Month: December 2020
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Week Fifty
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Assignment: Clearing the Camps Assignment: The Virus Assignment: Utah v Montana State State Street 42
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A Journalist’s Murder in Malta | The New Yorker
Murder in Malta After a journalist was assassinated, her sons found clues in her unfinished work that cracked the case and brought down the government. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/murder-in-malta Daphne wrote her final sentences minutes before the explosion: “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.”
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FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning – bellingcat
FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning – bellingcat A joint investigation between Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, has discovered voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning of the prominent Russian oppositi via bellingcat: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/14/fsb-team-of-chemical-weapon-experts-implicated-in-alexey-navalny-novichok-poisoning/ This…
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Instagram’s Favorite New Yorker Cartoons of 2020 | The New Yorker
Link: As I’m sure you know, this kind of bliss does get a bit tedious as time goes on—too much of a good thing makes Johnny a dull boy. So sometimes I crave something different. In these moments, I grab my cell phone and begin to look at various social-media sites. Instagram is one that…
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She Stalked Her Daughter’s Killers Across Mexico, One by One – The New York Times
She Stalked Her Daughter’s Killers Across Mexico, One by One (Published 2020) Armed with a handgun, a fake ID card and disguises, Miriam Rodríguez was a one-woman detective squad, defying a system where criminal impunity often prevails. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/world/americas/miriam-rodriguez-san-fernando.html In three years, Mrs. Rodríguez captured nearly every living member of the crew that had abducted…
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College Sports Has Reported at Least 6,629 Virus Cases – The New York Times
College Sports Has Reported at Least 6,629 Virus Cases. There Are Many More. (Published 2020) The N.C.A.A. does not track coronavirus cases, but a New York Times analysis shows the pandemic’s toll across college athletics. Many universities have kept their case counts from the public. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/sports/coronavirus-college-sports-football.html The remaining schools, many of them public institutions,…
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‘An Indelible Stain’: How the G.O.P. Tried to Topple a Pillar of Democracy – The New York Times
‘An Indelible Stain’: How the G.O.P. Tried to Topple a Pillar of Democracy (Published 2020) The Supreme Court repudiation of President Trump was also a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders who had put their interests ahead of the country’s. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/12/us/politics/trump-lawsuits-electoral-college.html The Supreme Court repudiation of President Trump’s desperate bid for a second term not…
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My Life in Cars | The New Yorker
My Life in Cars I lucked into the romance of driving at its fervent peak. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-life-in-cars I lucked into the romance of driving at its fervent peak.
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Four State A.G.s Ask Supreme Court to Reject Texas Election Lawsuit – The New York Times
In Blistering Retort, 4 Battleground States Tell Texas to Butt Out of Election (Published 2020) The attorneys general of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court to reject a lawsuit from Texas seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victories. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/us/trump-election-lawsuit-states.html The lawsuit, filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas and backed…
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Pentagon Weighs Sharp Drawback in Support for C.I.A. – The New York Times
Pentagon Weighs Sharp Drawback in Support for C.I.A. (Published 2020) A broad review of the military’s support for the agency is underway, including pulling back personnel and rethinking support for C.I.A. operations around the world. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/us/politics/pentagon-cia-support.html The administration is considering multiple options that could take effect as early as Jan. 5. One would reduce…
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Dianne Feinstein’s Missteps Raise a Painful Age Question Among Senate Democrats | The New Yorker
Dianne Feinstein’s Missteps Raise a Painful Age Question Among Senate Democrats Older lawmakers’ foibles and infirmities are coming under new scrutiny, violating an unspoken culture of complicity and coverup. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/dianne-feinsteins-missteps-raise-a-painful-age-question-among-senate-democrats Twitter and other social-media platforms are exposing lawmakers’ infirmities to new and harsher scrutiny, violating an unspoken culture of complicity and…
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The Life and COVID Death of a Revered Siberian Doctor | The New Yorker
The Life and COVID Death of a Revered Siberian Doctor In a chaotic and overwhelmed hospital, a physician received the kind of indifferent medical care he spent his life trying to overcome. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-life-and-covid-death-of-a-revered-siberian-doctor Perhaps the most macabre proof of the dysfunction in Tomsk came when, according to local media, a family…
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Interpreting America at the Minsk Book Fair | Literary Hub
Interpreting America at the Minsk Book Fair At the end of January this year, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko hosted US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Independence Palace, a glassy, corporate-looking building on Prospekte Pob… via Literary Hub: https://lithub.com/interpreting-america-at-the-minsk-book-fair/ It’s jarring that an industry ostensibly built on understanding the world’s complexity is so basic…
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Tony Hsieh’s American Tragedy: The Self-Destructive Last Months Of The Zappos Visionary
Tony Hsieh’s American Tragedy: The Self-Destructive Last Months Of The Zappos Visionary When the business icon died in a fire last week, questions abounded. The answers seem rooted in a Covid-period spiral, where he turned to drugs and shunned old friends. via Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2020/12/04/tony-hsiehs-american-tragedy-the-self-destructive-last-months-of-the-zappos-visionary/?sh=4811e0554f22 “I am going to be blunt,” she wrote in the letter,…
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A Tycoon’s Deep-State Conspiracy Dive | The New Yorker
A Tycoon’s Deep-State Conspiracy Dive Patrick Byrne, the former head of Overstock, had always been outspoken. Did an affair with a Russian agent push him too far? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/a-tycoons-deep-state-conspiracy-dive Byrne told me that he immediately wondered if Butina was a “red sparrow”—a reference to the 2013 novel that was turned into a film starring Jennifer…
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The mystery of the Gatwick drone | UK news | The Guardian
The mystery of the Gatwick drone The long read: A drone sighting caused the airport to close for two days in 2018, but despite a lengthy police investigation, no culprit was ever found. So what exactly did people see in the Sussex sky? via the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-of-the-gatwick-drone A few years ago, a T-shirt became popular…
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Report Points to Microwave ‘Attack’ as Likely Source of Mystery Illnesses That Hit Diplomats and Spies – The New York Times
Report Points to Microwave ‘Attack’ as Likely Source of Mystery Illnesses That Hit Diplomats and Spies (Published 2020) A government-commissioned report provides the most definitive explanation yet for “Havana syndrome,” which struck scores of American employees, first in Cuba and then in China, Russia and other countries. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/business/economy/havana-syndrome-microwave-attack.html “My government looked the other way…
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The Inside Story of Michigan’s Fake Voter Fraud Scandal – POLITICO
The Inside Story of Michigan’s Fake Voter Fraud Scandal How a state that was never in doubt became a “national embarrassment” and a symbol of the Republican Party’s fealty to Donald Trump. via POLITICO: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/24/michigan-election-trump-voter-fraud-democracy-440475 That November 4 missive James retweeted from his campaign adviser—“Stop making up numbers, stalling the process and cheating the system”—has…
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» Ethics in Strategy Gaming, Part 2: Colonization The Digital Antiquarian
Link: https://www.filfre.net/2020/12/ethics-in-strategy-gaming-part-2-colonization/ In 2008, Firaxis Games — a company founded by Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, and Jeff Briggs — announced a new version of Colonization, which once again chose to present Native Americans as dim-witted primitives and to completely ignore the historical reality of slavery. Even before its release, Ben Fritz, a gaming blogger for…