Today's Liberal News

Dolphins Might Have Elite Spice Tolerance

This article was originally published in Hakai Magazine.Fishers around the world are desperate for a reliable way to stop dolphins from plundering their catch. Dolphins’ net burgling—known as depredation—costs fishers income and also puts dolphins at risk of injury and entanglement. Proposed solutions, such as using noisemakers, have had mixed results.

We Still Don’t Know What Fundamentally Causes Canker Sores

A canker sore—a painful white ulcer inside the mouth—might be brought on by stress. Or the wrong toothpaste. Or certain foods: tomatoes, peanuts, cinnamon. Or an iron deficiency. Or an allergy. Or a new prescription. Or an underlying autoimmune disease.Even though millions of people suffer from them every year, researchers still don’t know much about what fundamentally causes these sores.

Harassment in Economics Doesn’t Stay in Economics

Betsey Stevenson, a professor at the University of Michigan and a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, told me that when she hit her mid-40s, she had an “aha moment.”“I was thinking, It’s so great having gotten to this stage of my career where I’m a little more established. It’s very freeing,” she told me. “And I realized: Oh, I think I just aged out of sexual harassment.

Dr. Gabor Maté on “The Myth of Normal,” Healing in a Toxic Culture & How Capitalism Fuels Addiction

In an extended interview, acclaimed physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté discusses his new book, “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.” “The very values of a society are traumatizing for a lot of people,” says Maté, who argues in his book that “psychological trauma, woundedness, underlies much of what we call disease.

Lakota Historian Nick Estes on Thanksgiving, Settler Colonialism & Continuing Indigenous Resistance

Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about Thanksgiving and his book “Our History Is the Future,” and the historic fight against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

Filipino Climate Activist Yeb Saño on COP27, Climate Reparations & Philippines’ New President Marcos

This week U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Philippines, where she said the U.S. would defend the Philippines “in the face of intimidation and coercion” from China and vowed to expand the U.S. military presence in the country even after former bases leaked toxic waste into the environment. We recently spoke about the environment and more with Filipino activist Yeb Saño at the U.N. climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Ukraine update: Let’s take stock of the current front lines

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As I noted yesterday, what was Russia’s five axes of attack at the start of the war has been gradually whittled down to a single front in The Donbas. Still, it’s a long front line, across two different oblasts (which collective make up the Donbas), with several directions of action. So let’s take a look at what should be the front lines for the foreseeable future (unless Ukraine surprises everyone with a new push into southern Kherson oblast or even Crimea).

Writer Sarah Fawn Montgomery talks ableism, COVID-19, and the reality of teaching at a state college

Years into the COVID-19 pandemic, people are understandably eager to try and get back into “normal” life again. But the hard reality is that the public health crisis is far from over, and we are still learning how COVID-19 impacts us in both the short and long term. While some folks are eager to move away from masking—including in indoor spaces, like restaurants and classrooms—we know that masks actually do work pretty darn well at reducing the spread of the virus.

The Federation, The Culture, and Elon Musk

The very first episode of the latest Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds, does something extremely clever. In the midst of one of those bog-standard Star Trek speeches, as the captain of this particular Enterprise is talking down an alien culture from the brink of disaster, he explains to them why the Federation is the way that it is.

Hey, Republicans, I want my country back, too!

It was nice last week to see those Mastriano signs stuffed in a trash can at the Bowmansville Service Plaza on the Pennsylvania turnpike, a little more than halfway between Harrisburg and Philadelphia. In hindsight, I should have taken a picture of that, but I didn’t.

At Last, the Americans Have Arrived

The worst American soccer chant goes, “I … I believe … I believe that we will win.” It betrays the anxieties of those who bellow it; far from arrogantly assuming victory, it seems to argue that the success of the United States men’s soccer team is a matter of prayerful thinking. Beating England is not a dream, if you will it.But the chant, for many years, was also an honest assessment of the quality of the U.S. Men’s National Team.

Empires of Soccer

This is an edition of The Great Game, a newsletter about the 2022 World Cup—and how soccer explains the world. Sign up here.Day six of the World Cup and it’s the United States versus England, big Satan versus little Satan in the great battle of the evil imperialists. At stake, a place in the next round of a competition that would likely never have existed without the soccer-spreading British empire, taking place in a country that is unlikely to have existed without it either.

Black Friday Special: Howard Zinn & Voices of a People’s History of the United States

This year marks 100 years since the birth of the historian Howard Zinn. In 1980, Zinn published his classic work, “A People’s History of the United States.” The book would go on to sell over a million copies and change the way many look at history in America. We begin today’s special with highlights from a production of Howard Zinn’s “Voices of a People’s History of the United States,” where Zinn introduced dramatic readings from history.

When Black Friday Is Your Super Bowl

After the turkey comes the pumpkin pie; after the pumpkin pie, the sales.Black Friday is America’s biggest shopping day, with some consumers lining up in the wee hours of the morning to get first grabs at the discounts. But an equally chaotic celebration takes place online.