It has been a rough few months for the internet.

For more than a year the world has been fixated on developing and deploying a vaccine for the coronavirus, but scientists have been working for decades to come up with a vaccine for another deadly infection — malaria. And now, finally, the long-awaited malaria vaccine is available.

No one likes a snitch.

Former President Donald Trump spent much of his four-year term packing the federal court system, all the way up to the Supreme Court, with conservatives and strict constitutionalists as he worked to overturn laws protecting women’s abortion rights. But that very court system could soon turn into Trump’s nightmare as he attempts to block Congress from accessing presidential communications linked to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

Listened to any good books lately?

California legislation just signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom requires all large stores to “maintain a gender-neutral section or area … in which a reasonable selection of the items and toys for children that it sells shall be displayed, regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys.” Having been led by many daughters through many toy sections, we have a few questions.

Until the spring of 2020, global commerce functioned like a finely tuned machine consisting of thousands if not millions of gears, all meshing in perfect sequence. A cargo ship leaving China on a two-week voyage could be timed within 30 minutes to dock in Los Angeles to offload its containers. Prescheduled trucks and trains would be waiting to carry containers to their destinations. Factories and warehouses had their inventories calculated to minimize storage costs by ensuring parts went straight into production and products spent minimal time on warehouse shelves. Airlines could reliably match pilots, crew and maintenance personnel with scheduled flights to keep passengers moving within tightly predicted time frames.

There seems to be something for everyone in the massive spending packages now working their way through Congress. And with a price tag of $4.6 trillion, or $37,400 per household, offering something for everyone — be it government-paid family leave, monthly child payments, free community college, union dues write-offs, a $12,500 electric vehicle tax credit or new bike paths — is easy.

Congratulations to Congress for avoiding economic catastrophe for another month or so. The Senate voted Thursday night to increase the nation’s debt limit by $480 billion, and the House is expected to do the same. That’s just enough money to pay America’s bills until Dec. 3, when Congress will likely have this fight all over again while the nation teeters on the edge of default.

When exactly is something either fair or unfair? Whether the topic is taxation, pay and bonuses, government benefits, crime and punishment, or almost anything else, we just can’t seem to agree.

As they prepare to spend $1.2 trillion on a bipartisan infrastructure deal, along with a vastly larger sum on a party-line social-policy bill, Democrats might be expected to defend their ambitions on the merits. Instead, progressive leaders seem to be focused on fiscal gimmickry.

The first big data release from the 2020 census in August contained some positive news about America’s biggest cities. The biggest of them, New York, turned out to have hundreds of thousands more people than the annual population estimates made by the Census Bureau had projected. Not one of the country’s 10 largest cities lost population between 2010 and 2020, the first time that’s happened since the 1940s. All of them now have more than a million residents for the first time ever.

As a sociologist who has researched reproduction and reproductive technologies for the last 12 years, I’ve learned that individuals are only one part of the equation. The choices people make are never removed from public policy or the resources — or lack thereof — made available by state and federal government.

OK, people. We need to talk.

President Joe Biden’s administration could soon have its foreign policy mettle tested like never before as China boosts its military aggression against Taiwan while proceeding with its naval expansion into the South China Sea. If Biden thought he would get a breather from major national security challenges after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, he figured wrong. A direct confrontation between China and Taiwan would dwarf the significance of Afghanistan. And the repercussions could hit every American hard in the pocketbook. So it’s worth paying attention.

A relatively favorable interpretation of Friday’s U.S. jobs report is that reversible COVID-19 effects are temporarily undermining a strong and consistent economic recovery. A less favorable one is that the labor market is becoming more vulnerable to stagflationary winds. Unfortunately, the particularly noisy report does not allow for a firm conclusion. That may be good news for the Federal Reserve in the short term despite longer-term policy complications. The implications for Congress are less conflicting and call for more urgent action on physical and human investment.

Facebook has become the latest company that everyone loves to hate, and internal documents stolen by an employee have become an opening to blame the social-media giant for America’s ills. The company has made mistakes, but it’s worth sorting the genuine issues from the opportunism of politicians looking to censor opponents.

The post-census redistricting process now underway around the country presents an important test for centrists to either live up to fundamental ideals such as fairness and choosing what’s best for the country, or go for the jugular the way the extremists in both parties do. Nice folks who play by the rules tend to finish last in politics, especially when it comes to the kinds of gerrymandering designed to determine election outcomes favorable to the dominant party in power.

Denouncing corporations is easy. Using actual policy tools to hold them accountable and check their power is more difficult. Yet this is precisely what the National Farmers Union (NFU) is pushing the Biden administration to do.

For all the manufactured controversy around COVID vaccine mandates, one thing no one can deny is that they’re fulfilling their intended purpose. From health care workers in California to employees of the food production behemoth Tyson, tying vaccination to continued employment is pushing people around the country to get the jab and help at long last restrict the virus’ ability to kill and propagate itself.