probably knew to stay away from windows in high buildings, so it seems plausible that Vladimir Putin took him out at 28,000 feet instead. Coup plotters rarely die of old age. Prigozhin sealed his fate…

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Federal judge rejects bids to halt Georgia prosecution of Trump aides over 2020 election

Federal judge rejects bids to halt Georgia prosecution of Trump aides over 2020 election

Politico reports: A federal judge quickly shot down bids Wednesday by two former Trump administration officials — Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark — to derail the criminal proceedings against them in Fulton County, where they’re charged alongside Donald Trump with a sprawling racketeering conspiracy to subvert the results of the 2020 election. In two six-page rulings by Atlanta-based U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones effectively ensures that Meadows and Clark will face arrest this week, a result both men attempted…

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Emails reveal Secret Service liaising with Oath Keepers

Emails reveal Secret Service liaising with Oath Keepers

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reports: Internal Secret Service emails obtained by CREW show special agents in close communication with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, while failing to acknowledge the group’s ties to white nationalists and clashes with law enforcement. In September 2020, a Secret Service agent sent an email to others within the agency, informing them that he had just spoken to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes about an upcoming visit by then-President Trump to Fayetteville,…

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South Carolina’s all-male Supreme Court upholds abortion law, reversing earlier decision

South Carolina’s all-male Supreme Court upholds abortion law, reversing earlier decision

The New York Times reports: The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the state’s new near-total ban on abortion by a 4-1 vote, reversing a decision it had made in January that struck down a similar ban and declared that the State Constitution’s protections for privacy included a right to abortion. The court’s decision was not unexpected, because the makeup of the bench had changed, and Republicans in the State Legislature had passed a new abortion law in the…

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It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say

It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say

CNN reports: If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose and mouth to protect yourself from a recent uptick of the virus, according to a growing number of experts. That advice should go all the way up to 80-year-old President Joe Biden, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist. “Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following Covid infection,” Reiner said. “At…

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If AI becomes conscious, how will we know?

If AI becomes conscious, how will we know?

Science reports: In 2021, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines—and got himself fired—when he claimed that LaMDA, the chatbot he’d been testing, was sentient. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, especially so-called large language models such as LaMDA and ChatGPT, can certainly seem conscious. But they’re trained on vast amounts of text to imitate human responses. So how can we really know? Now, a group of 19 computer scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers has come up with an approach: not a single definitive…

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No, Biden hasn’t messed up an opportunity to end the war in Ukraine

No, Biden hasn’t messed up an opportunity to end the war in Ukraine

Fred Kaplan writes: Did President Joe Biden miss an opportunity to end the war in Ukraine diplomatically nine months ago? Some commentators and at least one U.S. official are starting to think he might have. I disagree. The queasy feeling was first articulated last week in a Politico article that recalled a speech last November by Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The war was getting brutal, both sides had suffered horrible casualties, civilians were under…

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Ukraine’s forces and firepower are misallocated, U.S. officials say

Ukraine’s forces and firepower are misallocated, U.S. officials say

The New York Times reports: Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive is struggling to break through entrenched Russian defenses in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units, in the wrong places, American and other Western officials say. The main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. But instead of focusing on that, Ukrainian commanders have…

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Trump vows massive new tariffs if elected, risking global economic war

Trump vows massive new tariffs if elected, risking global economic war

The Washington Post reports: Even in the face of growing personal legal peril, Donald Trump summoned his top economic advisers to his private golf club in New Jersey for a two-hour dinner last Wednesday night to map out a trade-focused economic plan for his presidential bid. Trump and top aides, including former senior White House officials Larry Kudlow and Brooke Rollins, as well as outside advisers Stephen Moore and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, spent the dinner discussing how Trump…

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Prosecutors: Trump Mar-a-Lago security aide flipped after changing lawyers

Prosecutors: Trump Mar-a-Lago security aide flipped after changing lawyers

Politico reports: A Trump employee who monitored security cameras at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate abruptly retracted his earlier grand jury testimony and implicated Trump and others in obstruction of justice just after switching from an attorney paid for by a Trump political action committee to a lawyer from the federal defender’s office in Washington, prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday. The aide — described as “Trump Employee 4” in public court filings but identified elsewhere as Yuscil Taveras —…

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U.S. businessman is wannabe ‘warlord’ of secretive far-right men’s network

U.S. businessman is wannabe ‘warlord’ of secretive far-right men’s network

The Guardian reports: Charles Haywood, creator of the Society for American Civic Renewal, has said he might serve as ‘warlord’ at the head of an ‘armed patronage network’ The founder and sponsor of a far-right network of secretive, men-only, invitation-only fraternal lodges in the US is a former industrialist who has frequently speculated about his future as a warlord after the collapse of America, a Guardian investigation has found. Federal and state tax and company filings show that the Society…

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Why a highly mutated coronavirus variant has scientists on alert

Why a highly mutated coronavirus variant has scientists on alert

Nature reports: Researchers are racing to determine whether a highly mutated coronavirus variant that has popped up in three continents will be a global concern — or much ado about nothing. Several laboratories detected the variant last week, and it has been named BA.2.86. Although the lineage seems to be exceedingly rare, it is very different from other circulating variants and carries numerous changes to its spike protein, a key focus of the body’s immune attack on the SARS-CoV-2 virus….

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