Champion of Truth
What the evidence really says about social media’s impact on teens’ mental health
https://www.vox.com/24127431/smartphones-young-kids-children-parenting-social-media-teen-mental-health
A hack nearly gained access to millions of computers. Here’s what we should learn from this.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24127433/linux-hack-cyberattack-computer-security-internet-open-source-software
Bird flu in milk is alarming — but not for the reason you think
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24140017/milk-bird-flu-safe-dairy-usda-fda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaJ9VZorgjM
Biz Bros Have An Idiot Contest During Their Town Hall For Schmucks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7ZqvPBSor8
Violence AGAINST Anti-War Student Protesters Escalates Across The US
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJj2aVEzles
“Trump is the fundamental threat to American democracy today. All political violence is lamentable, but individual militants cannot undermine the independence of federal law enforcement, the integrity of the electoral process, or the peaceful transfer of power; an insurrectionary president plausibly can.
And there is no question that white voters from low-density areas support Trump by much larger margins than their counterparts in high-density places.
In the 2020 election, rural white voters backed Trump over Biden by 42 points, while suburban white voters favored him by just 7, according to the Democratic data firm Catalist. Urban white voters, meanwhile, supported Biden over Trump by a 32-point margin.
If rural white Americans voted the same way that suburban white Americans do, then Trump would never have been elected president and his brand of authoritarianism would not be competitive in national elections. If all white Americans voted like those who live in cities, meanwhile, then Trump’s party would have negligible influence over the federal government.
What’s more, Harper acknowledges that rural white Americans are “overrepresented” among those who support restoring Trump to power by force.
Given these facts, it’s silly to argue that urban and suburban white people are doing more to imperil American democracy than their rural counterparts. Harper’s only real counter is that more supporters of January 6 live in cities than in rural areas. But this is a trivial point: Roughly 80 percent of Americans live in non-rural areas. Name any ideological group under the sun and you’re almost certain to find that a majority of that group lives in high-population municipalities, rather than in places that, by definition, have few people.”
…
“All this said, rural white voters are not a monolith. In fact, such voters were an indispensable part of Biden’s 2020 coalition.
Yes, the president won only 28 percent of that voting bloc, but that adds up to more than 9 million votes. In 2020, Biden won nationally by roughly 7 million ballots and took many swing states by tiny margins. Subtract all rural white Democrats from Biden’s column and Trump almost certainly would have won reelection.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/24128478/white-rural-voters-politics-trump-biden-2024-election-polling
“Over the last 30 years, nearly every wealthy country in the world has made it much safer for people to have babies. Only one outlier has moved in the opposite direction: the United States, where the rate of people dying in childbirth continues, stubbornly and tragically, to rise. In 2021, 1,205 US women died from birth-related causes, up from 754 in 2019. Many of those deaths — a full 89 percent in one Georgia study — are potentially preventable with the proper care.”
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/24092448/black-mothers-maternal-mortality-crisis-solutions
“Forget the tank, the fighter jet and even the drone. Artillery is the most important weapon on the modern battlefield, just as it was 100, 200 or even 300 years ago. It was not for nothing that Stalin dubbed artillery the ‘God of War’.
So it’s extremely problematic that the world’s leading army, the US Army, can’t manage to develop a new howitzer. Trying and failing three times in a generation to acquire new heavy artillery, the Army is stuck with upgraded versions of the same howitzers it’s been using for 61 years.”
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/us-army-struggling-build-today-110610720.html
“Ukraine’s chances of victory in its two-year battle to repel Russia’s brutal invasion appear to be fading.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, is warning with increasing urgency that his country could lose the war if it doesn’t get $60 billion in US aid that Republicans in Congress are refusing to release.
“Can we hold our ground? No,” Zelenskyy recently told PBS of Ukraine’s prospects should it not get the funding.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was just as blunt in a recent interview.
“Give us the damn Patriots,” he told Politico in March, referring to the US-made air defense systems used to defend Russian missiles, which are pummelling Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
On the front line in east and south Ukraine, reports say the situation is increasingly desperate, with Russia outfiring Ukraine at a rate of three to one. Parts of the front line are also dangerously close to collapse.
Senior Ukrainian military officials, talking to Politico, said that Russia could break through wherever it focuses its anticipated summer offensive.
Russia will likely be able to “penetrate the front line and to crash it in some parts,” they told the outlet.
“I would say the conditions now are probably more favorable for a Russian breakthrough than at any time since the opening stages of the war,” Bryden Spurling, an analyst with the RAND Corporation, told Business Insider.
The aid block is also making it increasingly difficult for Ukraine to defend its cities and critical infrastructure, such as power stations, from waves of Russian missile and drone attacks.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-trouble-already-mdash-now-151430041.html