America — and the media — needs a Covid reckoning: Our Covid mistakes did lasting damage. No one wants to talk about it. - "The initial justification for lockdowns was that we just needed a few weeks to slow the spread so our first responders weren’t overwhelmed; but then those lockdowns persisted, without clear acknowledgment that the plan had changed. On masks, the line went from 'masks don’t help much and should be reserved for first responders and doctors' (the contradiction here rarely acknowledged) to 'masks are crucial.'
"Outdoor gatherings were always much safer than indoor ones (and I said so here in Vox from early on), but a lot of public health officials criticized outdoor gatherings — up until the Black Lives Matter protests, at which point they largely said such events were fine."
Signal intelligence for dummies
Austria says it has uncovered a Russian-steered campaign to spread disinformation about Ukraine
Teen sentenced to a year in connection to fatal shooting ruled self defense: The 17-year-old was under court supervision by the city’s youth rehabilitation agency when police say someone opened fire on him, prompting the youth to fire indiscriminately into a D.C. carryout, killing Dale Henson. - "Prosecutors argued one of his bullets struck and killed Henson. Authorities initially charged the teen with second-degree murder, but at trial last year, Briggs agreed with the teen’s public defenders that the youth was acting in self-defense and dismissed the murder charge. She found him guilty of carrying a pistol without a license.
"The downshift troubled Henson’s loved ones, especially as more information surfaced in court about the teen’s past troubles. Briggs at the hearing Thursday said he had 10 prior arrests and was being supervised by the youth rehabilitation department for carrying a firearm at the time he shot into the carryout."
Your grass-fed burger isn’t better for the planet, new study finds: Grass-fed beef has no climate benefit — even when taking into account that healthy pastureland can trap carbon, according to a new study. - "They found the emissions per kilogram of protein of even the most efficient grass-fed beef operations were 10 to 25 percent higher than those of grain-fed U.S. beef — and many times higher than those of plant and animal alternatives."
Judge criticizes D.C. police chief for denying cover-up in deadly pursuit: The rare remarks from U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman came after D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said publicly that “there was no obstruction of justice” by the officers, despite their convictions. - "The internal findings appear to run counter to the jury’s verdict in the criminal case, the testimony of two of the officers’ colleagues and [Judge] Friedman, who while sentencing Sutton and Zabavsky to prison called their actions an 'intentional cover-up.'"
Seeing Things For What They Are: And not for what they used to be. - "It was possible to use a certain frame of reference that worked pretty well in the American political system for the past 40 years or so. But now that frame is out of date. It is worse than useless. It is misleading. It is detrimental, because the answers it spits out, the explanations it gives, the strategies it recommends for specific situations, are all based upon old data and old wisdom that no longer works. The frame of reference that guides many of the people who, unfortunately, dominate the Democratic Party in Washington is like a flood map that was drawn up before climate change. They keep using these same old formulas that worked back then, ignoring the rising water as it creeps up to their necks."
There's No Justice Without Power: A rich guy's lesson for the left. - "I am going to generalize a bit here, but in a way that I think is fair: The left tends to think a lot about justice, but less about power. We are adept at figuring out what is just and unjust, how and why the oppression happens, what a better world would look like. We are able to produce detailed policy prescriptions that would, if enacted, remedy many of the world’s wrongs. We raise our voices in the streets—or, hello, write brilliant essays—about why these things should happen. But they do not happen. All of the effort we expend on polishing and promoting a program of justice does not accomplish anything if that program is not accompanied by the power to make it a reality.
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"Labor organizing that creates the ability of working people to strike is the only threat that the left can make that is on par with money and guns. It is our hammer. It is our most powerful tool. The power of the strike is not useful only in service of 'better labor rights.' It is a power that can be applied to any cause. If you can strike, you can stop the enterprises that do anything. You can strike to stop a polluting factory, you can strike to stop a weapons manufacturing factory, you can strike to stop a Silicon Valley privacy destruction company, you can strike to stop a bank. Furthermore, you can use a strike as leverage to make any sort of demands, and be assured that those demands are not simply a misbranded effort at persuasion, but rather a demand that is accompanied by a clear and meaningful consequence if it is not met. Money buys labor. Guns compel labor. The power of the strike stops labor. It is the only equal of the power of money and guns. It is the one form of hard power available to regular people who don’t own all of the money and guns. Our power is that the world can’t run without us."
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