All posts tagged: recent report

Putin’s ‘Rabble of Thin-Necked Henchmen’

Putin’s ‘Rabble of Thin-Necked Henchmen’

Published by skeptic

Not even the most passionate supporters of Vladimir Putin are pretending that the results of this weekend’s election are in doubt: Putin, Russia’s longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin, is about to embark on his sixth term. And so, with no electoral politics to debate, both pro-Putin and liberal Kremlinologists in the Russian-language mediasphere have been focusing instead on changes at the very top of Russia’s power pyramid: the new elite that is coming to replace the old Putin cronies, the tensions between the men in military uniforms and those in suits, and the perennial question of who will lead the country in the case of Putin’s sudden death. Before the war, perhaps the leading candidate for a successor was Putin’s favorite general and then–deputy head of military intelligence, Aleksey Dyumin, who commanded the Special Operations Forces’ top-secret “little green men” during the annexation of Crimea. But his train has departed, as Russians say: “Dyumin’s name was connected to Wagner, which decreased his chance to become Putin’s successor,” a columnist named Andrey Revnivtsev wrote on Tsargrad, …

We’ve Made a Cosmic Choice for Earth’s Oceans

We’ve Made a Cosmic Choice for Earth’s Oceans

Published by skeptic

Even after nearly three months of winter, the oceans of the Northern Hemisphere are disturbingly warm. Last summer’s unprecedented temperatures—remember the “hot tub” waters off the coast of Florida?—have simmered down to a sea-surface average around 68 degrees Fahrenheit in the North Atlantic, but even that is unprecedented for this time of year. The alarming trend stretches around the world: 41 percent of the global ocean experienced heat waves in January. The temperatures are also part of a decades-long hot streak in the oceans. “What we used to consider extreme is no longer an extreme today,” Dillon Amaya, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Physical Sciences Laboratory, told me. The situation is expected to worsen. Research suggests that by the end of the century, much of the ocean could be in a permanent heat wave relative to historical thresholds, depending on the quantity of greenhouse gases that humans emit. Many other changes will unfold alongside those hot ocean temperatures: stronger hurricanes, rising sea levels, unmanageable conditions for marine life. Our seas, …

Stay-at-Home Parents Need Support, Too

Stay-at-Home Parents Need Support, Too

Published by skeptic

In two-thirds of American families with children, all parents work outside the home. But American society is still largely built around the assumption that one parent does not. The lack of affordable child care and the laughable mismatch between school hours and work hours (including summer vacation, when parents are left to figure out who will care for their kids for three months), have beneath them the idea that a stay-at-home parent (read: mother) should be around to take care of things. Yet paradoxically—and much less remarked upon—American society also gives stay-at-home parents a raw deal, ignoring them in policy and providing little material or cultural support while using them as a political cudgel. Stay-at-home parents as we think of them today—that is, one parent in a single-family household who is unattached to the formal labor force—are unusual by historical standards. As the population historian Steven Ruggles has written, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, a majority of American households were “corporate families” wherein all members, including the children, supported the family business, most …

Who’s Afraid of Women’s Pleasure?

Who’s Afraid of Women’s Pleasure?

Published by skeptic

The Disappearance of Shere Hite, a recent documentary about the pioneering feminist researcher, opens with footage of Hite speaking on a 1976 television show about the findings in her new book. Among other things, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, which quickly became a best seller, challenged the widely believed myth that “women should orgasm from intercourse itself, that is, from thrusting,” as Hite explains. But before she can finish her statement—before she can even hint at what many women do need to orgasm—the interviewer has to pause their discussion to chastise the crew members laughing behind the camera. The Hite Report – A Nationwide Study Of Female Sexuality By Shere Hite Nearly half a century later, the impact of Hite’s study is undeniable. It’s no longer quite so taboo to note that many women can’t climax from “thrusting” alone, and an entire cottage industry now promises to help women get there via meditation, physical therapy, psychological counseling, spiritual healing—or, of course, one of the many luxury vibrators on the market. Considered …

The Murky Shoplifting Narrative – The Atlantic

The Murky Shoplifting Narrative – The Atlantic

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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Despite inconclusive evidence, some retailers have seized on the narrative that theft is a major issue, pressuring lawmakers to crack down and changing the shopping experience as a result. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: The specter of shoplifting is haunting America. Viral videos show frightening scenes: people in masks smashing windows, groups swarming stores, thieves attacking workers. Retail executives have referred to theft as a serious threat, suggesting that their companies are victims of a national crime wave. Already, they have made a number of decisions—including locking up items, closing stores, and advocating for harsher larceny laws—under the auspices of trying to deter theft. Despite some disturbing reports of both violent and nonviolent crime in stores, data do not conclusively show that instances of shoplifting are up everywhere; shoplifting has risen overall during the past …

SpaceX Is Holding Up America’s Lunar Ambitions

SpaceX Is Holding Up America’s Lunar Ambitions

Published by skeptic

The second liftoff of Starship, SpaceX’s giant new rocket-and-spaceship system, went beautifully this morning, the fire of the engines matching the orange glow of the sunrise in South Texas. The spaceship soared over the Gulf Coast, with all 33 engines in the rocket booster pulsing. High in the sky, the vehicles separated seamlessly—through a technique that SpaceX debuted during this flight—and employees let out wild cheers. The booster soon exploded, but the flight could survive that. What mattered was that Starship was still flying. It could still coast along the edge of space, and then plunge back to Earth, crashing into the Pacific Ocean off of the coast of Hawaii, as SpaceX planned. But then, as SpaceX mission control waited to hear a signal from Starship, there was only silence. Something had gone wrong after the ship shut off its engines in preparation to coast. The self-destruct system kicked in, and Starship blew itself up, according to SpaceX’s commentators, who were narrating the livestream. A “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” as SpaceXers call it. SpaceX can certainly …

Hackers Are Salivating Over Electric Cars

Hackers Are Salivating Over Electric Cars

Published by skeptic

When a group of German hackers breached a Tesla, they weren’t out to remotely seize control of the car. They weren’t trying to access the owner’s WiFi passwords, nor did they want a way to steal credit-card numbers from a local electric-vehicle charging network. Their target was its heated seats. The Tesla in question was equipped with heated rear seats, but the feature is hidden behind a paywall and activated only after the driver forks over $300. To get around that, three Ph.D. students from Technische Universität Berlin, along with an independent researcher (and the  Tesla’s owner), say they physically tampered with the voltage supply that powers the car’s infotainment system. This allowed them to essentially glitch the computer, in the process gaining access to the rear heated seats free of charge. By “jailbreaking” the car, they were also able to access many of its internal systems and private user data. “We are not the evil outsider, but we’re actually the insider, we own the car,” one of the researchers told TechCrunch last month ahead …

Xi Jinping Is Done With the Established World Order

Xi Jinping Is Done With the Established World Order

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The world’s most powerful leaders gathered in New Delhi for the year’s premier diplomatic event—the G20 summit—but China’s Xi Jinping deemed it not worth his time. His absence sends a stark signal: China is done with the established world order. Ditching the summit marks a dramatic turn in China’s foreign policy. For the past several years, Xi has apparently sought to make China an alternative to the West. Now Xi is positioning his country as a full-on opponent—ready to align its own bloc against the United States, its partners, and the international institutions they support. Xi’s break with the establishment has been a long time coming. His predecessors integrated China into the U.S.-led global order by joining its foundational institutions, such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. For much of his tenure over the past decade, Xi has kept a foot in the door to that Western order—even as China’s relations with the U.S. have deteriorated. China even participated (though grudgingly) in G20 efforts to help alleviate the debt burden on struggling …

Is Mississippi Really as Poor as Britain?

Is Mississippi Really as Poor as Britain?

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The shame of it! Mississippi has found itself in the humiliating position of being compared disobligingly with the United Kingdom. Just last week, the Financial Times ran a column asking, “Is Britain Really as Poor as Mississippi?” Most Mississippians do not spend much time worrying about comparisons with Britain. The same cannot be said about those on the other side of the Atlantic. For Brits—and I am one, though now based in Jackson, Mississippi—the issue of whether they are more or less prosperous than Mississippi has become a thing. Indeed, the Financial Times now calls it “the Mississippi Question.” It was nine years ago when Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator, first suggested that the U.K. was poorer than any U.S. state but Mississippi. This came as an uncomfortable shock for many in Britain for whom Mississippi, as a byword for backwardness, conjures up clichés about the Deep South. Every time anyone has made the comparison since, there has been an indignant outburst from Britons keen to denounce the data. In practice, when trying …