Reading archive 2023-03-31

He Wanted to Unclog Cities. Now He’s ‘Public Enemy No. 1.’: Researchers like Carlos Moreno, the professor behind a popular urban planning concept,are struggling with conspiracy theories and death threats.

What does ASMR do to your brain? Watch these videos and find out.: ASMR videos, which can leave people feeling tingly and blissful, are surging in popularity. Here’s a look at the science behind the experience.

Trump and advisers caught off guard by New York indictment: Advisers had privately counseled Trump that an indictment by a Manhattan grand jury involving hush-money payments to an adult-film star would not come for some time

Reading archive 2023-03-30

Disney quietly dodged DeSantis’s oversight board, appointees realize: An 11th-hour agreement forbids the governor-appointed board from using Disney’s “fanciful characters” such as Mickey Mouse.

Americans are returning to cities after remote-work exodus, data shows

Secret trove offers rare look into Russian cyberwar ambitions: More than 5,000 pages of documents from a Moscow-based contractor offer unusual glimpses into planning and training for security services, including the notorious hacking group Sandworm

D.C. housing employees accused of conflicts and voucher fraud: The investigations come as agency leaders face a Friday deadline to show federal overseers progress in combatting deficiencies identified in a scathing HUD audit last year

Trump indicted by N.Y. grand jury, first ex-president charged with crime: Trump advisers were discussing a Tuesday surrender. Specific charges have not been made public.

Opinion  How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie

Reading archive 2023-03-29

92-year-old has grown tomatoes from the same seed lineage since 1965: Sybil Gorby gives away her famous seeds and refuses all payment because she is superstitious about selling from her garden

He came to D.C. as a Brazilian student. The U.S. says he was a Russian spy.: Johns Hopkins graduate Victor Ferreira was unmasked as GRU operative Sergey Cherkasov, according to a federal indictment and Western security officials - "Cherkasov seemed convinced that Russia would face little backlash from the United States for a Ukraine invasion, saying in one message that there were 'no signs indicating that the U.S. is going to provide any but political support to the Ukrainians in case of war.'" [ed. note: bad spy]

Opinion  D.C. needs hundreds more police officers. Here’s how to do it right. - "Starting pay in D.C. jumped from $62,000 to $67,000 — higher than in neighboring counties such as Fairfax in Virginia or Prince George’s in Maryland."

Reading archive 2023-03-28

How Elon Musk knocked Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ off course: Tesla’s campaign to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle has suffered amid mounting safety concerns — and the boss’s Twitter distraction

When it comes to garlic mustard, doing less is more [ed. note: pull it only in newly invaded areas, otherwise disturbance helps it; lower deer population to 5-7 per square mile]

Opinion  Just how big should the House be? Let’s do the math.

To help Earth’s future, people are getting buried like it’s 1860

D.C. leaders prepare for GOP grilling in hearing on crime, policing

Staffer for Rand Paul stabbed in D.C. in apparently random attack: The man told police that he did not know the person who stabbed him or why he was attacked, court records say

No criminal charges for Arvada police officer who killed “good Samaritan” in Olde Town shooting: Announcement comes nearly five months after officer fatally shot Johnny Hurley

Reading archive 2023-03-27

In Waco, Trump stokes anger and valorizes violent actors: At a dubiously timed rally, he pairs calls for resistance with tacit assurances that those who did would be defended

D.C. campaign finance office tosses complaints about Silverman’s poll

Reading archive 2023-03-24

Metro just installed new fare gates. It’s spending $35 million to make them taller.: Fare evasion is rising at a time when the financially struggling transit agency is seeking to replace riders lost to telework

Opinion  The dollar is our superpower, and Russia and China are threatening it

This Midwestern factory was dead. Electric vehicles revived it.: A sweeping retooling of the U.S. auto industry is underway, as companies modernize old factories and break ground on new ones

Senior care is crushingly expensive. Boomers aren’t ready.: Long-term care options are too expensive for middle-income Americans, narrowing options for millions of seniors

RETREAT IN RODANTHE: Along three blocks in a North Carolina beach town, severe erosion is upending life, forcing hard choices and offering a glimpse of the dilemmas other coastal communities will face

Reading archive 2023-03-22

Idaho hospital to stop delivering babies, partly due to ‘political climate’

Electric cars are creating a new economy — and leaving some towns behind: Workers and small businesses in Belvidere, Ill., are dealing with the aftermath of mass layoffs, after Stellantis idled its Jeep factory

Reading archive 2023-03-21

Drone strikes, sabotage, shelling: Russia’s war on Ukraine comes to Russia

Fox staffer’s claims of sexism, coached testimony jolt defamation case: Abby Grossberg, who sued Fox News alleging discrimination and a hostile workplace, says she was ‘coerced, intimidated, and misinformed’ while preparing for her deposition in the $1.6 billion Dominion defamation case

Reading archive 2023-03-20

the best of the sedges, and how to use them (even mown!), with sam hoadley

Teenager fatally shot by U.S. Park Police officer in Northeast D.C.

A Lyft driver picked up 2 friends after night out in D.C. None made it home.: The three were killed when an SUV fleeing a traffic stop plowed into their sedan, authorities said. The SUV had racked up more than $12,000 in unpaid tickets. - "Most of the vehicle’s $12,300 in traffic tickets were for speeding violations, according to the District’s Department of Motor Vehicles website."

As Xi visits Russia, Putin sees his anti-U.S. world order taking shape

Opinion  Social Security needs fixing. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be painful. - "A plausible plan would involve these elements: broadening the base upon which the 12.4 percent payroll tax is levied — currently 84 percent of all earnings — to the 90 percent that prevailed in 1982, at the time of the Reagan reforms; gradually indexing up the age, currently 67, at which people may retire at full benefits, to take account of longer retirements due to rising life expectancy; and shoring up the program’s distributional equity, via tweaking benefit formulas to trim how much high-income households get and increases for the most vulnerable. The latter category would include a minimum benefit equal to 125 percent of the official poverty line as well as a “bump up” in payments to the very aged. And all new state and local employees should be required to pay Social Security tax — and receive the benefits — though existing opt-outs for the small minority of state and local government workers who chose not to participate in Social Security should not be altered."

A key starfish is now under threat of extinction, the government says: The federal government said Wednesday that the sunflower sea star needs protection under the Endangered Species Act - "The loss of so many of the many-limbed predators has allowed sea urchins to devour kelp forests that shelter other marine species and sequester carbon out of the atmosphere. Off the coast of Northern California, kelp cover has declined by more than 95 percent, according to a recent study."

This crow is ‘very intelligent’ — and it’s struggling to survive in the wild: Plans to repopulate Hawaii’s forests with its “very intelligent” crows have been upended in part by its natural predator, the Hawaiian hawk. Now scientists are tracking the hawk in order to save the corvids.

Trump-commissioned report undercut his claims of dead and double voters: A report commissioned by the former president’s campaign and obtained by The Post did not back up his claims of fraud and did not provide evidence to overturn the 2020 election

Reading archive 2023-03-16

In This Texas County, There's No Such Thing as Moving on From COVID-19

3315 12th St NE: 12-home building with two cellar floors

At center of Fox News lawsuit, Sidney Powell and a ‘wackadoodle’ email: In TV guest spots, the Trump-affiliated lawyer injected far-fetched and debunked claims of widespread fraud into the mainstream. Now the decision to keep booking her is at the heart of a $1.6 billion defamation case.

Inside the movement to remake America’s city streets - "Newspapers reported on the new machines as if they were a scourge, blaming drivers for increasing traffic deaths and comparing their cars to the Grim Reaper. Courts held drivers responsible for collisions, ruling in case after case that pedestrians had the right to cross the street where they pleased and had no legal obligation to look left or right, Norton said."

Reading archive 2023-03-15

Strangling The Environment - "The Nature Conservancy is one of the few environmental groups that strongly support the use of glyphosate to control invasive species."

How Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time - "It is, unfortunately, often the case that companies send ‘defective’ employees away to learn 'how to handle stress,' when in fact the stress is a completely reasonable response to the structural problems in an organisation."

Reading archive 2023-03-13

Preventing panic in the banking sector: A government-organized deposit guarantee should tame the animal spirits. - "First, in 2008, the bankers who made the bad decisions that led to the financial crisis generally got to keep their (very lucrative) jobs after getting bailed out. And their banks continued to exist as well, and even got government to guarantee them some profits going forward. Even as normal people suffered mass unemployment and the loss of their careers and livelihoods, many of the people responsible for the disaster kept collecting million-dollar checks and being in respected positions of power, now with government guarantees. If that seemed unfair, it’s because it was unfair."

Is this a bailout and 6 other questions about the SVB collapse: The Silicon Valley Bank rescue plan, explained

Sequins, feathers, homemade pasties: D.C.’s queer nightlife is in bloom: Flower Factory’s monthly style-forward dance parties invite participants to ‘show up and show out’

Opinion  Fox News fears competitors will steal its ‘journalistic processes’

China’s Xi promises to build ‘great wall of steel’ in rivalry with West

Ask a Doctor: What to know about Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs: Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro have changed my patients’ relationship to food. Research shows that they cause an average weight loss of 15 to 21 percent, as long as people stay on them.

Fallout grows from internal probe of D.C. police violent crime squad: In the month after police announced the investigation, prosecutors dropped 65 gun cases involving officers in the 7th District

Reading archive 2023-03-12

D.C. housing officials say they will stop overpaying landlords - "D.C. Housing Authority officials say they plan to comply with local and federal rules requiring the agency to ensure rents for low-income voucher holders are not paid at above-market rates, but they are not ready to detail how." [ed. note: lol]

3D analysis shows how Israeli troops fired into group of civilians: In an incident last month that left two Palestinians dead, troops shot at least 14 times in four seconds while civilians would have been visible.

China and Australia are starting to get along. Will AUKUS torpedo it?

The Pundits Are Wrong About D.C.’s Crime Bill: A cynical freakout stretching from Fox News to the Washington Post is utterly bogus. - "The legislation that D.C. passed in January is not a traditional reform bill, but the result of a 16-year process to overhaul a badly outdated, confusing, and often arbitrary criminal code. The revision’s goal was to modernize the law by defining elements of each crime, eliminating overlap between offenses, establishing proportionate penalties, and removing archaic or unconstitutional provisions. Every single change is justified in meticulous reports that span thousands of pages. Each one was crafted with extensive public input and support from both D.C. and federal prosecutors. Eleventh-hour criticisms of the bill rest on misunderstandings, willful or otherwise, about its purpose and effect. They malign complex, technocratic updates as radical concessions to criminals. In many cases, criticisms rest on sheer legal illiteracy about how criminal sentencing actually works. 

"The D.C. bill is not a liberal wishlist of soft-on-crime policies. It is an exhaustive and entirely mainstream blueprint for a more coherent and consistent legal system."

Lawsuits pile up as U.S. parents take on social media giants

How To Build Muscle And Lose Fat At The Same Time: Step By Step Explained (Body Recomposition)

Reading archive 2023-03-10

Young women are criticized for this vocal tic — but it helps whales survive: A new study in the journal Science finds many of the marine mammals vocalize in a strikingly similar way to humans

How fake sugars sneak into foods and disrupt metabolic health: Artificial sweeteners and other sugar substitutes sweeten foods without extra calories. But studies show the ingredients can affect gut and heart health. - "Another study published in Nature Medicine linked the sugar substitute erythritol to higher rates of heart attacks and strokes. The researchers found that when people consumed erythritol in amounts commonly found in processed foods it stayed in their systems for days and had the potential to promote blood clots. 

The Calorie Control Council challenged the study results, saying they are 'contrary to decades of scientific research.'"

China’s foreign minister predicts impending clash with United States

As Virginia restores quail habitats, their unique call is heard again: ‘I don’t want to shoot them anymore — I just like to see them around and hear them whistle,’ said a landowner - "Over decades, a thick specialty grass called fescue has been more widely used on suburban lawns because it can tolerate a variety of climates and on farms because it can handle heavy grazing by cattle, but it’s terrible for quail. It’s too thick for quail to walk through, and quail chicks — which are the size of bumblebees at birth — often get stuck in the morning dew on fescue, sometimes getting so wet and cold that they die from hypothermia."

Nature, as captured by some of the world’s best photographers

What to know about the (apparently doomed) D.C. criminal code

Catholic group spent millions on app data that tracked gay priests: A group of philanthropists poured money into a Denver nonprofit that obtained dating and hookup app data and shared it with bishops around the country, a Post investigation has found

Reading archive 2023-03-09

Fox News Edits Out Trump Saying He Might’ve Let Russia ‘Take Over’ Parts of Ukraine: While Trump told Hannity on the radio he could’ve prevented war by negotiating a deal with Russia, that portion was curiously edited out when aired on Fox News.

Reading archive 2023-03-06

Utah wants people to eat invasive bullfrogs. Here’s how to catch them.: What do you need? ‘A little bit of perseverance and not being afraid to get wet and muddy,’ one professional frog-catcher says

A D.C. handyman went missing. His mutilated body was found in a backyard.: Handyman who disappeared months earlier had been killed, police say, his remains left in the backyard of the D.C. home where he had been hired to work - "Johnson, 69, who lives in Maryland and does handyman work part-time, said in an interview with The Washington Post that he went to a police station in D.C. to file a missing-person report and met with two detectives. He said they took his information but told him they could not take a formal report because only relatives or roommates could declare someone missing. A police spokesman said that is not D.C. police’s policy and could not locate a record of Johnson’s meeting with police."

D.C. Council chairman tries to pull crime code bill before Senate vote

The Commanders’ shame offers their next owner a glittering opportunity

The bewildering descent of Scott Adams and ‘Dilbert’: ‘I shook the box intentionally,’ Scott Adams told The Post about the comments that prompted newspapers to drop his comic strip

Listening to ‘The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling’ is exhausting work: A podcast promised clarity from Harry Potter author on how she feels about trans issues. But it falls to the audience to fact-check her.

Amazon says it is pausing construction at HQ2 in Arlington: One set of offices is set to open later this year, but the largest piece of its new headquarters is being put on hold

DeSantis cannonballs into America’s deep blue states for war on ‘woke’ ahead of 2024: The Florida governor has used his trips to highlight his state’s accomplishments — citing statistics that sometimes mask far more complicated debates

Biden scraps reliance on market for faith in broader government role: The administration is pushing businesses to change with a carrot — and a stick - "'There is an increasing willingness on both the left and the right — spurred on by growing levels of progressivism on the left and populism on the right — to use the power of the state to essentially micromanage businesses,' said Neil Bradley, chief policy officer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 'The natural result of that is, frankly, crony capitalism and a much more inefficient private sector.'

"The Biden administration’s embrace of industrial policy reflects its view of the lessons of the pandemic, the urgency of the climate challenge and the imperatives of strategic competition with China."

Hells Angels, a synagogue shooting and Iran’s shady hand in Germany

Reading archive 2023-03-05

Nations agree on ‘world-changing’ deal to protect ocean life

Reading archive 2023-03-04

Meet Mary Reynolds, the plant whisperer who dared to be wild

First-ever California offshore wind auction surpasses $757 million in bids

Haley heckled as Trump movement asserts its dominance at shrunken CPAC: The dust-up showed the risks of taking the primary fight to what has clearly become Trump’s home turf

Nikki Haley’s bogus claims about foreign aid dollars - "Instead, she suggests that foreign aid goes directly to governments, especially ones with policies that are at odds with the interests of the United States. That’s wrong. The dirty little secret of foreign aid is that most of it never leaves the United States — and it goes right into the pockets of U.S. companies. Some countries receive direct grants of aid, but those are certainly not 'enemies.'"

‘15-minute city’ planning is on the rise, experts say. Here’s what to know.

Colombia tries a new solution for Pablo Escobar’s cocaine hippos

Why Wildlife Gardeners Need to Become Garden Designers ASAP

Spring Clean Up Doesn't Start at 50 Degrees

Reading archive 2023-03-02

D.C.’s long-term finances at risk as downtown stays sluggish, CFO warns

Fare-free bus program doesn’t have funding, D.C. finance chief says: D.C. Council members said the chief financial officer is removing funding from the program after previously certifying funding. They said they plan to challenge his ruling.

The Fleetwood Mac love saga that inspired ‘Daisy Jones and the Six’

Elon Musk struggles to generate excitement at Tesla: The carmaker’s stock plummeted as Musk pursued Twitter, the social media site he now owns. Now he’s under pressure to rebuild momentum.

Pregnant Russians are streaming into Argentina. Officials are suspicious. - "'The problem is, they’re not coming here to live,' she said. 'They take the passport, and then we find Russian spies in Slovenia with Argentine passports. That’s our fear.'"

G-20 fails to reach consensus on global agenda amid Ukraine disputes: India, which hosted the gathering of the world’s biggest economies, declared afterward that ‘multilateralism is in crisis’

China calls for end of sanctions against Russia, cease-fire in Ukraine

Opinion  Finally, Democrats appear ready to wage war on Fox News

Opinion  Christopher Wray is getting away with doing a lousy job

Walmart’s breakup with H Street hurts. Yet again, it’s not us. It’s you.

Rising thefts at Walmart could lead to price jumps, store closures, CEO says

Reading archive 2023-03-01

Opinion  China’s collapsing birth and marriage rates reflect a people’s deep pessimism [ed. note: AEI dude, tread carefully]

Opinion  Israel has angered its closest supporters

The NFL deserves every bit of its raging Daniel Snyder headache - "You know when the owners started caring? When it finally became clear that Snyder had so exhausted local goodwill that he couldn’t get a new stadium deal done. Only then did they decide to do something about him."

Opinion  Rupert Murdoch isn’t sinking the Fox News legal case. Here’s why.

Showdown before the raid: FBI agents and prosecutors argued over Trump: An exclusive look at behind-the-scenes deliberations as both sides wrestled with a national security case that has potentially far-reaching political consequences

‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds: After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is ‘very unlikely’ an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment

Opinion  Is D.C. juvenile justice a revolving door? We need to know.

Opinion  A last, best chance to fix the D.C. criminal code