Reading archive 2026-06-16

14-Year-Old Is Charged With Armed Robbery of Boston Lemonade Stand: A cash box containing about $80 was stolen from two siblings in Boston during the robbery, which occurred in broad daylight, the police and family members said.

Trump claims victory over Iran, but deal is silent on nuclear weapons: The president promised oil would resume flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, though U.S. and Iranian officials differed on the initial agreement’s terms. - "A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei, said Monday that Iran intended to keep charging fees for passage through the strait that would cover navigation services, environmental protection and ship insurance."

Covid vaccine linked to broad protections against heart conditions, study finds: A new study finds the vaccine was linked with nearly 40 percent lower risk of events like heart attack and stroke

He’s studied procrastination for 40 years. Here’s what he’s learned.: After so many years studying procrastination, Joseph Ferrari has some thoughts about why you can’t seem to get anything done — and how to fix that. - "'In our culture, we punish for being late,' Ferrari said. 'We need to reward for being early.' He believes incentives could transform the collective tendency to put things off. What if, for example, the government gave people a discount if they filed their taxes early, or stores offered their biggest holiday sales on the day after Thanksgiving rather than Christmas Eve?"

Good luck, JD Vance. I sense a setup.: The vice president is tasked with helping the Iran regime “learn the ways of peace.”

Algae forms in the Reflecting Pool. It’s ‘residual,’ Trump officials say.: A few days after the $14 million renovation was completed, along came the algae in the D.C. heat. It’s being removed, an Interior spokeswoman said, and measures are in place to prevent it in the future.

Planned forest fires have wider benefits than previously thought: The new research found managing low-severity fires across 1 million acres a year could reduce the amount of land that burned from severe fires by about 25 percent, protection that lasts for years.

The Milkman: Mark McAfee Promotes the Wonders of Raw Milk. It Has Sickened M Hundreds, Regulators Say - "'We have a red-flag system here, where if there’s anything that gets really out of whack, they can immediately tag the milk, and it doesn’t go to anything but cheese,' McAfee told me. 'Because, you know, cheese is resistant to pathogens.'

"Research has shown that raw cheese is not, in fact, resistant to pathogens; while aging can mitigate some risk, harmful bacteria can still survive the usual 60-day maturation process."

Reading archive 2026-06-10

A new wave of anti-immigrant violence hits U.K. as riots convulse Belfast: Attackers torched neighborhoods across Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, after a Sudanese asylum seeker was arrested and accused of stabbing a man.

Restaurants add World Cup service charges, fearing tourists won’t tip: Visitors to U.S. host cities may not know about tipping customs, so operators want to ensure that their workers share in the tournament’s financial benefits.

How to let go of things you don’t use and declutter your life: Hanging on to items that you aren’t actively using contributes to a chaotic existence.

Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All: University of California faculty are in open revolt over the lack of standardized test scores.

Driving in America Is Headlight Hell: Car bulbs don’t have to be this blinding.

Eat More Deer: America is letting good meat go to waste.

Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files: The president’s top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself.

Reading archive 2025-07-28 pt 2

The Sea Slug Defying Biological Orthodoxy: Symbiosis may be more important to evolution than scientists once thought.

The Worst-Kept Secret of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Trump turned a far-right fantasy—ethnic cleansing in Gaza—into U.S. policy. He needs to reject it. - "One of the more poorly kept secrets of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that many of those involved would prefer to take all the land and have the other side disappear. A 2011 poll found that two-thirds of Palestinians believed that their real goal should not be a two-state solution, but rather using that arrangement as a prelude to establishing 'one Palestinian state.' A 2016 survey found that nearly half of Israeli Jews agreed that 'Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.' A poll in 2000, conducted during negotiations toward a two-state solution, found that only 47 percent of Israelis and 10 percent of Palestinians supported a school curriculum that would educate students to 'give up aspirations for parts of the 'homeland' which are in the other state.'"

Tomato Season Is Different This Year Come fall, Americans will once again be stuck with flavorless grocery-store tomatoes. Because of tariffs, they’ll also be more expensive.

Pick tomatoes at color break: Ripening off the vine extends harvest, quality with no taste difference

Why China Won’t Stop the Fentanyl Trade: The opioid that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year has become a source of political leverage that Beijing won’t easily give up. - "From one standpoint, China's actions are easy to understand. Its leadership is behaving as many other rational state actors would exploiting the power it possesses over a strategic competitor. But the grisly truth is that, in this case, China's power derives from mass death. Chinese leaders continue to use American lives to forward their political aims, rather than taking the small steps necessary to save them. That choice is one of the starkest demonstrations that the regime's priority of narrow self-interest over the global good won't be changing anytime soon."

Trump’s Ukraine Policy Deserves a Reassessment: The president is easily caricatured—but there are better ways to explain his choices.

A Democrat for the Trump Era: Jasmine Crockett is testing out the coarse style of politics that the GOP has embraced. - "Through her hearing-room quips and social-media insults, she's become known, at least in MSNBC-watching households, as a leading general in the battle against Trump. The president is aware of this. He has repeatedly called Crockett a 'low-IQ' individual; she has dubbed him a 'buffoon' and 'Putin's hoe.' Perhaps the best-known Crockett clapback came last year during a hearing, after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made fun of Crockett's fake eyelashes. Crockett, seeming to relish the moment, leaned into the mic and blasted Greene's 'bleach-blond, bad-built, butch body.' Crockett trademarked the phrase which she now refers to as 'B6' and started selling T-shirts."

When It Feels Good to Root for a Bad Guy: The film Eddington inspires an uncomfortable empathy for its most twisted character.

The Mistake Parents Make With Chores Shooing young children away from the kitchen and the laundry can have a lasting effect.

Reading archive 2025-07-23

In hearing, developer told to rework plans to downsize D.C. grocery store: By early next week, Jair Lynch needs to rethink its request to downsize a grocery store it plans to build in a new Northwest Washington neighborhood.

Pressure heats up on D.C. Council to hold vote on RFK Stadium deal: D.C. lawmakers have said for weeks that they are doing their due diligence on the $3.7 billion dollar deal, and expect to approve it - just not as fast as everyone wants.

The ‘World’s Smartest Man’ Absolutely Hates Me: With an apparent score of 276, YoungHoon Kim claims to have the highest IQ on the planet. Just don’t ask him to prove it.

House Republicans eye restrictions on D.C. traffic safety, abortion and more: The proposed federal spending bill comes as President Donald Trump again publicly muses about taking over the city.

Try these hidden ‘NOPE’ buttons to stop AI content: How to turn off AI in Google and DuckDuckGo web search results -- plus a no-AI nuclear option.

"If he failed, their process failed": Inside the NFLPA meltdown

How strategists think about keeping the peace in the Taiwan Strait: In 1914, the world stumbled into a war that hurt all combatants. Is it on the same path now?

I’m a microplastics researcher. Here’s how I limit the plastic in my life.: Microplastics are everywhere. But there are simple ways to lower your exposure.

Ukraine’s top commander asks Trump to help take the war to Russia: With Trump now open to supplying U.S.-made weapons to Ukraine, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky calls for longer-range missiles and the permission to use them against Russia.

China’s strategy? Let Trump cook.: As President Donald Trump dismantles U.S. soft power and launches trade wars with allies, China is content to sit back and watch. - "'The United States, in their view, is dismantling its alliance relationships and alienating much of the world,' Gewirtz told the Wire China. 'It is dismantling aspects of the U.S. science and technology ecosystem, cutting funding to some of our great universities, and making it very unappealing, if not outright impossible, for foreign talent to come do research in those universities. And it is eliminating arms of U.S. influence around the world, from USAID to Voice of America. China’s view is that the United States is, in a sense, unilaterally disarming.'

...

"[Economic historian]Tooze argued that the Americans have 'dropped the ball' here and the consequences will be vast. 'This is the material dethroning of the West as the central driver of world history,' he said. 'This is really what the provincialization of the West really looks like.'"

The Wrecking of the FBI The former FBI official Peter Strzok on how President Donald Trump is destroying U.S. counterintelligence from the inside. - "But they thought they had a deal. Bracket Trump, leave Trump out of the story, and Trump in turn would license them to go on a hunting expedition against all the people they really hated. A long list of liberal icons, people like—people whom they dislike for other reasons who were in the Epstein network. If Trump would just—they would stand back from Trump and he would then deliver to them justice against their ideological and other kinds of opponents. They’re mad, these people, because Trump reneged on that deal. In order to protect himself, he ended up protecting a lot of other people, too, or so people in MAGA world who are excited about this issue believe that this has been taken away from them. And for some of the people who are the loudest influencers, losing the Epstein file, having Donald Trump say, There are no records, there’s nothing to see here, everybody stand down, that’s not just a threat to their belief system. For many of them, it’s a threat to their livelihoods. For a lot of influencers, Epstein was central to their engagement strategies, very lucrative engagement strategies, and they now have the choice: If they accept the Donald Trump edict—if they say, Okay, we’ll stand down, as President Trump says—then what do they do for engagement?

...

"This is a chronic—I think, going back to the 9/11 analogy, one of the things that happened after 9/11 was the decision was made to harden cockpit doors. What if somebody, a year and a half or two years before 9/11 said, You know, why don’t we harden the cockpit doors? Why don’t we do that? See how that maybe that would be an improvement. And they did it. We would probably now be studying that hardening of cockpit doors as an example of government waste. Right? 

"Strzok: Yes. 

"Frum: We hardened all the cockpit doors. It cost all this money. No one ever tried it. Nothing ever happened. Why did we ever do that in the first place? What a waste of time and money. Government overregulation hardening cockpit doors. This is the great injustice of government. No one ever knows what’s behind door number two, the thing that didn’t happen, the thing that you prevented."

How to Be More Charismatic, but Not Too Much More: It turns out that being charming has a happy mean.

What to Do With the Most Dangerous Book in America: At a perilous American moment, the Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains why he wanted to read The Turner Diaries.

This Is the Presidency John Roberts Has Built: The country is witnessing the creation of an all-powerful institution, and one man is responsible. - "Roberts has all but made at-will removal the president's constitutionally guaranteed prerogative, and his rhetoric goes further yet. His opinions taken together create a dangerously authoritarian and largely ahistorical narrative about the constitutional presidency."

What Trump’s Feud With Jerome Powell Is Really About: The president doesn’t think the Federal Reserve chair is bad at his job. He objects to the job itself. - "The Federal Reserve's assignment is to steward the long-term interests of the U.S. economy even at the occasional expense of short-term pain by balancing the twin objectives of suppressing inflation and managing the unemployment rate. Trump, however, believes that the Fed's objective should be to speed up the economy under Republican administrations and slow it down under Democratic ones. To the extent that the central bank balances unemployment and inflation, he would like to see the pain of high unemployment shifted onto Democratic administrations so that Republican ones can benefit from rapid economic growth."

Reading archive 2025-17-18

The Paramount comics, Colbert and Stewart, are sharp critics of the '60 Minutes' deal: Stephen Colbert returned from vacation loaded for bear - "'I am offended,' Colbert said in his monologue Monday night. 'I don’t know if anything — anything — will repair my trust in this company. But, just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.'"

Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ canceled by CBS, to end in May 2026: The announcement came days after Colbert spoke out against the $16 million settlement paid by CBS News parent Paramount to settle a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump.

The end of Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ has implications beyond late-night TV: The comedian has criticized CBS parent company Paramount Global for settling its lawsuit with President Donald Trump.

What made ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ special, in six clips Colbert, whose long-running show will be canceled in May, managed to break through the trappings of late-night TV to charm and surprise his audience

In Epstein Case, Follow the Money, Democratic Senator Says: Senator Ron Wyden has found that four banks waited until Mr. Epstein’s arrest on federal charges to flag $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions. Mr. Wyden wants the documents made public.

The best TV show I’ve seen in a decade: Give ‘Adolescence’ all the Emmys.

DOGE Put Free Tax Filing Tool on Chopping Block After One Meeting With Lobbyists: A key operative from DOGE initiated plans to potentially kill Direct File, the free tax filing tool developed by the IRS, after offering assurances it would be spared from cuts.

Activists try to preserve IRS’s Direct File now that Trump has ended it: The program offered free tax filing for two years under Biden. Republicans shut it down, but a small group hopes to keep the code around for a future administration to use.

Israel strikes the Gaza church the pope used to call nightly, killing 3 The Rev. Gabriel Romanelli of the Church of the Holy Family used to speak every night with Pope Francis before the pontiff’s death.

In reversal, senators advance FBI’s planned move to Reagan Building in D.C.: Maryland leaders tried to prohibit the FBI from financing the relocation with money designated for a suburban campus in Greenbelt --- but Sen. Lisa Murkowski changed her stance.

D.C. protesters try a different tactic for spreading their message: Umbrellas

Attorney General Bondi expected to seek release of Epstein grand jury testimony The attorney general said she would ask a court Friday to unseal pertinent grand jury records. That’s a portion of what would be included in the Justice Department’s broader investigative file.

America, meet the Trump-Mamdani voter: Yes, such a person exists. Should anyone be surprised?

Kansas City poured millions into a grocery store. It still may close. More cities and states are experimenting with the concept of city-owned grocery stores, but these experiments often don’t account for social issues. - "At a community meeting last year, Pierson played videos of security incidents so graphic he gave a warning in advance — a naked woman parading through the store throwing bags of chips to the ground, another person urinating in the vestibule and a couple fornicating on the lawn of the library in broad daylight.

..

"Part of the problem is the city’s lack of a jail, Young said. The left-leaning council closed the previous facility in 2009 as a cost-saving measure — a move the Kansas City Star has called a '$250 million mistake' — and so people arrested for minor crimes are quickly released instead of being held in rural counties miles away."

Most warming this century may be due to air pollution cuts: Satellite data suggests cloud darkening is responsible for much of the warming since 2001, and the good news is that it is a temporary effect due to a drop in sulphate pollution

Everyone’s the hero of their own story: How to comprehend the incomprehensible - "If your goal is to actually change someone’s mind — not just to feel like you won, or produce a nice YouTube clip, but to actually change their mind — then you should be operating in the conversation as if you’re talking to the hero of the story, who is basically good but has been misled."

EU Approves 18th Round of Sanctions Against Russia

Reading archive 2025-04-11 pt 2

What RFK Jr. Told Grieving Texas Families About the Measles Vaccine: The nation’s top public-health official has been promoting suspicions of the shot even as he offers comfort. - "Hildebrand said that, before they took Daisy to the hospital, his family was given advice on her care by, among others, Ben Edwards and Richard Bartlett, two West Texas doctors whom Kennedy has praised as " extraordinary healers" treating measles patients in Seminole. Edwards and Bartlett are pictured in a photo that Kennedy posted from his meeting with the two families, which occurred after the funeral at a steak dinner at the West Texas Living Heritage Museum, in Seminole. Like Kennedy, Edwards has raised doubts about the safety of the MMR vaccine and instead promoted treatments such as cod-liver oil, which is high in vitamins A and D. At one point, he was offering free cod-liver oil to Seminole residents at an ad hoc clinic next to a coffee shop." [ed. note: they treated her, she didn't get better, they delivered her to a hospital, she died]

Trump Says He Is Serious About Staying in Office Past 2028: Why do Republicans keep claiming he isn’t?

The Tariff Damage That Can’t Be Undone: Nothing here has ended well. In fact, it hasn’t even ended. - "Yesterday morning, the U.S. economy appeared to be on the verge of catastrophe. The stock market had already shrunk by trillions of dollars in just a few days. Usually, when the stock market falls, investors flock to the safest of all safe assets, U.S. Treasury bonds. This in turn causes interest rates to fall. (When more people want to buy your debt, you don't have to offer as high a return.) But that didn't happen this time. Instead, investors started pulling their money out of Treasury bonds en masse, causing interest rates to spike in just a few hours. 

"Suddenly the entire global financial system appeared to be at risk. If U.S. Treasuries were no longer considered safe - perhaps because the country that issues them had recently shown its willingness to tank its own economy in pursuit of incomprehensible objectives - then no other asset could be considered safe either. The next step might be a rush to liquidate assets, the equivalent of a bank run on the entire global financial system. 'This scenario is more serious than 2008,' Adam Tooze, an economic historian who wrote the definitive history of the financial crisis that triggered the Great Recession, argued on Substack."

A Defense Against Gaslighting Sociopaths: If you can recognize their signature move, then forewarned is forearmed. - "Some scholars argue that we now inhabit a 'culture of offense,' a way of turning a claim that some behavior or statement is offensive into, in effect, a right to be offended, which creates a further claim of victimhood. I expect that we can all think of examples of how this culture can be used as a cudgel to disingenuously keep disfavored views and voices out of the public realm."

Reading archive 2025-02-13

The Cognitive Bias Codex

Trump, Musk and America are headed for a very rude awakening: Elon Musk is trying to gut government programs, claiming it's what the people want. But is it really?

US Department of State removes Tesla armoured vehicles from list of planned purchases: Earlier procurement forecast list showing $400m for armoured Tesla units was incorrect, says department spokesperson - "However, a spokesperson for the department said the document was incorrect, and should have been a generic entry reading 'electric vehicle manufacturer'. The department said the order was on hold."

The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown - "But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori’s Peru, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey. Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair."

D.C. mayor proposes permanent rollback of pandemic-era housing protections: Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said the legislation is an attempt to support affordable housing providers who are in crisis mode over unpaid rent. Tenant advocates are worried.

Trump cuts affect signature Youngkin lab school program in Virginia: State officials say lab school partnership will continue even as federal funds are removed from university teacher program.

Trump announces ‘reciprocal’ tariffs in latest trade move: The tariffs would be customized to specific countries, White House officials said. - "'Reciprocity may sound appealing. But remember who pays tariffs: It’s the American importer and the burden eventually falls on the consumer,' said Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy for the Tax Foundation. 'It’s like shooting yourselves in the foot because someone else is shooting themselves in the foot.'"

Justice, FBI ousters remove longtime experts from daily threats meeting: Trump administration shake-ups at the Justice Department and FBI have eroded continuity on national security matters, people familiar with the situation said.

Under pressure, Trump exempts military spouses from federal return to office: Military families sought consideration as the administration’s blunt exercise of power proved uniquely disruptive for federal workers married to service members.

Scientists detect a mysterious messenger from the cosmos: With a deep-sea detector off the coast of Sicily, scientists have captured evidence of an exceptional ultra-high-energy neutrino.

Hegseth stumbles out of the gate: In his first big turn on the world stage, the defense secretary has already been forced to offer a major walk-back.

Welcome to the resistance? Mitch McConnell bucks Trump with ‘no’ votes.: Democrats heap praise on their former foe, while his GOP colleagues express disappointment.

Reading archive 2024-05-04

5 Reasons for Environmentalists to Stop Blaming "Doom & Gloom" Narratives

Why We Have Lawns

In year of budget cuts, Mayor Muriel Bowser bets big on downtown D.C.: Bowser says reviving downtown will ultimately pay dividends to all D.C. — returning the city to a period of growth that shaped the early years of her tenure. - "Bowser’s pledge that the downtown investments will uplift all neighborhoods largely stems from the fact that the city’s core has long been its economic engine. Economic activity downtown brings about $2.3 billion to the District’s coffers each year, comprising about one-fourth of D.C.’s annual local fund revenue, according to the Downtown Action Plan released by her administration and downtown business leaders in February."

He was almost off probation in a murder case. Then a judge saw his videos.: Citing social media posts in which a teenager rapped about drugs and violence, a Maryland judge declined to end his juvenile court supervision

U.S. tells Qatar to evict Hamas if it obstructs Israeli hostage deal: Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered the message to Qatar’s prime minister, a U.S. official said, signaling Washington’s impatience as cease-fire talks have languished.

Toddler fatally shot in Southeast, D.C. police say: Preliminary information indicated the girl may have been accidentally struck in an exchange of gunfire, police said.

A 3-year-old is shot to death, and D.C. reels again: ‘Everyone loved her’: Ty’ah Settles was riding in a car that got caught in the crossfire of a gun battle, police said. She was the city’s youngest homicide victim this year.

Confident of victory over Ukraine, Russia exhibits Western war trophies: The exhibition comes just ahead of a May 9 Victory Day celebration that is very different from last year’s, when Russia was facing battlefield setbacks.

University endowments show few signs of direct Israel, defense holdings: School investments are targets of Pro-Palestinian groups calling for “divestment,” even if the ties aren’t always clear.

Survivors of Oct. 7 attack sue pro-Palestinian groups in U.S.: They allege that American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine spread terrorist propaganda from Hamas at U.S. colleges.

Young mothers at risk of homelessness after D.C. program is denied funding: Program leaders have until July 1 to raise enough money to keep the homes open, or else five mothers and their babies will be displaced. - "A program is ranked by how often it is used, the rate at which people leave it for permanent housing, and how often those who leave return to another program within two years, said Tom Fredericksen, the chief of policy and programs at the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, which coordinates the local Continuum of Care program on behalf of the city. Olaiya’s Cradle was ranked 41 out of 43 projects, documents show."

Opinion  The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden: The White House is helping set a new norm, and a dubious one at that.

Opinion  To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest: You must have been doing for the past eight years what Trump has been doing in court the past three weeks: napping.

The children who remember their past lives: What happens when your toddler is haunted by memories that aren’t hers?

Reading archive 2024-04-26

Is Southwest about to end its free-for-all seating?: The company says it is ‘very seriously studying’ alternatives to its signature open-seating system

How to deal with the 3 levels of gaslighting

Blinken warns China to address its support for Russia or ‘we will’

Asia’s next war could be triggered by a rusting warship on a disputed reef - "To buttress its claims in the South China Sea, the Philippines in 1999 deliberately ran aground a World War II-era landing ship on a half-submerged shoal, establishing the vessel as an outpost of the Philippine navy."

Opinion  This tiny flower teaches us all we need to know about growing old

Secret meetings, social chatter: How Columbia students sparked a nationwide revolt - "But unlike the protests of decades past, college administrators have fewer tools at their disposal to assuage demonstrator demands. Experts say student requests for divestment are not only impractical but also are likely to yield little if any real benefit. More broadly, the students could face a challenge in trying to build alliances. Some would-be demonstrators have been deterred by tactics and chants some view as antisemitic.

...

"'I think a difference with older generations is that for them college was a coming of age, whereas my class started elementary school in the financial crisis, started high school in the Trump presidency, and started college in the pandemic,' Vijayakumar said. 'We’ve never lived in normal times.'" [ed. note: there is no such thing as "normal times"]

Baltimore principal’s racist rant was an AI fake. His colleague was arrested.

D.C. officers who were previously disciplined won’t get renewed contracts

After decades of disinvestment, D.C.’s Anacostia welcomes new developments - "But as Bowser and others spoke Thursday on the roof of DHCD’s new headquarters, there was a shared understanding that these new developments were only a step toward rectifying decades of disinvestment. Local business owners who attended the celebration said that while they are excited about the rapid development, they expressed concern about what the new amenities could eventually mean for the neighborhood’s affordability." [ed. note: complain about disinvestment, complain about the effects of investment]

Reading archive 2023-12-14

Supreme Court accepts Jan. 6 case that could affect or delay Trump trial Former president would like to push back election obstruction trial in D.C. as he seeks another term in White House

These yard signs offer an inconvenient truth about sea level rise - "After Ike flooded Houston, city leaders placed 25-foot-tall signs in Clear Lake showing how high the water might rise in a Category 4 or Category 5 storm. Neighbors complained the signs would lower their property values, and the city removed them months later."

The brain loves a challenge. Here’s why.: New research suggests we can train our brain to value making an effort and not just the outcome

Why do ‘gate lice’ line up early for a flight? Psychologists explain.: We all know those travelers: The ones who line up before their boarding group is called

How Congress leaned on crime victims to pay for Trump-era tax cuts - "In a statement, the IRS said withdrawals from tax-deferred accounts get taxed, even in sad circumstances, and that questions on appropriate tax policy are better directed to lawmakers." [ed. note: I agree]

There’s a big gap in views on abortion in Michigan — among Republicans: Trump supporters in the state are far more likely to support bans on abortion than are supporters of other candidates.

House passes defense policy bill, a rebuke of GOP’s far-right fringe: Democrats joined Republicans to approve the $886 billion legislation after it was stripped of hard-liners’ demands targeting abortion, diversity and LGBTQ+ rights

Ted Leonsis makes wonderful promises. Ask D.C. what they’re worth.

Development has transformed D.C. These then-and-now pictures show how. - "Sabiyha Prince, a cultural anthropologist, chronicled the demolition and displacement of the Barry Farm community, in Southeast Washington, in a documentary called 'Barry Farm: Community, Land and Justice in Washington, D.C.' She said a city’s disappearing views can make longtime residents feel like a foreigner in their own city."

Reading archive 2023-10-24

Opinion  Let’s not forget the Palestinian Authority’s role in this catastrophe

The surprising benefits of switching to ‘lamb mowers’

Opinion  How to raise cancel-proof kids

Opinion  This is not the State Department I know. That’s why I left my job.

Metro braces for closed stations, layoffs, reduced service without funding hike: Forced to plan ahead, Metro has drawn up multiple service plans that vary in severity depending on how much financial help the transit agency receives

Older Americans are dominating like never before, but what comes next?

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 2022-06-07

The Pithiest Critique of Modern Conservatism Keeps Getting Credited to the Wrong Man: “Wilhoit’s Law” was created by a different Frank Wilhoit.

Email to Giuliani reveals plan to keep Trump in office on Jan. 6, court records show

What science tells us about the mood-boosting effects of indoor plants

Opinion  A shocker in the Proud Boys indictment exposes the right’s long game - "'This regeneration through violence is going to be with us for a long time,' Lowndes said, 'because it is fundamental to the right-wing political imagination.'"

Trump call Jan. 6 to ‘walk down to the Capitol’ prompted Secret Service scramble: Agency’s actions are part of the Jan. 6 committee’s probe into Trump’s role in inciting the violent attack

Transcript: Race in America: Giving Voice with Bisa Butler

Both Republicans and Democrats prioritize family, but they differ over other sources of meaning in life

Reading archive 2022-06-02

We’ve Known How To Prevent A School Shooting for More Than 20 Years

Homeless camp cleared at Union Station: ‘We don’t have nowhere to go’

Google’s plan to talk about caste bias led to ‘division and rancor’

China’s hold over Tesla raises questions about Musk’s bid for Twitter: Current and former U.S. officials say deal could go against national interest - "By dominating the supply of multiple components critical to the fortunes of Tesla, the Chinese government holds so much leverage over chief executive Elon Musk’s wealth that his planned acquisition of Twitter should concern national security leaders, a dozen current and former officials involved in reviewing foreign investments told The Washington Post."

Opinion  Doug Mastriano’s unhinged ‘Nazi’ claim signals deeper danger ahead

Opinion  Susan Collins confronts a moment of truth - "'Justice Rehnquist was not successful in convincing a majority of justices in the context of abortion,' [Justice Kegstand] said. 'But he was successful in stemming the general tide of freewheeling judicial creation of unenumerated rights that were not rooted in the nation’s history and tradition.'" [ed. note: my marriage is fucked]

...

"Collins told me that neither side is more responsible than the other for today’s extremism — that there’s plenty of blame to go around." [ed. note: this is delusional]

Opinion  In death row case, the Supreme Court says guilt is now beside the point - "Last week, Scalia’s once-fringe position became law. In Shinn v. Ramirez, the court voted 6 to 3 to overrule two lower courts and disregard the innocence claims of Barry Lee Jones, a prisoner on Arizona’s death row. Importantly, the majority did not rule that it found Jones’s innocence claims unpersuasive. Instead, it ruled that the federal courts are barred from even considering them. Thomas wrote the opinion.

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"But last week the Supreme Court snuffed it out. Led by Thomas, the majority ruled that while the court’s 2012 decision did allow the federal courts to find that Jones’s post-conviction attorney was ineffective, AEDPA still bars Jones from using the evidence those attorneys failed to find in federal court. According to the majority, the federal courts can acknowledge that a prisoner’s state-appointed attorneys failed him at two critical points in his case, but they’re barred from actually doing anything about it. 

"It’s an illogical and profoundly cynical ruling, one that will almost certainly mean innocent people will remain behind bars — or be executed.

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"The Supreme Court’s own history ought to impart some lessons here. In 1994, Scalia described in an unrelated death penalty case the heinous nature of the rape and murder for which Henry McCollum was convicted and sentenced to death in North Carolina. It was, Scalia argued, a poster case for the death penalty. About 20 years later, McCullum was exonerated and freed. In 2006, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote a dissenting opinion defending the Tennessee conviction of Paul House that also included graphic descriptions of the crime and a recitation of the state’s narrative as if it were fact. House, too, was later exonerated and released. 

"Thomas joined both of those opinions. He seems utterly unchastened that both were so clearly and consequentially wrong."

Reading archive 2022-04-18

McDuffie ineligible to run for D.C. attorney general, elections board says

The nuclear missile next door: What it’s like to live with a bomb stronger than 20 Hiroshimas in a time of rising worldwide tensions.

China tries to cover lockdown strains on Shanghai’s front-line workers

Elon Musk wants a free speech utopia. Technologists clap back.: Musk’s vision of the Internet is outdated and doesn’t take into account the real world, they say - "Fast forward and the Internet is indeed a different place. Russian trolls sowed disinformation on social platforms in the 2016 U.S. election and President Donald Trump used a network of followers as a misinformation megaphone in the lead up to the last election. Anti-vaccine activists have used social media to spread health conspiracies to millions of people. Even now, amid the conflict in Ukraine, researchers and Facebook have identified disinformation networks trying to tilt public opinion toward Russia."

A Democrat in gym shorts tries to rally blue votes in Trump country: John Fetterman believes his road to the U.S. Senate runs through Pennsylvania’s red, rural areas

The mindfulness conspiracy: It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism. - "Instead of encouraging radical action, mindfulness says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live. And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world. It’s magical thinking on steroids."

Thich Nhat Hanh: is mindfulness being corrupted by business and finance?

The Trouble with Mindfulness Be mindful of three compelling problems with mindfulness. - "Thus, these studies basically find that mindfulness is better than nothing. Those that do use established interventions as comparison groups in randomized trials generally find that mindfulness works about as well as the other interventions such as exercise, prayer, pleasant activities (including watching television), and so forth."

Mindfulness is a capitalist grift: How faux enlightenment maintains our status quo: The meditative practice favored by America's titans of industry bears no relation to its anti-materialist origins

Reading archive 2021-08-02

Announcing a New Plan for Solving the Mystery of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: The newly organized Galileo Project will use a three-pronged approach to replace unreliable eyewitness reports with reproducible scientific observations

What Trump got right

A battle of green against green in this Texas community

‘I should have gotten the damn vaccine,’ woman says fiance texted before he died of covid-19

Vaxed, waxed, but definitely not relaxed: Welcome to the pandemic swerve - "The best way to describe what we’re going through right now is the prisoner’s dilemma, says Gretchen Chapman, a professor of psychology who studies vaccination decision-making at Carnegie Mellon University. Vaccines, as with the classic game theory model, provide a collective reward when everyone cooperates, though individuals may have personal incentives not to cooperate. If not enough individuals cooperate, then the people who did the right thing suffer the consequences."

Opinion: The GOP scamming of rural Trump voters continues. A new study shows the latest. - "It has long been central to Republican mythology that Democrats have nothing but seething contempt for the rural and small-town inhabitants of the Real American Heartland. Republicans sometimes pair this with vile lies about Democratic proposals that would deliver economic benefits to those regions, turning their residents against them.

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"The new analysis from the Niskanen Center finds that the expanded child allowance — which has started delivering up to $300 per child per month to most U.S. households with children — will shower outsize benefits on residents of rural and less populous states and will deliver a disproportionately large relative boost to their local economies."

Oak-mite bites: Cicadas may have left D.C. region an itchy gift

Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans

Reading archive 2020-10-12

Yes, you should smile behind your mask. Here’s why.

The ballad of Big John Fetterman: Democrats yearned for a folk hero. But will they vote for one?

As Trump stumbles, voters finalize their choices, and Biden’s lead grows

New research explores authoritarian mind-set of Trump’s core supporters: Data reveal high levels of anti-democratic beliefs among many of the president’s backers, who stand to be a potent voting bloc for years to come

QAnon is tearing families apart

Mark Zuckerberg’s reversal on Holocaust denial is a 180: Facebook’s decision to disallow Holocaust denial after previously affirming it reflects the company’s shifting stances on free speech.

‘Hatred is taught’: Pennsylvania’s second lady films a woman’s racist attack at the grocery store

How Biden could end 2020 on election night — and why Trump’s path is unlikely: Biden leads in polls of several fast-counting states Trump won in 2016, but the states that put Trump over the top last time face delays.

China hawks encounter new opponent: U.S. companies: Industry groups are fighting some restrictions on tech trade with China, saying the costs are too high

What's the first species humans drove to extinction?

Reading archive 2019-12-19

At Yale, we conducted an experiment to turn conservatives into liberals. The results say a lot about our political divisions.

Reading archive 2019-05-24

The Real Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones: It's not just bad storytelling—it’s because the storytelling style changed from sociological to psychological

New Law Would Help Bees—but Could Leave Other Pollinators out in the Cold: Proposed legislation focuses mostly on threats to honeybees and their wild cousins

He pledged to kill ‘as many girls as I see’ in mass shooting. After second chances, he’s going to prison.

Looted Nazi art and LGBT rights merge in recovery of Polish painting: After their prized 17th-century portrait is revealed to have been stolen from Poland’s National Museum, Los Angles same-sex couple turns setback into equality campaign

Reading archive 2018-08-20

Study: When a city’s trashy lots are cleaned up, residents’ mental health improves

‘The king and his husband’: The gay history of British royals

Another epic economic collapse is coming