IDEAS Fonda is an Oscar-winning actress, writer and activist. Correction appended, June 10. In less than 30 days, Royal Dutch Shell wants to begin drilling for oil in the newly ice-free parts of the Alaskan Arctic. The company is ignoring the advice of engineers and scientists around the world who…

CIA director George Tenet approved waterboarding and ordered medical staff to be present. Experts say the agency and its doctors violated its own limits on ‘human subject research’.Photograph: Guardian The Central Intelligence Agency had explicit guidelines for “human experimentation” – before,…

Tom Willey, an organic farmer in Madera, Calif. He says Whole Foods is subtly shifting the costs of its marketing program onto growers. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times Like a whale and the myriad barnacles clinging to its sides, Whole Foods Market and organic farmers have long had a symbiotic…

The new federal rules for net neutrality were allowed to take effect on Friday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a motion to stay the regulation. "Petitioners have not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review," the three-judge…

Senator Bernard "Bernie" Sanders, an independent from Vermont and possible presidential candidate, pauses before speaking during an interview in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, April 15, 2015. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg Democratic presidential…

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Just when you thought the fight over government surveillance powers was over, the Senate is poised for another battle, this time over a cyber security law that some civil libertarians have dubbed “Patriot Act 2.0.” On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced…

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at President Obama’s State of the Union speech on January 28, 2014. Photo by Larry Downing/Getty Images John Roberts has changed. Consider the chief justice’s voting record. From 2005—the year he was appointed—until 2012—the year of the first Affordable…

Gino Celli drew a water sample to check the salinity of an irrigation canal that runs through his fields near Stockton, Calif., in May. Credit Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press LOS ANGELES — Farmers with rights to California water dating back more than a century will face sharp cutbacks, the first…

I think a great deal about the difference between routine and ritual as a special case of our more general and generally trying quest for balance — ripped asunder by the contrary longings for control and whimsy, we routinize daily life in order to make its inherent chaos more manageable, then…

The U.S. high school graduation rate was 81 percent in 2013, the most recent year in which federal data are available. LA Johnson/NPR In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama had some sure-fire applause lines: "More of our kids are graduating than ever before" and "Our high…

Mises Daily Articles A A Home | Mises Library | Let’s Hope Machines Take Our Jobs: We Want Wealth, Not Jobs 0 Views 06/11/2015 The job-threatening rise of the machines is an economically illiterate meme that refuses to die. We’re actually probably in the early stages of it, a bull-market in…

Dreamstime One afternoon this past April, a Florida mom and dad I'll call Cindy and Fred could not get home in time to let their 11-year-old son into the house. The boy didn't have a key, so he played basketball in the yard. He was alone for 90 minutes. A neighbor called the cops, and when the…

Following a storm of criticism relating to a creepy-sounding privacy policy covering its smart TVs , Samsung has today published a rebuttal and a more detailed explanation of the workings of its under-fire voice recognition feature. It has also edited the wording of its privacy policy to avoid…

A rare photo of Marshal Josef Stalin holding his daughter, Svetlana. The photo was taken in 1937, at Stalin’s country house in the suburbs of Moscow. (Bettmann/CORBIS) The first sentence of Svetlana Alliluyeva’s obituary was set from her birth in 1926, for she was the only daughter of Joseph Stalin,…

Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker. Credit Jesse Dittmar for The New York Times “I’m pretty sure we have a revolution coming,” said Nick Denton, founder and chief executive of Gawker Media. “It’s not 100 percent guaranteed, but the existing corporate structure is looking pretty hollow.” It was a…

While the entire world was watching Eddy Cue and Drake introduce Apple ’s new streaming service at WWDC earlier this week, the tech firm was simultaneously being investigated for possible antitrust-related activities that took place in the organization and arranging of the product it was announcing,…

The robots at the final DARPA challenge have come a long way, but they still need a lot of human help The robot CHIMP weighs 443 pounds and has tank treads for elbows, but it’s the little things that give it trouble. At a recent DARPA competition, it drove a cart around a course, but then spent 15…

Illustration: Tavis Coburn “This is a bottle of pills,” says J.P. Errico, showing me something that’s obviously not a bottle of pills. Errico, who is cofounder and CEO of ElectroCore Medical , is holding the GammaCore, a noninvasive vagus nerve stimulator. If ElectroCore’s R&D work holds up, this…

Sixteen years after his first sip, Jens Ohlig remembers his initial taste of Club-Mate as vividly as if the drink had taken his virginity. It was 1998. Ohlig, then a software developer in his 20s, was attending an outdoor hacker camp in Cologne hosted by Germany's Chaos Computer Club. He describes…

June 12, 2015 I recently decided to stop using Firefox as my main Browser. I’m not alone there. While browser statistics are notoriously difficult to track and hotly debated, all sources seem to point toward a downward trend for Firefox. At LQ, they actually aren’t doing too badly. In 2010 Firefox…

A new study links parental age to autism. (Photo: Kelli Seeger Kim/Stocksy) A massive new study on autism risk has found elevations related to parental age — of both teen moms and older parents. With an analysis of more than 5.7 million children in five countries, the study, published Wednesday in…

WHEN Estonia regained its independence in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, less than half its population had a telephone line and its only independent link to the outside world was a Finnish mobile phone concealed in the foreign minister's garden. Two decades later, it is a world leader…

Brexit: Corbyn reaction to May statement on EU deal ift.tt/2SsKgoz Brexit: Corbyn reaction to May statement on EU deal ift.tt/2SsKgoz pic.twitter.com/acgJDBzOav Brexit: May statement on future votes and Article 50 extension ift.tt/2EzBeT3 pic.twitter.com/wAEp9mfvSA Brexit: May statement on future…

Tuol Sleng is Cambodia's most notorious prison - in the 1970s, at least 12,000 people were tortured there and murdered. Only a handful of prisoners survived but now, 40 years after Pol Pot took control of the country, two of them return to the cells every day to remind people what happened. Chum Mey…

Rosa Moreno hasn’t been able to afford prosthetic hands.Photograph: Alan Pogue/Texas Centre for Documentary Photography On February 11, 2011, I lost both my hands. I was working an overnight shift at my job in Reynosa, Mexico, where I was cutting metal for parts used in assembling flatscreen…

PBS NewsHour Logo: Home Full Episodes Podcasts Subscribe Live Apr 7, 2014 9:28 PM EST By — PBS NewsHour Transcript Audio In Switzerland, an idea to guarantee every citizen a yearly income of 30,000 Swiss francs, regardless of other wealth or employment, has gained enough supporters to trigger a…

VENICE, Italy — Over 17 years, David Darchicourt worked with the National Security Agency as a graphic designer and art director, illustrating top-secret documents about government surveillance programs. Now he is the unwitting central character in a new exhibition that puts the spotlight on the spy…

Johnny Greaves lost 96 of his 100 professional fights "Turn up, fight, lose, get paid, happy days." Johnny Greaves Meet the men who fight when nobody is watching; men who fight in nightclubs, social centres and town halls; men who fight when the headline acts are still asleep in their hotel rooms;…

Wilk D on Johnson finds it hard to remember the exact cards. Who could? At the height of his 12-hour blitz of the Tropicana casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, last April, he was playing a hand of blackjack nearly every minute. Dozens of spectators pressed against the glass of the high-roller pit.…

Anil Dash Jun 11, 2015 Will.I.Am visiting Twitter headquarters in 2010 Everybody’s got advice on what Twitter needs to do at its current crossroads. The answer might lie in revisiting the moment they first broke geeks’ hearts. I took it as a bad sign that Will.I.Am was hanging around backstage at a…

One of the problems with modern computer technology: programmers don’t learn from the great masters. There is such a thing as a Beethoven or Mozart of software design. Modern programmers seem more familiar with Lady Gaga. It’s not just a matter of taste and an appreciation for genius. It’s a matter…

Susie Cagle | Longreads | June 2015 | 21 minutes (5,160 words) The sun was going down in East Porterville, California, diffusing gold through a thick and creamy fog, as Donna Johnson pulled into the parking lot in front of the Family Dollar. Since the valley started running dry, this has become…

News June 11, 2015 Heijmans collaborates on the 3D printing of a steel bridge that will be located in the centre of Amsterdam. The project was initiated by Dutch start-up MX3D. Heijmans will contribute its knowledge of and experience in construction and technology to print the bridge. The bridge is…

President Obama's ambitious trade agenda unraveled Friday in a stunning setback delivered by his own party as the House rejected an important piece of a package aimed at fast-tracking a controversial trade pact he is pursuing with 11 other Pacific Rim nations. Hoping to salvage what could be a key…

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society agreed to pay $2.55 million to Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research on Monday as part of a settlement to resolve a long-standing legal battle over the anti-whaling group’s tactics against Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic. The settlement came the same day…

Chile’s Communist Party Rejects Intervention in Venezuela Nigeria: Early Tally Shows Buhari in Lead, Opposition Rejects 86% Votes For New Constitution in Cuba US VP Pence Leads Lima Group, Pushes for More Severe Blockade Venezuela: EU Spurns Violent Intervention for Peaceful Solution Campaign…

Solidarity works -- to an extent. (Lydia DePillis/The Washington Post) DETROIT, Mich. — This past weekend, the walls of Cobo Center on the Detroit River reverberated with more than the usual amount of cheers and chants, endlessly repeating a two-pronged demand: A minimum wage more than double the…

Cohen to Testify That Trump Engaged in Criminal Conduct House Set to Pass Measure Blocking Trump’s National Emergency on Wall CEOs Will Testify About Drug Prices Lawmakers Face Pressure to Resolve Fate of ‘Dreamers’ The Identity Crisis Facing Both Republicans and Democrats House Probes Trump Contact…

What does it take to get the personal attention of a member of Congress? A good idea backed by a strong, logical argument? Reams of academic research backing your point of view? Broad-based grassroots support for your ideals from millions of people around the country? If you nodded your head in the…

Pete Souza / White House An open letter to the president By on Jun 11, 2015 Get your daily dose of good news from Grist Subscribe to The Beacon Dear President Obama — I feel a little awkward writing a letter to you, perhaps because I helped organize the largest demonstrations outside your house…