Month: May 2021
-
Turkey Claims to Have ‘Captured’ Cleric’s Relative in Kenya – The New York Times
Turkey Claims to Have ‘Captured’ Cleric’s Relative in Kenya (Published 2021) The removal of a Turkish citizen from his home in Kenya is part of the crackdown by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on those he sees as connected to a failed 2016 coup. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/world/europe/turkey-kenya-gulen.html Interpol has come under widespread criticism for allowing autocrats and…
-
The Dark Side of Congo’s Cobalt Rush | The New Yorker
The Dark Side of Congo’s Cobalt Rush Cell phones and electric cars rely on the mineral, causing a boom in demand. Locals are hunting for this buried treasure—but are getting almost none of the profit. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/the-dark-side-of-congos-cobalt-rush The man stopped digging in his yard. Instead, he cut through the floor of his house,…
-
One Man’s Amazing Journey to the Center of the Bowling Ball | WIRED
One Man’s Amazing Journey to the Center of the Bowling Ball Mo Pinel spent a career reshaping the ball’s inner core to harness the power of physics. He revolutionized the sport—and spared no critics along the way. via WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/one-mans-amazing-journey-to-the-center-of-the-bowling-ball/ This is what the mercilessness of the pandemic has abruptly robbed from us: tens of…
-
The Native Scholar Who Wasn’t – The New York Times
The Native Scholar Who Wasn’t (Published 2021) More than a decade ago, a prominent academic was exposed for having faked her Cherokee ancestry. Why has her career continued to thrive? Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/magazine/cherokee-native-american-andrea-smith.html In Native Studies there’s a concept called “settler colonialism” that Smith has written about. It includes the conviction felt by non-Natives that the…
-
Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack? | The New Yorker
Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack? The Havana Syndrome first affected spies and diplomats in Cuba. Now it has spread to the White House. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/are-us-officials-under-silent-attack Geolocation data, which is based on signals from electronic devices, indicated that both victims had been in the vicinity of G.R.U. vehicles when they began experiencing symptoms.…
-
Olympic Pin Trading Is Another Casualty of Covid This Year – The New York Times
Their Olympics Are Already Canceled (Published 2021) The collapse of the pin trading market will hardly register amid the more than $15 billion cost of the Tokyo Games, but for avid traders, it’s a huge letdown. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/business/pin-traders-tokyo-olympics.html “I have a very patient wife,” said Mr. Kling, unnecessarily.
-
The Republican Party, Racial Hypocrisy, and the 1619 Project | The New Yorker
The Republican Party, Racial Hypocrisy, and the 1619 Project As the G.O.P. seeks to deny Americans knowledge of their own history, Nikole Hannah-Jones is denied tenure. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-republican-party-racial-hypocrisy-and-the-1619-project Recently, as the Texas Tribune reported, Texas introduced a bill that prohibits the teaching that any race is superior or inferior to another—an ostensibly…
-
Week Twenty-One
—
Assignment: Taylorsville Center for the Performing Arts Assignment: West Davis Highway Assignment: Girls Tackle Football
-
Week Twenty
—
“Photograph the Brigham Young Monument” The Genesis Project Kevin Magna Critical Race Theory, two sides Gov Faith
-
Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently – The New York Times
Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently (Published 2021) The mainstream narrative is that a pop star ripped up a photo of the pope on “Saturday Night Live” and derailed her life. What if the opposite were true? Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/arts/music/sinead-oconnor-rememberings.html?surface=most-popular&fellback=false&req_id=558401398&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-uh-lastthismonth-alpha-01&variant=7_bandit-all-surfaces-uh-lastthismonth-alpha-01&pool=pool/91fcf8 But O’Connor doesn’t see it that way. In fact, the opposite feels true. Now she has written…
-
Opinion | Kushner’s Israel-Palestine Peace Plan Has Failed – The New York Times
Opinion | Kushner’s Absurd Peace Plan Has Failed (Published 2021) There’s no ignoring the plight of the Palestinians. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/opinion/us-israel-palestine-jared-kushner.html To circumvent that dispute, the United States set about bribing other Arab and Muslim countries to normalize relations with Israel. The United Arab Emirates got an enormous arms deal. Morocco got Trump to support its…
-
Secret Sharers: The Hidden Ties Between Private Spies and Journalists – The New York Times
Secret Sharers: The Hidden Ties Between Private Spies and Journalists (Published 2021) A booming, renegade private intelligence industry is increasingly shaping (and misshaping) the news. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-private-spies-news-media.html The short answer is no. To learn from the dossier episode, news organizations would have to examine their ties to private intelligence agents, including why they so often…
-
‘No Smile, No Trash Talk’: Behind Tim Duncan’s Quiet Excellence – The New York Times
‘No Smile, No Trash Talk’: Behind Tim Duncan’s Quiet Excellence (Published 2021) A bank shot carried Duncan from St. Croix to Wake Forest, five championships with the Spurs and now the Hall of Fame. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/sports/basketball/tim-duncan-hall-of-fame.html When we were playing together, he’d come in after a loss and he’d be like, “That’s my fault guys.”…
-
A Press Corps Deceived, and the Gaza Invasion That Wasn’t – The New York Times
A Press Corps Deceived, and the Gaza Invasion That Wasn’t (Published 2021) A spokesman led the international media to believe that Israeli forces had entered Gaza. They hadn’t. But the army wanted Hamas to think they had. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-disinformation.html All through the week, the conflict has inspired a broader storm of misinformation on social media,…
-
The Raw DIY Documentaries Transforming Journalism
The Raw DIY Documentaries Transforming Journalism Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front is part of a new wave of war reporters making their own documentaries and podcasts to offer us a candid look at conflicts around the world. via Hyperallergic: https://hyperallergic.com/645721/the-raw-diy-documentaries-transforming-journalism/ “Honestly, I got sick of commissioning editors who are completely out of touch with their…
-
A City Under Siege: What the War Looks Like on Afghanistan’s Front Line – The New York Times
A City Under Siege: What the War Looks Like on Afghanistan’s Front Line (Published 2021) As bullets from a Taliban machine gun ricocheted through the street below, an Afghan soldier wearing an “I Heart Kabul” T-shirt took a brief rest. “There has been fighting day and night.” Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/world/asia/afghanistan-helmand-taliban.html As the planes departed and the…
-
White House to Investigate Brain Injuries Within C.I.A. – The New York Times
Mysterious Ailments Are Said to Be More Widespread Among U.S. Personnel (Published 2021) The Biden administration has begun more aggressively investigating episodes that left spies, diplomats, soldiers and others with brain injuries. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/us/politics/biden-cia-brain-injury.html And in one case in 2019 that has not previously been reported, a military officer serving overseas pulled his vehicle into…
-
Opinion | The Trump G.O.P.’s Plot Against Liz Cheney — and Our Democracy – The New York Times
Opinion | The Trump G.O.P.’s Plot Against Liz Cheney — and Our Democracy (Published 2021) Wednesday’s House leadership vote is one step among many that will hurt America. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/opinion/liz-cheney-gop.html There are also the new laws to enable Republican legislatures to legally manipulate the administration and counting of the votes in their states. Election expert…
-
Has an Old Soviet Mystery at Last Been Solved? | The New Yorker
Has an Old Soviet Mystery at Last Been Solved? The strange fate of a group of skiers in the Ural Mountains has generated endless speculation. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/17/has-an-old-soviet-mystery-at-last-been-solved All the Dyatlov theories share a basic assumption that the full story has not been told. In a place where information has been as tightly…