What Makes The Delta Variant So Dangerous; How The 'Critical Race Theory' Bogeyman Was Built; Here Comes Shrinkflation

Plus, an experiment in Iceland proves that less can be more when it comes to work hours

View this email online by Christopher Dean Hopkins Stories You May Have Missed Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group via Getty Images In 2019, Alan Hostetter posted a 20-minute "sunset gong meditation" on his YouTube channel. By 2020, he was fighting Caifornia's lockdown rules, allegedly messaging with militia members and saying in another YouTube video that "tyrants and traitors need to be executed as an example." He now faces charges in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Hostetter's case demonstrates how conspiracy theories and coronavirus protests funneled some people straight to the insurrection.   Juan Gaertner/Science Source It multiplies faster, which means you can infect others sooner. The viral load gets higher — the average person infected with the delta variant had about 1,000 times more copies of the virus in their respiratory tracts than those infected with the original strain. The delta variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus is perfectly adapted to cause outbreaks in unvaccinated populations. Lumber prices took a strange ride during the pandemic, soaring to four times their previous costs before dropping by half. Oil and gasoline prices, on the other hand, may just be boarding the roller-coaster. In both cases, sharply limited supplies are running up against demand levels that have become impossible to predict.    Nicole Xu for NPR Newly released tape and documents from the investigation into Oscar Grant's shooting by BART transit police suggest major errors were made. That includes failing to look into aggressive, escalating tactics by Officer Tony Pirone, the first officer on the scene. Detectives also failed to get an immediate statement from Officer Johannes Mehserle, before he'd locked in on a legal strategy. Read the story or listen to it here. In test runs using 2,500 workers, researchers in Iceland found support for cutting a few hours off of employees' work weeks but keeping their paychecks the same. The workers in the study reported improved well-being, while they got just as much done at the office — in some case becoming even more productive.   Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP via Getty Images The assassination of its president is just the latest in a long line of calamities for Haiti. A 7.0 earthquake near the capital wrecked the country in 2010 and killed 220,000, and was followed by a cholera outbreak that killed another 9,000. Since then the nation has been unable to rebuild much of its infrastructure, and Haitians have been abused by constant political instability and rising gang violence. "Everything that could go wrong seems to be going wrong," says an ex-pat and expert at the University of Virginia. Newsletter continues after sponsor message Podcasts Of The Week Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect "Critical race theory" seemded to pop into existence as a buzzword this year, pushed by conservative media. But this debate — which is blaring fury at school board meetings across the country — has been burbling for decades. It even got first-term president Bill Clinton to withdraw a Justice Department nominee. (Consider This)   Jeff Greenberg/Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Imag Companies know that consumers see and detest price increases, so when things get tight for them, they look for alternatives. One that usually flies below shoppers' attention: Keeping the price the same, but reducing how much product is in the box. It's called shrinkflation, and it's happening right now. (The Indicator From Planet Money)   Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WBEZ (edit station). Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Daily News, Politics, Health and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Best of NPR emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy