Alex Jones gave Oath Keepers leader the audience to spew his anti-government hatred

Alex Jones gave Oath Keepers leader the audience to spew his anti-government hatred

CNN reports: Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes has spewed violent rhetoric and whipped up unsubstantiated fears about secret government plots and imminent civil war for more than a decade with the help of another purveyor of extremism: conspiracy monger and internet powerhouse Alex Jones. Jones, who has built a staggering online following around his Infowars empire, has given Rhodes a platform to reach a wider audience — from the day Rhodes plugged the Oath Keepers’ first public meeting to the…

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Why didn’t the FBI see the Capitol siege coming?

Why didn’t the FBI see the Capitol siege coming?

Grid reports: In the lead-up to the Capitol siege, the FBI received at least a dozen warnings about the possibility of violence that day. When the day came and the Capitol barricades fell, it became evident the FBI largely ignored them all. The warnings came from all sides: regional law enforcement, social media platforms, Congress (specifically the House and Senate intelligence committees), a top defense official, extremist watchdogs, right-wing experts, journalists and even three different components within the FBI itself….

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U.S. intelligence indicates Russia preparing operation to justify invasion of Ukraine

U.S. intelligence indicates Russia preparing operation to justify invasion of Ukraine

CNN reports: The US has information that indicates Russia has prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine, a US official told CNN on Friday, in an attempt to create a pretext for an invasion. The official said the US has evidence that the operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy forces. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the Defense Department has…

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Can weed protect you from Covid?

Can weed protect you from Covid?

Slate reports: Fikadu Tafesse wasn’t expecting to wake up on Wednesday to a text in which his former mentor blamed him for his children’s new interest in weed. Earlier this week, Tafesse, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Oregon Health & Science University, published evidence that some compounds found in cannabis plants could prevent the coronavirus from infecting cells. The internet latched onto the idea that weed might protect them from COVID: Twitter users made memes about the…

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How is the pandemic affecting the brains of a generation of children?

How is the pandemic affecting the brains of a generation of children?

Nature reports: Like many paediatricians, Dani Dumitriu braced herself for the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus when it first surged in her wards. She was relieved when most newborn babies at her hospital who had been exposed to COVID-19 seemed to do just fine. Knowledge of the effects of Zika and other viruses that can cause birth defects meant that doctors were looking out for problems. But hints of a more subtle and insidious trend followed close behind. Dumitriu and…

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Romney warns against getting rid of filibuster, citing possible Trump win in 2024

Romney warns against getting rid of filibuster, citing possible Trump win in 2024

The Hill reports: Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Tuesday issued a warning to Democrats about the potential consequences of getting rid of the filibuster and accused President Biden of going down “the same tragic road” of former President Trump. “The United States Senate is one of our vital democratic institutions, and the power given to the minority in the Senate and the resulting requirement for political consensus are among the Senate’s defining features,” Romney said while speaking on the Senate…

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NATO chief warns of ‘real risk of conflict’ as talks with Russia over Ukraine end

NATO chief warns of ‘real risk of conflict’ as talks with Russia over Ukraine end

The Guardian reports: Nato discussions with Russia have concluded with no sign of progress towards narrowing substantial differences or defusing the crisis over Ukraine, and with the alliance’s secretary general warning “there is a real risk for a new armed conflict in Europe”. After four hours of talks, the US delegation leader, the deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, said she had heard nothing in Brussels that differed from the Kremlin position laid out at bilateral talks in Geneva, demanding…

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A century of quantum mechanics questions the fundamental nature of reality

A century of quantum mechanics questions the fundamental nature of reality

Tom Siegfried writes: Scientists are like prospectors, excavating the natural world seeking gems of knowledge about physical reality. And in the century just past, scientists have dug deep enough to discover that reality’s foundations do not mirror the world of everyday appearances. At its roots, reality is described by the mysterious set of mathematical rules known as quantum mechanics. Conceived at the turn of the 20th century and then emerging in its full form in the mid-1920s, quantum mechanics is…

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News outlets fixate on the negative

News outlets fixate on the negative

Eric Weiner writes: The critics are right. The mainstream media is biased. It is not a political bias, though, no liberal or conservative slant, but something even more insidious: a bad-news bias. During my decades as a daily journalist, at The New York Times and NPR, I knew that reporting on happy people and places wasn’t going to advance my career. No one told me this. They didn’t need to. The bad-news bias is simply understood. “If it bleeds, it…

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The worrisome rise of Non-Fungible Tokens

The worrisome rise of Non-Fungible Tokens

Caleb Scharf writes: Humans are very good at inventing commodities, and we’ve been at it for a long time. See that pebble over there? Well, that’s a better pebble than all these others, and if you give me something in exchange for it, I’ll let you take ownership. It’ll be your pebble, forever. And soon there will be a market in pebbles, a pebble community, pebble exhibitions and auctions filled with pebble speculators, pebble exchanges, and pebble artists. The deeper,…

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Rare, isolated script invented from scratch holds clues to the evolution of writing

Rare, isolated script invented from scratch holds clues to the evolution of writing

Science Alert reports: A rare script from a language in Liberia has provided some new insights into how written languages evolve. “The Vai script of Liberia was created from scratch in about 1834 by eight completely illiterate men who wrote in ink made from crushed berries,” says linguistic anthropologist Piers Kelly, now at the University of New England, Australia. “Because of its isolation, and the way it has continued to develop up until the present day, we thought it might…

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The world we want to live in after Covid

The world we want to live in after Covid

Dhruv Khullar writes: In 1909, the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep published a book called “The Rites of Passage.” In it, he explored the rituals that cultures use to transition people from one stage of life to the next. Birth, puberty, graduation, religious initiation, marriage, pregnancy, promotions, the seasons—we’re always on the threshold of one phase or another. How do communities shepherd individuals from the pre- to the post-? Van Gennep argued that certain universal principles underlie rites of passage…

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How the speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world

How the speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world

Oliver Milman writes: The climate crisis is set to profoundly alter the world around us. Humans will not be the only species to suffer from the calamity. Huge waves of die-offs will be triggered across the animal kingdom as coral reefs turn ghostly white and tropical rainforests collapse. For a period, some researchers suspected that insects may be less affected, or at least more adaptable, than mammals, birds and other groups of creatures. With their large, elastic populations and their…

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Evolution ‘landscapes’ predict what’s next for Covid virus

Evolution ‘landscapes’ predict what’s next for Covid virus

Carrie Arnold writes: In the fall of 2019, the world began one of the largest evolutionary biology experiments in modern history. Somewhere near the city of Wuhan in eastern China, a coronavirus acquired the ability to live inside humans rather than the bats and other mammals that had been its hosts. It adapted further to become efficient at spreading from one person to the next, even before the body’s defenses could rise against it. But the evolutionary chess game didn’t…

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