Florida & Beyond, and All Opinions

Jeff Sharlet’s “The Undertow” tells how the cultural divisions in American society could allow such a thing as the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters to happen. (And how, despite everything that’s happened since, he remains the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential race.) Sharlet believes that event is part of a “slow civil war” that threatens the future of the American republic.

Extreme cold-weather events often occur in association with changes to another river of air high above the jet stream: the stratospheric polar vortex, a great stream of air moving around the North Pole in the middle of the stratosphere. When this stratospheric vortex becomes disrupted or stretched in part due to warming, it can distort the jet stream as well, pushing it southward in some areas and causing cold air outbreaks.

The most common microplastics in the environment are microfibers – plastic fragments shaped like tiny threads or filaments. Microfibers come from many sources, including cigarette butts, fishing nets and ropes, but the biggest source is synthetic fabrics, which constantly shed them.

The Houthis stand to gain politically from these U.S.-U.K. attacks as they support a narrative that the group has been cultivating: that they are freedom fighters fighting Western imperialism in the Muslim world.

Attention to organizing is a shift for the Trump campaign. Today, it looks nothing like the scattershot campaign from 2016, the only other time Trump has waged a nomination battle in the state. Trump’s nod to organizing is noteworthy and is at odds with his brand, which is more focused on stirring the pot and agitating, rather than painstakingly building an infrastructure.

Nations are competing to exploit lunar and asteroid mineral resources. Private corporations and space billionaires are increasingly being touted as the way forward. After the Moon, Mars is the next world in line for “conquest”. The contemporary movement known as longtermism promotes living on other planets as insurance against existential risk, in a far future where humans (or some form of them) spread to fill the galaxies.

Nonprofit boards should require their members to take turns serving as “designated contrarians.” When it’s their turn for this role, board members would be responsible for asking critical questions and pushing for deeper debate about organizational decisions.

Three months after the current conflict began, civilians have borne the brunt of the violence on both sides, with the deaths of more than 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza and 1,200 Israelis. Some 85% of Gazans have also been displaced and a quarter of the population is facing a famine, according to the United Nations. The conflict still has a long way to run and may be headed towards stalemate.

The immense popularity of #JeSuisCharlie is a prime example of how the technology available to us can shape our understanding of shared experiences. The hashtag #JeSuisCharlie capitalised on these. It was widely adopted by those defending free expression, but a flurry of counter-narratives quickly emerged providing alternative perspectives on the attack.

The English war poet Wilfred Owen once wrote, “Celebrity is the last infirmity I desire.” Killed in France at the age of 25, unpublished and unknown, “celebrity” for Owen was a posthumous phenomenon. By contrast, celebrity status for the Irish poet Seamus Heaney – “Famous Seamus” – came early in his life.

Is Biden’s evergreen ego — his scrappy Scranton Joe determination — outpacing his ability to win a tough election, much less govern a bitterly divided country until 2029? Will there be dire consequences because the man who had been yearning to be president since he was 46 resists giving up the job at 81? Should he have stepped aside for someone younger?

Wolfram Eilenberger’s “The Visionaries” is a wild ride through ten of the worst years in the 20th century, and is told through the occasionally intersecting lives of four brilliant young women philosophers: Simone de Beauvoir and Simone Weil (both French), Russian-American Ayn Rand, and German-Jewish Hannah Arendt, who spent time exiled in France and New York.