Monday morning news drop
The West is burning. Climate change is making it worse. Almost 1.5 million acres of the US are on fire right now. (Vox)
The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, creates and profits from misleading claims about Covid-19, researchers and regulators say. An internet-savvy entrepreneur, he has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on vaccines. (New York Times)
More Variants Are Coming, and the U.S. Isn’t Ready to Track Them The people hunting for mutations want the country to fix its virus sequencing mess. (Businessweek)
In Alabama and Louisiana, partisan opposition to vaccine surges alongside Delta variant Many people are turning down Covid vaccines because they are angry that President Donald Trump lost the election and sick of Democrats thinking they know what’s best. (Politico)
Never mind NIMBY and YIMBY–it’s time for ‘QUIMBY’ urbanism We need a major rethink of gentrification and affordability challenges if we’re going to get anywhere. “Quality In My Back Yard” may offer a path. (CNU)
The Nightmare of Our Snooping Phones A Catholic official’s resignation shows the real-world consequences of practices by America’s data-harvesting industries. (New York Times)
Taibbi: The Myth of the Winnable Culture War Since the people we disagree with aren’t going anywhere, we might as well talk to each other (TK News)
How Stephen Colbert Survived the Pandemic, Trump and the Loss of Laughter. As happy as he is to settle back into a familiar routine with state-of-the-art production facilities, Colbert wants to harness the ingenuity demonstrated by department leaders during trying times to keep the show unpredictable as it heads into Season 7 in the fall. The late-night series that changed its name to “A Late Show” during the pandemic months — to signify that it was not full-fledged “The Late Show” they’d intended to produce — is on a roll with recognition for its feats of on-air derring-do. (Variety)
What Will Happen to My Music Library When Spotify Dies? If your entire collection is on a streaming service, good luck accessing it in 10 or 20 years. (The Atlantic)
