Something may have broken—or rather, begun to break—last month when U.S. President Donald Trump held an indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma in open defiance of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic and found, to his shock and outrage, that his own supporters had failed to show up. That something is the politics of alternate reality that he and other illiberal populists have ridden to power in recent years.

Recently, I saw a friend post an alarming pro-Police copypasta and say that “White Privilege” isn’t real. In response, I have written an essay that addresses Systemic Racism that I think everyone can benefit from. You will find the text of the copy pasta and my rebuttal including sources for my claims below. This is long but I implore you to be an active participant in the discourse.

During the coronavirus lockdown, a fifth-grade teacher, Linda, contacted me asking for help. She teaches in a school district in Southern California where over 80 percent of the students qualify for free lunches. Linda was struggling with students’ not showing up for online class. “Before the lockdown, I had started reading ‘It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel,’ so I thought of asking if you have any ideas,” she said. “The kids all related to your story about being an immigrant and having to translate for your mom.”

Your Prime Day shopping spree came with free, fast shipping — but experts say there’s a hidden environmental cost that doesn’t show up on the checkout page.

Let’s watch, shall we, as a woman struggles with one of the most common sources of distress for the modern middle-aged woman: fertility. She’s got good eggs, some of them frozen, but what she needs is sperm, and the body in which that sperm is contained.

Greta Thunberg has seen footage of the RCMP’s arrest of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam and called the “shameful abuse” of the police “very disturbing to see.” The 17-year-old climate activist tweeted her support for Chief Adam after a video of his encounter with the RCMP was made public. The footage shows the chief being tackled by two officers, getting punched and put in a chokehold in front of his wife.

Cryptocurrency and worldwide politics must find some shared basis coexistence. Regulators and even central banks are increasingly expected to integrate digital assets into the global economy as the benefits of security and privacy outweigh the risks of market decentralization. Public officials should take these matters into account as central authorities become increasingly aware of cryptocurrency and its wide role in affecting long term policy development.

Peter’s work suggests that peaks of violence in the US work on a 50-year cycle, with the next state of upheaval set to hit humanity in 2020. It’s sort of like that 2012 Mayan-apocalypse stuff, except Peter’s theory is the result of the hard work of a modern, living, and well-respected scientist rather than something hippies like to talk about while taking heavy psychedelic drugs. We spoke to Peter to find out what’s supposedly going to make the US descend into a horrifying, dystopian pit of violence in eight years’ time.

Environmentalists tend to be well-meaning, forward-thinking people who believe in preserving the planet for generations to come. They will buy reusable cups, wear ethically made clothing and advocate for endangered species; however, many are hesitant to do the same for endangered Black lives, and might be unclear on why they should.

Last week, my family and I attended an interfaith rally in Los Angeles in defense of Black life. We performed a group ritual in which we made noise for nine minutes to mark the last moments of George Floyd’s life. My wife, my oldest daughter, and I played African drums to mark those nine minutes with the rhythm of a beating heart. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, over and over again.

Adán Vez Lira, a prominent defender of an ecological reserve in Mexico, was shot while riding his motorcycle in April. Four years earlier, the renowned activist Berta Cáceres was shot dead in her home in Honduras by assailants taking direction from executives responsible for a dam she had opposed. Four years before that, Cambodian forest and land activist Chut Wutty was killed during a brawl with the country’s military police while investigating illegal logging.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, many of us have kept saying we can’t wait for things to get back to normal. We want to be able to go out again, see our friends, and be in public places without feeling like we’re risking our health or that of others. Now that Covid-19 case counts have gone down and restrictions are starting to lift, it seems we’re at last on the path back to some semblance of normalcy. But as recent events have shown, the status quo before the pandemic wasn’t all that great for large swathes of the population, both in the US and around the world.

spent last weekend thinking about what makes me different from Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. I was trying to convince myself that “I’ll be OK” – that under similar circumstances, I would experience a different outcome. How much larger of a smile do I need to stretch across my face when I walk through whiter neighborhoods? How much more polite can I be to a police officer who only sees the darkness of my skin? These are the questions that have wrestled control of my mind.

No one should have been surprised by President Donald Trump’s co-opting of the symbols of American Christianity — a church, the Bible — to speak Monday to the white evangelical base that made his election possible. Every American president since George Washington has sworn his oath upon the Bible.

The president’s true believers saw a message to appreciate. Many others saw something more alarming.

The dollar and the US is not immune to the same kind of progressive degeneration suffered by the pound sterling and the UK in the 20th century, says Professor Benjamin J Cohen. SANTA BARBARA, California: With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, the United States seems to have developed a severe case of what psychologists call dissociative identity disorder: it is simultaneously projecting two distinct personalities. On the one hand, the US Federal Reserve has responsibly assumed a leadership role in international finance, as it did during the 2008 global financial crisis.

An important lesson of the #MeToo movement has been that perpetrators of sexual assault include people who have been previously dismissed as potential predators — that sexual assaults can be and are committed by respected members of elite communities, including beloved comedians, Hollywood power players and prominent, well-paid journalists. No one, by virtue of their social or economic status, should be written off as incapable of assault.

In 2016, I was coming back to my apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, after a long afternoon of playing basketball with old friends. I was about to head upstairs, but I saw a missed call that I figured I’d return outside rather than annoy my roommates through the thin walls. A few minutes later, I looked up and saw that two NYPD officers had cornered me. They wanted to see my ID, which I didn’t have.

Our nation is in the midst of the greatest crisis in generations, with the Covid-19 pandemic impacting Americans’ physical and emotional well-being, while plummeting the nation’s economy into the worst economic downturn in our lifetimes. As the country begins what is likely to be a slow climb out of economic morass, federal, state, and local governments will be looking for new sources of revenue to replenish dwindling budgets and provide jobs to millions of Americans who find themselves out of work.

Since the pandemic began, pollution levels have dropped, animals are returning to areas they had previously abandoned and more people have taken to travelling on foot and by bicycle. Although short-lived, we have already seen some of the effects changing our behaviour can have on our own lives and on the natural world.