Author: TheConversation

By Nick Merrill, Research Fellow, University of California, Berkeley You try to use your credit card, but it doesn’t work. In fact, no one’s credit card works. You try to go to some news sites to find out why, but you can’t access any of those, either. Neither can anyone else. Panic-buying ensues. People empty ATMs of cash. This kind of catastrophic pan-internet meltdown is more likely than most people realize. I direct the Internet Atlas Project at the University of California, Berkeley. Our goal is to shine a light on long-term risks to the internet. We produce indicators...

By Sian Mughan, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs, Arizona State University Imagine being unable to pay a US$50 traffic ticket and, as a result, facing mounting fees so high that even after paying hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars toward your debt you still owe money. Imagine being fired from your job because you’ve been forced to use unreliable public transportation instead of your car. And imagine going to jail several times because, even though your license is suspended, you had to drive to work. These are some of the situations facing millions of Americans who were unable to pay...

By Eliga Gould, Professor of History, University of New Hampshire When a federal judge in California struck down the state’s 32-year-old ban on assault weapons in early June 2021, he added a volatile new issue to the gun-rights debate. The ruling, by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez, does not take effect immediately, because California has 30 days to appeal the rejection of its assault weapons ban. Most coverage has focused on Benitez’s provocative analogy between an AR-15 and a Swiss army knife. But the case raises troubling questions about the meaning and proper role of “militias” under the...

By Mark Robert Rank, Professor of Social Welfare, Washington University in St Louis In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously declared war on poverty. “The richest nation on Earth can afford to win it,” he told Congress in his first State of the Union address. “We cannot afford to lose it.” Yet as the administration was to learn on both the domestic and foreign battlefields, a country marching off to war must have a credible estimate of the enemy’s size and strength. Surprisingly, up until this point, the U.S. had no official measure of poverty and therefore no statistics...

By Cheryl Thompson, Assistant Professor, Creative Industries, Ryerson University Published nearly 170 years ago, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe had a profound impact on American slavery. But Uncle Tom is not a relic from the 19th century, this complex figure still has a hold over Black politics. In fact, the Uncle Tom stereotype is quite possibly the most resilient figure in American history. He has survived pandemics, lived through 33 presidents, and remains the most recognizable Black character in history. While most people know that Uncle Tom is the titular character of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, few people...