politics
So this is 90 seconds to midnight
Reading Time: 4 minutes On January 24, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists officially moved the hands on the Doomsday Clock, which for three quarters of a century has been used to depict humanity’s risk of global disaster from nuclear war. When the clock was first
Anonymity, privacy, transparency, integrity: Do we even know the future we want?
Reading Time: 8 minutes In the late 2000s, research blossomed around our use of online avatars. Did our videogame icons and social media profiles represent our actual selves, our ideal selves, or something else entirely? And did they have a reciprocal impact, a “Proteus effect” that transformed self
COP27 Climate Conference: The change we need vs. the change we’ll get
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last November, government ministers at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) agreed to The Glasgow Climate Pact. It was both ambitious, in setting key targets for emissions reductions by 2030, and also heavily criticized, including by the Sc
The Scientist Rebellion: What will it take to get the world’s attention?
Reading Time: 8 minutes The Scientist Rebellion calls for more people “on the inside” to take up the struggle against government inaction. But where does the movement fit into broader climate change activism, and is its degrowth message enough?
Study: How most of the 5 billion would die in a US/Russia nuclear exchange
Reading Time: 2 minutes A new study found that a nuclear war between the US and Russia could be the worst catastrophe in world history. But most people wouldn’t die from the exchange itself; 5 billion would perish from the hunger that follows. The study, published in Nature, found that the soot prod
The middle of history
Reading Time: 5 minutes Why today’s utopian ideologies are unlikely to take us all the way to utopia.
Lack of trust is the universal acid
Reading Time: 4 minutes Our greatest accomplishments sprang from an era of trust and cooperation. Without trust, all our institutions crumble.
Between massacres: a uniquely American horror show in seven acts
Reading Time: 7 minutes A shooter enters a building in an American city and takes innocent lives. The name of the shooter is insignificant, while their race and gender are both significant and mostly predictable. The city is Buffalo, or Uvalde, or East Lansing, or Monterey Park, or a hundred others.
Could there ever be a Black Trump?
Reading Time: 3 minutes We’re living through a period of rising authoritarianism in US politics. The January 6th Capitol riot was not an isolated incident but a culmination of conservative extremism. Former President Donald Trump regularly flouted political norms and pushed his base toward what were
Christian nationalism in 2022: An interview with Katherine Stewart
Reading Time: 9 minutes Religious freedom advocate Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, has been writing about politics, policy, education, and church-state relations for over a decade. The Power Worshippers won first place in the Ex
Why aren’t you a Trump supporter?
Reading Time: 7 minutes OnlySky · Why aren't you a Trump supporter? | Dale McGowan So you weren’t a Trump supporter in the last election, and you won’t be in the next one. Same here. Well done us. But the question stands: Why aren’t you a Trump
Will Red and Blue America have an amicable divorce?
Reading Time: 4 minutes During the Civil War, Union General William Sherman and Confederate General John Bell Hood exchanged letters. In their correspondence, Bell expressed disgust at his belief that the Union was fighting to give political rights to former slaves. Hood writes: You came into our co