Main Page/filed

• 2024/01/04 [L..T] Net Zero: Three graphs that might make you skeptical «Despite North Carolina slowly injuring itself by trying to eliminate oil, coal, and natural gas as energy sources, the scientific basis for “net zero” (the complete elimination of fossil-fuel usage) is based more on "general agreement" than hard data.»
• 2023/07/20 [L..T] RFK Jr. appears before Congress as his comments spreading misinformation draw scrutiny «All eyes are on the Republican primary this election cycle, but one Democratic underdog has been getting attention for his controversial comments spreading misinformation on a range of subjects. Lisa Desjardins reports on how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. captured the attention of some voters and Geoff Bennett discusses Kennedy's vaccine stances with Dr. Paul Offitt.»
• 2023/07/19 [L..T] RFK Jr. Vows to Back Dollar With Bitcoin, Exempt BTC From Taxes «The Democratic presidential hopeful also reiterated a May stance defending the right to self-custody bitcoin, run blockchain nodes at home and promising industry-neutral energy regulation.»
• 2023/06/23 [L..T] RFK Jr. calls for DIPLOMACY with Russia instead of “forever war” in speech «Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.) called for diplomacy and de-escalation with Russia instead of a "forever war" in a speech mirroring that of his uncle's, former President John F. Kennedy (JFK).»
• 2023/06/22 [L..T] Just Another RFK Jr. Lie. I Know, Because It’s About Me. «I’ve come to believe I have a responsibility to write about Kennedy because of my own shameful role in sending his toxic vaccine views into public discourse: I was the Salon editor, in partnership with Rolling Stone, who 18 years ago published his mendacious, error-ridden piece on how thimerosal in childhood vaccines supposedly led to a rise in autism, and how public health officials covered it up. From the day “Deadly Immunity” went up on Salon.com, we were besieged by scientists and advocates showing how Kennedy had misunderstood, incorrectly cited, and perhaps even falsified data. Some of his sources turned out to be known crackpots.»
• 2022/12/05 [L..T] A Parent Speaks Out After Armed Fascists Force School Drag Event's Cancelation «The father of two children who attended Red Oak Community School spoke with us about the school and its values, and the impact of the terrorism that resulted in the cancelation of the Holi-Drag Storytime event.»
• 2022/12/04 [L..T] Armed Fascist Group Terrorizes Church, Shuts Down Youth Story Hour «Armed fascists successfully intimidated a church in Ohio into cancelling a Drag Queen Story Hour event yesterday. A group of masked fascists paraded in paramilitary style chanting “Life, Liberty, Victory” while others wore camouflage and military gear. Many openly carried long guns, and protest signs accused organizers and participants of this costume, dance, and story-reading event of child abuse. Terrorized participants were forced to make the call to cancel in light of lackluster police involvement in security and fears from performers that they would not be safe.»
• 2022/12/03 [L..T] Drag storytime organizers, police offer different explanations amid Proud Boys protest «The Red Oak Community School canceled its Holi-drag storytime Saturday morning following promises of protest from the Proud Boys and what school officials described as only a "casual, distant acknowledgement" of the event from police. / The Columbus Division of Police and city officials, however, said they'd been in communication with organizers since they'd learned about the event weeks ago.» These two accounts do not actually contradict each other, though the wording implies that they do. Later in the article, though, police statements directly contradict what the school said about who first contacted whom.
• 2022/11/25 [L..T] WPATH Experts Rebuke NYT on Puberty Blockers «On November 22 the medical organization responsible for setting standards for providers of gender affirming care, WPATH, released a statement in response to the terrible New York Times piece on puberty blockers. Saying that the Times piece “furthers the atmosphere of misinformation and subjectivity,” WPATH did not mince words, condemning the use of sources unfamiliar with transgender medicine as well as some of the methods undertaken by the Times reporters.»
• 2022/11/17 [L..T] The NYT's Big Piece on Puberty Blockers Mucked Up the Most Important Point About Them «It’s a common error for certain journalists to make—viewing an essential piece of transgender health care as a newfangled, untested invention that may pose grave harm.» «It’s true they have downsides and that they aren’t right for every young person with gender dysphoria—but this is true of every medication, no matter the patient population. The mainstream medical consensus is that blockers are a useful tool in treating gender dysphoria, and more data is coming in all the time to support their efficacy in the patients for whom they’re indicated.»
• 2022/11/14 [L..T] NYT Investigation Offers Biased Reporting on Puberty Blocker Concerns «It's an overtly biased piece of work, and will no doubt spur a heck of a lot of articles from trans people, and allies, seeking to fact check and provide context and criticism on where the Times reporters, Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett, went so wrong. As our specific beat is media criticism, this piece will highlight the clearest journalistic errors, weaselly phrasing, and other poor choices made in the writing and editing of this piece.»
• 2022/11/14 [L..T] They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost? «Puberty blockers can ease transgender youths’ anguish and buy time to weigh options. But concerns are growing about long-term physical effects and other consequences.» A bit of think of the children scaremongering from your friendly neighborhood newspaper.
• 2022/10/14 [L..T] Mayor Will Announce Plan to Ban Unsanctioned Camping Across Portland and Build 500-Capacity Homeless "Campuses" «Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler plans next week to announce a sweeping strategy to ban unsanctioned camping across the city and build three massive sanctioned camping areas, called "campuses," each with capacity for 500 people. [..] Each campus would be divided into four camps with a 125-person capacity.» «The city will seek to hire an outside contractor to run the three campuses.»
• 2022/09/22 [L..T] A judge blocks the Indiana abortion ban a week after it took effect «Owen County Judge Kelsey Hanlon issued a preliminary injunction against the ban that took effect one week ago. The injunction was sought by abortion clinic operators who argued in a lawsuit that the state constitution protects access to the medical procedure.»
• 2022/09/21 [L..T] GOP congressional candidate said US suffered from women’s suffrage and praised organization trying to repeal 19th Amendment «John Gibbs, who defeated in the primary an incumbent Republican who had voted to impeach Trump, also made comments in the early 2000s praising an organization trying to repeal the 19th Amendment which also argued that women’s suffrage had made the United States into a “totalitarian state.”»
• 2022/09/16 [L..T] Book ban efforts surging in 2022, library association says «“I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “It’s both the number of challenges and the kinds of challenges. It used to be a parent had learned about a given book and had an issue with it. Now we see campaigns where organizations are compiling lists of books, without necessarily reading or even looking at them.”»
• 2022/06/15 [L..T] The Battle Over Gender Therapy «What Leibowitz and his co-authors didn’t foresee, when they began, was that their work would be engulfed by two intersecting forces: a significant rise in the number of teenagers openly identifying as transgender and seeking gender care, and a right-wing backlash in the United States against allowing them to medically transition, including state-by-state efforts to ban it.»
• 2022/03/17 [L..T] Trans Kids: The Misinformation Battle «U.S. politicians are trying to keep trans kids from getting the medical care they need to transition — and states are banning them from playing on the sports teams that match their gender. So we’re looking at the science here, and asking: are the medical treatments for trans kids dangerous? And do trans folks have an advantage when it comes to sports? We talk to Florence Ashley, Dr. Jack Turban, and Joanna Harper to find out.»
• 2022/02/02 [L..T] What happened after these unhoused people got monthly $500 checks? Two-thirds have homes «The group predicted that the money would help reduce stress and improve food security, and it did. But two-thirds of the people who were unhoused when the pilot began also now have permanent housing. (The number has grown since the program first ended, when only a third had moved into new housing.)» This was quite unexpected.
• 2021/07/28 [L..T] Why Is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Drug? «The Food and Drug Administration claims to follow the science. So why is it attacking ivermectin, a medication it certified in 1996?» Short Answer: It isn't, and this opinion-piece is stuffed full of misleading claims.
• 2021/07/02 [L..T] Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attacks me and Daily Kos. This is my (way too much fun) response «You may have seen my stories about Robert Kennedy Jr.'s lawsuit against Daily Kos. The first one is here, and the follow-up is here. His organization now fires back here. I had a good laugh reading that drivel, and now I'll share my reaction with you.»
• 2020/11/03 [L..T] Should We End Capitalism? (Douglas Murray & Bret Weinstein) “You have a society that generates a huge amount of wellbeing. That wellbeing is not well-distributed. I do not mean to say it should be evenly distributed... but it's not well-distributed. It's not efficiently distributed with respect to producing the kind of incentive that you would want -- you know, a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian ought to want opportunity better distributed because it results in more people discovering more things that serve us collectively. [...] The revolution that we are watching begin has misunderstood the difference between the noise in the way [...] they've misunderstood the basic fact that their lives will get much, much worse if the engine that creates the wellbeing that is unfairly distributed is turned off.–
• 2020/10/14 [L..T] The Curse of Monster Island: a four year experiment in unmoderated free speech “Gather round friends, I want to tell you a true horror story. I can’t promise a twist ending; the monster is still going to turn out to be humans with funny hats on. What I can promise is a direct connection to a recent high-profile act of violence, and an increased anxiety about unregulated internet speech.
• 2020/10/02 [L..T] Young trans men share brutal accounts of conversion therapy camps, where they were abused and forced to carry heavy rocks “...in June, J.K. Rowling liked a tweet from a Canadian anti-trans organisation called We The Females opposing a proposed law in Canada that would ban conversion therapy for LGBT+ youth, including trans kids. [..] Like other anti-trans organisations, We The Females propose that trans youth should be subjected to “gender-critical therapy”, to deter or prevent them from transitioning. Gender-critical feminists often claim that affirming therapists railroad youth. ”
• 2020/10/01 [L..T] The data scientist exposing US white supremacists: 'This is how you fight Nazis' “After surviving far right violence in Charlottesville, Emily Gorcenski has tracked the Proud Boys and other extremist groups.”
• 2020/09/28 [L..T] How A Conservative 6-3 Majority Would Reshape The Supreme Court «...Supreme Court experts [..] stress that we’re likely to see the legal conservative movement seize this moment, and as such, we should brace for a wave of rulings that move the law fundamentally to the right – on everything from hot-button cultural issues like gun rights and abortion to more legalistic, but nevertheless important, topics like the power of the executive branch.»
• 2020/09/26 [L..T] 'Greatest threat we’ve faced so far': Oregon declares state of emergency ahead of Proud Boys rally “The governor of Oregon has declared a state of emergency ahead of far-right demonstrations in Portland, where groups including the Proud Boys are expected to hold a rally following months of protests against police brutality and federal intervention.”
• 2020/09/23 [L..T] The Election That Could Break America “If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?”
• 2020/09/23 [L..T] Republicans will replace RBG but Democrats hold the trump cards – no, really “Progressives should not worry about what will happen if they mimic McConnell’s constitutional hardball. Their representatives need only act with a little less restraint”
• 2020/09/23 [L..T] Surreal scenes from SCOTUS as Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives for the last time “Thousands gathered outside the Supreme Court as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned for her last visit on Wednesday, including more than 100 of her former clerks.”... further results