Новости за 23.05.2022

Almost since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, epidemiologists, policymakers, science journalists, and many more have held onto two general assumptions that give them hope: that eventually enough people might develop immunity to Covid-19 to slow down transmission and that even if Covid doesn’t fade away, it might become a more seasonal illness, like respiratory viruses such as the flu, RSV, and other bugs—even other coronaviruses. But now, as cases rise steeply and summer approaches, Covid is again taking us by surprise. Читать дальше...

Elon Musk threw a fit last week. The proximate cause, this time, was his company Tesla getting booted from the S&P’s “ESG index.” The ESG index features companies deemed to be performing well on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) metrics that range from emissions-reduction plans to racial and gender diversity on corporate boards. As S&P’s Margaret Dorn explained, the downgrade centered mainly on documented instances of racial discrimination at Tesla’s Fremont factories.

There is a certain type of reader who, working her way through Proust, can think only of her own most recent heartbreak. She might be shy and bookish; certainly she is young. This reader might of course just as easily be a sad, literary boy, finding his ex refracted back to him in Goethe or Henry James. Nowhere are such readers easier to find than on college campuses, where heightened romantic sentiment and intellectual discovery are intertwined, and where people still in the process of forming a sense of self can meet... Читать дальше...

If you type “CPAC Budapest” into your search bar, Google auto-fills it to “CPAC Budapest tickets,” which somehow seems grimly appropriate, given that the Trump-era American right is such a relentless shakedown operation. But the ever-present grift isn’t the reason we should pay attention to what just unfolded in Hungary. This event was the American right wing stating as openly as it ever has that fascism is its goal for the United States of America.

A newly-drawn congressional map in New York is roiling Democratic politics in the state and nationwide, as lawmakers have been suddenly pitted against each other in districts that some argue disenfranchise certain voters. The map has far-reaching implications for Democrats’ already Sisyphean task of maintaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives, as it will likely wipe out potential Democratic gains that were balanced against redistricting moves benefiting Republicans in other states.

What the Supreme Court will do after it overturns Roe v. Wade in the next few weeks? Jacky Eubanks, a Trump-endorsed candidate for Michigan’s state Senate, suggested one potential answer in an interview last week: banning birth control.