Weekend Reads 10/26/19

GOP worries it's losing impeachment fight

“Does he need to be so unhinged? He says the dumbest things,” said one Republican senator who vented frustration with the president’s outbursts on Twitter and in front of the White House press corps.

End-Cretaceous mass extinction saw big swings in ocean pH

This pattern had been noticed in the carbon isotopes before, with several possible explanations proposed. The colorfully named "Strangelove Ocean" hypothesis, for example, calls for a total loss of photosynthetic activity. The "Living Ocean" hypothesis, on the other hand, explains things with a weakening of the downward carbon pump instead of reduced photosynthesis.

The many varieties of anti-Semitism

Just as alarming and puzzling as the persistence of anti-Semitism is its protean nature. Anti-Semitism surfaces among professors as well as street thugs, in sophisticated ideologies as well as crude stereotypes, and on the political left as well as on the right. It was expressed by the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in 2017, who chanted “Jews will not replace us,” but also by the organizers of the 2017 Dyke March in Chicago, who prohibited participants from displaying (in rainbow colors) the Star of David because of its association with what organizers deemed a uniquely objectionable country—Israel.

The Many Lives of Demogorgon, From Scribal Error to ‘Stranger Things’

Yet Demogorgon was never a deity who loomed over Greek or Roman mythology. In fact, “Demogorgon” wasn’t even a real word. His popularity actually dates back to the 1300s, when he began appearing in Latin literature in and around Florence. In the words of the late historian and mythographer Jean Seznac, “Demogorgon is a grammatical error become a god.”