The sun rose again this morning on a state emerging from a “stay-at-home” spring caused by a pandemic that has claimed over 3,500 of our family members, neighbors and friends. Since COVID-19 hit Connecticut, we have seen and heard about inspiring acts of humanity, we have practiced this newly found — and lifesaving— practice of social distancing, we have self-isolated and now we all await the return to work call so we can rebuild our lives and fire up our state’s economy.

Don’t be fooled by the unfounded, Malthusian belief that overpopulation is the roots of all evils when it comes to sustainability. Population growth is just one of many issues that we should keep an eye on – for sure – but it would be an unforgivable mistake – and a racist one – to give it our undivided attention.

Nearly 7.7 million American workers younger than 30 are now unemployed and three million dropped out of the labor force in the past month. Combined that’s nearly one in three young workers, by far the highest rate since the country started tracking unemployment by age in 1948. Nearly 40 percent worked in the devastated retail and food service sectors.

To scholars and activists left and right, human nature is the enemy. If it were not for human nature, the environmentalists believe, the forests and fields and natural wonders of the world would be pristine and perfect. If it were not for human nature, believe the behavioral economists, we would make better choices – save more, eat better, gamble less, and not get tricked by framing effects that marketers and retailers so expertly wield against us.

The United States is in a deep recession, but the official numbers are missing something big. They don’t reflect the immense value of the sacrifices being made by millions of people who have stayed at home to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Because we don’t charge one another for saving lives, one of the most herculean efforts ever undertaken isn’t being counted in gross domestic product.

This brutal spring, the U.S. faces two great crises. Over the past 14 weeks, 84,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. That’s 28 times the death toll of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more than the U.S. combat deaths in the Vietnam War, and one-quarter of the total global casualties from the coronavirus pandemic.

When clinging to America’s individualistic ideals in a pandemic means letting poor people die in service of the economy, society cannot hold. Human societies fall somewhere on a spectrum, with individualism on one end and collectivism on the other. The collectivist end could be summarized as, “We’re all in this together” — think propertyless Indigenous tribes that share everything — and the individualist end by Margaret Thatcher’s famous declaration that, “There’s no such thing as society; there are individual men and women, and there are families.” It could also be summarized as, “You’re on your own.”

I'm in downtown Warsaw in the middle of Europe's biggest far-right rally and it's messing with my mind. The weird part isn't the souvenir stands selling anti-Muslim t-shirts or the angry young men wearing skull masks and chanting "faggots forbidden". That's standard for an ultranationalist rally.

Denial never dies; it just goes quiet and waits. Today, after years of irrelevance, the climate science deniers are triumphant. Long after their last, desperate claims had collapsed, when they had traction only on “alt-right” conspiracy sites, a hero of the left turns up and gives them more than they could have dreamed of.

Whether it be a crazy foldable or just a 5G mega-brick with more storage than most laptops, smartphones are summiting peaks almost no one is asking them to, particularly on price. Samsung in particular has been on the cutting edge of what is a larger and growing trend, with its nearly-$2000 Galaxy Fold and maxed out Galaxy S20 Ultra (which retails for $1600 in 512GB trim).

Months into economic shutdown, millions of Americans still haven't received unemployment checks—a travesty that is the direct result of anti-welfare decisions that make the process as difficult as possible.

EVER SINCE Donald Trump declared his presidential candidacy and rank racism in 2015, those of us who’d witnessed the nationalist undoing in the Balkans at the end of the last millennium have found the subsequent rise of Trumpism frighteningly familiar. We quickly recognized a host of nationalist pathologies: the tactical importance of bigotry, since enemies must be ceaselessly identified and hated; relentless misogyny as a means of controlling women and their bodies, because the nation is a masculinist project where women serve as wombs for national reproduction;

Sustainability must be fully incorporated into material design. To the general public, the plastic problem is all about disposable single-use packaging. We are exhorted to use fewer plastic carrier bags, and products are sold as eco-friendly on the basis that they are packaged in paper, glass or steel – a sometimes questionable claim. But it’s essential to realise that demonising polymers and plastics is not the solution. They are more than simply packaging.

I told Laurie Garrett that she might as well change her name to Cassandra. Everyone is calling her that anyway. She and I were Zooming — that’s a verb now, right? — and she pulled out a 2017 book, “Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes.” It notes that Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was prescient not only about the impact of H.I.V. but also about the emergence and global spread of more contagious pathogens. “I’m a double Cassandra,” Garrett said.

In Human Errors, Lents “demonstrated that the human body can’t possibly be considered the product of an intelligent designer. Rather, its flaws tell the story of evolution,” reviewer Harriet Hall asserts in a Skeptical Inquirer magazine review of the nonfiction book (“Evolution’s Flaws Are in Us”).

Scientists saw it coming well in advance: a crisis that, left unaddressed, could kill hundreds of thousands of people. The White House ignored it, telling the public the problem was already contained. Maybe, senior officials speculated, it wasn’t a problem at all but another hoax cooked up by the president’s enemies in Congress, or by the Chinese government.

Karl Marx wrote that “history repeats itself twice, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.” The collapse of the Soviet Union was not a tragedy, nor is what is happening in Russia now a farce. Still, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a defining moment in human history. Russia’s current struggle with itself doesn’t begin to rise to that level.

When Planet of the Humans first came out, we added it to the site before watching it because we trusted Michael Moore's track record of releasing quality films that are factually accurate. After we watched it, we had issues with the film but assumed it was at least factually accurate, since Michael knows his films will be rigorously fact-checked.

The pandemic-induced global financial meltdown has rocked the fossil fuel industry, leaving American drilling and fracking companies begging for bailouts. Then things slid from crisis to catastrophe as crude prices temporarily plunged into negative territory, leading President Donald Trump to tweet this week that he would "never let the great U.S. Oil & Gas Industry down," signaling his renewed push to use taxpayers' money to throw fossil fuels a federal lifeline.

When it comes to learning anything new, we almost every time go through the same process of learning. Even though there are a few different directions for our learning process, the final step is always crucial. In short, we start from a reason which can be connected to an expectation or a vision. Then comes the effort required for learning and it involves the speed of learning and the ability to keep learning however painful it may be.