major volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes could affect climate rapidly

the global climate can swing between warm and cold periods in a matter of decades or even less came as a profound shock to scientists

Hurricane Sandy’s 2012 storm surge caused nearly $5 billion in water damage, much of which is still not repaired

Which makes you wonder whether the projected risks of further warming, dire as they are, might still be understated.

dismissed as alarmist

For decades, most scientists saw climate change as a distant prospect.

Pay is set to increase 3 percent in June 2020.

“They told me I should take my boat back to the Dominican Republic and not live off the government,” she said, crying.

Mr. Purnell, who lost his wife and his job in recent years, has been struggling to save money for his children’s education.

wearing body cameras by the end of 2019.

Since then, three officers have been fired, and 13 have resigned amid investigations.

When they did, he sexually assaulted her.

“If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know what he would have done to me,”

, the allegations suggest a pattern of unprovoked physical abuse against some of New York’s most vulnerable. Where compassion is demanded, the welfare offices all too often dispense callousness.

Since 2013, more than 50 people filed legal complaints of serious abuse

undertrained and poorly supervised.

stressful conditions and low pay.

The H.R.A. is the largest social service system run by an American city.

begging for help as officers kicked him and beat him with batons.

With longer life expectancies, the need for caregiving in later life is increasing.

it would use up almost all the revenue of Walmart worldwide.

moved in to support the new household, including my 90-year-old great-grandfathe

my grandmother, divorced and in her 50s, retired early from her job as a garment worker to care for her at home.

she could no longer care for her young daughter. My family rallied to help her.

32-year-old sister

“So we, as a people, will keep fighting, whether it’s peaceful or scary, until we reach justice by whatever means necessary.”

it is not their job to save us — we are the parents — but may they inspire us to help them save themselves.

The mural is spectacular, at the intersection of the two major roads that carry drivers from fully gentrified central Seattle to quickly gentrifying south Seattle. Images of Black Panthers distributing food and registering black voters stretch 40 feet along the sidewalk outside the high school, which is 93 percent kids of color.

the same as our parents marching to end segregation on the same streets a couple of decades before.

If you were a privileged white kid in the ’90s who could feel a moral pull to fight for something but didn’t know where to start, looking to the media for inspiration was a dry, dry well.

The safest path was to say all the right things about freedom and equality while rolling your eyes at the try-hards.

one of those kids who isn’t scared of sincerity, of action, of authority. To be the kind of smart, engaged young person who actually understood things about the globe.

The Gap was on high alert!

“probably think I’m selling drugs. But I’m not. I’m just a cool person that likes hanging out and making people laugh.”

Falling short a second time could get you barred for three years.

four million Americans could lose their health insurance.

Americans living on only $2 or less per person per day

the impulse has endured.

A 2013 study by the sociologist Ofer Sharone found that unemployed workers in the United States blame themselves

low intelligence or low ambition”

if you work hard, you will succeed. So those who do not succeed have not worked hard. It’s an idea found deep in the marrow of the nation.

was approved for Supplemental Security Income because of a learning disability. Vanessa began receiving a monthly $766 disability check.

raising two daughters on a fixed disability check

To afford basic necessities, the federal government estimates that Vanessa’s family would need to bring in $29,420 a year.

Vanessa earned $9,815.75 in 2015, $12,763.94 in 2016 and $10,446.81 last year.

Plus, working harder and longer often isn’t even an option for those at the mercy of an unpredictable schedule.

bifurcated,

America prides itself on being the country of economic mobility

But one of the most effective antipoverty solutions is a decent-paying job, and those have become scarce for people like Vanessa

the federal minimum wage tracked productivity, it would be more than $20 an hour, not today’s poverty wage of $7.25.

What kinds of jobs are available to people without much education? By and large, the answer is: jobs that do not pay enough to live on.

After juggling the kids and managing her diabetes, Vanessa is able to work 20 to 30 hours a week, which earns her around $1,200 a month.

three years

the kids wouldn’t run away out of anger or shame, Vanessa learned to park off Route 1, in crevices of the city that were so still and abandoned that no one dared crack a door until daybreak.

Laughter burst from the room.

Vanessa placed her insulin in the minifridge as her children chose beds, where they would sleep two to a mattress.

Vanessa’s children, Taliya, 17, Shamal, 14, and Tatiyana, 12

a shy smile peeks out when she feels proud of herself.

Vanessa began caring for her ailing father. He had been a functional crack addict for most of her life, working as a landscaper in the warmer months and collecting unemployment when business slowed down.

Now we suffer the consequences.

Older people forced the youth into this situation by our dereliction, and now we must not let them carry the battle alone.

The climate troglodytes must be thrown out of office, starting with Donald J. Trump.

If we do not move far more aggressively, it could spiral entirely out of control.

Under the unlikely leadership of a brave 16-year-old schoolgirl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, we are marching in the streets now by the millions.

At any time in these last three decades, we could have woken up.

The largest utility in the state, Pacific Gas & Electric, has already been propelled into bankruptcy by fire liabilities it calculates at $30 billion

desiccated

The scientists knew long ago, and told us, that the sea would invade the coasts.

All of it was predicted, in general outline, decades ago

that true strength resides in respecting and lifting up others, not seeking to dominate them.”

Parents of white kids need to talk about race and racism and how they’ve played out in this country

someone who is upset or offended a “snowflake” or “triggered” is just a lazy — and often hypocritical — way to justify treating that person poorly.

The person who wants people to stop racial slurs or mocking of gay people or the person who is upset and offended by the use of the phrase “Happy Holidays”

edginess or rebellion, the teenager softened his stances and even disabled his alt-right meme accounts.

indoctrination

They find a home for their rage, a brotherhood of guys like them, and that oh-so-alluring heroic struggle — and that’s how an extremist is born.

conservative perspectives on feminism and gender are very popular among young men and often are a path to more extreme content and ideologies.

“There is a sophisticated psychology at play,” Dr. Duffy warns, noting that today’s teenagers have been using smartphones and tablets their whole lives.

“regularly denigrate liberal or progressive white men as soft, emasculated ‘soy boys’ and insufficiently aggressive or right-wing white men as ‘cucks.’”

they’re more aware than we are of how vulnerable young white men are to radicalization.

the killers were white men

. In the past year, a total of 12 worshipers were killed in the U.S. in two hate-motivated attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego.

the trauma and violence

My son said he hadn’t even read it,

a segment of the white supremacist movement consisting of a loose network of racists and anti-Semites who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of politics that embrace implicit or explicit racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy.”

meme

“triggered.”

Even if Trump disappeared tomorrow, we would still live in a country where the top 1 percent own more than the bottom 90 percent — and where on any given night more than 100,000 children are homeless.

that players would play harder if only they were paid a little (or a lot) more.

if we had the same income distribution today as we had in 1979, the bottom 80 percent would have about an extra $1 trillion each year and the top 1 percent would have about $1 trillion less.

America’s richest men now live almost 15 years longer than the poorest men

Great wealth has translated into immense political power, which is then leveraged to multiply that wealth and power all over again

that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

Their stress is entirely the result of their own decisions.

This is not to say that successful people are immune to life’s difficulties and strains.

the ideology of meritocracy hurts the millions of people who don’t make it to the top.

The winners in America’s meritocracy are suffering.

It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it

And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us

“The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.”

Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears

potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America

that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

incendiary

against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity.

I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners

I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations

we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes

to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.

words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens

ultimately unfinished. It was stained

When we stay within our own tribe

tends to ignore because they don’t fit our narrative.

intelligent voices who disagree with us

who believe that the Sandy Hook school shooting was faked

afrai

liberals became more liberal and conservatives more conservative.

smart and well-informed — but who strikes me as less sensible, partly because I often disagree with him.

we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices.

enjoyable conversation that way.

I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate.

“opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences

it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like”

You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”