In The News (9)

Why a dawn of technological optimism is breaking The 2010s were marked by pessimism about innovation. That is giving way to hope .......... For much of the past decade the pace of innovation underwhelmed many people—especially those miserable economists. Productivity growth was lacklustre and the most popular new inventions, the smartphone and social media, did not seem to help much. Their malign side-effects, such as the creation of powerful monopolies and the pollution of the public square, became painfully apparent. Promising technologies stalled, including self-driving cars, making Silicon Valley’s evangelists look naive. Security hawks warned that authoritarian China was racing past the West and some gloomy folk warned that the world was finally running out of useful ideas. .................  Today a dawn of technological optimism is breaking. The speed at which covid-19 vaccines have been produced has made scientists household names. Prominent breakthroughs, a tech investment boom and the adoption of digital technologies during the pandemic are combining to raise hopes of a new era of progress: optimists giddily predict a “roaring Twenties”. ..........  The 18th century brought the Industrial Revolution and mechanised factories; the 19th century railways and electricity; the 20th century cars, planes, modern medicine and domestic liberation thanks to washing machines. In the 1970s, though, progress—measured by overall productivity growth—slowed. The economic impact was masked for a while by women piling into the workforce, and a burst of efficiency gains followed the adoption of personal computers in the 1990s. After 2000, though, growth flagged again. ............ Humans are increasingly able to bend biology to their will, whether that is to treat disease, edit genes or to grow meat in a lab. Artificial intelligence is at last displaying impressive progress in a range of contexts. A program created by DeepMind, part of Alphabet, has shown a remarkable ability to predict the shapes of proteins; last summer Openai unveiled gpt-3, the best natural-language algorithm to date; and since October driverless taxis have ferried the public around Phoenix, Arizona. Spectacular falls in the price of renewable energy are giving governments confidence that their green investments will pay off. Even China now promises carbon neutrality by 2060. ............... Such is the market’s optimism about electric vehicles that Tesla’s ceo, Elon Musk, who also runs a rocket firm, is the world’s richest man. ............ The pandemic has also accelerated the adoptions of digital payments, telemedicine and industrial automation ............. Eventually, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics could up-end how almost everything is done. .......... Ensuring that the whole economy harnesses new technologies will require robust antitrust enforcement and looser intellectual-property regimes. ......... The 2020s began with a cry of pain but, with the right policies, the decade could yet roar.

Biden Treasury pick Janet Yellen says additional stimulus and expanded unemployment insurance will provide the 'biggest bang for the buck'   Yellen emphasized the extent of the economic and human devastation the virus has inflicted on the US over the past year and warned of another recession without a set of fiscal policies to address the issues those most impacted by the pandemic face everyday. ......... Her plans align with Biden's $1.9 trillion relief proposal, which calls for bigger benefits for Americans struggling with hunger and $400 weekly federal unemployment benefits. Yellen called for the government to "act big" when it comes to providing stimulus, going along with Biden's $1,400 boost to the $600 stimulus checks.   ........ She will be the first woman to lead the Treasury in the nation's history. 

China builds massive Covid-19 quarantine camp for 4,000 people as outbreak continues  On Tuesday, China reported 103 new confirmed cases and 58 asymptomatic infections, which are counted separately, spread out across four provinces. Hebei province now has a total of 818 active locally transmitted cases, and more than 200 asymptomatic infections, according to the provincial health commission. Last Wednesday, a patient died in Hebei -- the country's first Covid-19 related death in 242 days. The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 88,557, while the official death toll is 4,635. ........ In an effort to contain the outbreak, authorities placed Shijiazhuang under lockdown on January 8, with all 11 million residents barred from leaving the city. ........ In northeastern Jilin province, 102 cases have been linked to a so-called "superspreader," a salesman who traveled from his home province of Heilongjiang.

What a ‘wrecked’ polar vortex means for winter-starved Americans It’s been an easy winter on the East Coast, but that’s not guaranteed to continue ........... Experts now say that although the bout of unsettled wintry weather is delayed, it’s too soon to count it out. ........ surprises can be in store when the polar vortex is weak and wobbly — as is currently the case. ....... The stratospheric polar vortex is a whirlpool of high-altitude cold air that swirls around a low-pressure area near the North Pole. It’s born as a result of polar night, a months-long dark spell that accompanies the dead of winter in the Far North. The lack of sunlight chills the air, jump-starting the gyrating icebox’s spin every winter. It vanishes once spring returns, only to re-form by September or October. ..........  It’s not guaranteed that each polar vortex disruption or stratospheric warming event will yield unusually cold and snowy conditions, given how unique each event is. ......... The ongoing event, which kicked off in early January, has been complex. “Typically, when you get a large disruption, that’s it,” said Judah Cohen, a polar vortex specialist and director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. “[But this time] we got a split, then it recovered; it kind of split again, and now it’s displaced, and it could split a third or fourth time.” ........ One of the lobes has already brought extreme cold to Siberia, where temperatures in Yakutia, in eastern Russia, haven’t climbed above minus-40 in more than a month, according to the Associated Press. Delyankir, in northeastern Russia, dropped to minus-73 degrees Jan. 18. The concentrated cold has been fierce and extreme, and looks to remain in place in eastern Russia through at least early next week. ........ the messy split of the polar vortex may be causing it to play out differently than other years when the vortex was displaced. ........ “While the polar vortex has become very stretched out and wobbly, it has not displaced as strongly southward or split as clearly into two lobes as in other events,” wrote Butler. “[That] means it might not be able to influence the underlying jet stream quite as well.” ............... Signs also point to the vortex remaining unsteady and unstable for the remainder of the season. That bolsters the odds of wintry weather in the northeastern United States .......... it’s just too late in the season to expect the polar vortex to regain its former strength. “We will not get to the cold temperatures in Arctic [stratosphere]; the vortex will stay in a weakened warm state.” .......... “If it becomes disturbed enough, it could help nudge the jet stream south, allowing cold air to spill from Canada into the U.S. But this prediction is for a couple of weeks from now, which is still too far in the future for any guarantees.” .......... His gut tells him late January into February could be interesting. “It’s not over,” Cohen said. “I think it’s just getting started.” 

In The News (8)

Shadows on the Silk Road Finding omens of American decline on a long walk across Asia. ........ toxic polarization, mobocracy and global retreat ......... I have spent the entire Trump administration stepping over the rubble of another once dynamic but collapsed experiment in multilateralism: the Silk Road. ......... the Silk Road, a fabled 2,000-year-old trade nexus connecting the markets and minds of Asia, Europe and Africa through a complex web of commercial trails ........... the United States, under its most polarizing leader in generations, experiences extreme polarization over race and identity, the rise of white supremacist militias and an autocratic president assaulting the national institutions till his very last days in office. ..............  Seen from afar, my home country is ......withdrawing into a fetal position. ............  homicidal traffic on the 2,500-year-old Grand Trunk Road in India — probably the oldest overland trade route still in bustling use. ........... made the Silk Road a conduit of human innovation .......... Chinese paper — an invention crucial, like computers, for transmitting knowledge cheaply and quickly — traveled westward into medieval Arabia and Europe. ............ “For centuries before the early modern era, the intellectual centers of excellence of the world, the Oxfords and Cambridges, the Harvards and Yales, were not located in Europe or the west, but in Baghdad and Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand” ..............  “A thousand years ago we had world-class astronomers, mathematicians and many other scientists here,” said Inessa Yuvakaeva, a cultural guide in the town’s walled old city. “We were more advanced than Europe.” ............... Ms. Yuvakaeva ticked off some homegrown Einsteins. Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, a ninth-century genius who helped formulate the precepts of algebra, has lent his name to the word “algorithm.” A century later, the brilliant polymathic Abu Rayhan Muhammad al-Biruni wrote more than 140 manuscripts on everything from pharmaceuticals to the anthropology of India. (A typical al-Biruni title: “The Exhaustive Treatise on Shadows.”) ................... Probably the most celebrated Silk Road sage of all was Abu Ali al-Hussein ibn Sina, revered in the West as Avicenna, who in the 11th century compiled an encyclopedia of healing that was still in use by European doctors as late as the 18th century. Avicenna’s “Canon of Medicine” accurately diagnosed diabetes by tasting sweetness in urine. Its pharmacopoeia cataloged more than 800 remedies. A millennium ago, Avicenna advocated quarantines to control epidemics. ................... Pacing off continents is an exercise in humility. You inhabit the limit of your daily strides. To the next tree shade. To the next horizon. ........... Back in the United States, the country seems to have U-turned into mustier Uzbek terrain. The government has erected its own fearmongering ads: Immigration and Customs Enforcement billboards in Pennsylvania featured mug shots of undocumented migrants charged with crimes. Federal agents interrogated American citizens for speaking Spanish in Montana. And a departing president with his own huge personality cult reportedly suggested shooting migrants in the legs at the Rio Grande. Mr. Trump’s mainstreaming of racism, xenophobia and science denialism doesn’t look very temporary. More than 74 million American voters endorsed it. And some even answered his call for insurrection. ..................... The Silk Road made our world. Ten centuries ago, incredibly diverse societies spanning a hemisphere extended an open hand — true enough, one holding the coin of commerce — and not a closed fist. Humanity’s capacity for curiosity grew. So, for a while, did intellectual achievement and open-mindedness. But by the 1600s, it had faded. ..................  blames Mongol invasions, shriveling patronage by wealthy sultans, rising European maritime competition and even climate change as factors of collapse. But he emphasizes a phenomenon that seems scraped from today’s social media: extreme polarization. ................ “By the late 11th century a full-blown cultural war was underway,” writes Mr. Starr. It was Muslim against Muslim, with “Sunni watchdogs of the faith making sure that no thinker strayed beyond the strict bounds of tradition, and Shiite watchdogs of the faith responding in kind. Free inquiry was caught in the crossfire.” .................. on the morning of Feb. 10, 1258: Mongol invaders breached the walls of Baghdad, massacred its civilian population and dumped the wisdom gathered across centuries — thousands of priceless manuscripts looted from 36 city libraries — into the Tigris. .......... A poll conducted over the summer revealed that almost a third of the American electorate would accept “a strong incumbent leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections.” .................. And the ground slopes east toward an Asian century. ......... India, yet another democracy cartwheeling into an abyss of right-wing populism. Riding a wave of Hindu nationalism, one Indian state all but criminalized marriages between Hindu and Muslim citizens. 

Biden’s Covid-19 Plan Is Maddeningly Obvious It is infuriating that the Trump administration left so many of these things undone. ....... But vaccines don’t save people; vaccinations do. And vaccinating more than 300 million people, at breakneck speed, is a challenge that only the federal government has the resources to meet. ............ broke the plan down into four buckets. Loosen the restrictions on who can get vaccinated (and when). Set up many more sites where vaccinations can take place. Mobilize more medical personnel to deliver the vaccinations. And use the might of the federal government to increase the vaccine supply by manufacturing whatever is needed, whenever it is needed, to accelerate the effort. ............ Biden’s team members intend to use the Federal Emergency Management Agency to set up thousands of vaccination sites in gyms, sports stadiums and community centers, and to deploy mobile vaccination options to reach those who can’t travel or who live in remote places. They want to mobilize the National Guard to staff the effort and ensure that strapped states don’t have to bear the cost. They want to expand who can deliver the vaccine and call up retired medical personnel to aid the campaign. They want to launch a massive public education blitz, aimed at communities skeptical of the vaccine. They’re evaluating how to eke out more doses from the existing supply — there is, for instance, a particular vial that will get you six doses out of a given quantity of Pfizer’s vaccine rather than five, and they are looking at whether the Defense Production Act could accelerate production of that particular vial and other, similarly useful goods. ......... people who could’ve been saved by simple competence and foresight will die instead. ............... Even on the most optimistic timetable, it will take until well into the summer for America to reach herd immunity. ........... the coronavirus death toll in America will pass 500,000 by the end of February. And it will not end there. ............. Back in May, I wrote that we were operating, in effect, without a president and without a national plan. It is January, and that remains true.

Yellen Readies Big Changes for Treasury From financial regulation to minority lending, Biden’s pick is poised to change course sharply from the policies of Secretary Steven Mnuchin. ........... Ms. Yellen’s plans to revive a pandemic-stricken economy. .......... emphasized the need to create “equitable growth,” using the tools of the Treasury Department to combat climate change and rebuild regulatory institutions like the F.S.O.C. .............. She called last year for a “new Dodd-Frank,” arguing at a Brookings Institution event that existing laws were insufficient for dealing with problems in the “shadow” banking sector that emerged when the pandemic caused severe market turmoil. ............ “This is the worst economic crisis in 100 years, and nobody is better qualified than Secretary-designate Yellen to lead an economic recovery”  

In The News (7)

Trump Is Blowing Apart the G.O.P. God Bless Him. There still will be a place for principled Republicans. ...............  If you look closely, there are actually four different Republican factions today: principled conservatives, pragmatic conservatives, unprincipled conservatives and Trump cultists. In the principled conservatives camp, I’d put Romney and Murkowski. They are the true America firsters. While animated by conservative ideas about small government and free markets, they put country and Constitution before party and ideology. They are rule-abiders. In the pragmatic conservative camp, which you could call the Mitch McConnell camp, I’d put all of those who tried to humor Trump for a while — going along with his refusal to acknowledge the election results until “all the legal votes were counted” — but once the Electoral College votes were cast by each state, slid into the reality-based world and confirmed Biden’s victory, some sooner than others. ............... The unprincipled Republicans — the “rule-breakers” in Charney’s lingo — are led by Hawley and Cruz, along with the other seditious senators and representatives who tried to get Congress to block its ceremonial confirmation of Biden’s election. Finally, there are the hard-core Trump cultists and QAnon conspiracy types, true believers in and purveyors of the Big Lie. I just don’t see how these four camps stay together. 

The great mall of China Why retailers everywhere should look to China That is where they will see the future of e-commerce .............. For a century the world’s consumer businesses have looked to America to spot new trends, from scannable barcodes on Wrigley’s gum in the 1970s to keeping up with the Kardashians’ consumption habits in the 2010s. Now they should be looking to the East. 

The next big thing in retail comes with Chinese characteristics Chinese apps are to 21st-century shopping what American malls were to last century’s 

The End of the GOP  It is easy to forget that the Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime measure that freed slaves only as a military exigency and only in those states in rebellion against the Union. If the Civil War had not dragged on long enough for the 13th Amendment to finally escape the House of Representatives, many of those men and women set free by Lincoln’s proclamation might very well have been forced back into manacles. ...............  It wasn’t Chief Justice Earl Warren who desegregated the schools: It was President Dwight Eisenhower, who deployed the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to get it done. But Eisenhower thought Brown was a bad decision and came to regard his appointment of Warren as chief justice one of the great blunders of his presidency. That skepticism about Brown was superseded by his conviction that it is the duty of the executive to enforce the law rather than to make it unilaterally, as a dictator. .................  Many progressives who once embraced the expansive view of the Supreme Court championed by Warren et al. must currently be rethinking that stance. ........... Lincoln, for his part, bitterly noted that if he had listened to the radicals in the early days of the Civil War or in the lead-up to it, then the war almost certainly would have been lost with the defection of the border states. The result would have been the preservation not of the Union but of slavery — and not merely its preservation but almost certainly its expansion. As a moral question, we might be with John Brown, even while we concede that as a political question Abraham Lincoln had the better case. ................... The United States is a nation founded in revolution — that’s what treason is called when you win — with a long history of resistance, sometimes violent, to duly constituted authority. .............. The largest U.S. corporations by market capitalization are firms such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet, and Tesla; by revenue, the top of the list comprises Walmart, Amazon, ExxonMobil, Apple, CVS, and Berkshire Hathaway. Which of those firms is led or owned by Republican-friendly, conservative-leaning activists? ............... The radical conservatives described by Buckley were “those who have not made their peace with the New Deal,” as he put it in 1955, unlike Eisenhower and his clique. ............. Donald Trump is the candidate of the 9/11 Republicans, whose politics is Kulturkampf and whose style is paranoid. (It is not for nothing that the worst and most embarrassing of his sycophants described 2016 as the “Flight 93 election.”) .................  Donald Trump, an avid conspiracy buff — 9/11, vaccines, Barack Obama’s place of birth, etc. — found himself in a petri dish practically tailored to his cultural DNA. .............. Trump had been, until five minutes before seeking the Republican nomination, pro-abortion and pro-gun control. ...........  Patriotism? He is a funny kind of patriot who cheers the sacking of the seat of government by barbarians carrying enemy flags. Republican radicals once stood for resistance to the worst kind of tyranny. Today’s Republican radicals stand for tyranny itself, for junta government, and they march under the banner of the very tyranny the Republican Party originally was constituted to oppose. ......... In 2016, I wrote that the likely outcome of a Trump presidency would be the end of the Republican Party as we had known it.......  In 2016, I wrote that the likely outcome of a Trump presidency would be the end of the Republican Party as we had known it. And so it ends for the Grand Old Party: From abolition to anarchy, from republicans to rabble, a bloody-minded, homicidal gang in thrall to the very democracy John Adams warned us about. A dog in this condition would be put to sleep. It would be a piece of mercy.

In The News (6)

This Spicy White Bean Soup Is a Poem in a Pot Filled with winter greens, savory beans and just a little bit of turkey, this piquant soup is both hearty and light. 

Meena Harris, Building That Brand Kamala Harris’s niece is building her own empire with statement T-shirts. Just don’t define her by her family. ......... Meena Harris, a lawyer and former tech executive, used to make statement T-shirts as a side job. Her most famous read, simply, “Phenomenal Woman.” .......... Ms. Harris’s passion project became her full-time job; she left her role as head of strategy and leadership at Uber to run her own company, called Phenomenal. She also picked up another side-gig — one that brought her more visibility than any prestigious job that came before it: campaign surrogate for her aunt, Kamala Harris, now the vice president-elect. ........... “I look at her as another figure in history and someone to be celebrated,” she said of her aunt — for example, with a holiday sweatshirt reading “Deck the halls with smart, strong women, Kamala-la-la-la-la-la-la.”  

Why Is It Taking So Long to Get Americans Vaccinated?

Ohio State study: 30% of student athletes have heart damage linked to COVID-19

This Year’s Underground Sensation: Modern Monetary Theory The economic ideas that once fueled deficit mythbusters and provided hope for a pandemic recovery have spawned a vibrant political subculture. ....... Modern Monetary Theory posits that a governing body like the United States federal government, which borrows and spends in the same currency it issues, can never run out of money and that taxes serve to take excess money out of circulation rather than to fund the government. ..............  The Cares Act, perhaps the most effective anti-poverty policy since the Great Society, really was “a few computer keystrokes ... without all that messy class conflict.” Since the 1970s, and especially since 2008, central banks have become the most powerful centers of economic power in the world by making money out of thin air, without spurring runaway inflation.  

2020 Shatters the Myth of American Exceptionalism We learned something about ourselves on that street corner in Minneapolis. 

Often overlooked, Asian American Christian voters could be key in Georgia Senate runoffs 

The Mutated Virus Is a Ticking Time Bomb There is much we don’t know about the new COVID-19 variant—but everything we know so far suggests a huge danger.

‘Personally, I’m incredibly frustrated’: Dr. Ashish Jha comments on ‘slow’ vaccine rollout

Japan developing wooden satellites to cut space junk

Brexit ends Britons’ right to live and work in EU

Russia admits coronavirus death toll three times higher than reported New figures show that more than 186,000 Russians have died from the virus

Second stimulus check: Who won't be getting a $600 check?

As Trump meets with QAnon influencers, the conspiracy's adherents beg for dictatorship With Trump's days in office dwindling, QAnon influencers have become increasingly restless and militant, urging the president to "#crosstherubicon.”

At long last we have a Brexit deal – and it's as bad as you thought

Politics, Science and the Remarkable Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine The furious race to develop a coronavirus vaccine played out against a presidential election, between a pharmaceutical giant and a biotech upstart, with the stakes as high as they could get.

100 Notable Books of 2020

In The News (5)

He Created the Web. Now He’s Out to Remake the Digital World. Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data. He has technology and a start-up pursuing that goal. Can he succeed? ........ Mr. Berners-Lee, 65, believes the online world has gone astray. Too much power and too much personal data, he says, reside with the tech giants like Google and Facebook — “silos” is the generic term he favors, instead of referring to the companies by name. Fueled by vast troves of data, he says, they have become surveillance platforms and gatekeepers of innovation. .............. The goal, he said, is to move toward “the web that I originally wanted.” ...........  Mr. Berners-Lee’s vision of personal data sovereignty stands in sharp contrast to the harvest-and-hoard model of the big tech companies. ............ If the concept takes off, low-cost or free personal data services — similar to today’s email services — could emerge. ......... Tim has become increasingly concerned as power in the digital world is weighted against the individual ........... The long view is a thriving decentralized marketplace, fueled by personal empowerment and collaboration  

How the Right Foods May Lead to a Healthier Gut, and Better Health A diet full of highly processed foods with added sugars and salt promoted gut microbes linked to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. ...........  a diet rich in nutrient-dense, whole foods supported the growth of beneficial microbes that promoted good health ........... People who tended to eat minimally processed foods like vegetables, nuts, eggs and seafood were more likely to harbor beneficial gut bacteria. Consuming large amounts of juices, sweetened beverages, white bread, refined grains, and processed meats, on the other hand, was associated with microbes linked to poor metabolic health. ................ The researchers identified clusters of so-called good gut bugs, which were more common in people who ate a diverse diet rich in high-fiber plants — like spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, nuts and seeds — as well as minimally processed animal foods such as fish and full-fat yogurt.   

With ‘I Hate Men,’ a French Feminist Touches a Nerve Pauline Harmange is adjusting to the success and backlash of her debut book, one of a handful of titles from France that suggest a more frank approach to sexism and gender violence. 

The American Abyss A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next. ............ Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. ................ Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. .............  Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. ............. big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence substitutes for experience and companionship. ...........  In November 2020, reaching millions of lonely minds through social media, Trump told a lie that was dangerously ambitious: that he had won an election that in fact he had lost. This lie was big in every pertinent respect: not as big as “Jews run the world,” but big enough. ................ His vision never went further than a mirror. ........... The lie outlasts the liar. The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? .............. For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished. ........... right-wing white supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States ..........  Democracy is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of others, heeding their voices and counting their votes.

In The News (4)

 Cuomo Widens Eligibility After Vaccine Goes Unused or Is Even Thrown Out Three million more people will be permitted to schedule vaccinations, including those 75 and older, as the campaign in New York gets off to a dispiriting start. ..........  He estimated that it could take into April to finish vaccinations for the two groups, which total about five million New Yorkers.   

FBI warns of plans for nationwide armed protests next week  “Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the U.S. Capitol from 17 January through 20 January” .........   A tweet in which Trump promised that last Wednesday’s event in Washington, D.C., “will be wild” fueled a “month-long frenzy of incitements, strategizing, and embrace of violence against lawmakers” ..............   the Capitol attack has emboldened Trump-supporting extremists. ............. Boogaloo followers advocate for a second civil war or the collapse of society, and they don’t adhere to a coherent political philosophy.   

Boogaloo followers advocate for a second civil war or the collapse of society, and they don’t adhere to a coherent political philosophy. .............  Trump has violated his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. He is a clear and present danger to American democracy and the national security of the United States. He has disqualified himself from continuing to serve out even his few remaining days as president, as well as from ever again holding, according to the Constitution, “any Office of honor, Trust or profit under the United States.” We urge members of the House of Representatives to conduct a speedy impeachment and the Senate to hold a prompt trial as the Constitution stipulates.

Who Dies for Donald Trump? Now her family members are trying to reconcile their own image of the feisty but private woman they knew with the one who stormed Congress as part of a violent mob that called for the killing of lawmakers. ...........  The Air Force veteran would hold court at barbecues for hours about the state of the country, but she often segued into conspiracy-theory-tinged rants that people couldn’t comprehend.   

Biden dresses down his Covid team over plans to speed vaccinations The president-elect has criticized his Covid coordinator on multiple occasions in front of groups of transition officials. ...... he’s refused to back off his own goal, instead doubling down on the belief that his administration can get at least 100 million shots into arms by April 30.  ........  Inside the Biden camp, officials pinned the success of their plan — and the 100-million pledge — largely on the ability to persuade Congress to quickly pass another relief package that includes billions of dollars for state and local governments. ....... The administration is also planning to offer clear and regular updates on its progress, a practice absent throughout much of the Trump response and that officials believe will build goodwill.  

We've seen this movie before — Rumors of Trump's political demise are greatly exaggerated  dispatching mobile vaccination units to rural areas and erecting new federal sites to administer the shots. ........ 

Sirota weighs in on what Democrats are likely to do with Senate majority  the “most immediate” thing Democrats could do is pass legislation to provide $2,000 coronavirus stimulus payments to Americans. ............  Sirota also predicted that Democrats would try to pass a public health insurance option. 

Hillary Clinton: Trump should be impeached. But that alone won’t remove white supremacy from America.  Trump ran for president on a vision of America where whiteness is valued at the expense of everything else. In the White House, he gave white supremacists, members of the extreme right and conspiracy theorists their most powerful platforms yet .......... Members of Congress who joined him in subverting our democracy should resign, and those who conspired with the domestic terrorists should be expelled immediately.  

In The News (3)

We Came All This Way to Let Vaccines Go Bad in the Freezer? America did not sufficiently plan for how to get millions of people vaccinated. ........... Operation Warp Speed has failed to come anywhere close to its original goal of vaccinating 20 million people against the coronavirus by the end of 2020. Of the 14 million vaccine doses that have been produced and delivered to hospitals and health departments across the country, just an estimated three million people have been vaccinated. .......... Poor coordination at the federal level, combined with a lack of funding and support for state and local entities, has resulted in a string of avoidable missteps and needless delays. We have been here before, in other words. With testing. With shutdowns. With contact tracing. With genomic surveillance. ............ Officials have long prioritized medicine (in this instance, developing the coronavirus vaccines) while neglecting public health (i.e., developing programs to vaccinate people).   

Why Is It Taking So Long to Get Americans Vaccinated? The country is millions of doses behind expectations. Here’s how it could pull ahead. ............ “We are at a pace right now to deliver vaccines in L.A. over five years, instead of over half a year” ............ Joe Biden, who has promised to “move heaven and earth” to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days. ............. the administration will do so by invoking the Defense Production Act to ramp up vaccine manufacturing, deploy mobile vaccination units and lobby Congress for more state and local funding. But even Mr. Biden warned that it might take until March to see significant improvement. ........ While the administration has paid pharmaceutical companies more than $12 billion to develop the vaccines, it has allocated only $340 million to states for their distribution — a small fraction of the $8.4 billion health departments told Congress they needed for training, record-keeping, staffing and communications. ........... New York, for example, has given out only 32 percent of its roughly 930,000 doses ........ In Israel, which has vaccinated 15 percent of its population, more than 100,000 young adults have received surplus doses that otherwise would have gone to waste .......... once vaccines become more widely available, the federal government plans to rely on some 40,000 pharmacies to vaccinate the broader population. ..........  In Georgia, so many rural health care workers have declined the vaccine that the state decided to expand access to its doses because they were “literally sitting in freezers.” ........ With the exception of Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the pace of vaccination in the United States is comparable to or better than that of most other countries. 

As the Georgia Runoffs Arrive, a New Book Says the Senate Is Broken The South Carolina senator’s soaring rhetoric about minority rights revolved around protecting the interests of wealthy slavers in the South and their vision of white supremacy. It’s not for nothing that the historian Richard Hofstadter called Calhoun “the Marx of the Master Class.” ............ “In the 87 years between the end of Reconstruction and 1964,” Jentleson writes, “the only bills that were stopped by filibusters were civil rights bills.” ........... “All you have to do is call the cloakroom, tell them the senator you work for intends to place a hold on the bill, and the bill is filibustered,” Jentleson writes. “One phone call, one objection, and the threshold on any bill or nomination goes from a majority to a supermajority.” .................  “All you have to do is call the cloakroom, tell them the senator you work for intends to place a hold on the bill, and the bill is filibustered,” Jentleson writes. “One phone call, one objection, and the threshold on any bill or nomination goes from a majority to a supermajority.” ............ In “Kill Switch,” McConnell is expressly portrayed as a 21st-century version of Calhoun — infinitely blander, less extravagantly fanatical but more coldly efficient.  

The Pro-Trump Movement Was Always Headed Here For years, professional grifters, trolls, true believers and political opportunists have sowed conspiratorial lies. We are now witnessing the reaping. .......... They listened to their president say he would never concede, that American elections were no longer free or fair. Then he implored his audience to march on the Capitol building. .............. Those who’ve been cocooned in Facebook groups and fed a steady diet of lies from election-denial outlets like Newsmax and One America News are coming to a realization that there is no grand plan for Mr. Trump to magically retain office. ................ The president of the United States was caught on tape for over an hour angrily spouting QAnon conspiracy theories about voter fraud in an attempt to pressure Georgia state officials to overturn the election results. ............... the culmination of more than five years of hatred, trolling, violent harassment and conspiracy theorizing that has moved from the internet’s underbelly to the White House and back again. ................ the demand side, in which millions of Americans are actively courting conspiracies and violent, radical ideologies in order to make sense of a world they don’t trust. ............... our reality crisis is born of selfishness, shamelessness and suffering. It is bone deep. And it will only continue to escalate.  

The ‘Horrifying Events’ at the Capitol A reader reacts: “This should mark the end of the Trump presidency, before he can cause more damage.” ............... Mr. Trump is guilty of sedition at the least, and treason at the worst. This should mark the end of the Trump presidency, before he can cause more damage. Mike Pence should call the Cabinet together and invoke the 25th Amendment.  .......... Peaceful, unarmed Black protesters have repeatedly been tear-gassed and shot at by the police over the past several years, but a group of violent armed white men, insurrectionists attempting to overthrow the presidential election, were allowed to run roughshod in the nation’s capital? The double standard is monstrous. .............. After the actions Wednesday by both some legislators and the mob, no one should have any doubt that we must pass a constitutional amendment rescinding both the Electoral College and the Second Amendment. For our nation’s security, we need to elect the president directly, and we need to disarm civilians.  

We Need a Second Great Migration Georgia illuminates the path to Black power. It lies in the South. Follow me there.

In The News (2)

Climbing the Himalaya With Soldiers, Spies, Lamas and Mountaineers Why does India have so many people? .......... “The answer,” he told me, “is the Himalaya.” ........ had created such an immense river network that it left behind staggeringly rich soil across a vast swath of Asia. It’s no accident, he said, that on either side of these mountains lie the world’s two most populous nations, India and China. If you include Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, all of which also greatly depend on rivers sourced in the Himalaya, we’re talking about nearly half of humankind tied to these mountains. ............. The pros never put an “s” at the end of the word; it’s just Himalaya, which in Sanskrit means “abode of snow.” ............. The air is thin at 15,000 feet; everything feels closer, yet the vast scale of the landscape reduces you. It’s easy to see why a philosophy stressing the illusory nature of an individual consciousness, as Buddhism does, might prosper here. ” ................  Even though our image of Tibet is of a closed-off, sealed-up place, that’s erroneous: It had been a cosmopolitan trading hub and cultural powerhouse for hundreds of years. ............ It’s virtually impossible to draw a line through these peaks, and the nations have competing versions of where the boundary lies. Both are determined not to give up an inch. .................. Maybe it’s a self-selecting group: Only if you have such wisdom and presence of mind can you scale walls of ice, reach the roof of the world where the oxygen level is about one-third that at sea level, lose fingers and toes to frostbite and come back alive. ..................  The climbers clearly revere the mountains, and you can sense how alive they felt in that landscape where they were nothing but a string of dark, slow-moving specks crossing the brilliant white snow. ............... nothing can alter the fact if for one moment in eternity we have really lived

You Think This Is Chaos? The Election of 1876 Was Worse. As President Trump pushes Congress to block certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, his Republican allies look to the showdown on Capitol Hill a century and a half ago as a model.

An Insurgency From Inside the Oval Office President Trump’s effort to overturn the election he lost has gone beyond mere venting of grievances at the risk of damaging the very American democracy he is charged with defending. ......... What else Mr. Trump could try to do to stop it remains unclear because he seems out of options. But he is not yet willing to acknowledge the reality of his situation, much less follow John Adams’s example.

Echoes of Another Pandemic: How The Times Covered the 1918 Flu The influenza outbreak killed more than 20,000 New Yorkers and 675,000 Americans. It might have dominated the news, if not for World War I. ........ “There were no secrets about it in real time. But you also have to remember, there was far less to report because the science of virology did not even exist, so nobody knew what caused influenza.”  ....... Many of his recommendations, like hand washing and avoiding crowds, stand up today, but he also instructed people to not wear tight clothes, tight shoes or tight gloves in order “to make nature your ally and not your prisoner.” .............  President Woodrow Wilson never made a statement on influenza ........ “One of the things that remained in the domain of the states and localities is public health. And there was no national public health effort at that time. There was no C.D.C.” ..............  an effective vaccine was not developed during the pandemic. 

A Democratic Twist in Georgia  The story of Georgia’s runoffs turned largely on the participation of Black voters ......... Vice President Mike Pence broke the news to Trump last night that he would not be able to deliver him a second term as president when Congress convenes today 

The Lull Before the Surge on Top of the Surge Tuesday: Slammed by the coronavirus and behind on its vaccine rollout, California is about to be hit by a tidal wave of post-holiday virus infections, the governor warns.

In The News (1)

100 Notable Books

Politics, Science and the Remarkable Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine The furious race to develop a coronavirus vaccine played out against a presidential election, between a pharmaceutical giant and a biotech upstart, with the stakes as high as they could get. 

At long last we have a Brexit deal – and it's as bad as you thought  We already know its contours: a barely-there treaty that will make trade harder and destroy jobs. Labour should oppose it

New York placing moratorium on most evictions amid COVID, strengthening protections for homeowners

Relief Package Grows as Campaign Issue in Georgia Senate Races The two Republicans tried to claim credit for bringing help to Georgians, despite President Trump’s initial waffling over whether to sign the bill. The Democrats said the $600 payments to Americans were too low. .......... The election seemed to be headed for a record turnout in a runoff, with 2.1 million Georgians having already cast ballots either at early voting sites or by mail-in ballots. The heaviest turnout so far has been in Democratic areas around Atlanta.  

Democrats’ Georgia Hopes Rest on Jon Ossoff, 33. How Did He Get Here? Some well-timed introductions and a knack for opportunity have helped Mr. Ossoff’s rise in Georgia politics. Now he is pursuing his most ambitious goal yet, a U.S. Senate seat.  .............  Mr. Ossoff first emerged on the national stage in 2017, when his bid for a House seat in a special election provided Democrats the first opportunity to express resistance to President Trump. Though he lost a close race in a well-off district in suburban Atlanta, the energy surrounding his candidacy enabled him to shatter fund-raising records and build the political network that has put him within reach of the Senate. .............. showed Mr. Ossoff to be the best-funded Senate candidate in history after pulling in $106.7 million from mid-October to mid-December — almost $40 million more than Mr. Perdue’s tally ............. He has stayed on message, hammering Mr. Perdue over his finances, and perhaps more important, he has not made any major mistakes on the campaign trail or in interviews. ........... Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the 2018 race for governor, has built a permanent progressive campaign infrastructure in the state. Already, more than two million Georgians have voted in the 2020 Senate runoffs. ............ “You remind me of another time in my own life,” Mr. Lewis said to Mr. Ossoff ..............  had “the most unique blog strategy” and quoted Mr. Ossoff saying that blogs were “effective in reaching out to the people who make the news, the people who determine what’s hot and what’s not.” ............... “Jon believed in having local journalists in places like Africa telling their stories and not having white men coming in.”   

2020 Was the Year Reaganism Died The government promised to help — and it did.  In times of crisis, government aid to people in distress is a good thing, not just for those getting help, but for the nation as a whole. ............ voodoo economics, the claim that tax cuts have magical power and can solve all problems ............. Oh, and the new recovery package does include a multi-billion-dollar tax break for business meals, as if three-martini lunches were the answer to a pandemic depression. ........ Opposition to helping the unemployed and the poor was never evidence-based; it was always rooted in a mix of elitism and racial hostility. So we’ll still keep hearing about the miraculous power of tax cuts and the evils of the welfare state. ..........  what we should fear most is a government that refuses to do its job.

How will you be told when it's your turn for a COVID-19 vaccine? It's complicated  Vaccine rollout has largely been left to the states, and with an "isolated and decentralized health system" in the U.S., as Dai put it, people may not know when they're eligible to get their vaccine. And they may have to be proactive in finding where they can get one and in proving that they meet the criteria to be next in line. ...........   about 50 million people will have received their first of two shots of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of January ....... the government should have enough supply so that every American who wants a vaccine can get it by summer 2021. ..........  As vaccines become more available, New York's plan says its residents will also be to check a website for a "vaccine eligibility screening tool and a vaccine administration site locator."  .......  CVS said in a statement that the public will be able to make appointments to get the vaccine at their pharmacies online or via an 800 number once the vaccine is more widely available.

How to persuade someone to take the COVID-19 vaccine  if most people get vaccinated, "we could really turn this thing around" toward the end of 2021. ........  Many people who plan to get vaccinated are confounded by those who are hesitant. ........... "Shame is likely to achieve the opposite reaction we’re hoping for. Look to more constructive emotions like love, hope and the desire to protect to get people to act." .............. Don't treat people's concerns as dumb. Listen to them, validate them, and figure out how to address them. "The first thing is just understanding the base of those concerns and not trying to dismiss them, but trying to grapple with them" ............. "In a perfect, limitlessly resourced world," the authors of the United Nations paper wrote, "we’d have the opportunity to craft highly specific campaigns for each community and identity." .........  It's unlikely you'll change the mind of a militant anti-vaxxer, but experts say they're rare. Those who are skeptical of vaccines are far more common. To figure out where someone stands on COVID-19 vaccines, be curious. Ask questions like, "Why do you think that?" or "Where are you hearing this?" or "Why do you trust this?" ............  if someone thinks COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the flu, you know which belief you have to correct. ........ trying to correct someone's perception can have a “backfire effect.” When you encounter facts that don’t support your belief, it actually grows stronger. .............  Human beings are hard-wired for bias. If you’re a new mom who believes vaccines cause autism, do you look for research that shows whether they actually do, or do you Google “vaccines cause autism” to find stories to affirm your belief? Likely the latter, which is driven by “motivated reasoning," our psychological tendency to perpetuate our own beliefs and dismiss anything that runs against our own views. However, if you and the person you are trying to persuade share the same identity or social circle, she may be more apt to hear what you have to say. ................ Research shows immediate connections in our social networks matter the most for changing behavior, partly because they set norms about what everybody else is doing. ............. You can also reach out to mutual friends to tell them you know a particular claim is false. ........ "Of course we're going to get the vaccine. That's what everyone's going to do, because that's how we're going to stop this. This is what we've all been waiting for."  

‘Personally, I’m incredibly frustrated’: Dr. Ashish Jha comments on ‘slow’ vaccine rollout

Unemployment aid: When would the $300-per-week benefit begin? "One thing that people don't realize is that the average unemployment benefit is at poverty level in many states." ....... the programs expire in mid-March ........ It could take about two to three weeks for states to start paying out the extra $300 in weekly benefits ..........  lawmakers may be debating more jobless aid in 2021. "I don't think we will be done with the pandemic and the recession in 11 weeks" 

Dr. Fauci predicts new COVID-19 strain will spread across US

Even With 10 Million COVID-19 Cases, A Doctor Says India 'Dodged A Bullet' India has a population of 1.4 billion people. With fewer than 7,500 coronavirus cases per million people and a COVID-19 fatality rate of just below 1.5%, India's per capita infections and mortality rate are among the lowest in the world. "[The virus] could have been completely out of control in India," she says. .......... It could be our age structure, that we have much fewer elderly people and therefore mortality and severe disease in the population was relatively low. We were hit later in the pandemic so we had a better opportunity to prepare. We may have prior exposure to other coronaviruses which may have led this disease to be less severe. We seem to have higher rates of asymptomatic infection so it may also mean that the virus is behaving differently in our population. .................. A lot of countries in Africa and South Asia are behaving like India with lower severe disease and lower mortality. ............. I'm glad to hear that the government is planning to use the election infrastructure for delivering vaccines. ........... Even with vaccines, I think we are again very lucky in India because we've got all these wonderful vaccine companies that are going to be able to provide to India perhaps more vaccines to more of our population than many other developing countries will have access to. I'm actually more worried about the rest of the world.

हाम्रो साहित्यले छुटाएका कथाहरू लेखकहरू सम्पन्न र विद्वान् हुँदा साधारण ज्यामीहरूका कथा यथार्थवादी ढङ्गले लेखिएनन् । लेखकहरू सहरका हुने भएकाले गाउँका कथा यथार्थवादी रूपमा आएनन् ।  

In The News (30)

Jimmy Kimmel Calls Giuliani the ‘Gift That Keeps on Grifting’ “I guess this explains why Trump has been passing the MAGA hat around, asking his fans to donate to his legal defense fund,” Kimmel said of Rudy Giuliani’s alleged request to be paid $20,000 a day.

Europe

Trump

90% of the Global Power Capacity Added in 2020 Will Be Renewable

The culling of minks in Denmark prompts a political crisis.  with the minister of agriculture forced to step down and the government in danger of collapse. ........... Denmark is home to some of the world’s largest mink farms, with an estimated population of more than 15 million. .......... “The mink farms are a reservoir where the coronavirus is thriving”  

Fauci

The Pandemic in Six-Word Memoirs “The world has never felt smaller.” ........... Avoiding death, but certainly not living. — Sydney Reimann ......... Cleaned Lysol container with Lysol wipe. — Alex Wasser ........... Hallway hike, bathtub swim, Pandora concert. — Susan Evind 

Giuliani Got a Bad Batch of ‘Just for Henchmen’ Hair Dye, Colbert Says “Remind me, is it a good sign when your lawyer starts melting?” Stephen Colbert joked after Rudy Giuliani appeared to sweat hair dye during a news conference. 

Douglas Stuart Wins Booker Prize for ‘Shuggie Bain’ The autobiographical novel, about the lonely gay son of an alcoholic mother in 1980s Scotland, was one of four debut books in this year’s shortlist. 

When the World Seems Like One Big Conspiracy Understanding the structure of global cabal theories can shed light on their allure — and their inherent falsehood.

David Fincher’s Impossible Eye With ‘Mank,’ America’s most famously exacting director tackles the movie he’s been waiting his entire career to make. .................. If you want to build worlds as engrossing as those he seeks to construct, then you need actors to push their performances into zones of fecund uncertainty, to shed all traces of what he calls “presentation.” And then you need them to give you options, all while hitting the exact same marks (which goes for the camera operators too) to ensure there will be no continuity errors when you cut the scene together. Getting all these stars to align before, say, Take No. 9 is possible but unlikely. ................. For one, he reveres “Citizen Kane.” “I don’t think it’s the greatest American movie ever made,” he said, “but it’s in the top three — and they made it in 1941.” (“The Godfather Part II” and “maybe ‘Chinatown’” round out his podium.) .............. his father “never understood Hollywood’s inherent cynicism — he didn’t understand the magnetic pull for the sociopath that Hollywood has.” .........  His shots come to represent the gliding, unmediated gaze of some impossible — and faintly malevolent — eye: “I want it to feel omniscient,” Fincher said. .......... The fundamental formal pleasure of watching a Fincher film is that every last micron of the experience has been considered, and then reconsidered, with an abundance of love, skill and precision. .......... his camera typically moves only when an actor does — and at the same speed .......... (Fincher described playing his favorite video game, Madden NFL, as “the only time I’m not thinking about movies.”) ............ “David had a laser pointer out, and he was circling this one section of a wall in the upper part of the frame, saying, ‘That’s a quarter of a stop too bright.’ I had to leave the room. I had to go outside and take some deep breaths, because I thought, Oh, my God — to see like that? All the time? Everywhere? I wouldn’t be able to do it.” ................. “I think because people are blinded by his outsize visual dexterity, he doesn’t get enough credit for his understanding of story.” ...........  “If David wanted to take the time, he could write his movies himself.” ...............  “strategically deployed silence can be just as breathtaking.” ........... He once stole baby dolls from her room, packed them with “hamburger and ketchup,” as he recalled in an article in Interview, and then “threw them onto the freeway,” treating motorists to the spectacle of infants exploding on the asphalt. .................  an experience of productive demystification: The people behind “Star Wars” were not deities but fellow Bay dudes figuring things out through trial and error. ................  “when he started out, Dave was so arrogant it was unreal. He still has very little patience for people who are not as smart as he is, which is a lot of people.” .................   compared Fincher’s repeated takes to working in theater, where an actor discovered new things in the same material night in, night out .................  He’s a taskmaster to a fault, and he’ll argue to the death with you. He’s a prosecutor — he makes me so uncomfortable. ‘Why would you write that? Why would you think that makes sense?’ ...............  Fincher’s way of dealing with people can rankle, Roth added, “but he’s as loyal as the day is long, he’ll support you and he knows what he wants — in Hollywood, that’s an incredible thing.” .......... Fincher’s sets can get tense. He has acknowledged that on “Panic Room” — a film whose every last shot he designed using previsualization software before ever stepping on to the set — ............. Jake Gyllenhaal, a star of “Zodiac,” told this paper in 2007 that Fincher “paints with people” and called it “tough to be a color.” ...............  When I asked Fincher what happened with Gyllenhaal on that film, he described an “extremely simple” situation: “Jake was in the unenviable position of being very young and having a lot of people vie for his attention, while working for someone who does not allow you to take a day off. I believe you have to have everything out of your peripheral vision.” But “I think Jake’s philosophy was informed by — look, he’d made a bunch of movies, even as a child, but I don’t think he’d ever been asked to concentrate on minutiae, and I think he was very distracted. He had a lot of people whispering that ‘Jarhead’” — a 2005 war movie starring Gyllenhaal — “was going to be this massive movie and put him in this other league, and every weekend he was being pulled to go to the Santa Barbara film festival and the Palm Springs film festival and the [expletive] Catalina film festival. And when he’d show up for work, he was very scattered.” He had “his managers and his silly agents who were all coming to his trailer at lunch to talk to him about the cover of GQ and this and that,” Fincher said, adding, “He was being nibbled to death by ducks, and not particularly smart ducks. They got in his vision, and it was hard for him to hit the fastball.” ................  But. It’s: Four. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. A day. And we might not get a chance to come back and do it again.” ................. “Once you get here, the only thing I care about is, Did we tell the story?” ................  “Mank” raises difficult questions about the ultimate ability of art to change society: Hearst effectively crushed Welles’s movie upon release, and even though “Kane” became legendary for its unflattering depiction of Hearst, it never posed a real threat to his power. ................ how advancements in technology had allowed him to tell more ambitious stories ................  “I had the horsepower to now think in terms of ‘What do you want to do,’ as opposed to ‘What are you capable of?’”  

How My Pet Snake Taught Me to Really See   Childhood has a way of alchemizing disparate information into wonder ........... The snake is as much symbol as animal, and this oversaturation of meaning prevents us from seeing the snake clearly. In reality, they are gentle, healthful to the environment, “more scared of you than you are of it,” a sort of tragic hero of the ecosystem that is, when gazed upon without malice, beautiful.   

No One Loves Arby’s Like I Do One look at the Colonel, and you could see the price of war. He was paralyzed from the waist down. ............ For years I made my dad give me crew cuts so I could look like the Colonel. Until third grade I would tell people that I wanted to be an Army Ranger when I grew up. .......... As I grew up, I learned that war was not my childhood fantasy of toy soldiers and brass trinkets; it was grim, relentlessly destructive and often pointless. ..............  I didn’t choose to be Mormon, or to grow up in the South, but those conservative structures did give me comfort — they provided an uncomplicated worldview, one with easy answers. ......... The only thing we would agree on now is roast beef. But at least it’s something.

In The News (29)

The Fight to Win Latino Voters for the G.O.P. For 10 years, Libre — an arm of the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity — has been working to foster conservatism in Hispanic communities. Now, the group is going all-in on Georgia’s Senate runoffs.

A Poet Who Mesmerizes by Zigs and Zags, Hopping From Idea to Idea

1918 Germany Has a Warning for America Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign recalls one of the most disastrous political lies of the 20th century.

Bitcoin Hits New Record, This Time With Less Talk of a Bubble The crazy cousin of traditional currencies, which fell below $4,000 in March, passed $19,783. More investors now are buying it for the long term.

A New Political Force Emerges in Georgia: Asian-American Voters The Asian-American population in the state has doubled in two decades, and many live in the Atlanta suburbs, which voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. by large margins.

New York’s Streets Have Brought Relief. Imagine Them Post-Pandemic.

The House members already facing the redistricting chopping block The upcoming reapportionment of congressional seats could hasten the departures of a number of longtime members of Congress.

American High Schools Go Woke Consultants cash in on radical changes to curricula nationwide

The Mastermind Behind Biden’s No-Drama Approach to Trump Only one top Biden adviser isn’t joining him in the White House—but she’ll still stay close. ......... “As [Biden] will be the first to say, he’s the only Irishman who doesn’t carry a grudge,” Dunn told me. “I’m not Irish, but I will carry his grudges.” 

Andrew Yang, said to be considering mayoral bid, tested in new online poll

मात्र प्रधानमन्त्रीका लागि : किन पार्टीको निर्णय लागु गर्नु भएन ?

अबको बैठकमा प्रम ओलीमाथि उठ्दैछन् यी ५ प्रश्न

Op-Ed: On the COVID frontlines, we’re tired of hearing lame excuses for risky behavior We’re tired of seeing patients who got the virus after their kid’s “limited” birthday party or because they went out to a restaurant dinner with “close friends” or flew to a celebration in a state “that didn’t have much COVID.” ...............  Wear a mask whenever you leave the house. Stop doing dumb stuff, like going to parties, destination weddings and the French Laundry. Stop listening to know-nothings who spout “science” on YouTube and Twitter. ............ So avoid crowds. Wash your hands. Stay home. Why is this so hard? ............... how a single wedding of 55 people in Maine infected 27 guests. None of them died and some didn’t even have symptoms. So, no big deal, right? Wrong. The infected guests went on to infect others, who in turn spread it themselves. Over the next 38 days, the wedding was responsible for infecting at least 176 people, and seven of them died. .............  We’ve reached that place in the movie where there are so many zombies we have to hide in the basement. Except the zombies are down there with us, fresh from an “essential” shopping trip, and now their kid has a cough. ..............  The fire burns all around us and we are dry grass, from sea to shining sea. ..........  Now we are in danger of losing perhaps half a million people or more. ............  How can the world’s strongest democracy be unwilling to fight a winnable war on our own soil to protect our own lives and those of our neighbors? A lot of us won’t even don masks to aid the fight. ............  Like the last man shot in war, you might get the virus before you get the vaccine.  

Ossoff warns McConnell would cause paralysis in federal government if GOP holds Senate

Politics, Science and the Remarkable Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine The furious race to develop a coronavirus vaccine played out against a presidential election, between a pharmaceutical giant and a biotech upstart, with the stakes as high as they could get.  ...........  Their apparent success showed that in an era of polarized politics, science was able to break down barriers between government, countries and industry to produce one of the few pieces of good news in a year of suffering and division.  

Individual 1

Making the Most of the Coming Biden Boom The economic outlook is probably brighter than you think. ......... Donald Trump is tweeting while America burns .......... Joe Biden will eventually preside over a soaring, “morning in America”-type recovery. ...........  I won’t even be surprised if we see G.O.P. efforts to impede the wide distribution of a vaccine. ........... we’ll still need to invest on a large scale to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, improve the condition of America’s families (especially children) and, above all, head off catastrophic climate change. 

In The News (28)

Best Movies of 2020 The screening rooms were closed. The festivals were virtual. The blockbusters were in storage. Even so, our critics found abundant and inspiring signs of cinematic life in the pandemic.  ........ A big-screen fundamentalist, I love going out to the movies, to first- and second-run cinemas as well as to art houses, museums and cinémathèques. I know which theater and studio in Los Angeles (where I live) has the biggest screen, the best sound, sightlines and seats — me, I like to sit in the middle of the theater, perfectly centered. ......... the sometimes shocking science videos demonstrating how far sneezes and coughs can travel (27 feet!) ........... the clock-and-capitalism-determined flow of everyday life. .......... Every so often, someone asks what I think will happen to movies. I haven’t a clue, beyond my conviction that good, bad and indifferent ones will continue to be produced, distributed and exhibited. ............. The press screenings and catch-up trips to local theaters that have punctuated my weeks for more than two decades vanished, and my internet connection turned into a 24-hour cinémathèque. 

The Stimulus Compromise Is $908 Billion Better Than Nothing The Senate’s plan is flawed. Doing nothing would be much worse.

The Coronavirus Vaccines Were Developed in Record Speed. Now, the Hard Part. Don’t squander this opportunity, America.

How Atlanta’s Politics Overtook the Suburbs, Too Communities that defined themselves in opposition to the city have increasingly grown to resemble it.

As Brexit Deadline Looms, Boris Johnson Takes Personal Control of Talks With negotiators at impasse, the prime minister hopes he and European leaders can hammer out a trade deal to replace the one that expires on Dec. 31.

Obama, the Best-Selling Author, on Reading, Writing and Radical Empathy He invited authors and historians to the White House and had already published a best-selling memoir. That didn’t make writing his latest book, “A Promised Land,” any less of a grind. .......  his belief that, in these divided times, “storytelling and literature are more important than ever,” adding that “we need to explain to each other who we are and where we’re going.”  

‘Is Austin on Your List?’: Biden’s Pentagon Pick Rose Despite Barriers to Diversity With retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III’s nomination to be the first Black defense secretary, the Pentagon comes face to face with its record as a place where people of color struggle to climb. .........   For much of his career, General Austin was accustomed to white men at the top. But a crucial turning point — and a key to his success — came a decade ago, when General Austin and a small group of African-American men populated the military’s most senior ranks. ...........   the entrenched system that has defaulted to white men at the top when 43 percent of the 1.3 million men and women on active duty in the United States are people of color. ........ a tendency by corporate America to raid the best talent ......... One thing the American military does is throw together young men and women of all different races, at least at first. ............ He could not help but notice that the higher up he went, the whiter the Navy got, until soon there were no people of color around him. ......... General Austin, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, was raised in Thomasville, Ga., the same town that produced Henry O. Flipper, who was born a slave and in 1877 became the first African-American graduate of West Point and the first Black officer to lead Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry. ............. He had learned a lesson: In the American military, if he did not specifically ask that minority candidates be included on the lists for various posts, he would not get any. .......... Mr. Biden, in an op-ed in The Atlantic on Tuesday, called General Austin’s management of the Iraq withdrawal “the largest logistical operation undertaken by the Army in six decades” and compared it to what will be required to help distribute coronavirus vaccines throughout the United States, a job the next defense secretary will find in his portfolio. “I know this man,” Mr. Biden said on Wednesday, formally introducing his nominee for defense secretary.  

It's Time To Break Up Facebook he’s human. But it’s his very humanity that makes his unchecked power so problematic. .......... Mark’s influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government. He controls three core communications platforms — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — that billions of people use every day. ............... Mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook’s algorithms to determine what people see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered. He sets the rules for how to distinguish violent and incendiary speech from the merely offensive, and he can choose to shut down a competitor by acquiring, blocking or copying it. ............  Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks. ...........  We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American. .......... Jefferson and Madison were voracious readers of Adam Smith, who believed that monopolies prevent the competition that spurs innovation and leads to economic growth. ..............  A century later, in response to the rise of the oil, railroad and banking trusts of the Gilded Age, the Ohio Republican John Sherman said on the floor of Congress: “If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation and sale of any of the necessities of life. If we would not submit to an emperor, we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity.” The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 outlawed monopolies. ............... In the past 20 years, more than 75 percent of American industries, from airlines to pharmaceuticals, have experienced increased concentration, and the average size of public companies has tripled. The results are a decline in entrepreneurship, stalled productivity growth, and higher prices and fewer choices for consumers. ...........  From our earliest days, Mark used the word “domination” to describe our ambitions, with no hint of irony or humility. Back then, we competed with a whole host of social networks, not just Myspace, but also Friendster, Twitter, Tumblr, LiveJournal and others. The pressure to beat them spurred innovation and led to many of the features that distinguish Facebook: simple, beautiful interfaces, the News Feed, a tie to real-world identities and more. .............. It is worth half a trillion dollars and commands, by my estimate, more than 80 percent of the world’s social networking revenue. It is a powerful monopoly, eclipsing all of its rivals and erasing competition from the social networking category. ............ About 70 percent of American adults use social media, and a vast majority are on Facebook products. Over two-thirds use the core site, a third use Instagram, and a fifth use WhatsApp. .................  I heard more than one friend say, “I’m getting off Facebook altogether — thank God for Instagram,” not realizing that Instagram was a Facebook subsidiary. .................  The F.T.C.’s biggest mistake was to allow Facebook to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. ...............  The News Feed algorithm reportedly prioritized videos created through Facebook over videos from competitors, like YouTube and Vimeo. In 2012, Twitter introduced a video network called Vine that featured six-second videos. That same day, Facebook blocked Vine from hosting a tool that let its users search for their Facebook friends while on the new network. The decision hobbled Vine, which shut down four years later. ............ other high-tech areas dominated by single companies, like search (controlled by Google) and e-commerce (taken over by Amazon).  

The Hidden ‘Fourth Wave’ of the Pandemic America hasn’t begun to face this year’s mental health crisis. ...........  Nine long, deadly months into the pandemic, Americans report severe psychic distress. It’s dark, we’re stuck inside, and we’re isolated from friends and family. ...............  Americans’ assessment of our mental health is “worse than it has been at any point in the last two decades.” ............  In addition to so much death, the next three months could bring a level of collective grief, anxiety, depression and overall stress that may eclipse all that we’ve experienced so far this terrible year. ............. “Once we get the pandemic under control, people are going to come up for air, and they will not be OK” ............  Many people often feel terrible about the holidays because they rarely go as well as they do on TV, and this year, more than ever, the disconnect will be unavoidable — and triggering. ............ Eat well, sleep well, maintain social connections, spend time outside in the sun and get a lot of exercise, which has been shown to provide significant improvements for a range of mental health problems.