Is reality a game of quantum mirrors? A new theory suggests it might be

Is reality a game of quantum mirrors? A new theory suggests it might be

Jurik Peter / Shutterstock By Peter Evans, The University of Queensland Imagine you sit down and pick up your favourite book. You look at the image on the front cover, run your fingers across the smooth book sleeve, and smell that familiar book smell as you flick through the pages. To you, the book is made up of a range of sensory appearances. But you also expect the book has its own independent existence behind those appearances. So when you…

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Summer is being replaced by the season of extreme heat

Summer is being replaced by the season of extreme heat

Kathy Baughman McLeod writes: Summer is hot. This is among the most basic weather concepts that we learn as children and accept without question. Heat and even heat waves have always been a reliable hallmark of the season between the June solstice and the September equinox. And yet recent weather has far outstripped that norm. For most of last week, the daily high temperature in Phoenix reached or exceeded 115 degrees, breaking records even in that desert city. This weekend,…

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The Civilian Climate Corps is a big government plan that all Americans can embrace

The Civilian Climate Corps is a big government plan that all Americans can embrace

The people are on our side and they know what’s at stake. ⁰⁰We need to pass an infrastructure bill that invests in communities and creates a robust #CivilianClimateCorps. Just so we're clear @POTUS, we’re coming to D.C. tomorrow. We’ll be the ones in black. Can't miss us 😈 pic.twitter.com/aAYuchnovC — Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) June 27, 2021 Jim Lardner writes: It was a rare case of Presidential understatement in the unveiling of a program: the Secretary of Agriculture and the…

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Incursions into indigenous lands not only threaten tribal food systems, but the planet’s well-being

Incursions into indigenous lands not only threaten tribal food systems, but the planet’s well-being

Georgina Gustin writes: For thousands of years Indigenous people have survived by hunting, fishing, foraging and harvesting in ways that sustain them while maintaining an equilibrium with nature. But a major report from the United Nations warns that this balance is being severely tested by climate change and by incursions into Indigenous lands—many of them illegal. And as these food systems come under threat, the world risks losing not only the tribes, but their service as crucial protectors of biodiversity…

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Why Barr broke up with Trump

Why Barr broke up with Trump

Jonathan D. Karl writes: Trump was sitting at the table. Meadows was sitting next to him with his arms crossed; the White House adviser Eric Herschmann stood off to the side. The details of this meeting were described to me by several people present. One told me that Trump had “the eyes and mannerism of a madman.” He went off on Barr. “I think you’ve noticed I haven’t been talking to you much,” Trump said to him. “I’ve been leaving…

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Why the ‘Trump court’ won’t be like Trump

Why the ‘Trump court’ won’t be like Trump

Peter S. Canellos writes: When Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, went before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation in early 2017, he offered a surprising choice of role model. Gorsuch — a conservative member of the Federalist Society, carrying the personal imprimatur of Mitch McConnell — named John Marshall Harlan, the progressive 19th-Century justice best known as the sole member of the Supreme Court to stand up for Black rights and economic protections. “Justice Harlan got the…

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They joined the Proud Boys looking for brotherhood. They found racism, bullying and antisemitism

They joined the Proud Boys looking for brotherhood. They found racism, bullying and antisemitism

USA Today reports: Daniel Berry said he was searching for camaraderie. The 40-year-old Army veteran yearned to forge the sort of bonds he had in the military: a brotherhood of like-minded men watching one another’s backs, holding one another up, united in a common goal. Last year, Berry said, he remembered a guy at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall asking him if he had heard of the Proud Boys. The group was vocal in its support for then-President Donald…

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Colonialism is built on the rubble of false idea of ancient Rome

Colonialism is built on the rubble of false idea of ancient Rome

Jamie Mackay writes: At the dawn of the 20th century, Italian patriots were struggling to overcome a profound inferiority complex. Ever since 1861, when Giuseppe Garibaldi unified the country’s disparate regions into a nation-state, politicians and intellectuals had been anticipating the arrival of a glorious new era. Decades on, however, the economic, diplomatic and cultural results were wanting. Nationalists knew they needed a new mythos to boost public confidence, something to make Italy seem strong and competitive on the world…

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Biden administration backs Trump-approved oil sands pipeline project

Biden administration backs Trump-approved oil sands pipeline project

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration has defended a contentious pipeline project that would carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil through Minnesota’s delicate watersheds, urging in a court brief that a challenge brought by local tribes and environmental groups be thrown out. The closely watched filing in federal court was the latest in a series of actions taken by the administration to back Trump-era approvals of oil and gas infrastructure, despite President Biden’s pledge to aggressively…

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The cruel logic of the Republican Party, before and after Trump

The cruel logic of the Republican Party, before and after Trump

Adam Serwer writes: Donald Trump has claimed credit for any number of things he benefited from but did not create, and the Republican Party’s reigning ideology is one of them: a politics of cruelty and exclusion that strategically exploits vulnerable Americans by portraying them as an existential threat, against whom acts of barbarism and disenfranchisement become not only justified but worthy of celebration. This approach has a long history in American politics. The most consistent threat to our democracy has…

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WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as delta Covid variant spreads

WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as delta Covid variant spreads

CNBC reports: The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe. “People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing from the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “Vaccine alone won’t…

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Canada puts U.S. Three Percenters militia on terror list, cites risk of violent extremism

Canada puts U.S. Three Percenters militia on terror list, cites risk of violent extremism

Reuters reports: Canada officially named the U.S. right-wing militia group Three Percenters a terrorist entity on Friday, saying it posed a “significant threat” to Canadian domestic security. Earlier this month U.S. prosecutors obtained a conspiracy indictment against six men associated with the Three Percenters, the latest in a series of such charges arising from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by former President Donald Trump’s supporters. Canadian officials cited the Jan. 6 riot in their listing. Public Safety…

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IQ tests can’t measure it, but ‘cognitive flexibility’ is key to learning and creativity

IQ tests can’t measure it, but ‘cognitive flexibility’ is key to learning and creativity

Einstein thought imagination was crucial. Robert and Talbot Trudeau/Flickr, CC BY-NC By Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, University of Cambridge; Christelle Langley, University of Cambridge, and Victoria Leong, University of Cambridge IQ is often hailed as a crucial driver of success, particularly in fields such as science, innovation and technology. In fact, many people have an endless fascination with the IQ scores of famous people. But the truth is that some of the greatest achievements by our species have primarily relied on…

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Our most abstract concepts emerged as solutions to our needs

Our most abstract concepts emerged as solutions to our needs

Matthieu Queloz writes: ‘Ideas, Mr Carlyle, ideas, nothing but ideas!’ scoffed a hard-headed businessman over dinner with Thomas Carlyle, the Victorian essayist and historian of the French Revolution. The businessman had had enough of Carlyle’s endless droning on about ideas – what do ideas matter anyway? Carlyle shot back: ‘There was once a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas. The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first.’ Ideas…

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