The other intelligence assessment that dropped last week was on so-called Havana Syndrome. This one was led by the CIA, and, unlike the assessment of how SARS-CoV-2 jumped to humans, there is a reasonable role for intelligence agencies. Whether an adversary country is sending agents with a mystery weapon to disable government workers is the […]
Author: Cheryl Rofer
Several developments this week in stories I’ve been following. I finally have some time to post about them. Questions about how SARS-CoV-2 jumped from animals to humans and the so-called Havana Synd
Until very recently, my Twitter experience of Joyce Carol Oates has been to see one of her absolutely off-base tweets dragged. I’ve never been fond of her writing, although a few of her articles
Last week, a CDC report, “Youth Risk Behavior Survey” dropped. It shows devastating levels of depression in young people, particularly young women. A great many people, predominantly middle-aged white men as far as I can see, have hastened to tell us that it’s all because of those newfangled phones. There might just be a few […]
A couple of Twitter threads this morning point to the central problem of strategy in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Rob Farley’s argument with Emma Ashford starts here: Ashford enters here: The gis
I get my news from Twitter. I follow experts in various fields, from universities, think tanks, wherever. I also follow individual reporters and editors who have proved their worth and governmental of
Haha, right? A coalition of organizations has put together a letter to the New York Times criticizing its recent inaccurate articles contributing to the moral panic against transgender people. The signers are people who have contributed to the Times and are LGBTQ+, along with allies. A couple of excerpts: The newspaper’s editorial guidelines demand that […]
On February 3, a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials derailed near the town of East Palestine, Ohio. Fifty cars derailed, ten of which carried hazardous chemicals. Federal investigator
Russia controls one side of the Kakhovka Dam at the end of the Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dneiper River. Back when Russia was withdrawing to the east side of the Dneiper, they exploded a couple of mine
Seymour Hersh published today, on his Substack, a long story about an involved plot by the United States to blow the Nordstream2 pipelines. No, I’m not going to link. It’s garbage. Over the past few years Hersh has argued that Osama bin Laden was not responsible for 9/11, and that Bashar al-Assad is not responsible […]
In the comment thread to my first post in this series, Erik comments that you can’t dance to classical music. Well. Music and dance are intimately intertwined. Always have been. The waltz, like twer
Once the balloon is over water, its uncontrolled landing no longer presents a danger to people. A fleet of planes and ships – Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force – is gathering off the coast