By Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz 24 February 2022 (Freedom House) – Global freedom faces a dire threat. Around the world, the enemies of liberal democracy—a form of self-government in which human rights are recognized and every individual is entitled to equal treatment under law—are accelerating their attacks. Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at […]
By Charles Gaba 22 February 2022 (ACA Signups) – Last summer, I pulled together the occasional vaccination rate scatter plot graphs I’d been compiling for months into a single animated GIF image to show how both the correlation (R^2) and steepness (slope) of the partisan COVID vaccination divide grew from almost nothing at all to a gaping […]
By Stefanie Eschenbacher 23 February 2022 (Reuters) – It never gets completely dark in Colonia El Carmen, home to Mexico’s largest natural gas processing center, in the poor southern state of Chiapas. After sunset, a red glare emanates from flares dotted around the Cactus gas processing center, run by state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). […]
By Claire Goforth 14 February 2022 (Daily Dot) – A member of a group that trolled trucker convoy protests by spamming them with a gay porn song infiltrated and took over a private chat protesters used to communicate and strategize. In recent weeks, truckers and people sympathetic to them have protested Canada’s requirements for truckers […]
By Nigel Chiwaya 4 February 2022 (NBC News) – More than 900,000 people have died in the United States from Covid-19 as of Friday, according to NBC News’ tally, and data shows that states with low vaccination rates have had the biggest share of deaths over the past six weeks. The country has recorded 100,000 […]
2 February 2022 (National Butterfly Center) – We regret to announce that the National Butterfly Center will be closed to the public—both members and visitors—for the immediate future. This difficult decision was made Tuesday evening, 1 February 2022, by the board of directors of the North American Butterfly Association, in the wake of recent events targeting the center. […]
By Christi Carrasstaff 6 January 2022 (Los Angeles Times) – Trevor Noah and The Daily Show are commemorating the Jan. 6 insurrection in their own special way. On Thursday, the hit Comedy Central program erected a series of “monuments” holding former President Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Fox News pundit Tucker […]
By George Monbiot 4 January 2022 (The Guardian) – No wonder journalists have slated it. They’ve produced a hundred excuses not to watch the climate breakdown satire, Don’t Look Up: it’s “blunt”, it’s “shrill”, it’s “smug”. But they will not name the real problem: it’s about them. The movie is, in my view, a powerful […]
By Andrew Feinberg 4 January 2022 WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Independent) – Allies of former president Donald Trump planned a campaign of harassment and intimidation against election officials and “weak” Republicans that was to culminate in what would become the worst attack on the US Capitol since the Burning of Washington in 1814, according to new […]
By Alexandra Villarreal 3 January 2022 (The Guardian) – Covid-19 cases in Florida have risen by 948% in just two weeks, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant drives a huge wave of infections and hospitalizations across the US. Even as Dr Anthony Fauci – Joe Biden’s top medical adviser – cautioned the public to look at hospitalizations and […]