Light pollution and drought are pushing fireflies toward extinction

Light pollution and drought are pushing fireflies toward extinction

CBS News reports: Fireflies are the romantics of the insect world. In the summer months, they emerge from the ground with love on the brain. They only live for two to three weeks once they’ve become full adults and in that time they don’t even eat. They’re too busy flirting. Fireflies — or lightning bugs, depending on where you grew up — are one of the only insects with elaborate courtship dialogues, said Avalon Owens, a research fellow at Harvard….

Read More Read More

The Constitution prohibits Trump from ever being president again

The Constitution prohibits Trump from ever being president again

J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe write: As students of the United States Constitution for many decades—one of us as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, the other as a professor of constitutional law, and both as constitutional advocates, scholars, and practitioners—we long ago came to the conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment, the amendment ratified in 1868 that represents our nation’s second founding and a new birth of freedom, contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the…

Read More Read More

How do we fix the scandal that is American health care?

How do we fix the scandal that is American health care?

Nicholas Kristof writes: It’s not just that life expectancy in Mississippi (71.9) now appears to be a hair shorter than in Bangladesh (72.4). Nor that an infant is some 70 percent more likely to die in the United States than in other wealthy countries. Nor even that for the first time in probably a century, the likelihood that an American child will live to the age of 20 has dropped. All that is tragic and infuriating, but to me the…

Read More Read More

The GOP might be over its war on ‘woke’

The GOP might be over its war on ‘woke’

HuffPost reports: Jill Connell is sick of hearing the word “woke.” The 66-year-old from Kansas is an undecided Republican voter with a host of concerns about the country, and she knows for sure what doesn’t top that list. “To me, wokeness is, ‘Hey, I woke up this morning,’” Connell said, employing the most literal definition of a word the right uses to describe what it sees as left-wing ideas and political correctness. “I call it goofy — it’s ridiculous. I’m…

Read More Read More

They integrated Little Rock’s schools. Now they’re slamming restrictions on AP African American Studies

They integrated Little Rock’s schools. Now they’re slamming restrictions on AP African American Studies

NBC News reports: Several surviving members of the Little Rock Nine, a group of students who in 1957 integrated Little Rock Central High School under threats of violence from white segregationists, are denouncing the Arkansas Department of Education’s restrictions on an Advanced Placement African American Studies course. The state is not barring students from taking the class but has cautioned that the coursework may not count toward the state’s high school graduation requirements. The Arkansas Department of Education has argued…

Read More Read More

Robo-taxis are legal now

Robo-taxis are legal now

Anna Wiener writes: The California Public Utilities Commission—a state agency that regulates power, water, and telecommunications companies, as well as movers, taxicabs, rideshare services, and self-driving cars—is headquartered in a large, curved building on Van Ness Avenue, in San Francisco, that looks a bit like a sun visor. Last Thursday morning, a small group of protesters gathered on the steps in advance of the commission’s vote on whether to allow the autonomous-vehicle companies Cruise and Waymo to expand their fleets,…

Read More Read More

What if you knew what you were missing on social media?

What if you knew what you were missing on social media?

Julia Angwin writes: Social media can feel like a giant newsstand, with more choices than any newsstand ever. It contains news not only from journalism outlets, but also from your grandma, your friends, celebrities and people in countries you have never visited. It is a bountiful feast. But so often you don’t get to pick from the buffet. On most social media platforms, algorithms use your behavior to narrow in on the posts you are shown. If you send a…

Read More Read More

Have astronomers finally found a meteorite from outside the solar system?

Have astronomers finally found a meteorite from outside the solar system?

Astronomy reports: After an expedition that spent about 10 days scouring the ocean floor off Papua New Guinea with a magnetic sled, Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb says he has collected more than 700 metallic spherules that are now undergoing detailed examination in his lab at Harvard as well as at least two other independent labs that he asked to help out. Loeb believes that many of these spherules, each less than a millimeter across (about the size of a…

Read More Read More

American democracy is cracking. These forces help explain why

American democracy is cracking. These forces help explain why

Dan Balz and Clara Ence Morse write: In a country where the search for common ground is increasingly elusive, many Americans can agree on this: They believe the political system is broken and that it fails to represent them. They aren’t wrong. Faced with big and challenging problems — climate, immigration, inequality, guns, debt and deficits — government and politicians seem incapable of achieving consensus. On each of those issues, the public is split, often bitterly. But on each, there…

Read More Read More

Threats, slurs and menace: Far-right websites target Fulton County grand jurors

Threats, slurs and menace: Far-right websites target Fulton County grand jurors

NPR reports: Before many people had a chance to fully read through the Fulton County, Ga., indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, malicious online actors had already done their work. On a far-right website, where the QAnon conspiracy theory originated, an anonymous user on Tuesday shared a list of the 23 grand jurors with their supposed full names, ages and addresses. Amid a torrent of other posts speculating on the race and religion of the jurors, and…

Read More Read More

Kenneth Chesebro, alleged architect of fake electors’ plot, followed Alex Jones around Capitol grounds on January 6th

Kenneth Chesebro, alleged architect of fake electors’ plot, followed Alex Jones around Capitol grounds on January 6th

CNN reports: When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red “Trump 2020” hat conspicuously tagged along. Videos and photographs reviewed by CNN show the man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters eventually broke in. While the man’s actions…

Read More Read More

U.S. intelligence says Ukraine will fail to meet offensive’s key goal

U.S. intelligence says Ukraine will fail to meet offensive’s key goal

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol, people familiar with the classified forecast told The Washington Post, a finding that, should it prove correct, would mean Kyiv won’t fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push. The grim assessment is based on Russia’s brutal proficiency in defending occupied territory through a phalanx of minefields and trenches, and is…

Read More Read More

Biden to sign strategic partnership deal with Vietnam in latest bid to counter China in the region

Biden to sign strategic partnership deal with Vietnam in latest bid to counter China in the region

Politico reports: President Joe Biden will chalk up a fresh victory in his campaign to boost U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific by sealing a deal with Vietnam next month aimed to draw Hanoi closer to Washington at a time of rising tensions with Beijing. Biden will sign a strategic partnership agreement with Vietnam during a state visit to the Southeast Asian country in mid-September, according to three people with knowledge of the deal’s planning. They were granted anonymity because they…

Read More Read More

Dead trees around the world are shocking scientists

Dead trees around the world are shocking scientists

Katarina Zimmer writes: As we hang far above the ground on a sunny October day, it would be easy to focus on the blue crests of hills and the small towns tucked in between. But Richard Peters, who’s with me inside a metal gondola mounted onto the maneuverable arm of a crane, points me instead to the tree canopy below, flushed with the gold and copper shades of fall. “That guy is definitely on his way to die,” he says…

Read More Read More