Новости за 29.06.2021

In the past month, we’ve seen a second wave of interest in the theory that the Covid-19 pandemic began with a lab leak. Last spring, the media accurately reported the scientific consensus that Covid (also known as SARS CoV-2) is a natural virus that probably evolved much the same way as the last two deadly human coronaviruses, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-COV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-COV): namely, from bats, probably by way of an intermediate species like a raccoon dog, a ferret badger, or even a feral cat. Читать дальше...

It’s hard to think of an issue that’s inspired broader center-left consensus than the Republican threat to the right to vote. Jacobin informs us that “There’s Less Than Two Years to Save American Democracy.” A piece in The Atlantic keeping us to a tighter schedule says we’ve already arrived at the “Last Chance to Save Democracy.” “American democracy,” CNN concurred in early June, “is about to show if it can save itself.” I myself called our political moment “Democracy’s Moment of Reckoning” not long ago. Читать дальше...

Amid the efforts to reunify the migrant families that were separated by President Donald Trump’s notorious zero tolerance policy, one question has consistently hovered in the background like an uninvited guest: Why can’t we just give these families permanent status? After a long period of kicking the can down the road, we have arrived at the moment when the search for an answer has become urgent, if not acute.

1. Trying to remember the dream

When we wake up on a certain morning, and we know that we just had a long, strange, complicated dream, and we want to remember it, we try to grab onto a few specific elements that somehow float up toward us. For me, looking back with very little hindsight at the swirling weirdness of four years under the leadership of Donald Trump, one of the odd elements that floats to the surface of my mind is a particular group of people who might seem to have very little to do with Trump. Читать дальше...

If you tried removing from Hollywood history any film that portrayed or otherwise depended on selling sex, there might not be a whole lot left. But the framing is all; it helps, when using sex for entertainment, to wrap a bit of critique around it. In my favorite Barbara Stanwyck vehicle, Baby Face (1933), which for 70 years after its initial release was accessible only in censored form, the protagonist, Lily Powers, pimped out by her father since her early teens to the patrons of his small-town speakeasy... Читать дальше...