Today's Liberal News

Nine Pandemic Words That Almost No One Gets Right

One of the best and toughest parts of being a science writer is acting as a kind of jargon liaison. Weird, obscure, aggressively multisyllabic words appear in scientific discourse; I, wielding nothing but a Google Doc, a cellphone, and the Powers of the Internet™, wrest these terms from their academic hidey-holes and try to pin them down with some endearing yet accurate analogy.

The People Who Make Your Favorite Movies and Shows Are Fed Up

Eighteen-hour workdays with no lunch breaks. Car accidents caused by sleep deprivation. A crew member who returned to set the day after a miscarriage.For months, members of a union representing more than 150,000 behind-the-scenes workers in the entertainment industry have shared hundreds of these stories on social media—anonymous testimonies about the grueling conditions on TV and film sets.

Ted Lasso Is No Superhero

This article contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale of Ted Lasso.In an episode halfway through the new season of Ted Lasso, Apple’s sweet and strange series about an optimistic American coach thrown into the cesspool of British soccer, the three AFC Richmond fans who compose the show’s dim-witted Greek chorus get ready to watch the FA Cup quarterfinal in a pub. “I swear, if we actually win this match, I will burn this pub to the ground,” one boasts.

The Atlantic Daily: The Big Wait

It’s not just toilet paper anymore. Pandemic pressure on the global supply chain is causing disruptions and shortages of a diverse assortment of items, such as books, furniture, wood, and COVID tests.“Americans are settling into a new phase of the pandemic economy,” my colleague Derek Thompson writes. “This is the Everything Shortage.”
The global supply chain is a disaster. And not just one part of it, either.

The Great Novel of the Internet Was Published in 1925

Adam Maida / The Atlantic
In September, The Wall Street Journal published a report, based on leaked documents, describing Facebook’s awareness of the harmful effects one of its platforms was having on young people. “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the company’s internal research revealed. “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.

Family of Henrietta Lacks Files Lawsuit over Use of Stolen Cells, Lambasts Racist Medical System

The family of Henrietta Lacks has filed a lawsuit against biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific for making billions in profit from the “HeLa” cell line. Henrietta Lacks was an African American patient at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Doctors kept her tissue samples without her consent for experimental studies while treating her for cervical cancer in 1951.

Filipina Journalist Maria Ressa Wins Nobel Peace Prize After Facing Years of Threats & Arrests

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday morning to Filipina journalist Maria Ressa and Russian newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov for their work to “safeguard freedom of expression.” Ressa has repeatedly been arrested by the government of Rodrigo Duterte for the groundbreaking work of her news site Rappler, which has exposed Duterte’s deadly war on drugs that has killed tens of thousands.

“Becoming Abolitionists”: Derecka Purnell on Why Police Reform Is Not Enough to Protect Black Lives

Derecka Purnell draws from her experience as a human rights lawyer in her new book, published this month, “Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom,” to argue that police reform is an inadequate compromise to calls for abolition. Since the murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville in 2020, many states have passed laws aimed at reforming police, but congressional talks at the federal level have broken down.

News Roundup: Senate report details Trump’s efforts to nullify election; more debt chaos

In the news today: Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced yesterday that his party will not stand in the way of postponing the current debt ceiling fight until December. Finding at least nine other Republicans willing to go along with that announcement, however, proved a challenge, and a filibuster scuttling the deal was avoided today by only the narrowest of margins.

McConnell scrapes together enough votes to avoid blowing up economy, debt ceiling filibuster stopped

Republicans were in total disarray Thursday after leader Mitch McConnell blinked and decided to allow a floor vote on saving the country from economic disaster by raising the debt limit. McConnell made that decision but apparently didn’t do a vote count beforehand. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer scheduled the vote for 7:30 p.m. ET Thursday. Within an hour of the vote, it’s not at all clear that McConnell can pull it off.

Texas senator tries to pin debt debacle on Democrats, gets Lone Star-sized helping of humble pie

The best thing you can say about  John Cornyn is that he’s the least—or rather less—revolting U.S. senator from Texas. That’s not saying much, of course. After all, even if the senior senator from the Lone Star State were an intestinal fluke who emerged fortnightly to sing Captain & Tennille B-sides during official state dinners, he still wouldn’t be as revolting as Ted “Probably Not the Zodiac Killer” Cruz.

Tell-all book paints Sen. Lindsey Graham as a ‘freeloader’ who would ‘stuff his face’ with food

On Tuesday, former White House press secretary and top Trump aide Stephanie Grisham released her tell-all book, something something something blah blah blah. Early leaks from the book gave a very believable account of the insecurities, the arrogance, the pettiness, and the incompetence that emanated from the Trump administration. Grisham is an unreliable narrator but so is every single person she talks about.