Carlson’s text that alarmed Fox leaders: ‘It’s not how white men fight’

Carlson’s text that alarmed Fox leaders: ‘It’s not how white men fight’

The New York Times reports: A text message sent by Tucker Carlson that set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox on the eve of its billion-dollar defamation trial showed its most popular host sharing his private, inflammatory views about violence and race. The discovery of the message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Mr. Carlson’s firing. In the message, sent to one of his producers in the hours after violent Trump supporters stormed…

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New documents show how Sandra Day O’Connor helped George W. Bush win the 2000 election

New documents show how Sandra Day O’Connor helped George W. Bush win the 2000 election

CNN reports: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor provided the early framework that steered the outcome in the dispute over the 2000 presidential election and ensured George W. Bush would win the White House over Al Gore, Supreme Court documents released on Tuesday show. Memos found in the newly opened files of the late Justice John Paul Stevens offer a first-ever view of the behind-the-scenes negotiations on Bush v. Gore at the court. They also demonstrate the tension among the nine justices…

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The oceans are missing their rivers

The oceans are missing their rivers

Erica Gies writes: Gazing out from the eighth floor of a hotel in Georgetown, Guyana, the broad expanse of the Atlantic Ocean was a muddy brown. Only a thin rim of blue on the horizon showed the ocean’s true color; the rest swirled with sediment emerging from the mouth of the Essequibo River. In a rhythm that’s pulsed through epochs, a river’s plume carries sediment and nutrients from the continental interior into the ocean, a major exchange of resources from…

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Is the debt limit constitutional? Biden aides are debating it

Is the debt limit constitutional? Biden aides are debating it

The New York Times reports: A standoff between House Republicans and President Biden over raising the nation’s borrowing limit has administration officials debating what to do if the government runs out of cash to pay its bills, including one option that previous administrations had deemed unthinkable. That option is effectively a constitutional challenge to the debt limit. Under the theory, the government would be required by the 14th Amendment to continue issuing new debt to pay bondholders, Social Security recipients,…

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The ‘woke mind virus’ is eating away at Republicans’ brains

The ‘woke mind virus’ is eating away at Republicans’ brains

Jamelle Bouie writes: There are a few reasons to think that President Biden might lose his bid for re-election next year, even if Donald Trump is once more — for the third straight time — the Republican nominee. There’s the Electoral College, which could still favor the Republican Party just enough to give Trump 270 electoral votes, even if he doesn’t win a popular majority. There’s Biden’s overall standing — around 43 percent of Americans approve of his job performance…

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The next front in the GOP’s war on women: No-fault divorce

The next front in the GOP’s war on women: No-fault divorce

Rolling Stone reports: Steven Crowder, the right-wing podcaster, is getting a divorce. “No, this was not my choice,” Crowder told his online audience last week. “My then-wife decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore — and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.” Crowder’s emphasis on “the state of Texas” makes it sound like the Lone Star State is an outlier, but all 50 states and the District of Columbia have no-fault divorce laws on the books —…

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Leonard Leo used Federalist Society contact to obtain $1.6 billion donation

Leonard Leo used Federalist Society contact to obtain $1.6 billion donation

Politico reports: Leonard Leo, who helped to choose judicial nominees for former President Donald Trump, obtained a historic $1.6 billion gift for his conservative legal network via an introduction through the Federalist Society, whose tax status forbids political activism. Leo first met Barre Seid, the now 91-year-old manufacturing magnate turned donor, through an introduction arranged by Eugene Meyer, the longtime director of the Federalist Society. At the time, Leo was the society’s executive vice president, and he is currently its…

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Like hungry locusts, humans can easily be tricked into overeating

Like hungry locusts, humans can easily be tricked into overeating

Tim Vernimmen writes: This story starts in an unusual place for an article about human nutrition: a cramped, humid and hot room somewhere in the Zoology building of the University of Oxford in England, filled with a couple hundred migratory locusts, each in its own plastic box. It was there, in the late 1980s, that entomologists Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer began working together on a curious job: rearing these notoriously voracious insects, to try and find out whether they…

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How close are we to reading minds? A new study decodes language and meaning from brain scans

How close are we to reading minds? A new study decodes language and meaning from brain scans

Shutterstock By Christina Maher, University of Sydney The technology to decode our thoughts is drawing ever closer. Neuroscientists at the University of Texas have for the first time decoded data from non-invasive brain scans and used them to reconstruct language and meaning from stories that people hear, see or even imagine. In a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, Alexander Huth and colleagues successfully recovered the gist of language and sometimes exact phrases from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain…

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The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

Rebecca Wragg Sykes writes: Sometime between 135,000-50,000 years ago, hands slick with animal blood carried more than 35 huge horned heads into a small, dark, winding cave. Tiny fires were lit amidst a boulder-jumbled floor, and the flame-illuminated chamber echoed to dull pounding, cracking and squelching sounds as the skulls of bison, wild cattle, red deer and rhinoceros were smashed open. This isn’t the gory beginning of an ice age horror novel, but the setting for a fascinating Neanderthal mystery….

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‘The Godfather of AI’ leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

‘The Godfather of AI’ leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

The New York Times reports: Geoffrey Hinton was an artificial intelligence pioneer. In 2012, Dr. Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto created technology that became the intellectual foundation for the A.I. systems that the tech industry’s biggest companies believe is a key to their future. On Monday, however, he officially joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative…

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Advice to Biden on how to handle House Republicans’ demands for raising the debt ceiling

Advice to Biden on how to handle House Republicans’ demands for raising the debt ceiling

Robert Reich writes: If House Republicans refuse to raise the limit on the amount of money America may repay on what it owes — the deceptively named “debt limit” — they might force the United States to default, pushing interest rates into the stratosphere and shaking the world economy. President Biden rightfully says that raising the so-called debt ceiling should not be negotiable. After all, Democrats joined Republicans during the Trump administration to raise it three times, even as Trump…

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Supreme Court to hear major case on limiting the power of federal government, a long-term goal of legal conservatives

Supreme Court to hear major case on limiting the power of federal government, a long-term goal of legal conservatives

CNN reports: The Supreme Court agreed Monday to reconsider long held precedent and decide whether to significantly scale back on the power of federal agencies in a case that can impact everything from how the government addresses everything from climate change to public health to immigration. Conservative justices have long sought to rein in regulatory authority, arguing that Washington has too much control over American businesses and individual lives. The justices have been incrementally diminishing federal power but the new…

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The Ukrainian counteroffensive

The Ukrainian counteroffensive

Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg write: In March 1774, Prince Grigory Potemkin, the favorite general and sometime lover of Catherine the Great, took control of the anarchic southern frontier of her empire, a region previously ruled by the Mongol Khans, the Cossack hosts, and the Ottoman Turks, among others. As viceroy, Potemkin waged war and founded cities, among them Kherson, the first home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In 1783, he annexed Crimea and became an avatar of imperial glory….

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