Tuesday morning articles
The new M2 is for BMW’s biggest fans; it’s also the beginning of the end The new M2 is likely the last of its kind. Is it a worthy goodbye to straight-six engines, stick shifts and classic little gas-guzzling, driver-focused BMW coupes. RIP BMW (Globe and Mail)
The Blast Effect: How bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart. (Washington Post)
Hundreds Of Passengers Have Said They Were Sexually Assaulted On Cruise Ships. Their Stories Highlight Years Of Lax Security: Numerous passengers traveling on major cruise lines such as Carnival and Disney say in court documents that they were raped and assaulted — often times by crew members. (Buzzfeed News)
How a Major Toy Company Kept 4chan Online: Documents obtained by WIRED confirm that Good Smile, which licenses toy production for Disney, was an investor in the controversial image board. (Wired)
A State’s Choice to Forgo Medicaid Funds Is Killing Hospitals: ‘We’re Going Away’: Mississippi is one of 10 states, all with Republican-led legislatures, that continue to reject federal funding to expand health insurance for the poor, intensifying financial pressure on hospitals. (New York Times)
How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them: Internal documents and former company executives reveal how Cigna doctors reject patients’ claims without opening their files. “We literally click and submit,” one former company doctor said. (ProPublica)
The long shadow of Covid-19 myths: Like in many countries, misinformation about Covid-19 has circulated widely in Morocco during the pandemic. Much of it came from the US and Europe. (BBC)
My 6-Year-Old Son Died. Then the Anti-vaxxers Found Out. Opponents of COVID vaccines terrorize grieving families on social media. (The Atlantic)
The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a Texas County: Students have overdosed during class, in bathrooms, and in an elementary-school parking lot. (New Yorker)
Why Tiny Ponds and Singing Frogs Matter So Much: We are facing nothing less than an existential crisis, and in that context the potential loss of a few amphibians in a few unprotected wetlands might not be the greatest source of grief in the world. These little vernal pools might seem expendable, hardly more than a storybook enchantment for children still enthralled to tales of princesses whose only reason to kiss a frog is to turn it back into a prince. (New York Times)
How Did America’s Weirdest, Most Freedom-Obsessed State Fall for an Authoritarian Governor? A journey through Ron DeSantis’s magic kingdom (The Atlantic)
The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists: Forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee explains the outgoing president’s pathological appeal and how to wean people from it. (Scientific American)
Meet Some Of Trump’s Guilty Friends: Join us on this walk down memory lane… (Talking Points Memo)
The gun that divides a nation: The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche. How the AR-15 became a powerful political, cultural symbol in America (Washington Post)