Новости за 26.08.2021

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its landmark report declaring “code red for humanity” a few weeks ago, everyone freaked out for about 24 hours. Then, they moved on. The document, despite describing the increasingly dire scenarios ahead if humanity doesn’t change course and decarbonize, garnered less than one-quarter of the social media impressions received by the IPCC’s earlier report in 2018, according to Axios. This flash in the pan came days after the Senate passed... Читать дальше...

For 10 days, nine opportunistic House Democrats puffed out their chests and tried to derail not only their party’s agenda, but its best chance of passing a transformative budget in decades. They claimed, again and again, to be driven by conviction. New Jersey Representative Josh Gottheimer told The Washington Post that he and his confederates were “holding strong to our principled beliefs.” Another, Florida Democrat Stephanie Murphy, insisted that she was being “constructive” and was willing to... Читать дальше...

On September 6, the federal government’s enhanced unemployment benefits will end. That’s the $300 (formerly $600) additional weekly boost to unemployment payments, which were also extended to millions of workers previously excluded from accessing unemployment, like freelancers, independent contractors, and gig workers. According to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, this lifeline was “always intended to be temporary.” It is, they wrote in a letter to lawmakers, no... Читать дальше...

On August 1—two months after the Rose Garden announcement of a legislative “framework” for an infrastructure bill dissolved into more protracted negotiations—Democratic and Republican senators pointed to a bipartisan deal as proof positive that “the Senate can work when given the opportunity to do so.”

In the HBO show Girls, there is a scene in which another character says, about Adam Driver’s gargantuan slacker, Adam Sackler, that he kind of looks like “the original man.” Like many of the best jokes, it holds up—Jessa, as played by Jemima Kirke, is right to say that Driver excels at suggesting an alluring version of the stooping figure who appears immediately before modern man in diagrams of evolutionary history, and she is extremely prescient in calling him “original,” since there may be no... Читать дальше...

Attack helicopters, rifles, drones, vehicles, night vision goggles, uniforms—the list of military gear and materiel left behind by U.S. forces is, well, enough to outfit an army. The physical footprint of the American occupation was enormous; it also includes huge amounts of trash. Officials and commentators are rightly worried about the military equipment now making its way into Taliban hands, but this has been an area of concern for months, ever since the U.S. ghosted on its Afghan government allies at Bagram Airfield in July... Читать дальше...

The Biden administration has spent much of August shouting over a chorus of critics who have lambasted the administration about the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden reiterated his intention to steadfastly stick to the August 31 deadline for the withdrawal. However, he also said that he has asked the State Department and the Pentagon to draw up “contingency plans to adjust the timetable should that become necessary.”