The last house on Holland Island in Chesapeake Bay, MD before it fell into the bay in 2010.
Credit: baldeaglebluff

Sea level rise caused by climate change has already cost the U.S. $14.1 billion dollars in home values across eight East Coast states, ( emphasis added) according to new data released Thursday by the First Street Foundation, a Brooklyn-based non-profit whose stated mission is “to educate citizens and elected officials on the risks, causes and solutions to sea level rise and flooding.”

Sea level rise caused by climate change has already cost the U.S. $14.1 billion dollars in home values across eight East Coast states, according to new data released Thursday by the First Street Foundation, a Brooklyn-based non-profit whose stated mission is “to educate citizens and elected officials on the risks, causes and solutions to sea level rise and flooding.”

“We all knew that flooding issues were getting worse from sea level rise, but the home value loss associated with it is truly staggering.” First Street Foundation Executive Director […]

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A deceitful US Department of Justice marketing brochure for call centers staffed by inmates in federal prison.
Credit: Federal Prison Industries

Prisoners in 17 states began a three-week strike this week, with many refusing to eat or work to protest what they consider “modern-day slavery” in America’s correctional facilities.

Among other demands, prisoners want to earn more than a few dimes for each hour of work that they do, considering that their work brings in billions of dollars in revenue to state and federal prisons. Most inmates across the country do skilled and unskilled labor typically for less than a dollar per hour. (In some states, it’s entirely unpaid.) The work ranges from building office furniture to answering customer service calls to video production and farm work — sometimes without the guarantee of safe work conditions.

Prisoners and human rights activists say this dynamic is a form of exploitation and disproportionately harms people of color, who are more likely to be incarcerated in the first place. But correctional facilities argue that prison laborers learn real-life […]

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The white-nationalist leader Jason Kessler poses with a flag across from the White House.
Credit: Jim Urquhart /Reuters

There is no “large-scale killing” of white farmers in South Africa. The government, led by the African National Congress and President Cyril Ramaphosa, is not currently dispossessing white farmers of entire countrysides’ worth of farmland. Claims that either of these things are happening are false. Claims that both are happening are part of well-worn white-nationalist talking points designed expressly to sound a global alarm of “white genocide,” recall the days of apartheid, and slander black people as savage, bloodthirsty, and unfit to lead.

Good news, then. President Trump made both of those claims on Twitter Wednesday night, apparently after watching an episode of Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News. Carlson had essentially parroted the white-nationalist talking points, repeatedly calling Ramaphosa a “racist” and criticizing former President Barack Obama for praising the South African leader. “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large […]

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As a journalist and a cognitive scientist, I often write about the psychology underlying the seemingly-nonsensical and unwavering support for President Donald Trump, and a very common response in the comments section goes something like, “It’s not that complicated. They are racists, plain and simple.”

While that may be true for a portion of Trump supporters (and perhaps Trump himself), is it really simple? What do we mean exactly when we say someone is racist? An even better question—what are the neural and psychological characteristics of a racist mind? By analyzing the pathways in the brain that underlie racist thought and behavior, we can better understand how this nasty bias is created, and potentially, how to mitigate

The Neuroscience of Racial Bias

First of all, how do we know that racial biases actually exist? While some may claim that they have no biases, a clever psychological experiment provides objective evidence supporting the notion that the vast majority of us do. In theimplicit bias task, participants are shown words on a computer screen like “happy” and “fear,” which they must categorize as positive or negative. What results have consistently shown is that if a black face is quickly flashed […]

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A vast majority — 70 percent — of Americans in a new poll supports “Medicare for all,” also known as a single-payer health-care system.

The Reuters–Ipsos survey found 85 percent of Democrats said they support the policy along with 52 percent of Republicans.

Medicare for all has been in the headlines after a study by the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University found it would lead to $32.6 trillion increase in federal spending over a 10-year period.

The study’s author, Charles Blahous, wrote in The Wall Street Journalearlier this month that even doubling taxes would not cover the bill for a single-payer health-care system.

The policy’s proponents, however, point to a note in the study showing that health-care costs would also decrease by $2 trillion by 2031 if it became law.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has introduced a Medicare for all bill, has said that the Mercatus study is “grossly misleading and biased.”

The new Reuters poll also showed that a majority of Americans supports free college tuition. Forty-one percent of Republicans said they supported the policy, pollsters found, compared with 79 percent of Democrats.

The move to abolish Immigration and Customs […]

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