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- 2020/09/20 [L..T] Pelosi won't rule out using impeachment as option to stop Trump Supreme Court pick “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday would not rule out impeachment as an option to stop President Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court pick from being confirmed to the bench, saying Democrats will "use every arrow in our quiver” to block the eventual nominee.”
- 2020/09/19 [L..T] Everything at stake in the upcoming Supreme Court battle “There are significant political and logistical hurdles that McConnell must clear to confirm Trump's nominee with just 45 days left until the election. But there’s little Democrats can do to halt the process if Republicans, who hold a majority in the Senate, remain united. ”
- 2020/09/19 [L..T] Obama calls for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor to be appointed by the election winner Barack Obama: “A basic principle of the law – and of everyday fairness – is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what's convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle.”
- 2020/09/19 [L..T] Trump and GOP rush on replacing RBG out of weakness and fear “To Republicans, the rush to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a simple proposition: If they don’t replace her right now with a conservative jurist, they’ll lose their chance to replace her. [..] In other words, they think they’re going to lose in November.”
- 2020/09/19 [L..T] Showing they want Democrats to fight GOP efforts to replace Ginsburg, donors inundate ActBlue “As the political reality of Ginsburg’s passing sank in, the ticker that keeps track of donations soared on ActBlue, the non-profit operation that provides a tool for left-leaning activists to raise money for political candidates and issues. About $100,000 in donations came each minute.”
- 2020/09/19 [L..T] In Memory of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) “Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court justice who first rose to national prominence as an ACLU lawyer fighting for equal rights for women, has died at 87 years old.”
- 2020/09/18 [L..T] White House announces Trump will nominate a new justice, McConnell announces there will be a vote “...sources inside the White House have already made it clear that Trump intends to nominate a replacement "in the coming days." It can be expected that nominee will come from the list of potential justices Trump published just last week, but considering that it is Donald Trump, anything is possible.
- 2020/09/18 [L..T] Murkowski: 'Fair is fair,' no Supreme Court confirmation before the inauguration. Who's joining her? “Remarkably, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, just told Alaska Public Media on Friday afternoon that she would not confirm a new Supreme Court justice before next year's inauguration. "Fair is fair," she said speaking hypothetically before the announcement of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing.”
- 2020/09/18 [L..T] What Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Death Means for America “A furious battle over a Supreme Court vacancy is arguably the last thing the United States needs right now. [..] The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg today represents a devastating loss for feminists who held up the 87-year-old as an icon of women’s rights, and as a bulwark protecting abortion rights and a wide range of other progressive ideals on a conservative Supreme Court.”
- 2020/09/18 [L..T] Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87 “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas.”
- 2020/07/27 [L..T] Just an ordinary TERF talking about biology Myers dissects some bizarre arguments from @lissyboops, who is apparently of the TERF persuasion.
- 2020/07/16 [L..T] Fox News pushed coronavirus misinformation 253 times in just five days “Fox News repeated coronavirus misinformation 253 times in its weekday coverage from July 6 through 10, including claims that undermined scientific research about the pandemic, eroded trust in public health experts and policy recommendations, called for reopening schools and businesses without regard to public health precautions, and politicized the country’s response to the virus.”
- 2020/07/10 [L..T] Cultivating a British flavor of narrow-mindedness "I saw the same thing in US skeptics, of course. But there was something fundamental going on that is also reflected in the British school of evolutionary biology, represented by Maynard Smith and Dawkins, that totally embraced reductive explanations and adaptationism, vs. the American subset led by Lewontin and Gould, who fiercely opposed eugenics and detested the arrogance of thinking biology could be reduced to a catalog of alleles." .. "Then there's the outcome of all this activity by bigots claiming the mantle of science – some people actually believed."
- 2020/06/17 [L..T] Fox News Argues Viewers Don't Assume Tucker Carlson Reports Facts Fox News argues in court that Tucker Carlson's audience knows that things which Carlson asserts, no matter how definitively stated as fact, may in fact have been entirely made up by Carlson on the spot and could be completely false, and that Carlson's employer will not only take no action against him for doing so but will in fact defend him.
- 2020/06/10 [L..T] J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues "For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t."
- 2020/02/18 [L..T] Richard Dawkins Claims Eugenics Works. He's Wrong. “Last week, Britain discovered that they had a eugenicist advising the prime minister, and that caused a polite bit of upset for almost everyone&rdquo Among the people who were ok with it was Richard Dawkins, who argued that eugenics may be morally wrong but it nonetheless works and these are just the facts.
- 2019/12/20 [L..T] JK Rowling's Transphobia Wasn't Hard to Find, She Wrote a Book About It "It's not just her blatant transphobia on Twitter. As the trans community has been saying for years, Rowling's transphobia is obvious in her writing, too."
- 2019/12/18 [L..T] Judge rules against researcher who lost job over transgender tweets Maya Forstater, a tax expert who lost her contract at the Centre for Global Development after tweeting that transgender women cannot change their biological sex, has lost her tribunal case.
- 2019/11/15 [L..T] Researcher defends tweets on trans rights at employment tribunal “Forstater tweeted that "men cannot change into women". She has argued that her "gender critical" beliefs should be protected under the 2010 Equality Act, and she has funded her legal challenge through the CrowdJustice website.” ...“She was accused of using "offensive and exclusionary" language in tweets opposing government proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act to allow people to self-identify as the opposite sex.“
- 2019/11/14 [L..T] Multnomah County Seeing Spike In People Experiencing Chronic Homelessness “[Marc Jolin, the director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services], said the office already knows what the solution is. "The fact that we don’t have supporting housing is why we’re seeing a persistent increase in the chronically homeless over time," he said.”
- 2019/11/03 [L..T] Rabidly pro-Trump fake news site Epoch Times may be engaging in astroturfing “on Thursday, religious right activist Jim Garlow took to Facebook to confirm what a lot of people suspected – the most rabid fundies believe rolling back abortion and marriage equality are so important that they must go all-in for Trump. [..] Garlow took part in a gathering of Trumpvangelicals at the White House on Tuesday, and included a link to coverage of that gathering from an outfit known as "The BL". [...] a search turned up a Snopes investigation from October that revealed some too-close-for-comfort ties between BL and Epoch Times.”
- 2019/10/29 [L..T] [Serious Discussion] Attracting a higher homeless population with Durham's Affordable Housing Plan? “With a proposed $10,455,838 (pg. 4 in the referendum) to be spent on homeless programs over the next 5 years, how do we protect Durham from attracting an even greater number of homeless people?”
- 2019/10/29 [L..T] The Long Shadow of the 'Welfare Queen' “When Ronald Reagan and his advisors wanted to undermine the very institution of social programs, he turned to a news story out of Chicago – the tale of one Linda Taylor, who'd bilked the government benefits system out of so much money she was dubbed the "welfare queen."”
- 2019/10/28 [L..T] Facebook allows prominent right-wing website to break the rules “The Daily Wire, the right-wing website founded by pundit Ben Shapiro, is a cesspool of misogyny, bigotry, and misinformation. Its toxic content is also fantastically successful on Facebook, with each story reaching more people than any other major media outlet. A Popular Information investigation reveals some of this success is attributable to a clandestine network of 14 large Facebook pages that purport to be independent but exclusively promote content from The Daily Wire in a coordinated fashion.”
- 2019/10/28 [L..T] Protests Continue Against Neo-Confederates in North Carolina “Anti-racists continue to mobilize in North Carolina against neo-Confederate and white nationalist groups, with this weekend seeing two more arrests on the anti-racist side.”
- 2019/10/28 [L..T] James Patrick Shillinglaw, Identity Evropa/American Identity Movement, Jamestown, North Carolina “Asheville Anti-Racism exposed James Patrick Shillinglaw, of Jamestown, North Carolina, as a member of white nationalist group Identity Evropa, recently renamed the American Identity Movement.”
- 2019/10/28 [L..T] Jeremy Bertino, Proud Boy in Charlotte, North Carolina “Jeremy Bertino, of Locust, North Carolina, was exposed as a Proud Boy this week after rallying in Pittsboro, North Carolina.”
- 2019/10/28 [L..T] Victory over the worst gerrymander in modern history: Court blocks North Carolina GOP's House map “On Monday, a bipartisan panel of state court judges delivered a monumental victory against the worst gerrymander in modern history when it blocked North Carolina from using its Republican-drawn congressional map in the 2020 elections, clearing the way for a fairer replacement that could see Democrats pick up three or more seats.”
- 2019/10/21 [L..T] Statement on GitLab "The MoodleNet team use products and services from GitLab Inc. to develop the MoodleNet code base. We were therefore disappointed to learn of a recent decision by GitLab Inc. to change their policies around who they will and will not do business with."
- 2019/10/20 [L..T] Amazon is shipping expired food, from baby formula to old beef jerky, scaring consumers and putting big brands at risk “...items are arriving spoiled and well past their sell-by date, Amazon customers say. Interviews with brands, consumers, third-party sellers and consultants all point to loopholes in Amazon’s technology and logistics system that allow for expired items to proliferate with little to no accountability.”
- 2019/10/17 [L..T] Inside TurboTax's 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free “Using lobbying, the revolving door and "dark pattern" customer tricks, Intuit fended off the government's attempts to make tax filing free and easy, and created its multi-billion-dollar franchise.”
- 2019/09/30 [L..T] Richard Dawkins Loves Evangelicals if They Hate Social Justice Richard Dawkins is uncompromising in his opposition to religion – except when it happens to oppose something that he thinks is worse, like social justice.
- 2019/09/12 [L..T] Why the neurodiversity movement has become harmful The movement has good intentions, but it favours the high-functioning and overlooks those who struggle with severe autism.
- 2019/08/05 [L..T] Will Durham’s business community support the city’s $95M affordable housing bond? ““A generation of opportunity” could be lost if voters don’t approve Durham’s $95 million affordable-housing bond this fall, [local businessman Steve Toler] said Monday.”
- 2019/06/24 [L..T] Abortion & Ben Shapiro “To DESTROY Ben Shapiro, you must first BECOME Ben Shapiro”
- 2019/04/22 [L..T] Here's How TurboTax Just Tricked You Into Paying to File Your Taxes "Did you know that if you make less than $66,000 a year, you can prepare and file your taxes for free? No? That’s no accident. Companies that make tax preparation software, like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, would rather you didn’t know."
- 2019/02/26 [L..T] What You Need to Know About the Largest Proposed Housing Bond Referendum in North Carolina History "In [Mayor Steve Schewel's] view, the city's current funding for affordable housing isn’t enough to keep downtown from becoming an expensive enclave for white people. If residents are serious about preventing displacement, they need to put their money where their mouths are."
- 2019/01/03 [L..T] Transphobia in the UK a mostly-audio (spoken word) video (35:05) giving a fairly detailed layout of transnegation arguments in the UK
- 2018/11/05 [L..T] Why is British media so transphobic? "The answer lies in part to the coalescence of a certain set of ideas in a very specific circle of voices in the early 21st century – voices that later went on to hold high profile positions in much of the U.K.'s print and broadcast media."
- 2018/08/30 [L..T] Offering a more progressive definition of freedom Pete Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He is a progressive Democrat, Rhodes scholar, served a tour of duty in Afghanistan during his time as mayor, and is openly gay. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Buttigieg talked about the need for progressives to recast concepts that political conservatives have traditionally “owned” – like freedom, family, and patriotism – in more progressive terms.
- 2018/08/30 [L..T] Beaten for Autism? The person filmed by KGW News on June 4 being struck on the head 16 times by a Marion County sheriff deputy while pinned down by three additional officers says the incident may be partly understood as the response of uninformed individuals to people they don’t understand.
- 2018/08/16 [L..T] Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports In on-line forums, parents have been reporting that their children are experiencing what is described here as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion.
- 2018/08/09 [L..T] Protester Maimed by Portland Police: ‘I Thought I Was Going to Die’ Anthony, who asked to be identified only by his first name, was injured last weekend when cops in riot gear unleashed flashbangs, pepper spray, rubber bullets and other less-lethal weapons as local protesters demonstrated against far-right groups massed downtown.
- 2018/08/07 [L..T] Protesters clash with guards at Portland City Hall; 2 arrested Protesters demanding reforms in police use of crowd control clashed with security officers at Portland City Hall after Mayor Ted Wheeler shut down a Wednesday morning City Council meeting.
- 2018/08/06 [L..T] Portland Police Chief: Allegations Of Protest Favoritism 'Ridiculous' "Everything that was anticipated ... with the very clear intent of what people wanted to do, with the level of confrontation and violence that they were expecting to bring, that did not occur. The officers were there and they prevented all of that from happening."
- 2018/08/04 [L..T] IGD Portland: Mass Community Mobilization Against Far-Right Live blog from antifascist mobilization in Portland, Oregon.
- 2018/08/04 [L..T] Portland's Patriot Prayer Rally Could Be Most Violent Since Charlottesville, Activists Say Armed, proto-fascist gangs are set to rally in Portland, Oregon, this weekend, stirring fears that the city could witness the kind of political violence not seen since the deadly white supremacist “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia, nearly a year ago.
- 2018/07/17 [L..T] Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States “The nation's top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them.”
- 2018/07/06 [L..T] Director’s Desk: Portland has criminalized poverty and mental illness “Now we know: More than half of the people arrested in Portland last year were homeless. [...] The ACLU of Oregon issued a report last year documenting 224 laws around the state that target people who are homeless. It identified laws that target people for sleeping in public places, for begging for money and for loitering. In other words, ACLU of Oregon researchers identified laws that matter only if you are homeless.”
- 2018/07/04 [L..T] Sheriff's office called on Oregon state legislator for representing constituents while black “"Casing" the neighborhood by knocking on doors and having extended conversations with the homeowners, carrying only a phone, a pen, and some leaflets. Bynum appears to have, sadly, taken it in stride. "It was just bizarre," she told an Oregonian reporter. "It boils down to people not knowing their neighbors and people having a sense of fear in their neighborhoods, which is kind of my job to help eradicate. But at the end of the day, it's important for people to feel like they can talk to each other to help minimize misunderstandings." Indeed. Had the woman who called the cops – it was a woman – simply engaged with Bynum, problem solved.”
- 2018/07/01 [L..T] When Children Say They’re Trans «Hormones? Surgery? The choices are fraught – and there are no easy answers.» ...except puberty blockers are generally a good idea. This article emphasizes the unknowns and the risks, and mistakenly implies they're not a good general solution.
- 2018/07/01 [L..T] Right-Wing Portland Rally Declared Riot Amid Clashes With Antifa Protesters A rally in Oregon sponsored by the right-wing group Patriot Prayer turned violent on Saturday as demonstrators clashed with anti-fascist protesters, who showed up in opposition to the event.
- 2018/06/30 [L..T] Portland Police Declare a Riot After Right-Wing Marchers Begin Beating Antifascists with Flag Poles “For the first time in more than a year of street brawling, Portland police today deemed a march by Proud Boys and other right-wing protesters too violent to continue.”
- 2018/06/27 [L..T] Portland Police Saw Right-Wing Protesters as "Much More Mainstream" Than Leftist Ones “Newly released draft reports from a city review of how Portland police handled dueling demonstrations last summer reveal cops admitting what activists have long suspected: They saw right-wing protesters as less of a threat than leftist ones.”
- 2018/06/22 [L..T] Contra the Fearmongering Atlantic Story, Trans-Affirming Care Is Great for Kids «Given all this hand-wringing over the children, it feels necessary to say, unambiguously, that such fears are overblown and can lead parents astray, guiding them toward decisions that may permanently harm their kids and endanger their relationship with them for the rest of their lives. Contrary to the fears of Singal and his ilk, current research supports a flexible approach that does not push children toward any particular outcome, and best practices put the needs of seriously distressed children first.»
- 2018/06/22 [L..T] Woman who set self on fire in Portland park remembered as 'brilliant and tortured' artist “The 31-year-old woman walked on crutches into a downtown Portland park. Minutes later, she set herself on fire. Bystanders put out the fire that consumed Chloe Sagal, but she died from her injuries. It was an act, witnesses and friends say, that was a political protest as well as a suicide.”
- 2018/06/06 [L..T] Portland Police Chief Danielle Outlaw on protests, trust and learning her new city "The mix-up proved to be a quick, hard lesson for Outlaw on Portland's unusual commission form of government. Mayor Ted Wheeler, who also serves as police commissioner, doesn’t have the final say on decisions like this. He must wade through established city procedures and gain majority support on the City Council."
- 2018/03/28 [L..T] Is J.K. Rowling Transphobic? A Trans Woman Investigates "Ultimately, the answer is yes, she is transphobic, at least in the ways that so many average cisgender people can be. However, because she’s J.K. Rowling, creator of the best-selling book series of all time and an idol to so many LGBTQ+ children and now adults, she gets called out for it. I think it's fair that she receives criticism from trans people, especially given her advocacy on behalf of queer people in general, but also because she has a huge platform. Many people look up to her for creating a singular piece of popular culture that holds deep meaning for fans from different walks of life, and she has a responsibility to handle that platform wisely."
- 2018/03/05 [L..T] Sex Change: Physically Impossible, Psychosocially Unhelpful, and Philosophically Misguided "Modern medicine can’t reassign sex physically, and attempting to do so doesn’t produce good outcomes psychosocially. Here is the evidence." Article presents evidence to the contrary, ignores it, and repeatedly concludes that selected ideologues are prima facie correct.
- 2018/02/15 [L..T] Transgender Women Aren't "Women" "I wanted to talk about the fact that I personally find it kind of offensive when transgender people don't own the fact that they're trans." Video is Tweeted, and much debate ensues.
- 2018/01/22 [L..T] Vast majority of new wealth last year went to top 1% “A new billionaire is created every other day. The three richest Americans have the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the U.S. population. And 82% of the global wealth generated last year went to just 1% of the world's population.”
- 2018/01/15 [L..T] Arsonist TERF thinks trans women are immoral & should be beaten "I’m quite prepared to threaten violence because it seems to me that politically what they’re seeking to do is piss on all women. That’s what they’re doing for their personal gratification. There aren’t many of them, but what really offends me is the extent to which academia and political parties have listened to them in a way that they’re not listening to us as women." – Linda Bellos
- 2017/09/04 [L..T] The Purge Of Transgender People From American Life Has Begun “Five members of Trump's evangelical executive advisory board, including the founder of the Family Research Council James Dobson, signed the Nashville Statement. The Nashville statement dictated that transgender people should not be tolerated in society, and that anyone who tolerates them is not a Christian.”
- 2017/09/01 [L..T] How Russian & Alt-Right Twitter Accounts Worked Together to Skew the Narrative About Berkeley “The narrative surrounding last weekend’s protests in Berkeley took shape on social media and was picked up, at least in part, by mainstream news outlets. The result was a skewed presentation of events that was almost entirely devoid of the context in which they took place. Even more troubling: that narrative was influenced by pro-Russian social media networks, including state-sponsored propaganda outlets, botnets, cyborgs, and individual users.”
- 2017/09/01 [L..T] The Idiot Boys of Antifa and the Alt-Right “A lot of what’s happened over the last 10,000 years can be attributed to hormonally charged young men pulling stupid crap.”
- 2017/08/31 [L..T] Preacher Aligned with Portland-Area Far-Right Group Promises “Bloodshed” at Future Rallies “Portland resident and far-right preacher Allen Pucket has penned an inflammatory Facebook post promising violence at future protests, possibly including the upcoming "Freedom March" and counter-protests slated to envelop downtown Portland on Sept. 10..”
- 2017/08/31 [L..T] The Right Wing 'God Will Wipe Them Out': White Supremacist Preacher Promises 'Bloodshed' at Future Rallies “In a video, Pucket also said that “God’s going to wipe them out one day anyway,” referring to anti-racist and anti-fascist counter-protesters who have marched against white supremacist groups in recent months. He also professed a belief that those who organize such rallies shouldn’t cancel them for fear of violent retaliation, but should be "patriots" willing to "fight" in the streets for their white supremacist beliefs.”
- 2017/08/19 [L..T] The truth has got its boots on: what the evidence says about Mr. Damore’s Google memo a detailed rebuttal of the supposedly-scientific arguments supporting Damore's arguments; includes links to many other rebuttals and related resources
- 2017/08/13 [L..T] Damore's Claim There Are Population-Level Differences Between the Genders Is Not The Central Problem With His Manifesto. “In response to the Damore manifesto, "Heterodox Academy", a group that includes multiple political points of view, posted that the scientific evidence is strong that there are population-level differences between the genders. However, the bare assertion that there are population-level differences between the genders is not the central problem with Damore's manifesto.”
- 2017/08/11 [L..T] We've studied gender and STEM for 25 years. The science doesn't support the Google memo. “These are some issues that males simply do not have to face. The "anxiety gap" exists for a reason, and it is not about biology.”
- 2017/08/11 [L..T] From a logical point of view ... “To translate this into practical language, if the Google Manifesto was correct, then you would expect to see that Google was full of mediocre female employees, who had been hired by a process biased in their favour despite being inadequate to the task. Whatever the author of the manifesto thinks, Google does not believe this to be the case and as far as I can tell from industry blogs, it isn’t – female employees in tech are generally very good. This would, of course, be consistent with the hypothesis that the current selection process is biased against them.”
- 2017/08/10 [L..T] Google town hall meeting canceled after days of online harassment “The cancellation of the town hall meeting caps off nearly a week of escalating anxiety around the targeted harassment of various Google employees. Very shortly after Motherboard first reported the existence of a controversial memo circulating inside Google, the memo's author was identified as James Damore. (Damore was fired on Monday). Since then, various corners of the internet have targeted Googlers who have been openly critical of the memo.”
- 2017/08/10 [L..T] James Damore's shoddy defense “I keep getting told that James Damore loves diversity. It’s the first thing he says in his manifesto. [...] Simply put, Damore's conclusions are not backed up by the scientific consensus.”
- 2017/08/09 [L..T] Sorry, Google memo man: women were in tech long before you “James Damore's controversial manifesto says women are genetically unsuited to tech roles. Doesn't he know they were the original computer programmers?”
- 2017/08/08 [L..T] No, the Google manifesto isn't sexist or anti-diversity. It's science “Despite how it's been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.”
- 2017/08/08 [L..T] Conservatives Outraged After Google Fires Engineer Whose 'Manifestbro' Says Women Biologically Less Suited for Leadership “Conservatives, especially those who seemingly don't understand the First Amendment or concepts of free speech, are outraged.”
- 2017/08/08 [L..T] The Guy Who Wrote the 'Google Memo' Just Might Sue “The former Google employee who was fired after posting a missive criticizing the company's diversity efforts calls his dismissal illegal and says he is "exploring all possible legal remedies."”
- 2017/08/08 [L..T] The free speech absolutists have a martyr in James Damore “James Damore, the author of that dumbass Google manifesto, has been fired. Now he wants to sue Google, and all the usual suspects are howling about “Free Speech!” [but] It's absurd. This really isn’t a free speech issue.”
- 2017/08/06 [L..T] What differentiates a good engineer from a clueless ignoramus? “Have you read the manifesto published internally at Google that has thrown many people into a tizzy? It’s amazingly stupid. Yet another blinkered male engineer babbling about his biases as if they are factual.”
- 2017/08/05 [L..T] So, about this Googler’s manifesto. “You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it.”
- 2017/08/05 [L..T] Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google (Updated) Article reports the full text of the memo, minus some graphics and links. “I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.”
- 2017/08/02 [L..T] Allen Pucket: A Case Study In Creeping Fascism As Facilitated By Joey Gibson In this article, we will highlight a member of the far-right that moved over to explicit white supremacy: self-described white nationalist, Allen Wesley Pucket.
- 2017/07/17 [L..T] Transgender People and “Biological Sex” Myths “...sometimes, efforts to undermine or exclude trans women rely on a somewhat different tactic which takes the following form: A case will be made that sex is distinct from gender – the former being purely biological in nature, the latter being entirely social. Upon making this claim, it will then be argued that, while trans women may indeed be women (because “woman” is a gender category), we nevertheless remain “biologically male” (a sex category).”
- 2017/06/27 [L..T] Debunking “Trans Women Are Not Women” Arguments “...since these trans-women-are-not-women claims recur on a regular basis (and are often forwarded by people who self-identify as feminists), I thought that it would be worthwhile to compile all my relevant counterarguments in one essay.”
- 2017/04/17 [L..T] VIDEO: Pro-Trump Oregon Street Preacher Kicks Guy at Crazy Berkeley Rally “The man wearing a "JESUS WILL JUDGE YOU" sweatshirt while kicking a person on the ground – standing next to a noted white supremacist sucker punching a woman in the face – is antagonistic Oregon street preacher Allen Wesley Pucket. He traveled with his associates down to Berkeley, California, on Saturday for a pro-Donald Trump "Patriot Day" [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pg5bnm/violent-protests-turned-berkeley-into-a-battleground rally that turned violent
- 2017/04/06 [L..T] Breitbart publishes multiple anti-Kushner stories in the wake of Steve Bannon's NSC ouster As Media Matters notes, Breitbart published four negative stories about Kushner on the same day that news broke that Bannon was out at the NSC.
- 2017/04/05 [L..T] Bannon threatened to quit if removed from National Security Council role: report Chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon was unhappy with the decision to remove him from his role on the National Security Council and threatened to quit, according to a new report.
- 2017/04/05 [L..T] Kushner Hires Hollywood PR Exec To Help Run White House Campaign To Privatize Government Functions The Office of American Innovation is intended to be non-partisan and is working with several industry leaders such as Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Bill Gates to make government more efficient and forward-looking. Trump won the presidency in part because he promised to bring an entrepreneurial style to the White House.
- 2017/04/04 [L..T] Are Butches Disappearing? (video) "I've had enough of anti-trans lesbians attacking me, or trying to "save" me, which is incredibly condescending and erases the years of research and soul-searching (I actually prefer soul-creation) I have done. So I wanted to put all my thoughts down into a (big) “bite sized” chunk here to direct them to when they start to vomit a word salad at me."
- 2017/03/30 [L..T] I worked for Jared Kushner. He’s the wrong businessman to reinvent government. That same obsession with the tech world permeates Kushner's new project. Cost-cutting is important in situations where there is excess, but it is not what catalyzes evolution; if the point here is to make government more effective, not just more efficient, cuts alone won’t do it.
- 2017/03/27 [L..T] The Civil War is Here “The left doesn’t want to secede. It wants to rule.”
- 2017/03/06 [L..T] Steve Bannon in 2013: Joseph McCarthy was right in crusade against Communist infiltration Donald Trump's chief White House strategist Steve Bannon said in 2013 that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was right in his 1950s campaign claiming widespread Communist infiltration into the United States government.
- 2017/03/04 [L..T] 'Gun for hire': how Jeff Sessions used his prosecuting power to target Democrats As the justice department’s man in Alabama, Trump's attorney general indicted political opponents in remarkably thin cases, court filings show.
- 2017/02/10 [L..T] Behind the Internet's Anti-Democracy Movement White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is reportedly a reader of neoreactionary political theory. A tour through the pro-authoritarian philosophy gaining visibility on the right.
- 2017/01/31 [L..T] Tumultuous Tillamook street preacher in Portland Airport brawl A former Tillamook street preacher is back making headlines, this time entrenched in the recent social unrest at Portland International Airport (PDX).
- 2016/12/09 [L..T] Trump's pick for White House counsel is wrong for the job "The White House counsel operates out of the public eye but has the president's ear. In the Trump administration, with the unprecedented multiplicity of conflict-of-interest challenges facing the businessman-president, the job will take on added importance. As a Democratic commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, I served five years alongside Donald F. McGahn, President-elect Donald Trump's choice for the post. My experience may be instructive – and disquieting."
- 2016/11/25 [L..T] Trump fills White House counsel and deputy national security posts "President-elect Donald Trump on Friday named a libertarian election lawyer as his White House counsel and a hard-line former Reagan administration official to a top post on his national security staff."
- 2016/10/01 [L..T] Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences «...this report shows that some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence. The report has a special focus on the higher rates of mental health problems among LGBT populations, and it questions the scientific basis of trends in the treatment of children who do not identify with their biological sex.» This report also appears to be the entire contents of issue #50, Fall 2016, a "special issue" of The New Atlantis, "A Journal of Technology and Society" which is published by the US conservatist advocacy group Ethics and Public Policy Center.
- 2016/09/11 [L..T] The TSA is a Waste of Money That Doesn't Save Lives and Might Actually Cost Them “As a test, Homeland Security officials tried to sneak guns and bombs through TSA checkpoints. They succeeded almost every time.”
- 2016/08/31 [L..T] Revealed: Conway, Bannon Members of Secretive Group "The two political operatives chosen earlier this month to lead Donald Trump's presidential campaign after two former managers departed have been members of the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP), Hatewatch has learned"
- 2016/07/01 [L..T] The Palestinian Incentive Program for Killing Jews Mahmoud Abbas may not be able to stop the knife attacks. But he shouldn't pay the killers' families.
- 2016/06/22 [L..T] The most overrated intellect in Washington "So Ryan's latest health care package is at war with itself. It rails against top-down decrees from Washington, all while imposing a structure on states that would effectively neuter their insurance laws. And it's only the latest in a comedy of errors that includes a proposal to phase out Medicare and an accidental effort to nationalize the means of production. Nor are these the only examples of Ryan's allergic response to math – we haven't even discussed the multi-trillion dollar "magic asterisk" Ryan relies upon to pay for his tax proposals."
- 2016/06/13 [L..T] Six questions we should ask after Orlando The questions:
- 1) Are there more home-grown terrorists than we realize?
- 2) Are lone wolves avoidable?
- 3) Why guns?
- 4) Who can buy a gun?
- 5) Why a gay nightclub?
- 6) Should we bar all Muslims?
- 2016/05/13 [L..T] Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution “...policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention.”
- 2016/03/01 [L..T] Gender Ideology Harms Children This is one of several credible-seeming pseudo-scientifi studies often cited by anti-LGBT activists, but its conclusions fly in the face of an overwhelming body of evidence.
- 2016/03/01 [L..T] Get Ready to Say President Trump Unless something changes dramatically between now and November, Donald Trump will be the next president.
- 2015/10/29 [L..T] GOP and the Rise of Anti-Knowledge "Ben Carson's rise to the top of the Republican presidential field shows that many Republicans, especially Christian fundamentalists, have decoupled from the real world – and are proud of it. The more that GOP candidates embrace "anti-knowledge" the more popular they become, as Mike Lofgren explains."
- 2015/09/10 [L..T] Message -- Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks “The terrorist threat that led to the declaration on September 14, 2001, of a national emergency continues. For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect after September 14, 2015, the national emergency with respect to the terrorist threat.”
- 2015/07/20 [L..T] ‘Stand-To:’ Holding The Line Against Christian Fascism "Yes, they are liars. They are lying little liars who tell wicked lies. How do you know that a forced-birth activist is lying? Simple: if they carry a sign or open their mouths, they are lying. They are never not lying. They only ever lie. Fibbing and fraud are their primary weapons."
- 2015/06/22 [L..T] Gaslighting Is a Common Victim-Blaming Abuse Tactic – Here Are 4 Ways to Recognize It in Your Life “If something happened that upset me, hurt me, or angered me, my reaction was often met with some variation of "That didn't happen! I never said that! You're overreacting!"”
- 2015/05/14 [L..T] The Story of How Bernie Sanders Became Famous Will Make You Love Him Even More Now, as his campaign for president ramps up, he's already making a splash. He's in Iowa talking about the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. He's on Sunday morning talk shows talking about free college and health care. He is waging a rhetorical war against "the billionaire class," whom he believes Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton will side with at the expense of the middle class.
- 2015/04/13 [L..T] I guess I'm an MRA now First let me point out that the little tweet I chirped out was because the TERFs were flocking to me — I hadn’t barged into one of their conversations, or invited them to explain to me what makes for a real woman, but there they were, in my space. So she doesn’t get to complain about me violating boundaries.
- 2015/04/12 [L..T] Hillary Clinton: I'm running for president "Hillary Clinton announced on Sunday that she was running for president of the United States, promising to be a champion of middle-class Americans if she made it to the White House as the country’s first female commander in chief."
- 2015/04/07 [L..T] Rand Paul declares presidential bid "It’s official: "Libertarian Conservative" Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) says he'll be running for president of the United States in 2016. [..] Paul, 52, announced Tuesday morning that he'll indeed be pursuing the Republican Party's nomination for president ahead of next year’s election.
- 2015/04/03 [L..T] Fatwah envy, again "Both of these people are committing a kind of rhetorical extortion, using the threat of murder elsewhere as a club to silence those who strive for respect and dignity in their lives. And in that sense both Ali and Cotton are happily exploiting atrocities to justify continued injustices."
- 2015/03/23 [L..T] Students upset they had to attend Ted Cruz's Liberty University event or face a fine "While Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) received a very warm welcome from most of the 10,000 Liberty University students present at his presidential campaign kickoff, not all were happy that they had to attend the event or face a fine."
- 2015/02/24 [L..T] Arkansas, Kentucky See Most Improvement in Uninsured Rates "Of the 11 states with the greatest reductions, 10 expanded Medicaid and established a state-based marketplace exchange or state-federal partnership. Montana, which is tied for 10th, is the only exception."
- 2015/02/24 [L..T] A letter from the property owner "As a queer radical disabled trans* person who has a history of housing insecurity, it is incredibly important to me that every person coming into contact with Trans* Housing Atlanta Program is treated with utmost respect; especially in regards to consent and accountability practices, autonomy and freedom from coercion, and having their privacy maintained and respected. Recently I have discovered that Trans* Housing Atlanta Program has unequivocally failed our clients around these issues and overall in our mission to provide safe housing and supportive services to the transgender and gender non-conforming community of Georgia. I am sorry."
- 2015/02/22 [L..T] Scientist Took Money From The Fossil Fuel Industry "One of the world's most prominent climate researchers publishing scientific papers that doubt humanity's role in climate change has received at least $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry to fund his research and salary, according to documents revealed this weekend."
- 2015/02/22 [L..T] Willie Soon is going down "Soon is a dishonest hack, one of the climate change deniers who exploited his prestigiously titled position as a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (Oooh! Sciencey!) to claim authority in attacks on more credible climate scientists, and he’s been very popular on the denialist side of things. [..] Now his own boss is admitting that he violated disclosure principles by failing to reveal his industry connections."
- 2015/02/18 [L..T] Sex redefined "These discoveries do not sit well in a world in which sex is still defined in binary terms. Few legal systems allow for any ambiguity in biological sex, and a person's legal rights and social status can be heavily influenced by whether their birth certificate says male or female."
- 2015/02/18 [L..T] “The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.” "...my only quibble would be with that “now”. You’d have to define "now" as a window of time that encompasses the entirety of my training and work in developmental biology, and I’m getting to be kind of an old guy. Differences in sex development (DSDs) are common knowledge, and rather routine – and coincidentally, I’m giving an exam on sex chromosome anomalies today."
- 2015/02/06 [L..T] Ukraine’s currency just collapsed 50 percent in two days "Ukraine, to use a technical term, is broke. That's what you call a country whose currency has lost half its value in just two days."
- 2015/02/05 [L..T] 3 Male Lawmakers Propose Eliminating Obamacare's Maternity Coverage "In their quest to repeal and replace Obamacare, three Republican lawmakers have offered an alternative proposal to the health reform law that would roll back some of its major consumer protections, including maternity care for pregnant women."
- 2015/02/05 [L..T] Russian Patriarch Again Supports Blasphemy Laws "Patriarch Kirill, the supreme leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, is unsurprisingly criticizing the publishing of cartoons that are viewed as blasphemous by some Muslims. Kirill was the main force pushing for harsh anti-blasphemy laws in Russia, so this is expected."
- 2015/02/04 [L..T] The Town Where Everyone Got Free Money "Between 1974 and 1979, the Canadian government tested the idea of a basic income guarantee (BIG) across an entire town, giving people enough money to survive in a way that no other place in North America has before or since. For those four years – until the project was cancelled and its findings packed away – the town's poorest residents were given monthly checks that supplemented what modest earnings they had and rewarded them for working more. And for that time, it seemed that the effects of poverty began to melt away. Doctor and hospital visits declined, mental health appeared to improve, and more teenagers completed high school."
- 2015/02/04 [L..T] I Had an Ectopic Pregnancy, and Anti-Choice Laws Could Have Made My Experience Much Worse "I'm grateful that during this medical emergency, my doctors were allowed to follow only their best judgment about what care would keep me healthiest, according to the most current standards of their profession. Their only legal concern was my safety. The police had no part in our story. If you want to imagine me at this moment, picture me thumbing my nose at every meddling anti-choice medievalist who was prevented from making a terrible week even worse and threatening my health to boot."
- 2015/02/04 [L..T] Paul Ryan's First Tax Legislation Adds Nearly $100 Billion To Deficit "The first bills promoted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as the new chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee would add nearly $100 billion to the deficit over 10 years. [..] Ryan, a deficit hawk during his time as the chairman of the Budget Committee for the previous six years, made his fame proposing budgets that aimed to dramatically cut domestic spending and balance the budget within a decade."
- 2015/01/30 [L..T] Rush Limbaugh lays down the law for Republican candidates "Not long ago, Mitt Romney seemed to be indicating that he was thinking about running for President. Shortly after that, he indicated that he thought Anthropogenic Global Warming was for real and important. Then Rush said..."
- 2015/01/26 [L..T] Islamic Terrorism: The Taboo Topic “Every time Islamic terrorism is discussed, those who bring up the "Christian terrorism" of the Ku Klux Klan or anti-abortion violence simply block free speech, as if deliberately trying to scramble the main topic. They seem to be saying, "Whether the Islamic State is Islamic or not is irrelevant; there are Christian terrorists as well, so do not talk about Islamic terrorists."”
- 2015/01/26 [L..T] Climate change skeptic accused of violating disclosure rules "In a note at the end of the paper, all four authors claimed no conflicts of interest on the published study. But Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, an organization based in Virginia, said Soon's long track record of accepting energy-industry related grants indicates otherwise and might constitute a violation of Science Bulletin's disclosure policy. [..] In a letter to Science Bulletin, Davies points to the more than $1 million Soon has received from companies and interests supporting studies critical of climate change."
- 2015/01/26 [L..T] NY cops throw cold water on wild right-wing claims about 'Islamberg' terrorist training camp "It's kind of perplexing to us, all this recent media attention in regard to potential terrorist training camps and things that are going on there," said Delaware County Sheriff Craig Dumont. "We don't see it. We just don’t find any of that to be valid at this time." [..] Rumors about the Islamberg compound have been circulating for years but gained recent attention after the terror attacks in Paris."
- 2015/01/21 [L..T] Muslim Scholars Demand International Blasphemy Laws "A leading Islamic organisation has called on the United Nations to make "contempt of religions" illegal and urged the West to protect Muslim communities following the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo."
- 2015/01/20 [L..T] Charlie Hebdo launches app version featuring prophet Muhammed cover "A new app for French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has been released for iOS, Android and Windows devices, letting readers worldwide get hold of a copy without queueing at newsagents. [..] The app is illustrated with the current cover, a cartoon of the prophet Muhammed, in a change from the norm for Apple's notoriously censorious App Store which has previous banned satirical and controversial apps."
- 2015/01/19 [L..T] Anti-Muslim crimes soar in France in wake of Paris attacks "The National Observatory Against Islamophobia said 116 anti-Muslim incidents had been reported to authorities since the January 7-9 shooting spree by three French jihadists that killed 17."
- 2015/01/18 [L..T] WFAA: Anti-Muslim Protestors Rally Outside Peace Conference in Texas "I don't support their ideology. I don't support what they're doing," one protestor said about the conference – while those at the conference made clear they don't support Islamic extremists who shot and killed 12 people at the satiric publication Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
- 2015/01/17 [L..T] Charlie Hebdo's cover rejected by Muslim world "Many Muslims have expressed disgust at the deadly assault on the magazine's Paris office by Islamic extremists who killed 12 people. However many also remain deeply offended by the magazine's record of publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. Those passions were further inflamed this week when the magazine's first issue following the attack carried a cover cartoon depicting Muhammad holding a "Je Suis Charlie" sign."
- 2015/01/16 [L..T] Hundreds expected to protest Islamic meeting in Garland "We asked if he saw a distinction between families going in, and terrorists who committed the murderous attacks in Paris. "I see common ground," he replied."
- 2015/01/16 [L..T] Draft of new Thailand constitution offers protections for gay, transgender people Gay rights activists are welcoming a clause in a draft of Thailand’s new constitution that is aimed at protecting the rights of gay and transgender people.
- 2015/01/15 [L..T] The Criticism Of The New Charlie Hebdo Cover Explained "This week's front page is a lot less defiant, if it is defiant at all, when compared to the caricatures previously published by the satirical newspaper. So how can these reactions be explained? HuffPost asked religious anthropologist and psychoanalyst Malek Chebel, author of the book L'Inconscient De L'Islam (The Unconscious of Islam)."
- 2015/01/14 [L..T] Are All Terrorists Muslims? It's Not Even Close "Overwhelmingly, those who have committed terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe aren't Muslims."
- 2015/01/13 [L..T] Farage blames Paris attacks on immigrants, UK foreign policy "Farage sparked yet more outrage when he claimed European governments have some 'culpability' for the shooting at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. [..] He further blamed the EU’s open door immigration policy for 'much of what has happened.'"
- 2015/01/13 [L..T] France - Muslims Feel Backlash After Paris Terror As Pig Heads Thrown Into Mosques "Abdallah Zekri, head of the National Observatory Against Islamophobia, said that in a 48-hour period after the Wednesday massacre at Charlie Hebdo, 16 places of worship around France were attacked by firebombs, gunshots or pig heads]]."
- 2015/01/13 [L..T] Charlie Hebdo Cover Features Muhammad on Post-Attack Issue "Now the often-caustic publication, faced with the challenge of reconciling its new status as a cause célèbre with its reflex to mock, ridicule and offend, is putting a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad on the cover of what is likely to be their most-read issue ever."
- 2015/01/12 [L..T] Jeremy Scahill on Paris Attacks, the al-Qaeda Link & the Secret U.S. War in Yemen "We speak to the reporter who broke this story, The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill, about al-Awlaki’s background and the Paris shooters' claims of militant ties."
- 2015/01/10 [L..T] Muslims are terrorism victims, too "These terrorists (Taliban/al-Qaida/ISIS), so-called Muslims, have no religion. No religion in the world teaches you to kill innocent people, especially children and women. [...] These so-called Muslims are not only killing non-Muslims, they are also killing Muslims."
- 2015/01/08 [L..T] Just As The Islamic State (ISIL) Gets Exposed As A Fake US Enemy, A "Wag the Dog" Terrorist Attack in Paris? "Notice how every time the US government is about to be fully exposed in another boldface lie, this one being that ISIL is our sworn enemy, another wag the dog "terrorist" incident suddenly comes along to divert world attention. This time it was three heavily armed and trained gunmen in Paris attacking the office of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, tragically killing twelve people. Of course like the US, France is notorious for arming and funding al Qaeda terrorists."
- 2015/01/08 [L..T] Charlie Hebdo and Tsarnaev's Trial: Cui bono? Conspiracy theorist Paul Craig Roberts argues that the CH massacre was a false flag: "France is suffering from the Washington-imposed sanctions against Russia. Shipyards are impacted from being unable to deliver Russian orders due to France’s vassalage status to Washington, and other aspects of the French economy are being adversely impacted by sanctions that Washington forced its NATO puppet states to apply to Russia."
- 2015/01/08 [L..T] How Muslim Scholars View Paris Attack (In-depth) "Muslim scholars responded quickly to the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which killed 12 and injured 10. Slamming the incident as un-Islamic, scholars express anger towards the perpetrators who "betrayed and tainted" Islam rather than defended it."
- 2015/01/07 [L..T] Special to The Los Angeles Times: Political Cartooning is Almost Worth Dying For "Political cartooning in the United States gets no respect. I was thinking about that this morning when I heard NPR's Eleanor Beardsley call Charlie Hebdo "gross" and "in poor taste." (I should certainly hope so! If it’s in good taste, it ain't funny.) It was a hell of a thing to say, not to mention not true, while the bodies of dead journalists were still warm. But these were cartoonists, and therefore unworthy of the same level of decorum that a similar event at, say, The Onion – which mainly runs words – would merit."
- 2015/01/07 [L..T] Sharpening Contradictions: Why al-Qaeda attacked Satirists in Paris "The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two policemen, by terrorists in Paris was in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public."
- 2014/12/22 [L..T] The Scientology Christmas Catalog Is Totally Insane "Thankfully, the Church of Scientology has compiled this handy catalog of L. Ron-approved holiday merchandise." -- including many items that cost more that most people make in a month while still being basically worthless.
- 2014/12/16 [L..T] Gov. Pat McCrory, Rep. Mark Sanford get payouts from broker Soon after taking office, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina accepted six-figure stock payouts from an online mortgage broker accused by regulators of deceiving its customers.
- 2014/12/14 [L..T] Inside The Koch-Backed History Lessons North Carolina Wants To Teach High School Students Public high school students in North Carolina will be taught from a lesson plans and worksheets prepared by an organization closely tied to the billionaire Koch brothers, if the state's Department of Public Instruction gets its way."
- 2014/11/25 [L..T] Bee deaths and neonics: Inside story of Colony Collapse Disorder, Harvard’s Chensheng Lu’s crusade Although public opinion has coalesced around the belief that the bee death mystery is settled, the vast majority of scientists who study bees for a living disagree – vehemently.
- 2014/11/21 [L..T] House panel finds no intelligence failure in Benghazi attacks "An investigation by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee has concluded that the CIA and U.S. military responded appropriately to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, dismissing allegations that the Obama administration blocked rescue attempts during the assault or sought to mislead the public afterward."
- 2014/11/21 [L..T] House intel panel debunks many Benghazi theories Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.
- 2014/10/10 [L..T] Wall Street Journal Offers a Skewed Climate Perspective from Judith Curry "Like other op-eds, Dr. Curry's is framed as “contradicting” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and suggests that any reduction in potential risks from climate change can justify delay in reducing emissions."
- 2014/10/09 [L..T] The Global Warming Statistical Meltdown "A growing body of evidence suggests that the climate is less sensitive to increases in carbon-dioxide emissions than policy makers generally assume..."
- 2014/10/06 [L..T] Climate response estimates from Lewis & Curry "While of some scientific interest, the impact for real-world mitigation policy of the range of conceivable values for the TCR is small (see also this discussion in Sci. Am.). For targets like the 2 K guide-rail, a TCR on the lower end of the Lewis and Curry and IPCC ranges might just be the difference between a achievable rate of emissions reduction and an impossible one..."
- 2014/09/26 [L..T] Muslims in Europe rally against extremist violence "In tweets, in street gatherings and in open letters, moderate Muslims around the world are insisting that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremists don't speak for their religion. Many are also frustrated that anyone might think they do, and a backlash has already begun."
- 2014/08/27 [L..T] IPCC attribution statements redux: A response to Judith Curry "The bottom line is that multiple studies indicate with very strong confidence that human activity is the dominant component in the warming of the last 50 to 60 years, and that our best estimates are that pretty much all of the rise is anthropogenic."
- 2014/08/12 [L..T] Only Stupid People Call People Stupid "We shouldn't call people stupid. And when other people resort to name calling, we should discourage them by expressing public disapproval, because calling people stupid... makes people stupid."
- 2014/08/05 [L..T] GOP bury House Benghazi report "In public relations it is understood if you want to bury bad news you release it on Friday afternoon in August. [..] So it was the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee declassified its two-year-old investigation into the Benghazi tragedy last week, releasing its findings last Friday, August 1, at 3:30PM Eastern Time."
- 2014/07/24 [L..T] Jeremy Scahill On U.S. Media Coverage Of Israel-Gaza Conflict: 'We've Hit All-Time Lows' "We could say this every time I come on your show and talk to you: we've hit all-time lows with media coverage in this country. [..] When you look at what's happening right now in Gaza, this is a massive massacre and one epic series of war crime after war crime, child after child being killed. [...] Israeli propagandists are largely given carte blanche to say what they want on American television with very little pushback."
- 2014/07/24 [L..T] Decriminalising sex work would cut HIV infections by a third "Mathematical modelling work by Drs Michael Pickles and Marie-Claude Boily from Imperial College London estimates that decriminalising sex work could prevent up to 33 to 46 per cent of HIV infections among female sex workers (FSWs) and clients worldwide over the next decade."
- 2014/07/23 [L..T] Driller apparently wants to frack Meadowmont in Chapel Hill "It appears the relatively unknown Crimson Holdings Corporation wants to frack more than a handful of nature preserves in Durham, as reported in today's Indy."
- 2014/07/23 [L..T] MSNBC's Sole Palestinian Voice Rula Jebreal Takes on Pro-Israeli Gov't Bias at Network & in US Media "A week after public outrage helped force NBC's reversal of a decision to pull veteran reporter Ayman Mohyeldin out of Gaza, the sole Palestinian contributor to sister network MSNBC has publicly criticized its coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. "We are disgustingly biased when it comes to this issue," Rula Jebreal said Monday on MSNBC's Ronan Farrow Daily, citing a disproportionate amount of Palestinian voices and a preponderance of Israeli government officials and supporters."
- 2014/07/22 [L..T] Otherwise Intelligent People
- 2014/07/22 [L..T] Al-Jazeera Gaza offices evacuated after direct hit by Israeli fire "Israel's army has denied targeting the Gaza offices of al-Jazeera TV after the network's correspondents reported that the building had come under fire on Tuesday."
- 2014/07/22 [L..T] An "unfortunate political stunt" goes awry «Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) thought he'd come up with a great idea: he'd file a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act in the hopes of making coverage more expensive for Capitol Hill staff. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Johnson's home state of Wisconsin, conceded the senator's lawsuit was "frivolous" and an "unfortunate political stunt."»
- 2014/07/22 [L..T] Great Barrier Reef Will Be 'Pretty Ugly' By 2050, Researchers Say "...there are additional threats facing the Great Barrier reef. Earlier this year, a University of Queensland report indicated that the reef will not be able to recover from "irreversible" damage caused by climate change."
- 2014/07/22 [L..T] Appeals court swings a sledgehammer at the ACA «There's one last court case that we've been following that, in theory, could still destroy much of the federal health care system. At a distance, it's a genuinely ridiculous case, but as Adam Serwer reports this morning, its absurdity didn't stop Republican-appointed judges from making the wrong call this morning.»
- 2014/07/21 [L..T] Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction, Study Finds "Young children who are exposed to religion have a hard time differentiating between fact and fiction, according to a new study published in the July issue of Cognitive Science."
- 2014/07/18 [L..T] [[2014/07/18/This Woman Has Been Confronting Her Catcallers|]] "It was then she had the idea for Cards Against Street Harassment: pocket-size cards women could download, print, and hand out to their catcallers, explaining why the attention was unwanted without even speaking."
- 2014/07/16 [L..T] Portland police Capt. Mark Kruger's past discipline to be erased -- including for tribute to Nazi-era soldiers -- under city settlement “To settle a legal claim, the city of Portland has agreed to pay $5,000 to Portland police Capt. Mark Kruger and erase two disciplinary actions from his personnel record: a suspension for his public tribute to five Nazi-era German soldiers at a city park and a reprimand for retaliating against a female lieutenant.”
- 2014/07/16 [L..T] Everybody I know is on Food Stamps. "Everybody I know is on Food Stamps. We have jobs, but the jobs pay so low that we still need help. We stock shelves, pump gas, and cook your food. Stuff that needs to be done, but is somehow not "Real Work" or a "Real Job." Let's not even go into the fact that a good chunk of us went to college so we could have a "Real Job" but when we finished those "Real Jobs" turned out to be as mythical as the Yeti or Brownies."
- 2014/07/15 [L..T] Timeline: Koch Brothers' 50 Years in the Tar Sands "The Koch brothers built their first fortune on the particularly dirty form of oil mined in Alberta's tar sands, where they have been major players for 50 years, and remain deeply invested."
- 2014/07/14 [L..T] Hobby Lobby Is Now Discriminating Against a Transgender Employee
- 2014/07/11 [L..T] What We Don't Talk About When We Don't Talk About Abortion "I had an abortion four years ago. I just recently decided to start talking about it."
- 2014/07/06 [L..T] Billionaire Koch brothers are big oil players in Alberta "The ultra-right U.S. Koch brothers, little-known to Canadians, are major players in Alberta's oil patch, where they control at least 1.1 million acres."
- 2014/07/06 [L..T] A Company Liberals Could Love Douthat argues that liberals should support Hobby Lobby because of their internal minimum wage policy, and goes on to argue something about liberal intolerance of religious diversity.
- 2014/07/06 [L..T] Fukushima has 9 days to prevent "unsafe" overheating "Fukushima operator TEPCO has been forced to switch off the cooling system at mothballed Reactor Unit 5, after it was discovered that it had been leaking water. In nine days, if the system is not repaired, temperatures will exceed dangerous levels."
- 2014/07/04 [L..T] At Some Point, Progressives Need to Break Up With the Democratic Party "The Democratic Party espouses right-wing policies. Self-described progressives give them cash. Comedian Bill Maher gave them a million cash dollars, yet Democrats don't agree with him on anything. Why? Because he hates Republicans even more. Why didn't Maher save his money? Or better yet, fund a group or a writer or an artist who promotes ideas he actually agrees with? Because he, like tens of millions of other liberals, are stuck in the two-party trap."
- 2014/07/02 [L..T] Two documentaries reveal shadowy Koch-funded network threatening democracy, public education
- 2014/07/02 [L..T] Cliven Bundy's cousin: "He was raised in a racist predicament" "Explaining that she and Bundy were raised as Mormons, Robertson said, “For the first 130 years of our church, they taught that black people carried the curse of Cain,” adding, “That's why their skin was black. He was raised in a racist predicament.”"
- 2014/07/01 [L..T] Hobby Lobby Made Fight a Matter of Christian Principle
- 2014/07/01 [L..T] 3/4 of Hobby Lobby's investment funds include contraception, abortion services "Hobby Lobby is so offended by the idea of contributing to its employees' birth control expenses that it fought all the way to the Supreme Court over the issue. But its retirement plan has over $73M sunk into funds that include companies that make contraception."
- 2014/06/23 [L..T] Earth has warmest May on record, may signal warmest year in pipeline
- 2014/06/21 [L..T] The Republic of Ireland has never had a school shooting in its history. "The Republic of Ireland has never had a school shooting in its history. Not. A. Single. One."
- 2014/06/21 [L..T] States with Weak Gun Laws and Higher Gun Ownership Lead Nation in Gun Deaths
- 2014/06/20 [L..T] 'Runaway maids' tracked down on Kuwaiti Instagram "Kuwaiti domestic workers are being named and shamed on an Instagram account called Mn7asha, or "runaway"."
- 2014/06/18 [L..T] Abu Khattala comes into sharper focus «The second [possibility] is that the suspected ringleader behind the Benghazi attack is in on the Benghazi conspiracy. Sure, the sheeple will resist, but don't you see it? The conspiracy is so broad, so all-encompassing, and so far-reaching in its scope, the White House has even gotten to Ahmed Abu Khattala, convincing an alleged terrorist to stick to the talking points.»
- 2014/06/17 [L..T] Fall Into Theocracy #1: How the Catholic Church is Killing Polish Democracy
- 2014/06/15 [L..T] WordPress Demands $10,000 For DMCA Takedown Censorship
- 2014/06/15 [L..T] Fukushima's Children are Dying "Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times (40x) normal." CAVEAT: This article's analysis is suspect.
- 2014/06/12 [http://newamericamedia.org/2014/06/oakland-at-risk-of-severe-floods---not-just-water-but-sewage.php L..T] Sea Rise Threatens Oakland's Sewer System
- 2014/06/12 [L..T] The Troubling Case of Chris Hedges
- 2014/06/11 [L..T] Eric Cantor Pushes GOP To The Edge Of A Cliff, Falls Off
- 2014/06/11 [L..T] The Myth of Trafficking
- 2014/06/11 [L..T] U.S. Budget Deficit Narrows as Economy, Jobs Boost Revenue "The U.S. posted a $130 billion budget deficit in May and the smallest shortfall for the first eight months of a fiscal year since 2008, as a stronger economy and rising employment bolster revenue."
- 2014/06/11 [L..T] Armed, masked Russian separatists seize "decadent" hackspace in Donetsk, Ukraine "The Izolyatsia makerspace in Donetsk, Ukraine, has been seized by armed, masked Russian separatists from the Donetsk People's Republic, who denounced it as "decadent" and accused it of being "an American-funded anti-Russian organisation which supports fascism and develops decadent kind of arts." Izolyatsia is the first hackerspace to be occupied by an armed militia."
- 2014/06/11 [L..T] Schroedinger's Kingdom: the Scottish Political Singularity Explained "... it's impossible for me to write fiction set in the near future of Scotland until after we've navigated the political white water ahead: the referendum in September 2014, the general election in June 2015, and (optionally) the further UK referendum in 2016/17. Truly, we're living through the dog days of Schroedinger's Republic; and it's anybody's guess which state the wave function will finally collapse into."
- 2014/06/10 [L..T] We Need to Talk About This "One of the things that happens when I meet a bunch of new people, as I did last weekend, is that when they begin to ask about my job, the conversation inevitably comes around to the ugly part of my job. The threats, the harassment, the rivers of vitriolic shit I have to navigate on a daily basis as a cost of doing this work. [..] Every time, the people with whom I share this experience express shock. It is always, always, a surprise that a woman who does public advocacy is subjected to this sort of abuse."
- 2014/06/10 [L..T] Cult of Compliance: Attacking the Breasts of Female Protestors "One of my questions about what I term the cult of compliance is the extent to which it is a product of our historical moment or an indelible aspect of the relationship between the state and its subjects. I'm an optimist, I want to believe that we can improve, that we can make things better. I'm also an historian, though, so it's hard to ignore this kind of evidence as coming out of a fundamental place in the structures of our society in its reactions to protesters in general and women specifically."
- 2014/06/09 [L..T] George Will: Being a victim of sexual assault is a "coveted status that confers privileges" "Washington Post columnist George Will doesn't believe the statistic that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college. Instead he believes that liberals, feminists and other nefarious forces have conspired to turn being a rape survivor into a "coveted status that confers privileges." As a result of this plot, "victims proliferate," Will wrote in a weekend editorial that ran in the Washington Post and New York Post."
- 2014/06/09 [L..T] Missing Malaysia Airlines flight: Oil rig worker Mike McKay loses job after MH370 'fire in the sky' report "Reports from an oil rig worker who saw a fire in the sky on the night Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared are being taken seriously, police sources have confirmed."
- 2014/06/09 [L..T] Thanks for nothing, jerkface "In case you missed it, Google CEO Sergey Brin publicly admitted last week that Google+ was "a mistake" for him – one month after the man he hired to run the social network, Vic Gundotra, left the company without explanation."
- 2014/06/08 [L..T] Obama on Obama on Climate
- 2014/06/06 [L..T] Memo to Potential Whistleblowers: If You See Something, Say Something
- 2014/06/05 [L..T] Scott Brown resigns from Florida firearm manufacturer «Yesterday afternoon, former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), on the campaign trail in his new state, was confronted by quite a few reporters asking about the same topic: his curious role as an adviser to a Florida firearm manufacturer that doesn't actually manufacture firearms.»
- 2014/06/05 [L..T] The Deeply Disturbing Truth About Street Harassment in America "For the past few years, grassroots efforts to end street harassment in the US have been gaining support and amplifying their message."
- 2014/06/03 [L..T] Alabama Bible school puts Hitler quote on billboard to encourage youth indoctrination "A Christian ministry in Alabama said this week that it would remove a billboard with a quote by Adolf Hitler that it had used to promote its work with children."
- 2014/06/03 [L..T] This computer programmer solved gerrymandering in his spare time "Brian Olson is a software engineer in Massachusetts who wrote a program to draw "optimally compact" equal-population congressional districts in each state, based on 2010 census data. Olson's algorithm draws districts that respect the boundaries of census blocks, which are the smallest geographic units used by the Census Bureau. This ensures that the district boundaries reflect actual neighborhoods and don't, say, cut an arbitrary line through somebody's house."
- 2014/06/03 [L..T] Transgender: The Perfect Social Conservative Storm "These days, transgender people bring out the crazy, mean, and ignorant in social conservatives like nothing else. They are accused of being rapists, child molesters, delusional, and mentally ill. Social conservatives in very public positions have offered many "solutions" to the perceived transgender menace, ranging from mistreating us until we self-deport back to our birth gender, to forced institutionalization, to "putting them in camps.""
- 2014/06/02 [L..T] The Conservative War on Girls: School Accused of Shaming Girls for Wearing Shorts (Video) "Shaming women has become almost a sport in schools. Every day, it seems we are confronted with a new instance of a yearbook editing female students to make them less sexy or a girl being kicked from prom because it was likely that she was going to drive a crowd of middle-aged men wild with lust."
- 2014/06/02 [L..T] Google reportedly launching 180 satellites for global internet service "The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is planning to spend more than $1 billion on satellites that will offer internet access worldwide from space. The publication's sources say that Google will begin with 180 small satellites that will orbit the Earth at a lower altitude than most other craft, before possibly expanding the fleet in the future."
- 2014/06/01 [L..T] Facebook Could Decide an Election Without Anyone Ever Finding Out
- 2014/05/31 [L..T] The extreme misogyny of 'pick-up artist' hate "There was a storm on Twitter when Elliot Rodger's misogynistic ramblings and videos were discovered online. Bloggers and commentators pointed out he used language familiar to the "pick-up artist" (PUA) community - an industry dedicated to teaching men the art of attracting women."
- 2014/05/30 [L..T] House votes to restrict DEA marijuana raids «The roll call on the vote is here. Note that it passed largely with Democratic support – the vast majority of Dems voted for it; a clear majority of Republicans voted against it – but the measure was backed by a bipartisan group of co-sponsors.»
- 2014/05/29 [L..T] Utah High School Photoshops Yearbook Pics To Make Girls "Less Sexy" (Video) "Female students at Wasatch High School in Utah is under fire after selectively editing female students' yearbook photos to show less skin – without the students knowing about it."
- 2014/05/29 [L..T] [[2014/05/29/Bush counterterrorism czar: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld all committed war crimes|]]
- 2014/05/29 [L..T] Michael Bloomberg: Universities becoming bastions of intolerance "Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, delivering Thursday's commencement speech at Harvard University, criticized what he described as a disturbing trend of liberals silencing voices 'deemed politically objectionable.'"
- 2014/05/28 [L..T] The Inclusive Capitalism Initiative is Trojan Horse to quell coming global revolt
- 2014/05/28 [L..T] Are You a Slut? That Depends. Are You Rich? «This class-based construction of the campus slut allowed both groups to deflect the stigma of "sluttiness" onto other women and away from themselves, establish hierarchies among social groups, and police everyone's gender performance – including their own – along the way.»
- 2014/05/27 [L..T] Leaving Homeless Person On The Streets: $31,065. Giving Them Housing: $10,051. "There is a far cheaper option though: giving homeless people housing and supportive services. The study found that it would cost taxpayers just $10,051 per homeless person to give them a permanent place to live and services like job training and health care. That figure is 68 percent less than the public currently spends by allowing homeless people to remain on the streets. If central Florida took the permanent supportive housing approach, it could save $350 million over the next decade."
- 2014/05/27 [L..T] This silent, zero-emissions electric plane could be the future of sustainable air travel "One of the first public demonstrations of energy efficient air travel took to the air last week at the Berlin Air Show, in the form of a fully electric airplane."
- 2014/05/26 [L..T] I.R.S. Bars Employers From Dumping Workers Into Health Exchanges
- 2014/05/26 [L..T] Exclusive: Transgender travelers singled out in TSA screenings, docs show "Department of Homeland Security documents obtained last month reveal details of incidents in which transgender travelers were subjected to heightened scrutiny when passing through airport security checkpoints."
- 2014/05/25 [L..T] Isla Vista: the discussion we should be having.
- 2014/05/25 [L..T] Obama Administration Will Let Veterans Seek Care At Private Hospitals "The Obama administration's decision to allow more veterans to get care at private hospitals could take some pressure off backlogged Veterans Affairs facilities struggling to cope with new patients from the wars on terrorism as well as old soldiers from prior conflicts."
- 2014/05/23 [L..T] Absolution By Punctuation "The administration to which Ms. Rice was unswervingly loyal -- and for which she fudged her testimony in front of the 9/11 commission, and for which she helped lie this country into a war that was the most fundamentally immoral act of foreign policy (perhaps) in its history -- did, in fact, torture people to those ends."
- 2014/05/23 [L..T] Harvard professor's 'super PAC' aims to end power of 'super PACs' "Is it possible to create a "super PAC" that would end the power of super PACs by drawing enough Americans into the system to limit the influence of big money in politics? And is it possible to get voters excited about a subject as dry as campaign finance? [..] Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig is leading a crusade to answer both those questions with a yes."
- 2014/05/21 [L..T] Enforcing School Dress Codes Teaches Girls to be Ashamed, Not 'Modest'
- 2014/05/21 [L..T] Patent reform stalls in Senate as legislation is pulled from agenda "Patent trolls can claim a major victory today thanks to Sen. Patrick Leahy. The Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman has removed patent reform legislation from the agenda, citing a lack of "sufficient support behind any comprehensive deal." [...] This stall in the Senate comes after the House passed a bipartisan bill designed to crack down on frivolous lawsuits with strong support on both sides of the aisle. The White House also stands behind reform."
- 2014/05/20 [L..T] A replication tour de force "Now, after decades of the status quo, psychology is finally coming to terms with the idea that replication is a vital ingredient in the recipe of discovery. The latest issue of the journal Social Psychology reports an impressive 15 papers that attempted to replicate influential findings related to personality and social cognition."
- 2014/05/20 [L..T] Spain Is Going Orwellian Over Mean Twitter Comments
- 2014/05/19 [L..T] Why were so many female artists airbrushed from history? "Annie Kevans, who first painted well-known men as boys, is now portraying women who should have been famous."
- 2014/05/18 [L..T] 'Trojan horse' teacher breaks into girl's phone
- 2014/05/18 [L..T] Switzerland Votes on World's Highest Minimum Wage "Switzerland's citizens voted Sunday on whether to create the world's highest minimum wage of 22 Swiss francs ($24.70) an hour."
- 2014/05/16 [L..T] Miami Will Be Underwater Before the Senate Acts on Climate Change
- 2014/05/15 [L..T] Jill Abramson and the Mainstreaming of Feminism in American Media
- 2014/05/15 [L..T] Women in secularism: Got a problem with that? "Many of her harassers, she believes, are men in the secular community. They feel threatened by the inclusion of issues that go beyond the central pillars of the secular movement, such as protections of freedom and conscience and church-state separation They want to silence activists, like Hensley and others, who want secularism to address broader issues of social justice, economic equality and racism."
- 2014/05/15 [L..T] Hedge Fund Titans Hum a Happy Tune as They Target Public Schools "Hedge fund flacks hail this growing charter presence as a new window of opportunity for underprivileged kids in failing traditional schools. But many educators consider charters a diversion of badly needed public tax dollars into unaccountable private entities that cream off top students and refuse to take in the most challenged."
- 2014/05/14 [L..T] Bad Science Doesn't Help Bees "In the new study, researchers didn't waste time with a low initial dose. They began right away with syrup containing 136 micrograms of insect-killer per liter. Eventually, six of the 12 colonies fed the spiked syrup failed. Calling the researchers' credibility into further question, the second study, like the first, ascribes colony failure to colony collapse disorder, a malady with characteristics not evident in either trial."
- 2014/05/14 [L..T] Russia threatens to disrupt GPS navigation in fight over sanctions " The Russian government has just threatened to end cooperation with America on major space projects, including maintenance of the GPS system. The policy will also prevent NASA from accessing the International Space Station from 2020, as well as blocking the supply of components for America's Atlas V rockets, which are currently vital for sending military and commercial satellites into space."
- 2014/05/14 [L..T] Glenn Greenwald: U.S. Corporate Media is "Neutered, Impotent and Obsolete" "In the final part of our extended interview, Glenn Greenwald reflects on the Pulitzer Prize, adversarial journalism and the corporate media's response to his reporting on Edward Snowden's leaked National Security Agency documents."
- 2014/05/14 [L..T] How Five American Companies Control What You Think
- 2014/05/14 [L..T] We all have to be brave "Michelle Farber, a midwife at women's reproductive health clinics, describes the impact of anti-choice protests on abortion providers and the women seeking their services."
- 2014/05/13 [L..T] The Totally Misleading Way The GOP Plans To Attack Obamacare Next "But they left out one crucial piece of information: Obamacare is designed to protect enrollees against year-to-year price fluctuations. Warning about higher premiums leaves an impression that people will pay more, and the GOP surely won't hesitate to push that line again whenever news of rising premiums breaks."