On New Years’ Eve 2019, Americans celebrated the advent of the roaring ’20s with fireworks and champagne, amid ominous news alerts from China. Surely that virus would stay on the other side of the planet. I cringe at how entitled we felt then. Covid-19 has now wiped out more than a million of us (by far the worst record on Earth when it comes to wealthy countries). Up to a third of all survivors suffer the sometimes disabling effects of long Covid, with implications for society that will outlast the pandemic—if it ever ends. I’d like to believe we’ve learned a lesson about our species-wide vulnerability,…

Before Payton Gendron carried out a racist mass shooting at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, last weekend, killing ten people and wounding three more, he spent many months developing his hate crime on the Internet. Logs from a weapons-focussed group called Plate Land on the social platform Discord, collected by the media nonprofit Unicorn Riot, reveal that he had been discussing the efficacy of body armor. “Wouldnt it hurt a lot being shot with any type of bulelt with armor on,” he wrote under the username Jimboboii, in early 2021. Thousands of other Discord messages that have circulated in…

Chinese Communist Party officials in charge of Shanghai “admitted” on Thursday they have been “inadequately prepared” for the city’s latest epidemic of the Chinese coronavirus, China’s state-run Global Times reported. “Shanghai was ill prepared for the latest surge in infections, had not developed sufficient knowledge about the highly contagious Omicron variant, and its control measures have not been up to speed,” Ma Chunlei, the secretary-general of Shanghai’s government, told reporters at a regular press conference on March 31. Ma added that Shanghai’s municipal government “accepts criticism and vowed to improve.” Shanghai’s government issued an edict on March 27 requiring one-half of the city of…

People in Russia can no longer access Facebook or Twitter after the government blocked access to the sites in an attempt to reduce dissent during the war in Ukraine. Russian agency Roskomnadzor said it halted access to Facebook because it had engaged in "discrimination" against Russian news media. The government claimed there were 26 cases of reported "discrimination" made against Russian media by the social media platform. The  move against Facebook and Twitter follows other restrictions Russia has enacted against foreign news organizations. The government previously restricted access to the BBC and Deutsche Welle for allegedly spreading false information about the war in Ukraine. The United…

Thursday was roiling with headlines — thanks to remarks from U.S. government officials, including President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Ambassador to the UN Linda Greenfield — that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was “imminent.” As a result, social media was crackling with the speculation that war might break out any moment.  Media coverage of the Ukraine crisis for the last several months has been increasingly sensationalist and overwrought. Many of the worst features of Western media reporting on foreign policy issues have been on display from the mostly uncritical acceptance of government claims at face value to the worst-case alarmism about…