Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis fight over mask and vaccine requirements as Delta ravages Florida, Congressman Mondaire Jones talks to Jon Favreau about the new eviction moratorium and student debt relief, and as Democrats worry aloud about losing their majority in 2022, new polling from Data for Progress points to messages about Republicans that might just save the House.
July 2021 saw temperatures in the western US and Canada smash previous records by 5 degrees. And that’s what we should expect, according to a study prepared much earlier but published, coincidentally, just a few days later. A hallmark of rapid climate change, says author Erich Fischer of ETH Zurich, will be an accelerating number of record-shattering, and socially disruptive, events.
A large new study on communications and hierarchy across a large range of our ape and monkey relatives has just been published. Lead author Katie Slocombe of the University of York explains the findings: like us, the primates live socially in groups, and there are leaders, but the more tolerant ones are also the more communicative ones. In species with ‘despotic’ leaders, order seems to be maintained with more menacing silence.
The double helix of all DNA on earth twists in one direction. But researchers at Tsinghua University in China have made some important steps towards making mirror life, in which the DNA twists in the opposite direction. Chemistry journalist Mark Peplow discusses the significance of this discovery with Roland Pease.
One of the benefits of science’s ability to read normal DNA has been to compare human genomes from across the globe – for example in the Human Genome Diversity Project – for what they reveal about both our health – and our past. But sequences from the Middle East have been sadly lacking. The Sanger Institute’s Mohamed Almarri and colleagues have just rectified that, saying that the Middle East played such a key role in the human story.
(Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
On today’s episode of “The Breakdown,” host NLW discusses:
Proposed amendments to the infrastructure bill
Notable EIP 1559 changes
“Ultra-sound” money meme explained
Amendment proposals came from a variety of political figures, including Sen. Ted Cruz’s bid to scrap the crypto provision altogether. A more realistic option, however, came from Sens. Wyden, Toomey and Lummis, who chose to insert a definition excluding non-custodial intermediaries.
In the main discussion, the London hard fork to Ethereum took place early this morning. The changes aimed to improve the user experience on the network and included the introduction of a maximum bidding tip, increased block size in times of high demand and the change to burn the base fee.
The base fee burning modification has sparked conversation about a potentially powerful side effect. In new EIP-1559 transactions, the protocol will burn the ETH used for to pay the base fee. If more ETH is burned this way than is issued, it will make ETH deflationary. If bitcoin’s fixed supply constitutes “sound money,” does ether’s declining supply “ultra-sound?”
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NYDIG, the institutional-grade platform for Bitcoin, is making it possible for thousands of banks who have trusted relationships with hundreds of millions of customers, to offer Bitcoin. Learn more at NYDIG.com/NLW.
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The Breakdown is written, produced by and features NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Only in Time” by Abloom. Image credit: Zoltan Tasi/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk, modified by CoinDesk.
Regulation has the potential to stop new business before it starts. What if it didn't? Connor Boyack of the Libertas Institute details "the regulatory sandbox" experiment in Utah.
A listener writes in with a bizarre story of experiments with blood substitutes in the US and Brazil. The DuPont family is rumored to own a mysterious structure near a place called Devil's Road. Colorado courts controversy with new facial recognition requirements. All this and more in this week's listener mail.
Today's podcast takes up the glee with which Democratic legislators greeted Joe Biden's decision to...usurp legislative authority. What's going on here? And what will happen with Andrew Cuomo? And why are we talking about the COVID threat posed by the Sturgis bike rally again? Give a listen.
Vaccine mandates on the horizon for for active duty troops and foreign visitors. A California community destroyed by wildfire. Renewed push for electric vehicles. CBS News Correspondent Steve Kathan has today's World News Roundup.
Graceful, playful and tough, the gray whale is a beloved icon of the Pacific coast. The whales’ annual migration from the waters off Alaska to Baja California is one of the longest undertaken by any mammal, a journey that has happened for thousands of years.
But in the last couple of years, fewer gray whales have made the trip. These magnificent giants are dying in numbers unseen in decades. Nobody knows exactly why, but there are some clues.
Today, we speak with Los Angeles Times investigative reporter Susanne Rust about what’s happening.
After a damning report into sexual-harassment allegations, support for New York’s governor has cratered. He is hanging on—for now. LinkedIn seems to do a brisk trade in China, without revealing how it keeps on the right side of the censors. So users increasingly censor themselves. And the mutual appreciation of Chechnya’s brutal dictator and a star mixed-martial-arts fighter.
