I guess we’ll be told we’re unseemly if we giggle at the cancellation of useless stooge Don Lemon’s low-rated airport lounge video muzak, or at how the Israelis leveled the Gaza high-rise housing the AP and Al-Jazeera. Well, color us unseemly, because when the media suffers, we celebrate.
And we’re not going to apologize for it. Half of America, at least, now cares about the media precisely as much as the media cares about us – that is, not at all. In fact, we actively wish it ill. We cheer when some trash website or paper folds. The frequent layoff announcements make us giddy. Sad journalists whining about how people on Twitter dare criticize them cause us to howl in delight.
Our contempt for them is a result of their contempt for us. And as individuals and collectively, we should do whatever we lawfully can to hasten the collapse of the mainstream media as an institution.
Harsh? Nah.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take a major abortion case and would consider Mississippi’s appeal of a lower court ruling that reversed a ban on most abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The case will grant the Supreme Court the opportunity to reconsider landmark abortion rulings including Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. With Roe v. Wade, in a ruling that was derided by conservatives and religious adherents, the high court in 1973 ruled that a woman had a right to an abortion and reaffirmed it about 20 years later.
In a single-line order, the court wrote, “The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted limited to Question 1 presented by the petition.”
The Treasury Department said Monday that 39 million families are set to receive monthly child payments beginning on July 15.
The payments are part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which expanded the child tax credit for one year and made it possible to pre-pay the benefits on a monthly basis. Nearly 88% of children are set to receive the benefits without their parents needing to take any additional action.
Qualified families will receive a payment of up to $300 per month for each child under 6 and up to $250 per month for children between the ages of 6 and 17. The child tax credit was previously capped at $2,000 and only paid out to families with income tax obligations after they filed with the IRS.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, recently defended the department’s decision to ease mask mandates by saying there has been an evolution in the science.
Her comments come as commentators and Twitter users on the left have been urging people to continue wearing masks. Left-wing activist David Hogg even went as far as to say he will keep wearing a mask, so people don’t mistake him for being conservative.
A federal judge is sending out signals he may take Twitter to task over its designation as a “private entity” after the platform banned a Massachusetts Senate candidate. In a recent memorandum filed by Judge Mark Wolf, he laid out that Twitter may be considered a state actor if government officials have compelled it to do certain actions.
This all stems from a case in which Dr. V. A. Shiva, who ran in the Massachusetts 2020 Senate election, had his Twitter account suspended for casting doubt on the results of the presidential election. He later filed a lawsuit claiming his account was deleted at the behest of employees working under Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin.
The New York Yankees have had another positive COVID-19 test, this one involving a staff member, manager Aaron Boone said before their game against the Orioles on Sunday.
Boone did not identify the staff member, saying he was part of the team’s support staff. Another staff member was not available because of contact tracing.
The Yankees have had nine total positives within the traveling party since Monday—three coaches, five staffers and shortstop Gleyber Torres.
“We’re just doing the best we can with it,” Boone said. “Fortunately, he’s another one that feels good. So we’ll just continue to try and be vigilant and handle it as best we can.”
The Yankees will have another staff member travel with the team to Texas. The latest staff member that tested positive is being quarantined in Baltimore.
Last week, the Yankees revealed that Torres tested positive for the coronavirus despite being fully vaccinated and previously having COVID-19. He is quarantining in Tampa, Florida.
Adeel Raja contributed to CNN for seven years after tweeting ‘Hail Hitler’
CNN says it cut ties with a writer who took to social media to praise Adolf Hitler, but his admiration for the Nazi leader who killed more than six million Jews was well-established prior to this weekend’s post.
Adeel Raja, a Pakistani-based CNN contributor whose byline has appeared on the network’s website at least 54 times, wrote on Sunday in a now-deleted post, “The world today needs a Hitler.” CNN said Sunday night that due to Raja’s “abhorrent statements,” he would “not be working with CNN again in any capacity.”
Raja’s Sunday post, however, is just one of several praising Hitler and criticizing Israel in vitriolic terms. In other tweets, such as one during the World Cup in 2014, Raja wrote, “The only reason I am supporting Germany in the finals is—Hitler was a German and he did good with those jews [sic]!” In another 2014 tweet, Raja said, “Hail Hitler.”
(The American Conservative) COVID, whatever its origins, presents an opportunity to talk about risks and benefits in scientific experiments.
In theory, gain-of-function research prevents pandemics. Scientists subject pathogens to adaptive pressures, novel environments, animal experiments, protein modifications, and the like to see in action how they go about becoming dangerous to human beings. It’s supposed to keep us one step ahead of the enemy, knowing their tricks before they can use them, seeing mutations before they’ve happened, so that we prevent those conditions from occurring in the wild and can rapidly develop vaccines and treatments for viruses we’ve never seen before. It’s heroic “blue sky” research, the kind you do just because of what it might produce.
In practice, gain-of-function experiments are an established, sexy-sounding way to use a lab. You’re dealing with live pathogens, so it’s obviously dangerous, which means you need to use the best equipment and best practices that make the highest biosafety levels. You need funding. You’re a research scientist and want to get published, and producing and observing a potential pandemic virus is a sure way for you to have something to write about. The more it could kill, the cooler, right? Bet the money and recognition will come pouring in. Scientists are only human.
In theoretical practice, gain-of-function research is something you do as a matter of course, wherever they’ll let you do it, as long as there’s funding. Maintaining the highest standards for biosafety levels is hard, and since you would never be so stupid as to make a mistake, you can cut some corners. Besides, suiting up is not only annoying and uncomfortable; it makes it actually more difficult to conduct the experiments. That’s where the error will come from, right? You’re actually doing better, even safer science, skipping some steps. Yes, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a global leader in research on coronaviruses, has a biosafety level four lab, but its labs also mostly operate at a comfortable and efficient biosafety level two.
I said theoretical practice, because we don’t know. But leading scientists, and science journalists, and your smart friends, all think it’s worth investigating whether the long-named thing we call COVID-19 here leaked from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory. “The science” on this is decidedly not settled. That was the point 18 virologists, epidemiologists, and the like made in a letter in Science journal Thursday, writing, “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable. Knowing how COVID-19 emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks.” That was the point former NYT science writer Nicholas Wade made in a must-read survey of what we do know about the origins of this pandemic for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Adeel Raja, a CNN contributor, called for a “new Hitler” on Twitter.
Raja, who lists himself as a Freelance Contributor at the outlet on LinkedIn, shared the tweet on May 16th amidst ongoing attacks on Israel.
“The world today needs a Hitler,” wrote Raja in a now-deleted post.
At the time of publication, however, Raja’s account still contains pro-Adolf Hitler messages including comments about how the Nazi leader “did good with the Jews”:
Raja has been cited as an author on several CNN articles, with the network’s Spanish-language edition giving him an author page. Most of Raja’s work focuses on international and domestic news related to Pakistan.
