As both candidate and president, Trump has a habit of calling himself an expert on a LOT of different things. MSNBC’s Brian Williams takes a look:

Via MSNBC – YouTube (thanks, Jim)

Ron Rosenbaum:

’The world is divided between those who willingly waste precious moments, hours, weeks, years of life doing crosswords, double-crostics, sudoku, and other word and number puzzles—and those (like myself) who are virtually allergic to them. (The puzzles, not the people.)

I’m not claiming any superiority for those who share my allergy. (Well, that’s my story, anyway, and I’m sticking to it.) I just think our brains are wired differently. Really differently.

Try this experiment at a dinner party (if you want to ruin it). Mention a frequent obsession of puzzle people, the NPR “news quiz” show, Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! (Or, as I call it, “Wait Wait … Please Kill Me!”) About half the attendees will exhibit violent, often physical reactions ranging from cringing to shuddering. Meanwhile, the other half will have sublime self-satisfied smiles. They sometimes get the answers before the guests! The show is so mentally stimulating!

What always gets to me is the self-congratulatory assumption on the part of puzzle people that their addiction to the useless habit somehow proves they are smarter or more literate than the rest of us. Need I suggest that those who spend time doing crossword puzzles (or sudoku)—uselessly filling empty boxes (a metaphor for some emptiness in their lives?)—could be doing something else that involves words and letters? It’s called reading.…’

Via Slate

’In the U.S., 18th and 19th century burials involved at most, a pine casket and a plot in a cemetery or on your land. But embalming techniques pioneered during the Civil War so thousands of soldiers could be brought home helped spawn the modern funeral industry. The death of Abraham Lincoln and the public viewings of his embalmed body as it was brought from Washington, D.C. to its final resting in Springfield, Illinois likely also contributed to the shift in how Americans conceive of death.

“The reports we get from that era is he [Lincoln] looked pretty doggone good for being dead after being assassinated with a bullet to the head,” Bill Hoy, an end of life expert at Baylor University, told Earther. “That confirmed that [embalming] is especially helpful for two things: One, when our dead’s death occurs a few days from home, and two, when an injury or disease process was such that dead just look horrible, and people thought ‘I don’t want that to be my last picture.’”

But while the growth of arterial embalming fluid gave loved ones more time to say goodbye and create a last memory, the processes also cuts bodies off from what some would argue is their final purpose, of giving life the Earth.

The modern green burial movement is a sort of course correction for the Western world. Acciavatti said that it’s always been much bigger in Europe compared to the U.S. “[i]n part because embalming was never really a thing there, but also because we’re so behind the curve in terms of green movements in the U.S.” But the U.S. is now catching up.

Ramsey Creek Preserve, the first modern green burial cemetery in the U.S., opened 20 years ago in South Carolina. Since then, roughly 150 green burial sites have opened their gates (if they even have them), allowing family and friends to bury loved ones in a more natural way. That generally means wrapping their body in a shroud, digging a grave that’s three feet deep—far enough down to not be detected by scavengers but not so far down as to be cut off from microbial decay—and keeping the grave unmarked.…’

Via Earther

’If December’s multiple meteor showers left you craving more, you’re in luck! Tonight is the peak of the quadrantid meteor shower, and we’ve got your list of all the major meteor showers to put on your calendar for 2019.…’

Via Lifehacker

Efforts to fill the periodic table raise questions of special relativity that “strike at the very heart of chemistry as a discipline.”

’Until December 2015, there were holes in the periodic table, elements synthesized but not yet officially recognized. But as we enter the International Year of the Periodic Table, the classic periodic table has been filled to its seventh row: In late 2015, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially confirmed elements 113, 115, 117, and 118. The new elements also received their final names: nihonium, moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson. Efforts to find the next elements, 119 and 120, are underway.

Exactly how many elements are still to be discovered? Is there an end to the periodic table? When will we reach it? What does it teach us about the nature of the elements?…’

Via JSTOR Daily

Janis Searles Jones and Philippe Cousteau:

’Eight years ago, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico devastated communities, wildlife and livelihoods all along the Gulf coast. While dying dolphins and oil-soaked marsh grass dominated the headlines, the human cost was catastrophic. Now, it appears that a new disaster is slowly unfolding that may soon eclipse that horrific event to become the worst environmental disaster in US history.

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan triggered an undersea mudslide that sank an oil platform owned by Taylor Energy. Since then, between 300 and 700 barrels of oil have been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico every day. Let’s put that into perspective. The Deepwater Horizon disaster spilled almost 200m gallons of oil into the Gulf. To date, the Taylor spill has released as much as 140m gallons of oil into the Gulf.…’

Via The Guardian

Our best bet for survival? Lie low.

’If advanced alien civilizations do exist, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku asks: Why would they want anything to do with us? It would be like an academic talking to a squirrel, he suggests, and he has a great point.

Hollywood and science fiction novels have conditioned us for years to believe that aliens either want to hang out on our intellectual level and learn from us… or destroy us. If alien life really does have the technology and know-how to make it all the way here, perhaps we should just play it cool and not assume that we are the top species in the universe.

Kaku speculates that our hypothetical demise would come at the hands of an intelligence civilization that sees us as no more than deer in the woods and wipes us out by accident — just as we have done to (what we deem) less remarkable species since time immemorial…’

Via Big Think

’New research shows that people with depression use absolute words, such as “always,” “nothing,” or “completely,” more often than others.…’

Via JSTOR Daily

Paul Nicklen:

’I have either lived or worked in the Arctic for most of my life. There is no place that I love more. The Arctic is also warming twice as fast as anywhere else on Earth. On this day, four years ago, I photographed two young bears who were lying dead next to one another. Top polar bear scientists are saying that we will likely lose 30 percent of the polar bear population by 2050 due to starvation and we could lose polar bears all together within a hundred years. I want the world to realize that these are not just data points falling off a sheet paper. These are individuals that are and will starve to death due to the lack of sea ice. What is it going to take for us to wake up? It was on this day that @sealegacy was born. I am proud of the work that @sealegacy is doing. We have come a long way but we are only just getting started. If we are going to create real and lasting change for our planet, then we need to quickly scale our organization and take on bigger campaigns. Please go to the link in my bio and please consider a donation of any size. Please join us in #turnthetide #becomepartofthesolution #gratitude…’

Via Instagram

’During a CNN appearance on December 24, Clark stressed that “there doesn’t seem to be any strategic rational for the decision. And if there is no strategic rational, then you have to ask, ‘Why was the decision made? I can tell you that people around the world are asking this. And some of our friends and our allies in the Middle East are asking, ‘Well, did Erdogan blackmail the president? Was there a payoff or something? Why would a guy make a decision like this?’”…’

Via Salon.com

‘If the ACME Corporation were a real company, its R&D department would have been pretty busy. The fake manufacturer, featured in the Looney Tunes’s Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons, seemingly made every type of product in the Looney Tunes universe, from explosives to refrigerators to trampolines to instructional karate manuals.

Chicago-based artist Rob Loukotka knows them all. His studio, Fringe Focus, has put them all on one 24-inch by 36-inch poster, creating an exhaustive illustrated compendium of all of the ACME-brand products that fueled the endless coyote-on-bird rivalry.

First designed as part of a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign—it vastly overshot its $3000 goal, raising more than $105,000 in less than a month—the poster features all 126 ACME products (the full list is here) that appear in the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner sketches.

To come up with the design, Loukotka watched 43 Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner cartoons that aired between 1949 and 1994, spending more than 100 hours creating intricate renderings of products like the ACME Bird Seed, ACME Glue, the ACME Instant Icicle Maker, the book Birds and Their Habitat, and more.

Spend enough time with the poster and you’ll no doubt start wishing you could buy some of the whimsical inventions for yourself, forgetting that most of them ended up spectacularly backfiring on the poor coyote.…’

Via Mental Floss

Collective Suicide (1936), by Mexican muralist David A. Siqueiros, is an example of the “accidental painting” technique developed by the artist.

’In the 1930s, a small group of New York City artists began experimenting with novel painting techniques and materials, including Mexican muralist David A. Siqueiros and Jackson Pollock. For the last few years, a team of Mexican physicists has been studying the physics of fluids at work in those techniques, concluding that the artists were “intuitive physicists,” using science to create timeless art.

“One of the things I have come to realize is that painters have a deep understanding of fluid mechanics as they manipulate their materials,” said Roberto Zenit, a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who is leading the research. “This is what fluid mechanicians do. The objective is different, but the manipulation of these materials that flow is the same. So it is not a surprise that fluid mechanics has a lot to say about how artists paint.”

Zenit is not the first physicist to be fascinated by Pollock’s work in particular. Back in 2001, for instance, physicist Richard Taylor found evidence of fractal patterns in Pollock’s seemingly random drip patterns. His hypothesis met with considerable controversy, both from art historians and a few fellow physicists. In a 2006 paper published in Nature, for instance, Case University physicists Katherine Jones-Smith and Harsh Mathur claimed Taylor’s work was “seriously flawed” and “lacked the range of scales needed to be considered fractal.” (To prove the point, Jones-Smith created her own version of a fractal painting—using Taylor’s criteria—in about five minutes using Photoshop.)

Then, in 2011, Boston College physicist Andrzej Herczynski^ and Harvard mathematician Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan collaborated with art historian Claude Cernuschi on an article for Physics Today examining Pollock’s use of a coiling instability in his paintings. It’s basically a mathematical description for how a viscous fluid folds onto itself like a coiling rope—just like pouring maple syrup on pancakes. The patterns that form depend on how thick the fluid is (its viscosity) and how fast it’s moving. Thick fluids form straight lines when being spread rapidly across a canvas, but will form loops and squiggles and figure eights if poured slowly.…’

Via Ars Technica

’To understand what goes through the minds and bodies of opioid users, The New York Times spent months interviewing users, family members and addiction experts. Using their insights, we created a visual representation of how the strong lure of these powerful drugs can hijack the brain.

Dr. Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, one of the nation’s top opioid researchers, said this work brings “an emotional understanding” to the epidemic but “without glamorizing or oversimplifying.”…’

Via The New York Times

The ‘visual representation’ is hokey and adds nothing but glitz to the narrative. Nevertheless, it is insightful. However, it is hard to understand why it took the Times months of interviewing, when the reporters could have interviewed Dr Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, or read one of her review papers on the neurobiology of addiction, deriving the same sophisticated understanding in thirty minutes or less.

Regardless, it is important to understand that addiction is not just a weakness of will and that recovery is not just a matter of determination. Motivation and commitment are necessary but far from sufficient in the face of the powerful neurobiological changes precipitated by a period of consistent use of an addictive drug. And this is true not only with respect to opioids (so fashionable to think about given the nationwide ‘epidemic’) but but any class of addictive drug. (And, for that matter, we speculate that non-drug-related ‘addictive’ behaviors such as gambling may involve similar mechanisms.). Essentially, the machinery of pleasure, reward and satisfaction have been hijacked by the substance use. With abstinence, such changes do not reverse for months or even years. 

’It’s the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most remarkable photograph ever taken, Earthrise… In what was at that time the biggest television broadcast in terms of audience ever, the crew described the moon as they orbited it, and then ended the broadcast with a reading from Genesis and, finally, with this:

“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

The crew fired their engine to leave lunar orbit and return to Earth on Christmas Day from behind the moon, out of radio contact with the rest of humanity. When they finally saw the Earth again, Jim Lovell broke radio silence to declare, “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”…’

Via Six Colors

As explained by a rabbi:

’For over a century, American Jews have eaten American Chinese food on Christmas. This pastime has evolved to a near-holy tradition, parodied on Saturday Night Live, analyzed in academic papers, and reaffirmed by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

Perhaps the foremost expert on the practice is Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, PhD, executive director of American Friends of Rabin Medical Center, rabbi of Metropolitan Synagogue in New York, and author of A Kosher Christmas, the premier (and only?) comprehensive study of what Jews do at Christmastime.

I spoke to Plaut about Chinese food on Christmas, and why he used to sit on Santa Claus’s lap.…’

Via Vox

’Dear Anonymous,

It’s time we revisit that famous op-ed of yours.

In September, you acknowledged that you were a member of the “quiet resistance” within Donald Trump’s administration. You told us that you and others were “working diligently” to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” You said that while you agreed with many of the president’s policies, you were appalled by the president’s amorality, his chaotic management, his “repetitive rants,” his fondness for dictators.

You also believed that your efforts to resist Trump were often successful. On foreign policy, you noted, the administration’s policies were far more sober and serious than the president’s reckless rhetoric.

You were wrong. This week proves it. Assuming you haven’t departed the administration already, now would be the time for you to go. Ditto for all of your fellow “resisters.”

This is the central lesson of James Mattis’s stunning resignation on Thursday. Secretaries of defense come and go — we’ve had five in the last eight years — and some of them run afoul of the president they serve.
But Mattis is the highest-ranking cabinet member to resign over differences of policy and principle since Cyrus Vance quit the State Department in 1980 after Jimmy Carter’s Desert One fiasco. He is the only defense secretary to leave this way since the position was created in 1947.

Mattis resigned because he no longer shares your analysis. He no longer believes he can be a steadying or blocking force in the councils of government because it isn’t clear there are “councils of government.” Donald Trump made a snap decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria following a phone call with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He did so over the unanimous objections of his national-security team. He did so after leading members of that team had said publicly and recently that the U.S. would not withdraw.

A president who sticks it to his own team while sticking with a foreign strongman is not worth sticking by.

Mattis also resigned because he has concluded that the problem with Trump isn’t that he’s an empty vessel. It’s that he’s a malignant one.

Here was the fundamental mistake in your view of Trump: You thought he could be handled. You thought of him as a child who simply needed to be kept away from dangerous toys, as former economic adviser Gary Cohn did when he removed a letter from the president’s desk ordering the end of the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement.
But our Commodus-in-Chief isn’t just an irascible buffoon whose worst impulses can be confined to Twitter but whose policy instincts largely align with yours. Trump thinks of himself as a man of ideas. Withdrawal from Syria, along with partial withdrawal from Afghanistan, is consonant with the quasi-isolationism he’s preached for decades. He is sympathetic to Erdogan, as he is to other tyrants, because he is indifferent to considerations of human rights and civil liberties.…’

Via The New York Times Opinion

’In 2014, BBC aired a two-part documentary that featured intimate and close-up footage of dolphins using remote-controlled cameras disguised as sea creatures like turtles and fish. In one of the scenes, a group of adolescent dolphins captures a puffer fish and passes the ball-shaped little guy around. But as narrator David Tennant explains, what the dolphins really appear to be after is the toxin released by the puffer.

When attacked, puffer fish release a neurotoxin. In high doses, it can kill, but in small doses, it has a narcotic effect. It seems to be affecting the dolphins. They appear totally blissed out by the whole experience. And remarkably, all take turns in passing the puffer around.…’

Via Kottke

’Nestled amongst hundreds of stunning shots of the aurora borealis taken by Finnish photographer Jani Ylinampa is a series of four photos of Kotisaari, showing the island from a drone’s point of view for each of the four seasons (clockwise from upper left): spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

But seriously, go check out Ylinampa’s Instagram account…it’s packed with aurora borealis photos. What a magical place to live, where the sky lights up like that all the time.…’

Via Kottke

Defendant in largest case of poaching in the state, which killed hundreds of deer.

Via Boston Globe

My guess? The convict will be unmoved. 

No sense of humor:

‘While this pales in comparison with his mounting moral, constitutional, and possibly criminal sins, his latest tantrum against “Saturday Night Live” finds him wading deeper into the wannabe dictator muck.…’

Via Boston Globe

What is that they say about political jokes, that the problem with them is that too many of them get elected? Trump would just be funny if he weren’t so pitiful and his impact on human misery so profound.

Via Imgur

’A cosmological model predicts that the expanding Universe could rip itself apart. Too much dark energy could overwhelm the forces holding matter together. The disaster could happen in about 22 billion years.…’

Via Big Think

’Philosophers are supposed to ask Big Questions. The Big Questions is the title of a popular introduction to philosophy and of a long-running BBC programme in which people discuss their ethical and religious perspectives. But since we philosophers, following in the footsteps of Socrates, claim to practice critical thinking, it behooves us to ask whether Big Questions are a good idea.

It’s not easy to say precisely what makes a question big; but we can at least give a few examples form the history of philosophy so that we have some idea what we’re talking about:…’

Via 3 Quarks Daily

Disaster-Prepping for the Animals:

’As climate change escalates the intensity and frequency of natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes, zoos are having to find new ways to keep their animals safe. This means stocking up on emergency provisions for a hundred or more species, each with their own special medical, dietary, and habitat needs. It also means knowing, at a moment’s notice, which species need to move if keeping them outdoors becomes unsafe. Collecting such information requires years of planning. But zoos only began doing the work fairly recently.…’

Via WIRED

A: drug addiction treatment.

’Many drug treatment centers are run as for-profit institutions. Making a buck off of treating people’s addictions often runs counter to actually helping addicts. Some Chinese drug centers are experimenting with removing an addict’s nucleus accumbens, which saps them of their ability to feel pleasure.…’

Via Big Think

3 Quarks Daily

’One of Mick Mulvaney’s first tasks as acting chief of staff to Donald Trump will perhaps be explaining why he previously publicly called his boss “a terrible human being”.

Video has emerged of Mulvaney, previously a Republican congressman, admitting his disdain for Trump shortly before the presidential election in November 2016.

“Yes, I’m supporting Donald Trump; I’m doing so as enthusiastically as I can given the fact I think he’s a terrible human being,” Mulvaney said.…’

Via The Guardian

Via Reddit

’The Geminid meteor shower has been raining down on us the past few days, and if you want to see it, tonight is the best night.

Read more Brave the cold for a glimpse at this expansive star show. The Geminids appear to come more of less from the Gemini constellation, but they travel far across the sky. You don’t need a telescope to see them, just endurance: the shower is at its best around 2am, your local time.…’

Via Lifehacker

’Astronomer Carl Wirtanen discovered his namesake comet in 1948. He was a skilled object hunter and used photos of the night sky to spot the quickly moving object, at least astronomically speaking.

Comet 46P/Wirtanen’s orbit keeps it pretty near to the sun. Its aphelion, or farthest point from the sun, is about 5.1 astronomical units (AU), which is just a tad bigger than Jupiter’s orbit. Its perihelion, or closest approach to the sun, is about 1 AU, just about the Earth’s distance from the sun. This path takes about 5.4 years to complete, meaning it comes back into view quite frequently compared to other famous comets.

Right now, it is approaching its perihelion. Its closest point to the sun will fall on Dec. 16 – which is why it will be brightest on this day.

Comet 46P/Wirtanen is a particularly active comet – called a hyperactive comet – and tends to be brighter than other comets of a similar size. This makes it a good candidate for viewing. Predictions suggest it will be as bright as a magnitude 3, which is a little brighter than the dimmest star in the Big Dipper, Megrez. However, there are some predictions that keep it beyond naked eye visibility at a brightest magnitude of only 7.6. The dimmest object visible with the naked human eye is magnitude 6, under perfect observing conditions.…’

Via The Conversation

’Just because you disagree with something doesn’t mean that it isn’t true for someone else.…’

Via Big Think

’From seizing control of the internet to declaring martial law, President Trump may legally do all kinds of extraordinary things.…’

Via The Atlantic

A Supercell Storm Chaser Photographs Thundering Formations:

’FOR THE PAST decade, photographer Mitch Dobrowner has spent a few weeks every summer pursuing extreme weather across the midwestern United States with veteran storm chaser Roger Hill, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, has witnessed more tornadoes (more than 650) than anyone in history. During their first outing, in 2009, Dobrowner and Hill spotted a high-precipitation supercell thunderstorm in the Black Hills of South Dakota at noon and followed it all day in Hill’s eight-seater van until giving up the chase at midnight in Valentine, Nebraska.

“It looked like a spaceship,” recalls Hill, who runs Silver Lining Tours, which offers 11 storm-chasing outings each year. “Hail the size of grapefruits, lightning strikes every three or four seconds.”

Dobrowner’s black and white images of that megastorm are some of the most spectacular in his ever-expanding portfolio of extreme weather photography. Although tornadoes get all the attention on TV, Dobrowner is more interested in supercells, massive storm systems that sometimes spawn tornadoes. “I see them as living things,” he says. “Some are gorgeous and beautiful, some are tornadic and violent. And the longer they last the more form they take. Eventually, they mature and die. So I try to take a portrait, almost like with a person.”…’

Via WIRED

’Tibetan monks from all over the world are scheduled to visit India to discuss the issues related to the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Some, including the Dalai Lama himself, have questioned if the institution should be continued. The final decision will have far reaching effects, since China is unlikely to let the monks have the last word on the matter.…’

Via Big Think

Amanda Marcotte:

’The heat is turning up on Donald Trump this week, as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is making news every day, giving a strong impression that justice circles ever closer to Trump himself. … As the walls close in around the president this week, there’s been a detectable shift in the way that Trump and his protectors in both the right-wing media and the Republican Party have defended him. The pretense of innocence is slipping away and in its place is rising a new excuse: Donald Trump and his associates are and should be above the law….

This pretense of respect for rule of law is quickly eroding as it becomes likelier that Trump could be in real trouble. While Trump still occasionally throws the word “innocent” around, he’s been increasingly bold about implying that he and his associates simply cannot be held accountable to the same rules as everyone else.…’

Via Salon.com

Michelle Goldberg, NYT opinion columnist:

’One of the chief questions in the Trump-Russia scandal has been whether Vladimir Putin has leverage over the president of the United States, and, if so, what that leverage looks like. The significance of the fabled “pee tape,” after all, is not that it would reveal Donald Trump to be a pervert bent on defiling the place where Barack Obama slept. Rather, the tape matters because, if real, it would show the president to be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

That’s also why evidence of Trump’s business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him.…’

Via New York Times

’People who speak languages missing from Google Translate, Siri, and Wikipedia will face future crises—leaving aid organizations scrambling.…’

Via WIRED

’We all want to do more to reduce our impact on the environment, but working out what steps to take to actually make a difference is a bit of a minefield…’

Via WIRED UK

One of the most surprising and least noticed aspects of Mueller’s approach all along: 

‘…He’s been writing the long-anticipated “Mueller Report” bit by bit, in public, since his very first court filing.

Those waiting for Mueller to issue some massive, 9/11 Commission–style report at the end of the investigation often overlook the sheer volume of detailed information Mueller has pushed into public view already. Nearly every court document he has filed has been what lawyers call a “speaking indictment,” going into deeper detail and at greater length than is strictly needed to make the case for the criminal behavior charged.

Similarly, his “criminal informations,” the indictment-like documents filed as part of guilty pleas, have often included extraneous evidence of additional, formally uncharged criminality.

In former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s plea agreement, Mueller detailed how Flynn served as an unregistered foreign agent for the government of Turkey. Manafort’s criminal information—a document that often is only a few pages, the bare minimum that prosecutors and a defendant will agree upon—this fall stretched to nearly 40 pages, including voluminous details about the so-called Hapsburg group, European politicians enlisted in Manafort’s alleged scheme, information that hadn’t appeared in any of the indictments or charges against Manafort until that point.

With his major court filings, Mueller has already written more than 290 pages of the “Mueller Report.” As Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes has said, if a 9/11 Commission–style body had gathered in the wake of the 2016 election to study Russian interference, its findings would read much like Mueller’s novelistic charges against the Internet Research Agency and the military intelligence agency commonly referred to as the GRU.

Together with the charges against Michael Cohen by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York—which stemmed from findings by the Mueller investigation—the Justice Department has outlined over the course of this year two separate alleged criminal conspiracies that aided the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

But even that’s not the full story.

Mueller’s courtroom strategy—guided surely by Michael Dreeben, one of the nation’s top appellate lawyers—has been all but flawless. His prosecutors have batted away numerous challenges, and he has notched a steady stream of guilty pleas. Earlier this fall, when Manafort became the first and only of those cases to go to trial, Mueller’s team convinced a jury of his guilt in each area of crimes they charged and, according to reporting afterward, came within a single vote of conviction on all 18 charges.

And now, Manafort’s apparent dissembling has given Mueller’s team an excuse to publish everything they know about Manafort’s “crimes and lies,” whether they’ve been publicly discussed yet or not. That could potentially include new information about that mysterious 2016 Trump Tower meeting—prompted by a Russian offer to help the campaign—or details about the apparent Assange connection.

A Manafort sentencing submission, meanwhile, would sidestep the current awkward question of delivering a “Mueller Report” to the acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, that could be suppressed politically or redacted before release.…’

Via WIRED

’Writ presented by Human Rights Watch calls for prosecution over mass civilian casualties in Yemen and murder of Jamal Khashoggi…’

Via The Guardian

’No place is safe from the scourge of superbugs, a new study suggests, not even space. According to the study, samples of bacteria resistant to several antibiotics have been found on the International Space Station (ISS). And while the bacteria may not have made any astronauts sick, the authors say it’s pretty likely that they can…

The new study is actually an update to the researchers’ ongoing work. In January, the same team published research looking into the bacterial genetics of samples swabbed from the surfaces of the ISS in 2015. Within these samples, they found more than 100 bacterial genes known to help make bacteria resistant to antibiotics. And strains belonging to a particular species of bacteria, Enterobacter bugandensis, were resistant to all nine antibiotics tested against them.…’

Via Gizmodo

’Speaking to a parliamentary communications committee, Digital Minister Margot James described the software as “a very cynical, exploitative means… to hoodwink the general public”.

She added: “Some airlines have set an algorithm to identify passengers of the same surname travelling together.

How much money do airlines make from charging for extras? “They’ve had the temerity to split the passengers up, and when the family want to travel together they are charged more.”

It’s an issue that will be looked at by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, launched by the government this week to identify and address areas where clearer guidelines and regulation are needed in how data is used.

Passengers first started noticing they were being split up from their party if they didn’t pay more for allocated seating in June 2017, with Ryanair most commonly associated with the practice.

However, Europe’s biggest airline never admitted to changing the way seating was allocated, insisting there was no change and saying that those who don’t pay to choose a seat are “randomly” assigned one.…’

Via The Independent

’A group of psychologists at Emory University have proposed a new three-part model to explain schadenfreude. Their proposal, published in New Ideas in Psychology, suggests that the motivation behind the feeling is important and that an element of viewing others as less than human is often at play.

Drawing upon decades of work, the researchers suggest that three different motivations can drive the feeling of schadenfreude; aggression, rivalry, and justice.

Aggression based schadenfreude involves group identity. Often, improving the group you’re in can require the defeat of other groups. This kind of Schadenfreude is the one you might feel when your favorite team’s rival loses a game to somebody else and can’t make the playoffs, even though your team is already long out of the running.

Rivalry based schadenfreude is similar but distinct. This one is tied to individual achievement and jealousies. It occurs when you go out of your way to do better than another person, such as when you make a move in a game that improves your lead over one player in particular, but that doesn’t help you otherwise. Like when you play The Settlers of Catan with somebody and place a settlement right where they wanted to build one, even though there was a better option for you.

The third kind is justice based and revolves around the joy we feel when somebody who we think deserves some comeuppance, say a successful person who we all know robs, cheats, steals, and overcharges for lifesaving drugs who then goes to prison.…’

Via Big Think

Why ‘Changing-Look Quasars’ Appear to Vanish

’Quasars powered by supermassive black holes have been unexpectedly vanishing. Scientists have started to figure out why.…’

Via Quanta Magazine

’Over the past few years, an international team of almost 200 psychologists has been trying to repeat a set of previously published experiments from its field, to see if it can get the same results. Despite its best efforts, the project, called Many Labs 2, has only succeeded in 14 out of 28 cases. Six years ago, that might have been shocking. Now it comes as expected (if still somewhat disturbing) news.

In recent years, it has become painfully clear that psychology is facing a “reproducibility crisis,” in which even famous, long-established phenomena—the stuff of textbooks and ted Talks—might not be real. There’s social priming, where subliminal exposures can influence our behavior. And ego depletion, the idea that we have a limited supply of willpower that can be exhausted. And the facial-feedback hypothesis, which simply says that smiling makes us feel happier.

One by one, researchers have tried to repeat the classic experiments behind these well-known effects—and failed. And whenever psychologists undertake large projects, like Many Labs 2, in which they replicate past experiments en masse, they typically succeed, on average, half of the time.…’

Via The Atlantic

’There’s a verbal tic particular to a certain kind of response to a certain kind of story about the thinness and desperation of American society; about the person who died of preventable illness or the Kickstarter campaign to help another who can’t afford cancer treatment even with “good” insurance; about the plight of the homeless or the lack of resources for the rural poor; about underpaid teachers spending thousands of dollars of their own money for the most basic classroom supplies; about train derailments, the ruination of the New York subway system and the decrepit states of our airports and ports of entry.

“I can’t believe in the richest country in the world. …”

This is the expression of incredulity and dismay that precedes some story about the fundamental impoverishment of American life, the fact that the lived, built geography of existence here is so frequently wanting, that the most basic social amenities are at once grossly overpriced and terribly underwhelming, that normal people (most especially the poor and working class) must navigate labyrinths of bureaucracy for the simplest public services, about our extraordinary social and political paralysis in the face of problems whose solutions seem to any reasonable person self-evident and relatively straightforward.…’

Via Truthdig

’A dead sperm whale that washed up in Indonesia on Monday had more than 13 pounds of plastic waste in its stomach, according to local officials. An autopsy of the whale’s stomach turned up 115 plastic cups, 25 plastic bags, four plastic bottles, two flip-flops, some nylon, and more than 1,000 smaller plastic shards.…’

Via Motherboard

Follow Me Here is 19 years old today. Thank you to all my loyal readers, and here’s to many more years of fun curation and occasional sardonic commentary. Keep reading!

’Speaking to Fox News’s Chris Wallace in an interview that aired on Sunday, President Donald Trump explained that he didn’t manage to make it across the river to Arlington National Cemetery for a Veterans Day commemoration because “I was extremely busy on calls for the country, we did a lot of calling as you know.”

Had a Democratic president pulled this remarkable snub/gaffe combination, conservative media and conservative politicians would have pretended to be sincerely outraged and mainstream media would have pretended to believe them. But thanks to the normal operation of the hack gap, Trump’s unwillingness to inconvenience himself in the slightest in order to commemorate Veterans Day simply becomes the subject of arch commentary rather than faux outrage.

Perhaps the strangest thing about it is that Trump pretended to be busy when his public schedule for the day was empty. And thanks to his Twitter feed, we know perfectly well that he spent the day repeating weird misunderstandings of what a trade deficit is, flinging around absurd conspiracy theories about election fraud, feuding with the president of France, etc.

Yet the strangest thing about life in the United States in 2018 is that every time Trump sits down for an interview like this, he gives new evidence that we should almost certainly be glad he’s too lazy to actually bother doing his job most of the time. After all, he has no real understanding of any of the relevant issues.…’

Via Vox

Temperatures over 100 million degrees:

’In a breakthrough for nuclear fusion research, scientists at China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor have produced temperatures necessary for nuclear fusion on Earth. STEPHEN JOHNSON 15 November, 2018 The EAST reactor was able to heat hydrogen to temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius…

At the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor in Hefei, China, researchers managed to heat hydrogen within the ‘artificial sun’ to a temperature of more than 100 million degrees Celsius, or 212 million degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it becomes plasma. The temperatures inside EAST are actually about seven times hotter than the center of the sun, where the added pressure from gravity allows for fusion to occur.…’

Via Big Think

Secret whale jail discovered by Russian reporters:

’Russian news network discovers 101 black-market whales. Orcas and belugas are seen crammed into tiny pens. Marine parks continue to create a high-price demand for illegal captures.…

This giant group of whales — 11 orcas and 90 belugas — are reportedly believed to have been captured by LLC Oceanarium DV, LLC Afalina, LLC Bely Kit and LLC Sochi Dolphinarium. According to VL, these four firms dominate an illegal export market for marine animals. The four companies appear to be largely unregulated.

These whales are believed to be for sale to one of China’s 60 marine parks and aquariums, with a dozen more venues reportedly under construction. With an individual orca said to be going for about $6 million on the black market, there’s money to be made in supplying all of these attractions, in China and elsewhere. There are thought to be at least 71 orcas currently in captivity — 166 orcas have been captured since 1961, and 129 of them have died since. SeaWorld still has 21 orcas; 48 have previously died at their parks…’

Via Big Think

Time to be afraid for the future:

’…[We] are a nation profoundly divided about what it means to be American. The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer suggested, in Anna Holmes’ documentary The Loving Generation, that the US has long been pledging allegiance to two very different visions of what it means to be an American. On one side, being an “American” involves signing up for a civic faith dedicated to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to the privacy of the voting booth and liberty and justice for all. This is the Americanness of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, of the pulsing urban coastal centers, a vision that’s open to your tired, your poor, your refugees from around the world yearning to be free and ready to work hard. On the other hand are those who believe that “American” means people whose parents were born here, who are white and Christian, who want to bar the doors against the swarthy hordes. And yes, at least some of the latter—like this weekend’s gunman—believe in the more sinister slogan that arbeit macht frei.

The US government has been teetering back and forth between these two visions for generations. And no matter which side occupies the White House, the other wants their country back. One side was happy with George W. Bush’s red meat, red state presidency, invading freedom-hating nations, torturing suspected enemies to show strength, and keeping the country secure with a sprawling (and enduring) “security” apparatus. The other side—the globalists, the diversity-lovers, the cosmopolitans, the blue-coastal urbanites—thought that by electing Barack Obama, they had won back their country. Now, if they didn’t before, these people know that boiling underneath Obama’s presidency was a furious resistance: the Tea Party, the racists, the white nationalists who then elected their Birther-in-Chief.…’

Via Vice

It’s going to get weirder from here.

’“No matter what the kind of natural disaster, whether it’s flooding or wind damage or fire, the biggest burden of the longest duration falls on the already-poor,” David Lodge, director of Cornell University’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, told me.

In addition to the immediate threats to life and limb that come with any severe natural disaster, there may be a temporary period of homelessness or unemployment that can send someone on the brink of poverty over the edge. Without adequate insurance, savings to rebuild, or a reliable social safety net in place, what Lodge has called “the human face of policy-induced suffering” is revealed.

And with the current trajectory of increasing weather disasters, that suffering is likely to grow.…’

Via VICE

’The inner life of plants arouses the passions of even the mildest-mannered naturalists. A debate over plant consciousness and intelligence has raged in scientific circles for well over a century—at least since Charles Darwin observed in 1880 that stressed-out flora can’t rest.

There’s no doubt that plants are extremely complex. Biologists believe that plants communicate with one another, fungi, and animals by releasing chemicals via their roots, branches, and leaves. Plants also send seeds that supply information, working as data packets. They even sustain weak members of their own species by providing nutrients to their peers, which indicates a sense of kinship.

Plants have preferences—their roots move toward water, sensing its acoustic vibes—and defense mechanisms. They also have memories, and can learn from experience. One 2014 experiment, for example, involved dropping potted plants called Mimosa pudicas a short distance. At first, when the plants were dropped, they curled up their leaves defensively. But soon the plants learned that no harm would come to them, and they stopped protecting themselves.

But does any of this qualify as consciousness? The answer to that question seems to depend largely on linguistics, rather than science—how humans choose to define our conceptions of the self and intelligence.…’

Via Quartz

’A group of House Democrats will introduce a bill on Friday to help protect millions of nurses and other health care workers from the high rates of violence they experience on the job.

The new bill, called the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, would require hospitals, nursing homes, rehab centers, and jails to develop a workplace safety plan to protect their workers from violence they experience at the hands of patients — a surprisingly common phenomenon. The bill would also require employers to record and investigate all complaints of violence, and prohibits retaliation against employees who call 911. A draft of the bill was shared with Vox.…’

Via Vox

’The FBI released a report earlier this year on “pre-attack behaviors” of mass shooters, Quartz reports. … The FBI writes in the report’s conclusion:

What emerges is a complex and troubling picture of individuals who fail to successfully navigate multiple stressors in their lives while concurrently displaying four to five observable, concerning behaviors, engaging in planning and preparation, and frequently communicating threats or leaking indications of an intent to attack.

It takes a community to spot all the red flags, they say. But they include forms of abuse, harassment, bullying, and violence, to name just a few. Among the red flags:

• Threats or confrontations (35 percent of shooters)
• Physical aggression (33 percent) 
• Anger that concerns people around them (33 percent) 
• Intimate partner violence (16 percent of shooters) and stalking (11 percent)
• Suicidal ideation (48 percent) 
• “Concerning” interpersonal behavior (57 percent) 
• Inappropriate firearms use (21 percent)

Via Lifehacker

Obvious caveat: while mass shooters may display this cluster of behaviors, far from everyone displaying this cluster of behaviors becomes a mass shooter. 

’The claim, being taken up by an increasing number of people in QAnon circles, is that the fires are caused by “directed energy weapons”—that is, government-directed lasers bent on destroying homes, property, and lives. And if recent history is any judge, there’s a chance the country’s biggest conspiracy-peddlers, up to and including the one who lives in the White House, will take up the cause.

Directed energy weapons, or DEWs, have an interesting place in conspiratorial circles. DEWs are, to begin with, a real technology, but one still in its infancy: a report produced for Congress describes that term as an umbrella to refer to technologies “that produce concentrated electromagnetic energy and atomic or subatomic particles.” The consensus is that there are a number of logistical issues to work out before that the U.S. government will be able to build a laser system that would actually be workable on a battlefield, but that the Department of Defense and private contractors are eager to leverage laser power towards killing people and/or destroying enemy missiles, aircrafts, or satellites.

If you ask people in the deep end of the conspiracy theory pool, though, DEWs are here already. There’s a small body of people who believe themselves to be “targeted individuals”—stalked, harassed, and attacked by the government or other shadowy groups—and at least some of them believe those attacks are being carried out by DEWs. Now, through a strange confluence of forces, the paranoia over DEWs is making its way into the discussion about natural disasters. What we’re seeing is a convergence of longstanding American fears about government mind control and manipulation of the weather merging with climate change skepticism, as climate science becomes ever-more-politicized.…’

Via Earther

Did you know:

• The consensus view among scientists is that polygraph testing has no scientific basis?
• The FBI considered the creator of the lie detector test to be a phony and a crackpot?
• The man who started the CIA’s polygraph program thought that plants can read human thoughts?
• The foremost polygraph advocate in academia was discredited by a federal judge?
• A prominent past-president of the American Polygraph Association is a phony Ph.D., and this premier polygraph organization doesn’t consider it an ethics problem?
• The longest polygraph school produces newly minted polygraphers in just 14 weeks — less than half the time it takes to graduate from a typical barber college?
• The National Center for Credibility Assessment (the erstwhile DoD Polygraph Institute) suppressed a study suggesting that innocent blacks are more likely to fail the polygraph than innocent whites?
• The researcher who developed the U.S. Government’s polygraph Test for Espionage and Sabotage “thought the whole security screening program should be shut down?”
• The National Academy of Sciences concluded that “[polygraph testing’s] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies?”
• Spies Ignatz Theodor Griebl, Karel Frantisek Koecher, Jiri Pasovsky, Larry Wu-tai Chin, Aldrich Hazen Ames, Nicolás Sirgado, Ana Belen Montes, and Leandro Aragoncillo all passed the polygraph?
• One of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history passed the polygraph and killed again?
• Al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents know full well that the lie detector is bogus?
• You don’t have to be a psychopath, go to spy school, or somehow believe your own lies to fool the polygraph? (We’ll reveal how it’s done.)

Educate yourself. Before playing Russian roulette with yourreputation, learn how to protect yourself against this invalid test. Download AntiPolygraph.org’s free book (4 mb PDF):

The Lie Behind the Lie Detector

(Also available in EPUB and MOBI/Kindle formats)…’

Via AntiPolygraph.org

Can AI fix it?:

’Cities are looking to machine learning to streamline their disaster-response efforts. Will it be too little too late?…’

Via Fast Company

’Poorer people living in formerly industrialized cities in the middle latitudes tend to live on the East side. Here’s what’s probably going on.…’

Via Digg

(Hint: prevailing winds.)

Daily Caller interview transcript shows he has no clue

’In some ways, the friendliest Donald Trump interviews are the most revealing. Given the opportunity to ramble and free-associate without any pushback whatsoever, you can see what channels his mind naturally follows.

His latest interview with the Daily Caller shows a president who’s fundamentally out to sea. The sycophantic interviewers can’t get Trump to answer a policy question of any kind, no matter how much of a softball they lob at him. The only subjects he is actually interested in talking about are his deranged belief in his incredible popularity and how that popularity is not reflected in actual vote totals because he’s the victim of a vast voter fraud conspiracy.

It’s the kind of thing that would be a bit sad if it were just your elderly uncle ranting about his past glories, but Trump mixes it in with authoritarian asides and the fundamental reality that whether he cares to do the actual job or not, he is ultimately the president of the United States.…’

Via Vox

Related:

Donald Trump: incompetent or authoritarian? Both are scary. Reject journalist David Brooks’s false choice:

 

’While promoting an excellent article by Weekly Standard editor Jonathan Last about President Donald Trump’s tendency to be the vaporware president, New York Times columnist David Brooks offers an unfortunate false dichotomy, saying that Americans should fear Trump’s incompetence rather than his authoritarianism.

 

This is a frequent theme among intelligent conservative commentators who find themselves trapped between the bombast of the MAGA-maniacs and the ideological betrayals of the hardcore Never Trumpers. Ross Douthat wrote in January in the New York Times, for example, that “Trump so far is more farce than tragedy.” …

 

There are undoubtedly real examples of autocratic rulers who are also savvy, highly skilled technocrats who excel at devising and implementing public policy.

 

Singapore’s former leader Lee Kwan Yoo is the example one hears most commonly, but the likes of Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Deng Xiaoping in China, and Park Chung-hee in South Korea are also often said to fit the bill.

 

But a much more common situation is for authoritarians to appoint people to positions of authority based on considerations of loyalty and regime stability rather than competence…’

 

Via Vox

’George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley and the author of the 2004 book Don’t Think of an Elephant, recently published an article laying out the media’s dilemma. Trump’s “big lie” strategy, he argues, is to “exploit journalistic convention by providing rapid-fire news events for reporters to chase.”

According to Lakoff, the president uses lies to divert attention from the “big truths,” or the things he doesn’t want the media to cover. This allows Trump to create the controversies he wants and capitalize on the outrage and confusion they generate, while simultaneously stoking his base and forcing the press into the role of “opposition party.”

I reached out to Lakoff to talk about Trump’s media strategy, but also, more importantly, about solutions. If the president has indeed turned journalistic conventions to his advantage, how can we, the media, respond constructively?…’

Via Vox

’Sen. Jeff Flake, the lame-duck Arizona senator who’s long clashed with President Donald Trump, is once again threatening to use his position to express concerns about executive power and the fate of the Russia investigation.

It’s not an empty threat. But it’s not yet clear to what extent he’ll follow through.

Flake said on Wednesday that he would oppose all judicial nominees coming through the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate floor until Majority Leader Mitch McConnell puts a bill protecting special counsel Robert Mueller up for a vote.…’

Via Vox

Related:

McConnell just said there’s no need for a “protect Mueller” bill. Trump already made that look silly.

Trump rages against Robert Mueller:

 

’In an angry Twitter rant, Trump describes Mueller as “a disgrace to our Nation.”…’

 

Via Vox

Fox backs CNN in lawsuit against Trump Administration:

’On Tuesday, CNN filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for allegedly violating the First and Fifth Amendments when it revoked Jim Acosta’s press badge. Opinions on Acosta may vary among media professionals, though the general consensus seems to be that administrations shouldn’t bar journalists from the White House based on the content of their reporting. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who had tweeted a doctored video of the heated exchange between Acosta and President Donald Trump, described CNN’s lawsuit as “more grandstanding.” Fox News voiced support on Wednesday for CNN’s effort to restore the press pass of reporter Jim Acosta after it was revoked by the White House.…’

Via Big Think

’Technically, “S1” is a stream of debris from a dwarf galaxy torn apart by the Milky Way’s gravity, passing through space. What S1 is pulling along with it, though, is being described in a far more dramatic way, as “a dark matter hurricane.” Scientists believe this companion stream of dark matter (DM) is hurtling through us right now at a jaw-dropping speed of 500 kilometers a second. Hence the “hurricane” metaphor. Is it time to head down into our quantum storm cellars? Not quite. This is dark matter, after all, material we can’t directly perceive and with which we can’t interact, so no worries. On the other hand, this blast of DM has the potential to afford us our best glimpse yet of the elusive stuff.…’

Via Big Think

Is the appendix a useless organ, an immune system benefactor, a Parkinson’s disease instigator, or all of the above?

’As far back as Darwin, scientists have thought the appendix was a vestigial organ, but opinions have changed in recent years. A new study found that the appendix houses Lewy bodies, abnormal protein deposits that contribute to Parkinson’s disease. Researchers suggest an appendectomy may lower one’s risk of Parkinson’s, while other research suggests the appendix has important roles to play in our immune system.…’

Via Big Think

’Progressive America would be half as big, but twice as populated as its conservative twin.…’

Via Big Think

’Picked up by MacRumors, iOS has started locking owners of iPhones (and to a lesser extent iPads and Apple TVs) out of their devices, disabling their Apple IDs. And Apple has now acknowledged it.

Apple’s new iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR are among the devices affected by the widespread Apple ID lockoutAPPLE Citing multiple reports across Reddit and Twitter, MacRumors says users are being told they can no longer use their devices “for security reasons”. In response, @AppleSupport is recognising the issue and guiding users to the company’s Support Communities page which tells users how to restore access when Apple IDs are locked and disabled.…’

Via Forbes

’With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources. Behind the scenes, they say, the president has lashed out at several aides, from junior press assistants to senior officials. “He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.” The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory.…’

Via Los Angeles Times

Five days of fury: 

’Trump’s splenetic tweets and [testy tone were] described in interviews with 14 senior administration officials, outside Trump confidants and foreign diplomats, many of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“He was frustrated with the trip. And he’s itching to make some changes,” said one senior White House official. “This is a week where things could get really dicey.”

During his 43-hour stay in Paris, Trump brooded over the Florida recounts and sulked over key races being called for Democrats in the midterm elections that he had claimed as a “big victory.” He erupted at his staff over media coverage of his decision to skip a ceremony honoring the military sacrifice of World War I.

The president also was angry and resentful over French President Emmanuel Macron’s public rebuke of rising nationalism, which Trump considered a personal attack. And that was after his difficult meeting with Macron, where officials said little progress was made as Trump again brought up his frustrations over trade and Iran.

“He’s just a bull carrying his own china shop with him when ever he travels the world,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said.…’

Via Washington Post

’Claire Lehmann’s online magazine, Quillette, prides itself on publishing ‘dangerous’ ideas other outlets won’t touch. How far is it willing to go?…’

Via POLITICO Magazine