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Last night, Reuters reported that White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy plans to step down from her post as the country’s de facto climate czar, a Cabinet-level position whose creation was seen as a win by activists. McCarthy, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, quickly denied that she had resigned, calling such reports “simply …

A Purely Speculative List of Reasons Why Gina McCarthy Might Be Leaving the White House Read More »

It is quite possible, even likely, that abortion rights as we’ve known them in America for half a century will no longer exist two months from now. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling this June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerning a Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 …

Could Overturning Roe Help Democrats in the Midterms? Read More »

What happens to a bipartisan democracy when one of the two parties turns toward autocracy? This is the drama we are now living through in the United States. Half the political class operates within a democratic framework, while the other half embraces extremist politics. From support for the January 6 assault on the Capitol, to …

Trump, Putin, and the Politics of Domination Read More »

Later this month, the second round of runoffs will see a rematch between French President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, standard-bearer of the far-right National Rally. Polls that once projected Macron comfortably winning in a head-to-head race with Le Pen have narrowed in recent weeks, leading many to contemplate what until recently seemed unthinkable. …

Marine Le Pen’s Climate Policy Has a Whiff of Ecofascism Read More »

A French social media platform launched by Alexis Barreyat in 2020, BeReal is attracting dedicated users on US college campuses after gaining popularity overseas. Essentially, BeReal sends users a prompt at a random time each day, urging them to snap a picture and send it to their friends. You only have two minutes to respond, …

BeReal Basics: How to Use the ‘Unfiltered’ Social Media App Read More »

Enlarge / A blow fly trapped on a carnivorous sundew plant. Cathy Keifer | Getty Toward the end of the 19th century, lurid tales of killer plants began popping up everywhere. Terrible, tentacle-waving trees snatched and swallowed unwary travelers in far-off lands. Mad professors raised monstrous sundews and pitcher plants on raw steak until their …

How plants turned predator Read More »

So Long Spring Launch — NASA has options for what to do next, but all will involve schedule delays. Eric Berger – Apr 17, 2022 3:10 am UTC Enlarge / The Space Launch System rocket rolls out of the Vehicle Assembly Building in mid-March, 2022. Trevor Mahlmann After three attempts to complete a critical fueling …

NASA to roll back its mega rocket after failing to complete countdown test Read More »

Also, stop shutting down services, in general, we’re begging you — Apple and Microsoft sell custom domain email to consumers, but Google doesn’t. Ron Amadeo – Apr 15, 2022 9:06 pm UTC Some longtime Google users are facing a rough transition. In the early days of Google’s business-focused productivity service—first called “Google Apps for Your …

Before Google kills free G Suite accounts, why not offer a family email plan? Read More »

Getty Images | Peter Dazeley Twitter’s board of directors approved a poison pill to prevent a hostile takeover in response to Elon Musk’s offer to buy the firm. “The company on Friday adopted a so-called poison pill that makes it difficult for him to increase his stake beyond 15 percent,” The Wall Street Journal wrote. …

Twitter board fights Musk takeover with unanimous adoption of poison pill Read More »

Quantum computing has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years. Indeed, once the big technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Google started showing an interest, I kind of stopped keeping track. Nevertheless, research on the basic elements of quantum computing continues and is, for me, more interesting than the engineering achievements of …

Quantum memristor: A memory-dependent computational unit Read More »