Biden should take Manchin’s deal right now

Biden should take Manchin’s deal right now

Jonathan Chait writes: Sunday morning, Joe Manchin threw a giant twist into the plot of the Biden presidency by announcing his opposition to the administration’s signature domestic agenda. But the new plot had a gaping hole: Biden noted that, a few days before walking away, Manchin had made a counteroffer to Biden at the White House. What was the counteroffer? And why did Biden reject it? The Washington Post fills in the answer. Manchin’s proposal included universal pre-kindergarten, an expansion…

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One shot to see the universe like never before

One shot to see the universe like never before

Marina Koren writes: In the beginning, the universe was dark. The Big Bang had electrified the cosmos into existence, and the new landscape buzzed with particles, chaotic and hot, before cooling off into a calm expanse of hydrogen and helium. Then something began to happen in the fog. Gravity drove pockets of gas to collapse in on themselves and ignite, creating the first stars. The radiant orbs began to cluster, forming the first galaxies: messy, misshapen things, not as polished…

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A relentless assault on the Amazon rainforest poses a threat to the planet

A relentless assault on the Amazon rainforest poses a threat to the planet

Georgina Gustin writes: The Amazon is enveloping and lush, a place of stupefying richness. But a powerful web of extractive forces is also at work here. Every day, thousands of miners, loggers, farmers and ranchers burn or cut roughly 10,000 acres of forest, working to satisfy a growing demand for the resources it contains. They are tiny cogs in a sprawling global machine that has destroyed nearly one-fifth of the Brazilian rainforest—an area about the size of California—over the last…

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Most of the world’s vaccines likely won’t prevent infection from Omicron

Most of the world’s vaccines likely won’t prevent infection from Omicron

The New York Times reports: A growing body of preliminary research suggests the Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious Omicron variant. All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from Omicron, which is the most crucial goal. But only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have initial success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are…

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Don’t panic about Omicron. But don’t be indifferent, either

Don’t panic about Omicron. But don’t be indifferent, either

Ashish K. Jha writes: The Omicron wave is upon us, and the national conversation is vacillating between panic and indifference. Those who are near panic point to rapidly rising case counts and lockdowns in several European nations. Those who are indifferent lean into reports of Omicron being a milder coronavirus variant; after nearly two years of COVID, that can feel like reason enough to put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror and get on with their life. Both perspectives are…

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Did Manchin just kill Biden’s domestic agenda? Or is he back to negotiating yet again?

Did Manchin just kill Biden’s domestic agenda? Or is he back to negotiating yet again?

Jonathan Chait writes: When historians record the Biden presidency, the aspect they will struggle to capture is just how much of it was spent attempting to divine the objectives and motivation of Joe Manchin. The West Virginia senator once again threw Washington into chaos by appearing on Fox News Sunday to deliver what may or may not be a death blow to the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda. “I can’t move forward. I cannot vote to continue with this piece…

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The fallen mercenaries in Russia’s dark army

The fallen mercenaries in Russia’s dark army

New Lines reports: “If you’d have come here to tell me that my son is still alive, you would have made me the happiest mom in the world.” Svetlana Antipova opens the gate to allow us into her yard in the village of Shyryajeve. It is a pitch-black Saturday evening, a little over an hour’s drive outside Odessa, Ukraine. The stillness is interrupted only by dogs barking in the neighbors’ yards, altered to the arrival of strangers. Evgeny Antipov, Svetlana’s…

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What does it mean for AI to understand?

What does it mean for AI to understand?

Melanie Mitchell writes: Remember IBM’s Watson, the AI Jeopardy! champion? A 2010 promotion proclaimed, “Watson understands natural language with all its ambiguity and complexity.” However, as we saw when Watson subsequently failed spectacularly in its quest to “revolutionize medicine with artificial intelligence,” a veneer of linguistic facility is not the same as actually comprehending human language. Natural language understanding has long been a major goal of AI research. At first, researchers tried to manually program everything a machine would need…

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Physicists prove anyons exist, a third kingdom of quasiparticles that only arise in two dimensions

Physicists prove anyons exist, a third kingdom of quasiparticles that only arise in two dimensions

Discover reports: After decades of exploration in nature’s smallest domains, physicists have finally found evidence that anyons exist. First predicted by theorists in the early 1980s, these particle-like objects only arise in realms confined to two dimensions, and then only under certain circumstances — like at temperatures near absolute zero and in the presence of a strong magnetic field. Physicists are excited about anyons not only because their discovery confirms decades of theoretical work, but also for practical reasons. For…

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Hidden Pentagon records reveal pattern of failures in deadly strikes

Hidden Pentagon records reveal pattern of failures in deadly strikes

The New York Times reports: Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed. In early 2017 in Iraq, an American…

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A humanitarian catastrophe: ‘No one benefits from a failed state in Afghanistan’

A humanitarian catastrophe: ‘No one benefits from a failed state in Afghanistan’

David Ignatius writes: Americans have been generous after military victories. Just look at the postwar economic miracles in Germany and Japan. But it’s harder to be generous in defeat — as we see in the Biden administration’s wary response to the humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s seizure of power there in August. As winter approaches, Afghanistan’s battered population faces food shortages approaching famine; its financial system has imploded, thanks in part to U.S. Treasury sanctions. There is, literally,…

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In South Africa, Gauteng’s Omicron wave is already peaking. Why?

In South Africa, Gauteng’s Omicron wave is already peaking. Why?

David Wallace-Wells writes: In Gauteng, South Africa’s Omicron epicenter, the wave seems to be cresting. In other parts of the country, too, the terrifyingly fast rise of the new variant appears already to be slowing and even receding. This is very encouraging, since it suggests that Omicron waves elsewhere in the world may also be, if disorientingly fast, also mercifully short. But it is also a bit confusing, given that the wave has peaked well before anything like it had…

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Trump White House made ‘deliberate efforts’ to undermine Covid response, report says

Trump White House made ‘deliberate efforts’ to undermine Covid response, report says

NBC News reports: The Trump administration engaged in “deliberate efforts” to undermine the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic for political purposes, a congressional report released Friday concludes. The report, prepared by the House select subcommittee investigating the nation’s Covid response, says the White House repeatedly overruled public health and testing guidance by the nation’s top infectious disease experts and silenced officials in order to promote then-President Donald Trump’s political agenda. In August of last year, for example, Trump hosted…

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McConnell rips ‘horrendous’ January 6 riot, says public ‘needs to know’ what happened

McConnell rips ‘horrendous’ January 6 riot, says public ‘needs to know’ what happened

HuffPost reports: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell described the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as “horrendous” in a surprising interview Thursday, and said he was looking forward to what the House select committee investigating it discovers. “I think the fact finding is interesting. We’re all going to be watching it,” McConnell told Spectrum News. “It was a horrendous event, and I think what they’re seeking to find out is something the public needs to know.” [Continue reading…]…

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