Новости за 13.05.2020

It’s not certain that we’ll ever get a vaccine for the coronavirus, let alone that one will be available by January, as Anthony Fauci has suggested as a hopeful possibility. As Alexander Zaitchik wrote for The New Republic, the pharmaceutical industry’s greed has devastated America’s ability to produce new vaccines. In fact, he argues, the manufacturing of anything that might not be profitable may be no longer within the industry’s grasp. Our unique dedication to letting the market decimate whatever... Читать дальше...

Even as the number of documented cases declines, New York City remains the hot spot of the coronavirus crisis in the United States. It’s also, in the months since the pandemic first took hold here, become a case study in how a government’s response will only ever be as good or as just as the people in charge of organizing it. There is no emergency, it seems, that can knock a certain kind of political figure off whatever ideological autopilot they’ve been running on.  

Just two months into the United States government’s historic multi-trillion dollar response to the damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, leading congressional Republicans have lost their appetite for deficit-financed spending. On Tuesday, House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi rolled out another enormous rescue package, a $3 trillion proposal that includes aid to state and local governments, more direct cash payments to households as well as expanded unemployment insurance, SNAP and vote by mail funding. Читать дальше...

For millions of newly remote workers in the United States, doing your job in this pandemic now involves looking presentable on camera, in a relatively pleasing setting at home. With bedrooms and basements doubling as offices, the line between work and life has more deeply fractured, maybe permanently. Even when we aren’t strictly working we are just doing different things in the same place with the same technology. I can “log off” from an editorial meeting on Google Hangout to make dinner while... Читать дальше...

If there was one word that defined the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on Tuesday, it was “burden.” President Donald Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department alike urged the justices to reject a batch of subpoenas from the House of Representatives and Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance Jr. which seek to pry loose Trump’s financial records and tax returns. The arguments covered a wide swath of constitutional territory, including the scope of legislative and executive powers and the presidency’s relationship with the states. Читать дальше...

Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that his state will partner with the Gates Foundation to “reimagine education.” “The old model of everybody goes and sits in a classroom, and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class, and you do that all across the city, all across the state; all these buildings, all these physical classrooms; why, with all the technology you have?” he asked at the briefing. It was a revealing, troubling question.

In 1955, Aldous Huxley, author and early champion of the psychedelic experience, returned to reality after the effects of 400 milligrams of mescaline had settled, brimming with, “the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact.” Recounting the experience to Dr. Humphry Osmond, the English-Canadian psychiatrist who ran a psychedelic research laboratory out of Saskatchewan’s Weyburn Mental Hospital, Huxley almost reflexively backpedaled—like... Читать дальше...

While the country is facing a daily Covid-19 death toll in the thousands, and the coronavirus outbreak snakes its way inside the executive branch, Congress is currently considering a vast expansion of the Justice Department’s power over online platforms and the people who use them. Should these measures pass, Americans’ web searching and browsing histories could be collected by the FBI without a warrant. But that’s just the pre-eminent concern. Should Congress grant the DOJ all the power they are seeking... Читать дальше...