Новости за 08.09.2020

Donald Trump has figured out the One Weird Trick to winning the 2020 election: a working vaccine, announced just in time for the election and teased throughout the campaign. Having failed to control the pandemic, institute an adequate testing regime, provide enough economic support to keep people home, or save the lives of vulnerable Americans in places like nursing homes, he believes he has hit upon the infinite health cheat code, allowing him to shake off all those catastrophic errors and live to fight another day—or if you prefer... Читать дальше...

Everybody knows Donald Trump is an opportunistic, lying asshole. Hell, that was his defenders’ main point this weekend, when they tried vainly to save the president from Jeffrey Goldberg’s September 3 article in The Atlantic, in which multiple former U.S. officials and senior military officers revealed—anonymously—that Trump in private is the same as Trump in public: a narcissistic twit who lacks a tenth-grader’s understanding of American combat history and thinks the nation’s war dead are “losers” and “suckers.” Trump... Читать дальше...

Since coming down south to be closer to family, I’ve taken many walks around the University of North Carolina’s Greensboro campus, where my father works as a professor of chemistry. I arrived not long before spring classes were moved online and the vast majority of students decamped for home. The spacious campus turned desolate, bicycles locked up everywhere, as though the people who rode them to class had vaporized. For months, little changed, with the exception of a large boulder that sits near... Читать дальше...

In 2015, the winter monsoon season brought torrential rains to Chennai, in southern India. Unprecedented floods followed, and some parts of the city of six million residents experienced floodwaters as high as eight feet. About 130,000 people were evacuated to relief shelters; 347 people died, as well as 3,889 cattle meant to provide sustenance.

I’m always a bit relieved when a tech company’s algorithm seems to fall short of mind reading. It’s somewhat reassuring when a so-called smart ad displays hideous shoes I would never buy just because I once bought a different pair from the same brand, or when Facebook suggests I befriend a good friend’s ex, having determined that he’s in my extended orbit, but lacking the sophistication to comprehend that I dislike him. In an age of unchecked data harvesting, in which corporations have free rein... Читать дальше...

When the pandemic hit and millions of people lost their jobs, my beat as a reporter at Vice swiftly changed to covering unemployment. I spoke to workers—teachers, ride-share drivers, servers—who were dialing unemployment offices hundreds of times a day, desperate for any type of relief. Our team called offices in all 50 states and found only two people actually picked up, illustrating how impossible it was to get help from a real person. I spoke to labor lawyers and policy experts who themselves... Читать дальше...