Europe is also increasingly concerned about the future of Taiwan after Beijing imposed new national security laws on Hong Kong, increased its military presence in the Taiwan strait and released a stream of propaganda videos preparing the Chinese public for a potential invasion.

The Chinese Communist Party reinserted the word “peaceful” in its desire to unify with Taiwan through its Five Year Plan last week, after omitting it in May.

former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News who leaked the Steele Dossier argues that shouldn't have been done and journalists should reprise their role as gatekeepers of information, lest discourse turn into a mess of unsubstantiated mudslinging, which is what it was in 2016.
"In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified “Steele dossier,” in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience... the special nervousness that many outlets, including this one, feel about the provenance of the Hunter Biden emails is, in many ways, the legacy of the WikiLeaks experience. I’d prefer to put my faith in Mr. Murray and careful, professional journalists like him than in the social platforms’ product managers and executives. And I hope Americans relieved that the gatekeepers are reasserting themselves will also pay attention to who gets that power, and how centralized it is, and root for new voices to correct and challenge them."

almost any election scenario this fall is likely to lead to popular protests on a scale we have not seen this century

“What we need is a new social contract that will enable us to get past extreme polarization to find consensus, tip the shares of economic growth back toward workers and improve government funding for public health, education and infrastructure,” Goldstone and Turchin wrote in their Berggruen Institute article.

Can that really happen in today’s combat zone of weaponized social media, in which even modest proposals to ratchet back inequality are framed as “communism”?

quick action based on learning, local response, and listening to scientists (with some luck).

It’s pretty common, now, for patients to bring in a readout from a wearable device to an appointment with a sleep doctor. It’s helpful — it adds some objectivity to how many hours someone says they sleep at night, for example, Patil says. Khosla loves when patients bring in their wearable data. “I think we have to embrace it,” she says. “And it’s not all terrible data. Some of it is helpful.”

Because men who are depressed may appear to be angry or aggressive instead of sad, their families, friends, and even their doctors may not always recognize the anger or aggression as depression symptoms. In addition, men are less likely than women to recognize, talk about, and seek treatment for depression. Yet depression affects a large number of men.

It’s a sign of how far we’ve fallen that the president of the United States can accuse his predecessor of “treason” based on pure fictions, and his campaign can suggest that his challenger’s candidacy is illegitimate, only to see it largely ignored as typical conduct on his part.

To be clear, the “Obamagate” ploy will almost certainly fail. According to Axios, Attorney General William P. Barr will likely not release a “report” on his “review” of the origins of the Russia investigation by Election Day. You just can’t find good corrupt co-conspiratorial help these days, apparently.