'Climate change doesn't just boost record weather events — it boosts the snake-oil salesmen'

'The California wildfires just revealed this very grim truth'

Nitish Pahwa at Slate

"Naturally, it's conspiracy time" about the California wildfires, and this is "just how every major climate disaster is going to unfold online from here on out," says Nitish Pahwa. In an "ecosystem where social media outlets have purposefully hobbled their ability to provide real-time, reliable updates to users, the people affected by those disasters are literally left in the dark." It "takes time and effort to extinguish flames and dispatch reliable information in favor of the public interest."

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'Venezuela's Maduro could be the next dictator to fall'

Kristina Foltz at The Hill

The "swift fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is a lesson on the fragility of alliances between autocrats," and shows the "growing weakness and isolation" of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, says Kristina Foltz. Dictators "share only a common enemy — the global international rules-based order that would put a halt to their criminal, repression-fueled operations." Now is the "time for the world to ramp up pressure on Nicolas Maduro to accept defeat and liberate Venezuela from tyranny."

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'How Jimmy Carter helped the religious right's rise to power'

Neil J. Young at MSNBC

It is "hard to imagine a time when being an evangelical or openly talking about one's religious faith would be regarded as a liability for a presidential candidate," but Jimmy Carter "helped bring religious talk into the American presidency to a degree that had never been seen before," says Neil J. Young. Conservative politicians were "also following in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter, even as they took the nation down a very different path."

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'A TikTok ban would harm colleges sports' have-nots'

Adam Minter at Bloomberg

For "thousands of college athletes," social media is an "essential tool for monetizing a brief college sports career," says Adam Minter. The "reality for most college athletes is that they can't earn money unless they hustle. If TikTok disappears, they'll struggle to even do that." If athletes "want to get paid, they need to develop personal brands and attract audiences," and TikTok is by far the most efficient means to secure them."

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