Events

I admire the New York Times for digging into how our pandemic response was so much worse than every other rich country, but ultimately, we already knew: First, the United States faced longstanding challenges in confronting a major pandemic. It is a large country at the nexus of the global economy, with a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions. That tradition is one reason the United States suffers from an unequal health care system that has long produced worse medical...

New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed suit to dissolve the National Rifle Association: The lawsuit sets up a legal confrontation that could take years to play out and will leave the 148-year-old N.R.A. — long the nation’s most influential gun-rights lobby but recently hobbled by financial woes and infighting — fighting for its survival. The attorney general’s office previously presided over the dissolution of President Trump’s scandal-marred charitable foundation, but the N.R.A., with more...

Casualties continue to mount along with accusations of official malfeasance from Tuesday evening's blast at the Port of Beirut: Lebanon's President, Michel Aoun, blamed the detonation on 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that he said had been stored unsafely at a warehouse in the port. A similar amount of the chemical arrived on a Moldovan-flagged cargo ship, the MV Rhosus, which docked in Beirut in 2013 after suffering technical problems while sailing from Georgia to Mozambique. The Rhosus was...

Yesterday approximately 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in the Port of Beirut, Lebanon, leaving hundreds feared dead and thousands injured. If you've ever worried what a "tactical" nuclear weapon can do to a city, here are photos of ground zero from (apparently) just a few days ago and this morning: Here's the Nukemap, showing pretty much exactly what happened: For scale, here's the same detonation at the Sears Tower: The search for survivors continues, with 300,000 people evacuated and Port...

Yesterday, Axios and HBO ran a 45-minute interview between Axios' Jonathn Swan and the President of the United States filmed last Tuesday. I haven't seen it, and I'm not sure I can stomach the whole thing after watching some excerpts. Fortunately, other people watched it for me. Greg Sargent cites it as an example of "how to interview a serial liar and narcissist who is unfit to be president:" Again and again, Swan practically pleaded with Trump to demonstrate a shred of basic humanity about the...

I'm waiting for a build to finish so I can sign off work for the day, so I've queued up a few things to read later: The Atlantic's cover this month will be "How the Pandemic Defeated America" by Ed Yong. In a filing today, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr suggested his office is investigating the president for all kinds of bank fraud. Pass the popcorn. Charles Blow accuses the president of forecasting his own election fraud. Recreational weed sales in Illinois topped a record $61m last month...

That's what Josh Marshall calls the president's ongoing disinformation campaign: Often we think about his chatter as though it’s annoying and distracting but as long as he finally respects the results and doesn’t take steps to prevent people from voting that it will all have been words. No harm, no foul. But of course that isn’t remotely the case. Think about it this way. How much time are you thinking about who will win the election in the ordinary sense: i.e., who will get the most electoral college...

I am trying to put that number into perspective. Assuming 112.5 passengers per flight (4.378 billion passengers carried in 2018 divided by 38.9 million flights[1]), that's the equivalent of 1,395 air-transport crashes this year. It's approximately the number of deaths from nuclear weapons, ever[2]. More Americans have died from Covid-19 in the US than died in World War I and the Vietnam War, combined[3]. It is more than the total number of people who died in New York State in 2017 from all causes[4]....

Given Gerrymandering, the Senate's design favoring rural states, and a host of other factors, most Republicans in Congress will keep their jobs in January. Even though the best likely outcome of November's election is just two more years of gridlock before Democrats re-take the Senate, the vast majority simply don't care: It seems relevant, for instance, that while President Trump and a few Republican incumbents seem to be in genuine trouble, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress are certain to...

This colorized and upscaled video is fascinating: