Новости за 19.05.2021

Most of the attention on the Supreme Court this week focused on the court’s decision to hear a major abortion-rights case this fall. As I noted on Monday, it’s likely that the court’s conservative bloc will use that case to strike a grievous, and perhaps fatal, blow to Roe v. Wade. That news, however, overshadowed a troubling ruling made by the Supreme Court and authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a case involving jury unanimity—one that may also bode poorly for the future of abortion rights... Читать дальше...

John Kerry’s interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday was a masterclass in equivocation. The first-ever Special Presidential Envoy for Climate replied to each of Marr’s clear, direct questions on how the U.S. planned to phase out fossil fuels with vague references to President Biden’s commitment to decarbonization and shifting to renewable energy. Asked whether the U.S. would sign a pledge to stop using coal, he replied “well over time that’s happening anyway.” Asked for a date for closing coal-fired power plants... Читать дальше...

In 1983, the director Mike Nichols was rehearsing Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing on Broadway. The cast included Glenn Close, Jeremy Irons, Christine Baranski, Peter Gallagher, and Cynthia Nixon, then 17 years old. Stoppard had flown over from London for rehearsal. According to Hermione Lee’s magisterial new biography, the playwright had a note for Gallagher. Could his character “be more plangent?” Gallagher, panicked, looked at Nichols, who, according to Lee, said, “Fucked if I know.”

In Minden, Nevada, a cherry-red siren, perched atop the town’s volunteer fire department, sounds every evening at 6 p.m. on the dot. If you listen to town manager J.D. Frisby tell it, the siren is a symbolic gesture of gratitude for Minden’s emergency workers. Other residents consider it a charming dinner bell, signaling the call to home. In reality, though, the siren was, and still is, a warning—an active relic of an early twentieth-century ordinance that ordered Native residents to exit the... Читать дальше...

What atrocities a human being is capable of and the psychic torments she might or might not suffer in consequence are, to a disturbing degree, social questions. In Joshua Oppenheimer’s disorienting 2012 documentary, The Act of Killing, a group of Indonesian gangsters reminisce in fond tones about the mass rape, torture, and murder they committed together in the mid-1960s, reenacting some favorite scenes for the camera. Swaggering, they dress each other up in candy-colored suits and hats like something out of Guys and Dolls... Читать дальше...

While other tech giants have spent the last several years mired in privacy scandals, Apple has charted a different course, branding itself as the juggernaut that cares about your civil liberties. Google and Facebook, whose businesses are built on aggressive and invasive testing on their human subjects, have had to cope with well-publicized data breaches. Apple, meanwhile, has taken a different view; the company even introduced a feature last month that allows user to opt out of the invasive tracking... Читать дальше...