Reading archive 2021-09-30

The problem with ‘The Problem With Jon Stewart’

Biden officials finalize a rule making it harder to kill birds, reversing Trump: The move restores protections under the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which imposes penalties for unintentionally causing bird deaths through drilling, construction and other activities

D.C.’s Department of Employment Services Enabled Widespread Identity Theft, Victims Allege

A man awoke to a bat on his neck and declined a vaccine. Weeks later, he died of rabies.

Inside America’s Broken Supply Chain: How industry failures to collaborate and share information left the system vulnerable - "In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, everyone involved in a cargo vessel’s arrival sees the same information on a common data-sharing platform. Called 'PortXchange,' the software makes port calls “smarter and more efficient” than the use of separate systems or the telephone, according to the port’s website."

A child on a bike was struck in a D.C. crosswalk — again

Bees And Butterflies Love Native Gardens, But Kansas City Code Officers Want Them Trimmed

Reading archive 2021-09-29

Ivory-billed woodpecker officially declared extinct, along with 22 other species: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s move underscores what scientists say is an accelerating rate of extinction worldwide, given climate change and habitat loss

New England Patriots book goes inside secretive and controversial franchise and Robert Kraft, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick

YouTube is banning prominent anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content: The Google-owned video site previously only banned misinformation about coronavirus vaccines. Facebook made the same change months ago.

It’s never easy to say goodbye, but it’s time for me to plant some trees

Fat Bear Week is here. Here’s how to celebrate, according to huge fans.: The biggest week for the biggest bears is upon us

Ohio men sentenced to 45 days become first Jan. 6 misdemeanor defendants to receive new jail time

Reading archive 2021-09-28

Vaccinated NBA staffers concerned about health risks of being exposed to unvaccinated players as season approaches

The surprising downsides to planting trillions of trees: Large tree-planting initiatives often fail — and some have even fueled deforestation. There’s a better way.

The Rise of the Liberal Latter-day Saints: And the battle for the future of Mormonism

Trump played tough with Putin when cameras were around, but a new book details his insecurities

Kyrie Irving wants to leave a legacy. With his stance on vaccination, he just might.

Why Athletes Need to Lead the Drive to Vaccinate: We Have a Duty to Use Our Platform to Save Lives

Tribes want ‘immediate action’ to reverse Trump’s cut to Bears Ears National Monument: Biden is weighing whether to restore the boundaries for the Utah site tribes consider sacred, after Trump shrank it by 85 percent

Senior Democrats’ push for powerful climate tool collides with political realities: White House has been wary of proposals to raise costs for middle-class Americans, while some centrists also object to the plan

Reading archive 2021-09-27

FILE NOT FOUND: A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans

Honey, We Bought the Exorcist House!: Would you want to live in the place that inspired a famous horror movie?

Great Wall of Lights: China's sea power on Darwin's doorstep

A teen posted that she had covid-19. Police said she was causing trouble — and threatened jail time.

Supreme Court observers see trouble ahead as public approval of justices erodes

Lil Nas X and rap’s reckoning over Black manhood: What do Lil Nas X’s superstardom and DaBaby’s controversial comments tell us about the future of LGBTQ people in hip-hop?

An elections supervisor embraced conspiracy theories. Officials say she has become an insider threat.

Reading archive 2021-09-26

Opinion: Our constitutional crisis is already here

How Afghanistan’s security forces lost the war

Democrats outside D.C. worry party will blow its chance of enacting historic agenda — a failure with grave political consequences

Opinion: Trump’s fatal obsession with his base [ed. note: this is milquetoast James Hohmann bullshit]

Opinion: Solar energy’s luster dims in rural southern Ohio

Reading archive 2021-09-25

Canada’s ‘two Michaels’ back home after more than 1,000 days imprisoned in China as Huawei’s Meng cuts deal with U.S.

China’s ‘hostage diplomacy’ standoff with Canada is over. But how much damage was done?

Fallout begins for far-right trolls who trusted Epik to keep their identities secret: The colossal hack of Epik, an Internet-services company popular with the far right, has been called the “mother of all data lodes” for extremism researchers. Some of those named in the data have already lost their jobs.

Taliban hang body in public; signal return to past tactics

Afghans arrived near a small Virginia town, exposing two different versions of America - "Moore said he has found himself feeling afraid even to be walking around Blackstone, and some nights found himself wondering if an invasion was possible. 'I keep a pistol on me all the time,' he said, 'because you don’t know what’s going to happen.'"

Reading archive 2021-09-24

Investigation into antisemitic symbols at AU ‘inconclusive,’ officials say: The markings included a swastika, a pair of SS Lightning Bolts — a white supremacist, neo-Nazi symbol — and a Star of David crossed out with an “X."

Opinion: American University sets a dangerous precedent: Antisemitism can wait

D.C. Auditor Looking Into Vision Zero Program, Which Has Only Reduced Traffic Fatality Total Once In Six Years

As eviction looms, unhoused people in Adams Morgan plaza say they’re being used by both sides in political tug of war

A Taliban founder says cutting off hands as punishment will be ‘necessary for security’

The Meaning of Yusuf/Cat Stevens: After a brilliant but turbulent career, he is reemerging on the public stage. How should we feel about him­ — and his music — now?

Al Franken has a new comedy tour. His targets? Former Senate colleagues.

Nine charts that show who’s winning the U.S.-China tech race: Chinese and American companies are locked in a hard-fought battle for technological primacy. Here’s a look at where that competition is headed.

Climate change lets mosquitoes flourish — and feast — in Los Angeles: Warmer weather has allowed the pesky bugs to multiply and thwart attempts to slow their spread

The world’s tallest populace is shrinking, and scientists want to know why

British police identify new suspect in Russian Novichok double-agent poisoning

Reading archive 2021-09-17

Why the French are so furious at the Biden administration over a derailed submarine deal

Navalny app vanishes from Apple, Google stores as Russia voting begins: The tech giants had been under pressure to drop the ‘Smart Voting’ tool, which encourages voters to back candidates not aligned with President Vladimir Putin’s party

Reading archive 2021-09-16

Video shows woman curse at, assault Navy sailor who she claimed was a ‘fake’

Woman slaps, curses out Navy sailor on 9/11, claims he’s a ‘fake’: video

Durham is said to be seeking indictment of lawyer whose firm represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign

Facebook keeps researching its own harms — and burying the findings: A series of leaked internal reports shows Facebook knows far more than it lets on. That’s by design.

Brutal killing of a woman and her dog in an Atlanta park reignites the debate over city’s growing crime problem

Reading archive 2021-09-15

Opinion: Newsom’s winning recall strategy offers a playbook for Democrats in 2022

Conservative radio host who spurned vaccines, mocked AIDS patients dies of covid-19

Opinion: Once again, the GOP’s answer is ‘no.’ Democrats should take it and run.

Opinion: The Supreme Court doesn’t just suffer from political hackery. It’s more insidious than that. - "Let us grant, for the sake of argument, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s desire to convince us that she and her high court colleagues aren’t 'a bunch of partisan hacks.' Because, to be sure, no political hack worth her salt would choose, for one of her first public speeches since joining the court, a venue named after the same senator who engineered her rushed confirmation.

"The insidious part is when the court majority doesn’t even bother to practice the conservatism it preaches. 

"One of the most flagrant examples of the court’s willingness to jettison its supposed conservatism in the pursuit of a desired result came last summer in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the 6-to-3 ruling eviscerating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act."

The China Initiative aims to stop economic espionage. Is targeting academics over grant fraud ‘overkill’? - "For the 20 or so academics prosecuted in the past three years and linked to the China Initiative, most charges related to lack of candor — making false statements or failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions — rather than intent to spy. All but a few of the researchers are of Chinese descent." [ed. note: lack of candor when asked these questions is a big deal IMO]

Opinion: Amy Coney Barrett has ascended

This pastor will sign a religious exemption for vaccines if you donate to his church - "Lahmeyer said he is not anti-vaccine, but he has already had the virus and believes that people whoare infected with it can be treated with medications like ivermectin, which is used to treat parasites in humans and horses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says ivermectin should not be used to treat or prevent covid-19."

How to actually make your travel better for the planet: Four climate experts weigh in on how we can change our travel carbon footprint in a meaningful way

Cow pee is an environmental problem. But now scientists say calves can be potty-trained.

A Kansas boy entered a unique insect at the state fair. It triggered a federal investigation.

The invasive spotted lantern fly is spreading across the Mid-Atlantic: This colorful bug from Asia can devastate vineyards and ruin fruit crops

Three former U.S. intelligence operatives admit to working as ‘hackers-for-hire’ for UAE

A bigger role for baby eels in preserving the Chesapeake Bay

Reading archives 2021-09-14

Opinion: In my community, Biden’s vaccine mandates could put more lives at risk [ed. note: cry more]

Nicki Minaj tweets coronavirus vaccine conspiracy theory, spotlighting struggle against misinformation: Explaining why she missed the Met Gala to fans, Minaj sparked a debate on coronavirus vaccines

Words matter. So these journalists refuse to call GOP election meddling an ‘audit.’

Opinion: Tucker Carlson confirms it: ‘I lie’

Top general was so fearful Trump might spark war that he made secret calls to his Chinese counterpart, new book says: ‘Peril,’ by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, reveals that Gen. Mark A. Milley called his Chinese counterpart before the election and after Jan. 6 in a bid to avert armed conflict. - "Milley also summoned senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, saying the president alone could give the order — but, crucially, that he, Milley, also had to be involved. Looking each in the eye, Milley asked the officers to affirm that they had understood, the authors write, in what he considered an 'oath.'

...

"Though Milley went furthest in seeking to stave off a national security crisis, his alarm was shared throughout the highest ranks of the administration, the authors reveal. CIA Director Gina Haspel, for instance, reportedly told Milley, 'We are on the way to a right-wing coup.'"

Residents of a rich Montgomery County neighborhood provide a helpful list of places where cheaper homes can go

“Green infrastructure” for clean water shows its worth in DC

Reading archive 2021-09-13

How wellness influencers are fueling the anti-vaccine movement: For years, the wellness world has been entangled with vaccine hesitancy. Amid covid-19, the consequences are starker than ever.

Alabama man dies after being turned away from 43 hospitals as covid packs ICUs, family says

Does the supplement Prevagen improve memory? A court case is asking that question.

Opinion: Chris Wallace’s grilling of a GOP governor exposes a much bigger scam

Two Florida middle-schoolers charged with plotting mass shooting after ‘extensively studying’ Columbine

California couple die of covid, leaving five kids behind. Their newborn is 3 weeks old.

Space for dissent opened in Afghanistan after the Taliban was ousted 20 years ago. Now the militants are trying to slam it shut. - "'The United States should have just dropped a nuclear bomb on Afghanistan when it left, instead of letting us die slowly,' yelled one of the women, Rashmeen, her hands shaking. She spoke on the condition that she be identified only by her first name, for fear of reprisals."

Barrett concerned about public perception of Supreme Court: Judges must be "hyper vigilant" to keep personal biases out of their decisions, said Barrett, who would not comment on the court's vote not to block Texas' abortion ban.

Texas wanted to be the tech haven of the U.S. Its new abortion bill and other measures are causing workers to rethink their move.: Tech workers are marking Texas off the list of places they’d consider working after the state passed the nation’s most restrictive abortion law

Fencing to be reinstalled ahead of ‘Justice for J6’ rally defending those arrested in Capitol riot

Afghan American woman’s escape highlights secretive CIA role in Kabul rescues

After COVID almost killed him, a Colorado fitness coach wishes he listened to his mom's advice [ed. note: COVID January 2020, thought was immune, caught again June 2021]

California’s disappearing salmon: The drought, along with man-made impediments, has placed the state’s wild Chinook population at grave risk.

Native Thicket Conservation Project

THE MYTH OF THE THICKET-LESS PRAIRIE

Trump takes aim at George W. Bush, saying he shouldn’t ‘lecture’ about threat of domestic terrorism

Reading archive 2021-09-10

Why Switzerland Is Growing A Native Plant Oasis in the Heart of Washington: The Swiss ambassador, an avid birder and bird photographer, is on a mission to remake a former farm into a biodiversity haven.

Forget the Roses, Give the White House a Native Plant Garden: The dustup over First Lady Melania Trump's recent renovation misses a bigger problem with the Rose Garden: It's too heavy on introduced species.

Byron Calhoun says abortion is never necessary to save a mother’s life. He’s the only high-risk OB/GYN in central West Virginia. - "His practice highlights a fraught ethical area: When doctors personally oppose abortion, their beliefs can affect the care they provide, leading a patient down a path that could put their health at risk.

...

"Three [OB/GYNs] said they also avoid sending Calhoun any patients who need more advanced testing to determine the severity of their anomalies, because they have also heard from patients that he often refuses to perform these tests.

...

"While confidentiality laws protect the identities of Calhoun’s patients, The Lily was able, through infant obituaries and online reviews of medical care, to speak with eight women who say they received care from Calhoun. [ed note: holy fuck]

Reading archive 2021-09-09

Study provides first evidence of coevolution between invasive, native species

A woman was late for her flight. So she told airline workers there was a bomb on the plane, police say.

Opinion: Georgia’s GOP lieutenant governor conducts the 2020 autopsy his party won’t - "From Duncan’s vantage point, the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was entirely foreseeable. He draws a direct line from Trump’s lies to the restrictive voting bills that Republicans introduced in legislatures across the country, including the state Senate over which he presides."

The world’s biggest plant to capture CO2 from the air just opened in Iceland: The Orca, an installation built by Climeworks, will capture 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year — and serve as a blueprint for similar technology.

Breonna Taylor’s image adorned T-shirts, signs and street murals. Now her portrait is in the Smithsonian.

Opinion: How Democrats will try to ‘Trump proof’ the White House — behind the GOP’s back

Inside the Ohio factory that could make or break Biden’s big solar energy push: Toledo-area plant faces pressure to boost output as U.S. blocks some solar-panel imports over concerns about forced labor in China - "Since 2004, U.S. production of the photovoltaic cells that form solar panels has fallen from 13 percent of global supply to less than 1 percent, while China’s share has soared from less than 1 percent to 67 percent, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

...

"Hefty state subsidies of Chinese solar companies helped drive many U.S. and European panel producers out of business a decade ago. First Solar, which grew out of a predecessor company founded in the 1990s by Toledo entrepreneur Harold McMaster, was one of the few to hang on."

Xi Jinping’s crackdown on everything is remaking Chinese society

Reading archive 2021-09-08

Opinion: How the rise of Politico shifted political journalism off course - "So the press spent much of the Obama years acting as if the opposition to him was solely because he had a liberal policy ideas on issues such as health care — and not because Obama had become both the leader and a symbol of a multicultural America whose values are opposed by many on the right. Wary of angering Republican readers, much of the mainstream press refused to cast the GOP as drifting into radical and racist behavior, even when prominent Republicans would not acknowledge that Obama was born in the United States."

D.C. renews Adams Morgan business improvement district but urges change: Critics called for the dissolution of a taxpayer-funded nonprofit organization because of its governance

Reading archive 2021-09-07

New Frederick Douglass bridge hailed as D.C.’s ‘most important’ span during opening week ceremony: The bridge was blessed during the Tuesday event, and the freedom fighter it was named for was recalled as an inspiration

Inside the Wuhan lab: French engineering, deadly viruses and a big mysteryt

Reading archive 2021-09-05

‘QAnon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley, face of pro-Trump Capitol riot, pleads guilty to felony

The man who committed the New Zealand stabbing attack was a known threat. Now, the nation’s counterterrorism laws are under scrutiny.

Reading archive 2021-09-04

19-year-old Navarro College student dies from COVID-19

What it would take to put all our electric lines underground: Burying cables protects them from the elements. It’s not cheap.

Reading archive 2021-09-03

Get the vaccine or get fired? In Shenandoah Valley, some nurses choose termination.

Doctors dismayed by patients who fear coronavirus vaccines but clamor for unproven ivermectin

ISIS-inspired extremist killed after stabbing six in New Zealand terrorist attack, authorities say

Here’s what we know about the mu variant: Cases of the WHO-designated “variant of interest” have been reported in the United States, Colombia, South Korea and parts of Europe.

Reading archive 2021-09-02

Why The South Is Decades Ahead Of The West In Wildfire Prevention

What Is The Internet Doing To Boomers’ Brains?: Social media platforms are sucking a generation into a misinformation rabbit hole.

Reading archive 2021-09-01

‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ shows there are limits to how much we can (or should) rehab ’90s tabloid figures - "Paula’s plight as an unassuming pawn who’s debased by even the right-wing press for her naivete in going to Clinton’s hotel room during his governorship (where he allegedly asked her for oral sex) is hard to square with the real-life Jones, who showed up at a presidential debate in 2016 in support of Donald Trump."

Why You Should Do Your Spring Planting in the Fall: Conventional wisdom says you should do the same tasks in the same order every year. The director of horticulture at Brooklyn Bridge Park has a better idea.

Four conservative radio talk-show hosts bashed coronavirus vaccines. Then they got sick. - "'The vaccine isn’t the problem. Talk radio is,' said Jerry Del Colliano, a professor at New York University and publisher and editor of Inside Music Media, which covers the radio industry. Radio companies, he said, 'are risking the health of their audiences even as anti-vaxxer bloviators continue to die.'

...

"Even as he was receiving state-of-the-art care for cancer last year, Limbaugh maintained a skeptical, conspiratorial pose, falsely dismissing the then-emerging coronavirus as 'the common cold' and saying, without evidence, that it was being 'weaponized' to attack President Donald Trump."

Opinion: I was a combat interpreter in Afghanistan, where cultural illiteracy led to U.S. failure

Oklahoma congressman threatened embassy staff as he tried to enter Afghanistan, U.S. officials say

A 9/11 survivor wanted nothing to do with ‘Come From Away.’ Now she’s seen it a dozen times.

Opinion: Texas shows us what post-democracy America would look like