Our picksFacebook & American democracy; securing voting machines; the fate of the Earth, and more

Senate Democrats worry Russia could jeopardize reelection bids (Kyle Cheney, Elana Schor, and Cory Bennett, Politico)
A warning from the Senate Intelligence Committee has vulnerable lawmakers fretting about election security

What Facebook did to American democracy (Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic)
And why it was so hard to see it coming
The race to secure voting tech gets an urgent jumpstart (Lily Hay Newman, Wired)
Numerous electronic voting machines used in United States elections have critical exposures that could make them vulnerable to hacking. Security experts have known that for a decade. But it wasn’t until Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential campaigns and began probing digital voting systems that the topic took on pressing urgency. Now hackers, researchers, diplomats, and national security experts are pushing to effect real change in Washington. The latest update? It’s working, but maybe not fast enough.

This isn’t ‘the New Normal’ for climate change — that will be worse (David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine)
What that means is that we have not, at all, arrived at a new normal. It is more like we’ve taken one step out on the plank off a pirate ship.

Why the Vegas shooter did it(Daniel Benjamin, Politico)
In today’s fame-obsessed world, mass killings have become a bloody route to immortality.

The fate of Earth  (Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker)
Humanity’s survival on this planet seems more uncertain than ever. But what happens when we look at ourselves through other creatures’ eyes?