EU’s Borrell: Europe cannot be left out of Russia-U.S. talks

EU’s Borrell: Europe cannot be left out of Russia-U.S. talks

Politico reports: The EU’s chief fear is no longer that it will be squeezed onto the diplomatic sidelines by the U.S. and China — because it is now more afraid of being squeezed out by the U.S. and Russia. Washington is leading talks on defusing tensions with Moscow after Russia moved about 100,000 troops to its border with Ukraine and says it wants legally-binding guarantees from the NATO military alliance about its weapons deployment and its eastern expansion. At a…

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Here’s the real deal on flurona

Here’s the real deal on flurona

Jaime Green writes: Two years of pandemic have us primed to panic at every headline. A new variant, a new complication, a new baffling policy move. Now, headlines have brought an alarmingly exotic new word to stoke our fears: flurona. On Sunday the Times of Israel published an article with the headline, “‘Flurona’: Israel Records Its First Case of Patient With COVID and Flu at Same Time.” The first wave of follow-up aggregation articles in other outlets was staid, merely…

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The therapeutic value of swearing

The therapeutic value of swearing

Stephen Tuffin writes: When I was a kid, swearing was taboo – except for that one time when my dad, a hulking great navvy of a man, took me down the yard where they kept all the equipment road workers used out on the roads, and I witnessed the cutting down of a tree. An elm, I am reliably told. At home, that evening, sat on the kitchen table of our council house, my mum scrubbing my hands and face,…

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One woman’s six-word mantra that has helped to calm millions

One woman’s six-word mantra that has helped to calm millions

Judith Hoare writes: [Dr Claire] Weekes distilled her understanding of ‘nervous illness’ into a six-word mantra for overcoming anxiety: face, accept, float, let time pass. In Self-Help for Your Nerves, she said that sufferers usually spent their time counterproductively: Running away, not facing. Fighting, not accepting. Arresting and ‘listening in’, not floating past. Being impatient with time, not letting time pass. The nervously ill person usually notices each new symptom in alarm, listens-in in apprehension, and yet at the same…

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Waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do

Waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do

Justin McGuirk writes: The opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ is problematic for many reasons, but there’s one that we rarely discuss. The ‘nature vs culture’ dualism leaves out an entire domain that properly belongs to neither: the world of waste. The mountains of waste that we produce every year, the torrents of polluting effluent, the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases, the new cosmos of microplastics expanding through our oceans – none of this has ever been entered into the…

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What if the January 6 insurrection had succeeded in illegally installing Trump?

What if the January 6 insurrection had succeeded in illegally installing Trump?

David Rothkopf writes: As we approach the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, many questions remain. Among these, one of the most important is, “What if?” What if the coup attempt had succeeded? What if the election results had been overturned? What if Donald Trump were illegally installed for a second term as president of the United States? It could have happened several different ways. Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman might have been out sick…

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Navarro: Trump distributed bogus election fraud research to ‘every’ Congressional Republican

Navarro: Trump distributed bogus election fraud research to ‘every’ Congressional Republican

Rolling Stone reports: When the 2020 election didn’t go Trump’s way, Peter Navarro did something dangerous. He began to do his own research. Navarro, an economist whom Donald Trump tapped to lead his trade war against China, didn’t stay in his lane at the White House. He’d already inserted himself in the administration’s botched pandemic response, pushing the unproven hypothesis that Covid-19 escaped from a Wuhan lab. And after the 2020 vote, Navarro began compiling a series of inflammatory dossiers…

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How January 6 spawned a new right

How January 6 spawned a new right

Jonathan Chait writes: January 6, 2021, may be the most contentious date in American history. To Democrats and the surviving remnant of anti-Trump Republicans, the event was a spasm of right-wing political violence aimed at terminating the republican experiment. To most Republicans, it was something ranging from a noble uprising to a prank gone somewhat awry to, at worst, a minor lapse in judgment. We do not yet have a common language to describe this event: Its critics call it…

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For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults

For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults

David Leonhardt writes: Children fell far behind in school during the first year of the pandemic and have not caught up. Among third through eighth graders, math and reading levels were all lower than normal this fall, according to NWEA, a research group. The shortfalls were largest for Black and Hispanic students, as well as students in schools with high poverty rates. “We haven’t seen this kind of academic achievement crisis in living memory,” Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B….

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What happened in Colorado was much scarier than a wildfire

What happened in Colorado was much scarier than a wildfire

David Wallace-Wells writes: On Thursday afternoon, in the space of a few hours just a day before the new year, 100-plus-mph winds carried the most destructive fire in Colorado history through the suburban sprawl of greater Denver, destroying much of the towns of Louisville and Superior and forcing tens of thousands to flee, including many who had entered shopping malls from sunny skies just a few minutes before. As many as 1,000 homes were destroyed. Two people currently remain missing;…

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How could the Big Bang arise from nothing?

How could the Big Bang arise from nothing?

The evolution of the cosmos after the Big Bang. NASA By Alastair Wilson, University of Birmingham READER QUESTION: My understanding is that nothing comes from nothing. For something to exist, there must be material or a component available, and for them to be available, there must be something else available. Now my question: Where did the material come from that created the Big Bang, and what happened in the first instance to create that material? Peter, 80, Australia. “The last…

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For the silent majority, it’s time to come out of hiding

For the silent majority, it’s time to come out of hiding

How can the silent majority find its voice? The phrase, silent majority, often conjures up an image of moderation and sanity — a population hemmed in from either side by the strident voices of extremists. The problem with this characterization is that it reinforces the self-imposed impotence of those who survey the political landscape while believing that as individuals, they have no capacity to be instruments of change. But the silent majority hasn’t been silenced. It is silent by choice….

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The defense of democracy must become central for American journalists

The defense of democracy must become central for American journalists

Margaret Sullivan writes: [P]ro-democracy coverage is not being “centered” by the media writ large. It’s occasional, not regular; it doesn’t appear to be part of an overall editorial plan that fully recognizes just how much trouble we’re in. That must change. It’s not merely that there needs to be more of this work. It also needs to be different. For example, it should include a new emphasis on those who are fighting to preserve voting rights and defend democratic norms….

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Jamie Raskin, democracy’s defender

Jamie Raskin, democracy’s defender

Michael Tomasky writes: Most every night, just after he slips into bed, Jamie Raskin picks up a volume of the collected works of Shakespeare, thumbs through it, and reads a few pages before sleep takes him. He is not, he admits, a big reader of fiction; doesn’t have the time. But he loves his Shakespeare, he told me one October night as we sat in his kitchen. Two days later, I asked him for a quote from the Bard that…

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