Loneliness - Fay Bound Alberti, Reader in History at the University of York, charts the emergence of loneliness as a contemporary emotional state. Also, Janne Flora, postdoctoral scholar at Aarhus University, explores the deep connections between loneliness and modernity in the Arctic, tracing the history of Greenland and analysing the social dynamics that shaped it.
10 March 2020
The Guardian Today in Focus: What's behind the rise of Germany's far right?
A terrorist attack in Hanau is just the latest incident of far-right violence in Germany in recent years. It left local residents outraged, with many questioning the effectiveness of the police and security services in the battle against far-right extremism.
The Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief Philip Oltermann tells Anushka Asthana that this latest attack comes at a worrying time for Germany. There is political upheaval as Angela Merkel prepares to depart as chancellor, and meanwhile the far-right AfD is making gains. He says that while many in Germany’s security services were focusing on the rising threat from Islamist-inspired terrorism, they have been accused of downplaying the threat from neo-Nazi groups.
SciShow: Is COVID-19 a Pandemic? | March 2020 Update
SARS-CoV-2 is a new kind of coronavirus that appeared suddenly in late 2019. The disease it causes, called COVID-19, is now showing signs that it's able to spread outside of its place of origin. This raises some questions... like, do we have a pandemic on our hands? What’s the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic? SciShow News has some facts to help you understand a complex and rapidly changing situation.
FiveThirtyEight: Bloomberg Lost, But He May Still Get What He Wanted
But I don’t think Bloomberg’s candidacy was a mistake or unwise. He’s worth more than $50 billion — so it’s not clear the $400 million he spent on television commercials or the other money he poured into his campaign matters much to him. He got to go on stage in the debates and attack Sanders and Warren. We don’t know if that boosted Biden, but it likely didn’t hurt him. With Biden now in a much stronger position than when Bloomberg entered the race, you could argue that Bloomberg provided what he and other more center-left figures wanted — to steer the race towards a more moderate nominee. The more extreme back-up plan — nominate Bloomberg — ended up not being needed. My guess is that Bloomberg would have preferred to be the candidate instead of Biden but knew that was a fairly unlikely outcome, since he is a one-time Republican who entered the race in late November. [...]
Now go back to his previous political role: pumping his billions into a variety of liberal causes. He hired people in numerous states for his presidential campaign, and his employees were reportedly told that they would have jobs through November. It’s not clear if Bloomberg will end up retaining these staffers for some kind of operation to boost Biden against Sanders and Warren in the primary, have his team start focusing now on the general election against Trump or simply wind down his apparatus. But I expect him to stay out of the primary and focus on Trump.
Associated Press: Lawmakers pass bill allowing Confederate monument removals
The Democratic-led House and Senate passed measures that would undo an existing state law that protects the monuments and instead let local governments decide their fate. The passage marks the latest turn in Virginia’s long-running debate over how its history should be told in public spaces. [...]
After white supremacists descended on Charlottesville in 2017, in part to protest the city’s attempt to move a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, many places across the country quickly started taking Confederate monuments down. But Virginia localities that wanted to remove monuments were hamstrung by the existing law. [...]
The compromise measure says a locality must hold a public hearing before voting to remove or otherwise alter a monument. If it decides to remove one, it must be offered to “any museum, historical society, government or military battlefield,” although the governing body ultimately gets the say on the “final disposition.” [...]
In addition to the monuments bill, lawmakers also have advanced bills removing old racist laws that were technically still on the books, substituting the state’s holiday honoring Lee and Jackson for one on Election Day and creating a commission to recommend a replacement for a Lee statue Virginia contributed to the U.S. Capitol. They have also passed legislation that provides protections and funding for historic African American cemeteries.
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