Новости за 06.10.2020

Last week, Melania Trump managed to avert a potential P.R. disaster by contracting Covid-19. On Thursday, CNN released audio secretly recorded by Melania’s former friend and adviser Stephanie Wolkoff, in which the first lady complained about her treatment by the media; claimed that immigrant children lied in order to gain asylum; and griped, maybe fairly, that decorating the White House for Christmas was bullshit. The story received some early pickup but was soon swallowed by the news that the... Читать дальше...

The nation surely breathed a sigh of relief last night, just as the president inhaled some very normal, deep, refreshing breaths, on the balcony of the White House, in front of television cameras—just a completely candid demonstration of perfect health. Donald Trump returned to the White House from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, because he was feeling “better than [he] did 20 years ago,” according to the man himself. The road ahead may not be certain for the president: His doctor says that... Читать дальше...

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that multinational oil company ExxonMobil has recently planned to increase its carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent by 2025 while doubling its earnings. According to internal documents obtained by Bloomberg reporters, the company’s seven-year, $217 billion investment plan would see it expand its core oil and gas business and keep its investments in low-carbon fuel and emissions reductions as a sliver of overall spending. That 17 percent projection only accounts for the company’s operations... Читать дальше...

Four years ago, I made the worst prediction of my professional life. No, not that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump—though I was pretty confident of that, too. Instead, I wrote that Bob Dylan would not win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 and, furthermore, that he would never win it—and that if he did I would eat my vinyl copy of Blood on the Tracks. (For the record, I have yet to eat my copy of Blood on the Tracks, though I promise to eat it, for real this time, if Donald Trump wins... Читать дальше...

Samantha Smith first encountered PYBI029 in January 2019 after a farmer traced her tracks in the ash of a recently burned agricultural field on the outskirts of Sakaerat Biosphere Reserve, in Thailand. She treated the snake’s burn injuries with Neosporin and nicknamed her Daenerys, after the fireproof Game of Thrones character. A few weeks later, a veterinarian implanted the newly healed PYBI029 with a radio tracker, making her the fourth Burmese python in Smith’s study group of seven.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has already drawn a substantial amount of scrutiny for her conservative religious beliefs and her potential willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade. An originalist in the mold of her mentor Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett could hamper liberal causes for decades to come. But it’s perhaps underappreciated just how much the conservative religious takeover of the court has long been underway. If Barrett is confirmed, she will join a bench that has already tipped... Читать дальше...

Jim Inhofe might be best known as the dipshit who brought a snowball to the floor of Congress as “proof” that climate change is not real. But the Republican senator from Oklahoma is no fool.

In her newest book, Claudia Rankine takes on the oldest question in politics: How ought we to live together? Just Us completes Rankine’s trilogy of works on race in the United States, following Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric and Citizen: An American Lyric. Published in 2014, a year marred by police killings and sustained protests against police violence, Citizen found a way to describe the psychic violence of being Black in the U.S. Bending the genre of lyric poem just shy of breaking... Читать дальше...

The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin its confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett next week. I am not looking forward to them, and for reasons that have nothing to do with Barrett herself. Supreme Court confirmation hearings as they currently exist are far from a productive use of time for the Senate, the nominee, or the American public. Fifteen years before her own hearings, Justice Elena Kagan described them as “a vapid and hollow charade, in which repetition of platitudes has... Читать дальше...