Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2024 i Mother Jones

THERE’S SOMETHING UNSETTLING about the Venus flytrap. When it eats, it behaves more like an animal than a plant, ensnaring unsuspecting insects in its fragrant snapping trap in as little as a third of a second. And while one can understand, rationally, that the flytrap evolved its taste for bugs over tens of millions of years as a means to source more nutrients, watching it move feels suspiciously otherworldly, even alien. It hunts. “There’s nothing else in the world like it,” retired Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and flytrap maven Julie Moore told me. “Noth-ing,” she said, emphasizing each syllable. To her, the plant’s quirky modifications—its diet, jawlike leaves, and speed—aren’t scary; they’re evidence of Mother Nature’s power to survive, and what inspired Moore’s crusade to protect it. You can…

LIKE A REVELER who chases each of many tequila shots with a seltzer, US farm policy consists of comically clashing impulses likely to result in a nasty hangover. The Department of Agriculture doles out substantial subsidies each year to entice farmers to maximize production of corn and soybeans. These commodities account for about 60 percent of US farmland, are used to fatten animals on factory farms, and deliver many of the sugars and fats in our ultraprocessed diets. Unsavory side effects of their production include planet-warming emissions, soil erosion, and polluted waterways. Since 1985, the USDA has also offered farmers cash to adopt conservation practices meant to help counter those troublesome impacts. Growers can make extra money by adding soil-stabilizing crops such as rye and oats to their rotations or…

MOST OF THE NEWS about the journalism business right now is grim. Storied newsrooms are being hollowed out and sold to hedge funds. Once-hot digital startups are cutting back and closing down. Even public radio and television are laying off staff. Last year, the United States lost about 2,700 news jobs, and more than 20,000 media jobs altogether; since 2005, newspaper employment has shrunk by as much as 60 percent. It’s no coincidence that during this same time, disinformation and propaganda have come to dominate our politics, to the point where a significant portion of our politics is an exercise in what George Orwell called “blackwhite”: “Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a…

TANIA CULVER HUMPHREY has spent most of her life grappling with her father’s secrets. In public, her father, Ellsworth Culver, cultivated a reputation as a globetrotting Christian do-gooder. He taught schoolchildren in Cuba, ran missionary programs in the Philippines, and, in the early 1980s, co-founded the humanitarian nonprofit Mercy Corps with friends from the international aid world. At Mercy Corps, including the nine years he spent as its president, he built programs across three continents, conducted informal diplomacy in conflict zones, and received a medal from North Korea for organizing food and medical aid. In private, he was sexually abusing Humphrey, his youngest daughter—at times raping her, choking her, and taking explicit photos of her, according to a lawsuit she eventually filed. The abuse, she says, began as far back…

IN 2009, when Facebook changed its newsfeed significantly for the first time, there wasn’t much uproar over “the algorithm.” Now we’re all talking about it—whatever “it” is. The algorithm and its ramifications have been the focus of congressional hearings and scholarly debates. In an article on the collapse of Twitter, writer Willy Staley noted “vague concerns about ‘the algorithm,’ the exotic mathematical force accused of steering hypnotized users into right-wing extremism, or imprisoning people in a cocoon of smug liberalism, or somehow both.” But “the algorithm” does not exist. And widespread use of the phrase implies a false hope that we can fully understand our dizzying information system. If it were only the algorithm on YouTube radicalizing us, or the algorithm on Facebook weaponizing misinformation, then we would know how…

CRUISING SOUTH DOWN a two-lane highway in Montana, Braven Glenn looked out onto the open road, the evening sky chilly and dark. It was November 24, 2020—half a year into the pandemic and three months after his 17th birthday. He was a good student, on his way to pick up his girlfriend, a basketball player like him, at her house on the Crow Indian Reservation. Most days, Braven took his time while driving; his friends sometimes teased him for staying below the speed limit. But lately he hadn’t been feeling like himself—not since his grandma died from Covid weeks earlier. On this particular night, when a car ahead of him sat at around 60 mph in a 70 mph zone, he signaled and passed it, slowing again to the speed…

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC seems to have emerged from the initial jolt of the pandemic with a newfound clarity familiar to survivors of catastrophes. Many people experienced an evaporation of the things that lent their lives the illusion of stability. Jobs disappeared and the social safety net’s holes loomed large. For scores of working people, it was—though they might not use this term—a radicalizing experience. Millions suddenly confronted the fact that if we didn’t protect ourselves, nobody else would. “I don’t really know if any amount of money would make working in this environment and being exposed to this level of risk feel worth it,” one grocery worker said early in the pandemic. For “essential” workers, it became clear that the work and the risk were a package deal. This realization…