The New Office Small-Talk: Are You Vaccinated?

After more than a year of working from home, millions of Americans trudged back to the office this summer. And for some, waking up at 7am and boarding a crowded train...

More Workers Are Saying That Minimum-Wage Jobs Just Aren’t Worth It Anymore

Employees of McDonald's march on the street as they protest for a raise in their minimum wage to $15 an hour, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 19, 2021.CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP via Getty Images Janine Jackson: “We all quit.” A very good Motherboard story about fast food, retail and hospitality workers resigning from their jobs nevertheless began by telling readers that they “may have seen photos of it go viral,” or “may have even experienced it in real life, if you’ve dined at a Chili’s or Applebee’s, and the hostess apologizes for the extra-long wait times.” A source in The New York Times explains that it’s “not about the wages of college grads going up — it’s about the wages of lifeguards at my pool.”

Striking Coal Miners Are Demanding $1.1 Billion From World’s Largest Asset Firm

History repeated itself as hundreds of miners spilled out of buses in June and July to leaflet the Manhattan offices of asset manager BlackRock, the largest shareholder in the mining company Warrior Met Coal. Some had traveled from the pine woods of Brookwood, Alabama, where 1,100 coal miners have been on strike against Warrior Met since April 1. Others came in solidarity from the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania and the hollows of West Virginia and Ohio. Among them was 90-year-old retired Ohio miner Jay Kolenc, in a wheelchair at the picket line — retracing his own steps from five decades ago. It was 1974 when Kentucky miners and their supporters came to fight Wall Street in the strike behind the film Harlan County USA.

Senator Whitehouse Asks Jan. 6 Commission to Study Role of Dark Money in Breach

Linking the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol with a protracted effort by secretive right-wing groups and wealthy GOP contributors, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse on Friday called for investigating dark money organizations and influential donors who allegedly organized and funded the deadly attack in a failed bid to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. “The attack on the Capitol on January 6 was the culmination of a monthslong disinformation campaign designed to allow President [Donald] Trump to remain in office,” Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wrote in a letter (pdf) to Sen. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, also known as the commission. “Public reporting indicates that this campaign was organized and funded by dark money organizations and powerful donors, and aided and abetted by members of Congress and the Trump administration,” he continued.

Florida Jail Faces Threat of Toxic Flooding. It Has No Evacuation Plan.

Jennifer watched pandemonium unfold outside the window of her cell at the Manatee County Jail in Florida on the evening of Sunday, April 4. Drones hovered, dozens of police cars sped back and forth down the road. Jail staff moved their personal vehicles to higher ground and led livestock from the jail’s work farm onto trailers. A wastewater reservoir covering stacks of phosphogypsum — a radioactive byproduct from manufacturing phosphate rock for fertilizer — was leaking at Piney Point, a defunct fertilizer plant nearby. It threatened to inundate nearly eight square miles of land in Manatee County, a sparsely populated area near Tampa Bay. The county jail is in the mandatory evacuation zone for the plant — if the dam holding the water back collapsed, some models predicted up to 10 feet of water on jail property.

The El Paso Attack Was Not Just a Mass Shooting. It Was a Genocidal...

August 3, 2021, marked the second anniversary of the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that took place on a Saturday morning in 2019 and resulted in the deaths of 23 people and injury of 26 others, ranging in age from 2 to 82. Twenty-one of the 23 killed were of Mexican origin, and eight were Mexican citizens; another eight Mexican citizens were wounded. The killer was a lone, white gunman, aged 21, named Patrick Crusius, who published an online manifesto immediately prior to the attack where he proclaimed his intent to target those he considered responsible for what he described as the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Average Global Temperature Has Risen Steadily Under 40 Years of Neoliberalism

Since the advent of neoliberalism 40 years ago, societies virtually all over the world have undergone profound economic, social and political transformations. At its most basic function, neoliberalism represents the rise of a market-dominated world economic regime and the concomitant decline of the social state. Yet, the truth of the matter is that neoliberalism cannot survive without the state, as leading progressive economist Robert Pollin argues in the interview that follows. However, what is unclear is whether neoliberalism represents a new stage of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and, equally important, what comes after neoliberalism. Pollin tackles both of these questions in light of the political implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, as most governments have implemented a wide range of monetary and fiscal measures in order to address economic hardships and stave off a recession.

This Is How To Know When It Might Be Time To Lay Off Marijuana

By all accounts, marijuana is the most popular drug in the world. Some of the latest statistics show there are somewhere around 35 million regular users all across the United States....

Hacker Steals $610M of Cryptocurrency—and Returns Most of It

Plus: An Apple lawsuit, a VPN audit, and more of the week's top security news.It was a big week for smartphone privacy, at least in various ways that external forces make...

Want to Slash Carbon Emissions? Start With These Power Plants

The worst 5 percent of energy producers account for almost 75 percent of the sector’s emissions.The world seems to be simultaneously on fire and flooding, and the latest expert report indicates...