Growth in U.S. economic output for ten generations. This graph shows how much inflation-adjusted gross domestic product per person grew during each generation's first fifteen years in the workforce, starting at age 18, averaged across all the birth years within each generation. Data are adjusted for population. Graphic: The Washington Post

Millennials are the unluckiest generation in U.S. history – “It’s not just that it’s a bad recession, and that it’s hitting young people more, but that it’s hitting people who have already been hit”

By Andrew Van Dam 27 March 2020 (The Washington Post) – After accounting for the present crisis, the average millennial has experienced slower economic growth since entering the workforce than any other generation in U.S. history. Millennials will bear these economic scars over the rest of their lives, in the form of lower earnings, lower […]

An aerial view of floodwaters flowing from the Tittabawassee River into the lower part of downtown Midland on 20 May 2020 in Midland, Michigan. Thousands of residents have been ordered to evacuate after two dams in Sanford and Edenville collapsed causing water from the Tittabawassee River to flood nearby communities. Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images

Two Michigan dams breached, thousands evacuated amid “devastating” record flooding – “It’s hard to believe that we’re in the midst of a 100-year crisis – a global pandemic – and a flooding event that looks to be the worst in 500 years”

By Elisha Fieldstadt and Doha Madani21 May 2020 (NBC News) – About 11,000 people in central Michigan were told to evacuate their homes after rapidly rising water overwhelmed dams, creating what the National Weather Service called a “life-threatening situation.” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said the destruction in Midland County caused by the failures of the Edenville […]

Monthly job gains or losses in the U.S., from 1939 to 30 April 2020. Data: U.S. Labor Department. Graphic: The Washington Post

U.S. unemployment rate soars to 14.7 percent, the worst since the Great Depression – “This is a catastrophe. When things go over a cliff, they usually they don’t recover quickly.”

By Heather Long 8 May 2020 (The Washington Post) – The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression, as most businesses shut down or severely curtailed operations to fight the deadly coronavirus. The jobless rate was pushed higher because 20.5 million people lost their jobs last […]

Trump, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Kushner as Immortan Joe and henchmen from “Mad Max: Fury Road”. “But nowhere has our policy been more evident than backward countries and failed states. Like the U.S. Here, as thousands of people died and got buried in mass graves, Il Duce left you to fight each other over medical equipment by entrusting it to his little shit-goblin-in-law.” Photo: The Juice Media

Honest Government Ad: Pandemic Update – “Scientists have been warning us for decades to prepare for this crisis. Did we? Of course not.”

30 April 2020 (The Juice Media) – The Government has made an ad about its response to the pandemic, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative. Scientists have been warning us for decades to prepare for this crisis. Did we? Of course not. The Machine said there was no profit in preventing future crises. So instead, […]

Aerial view of the Clinical Research Center of the National Institutes of Health. Photo: NIH

Trump cuts U.S. research on bat-human virus transmission over China ties

By Sarah Owermohle 27 April 2020 (Politico) – The Trump administration abruptly cut off funding for a project studying how coronaviruses spread from bats to people after reports linked the work to a lab in Wuhan, China, at the center of conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins. The National Institutes of Health on Friday […]

View of air pollution in Moscow, Russia on 6 August 2010 and 20 April 2020. Photo: Natalia Kolesnikova / Niklas Halle'n / AFP / Getty Images

Before-and-after photos show dramatic decline in air pollution around the world during coronavirus lockdown

By Sophie Lewis 22 April 2020 (CBS News) – As humans continue to stay indoors under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Earth is slowly healing. Wild animals have taken to roaming the streets, clear waters have returned to the Venice canals and the world is literally shaking less.  With billions of people quarantined and businesses closed, travel has all but […]

A healthcare worker stands in a crosswalk to block hundreds of pro-death pro-Covid protesters in Denver, on 19 April 2020. Photo: Alyson McClaran / Reuters

Are we finally seeing science denialism for the death wish it is? “Denying the severity of COVID-19 is tantamount to denying the worth of the thousands who have died and the thousands more who will”

By Heather Houser 16 April 2020 (the Austin Statesman) – Every day it seems we read headlines that connect science denialism to cruel indifference and death. Just recently, when talking about the initial COVID-19 response, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asserted that ”[Trump’s] denial at the beginning was deadly.” In Arizona, some residents called […]

Protesters shout outside the Ohio Statehouse Atrium where reporters listen during state officials’ coronavirus update Monday, 13 April 2020. About 100 demonstrators assembled outside the building, upset that the state remains under a stay-at-home order and that non-essential businesses remain closed. Photo: Joshua A. Bickel / Dispatch

Attacks on press credibility endanger U.S. democracy and global press freedom

WASHINGTON, D.C., 16 April 2020 (CPJ) – When President Donald J. Trump initially minimized the danger of the COVID-19 virus in the first two months of 2020, he attacked news media reporting about the growing threat and his administration’s slow response. “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make […]

Trump during a daily press briefing on the coronavirus crisis, 10 April 2020. An attack ad for Donald Trump's campaign for reelection showed Gary Locke, a former governor of Washington state and U.S. ambassador to China, as a Chinese official. Photo: Reuters

Masha Gessen: We won’t know the exact moment when democracy dies – “Autocracy creeps in, staking one claim after another, but it does not firmly and finally announce its own arrival”

By Masha Gessen 16 April 2020 (The New Yorker) – In the early days of the Trump Presidency, there was a lot of speculation about when, if, and how we would pass the point of no return, when we would know that American democracy had been destroyed. That conversation faded after a while, drowned out by the […]

Aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burning after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, off the southeast tip of Louisiana, 21 April 2010. Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

10 years after BP spill: Oil drilled deeper; rules relaxed – “I’m concerned that in the industry, the lessons aren’t fully learned — that we’re tending to backslide”

By Kevin Mcgill and Matthew Brown 18 April 2020 NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters, where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Industry leaders and […]

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