Today's Liberal News

There’s Nothing Quite Like the Wrath of Losing Your Fantasy League

At first, Damon DuBois’s fantasy-football league kept the punishment for the last-place finisher fairly tame. The loser would have to let the champion select their team name for the following year, take care of the housekeeping at the next draft, or, at worst, sport an I suck at fantasy football license plate all off-season. Nothing crazy.But by the final weeks of each season, league members already eliminated from playoff contention were checking out. DuBois wanted to raise the stakes.

After the Queen, What Is Britain?

It wasn’t exactly a shock. The ancient and beloved Queen, who had reigned much longer than most of her subjects had lived, was 96 and visibly failing. Leaning on a stick, she managed a smile last week as she invited Liz Truss, Britain’s new prime minister, to form a government. And within 48 hours, she was dead.A huge and complex contraption of official mourning, rehearsed to exhaustion over the past 15 years, lurched into action. Public events were canceled.

Why the Russian Military Brutalizes Ukraine

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.War is always a brutal business, but why is the Russian military so determined to inflict civilian casualties on neighboring Ukraine? I talked with a fellow Russia expert.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

“Attack Philanthropy”: Right-Wing Billionaire Fueled Climate Denial & Conservative Judges, Schools

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.

Famine by October? Somalia & East Africa Face Humanitarian Crisis Amid Climate Change, Ukraine War

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.

Workers across industries are demanding abortion protections from their employers

This article was originally published at Prism

After major corporations including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft announced plans to provide abortion-related travel benefits for full-time employees, workers across industries are fighting to make sure those benefits are provided to everyone and that the corporations take their investments out of the pockets of anti-abortion politicians.

On Aug.

Minor League Baseball players seek to unionize, this week in the war on workers

While a few baseball players make headline-grabbing amounts of money, 40% of MLB players make the league minimum of $570,000 during careers that average just four years, and during which many spend significant chunks of time in the minor leagues, Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier reported earlier in the year,L during the MLB’s lockout of players. And in the minor leagues? Most players earn less than $14,000 per season.

Now, minor league players are moving to unionize.

Ukraine Update: Can we get a Donbas uprising or surrender?

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Reports continue to stream in of confirmed and rumors Ukrainian advances. In Mark Sumner’s last update, he gave up trying to post an accurate map. There isn’t one that can keep up with Ukraine’s shockingly fast rate of advance. 

Tomorrow, Sunday, I’ll make an effort to collate advances.

Connect! Unite! Act! When does profit become avarice?

Connect! Unite! Act! is a weekly series encouraging the creation of face-to-face networks in each congressional district. Groups meet to socialize, support candidates, get out the vote, and engage in other local political actions that help our progressive movement grow and exert maximum influence on the powers that be. Visit us every week to see how you can get involved!

Money.

Disney+’s Pinocchio Is a Zombie

Robert Zemeckis has always been a director fascinated by avant-garde technology. His biggest films of the ’80s and ’90s—Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Back to the Future, Forrest Gump—were all revolutionary in their use of visual effects and CGI. In the 2000s, he dove into the nascent field of motion capture to produce the animated movies The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol.

I Wish My Friend Could Have Read Her Own Obituary

I wish my friend Anne Garrels could have lived just a few days longer. She died early last Wednesday, but if she’d held on a few more hours, I like to imagine that she would have been able to enjoy (even while pretending to dismiss) the torrent of admiration from colleagues and listeners for her work as a foreign correspondent with National Public Radio. I wish she’d been able to read the glowing obituary that The New York Times had prepared for her.