There are two more reasons to love Australia's fluffiest aeronautical marsupials after the discovery that there are actually three species of greater glider, not one as previously assumed.

House Democratic campaign chief Cheri Bustos announced Monday that she would not seek reelection, days after an unexpected string of losses that could end up costing the caucus nearly a dozen seats, according to multiple sources. Bustos’ campaign arm has faced intense scrutiny since Democrats’ losses on Tuesday, with battleground Democrats arguing she did little to protect them from stinging GOP attacks and that she pursued an overly aggressive strategy in impossible-to-win districts in states like Texas and Arkansas. Democrats held onto control of the House but lost a net five seats, with more expected.

On any given trip to Green Fish Market in Oakland’s Chinatown, you might find Finnie Phung surrounded by tanks of fish, geoduck clams, and Dungeness crab, dressed in knee-high rain boots, rubber gloves, a face mask, and answering questions in Cantonese or English. To the casual shopper, the smell of the sea in the city’s busiest fish market might be penetrating. Not to Phung. “I have been working in this environment since I was a teenager,” she says proudly. A daughter of refugees from Vietnam, Phung runs this seafood market in the heart of Oakland Chinatown with her husband, while raising three children in the middle of a pandemic, and somehow maintaining a chipper outlook. She epitomizes the younger generation of Chinatown’s shopkeepers: social-media savvy, bilingual or trilingual, with a uniquely Asian American outlook. While San Francisco’s Chinatown is a well-known tourist destination, the century-old Oakland Chinatown is far less so. As with the Chinese American commercial strips of Philadelphia and Houston, most of the neighborhood businesses serve the community. As a first-generation immigrant from Taiwan, Oakland Chinatown feels like home to me, the best of living in the United States while still being able to get chicken feet, mangosteen, and star fruit, surrounded by familiar languages, only one of which is English. Those close ties may be why Oakland Chinatown, while significantly affected by the pandemic, may be able to weather the economic crisis better than Chinatowns in other cities. In fact, multi-generational businesses like Finnie’s market, passed down from parents or grandparents, say that immediate post-pandemic sales are at least as strong as before. Chinatown’s support of the Black Lives Matter protests that flowed through Oakland in May also show how intertwined the neighborhood feels with the broader city. 

Utopian societies in fiction rarely turn out to be as inviting as they first seem. It is a pattern centuries old; the utopia degenerates into an abominable society—or else it had always been abominable, and the reality had been hidden from view. Le Guin breaks the mould with Anarres, her imaginary society in The Dispossessed. Rather than attempting to prove utopias are impossible, she encourages us to reconsider exactly what it is that we view as one. Anarres is a believably flawed society, but one built on solidarity and equality.

While some have praised the new research for revealing the secret to why Indian cuisine is so delicious, this notion of layering many contrasting flavors and spices isn't unique to Indian cooking. In fact, most of the world's cuisines tend to follow that principle, says Tulasi Srinivas, an anthropologist at Emerson University who studies food and globalization. And up until the mid-1600s, European cuisine was the same way. In medieval Europe, those who could afford to do so would generously season their stews with saffron, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Sugar was ubiquitous in savory dishes. And haute European cuisine, until the mid-1600s, was defined by its use of complex, contrasting flavors. "The real question, then, is why the wealthy, powerful West — with unprecedented access to spices from its colonies — became so fixated on this singular understanding of flavor," Srinivas says. The answer, it turns out, has just as much to do with economics, politics and religion as it does taste.

After an election campaign built on attacking the reputation of his rival’s son, Donald Trump is facing calls for a new legal investigation into his activities in Ukraine where he and his associates were looking for dirt on Hunter Biden. The Stories of our Times podcast has spoken to a Ukrainian businessman who has admitted, for the first time, that he was asked to lie about Hunter Biden’s business dealings to damage Joe Biden’s reputation. In return, he was promised a US visa and legal immunity.

David Bossie, an outside adviser to Donald Trump who is leading his post-election fight over vote counts, has tested positive for coronavirus, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest in a series of cases among the president’s circle. Bossie, who tested positive on Sunday, joins Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who both contracted the virus in the past week.

Laughing at Republicans isn't just about kicking them when they're down. It's a little bit about that though.

The iconic Berkeley restaurant's new pandemic model works to preserve its suppliers and workers who make its farm-to-table philosophy possible.

Moderates and progressives were mostly united during the campaign. Their deep differences will now present a significant challenge for the president-elect.

The man on the trail went by “Mostly Harmless." He was friendly and said he worked in tech. After he died in his tent, no one could figure out who he was.

It’s been two days since President-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election — and President Donald Trump has reportedly been coping by downing large amounts of fast food. The British Daily Mail tabloid reports that the atmosphere in the White House has grown incredibly toxic as the president and his inner […]

Memories are short in "This Town." Just look at the veterans of George W. Bush’s White House, who did just fine for themselves.

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

A main cable that supports the Arecibo Observatory broke Friday at 7:39 p.m. Puerto Rico time. Unlike the auxiliary cable that failed at the same facility on Aug. 10, this main cable did not slip out of its socket. It broke and fell onto the reflector dish below, causing additional damage to the dish and other nearby cables. Both cables were connected to the same support tower. No one was hurt, and engineers are already working to determine the best way to stabilize the structure.

“I have always had a focus on public service, always a desire to make sure that I’m using my skills and talents to help people and to make the community around me a little bit better,” she said.

His immediate priorities will be to overturn Trump’s ugliest executive actions, while enacting his own to provide COVID relief without legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t acknowledged that Joe Biden won the election, and he’s calling the Senate back into session to confirm more judges nominated by President Donald Trump. The Kentucky Republican hasn’t commented on the election since Friday, a day before the race was called for Biden, but he’ll resume his efforts to fill judicial vacancies with conservative nominees.

He tricked the Bush administration into thinking he could detect terrorist signals in al Jazeera broadcasts. Now Dennis Montgomery has a new set of believers.

President Donald Trump is reportedly has another gambit in the works to magnify his unfounded accusations that the election, which he lost to Democratic challenger Joe Biden last week, was “stolen” from him via election fraud: Going back to holding his beloved rallies. CNN, Axios, and NBC News report that Trump will be holding campaign-style rallies throughout the country in a few weeks as his legal team continues to fight the election results in court with unproven claims that the election had been plagued with voter fraud. White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller, and lawyer Rudy Giuliani made the push on the rallies, according to CNN. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.