This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week, a person who came of age in the online era tweeted this question: “Literally BAFFLED as to how people found love before dating sites and social media.
Nothing is less fun than a fun fact. The mandate to share one about yourself, typically posed as an icebreaker in schools, offices, and other formal settings, is deeply constraining. The form demands a tidbit that’s honest without being overly revealing, interesting but never indecent, unique but not weird. Within such parameters, it’s virtually impossible not to come off as either hopelessly boring or a complete fool.
We look at how corporate involvement in Jackson, Mississippi’s infrastructure helped set the stage for its water crisis, as tens of thousands of residents of the majority-Black city remain under a boil water advisory. The main water treatment plant was damaged after a flood in late August, and while water pressure has been restored to most homes, viral videos show undrinkable brown liquid coming out of many taps.
Just after midnight on New Year’s Day of 2021, Newark police officer Rod Simpkins shot 39-year-old Carl Dorsey dead. Simpkins was in an unmarked police minivan and in plainclothes when he arrived at the scene after reportedly hearing gunshots. Within seconds of exiting his car, Simpkins fired his gun at Dorsey. It is unclear if he announced himself as a police officer.
The death of Queen Elizabeth II has focused global attention on the British royal family and renewed criticism of the monarchy both inside the U.K. and abroad, especially among peoples colonized by Britain.
The state efforts are a direct threat to abortion-rights advocates and other liberal groups’ efforts to bypass governors and legislatures and take issues directly to voters.
Chief Justice Bridget McCormack in her ruling blasted Republican officials who argued spacing and formatting errors on the text canvassers presented to voters rendered the entire effort invalid.
Abortion ranked fourth with 44 percent of registered voters saying it is “extremely important.” Guns ranked third with 46 percent.
The White House this week said that future national strategies to bolster Covid-19 immunity will fall in line with the annual flu campaign.
Absent more guidance from the government, physicians are sharing ideas for treating the mysterious condition.
The plan touted by the U.S. Treasury secretary aims to diminish the Kremlin’s revenue while preserving the global oil supply.
“Jerome Powell’s rhetoric is dangerous, and a Fed-manufactured recession is not inevitable — it’s a policy choice,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.
The housing market has cooled so much as the Fed withdraws its support for the economy that some analysts say it may be in a slump.
In a closely watched speech, the Fed chair foreshadowed further interest rate increases and warned that rates might need to stay high for some time to kill price spikes.
The Federal Reserve chair needs to convince markets he means business when he addresses the landmark conference of economists on Friday.
Climate activists from as far away as Alaska, Indigenous peoples and Appalachians rallied in Washington, D.C., Thursday against the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
We host a roundtable on the life and legacy of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, who died Thursday at the age of 96. She was the country’s longest-reigning monarch, serving for 70 years and presiding over the end of the British Empire. Her death set off a period of national mourning in the U.K. and has thrown the future of the monarchy into doubt.
New revelations about the secretive right-wing billionaire Barre Seid, who donated $1.6 billion to a conservative nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, known as Donald Trump’s “Supreme Court whisperer,” show he has also used his massive fortune to undermine climate science, fight Medicaid expansion and remake the higher education system in a conservative mold.
We look at the devastating effects of climate change and global inequity in East Africa, and how many countries face drought and a looming famine, with guests in Mogadishu, Somalia, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “The current unprecedented drought, that is a result of four consecutive failed rainy seasons, with the fifth and the sixth projected to also be below average, is causing a huge food insecurity,” says Adam Abdelmoula, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
This story contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 4 of House of the Dragon.Like a court musician ordered to strum a princess’s favorite tunes under a Weirwood tree, HBO’s House of the Dragon knows how to play all the hits that satisfy Game of Thrones fans. The small-council meetings crackle with passive-aggressive tension. The sets look eye-popping, the dragons only more so. The battle sequences appear to spill enough blood to fill the Narrow Sea.
This article was originally published at Prism.
In 2013, Marilyn Reyes was in a peer program run by New York Harm Reduction Educators when she first learned about VOCAL-NY, a New York-based grassroots group mobilizing people directly impacted by HIV/AIDS, mass incarceration, the war on drugs, and homelessness.
Russia spent months building up the location of Kozacha Lopan, north of the city of Kharkiv. When Ukraine first began a counteroffensive in the area, back in April, Russia made protection of Kozacha Lopan a priority. It was seen as the gateway to the E105 highway crossing, the largest and most active border crossing between Russia and Ukraine.
We can be reasonably certain that Donald Trump was selling highly classified nuclear secrets to our enemies—because they’re worth a lot of money and Trump has the morals of a ShopRite head cheese.
Welcome to Nuts & Bolts. A few times a year, this series looks beyond campaigns and to the makeup of the party itself, the rules, resolutions, proposals and general outlook that shape what the party wants to be for the future. The Democratic Party, like everything in our life, will change and grow as our understanding and our society change and grows. It is a healthy and important part of making sure that we stay in tune with the voters we need every November.
A quick update to get the news up, I’ll flesh this out throughout the day.
Russians confirm they are leaving the whole of Kharkiv Oblast. That’s right, now leave a few more. pic.twitter.com/bbyhNYBi8M— Dmitri (@wartranslated) September 11, 2022
HIMARS caught a retreating Russian unit:
Here is the what remains of the Russian military column. pic.twitter.
President Joe Biden has marked the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, taking part in a somber wreath-laying ceremony held at the Pentagon under a steady rain.
Over the past six days, Ukraine’s armed forces have broken through the Russian lines in the northeastern corner of the country, swept eastward, and liberated town after town in what had been occupied territory. First Balakliya, then Kupyansk, then Izium, a city that sits on major supply routes. These names won’t mean much to a foreign audience, but they are places that have been beyond reach, impossible for Ukrainians to contact for months. Now they have fallen in hours.
“I think that we have to admit that there are attacks from within … and we need to take it seriously,” she said.
“Tell me when it happened before,” Franken asked Alice Stewart after she made a claim about filling Supreme Court vacancies in election years.
We accept as self-evident that each of us is free to think and form our own opinions, that we have autonomous selves. Western societies and institutions are founded on this spirit of individual freedom and self-determination. But it is becoming clear that this very core of Western democratic culture is being undermined—be it by Russia’s cyber interference in elections or the widespread dissemination of fake news on social media.