Reading archive 2023-02-22

In wake of Ukraine war, U.S. and allies are hunting down Russian spies: Officials caution that Russia retains significant capabilities despite exposure of multiple operatives in Europe

Ex-ISIS teen bride Shamima Begum loses appeal to regain British citizenship

Notice of Infractions: Notice No. U 100286

Pythons are snacking on GPS-wearing opossums that give up their locations

Europe awakens to the threat of sabotage by Russian agents: Attacks on critical infrastructure from France to Denmark bear the hallmark of Russian operatives, experts say.

Poland reviews security after divers found near key port

Putin, czar with no empire, needs military victory for his own survival

Where U.S. house prices may be most overvalued as climate change worsens: While individual homeowners stand to collectively lose billions as hurricanes and heavy rains intensify flooding, local governments that rely on property taxes also could suffer crippling decreases in revenue

Meet the climate scientist helping guide Biden on spy agencies: Kim Cobb answers questions about her hopes to infuse Biden’s intelligence discussions with climate expertise

Arizona’s top prosecutor concealed records debunking election fraud claims: Newly released documents show how Republican Mark Brnovich publicized an incomplete account of his office’s probe of the 2020 election in Maricopa County - "Sonny Borrelli, a GOP state senator who had alleged a coverup of election irregularities, did not repeat those claims during an interview but did provide what he said was the name of a deceased voter, the memo stated. Investigators learned that the alleged deceased voter was alive, had not voted and was not a resident of Arizona."

Georgia juror unsettles Trump investigation with revealing interviews: Emily Kohrs may have added to the challenge for Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, whose investigation has come under scrutiny for what some have described legal and ethical missteps

National Zoo debuts a serene new habitat for birds and humans: Historic bird building re-creates the quiet habitats of migratory birds that visitors can experience

Montgomery turned a road into a park. Residents want the street back. - "To solve the cut-through conundrum, Montgomery Parks decided keep the road open but restrict traffic to two lanes from Arlington to Dorset in late-2022. The result, traffic studies showed, was healthy flow on Little Falls and an end to cut-through traffic in the Kenwood neighborhood. 

"But some residents refute the data presented by public officials, because it does not match what they claim to be seeing with their own eyes." [ed. note: fucking lol]

Inside the Taliban campaign to forge a religious emirate: Afghanistan’s new rulers are replacing civil rights with ‘God’s law’

ALEX JONES ON ALLEGED FBI MONITORING OF NICK FUENTES: ‘IT’S A TRAP’

Reading archive 2022-02-04

Opinion: The unjust shaming of a little girl highlights the broad issue of institutional food waste - "In this case, if the officials at Palm Elementary were honestly concerned about waste and interested in recuperating surplus food, they could have placed alternate bins near the trash cans and worked with local food banks and homeless shelters to reroute edible discards to people who might need them. Instead, the situation was left in the hands of a 9-year-old and an adult who happened to oversee the room."

‘Dear White Staffers’: Anonymous testimonials about workplace culture grip Capitol Hill: A viral Instagram account has become a safe space for congressional aides to anonymously call out lawmakers and share their experiences

Islamic State’s ‘ghost’ of a leader was plotting comeback when U.S. commandos cornered him

Putin and Xi, united at Olympics, air shared grievances against absent U.S. amid Ukraine standoff

RNC votes to condemn Cheney, Kinzinger for serving on House committee investigating Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump mob: Party leaders meeting in Salt Lake City move a censure resolution against the congresswoman from Wyoming and prepare to fund her primary opponent

Wetlands and radioactive soil: How Ukraine’s geography could influence a Russian invasion

Reading archive 2020-12-21

Undercutting Trump, Barr says there’s no basis for seizing voting machines, using special counsels for election fraud, Hunter Biden

How We Survive Winter: The solstice arrives in the depths of the pandemic. But the season of darkness also offers ancient lessons of hope and renewal.

The ‘Caliphate’ retraction won’t end the New York Times’s woes

As covid cases spike in Tennessee, health department warns Christmas surge ‘will completely break our hospitals’

I cut off all contact with my mother. It made my life much better.

Hunting is ‘slowly dying off,’ and that has created a crisis for the nation’s many endangered species

Reading archive 2019-06-14

The kidnapped Yazidi children who don’t want to be rescued from ISIS

Sarah Sanders was the disdainful Queen of Gaslighting

Saving face: How Donald Trump silenced the people who could expose his business failures

Reading archive 2019-04-08

A Tale Of Two Suburbs: White Democrats’ culture clash has been long in the making.

What the heck does Steve King do all day?

Small towns are dying everywhere but here

Md. man planned to run down crowds at National Harbor in an ISIS-inspired attack, prosecutors say

Reading archive 2018-01-03

Tom Brady Is Drowning In His Own Pseudoscience

Warren positions herself for potential 2020 run: The Massachusetts senator has made a series of under-the-radar moves in the past year that would help her if she challenges Donald Trump.

Former Taliban captive Joshua Boyle arrested and charged with sexual assault, death threats

Trump Tower meeting with Russians 'treasonous', Bannon says in explosive book

The Republicans’ Fake Investigations - "Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign — the Republican and Democratic funders of our Trump research — separately came to hire us in the first place."

Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President: One year ago: the plan to lose, and the administration’s shocked first days. - "This was a real-life version of Mel Brooks’s The Producers, where the mistaken outcome trusted by everyone in Trump’s inner circle — that they would lose the election — wound up exposing them for who they really were.
...
"As soon as the campaign team had stepped into the White House, Walsh saw, it had gone from managing Trump to the expectation of being managed by him. Yet the president, while proposing the most radical departure from governing and policy norms in several generations, had few specific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy. And making suggestions to him was deeply complicated. Here, arguably, was the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-­literate. He trusted his own expertise ­— no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. He was often confident, but he was just as often paralyzed, less a savant than a figure of sputtering and dangerous insecurities, whose instinctive response was to lash out and behave as if his gut, however confused, was in fact in some clear and forceful way telling him what to do. It was, said Walsh, 'like trying to figure out what a child wants.'"

Trump slams Bannon: ‘When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind’

Michael Wolff’s unbelievable — sometimes literally — tell-all about the Trump administration

Manafort sues DOJ, Mueller over Russia probe authority

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE IS REBRANDING AS A WHITE MAN: The former *NSYNC singer is the latest pop star to embrace his “authentic” roots.

THE BIGGEST SECRET: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror

U.S. officials urge Iran to stop blocking social-media sites as death toll rises in nationwide protests

Trump takes hard line on ‘dreamers,’ but remains interested in a deal

NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, slumping morale and unpopular reorganization

Why Turkey’s president was among thousands in Konya paying homage to Rumi

Pharma, under attack for drug prices, started an industry war

‘You feel that the devil is helping you’: MS-13’s satanic history

Accused Islamic State supporter appears in Virginia court

Reading archive 2017-12-29

A Baffling Brain Defect Is Linked to Gut Bacteria, Scientists Say

Tesla’s enormous battery in Australia, just weeks old, is already responding to outages in ‘record’ time

Putin may be in more trouble than we know

A Republican deficit hawk flies alone - "'I guarantee you, if Mr. Obama was the president and he put this tax bill in, those deficit hawks in my party would get out of the nests and start squawking,' Jones said. 'But here they are, and because it’s a Republican president possibly adding $1.5 to $2 trillion to this country’s deficit, they’re going to stay in the nest and not squawk about it.'"

Polls show Americans distrust the media. But talk to them, and it’s a very different story.

The Most Honest Man in Medicine?: Dr. Joseph Mercola reigns over a long-running “natural health” website and e-commerce empire. He wants to save people from pharmaceutical profiteers, toxic chemicals, and greedy doctors. But former colleagues and medical experts say he’s more dangerous than the supposed threats he preaches about.

Season of the Witch: The Enduring Power of Stevie Nicks: Underestimated and overwhelming, Nicks remains the bewitching woman of our time. Here’s how the Fleetwood Mac songstress became an intergenerational icon. - "Her friend Danny Goldberg has called Stevie Nicks an 'autodidactic mystic who viewed the universe through the eyes of middle America.' Her critics used to hold that idea against her—that there was something surface, shallow, and silly about her brand of vaguely occult spirituality. I see this, instead, as Nicks’s enduring strength—her appeal across generations. She 'seems to embody,' Davis writes, 'the idea that we all have sacred powers within us.'"

Forced out over sex, drugs and other infractions, fired officers find work in other departments

New tax law expected to slow rise of home values, creating winners and losers

‘SMOTHERED’ AND ‘SHOVED ASIDE’ IN RURAL AMERICA

2018’s challenge: Too many jobs, not enough workers

Iraq’s rapid-fire trials send alleged ISIS members — including foreigners — to the gallows

As airline rules relax under Trump, here’s a survival guide to flying in 2018

How to fix the American diet, according to the man who coined the term ‘junk food’

Iranian cities hit by anti-government protests

Reading archive 2017-11-29

NBC Fires Matt Lauer Over Sexual Misconduct Allegation

From ‘Access Hollywood’ to Russia, Trump seeks to paint the rosiest picture

Trump's Tax Promises Undercut by CEO Plans to Help Investors

Trump claims kneeling players hurt NFL attendance. Facts say otherwise.

A Sharp Decline for Jimmy Fallon’s ‘Tonight Show’

Good riddance to Lena Dunham

This police officer is accused of being an ISIS-supporting neo-Nazi. He says he just has a dark sense of humor.

Donald Trump is going to build a big, beautiful deficit and rely on China to help pay for it

Matt Lauer Accused of Sexual Harassment by Multiple Women

As Matt Lauer is fired from ‘Today,’ Ann Curry’s disastrous exit is back in the spotlight

Matt Lauer was fired for reported sexual harassment. Watch him question Hillary Clinton’s “judgment.”: His widely criticized interview with Clinton takes on a new importance now.

Mom, son Bears fans ran into Aaron Rodgers in Chicago, and that was just the beginning

Reading archive 2017-01-26

The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned

Trump just gave a remarkable new interview. Here’s a tally of all his lies.

Trump is getting payments from foreign governments. We have no idea what they are.

Trump pressured Park Service to find proof for his claims about inauguration crowd

A Lie by Any Other Name

One-third of Metro’s track inspection department has been fired for falsifying records, Wiedefeld confirms

Trump says Syrian refugees aren’t vetted. We are. Here’s what we went through.

A running list of all the possible subtweets of President Trump from government Twitter accounts

Reading archive 2016-10-20

Interview With a Woman Who Recently Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks

Inside ISIS’ looted antiquities trade

Reading archive 2016-08-13

Who Loves America?

The Rise of the Reasonable Conservative

The Night That Obama and Hillary Founded ISIS

Reading archive 2016-08-11 part II

DEA Rejects Attempt To Loosen Federal Restrictions On Marijuana

When Women Win, Men Win, Too

This is how the Islamic State was founded

Shooting in North Carolina Draws Comparisons to Trayvon Martin’s Death