“Despite being widely seen as mild, the omicron coronavirus variant has been brutal on children and adolescents—particularly babies and toddlers, who are still ineligible for vaccination,” Beth Mole writes.
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Megadrought in Southwest North America worst in 1,200 years
Megadrought in Southwest North America worst in 1,200 years “The extreme heat and dry conditions of the past few years pushed what was already an
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‘Highly suspect’: Unusual clusters of Miami voters switched to Republican, data show
“According to the Miami Herald’s tally, 5,428 people’s party affiliation changed between the October and January registration files. Many of the changes were concentrated in multi-family residential buildings, often low-income housing, raising questions about whether the changes are part of a targeted effort,” reporters Bianca Padró Ocasio and Claudia Chacin write.
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SNL offers commentary on Russian disinformation in cold open
Watch highlights from the twelfth episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Willem Dafoe, with Katy Perry as the musical guest, including the Russian disinformation cold open.
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Putin is making NATO stronger, whether he starts a war in Ukraine or not
“The Russian leader may have thought NATO was in disarray and the U.S. in retreat, but we’ve already seen it’s quite the opposite,” David Rothkopf writes in a piece for The Daily Beast.
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SNL rips Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Candace Owens; Will Forte brings back MacGruber to mock antivaxers
Watch highlights from the eleventh episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by SNL alum Will Forte, with Måneskin as the musical guest, including the cold open mocking Fox’s Laura Ingraham, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Candace Owens.
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SNL returns; cold open uses a Joe Biden press conference to deliver political and social commentary
Watch highlights from the tenth episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Ariana DeBose, with Bleachers as the musical guest.
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NASA’s Webb Telescope reaches major milestone as mirror unfolds
“The two wings of Webb’s primary mirror had been folded to fit inside the nose cone of an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket prior to launch. After more than a week of other critical spacecraft deployments, the Webb team began remotely unfolding the hexagonal segments of the primary mirror, the largest ever launched into space,” NASA said in a news release.
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Donald Trump is hiding his January 6th records to avoid “prison time,” says former National Archivist
“Given how frantic they are… there are things in those records that are going to make real trouble. I’m talking about prison time,” said former national archivist John W. Carlin, in remarks reported by The Daily Beast.
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A year after the January 6 insurrection, how does America’s crisis end?
A year after the January 6 insurrection, how does America’s crisis end? Vox’s Zack Beauchamp says he has spent the past few months digging into
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We can’t fix distracted driving, but we can fix street design
“Once we’re inside our cars, we enter our own little bubbles and anything that prevents us from getting to where we want to go in the rushed time we need to get there becomes an inconvenience,” writes D.C.-based freelance writer Matthew Koehler.
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The dirty secret of America’s clean dishes
“The world’s largest chemical maker, BASF, produces ingredients for America’s most popular products, from soaps to surface cleaners to dishwasher detergent. Emissions from their U.S. plants elevate cancer risks for an estimated 1.5 million people,” ProPublica reports.
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President Biden addresses the nation to offer an update on combating COVID-19 and the omicron variant
The President spoke on December 21st, 2021, from the East Room of the White House to lay out what the administration is doing to fight COVID-19 and the omicron variant.
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Boris Johnson, facing omicron and scandal, is in trouble
“A brinkman seeing how far he can go, he is too preoccupied with his survival,” writes Tanya Gold in a guest essay for The New York Times.
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Kate McKinnon returns to SNL, shares lots of time onscreen with Billie Eilish
Watch highlights from the eighth episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Billie Eilish, who also performed as the musical guest, including the cold open with Kate McKinnon.
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Buy Nothing brings neighborhoods together with no cost goods
“What started in 2013 as a hyperlocal network of ‘circular gift economies’ in Bainbridge Island, Washington, has ballooned into a constellation of Buy Nothing groups with 4.3 million members in 44 countries,” Taylor Telford reports. “Members can request or offer any item or service as long as it’s legal; however buying, selling and bartering are prohibited.”
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The crypto-congressional complex
“Markets don’t exist in nature. They’re created and enforced by governments,” Robert Reich points out, echoing what George Lakoff has previously written about all markets being constructed for someone’s benefit.
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In Russia, the pandemic is beating Putin
“A deadly virus can’t be ignored, jailed, exiled or co-opted — nor can it be locked down without great economic cost. That puts President Vladimir Putin of Russia in a bind. The pandemic, perhaps his hardiest foe to date, has starkly revealed the limits of his power,” writes Alexey Kovalev, the investigations editor at Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet.
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A century of tragedy: How the car and gas industry knew about the health risks of leaded fuel but sold it for one hundred years anyway
For decades, most gas sold in the U.S. contained a lead additive. Historian Bill Kovarik sees this anniversary as a time to reflect on the role of public health advocates and environmental journalists in preventing profit-driven tragedy.
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The media has given Republicans a free pass on assaulting democracy
“The media’s fixation with false equivalency between the two political parties and fear of criticism from the right has led to distorted coverage and misleading characterizations of the assault on democracy,” Jennifer Rubin writes.
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This is what the total solar eclipse only visible from Antarctica looked like
The weather cooperated, allowing NASA to offer a livestream of the eclipse courtesy of the Theo Boris and Christian Lockwood of the JM Pasachoff Antarctic Expedition.
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