Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• How the Sugar Industry Makes Political Friends and Influences Elections A city commissioner race in Florida provides a window into how the sugar industry cultivates political allies, who help protect its interests. (ProPublica)
• Neo-Nazis and QAnon: how Canadian truckers’ anti-vaccine protest was steered by extremists Ottawa’s occupation was a result of unrivaled coordination between anti-vax and anti-government organizations. (The Guardian) see also The hacked account and suspicious donations behind the Canadian trucker protests The jumble of misinformation, online fundraising groups and amplification from right-wing political figures suggests there’s more to these protests than meets the eye. (Grid)
• Sidney Powell Finally Admits That ‘Perhaps’ the Kraken Is Not Real: Facing disbarment and several billion-dollar lawsuits, the pro-Trump “Kraken” lawyer is changing her story–kind of. (Vice)
• The Crankification Engine: On the internet, we are all encouraged to become the sort of person who writes letters to the editor (Gawker)
• The strange US surge in banning of books The surge in parental interest can be attributed, at least in part, to the remote learning policies schools implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic. For the first time, they say, many parents had an up-close view of what their children were being taught – and they didn’t like it. She calls it “Covid lemonade,” because the pandemic had a silver lining. (BBC)
• Inside Patriot Front: The Masked White Supremacists On A Nationwide Hate Crime Spree A new HuffPost investigation exposes the inner workings of the secretive American fascist group destroying Black Lives Matter symbols across the country. (Huffington Post)
• Who Gets the Child? States across the country are considering equal shared parenting in custody cases. This young Kentucky couple serve as a test case. (Washington Post)
• The GOP’s January 6 lies have reached a fever pitch The RNC censured two members of Congress for refusing to play along. (Vox)
• Tucker Carlson’s Self-Loathing International Tourism: Why the Fox News host—and other conservatives who dislike today’s America—happily assumed roles in an autocrat’s public-relations campaign (The Atlantic)
• Eric Clapton’s Covid vaccine conspiracies mark a sad final act Bigotry and ignorance, in the age of the internet, have a way of catching up with you. And Clapton’s racism and conspiracy theories can no longer be ignored. (NBC News)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with James Anderson, partner at Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh, Scotland investing giant that manages $470 billion in client assets. He runs FTSE-100-listed Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, a $23.5 billion fund, where since 2001, he has generated returns of 1,700%.
The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts Countries have reported some five million COVID-19 deaths in two years, but global excess deaths are estimated at double or even quadruple that figure
Source: Nature
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RRs will be on vacation next week; No AM Reads Monday 2/14 to Friday 2/18
