It looks like the real paleo diet often included lots of grains

It looks like the real paleo diet often included lots of grains

Nature reports: On a clear day, the view from the ruins of Göbekli Tepe stretches across southern Turkey all the way to the Syrian border some 50 kilometres away. At 11,600 years old, this mountaintop archaeological site has been described as the world’s oldest temple — so ancient, in fact, that its T-shaped pillars and circular enclosures pre-date pottery in the Middle East. The people who built these monumental structures were living just before a major transition in human history:…

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Voting rights bill will be blocked by the anti-democratic system it seeks to reform

Voting rights bill will be blocked by the anti-democratic system it seeks to reform

Mother Jones reports: Congressional Democrats’ signature voting rights bill, the For the People Act, is set to be defeated on Tuesday by the very anti-democratic system it’s meant to reform. The 50 Democratic senators who support the For the People Act (or least Sen. Joe Manchin’s compromise proposal keeping some key elements of the bill while excluding others) represent 43 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators who oppose it, according to data compiled by Alex Tausanovitch of the…

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Biden’s Justice Dept may defend Trump in Capitol riot lawsuits

Biden’s Justice Dept may defend Trump in Capitol riot lawsuits

Reuters reports: Former U.S. President Donald Trump may have an unlikely ally to defend him against lawsuits alleging he incited the U.S. Capitol insurrection: President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. The Biden administration paved the way for that possibility, say constitutional scholars and lawyers in the cases, by arguing in an unrelated defamation case against Trump that presidents enjoy sweeping immunity for their comments while in office – and the right to a defense by government lawyers. Biden’s Justice Department used…

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Trump wanted his Justice Department to stop Saturday Night Live from teasing him

Trump wanted his Justice Department to stop Saturday Night Live from teasing him

The Daily Beast reports: It was the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency, and he was—yet again—mad at Saturday Night Live. And he wanted the federal government to help him settle the score. In March 2019, the then-president of the United States had just watched an episode of the long-running, liberal-leaning NBC sketch comedy series (it wasn’t even a new episode, it was a rerun), and grew immediately incensed that the show was gently mocking him. “It’s truly incredible that shows…

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Trump can’t be sued over the violent clearing of Lafayette Square last summer, a judge ruled

Trump can’t be sued over the violent clearing of Lafayette Square last summer, a judge ruled

BuzzFeed News reports: Donald Trump and a cadre of current and former federal officials can’t be sued over the violent clearing of peaceful protesters from a park in Washington, DC, last summer shortly before the then-president passed through for a photo op, a federal judge ruled Monday. Black Lives Matter DC and individual protesters who were forcibly removed from Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, had sued Trump, former attorney general Bill Barr, and top officials from other federal agencies…

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What Biden — and a lot of other people — get wrong about journalists

What Biden — and a lot of other people — get wrong about journalists

Margaret Sullivan writes: When [Janet Malcolm] died last week, obituaries reprised the famously devastating critique that opened her 1989 New Yorker magazine piece, later to become a book, “The Journalist and the Murderer.” “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible,” she wrote. “He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying…

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A record buyout is just the start as wealthy flee U.S. tax hike

A record buyout is just the start as wealthy flee U.S. tax hike

Bloomberg reports: For 110 years, four generations of Mills family members earned their money by expanding their great-grandfather’s Chicago apron business into a medical supplier that ranked among the nation’s largest private companies. But soon after Democrats turned their attention toward raising taxes for the wealthy this year, the family signed a deal to cash out billions. It was no coincidence, according to people close to the more-than $30 billion transaction, which sold part of Medline Industries Inc. to a…

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Populist leaders in Eastern Europe have a problem: Unpopularity

Populist leaders in Eastern Europe have a problem: Unpopularity

The New York Times reports: A right-wing populist wave in Eastern Europe, lifted by Donald J. Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, has not crashed as a result of his defeat last November. But it has collided with a serious obstacle: Its leaders are not very popular. After winning elections by railing against widely disliked elites, right-wing populists on Europe’s formerly communist eastern flank, it turns out, are themselves not much liked. That is due in large part to unpopular coronavirus…

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The dark side of solar power

The dark side of solar power

Atalay Atasu, Serasu Duran, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove write: It’s sunny times for solar power. In the U.S., home installations of solar panels have fully rebounded from the Covid slump, with analysts predicting more than 19 gigawatts of total capacity installed, compared to 13 gigawatts at the close of 2019. Over the next 10 years, that number may quadruple, according to industry research data. And that’s not even taking into consideration the further impact of possible new regulations and…

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Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice

Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice

Crystal Cavalier and Michael E. Mann write: Four years of President Donald Trump have cost America dearly. We lost our global leadership on addressing climate change and saw the struggle for environmental justice thwarted here at home. President Joe Biden has defined both of these objectives as cornerstones of his legacy, but a huge interstate methane gas pipeline now being rammed through the Appalachian Mountains threatens to undermine the progress his administration has promised. The 42-inch diameter Mountain Valley Pipeline…

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How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars

How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars

Politico reports: Oregon Democrats had finally secured total control of redistricting for the first time in decades. Then, just months before they were set to draw new maps, they gave it away. In a surprise that left Democrats from Salem to Washington baffled and angry, the state House speaker handed the GOP an effective veto over the districts in exchange for a pledge to stop stymieing her legislative agenda with delay tactics. The reaction from some of Oregon’s Democratic House…

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The man who controls the Senate

The man who controls the Senate

Evan Osnos writes: On a frosty night in February, Joe Manchin III, the senior senator from West Virginia, invited a few colleagues over for dinner aboard the houseboat he docks on the Potomac. In the past, opponents have sought to highlight the vessel for political effect; a 2018 advertisement by the National Republican Senatorial Committee called it a “$700,000 D.C. luxury yacht.” (In response, Manchin’s office reported that he bought it, used, for two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.) The…

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Progressives crank up filibuster pressure on Sinema with million-dollar ad buy in Arizona

Progressives crank up filibuster pressure on Sinema with million-dollar ad buy in Arizona

NBC News reports: A progressive group is launching a seven-figure ad campaign aiming to pressure Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., to support abolition of the filibuster, as the Senate eyes a vote to advance major voting rights legislation. The group, Just Democracy, is spending $1.2 million for TV ads and another $200,000 on digital ads in Arizona from June 21 to June 30, said a spokesman for the group, adding the effort will feature two ads on cable news programs, local…

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The authoritarian instincts of police unions

The authoritarian instincts of police unions

Adam Serwer writes: In May 2020, Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old with a smartphone camera, documented the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Most Americans who watched the video of Floyd begging for his life, as Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck, saw a human being. Robert Kroll did not. The head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis saw a “violent criminal” and viewed the protests that followed as a “terrorist movement.” In a letter to…

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