The Catholic Church Holds a Lesson for Progressives
Grzegorz Galazka/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Ross Douthat wrote a column over the weekend about the possibility of a schism in the Catholic church. As you can imagine, I don’t really care if the Catholic church splits in two again, but I read the column anyway because of what it says about conservative thought in general.…
Walking Around Has Gotten a Lot More Dangerous Over the Past Decade
I missed this when it made the rounds a few months ago, but today the LA Times tells us that pedestrian fatalities have been rising steeply for the past decade. Here’s a chart from the Governors Highway Safety Association: This is something of a mystery, but the most interesting part of the Times story is…
Trump Says the Government Should Investigate Obama’s Netflix Deal
Alex Wong/Getty The House Judiciary Committee moved closer to opening impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump last week. But what really deserves investigation, according to Trump, is Barack Obama’s Netflix deal. The president fired off an early morning tweet storm Monday, repeating his rallying cry that former special counsel Robert Mueller found “ZERO COLLUSION, ZERO OBSTRUCTION” and…
Trump Is Forcing Asylum Seekers to Brave Mexican Border Cities at Night to Make Their Court Dates
Mario Tama/Getty A few weeks ago, Sister Salome Limas started fielding some unusual requests at the women’s shelter she runs in Tijuana: The Central American asylum seekers staying at Instituto Madre Asunta began asking if she could let them out in the middle of the night so they could go to court in the United States.…
How a Revolution in Climate Science Is Putting Big Oil Back on Trial
A man in the Bahamas searches through rubble after Hurricane Dorian.Ramon Espinosa, AP The outer banks of the Carolinas and the Bahamas are picking up the pieces after the battering from Hurricane Dorian—the first direct hit of this year’s extreme weather season. Already the damages for 2019 are well above the 40-year average for billion-dollar events,…
We Know There’s Lots of Plastic in the Ocean. Why Can’t We Find It?
Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty This story was originally published by Wired and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Humans unleash mountains of plastic into the sea each year, and that rate is only accelerating as plastic production grows around the world. The confounding bit is that scientists know little about where all that plastic is ending up—in…