AllTop Viral!

Elizabeth Warren has a proposed a 7% surtax on the country’s largest corporations. The tax would apply to companies whose worldwide profits exceed $100 million. Warren has said the tax “ will make our biggest and most profitable corporations pay more and ensure that none of them can ever make billions and pay zero taxes …

Although the earliest speculations about the existence of black holes date back to the late eighteenth century, those speculations have been limited to mathematical equations and discussions of theoretical physics. Yesterday, the world finally saw proof of their existence in the form of a photograph. To the untrained eye, the image doesn’t look like much …

The House voted to reinstate Obama-era net neutrality rules by a vote of 232-190. Predictably, the vote fell along party lines, with only a single Republican––Bill Posey of Florida––breaking ranks with his party to support the bill. Supporters of net neutrality should not get their hopes up yet, however. The bill stands little chance in …

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared a public emergency in parts of Brooklyn experiencing a measles outbreak. The declaration requires that unvaccinated peoples get vaccines or pay fines. The outbreak is most heavily effecting the Orthodox Jewish community Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. So far, 21 people have been hospitalized, five of whom are …

The small Philippines island of Siargao houses the White Banana Beach Club, a small cocktail bar with two “luxury dorms.” The owner, Gianluca Casaccia, has been receiving an increasing number of requests from so-called social media “influencers” asking for free room and board in exchange for content. Recently, Gasaccia received an email from yet another …

Stanford University has rescinded the admission offered to a student who was linked to the massive college admissions scam uncovered in March. The student’s application materials included falsified sailing credentials, and after she was admitted Stanford sailing received a $500,000 donation through head sailing coach John Vandemoer. Vandemoer has been fired after admitting to taking …

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D) and Representative Doug Collins (R) have called for Robert Mueller to testify before the Judiciary Committee following Congress’s receipt of the Mueller report. Doug Collins initiated the call for Mueller’s testimony in a tweet: “Democrats can cite no precedent for their demands for grand jury information from the #MuellerReport, …

Tibetan nomads have lived on the grasslands of central Tibet for 8,000 years. Soon, that long legacy will be over. In the past few months, China has ramped up a forced relocation policy, which requires that the nomads move to villages. According to the Chinese government, the policy is meant to protect the environment. Alternative sources, however, report that the land is being sold to developers.

This news is bringing (yet more) controversy to Reddit. In the discussion thread about the news, comments are disappearing and being deleted with unusual frequency. Some users speculate that it’s because Chinese social media company Tencent is a major investor in Reddit.

The displacement of Tibetan nomads is part of a drawn out cultural genocide against the Tibetan people, and that is but one of the peoples that China is attempting to “assimilate.”  As many as one million Uighurs are currently being held in secret concentration camps: “The allegations came from multiple sources, including activist group Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which said in a report last month that 21 percent of all arrests recorded in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang.” 

China’s economic ties to major world powers will likely ensure that its human rights violations continue unabated. 

More news.

A man who was allegedly attempting to hunt rhinos illegally was trampled to death by elephants in Kruger National Park, South Africa last week. “According to the family of the deceased, they were called by his accomplices who notified them that their relative had been killed by an elephant while they were in the KNP to poach a rhino on Tuesday evening,” according to a spokesperson. 

After watching their friend be trampled by elephants, the other hunters fled. The man’s remains were then eaten by lions––everything except his skull and a pair of pants. Rangers found the evidence after the victim’s family pleaded for the return of his remains. 

Unsurprisingly, the internet is celebrating this as sweet poetic justice for a criminal, but a few––especially on Reddit––express sympathy for the victim, who was likely poor and used hunting as a means of feeding his family. Hopefully, this man’s death will serve as a reminder to poachers that what they do is not only illegal, but also incredibly dangerous. Similarly, perhaps the internet outrage machine can turn its focus on the systematic poverty that drives people to violate anti-poaching laws, which will likely do more to reduce poaching than all the grave-dancing they can muster. 

More news.

The gig economy is a damnable scam, but too many Americans are accepting it as the new economic normal. Commercials like this one from Uber make the “side hustle” seem glamorous and easy. Americans are easily susceptible to gig economy because we place such high value on hard work. Working hard is not just a good thing, it’s a virtue. We’re trained to connect our worth as humans to our willingness to work. So we sign up to drive strangers around in our cars, to rent out our empty rooms to tourists, or to do any other side job that we can get via an app on our phone. 

Data reveal that participating in the gig economy is far from efficient or lucrative, but many participate anyway, either out of ignorance or out of desperation. Many surrender their rights as workers by signing on as an independent contractor, which the New York Times has pointed out makes side hustles a tax nightmare. So without insurance coverage, employee protections, or even decent wages, many Americans sell their labor for pennies to companies with valuations in the tens of billions. Out of principle, Americans should refuse to participate in this scam.

More news.

Yoga is a strange phenomenon. It’s not exactly an exercise, and it’s not exactly a spiritual practice. Rather, it’s a bit of both. It’s also a business––though its practitioners may not like to think of it that way. Because yoga is not entirely one thing, it is the perfect place for unscrupulous people to make money. 

A recent New York Times article describes how many yogi practitioners get duped into signing up for teacher trainings. These trainings are touted as a way to deepen one’s yoga practice and make extra money. The problem is, they’re not cheap. One woman describes paying $1,500 for the actual course, and then another $500 for a more training––training that she did not know about at first. She believed that she would be able to earn that back by teaching courses, but the studio that convinced her to do the training, a national chain called Core Power, has not given her an opportunity to teach. As a result, she’s saddled with debt. 

This is, of course, nothing new in American religious history. In the mid 1800s, two practices spread like wildfire around the country: mesmerism and phrenology. Both were touted as both spiritual and medical phenomenon, and “experts” in the tradition sold their knowledge in the form of trainings. Eventually, the practices were exposed as pseudoscience and died out. Yoga may not be going anywhere, but teacher trainings may eventually be outed. 

More about religion.

Donald Trump has said that he has not read the most significant document of his presidency, the Mueller report. He tweeted: “I have not read the Mueller Report yet, even though I have every right to do so. Only know the conclusions, and on the big one, No Collusion.” The admission is somewhat stunning given that many of Mueller’s own staff were not happy with Barr’s report, which seems to be the source of Trump’s conclusions. 

A House of Representatives committee has voted to issue a subpoena demanding that the justice department release the full Mueller report and all the evidence about the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia. The vote comes after Attorney General William Barr ignored the Democrat’s deadline demanding he submit the report to Congress.

Far from relaxing, tensions have only increased since William Barr’s controversial letter summarizing the Mueller report. Many on the liberal side of the aisle believe that the few people who have seen the report are those who are least trustworthy.

Trump’s tweet is likely to infuriate his opponents even more, especially as days pass without the report’s release either to the public. Congress is working to continue the Mueller investigations. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has said, “I think it’s inevitable that Bob Mueller is going to have to testify before Congress…[the committee has] a statutory requirement that the Intelligence Community, FBI, brief us on any significant counterintelligence or intelligence activity. And it’s hard to imagine something that rises more to that level than this investigation.”

More news.