Reading archive 2021-07-13

Trump wrong about officer who shot Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt, law enforcement official says: The former president suggested without evidence that the Capitol Police officer who shot Babbitt was "head of security" for a "high-ranking" Democratic lawmaker.

‘This is really fantastical’: Federal judge in Michigan presses Trump-allied lawyers on 2020 election fraud claims in sanctions hearing

North Carolina Democratic voters yearn for a new type of Senate candidate after years of defeats. Now they have two.

‘I Alone Can Fix It’ book excerpt: Inside Trump’s Election Day and the birth of the ‘big lie’: At the end of a tumultuous day, the defiant president refused to accept the signs that he was losing the White House contest to Joe Biden. “I won in a landslide and they’re taking it back,” Trump told advisers. - "Around 10:30 p.m., with results from most key states still far too close to call, Milley received an interesting call from a retired military buddy who reminded him of his apolitical role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

"'You are an island unto yourself right now,' the friend said, according to the account Milley shared with aides. 'You are not tethered. Your loyalty is to the Constitution. You represent the stability of this republic.' 

"Milley’s friend added: 'There’s fourth-rate people at the Pentagon. And you have fifth-rate people at the White House. You’re surrounded by total incompetence. Hang in there. Hang tough.'

"In fact, Trump had privately indicated that he would seek to withdraw from NATO and to blow up the U.S. alliance with South Korea, should he win reelection."

William Barr clashes with former Trump appointee from Pa. over handling of election-fraud claims

Cubans, broken by pandemic and fueled by social media, confront their police state

Cubans hold biggest anti-government protests in decades; Biden says U.S. stands with people

Four Iranians charged with plotting to kidnap author living in Brooklyn: Prosecutors say the Iranian government directed followers to kidnap the author to get her back to Iran.

Reading archive 2021-07-12

This Man Documented 5,000 Trees Being Killed By Vines In Takoma Park

People dumped their pets into lakes, officials say. Now football-size goldfish are taking over.

Meet the conservatives who want to fight climate change — their way - "But his rally showed that may be harder than Backer’s optimism lets on. Despite a projected attendance of more than 500, only about 150 were there, huddling in sparse patches of shade. Some of the loudest voices at the event were exactly the ones Backer wants to leave behind: A group of older men jeered the speakers, lustily waving a Trump 2020 flag and signs that read 'There Is No Climate Crisis.'"

An American Kingdom: A new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, wants a nation under God’s authority, and is central to Donald Trump’s GOP

A teen was accused of abuse inside Vatican City. Powerful church figures helped him become a priest. - "'The behaviors were just the expression of a transitory homosexual tendency, of a not-yet-completed adolescence,' Cantoni wrote at the end of the review." [ed. note: how could this organization possibly speak to gay people, or any person, with this broken understanding of sexuality?]

Reading archive 2021-07-09

Whether Republicans Get Vaccinated Has A Lot To Do With If They Watch Fox News … Or OANN

In Maryland, every person who died of Covid-19 in June was unvaccinated. That's not an aberration, experts say

China Has a BIG Plan for Post-U.S. Afghanistan—and It’s Worth Billions

Why do we procrastinate, and how can we stop? Experts have answers.

Reservoirs are drying up as consequences of the Western drought worsen

Reading archive 2021-07-08

Video shows Glenn Youngkin saying he can’t fully discuss abortion or risk losing independent Virginia voters

New study on delta variant reveals importance of receiving both vaccine shots, highlights challenges posed by mutations

You Literally Can't Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox's Lawyers - "Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way. 

"Just read U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion, leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The ''general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.''

...

"In sum, the Fox News lawyers mocked the legal case made by McDougal's legal team. She alleged 'a reasonable viewer of ordinary intelligence listening or watching the show ... would conclude that [she] is a criminal who extorted Trump for money' and that "the statements about [her] were fact.' 

"'Context makes plain,' Fox's lawyers wrote, 'that the reasonable viewer would do no such thing.'

"The judge fully agreed."

The climate crisis haunts Chicago’s future.: A Battle Between a Great City and a Great Lake - "In 2013, Lake Michigan plunged to a low not seen since record-keeping began in the mid-1800s, wreaking havoc across the Midwest. Marina docks became useless catwalks. Freighter captains couldn’t fully load their ships. And fears grew that the lake would drop so low it would no longer be able to feed the Chicago River, the defining waterway that snakes through the heart of the city. 

"That fear was short-lived. Just a year later, in 2014, the lake started climbing at a stunning rate, ultimately setting a record summertime high in 2020 before drought took hold and water levels started plunging again. 

"In just seven years, Lake Michigan had swung more than six feet. It was an ominous sign that the inland sea, yoked for centuries to its historic shoreline, is starting to buck."

Reading archive 2021-07-07

Grain Valley family mourning after 45-year-old mother dies from Delta variant

A Dutch journalist exposed the mob and defied death threats. Now he’s been shot in the head.

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse assassinated at his home by unidentified gunmen

Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book says

From corporate America to conspiracy theory promotion: How a Minnesota man made a career out of anonymously amplifying dark plots

Des Moines faces extreme measures to find clean water - "Iowa is a national leader in producing corn, soybeans, eggs and pork, and all that agricultural bounty results in enormous amounts of chemical fertilizer and animal waste pouring into waterways. The state's 23 million pigs produce waste that would be the equivalent of 83 million people — more than 25 times the state’s human population, according to University of Iowa research engineer Chris Jones."

Reading archive 2021-07-06

Their neighbors called covid-19 a hoax. Can these ICU nurses forgive them?: For the nurses in the Appalachian highlands who risked their lives during the pandemic, it is as if they fought in a war no one acknowledges.

House Democrats take different approach to economic, national security threats posed by China

The scientists fighting to save the ocean’s most important carbon capture system The population of kelp forests, which help clean the air, has fallen dramatically. That has environmentalists worried. - "The fate of the world’s kelp forests may depend on controlling its sworn enemy — sea urchins — and the Nature Conservancy, an Arlington-based environmental group, says it has a plan. It is touting urchins as a culinary cuisine, hoping to appeal to commercial fishermen who could scoop them out of the ocean. It is also attempting to increase the population of their natural predators, sea stars and growing kelp in controlled environments before releasing the algae back into the sea."

A classic Silicon Valley tactic — losing money to crush rivals — comes in for scrutiny: Facebook’s latest product, a newsletter platform called Bulletin, exemplifies a strategy that some critics think should be illegal - "Asked for comment on Facebook Bulletin, Substack spokeswoman Lulu Cheng Meservey said, 'The nice shiny rings from Sauron were also 'free.''"

Untangling The Long-Armed Mystery Of The Bigfin Squid: The elbowed, spindly appendages of the bigfin squid have long stunned the public. But scientists say there is more to this deep-sea dweller than its ghostly appearance.

A Smithsonian museum turns to art, not science, to hammer home a warning about Mother Nature

He says he helped his country. A decade later, the government accused him of fraud.

Reading archive 2021-07-04

Mark Levin, the Fox News host who won’t stop criticizing other Fox News personalities: ‘I’m an American first,’ says Levin, who also has a popular radio show, ‘and I’m going to tell it like it is.’ - "Levin, who had supported Ted Cruz for president before rallying behind Trump and becoming one of the biggest television cheerleaders for his presidency, lashed out at Fox for giving Trump a platform to spread a disproven conspiracy theory trying to tie Cruz’s father to assassin Lee Harvey Oswald."

July Fourth is Independence Day for two countries. But for one it is hollow.: For the Philippines, independence from the United States came with strings attached.

What to know about Rise of the Moors, an armed group that says it’s not subject to U.S. law - "On its website, the group says 'sovereignty and nationality can be considered synonymous,' and it considers Moorish Americans to be the 'aboriginal people of the land.' In a video Saturday morning, an unidentified member of the group disputed the sovereign-citizen moniker, saying, 'We are not anti-government. We are not anti-police, we are not sovereign citizens, we’re not Black identity extremists.'" [ed. note: they are all of those things]