Month: March 2021
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Notes from a Moab Trailer | Outside Online
Life Lessons from a Moab Trailer What I learned about love, loss, and landscape over two decades of living in a 1961 Artcraft mobile home in the Utah desert via Outside Online: https://www.outsideonline.com/2421817/moab-trailer-mark-sundeen-essay#close I took up with a six-foot-one river guide named Slim, who drove a 1972 Ford truck and sang like Tammy Wynette. I…
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Unpacking the controversy at The Washington Post – Poynter
Unpacking the controversy at The Washington Post – Poynter A Washington Post town hall meeting on Zoom with hundreds of staffers “went off the rails briefly.” The controversy grew even more over the weekend. via Poynter: https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2021/unpacking-the-controversy-at-the-washington-post/ During the March 16 meeting on Zoom, the Post trumpeted its defense of reporter Seung Min Kim from…
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Inside America’s Most Interesting Magazine, and Media’s Oddest Workplace – The New York Times
Inside America’s Most Interesting Magazine, and Media’s Oddest Workplace (Published 2021) The publication of the “Harper’s letter” attracted huge attention. Most people had stopped reading the magazine, which is stranger and better than you might expect. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/business/media/harpers-magazine-macarthur.html The situation, widely viewed internally as insane, makes complete sense to those familiar with the recent history…
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Insurgents Seize Mozambique Town, Killing Several People; Fate of Hundreds Unknown – The New York Times
Insurgents Seize Mozambique Town, Killing Several People; Fate of Hundreds Unknown (Published 2021) The attack by hundreds of militants trapped nearly 200 people, including foreign workers, in a hotel in Palma, Mozambique, site of a major gas project. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/world/africa/27mozambique-insurgents-attack.html After establishing some control, around 100 additional insurgents descended on the area, attacking villages along…
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Florida’s only lead smelter exposed hundreds of workers to high lead levels | Investigations | Tampa Bay Times
Florida’s only lead smelter exposed hundreds of workers to high lead levels Hundreds of workers at Gopher Resource have been exposed to dangerous levels of lead and other dangerous chemicals. Link: https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2021/investigations/lead-factory/gopher-workers/ Gopher exposed workers for years to levels of lead in the air that were hundreds of times higher than the federal limit. At…
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The Historians Under Attack for Exploring Poland’s Role in the Holocaust | The New Yorker
The Historians Under Attack for Exploring Poland’s Role in the Holocaust Scholars face defamation suits, and potential criminal charges, in the Polish government’s effort to exonerate the nation of any role in the murders of three million Jews during the Nazi occupation. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-historians-under-attack-for-exploring-polands-role-in-the-holocaust The other part of that story is that…
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Far-Right Extremists Move From ‘Stop the Steal’ to Stop the Vaccine – The New York Times
Far-Right Extremists Move From ‘Stop the Steal’ to Stop the Vaccine (Published 2021) Extremist organizations are now bashing the safety and efficacy of coronavirus vaccines in an effort to try to undermine the government. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/us/far-right-extremism-anti-vaccine.html In Idaho, the far-right activist Ammon Bundy helped to push for a proposed state law to ban any mandatory…
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Week Twelve
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Assignment: Climate Rally Assignment: Mountain Goat Watch Assignment: Jazz v Nets Assignment: Nohm
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For Biden, an Anguishing Choice on Withdrawal from Afghanistan | The New Yorker
For Biden, an Anguishing Choice on Withdrawal from Afghanistan Five factors will influence the U.S. role and the prospects for peace after two decades of war. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/for-biden-an-anguishing-choice-on-withdrawal-from-afghanistan “The expectation that violence would gradually reduce as we went into the peace process is not taking place,” Miller said. Attacks on American forces…
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After Myanmar Coup, a New Resistance Rises – The New York Times
‘I Will Die Protecting My Country’: In Myanmar, a New Resistance Rises (Published 2021) As the nation’s military kills, assaults and terrorizes unarmed civilians each day, some protesters say there is no choice but to fight the army on its own terms. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/world/asia/myanmar-coup-resistance-protests.html Most days in the concrete conflict zones of Yangon, Ko Soe…
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What We Learned From Our Investigation into Covert Oil Deliveries to North Korea – The New York Times
5 Takeaways From Investigating Covert Oil Deliveries to North Korea (Published 2021) We uncovered how one ship helped North Korea get oil despite sanctions. Here are five takeaways from the investigation. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/world/winson-north-korea-oil-tankers.html North Korea continues to illicitly import oil, in violation of strict international sanctions. The New York Times Visual Investigations team and Times…
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The High Cost of Georgia’s Restrictive Voting Bills | The New Yorker
The High Cost of Georgia’s Restrictive Voting Bills Racist policies are bad for business, as the state’s own history can attest. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/the-high-cost-of-georgias-restrictive-voting-bills Since the defeat of Donald Trump, voter-suppression efforts have emerged in Republican-controlled legislatures across the country. But the campaign in Georgia has particular resonance, in part, because it is…
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Arrests Shake Up a Soccer Scene in Serbia Ruled by Gangsters and ‘Gravediggers’ – The New York Times
Arrests Shake Up a Soccer Scene in Serbia Ruled by Gangsters and ‘Gravediggers’ (Published 2021) A reputed gangster and leader of an “ultras” fan group, who also reportedly had ties to the government, has been arrested following a series of gruesome murders connected to a Belgrade soccer stadium. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/world/europe/serbia-soccer-hooligans.html The name is well deserved.…
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Week Eleven
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Assignment: COVID-19 Memorial – The McGillis School Assignment: Utah Jazz v Houston Rockets
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The Young Political Spaces of the Internet | The New Yorker
The Young Political Spaces of the Internet How a new generation has embraced extreme views online. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-young-political-spaces-of-the-internet Developing an effective response to this crisis of extremism requires an understanding that the modern Internet is an inherently radicalizing mechanism, and that no amount of moderation can effectively halt the sweeping polarization of…
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The Pastry A.I. That Learned to Fight Cancer | The New Yorker
The Pastry A.I. That Learned to Fight Cancer In Japan, a system designed to distinguish croissants from bear claws has turned out to be capable of a whole lot more. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-pastry-ai-that-learned-to-fight-cancer One morning in the spring of 2019, I entered a pastry shop in the Ueno train station, in Tokyo. The…
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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem: The Covid Queen – Rolling Stone
The Covid Queen of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s state has been ravaged by her Trumpian response to the pandemic — but that hasn’t paused her national ambitions via Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/south-dakota-kristi-noem-covid-1142068/ Then she pushed in all her chips. In August, she urged Americans to ride into Sturgis for the annual motorcycle rally. “We hope…
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Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol – The New York Times
Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol (Published 2021) Two Proud Boys accused of leading a mob to Congress followed a bloody path to get there. Law enforcement did little to stop them. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/14/us/proud-boys-law-enforcement.html “They committed violence in public, used videos of that violence to promote themselves for other rallies…
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The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram
The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram “To be truly countercultural in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform.” via Document Journal: https://www.documentjournal.com/2021/01/the-internet-didnt-kill-counterculture-you-just-wont-find-it-on-instagram/ So what does today’s counter-hegemonic culture look like? It’s not particularly interested in being seen—at least not in person. It gets no…
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Inside Andrew Cuomo’s Toxic Workplace
The Cruelty and the Casualties Inside Andrew Cuomo’s toxic workplace. via Intelligencer: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-cuomo-misconduct-allegations.html Multiple people told me that they began therapy and antidepressants for the first time in their lives while working for Cuomo. Ana Liss said that she “started pursuing mental-health services when I was there because I thought I was going crazy. My…