Новости за 16.04.2021

When the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine was temporarily paused after six people got blood clots postvaccination, one line of response was frustration that six out of around seven million people could prompt what seemed an extreme intervention. The Food and Drug Administration emphasized that the measure was taken in part because administering a typical treatment for blood clots had adverse effects with the six cases seen postvaccine—a type of clot called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis—and... Читать дальше...

On Thursday, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources held a hearing to address an issue that’s been plaguing communities from West Virginia to New Mexico for decades: abandoned and orphaned gas and oil wells. While the terminology varies state to state, to keep things simple, an abandoned well is one that is no longer operational but is still owned by a functioning company; an orphaned well is one whose owner has since disappeared, often due to bankruptcy, transferring the responsibility for the well to the state government. Читать дальше...

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal published a remarkable editorial framed as a breakup letter with corporate America. “We have supported big business, including Amazon and Exxon, against the depredations of big government,” it reads. “We will again when warranted. But we’re under no illusions that big business is a reliable friend of capitalism.”

Andrew Yang was, briefly, a corporate attorney, then an executive at a test preparation company, then the founder of a nonprofit that encourages entrepreneurship. (It has a mixed record.) He ran for president in 2020, more or less as the Reddit Candidate, embracing memes and borrowing some of his policy agenda from the tech world. His signature proposal was a Universal Basic Income, and he gained an enthusiastic following in part by appearing on podcasts popular among highly online young men.

Raoul Peck’s 2014 drama Murder in Pacot is a sweaty, outdoor masterpiece. Set amid the ruins of a stylish, modern home in the chaotic days after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the couple who own it endure a Beckettian reversal of fortune. Played by the graceful Ayọ and Claire Denis favorite Alex Descas, they are forced to rent out the remains of their house to a creepy white aid worker, while they live in an unglazed shed and their clothing turns to rags. When the tenant brings home a flirtatious young stranger... Читать дальше...

It is very likely that no work of popular history has ever informed an American president’s actions in a crisis as much as The Guns of August did in the fall of 1962. Published that spring, Barbara W. Tuchman’s account of the outbreak of World War I made a lasting impression on John F. Kennedy. “In reading the history of past wars and how they began,” he wrote to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in July 1962, “we cannot help but be impressed how frequently the failure of communication, misunderstanding... Читать дальше...

A few weeks ago, I learned I’d qualified for a Covid vaccine. I began devoting my days to shot chasing. I joined local vaccine-hunting groups on Facebook, where members reported driving all over the state to get their jab, and I pre-registered for state-run mass vaccination sites. A week later, I received a text message from the preregistration service: Was I available that Saturday? Hell yes. I happily drove for an hour to a drive-in site.

“The good thing about Science,” TV science evangelist and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted in 2013, “is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” Protesters at the “March for Science” used versions of the phrase to rebuke a presidency that denied climate change and, later, suggested that injecting bleach might cure coronavirus. Some of their signs proclaimed WE <3 EXPERTS! Now, in the first months of the Biden presidency, liberals are once again cheering an administration that “believes in science.”

Or... Читать дальше...