Music: Emil Brandqvist Trio — ‘The Sea Begins to Freeze’
You can’t beat climate change without tackling disinformation
Amy Westervelt writes: In the past month or so, climate disinformation has been making its way into the news more than usual. There was the House Oversight Committee’s climate disinformation hearing in October, and then, just days later, leaked documents from Facebook revealed its role in spreading climate denial. The Oversight Committee’s investigation continues, as does the work to fully understand social media’s role in disinformation, about climate and otherwise. But for all we know about disinformation and how dangerously…
Democrats shouldn’t panic. They should go into shock
Thomas B. Edsall writes: The rise of inflation, supply chain shortages, a surge in illegal border crossings, the persistence of Covid, mayhem in Afghanistan and the uproar over “critical race theory” — all of these developments, individually and collectively, have taken their toll on President Biden and Democratic candidates, so much so that Democrats are now the underdogs going into 2022 and possibly 2024. Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News, put it this way in an essay published…
Poll: Voters’ doubts rising about Biden’s health, mental fitness
Politico reports: Voters have increasing doubts about the health and mental fitness of President Joe Biden, the oldest man ever sworn into the White House, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. Only 40 percent of voters surveyed agreed with the statement that Biden “is in good health,” while 50 percent disagreed. That 10-percentage-point gap — outside the poll’s margin of error — represents a massive 29-point shift since October 2020, when Morning Consult last surveyed the question and found…
Sinema speaks up — and shakes off her critics
Politico reports: Watch the Senate floor enough and you’ll notice Sen. Kyrsten Sinema regularly chatting with Mitch McConnell and his top deputy John Thune. Republicans have even tried to recruit her to their conference, and throw the Senate to the GOP. Don’t worry though, Democrats: Sinema’s not becoming a Republican. “No. Why would I do that?” the moderate Arizonan says in her trademark deadpan. Thune, the GOP whip, wishes it were otherwise, confirming in an interview he’s pressed Sinema to…
Can Russia’s press ever be free?
Masha Gessen writes: Around noon every workday, Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, sits down at the head of a long table in a large round room in the paper’s office, in Moscow, to chair a planyorka, or planning meeting. On October 11th, the Monday after the Friday when the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that it was awarding this year’s Peace Prize to Muratov and the Filipina journalist Maria Ressa, ten people gathered at the table, joined by fifteen…
The elephant who could be a person
Jill Lepore writes: The subject of the most important animal-rights case of the 21st century was born in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Very soon after that, a tousle-haired baby, she became trapped in human history. She was captured, locked in a cage, trucked to the coast, and loaded onto a roaring 747 that soared across the Pacific until it made landfall in the United States. She spent her earliest years in Florida, not far from Disney World, before she…
Who said science and art were two cultures?
Kevin Berger writes: On a May evening in 1959, C.P. Snow, a popular novelist and former research scientist, gave a lecture before a gathering of dons and students at the University of Cambridge, his alma mater. He called his talk “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Snow declared that a gulf of mutual incomprehension divided literary intellectuals and scientists. “The non-scientists have a rooted impression that the scientists are shallowly optimistic, unaware of man’s condition,” Snow said. “On the…
Music: Emil Brandqvist Trio — ‘Raindrops’
Xi Jinping’s terrifying new China
Michael Schuman writes: China’s social media was briefly aflutter this fall about an impressive feat in the popular online fantasy game Honor of Kings. A player had completed a “pentakill,” or five kills in a row, but something just smelled wrong: The user in question was 60 years old, according to the verified account information—hardly the type to be an expert gamer. Even more mysterious, why was this person brandishing digital weaponry at 3 a.m.? Was the player in fact…
This next-generation nuclear power plant is pitched for Washington State. Can it ‘change the world’?
The Seattle Times reports: Near the Columbia River, Clay Sell hopes to launch a new era of nuclear power with four small reactors, each stocked with billiard ball-sized “pebbles” packed full of uranium fuel. Chief executive officer of Maryland-based X-energy, Sell aims to bring the project online by 2028 as part of a broader attempt to develop safer, more flexible reactors to redefine the nation’s energy future. These efforts have gained support in the nation’s capital where many Democrats eager…
New Russian satellite-killer produces decades of fallout
Cosmos reports: The International Space Station is going into lockdown every 93 minutes. Satellite operators are scrambling to see if their assets are at risk. All thanks to a “most irresponsible” Russian orbital weapons test. The world’s space agencies and industries went into high alert overnight and ground-based radars had begun issuing warnings about the appearance of a deadly new hail of debris in low Earth orbit. It was quickly determined that this was not the result of a random,…
Could a new government report spell felony charges for Trump?
Slate reports: Last week, the Office of Special Counsel released a report finding that 13 senior Trump administration officials violated the Hatch Act, a statute prohibiting federal officials from using their positions to influence the outcome of partisan elections. In August 2020, we filed a Hatch Act complaint with that office against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for, among other things, using a diplomatic mission to Jerusalem to broadcast a speech to the Republican National Convention in which he advocated…
Mnuchin and Pompeo reportedly discussed a plan to oust Trump from office on January 6
Rolling Stone reports: Steve Mnuchin and Mike Pompeo discussed a plan to remove Trump from office after the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to Jonathan Karl’s new book Betrayal, which chronicles the final days of the former president’s time in office. Then-Treasury Secretary Mnuchin reportedly called then-Secretary of State Pompeo on the evening of Jan. 6 to suggest using the 25th Amendment, which outlines the protocols for how to replace the president or vice president in the event of their death,…
Tucker Carlson’s January 6 ‘documentary’ is his most nakedly fascist piece of propaganda yet
HuffPost reports: Tucker Carlson’s “Patriot Purge,” a revisionist history of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, clocks in at an easily binge-watchable 70 minutes, spread over three episodes. It’s produced with the aesthetics and narrative suspense of an action thriller. The good guys are the “patriots” who stormed the Capitol. The bad guys are those in the media and government who are persecuting them. “The left is hunting the right,” Carlson warns his viewers. It is the most…
To be energy-efficient, brains predict their perceptions
Anil Ananthaswamy writes: How our brain, a three-pound mass of tissue encased within a bony skull, creates perceptions from sensations is a long-standing mystery. Abundant evidence and decades of sustained research suggest that the brain cannot simply be assembling sensory information, as though it were putting together a jigsaw puzzle, to perceive its surroundings. This is borne out by the fact that the brain can construct a scene based on the light entering our eyes, even when the incoming information…