Credit: Harriet Lee-Merrion

Stretch out your hand. Ever wonder what it’s made of? The skin masks flesh, blood and bone sure enough. But those tissues are made of molecules, which are made of atoms. And atoms are made of electrons, protons and neutrons. It’s only when we drill down to fundamental particles and energy that we reach bedrock.

Or do we? The history of physics certainly gives us pause. For more than 300 years we have been asking ourselves about the true nature of reality–what, ultimately, stuff is made of. Time and again, we have found another layer beneath what we thought was the lowest. What’s more, with each new depth we plumb, our old understanding of reality is swept aside.

Now we could be on the cusp of another revolution, thanks to efforts to reconcile our two most successful but incompatible theories of reality. Not particles, energy, space,time or anything else we might think of as fundamental truly is: instead, the essence of reality is a thing whose workings we’re only just […]

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A new survey conducted by the Runawayinequality.org Educational Network shows that younger Americans (ages 18-40) overwhelmingly support bold proposals to reverse inequality— polices such as Medicare for all, free higher education, ending mass incarceration, wealth taxes on multi-millionaires, financial speculation taxes on Wall Street, public banks, immigrants rights, worker rights, a guaranteed job at a living wage, campaign finance reform, and a sustainable environment.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is doing all it can to accelerate inequality. The billionaire appointees, the Goldman Sachs economic advisors, the hollow health care and tax proposals all are designed to move more money into the hands of the few.

Unfortunately, the mainstream Democrats are hardly better when in comes to runaway inequality.

• Over the last 37 years, America’s top 10 percent saw their incomes rise by 115 percent and the top 1 percent saw an incredible rise of 198 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom half of all American earners not only failed to see any gain at all, but their incomes actually declined by 1 percent from 1978 to 2015, according to research by Thomas Piketty. 
• During the Obama years “the top 1 percent of families captured 52 percent of total real income growth per family from 2009 to 2015 […]
  
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Condominiums going up in Edgewater, across the bay from Miami Beach. Sea-level rise hasn’t stopped developers from building by the water’s edge, or people from buying there.
Credit: Rose Marie Cromwell /Bloomberg

On a predictably gorgeous South Florida afternoon, Coral Gables Mayor Jim Cason sat in his office overlooking the white-linen restaurants of this affluent seaside community and wondered when climate change would bring it all to an end. He figured it would involve a boat.

When Cason first started worrying about sea-level rise, he asked his staff to count not just how much coastline the city had (47 miles) or value of the property along that coast ($3.5 billion). He also told them to find out how many boats dock inland from the bridges that span the city’s canals (302). What matters, he guessed, will be the first time a mast fails to clear the bottom of one of those bridges because the water level had risen too far.

“These boats are going to be the canary […]

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These brain scan images show an increase in neural signal diversity under the influence of LSD, indicating a “higher” level of consciousness
Credit: Suresh Muthukumaraswamy

Reaching a higher state of consciousness is a concept you’re more likely to hear a spiritualist spout than a scientist, but now neuroscientists at the University of Sussex claim to have found the first evidence of just such a state. From wakefulness down to a deep coma, consciousness is on a sliding scale measured by the diversity of brain signals, and the researchers found that when under the influence of psychedelic drugs, that diversity jumps to new heights above the everyday baseline.

The research builds on data gathered about a year ago by a team at Imperial College London, which dosed up volunteers with psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin and ketamine, then scanned their brains with magnetoencephalographic (MEG) techniques to examine the effects. This new study set out to determine how a psychedelic state would compare to other levels of wakefulness and unconsciousness, according to a scale […]

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has come to Exxon’s defense — again.
Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay

Citing Exxon Mobil’s right to “free speech,” 11 state attorneys general — all Republicans — filed in court this week to stop an investigation into the oil and gas giant’s decades-long history of climate denial.

The attorneys general — from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin — filed a brief to support Exxon’s request to stop the so-called “Exxon Knew” investigation, arguing that there is a “public policy debate” over climate change and that the investigation is an “unconstitutional abuse” of power.

“The Constitution was written to protect citizens from government witch-hunts such as this one, where officials use their authority and the threat of criminal prosecution to try and suppress speech on a viewpoint they disagree with,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.

This isn’t the first time Texas has intervened in the investigation […]

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