Ukraine’s Alternate Win Condition: Inside the Gamble on the War of Attrition
Is America uniquely vulnerable to tyranny?
“Around the world, they find two conditions that make political parties more likely to accept electoral defeats: “when they believe they stand a reasonable chance of winning again in the future” and when they believe “that losing power will not bring catastrophe — that a change of government will not threaten the lives, livelihoods, or most cherished principles.”
In the 21st century, these conditions no longer held among the GOP’s conservative white base. Democrats were no longer a mere political rival, but avatars of a new and scary social order.
“Not only was America no longer overwhelmingly white, but once entrenched racial hierarchies were weakening. Challenges to white Americans’ long-standing social dominance left many of them with feelings of alienation, displacement, and deprivation,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write. “Many of the party’s voters feared losing … their country — or more accurately, their place in it.”
This, they say, is what made the party vulnerable to conquest by someone like Trump. Rather than fight the base in democracy’s name, traditional Republican elites like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) acted as “semi-loyal democrats”: leaders who say the right things about supporting democracy and the rule of law, but value partisan victory over everything else — including basic, non-partisan democratic principles. This enabled the entire party to become a vehicle for an anti-democratic agenda.
“Openly authoritarian figures — like coup conspirators or armed insurrectionists — are visible for all to see. By themselves, they often lack the public support or legitimacy to destroy a democracy. But when semi-loyalists — tucked away in the hallways of power — lend a hand, openly authoritarian forces become much more dangerous,” they explain. “Throughout history, cooperation between authoritarians and seemingly respectable semi-loyal democrats has been a recipe for democratic breakdown.””
https://www.vox.com/23873476/america-democracy-authoritarianism-tyranny-minority-levitsky-ziblatt
New York City’s not-so-sudden migrant surge, explained
https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/9/26/23875580/new-york-city-migrant-crisis-influx-eric-adams
The government’s case to break up Amazon, explained
“Much of the lawsuit centers around how Amazon essentially forces third-party sellers who use its Marketplace platform — which accounts for about 60 percent of Amazon’s sales — to purchase additional services from Amazon. Amazon’s critics say the company has gotten greedier over the years, resulting in sellers having to cut their profit margins or raise prices to consumers to account for Amazon’s ever-increasing charges and fees. The FTC says that many sellers pay nearly 50 percent of their revenue to Amazon when all of the fees are combined, and those costs can be passed on to the consumer.
One way it does this, the suit says, is through search ads, which allow sellers to have their products placed prominently in customer searches, above products that organically earned a top spot. The lawsuit alleges that Amazon has increased the number of ads in search results over the years, making sellers feel that the only way potential customers will see their products at all is if they pay Amazon for ads. This makes the shopping experience worse for consumers who have to wade through them to find organic results.
“These ads have been enormously lucrative for Amazon, but shoppers face less relevant results and are steered toward more expensive products, while sellers face an additional set of fees,” Khan said.
The lawsuit also addresses Amazon’s “buy box.” When several sellers offer the same product, Amazon picks which one gets the sale when a customer clicks to make a purchase — whether “add to cart” or “buy now.” That’s the buy box. Everyone else is relegated to an “other sellers” section, which is farther down the page. Most customers don’t bother or even know to check it, which makes that buy box placement crucial for sellers.
But Amazon has certain conditions that make it more likely that the seller will get that buy box — or, if they don’t comply with them, make it impossible to get it at all. Those conditions often mean giving Amazon more money.
Qualifying for Prime is one of them, but sellers pretty much have to use Amazon’s “Fulfilled by Amazon” logistics and shipping service in order to be eligible for it. Amazon has technically allowed sellers to use other fulfillment services, but it’s exceedingly difficult for any third-party fulfillment service to meet Amazon’s requirements, and Amazon closed off enrollment to the Seller Fulfilled Prime option years ago.
A few months ago, however, Amazon announced it would re-open enrollment “later this year.” Notably, it has also changed some of these practices in the European Union recently as part of a settlement to end an antitrust case there, including adding a second buy box and allowing seller-fulfilled Prime.”
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/9/26/23835959/ftc-amazon-antitrust-lawsuit-prime-lina-khan
Scientists will unleash an army of crabs to help save Florida’s dying reef
“Algae is one of the few winners in a world dominated by humans. It thrives on our waste, such as sewage and runoff from farmland, which is full of nitrogen and phosphorous — nutrients that algae need to grow.
As pollution runs into the ocean, algae booms.
Meanwhile, animals that eat algae have declined precipitously in recent decades. In the 1980s, an unknown pathogen wiped out longspined sea urchins in the Caribbean. These marine invertebrates — which take the shape of an overfilled pin cushion — eat loads of algae. Similarly, overfishing and the loss of various ecosystems has caused declines in algae-eating fish, such as parrotfish.
Like a fertilized pasture with no cows, a field of algae on a reef with no herbivores grows unencumbered. In the last decade, the extent of algae on reefs globally increased by roughly 20 percent, turning them from brilliant fields of color to monochrome patches of green.
This is a serious problem for coral.
When a thick layer of seaweed covers the reef, it’s hard for baby corals — which spend their early days as larvae swimming in the ocean — to find a spot on the seafloor and start a colony. This seaweed not only takes up floor space but it can also limit the amount of sunlight that reaches the bottom (coral needs light to grow) and produce chemicals that dissuade corals from settling. Abundant algae also competes with adult colonies for space, crowding them out.”
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/9/27/23883039/florida-coral-reef-caribbean-king-crabs-restoration