Новости за 21.12.2022

Earlier this week, The New York Times set off a political bomb after it published a story that pointed out the numerous holes in Congressman-elect George Santos’s résumé. The report illuminated several instances in which Santos appears to have committed fabulism. There’s reason to doubt that he graduated from Baruch College. There’s reason to doubt he worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. There’s reason to question the tax-exempt status of his organization for rescuing animals. And there was reason to question the source of his wealth. Читать дальше...

The IRS did not audit Donald Trump’s taxes until two years into his presidency, despite his adamant claims to the contrary, the House Ways and Means Committee revealed.

There are bigger villains in the world than Elon Musk. While he has a long history of wrecking lives—from the Tesla whistleblower on whom he sicced the police to the janitorial staff whose contract he terminated before the holidays—he has not, like Vladimir Putin, invaded a country simply because he wants it. And there are larger fools too. Crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried lost an even greater portion of his net worth in 2022, all while convincing some ostensibly intelligent pundits that “effective... Читать дальше...

When I was a teenager, I started playing a popular computer game called EverQuest. It was a multiplayer fantasy game where players could create dwarvish knights, elvish wizards, and other genre-appropriate characters and go on adventures. After completing a quest or slaying a monster, you would be rewarded with armor, weapons, or other goods. Most players used these items to advance in the game. Others sold or traded them for what they needed as part of EverQuest’s vibrant internal economy.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States, Judith Butler was at home in Berkeley, California. In the two and half years since, they’ve reflected on the ways it changed daily life. “I had to stop the spontaneity of my own intimate gestures in order to reflect on whether or not I’m imperiling or am imperiled,” they said.

It’s layoff season. For tax purposes, business budgets typically follow the calendar year, so layoffs tend to peak around Christmas. Merry Christmas! Job cuts this year started rising in August and peaked in November, the last month for which data are available, at a level that was 127 percent higher than in October and 417 percent higher than in November 2021.

Although the omnibus package of bills to fund the government expands the number of special immigrant visas to Afghan allies still trapped in Afghanistan, it does not address the plight faced by tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees settled in the United States: They do not currently have a pathway to permanent residency, and their eligibility to remain in the country expires in August 2023.