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“the price of freedom”? “For years now, after one massacre or another,” writes Heather Cox Richardson this mourning, “I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority.” A minority that, like Bill O’Reilly, considers daily slaughter “the price of freedom.” None of that was normal until about the time Ronald Reagan and Movement Conservatism arrived in full. Fueled by National Rifle Association money, the right twisted the Second Amendment into an “unfettered right to own and carry weapons.” They’ve turned America into a place Old West residents of Tombstone and Dodge City would not recognize. At least eight dead and nine injured at a suburban Dallas, Texas outlet mall (Washington Post): Six of the eight people killed were found dead at the scene. At least nine people injured in the shootingwere taken to hospitals by the local fire department, Allen Fire Chief Jon Boyd said.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Doctor Who, S.W.A.T., Yellowjackets, Always Sunny, WWE Backlash, James Gunn/Superman, Justified, and more!
Local election results across England have largely come in, and with them, the inevitable spin, gloss, and damage control has begun. Early indications show a low turnout, Conservative voters staying at home, and a general lack of enthusiasm and engagement across the board. As a local Labour candidate for the Crewe South ward of Cheshire […]
Dems’ are settling on the same playbook: shifting right, crushing a primary, and hoping demoralized voters are repulsed by the GOP.
Companies like Evolv sell multimillion-dollar AI-powered gun detection systems to schools nationwide, but weapons still slip through.
The post AI Tries (and Fails) to Detect Weapons in Schools appeared first on The Intercept.
. [You can watch the Foucault-Chomsky debate mentioned in the video here]
Recent moves by Eugen Rochko (known as Gargron on fedi), the CEO of Mastodon-the-non-profit and lead developer of Mastodon-the-software, got some people worried about the outsized influence Mastodon (the software project and the non-profit) has on the rest of the Fediverse.
Good. We should be worried.
Mastodon-the-software is used by far by the most people on fedi. The biggest instance, mastodon.social, is home to over 200.000 active accounts as of this writing. This is roughly 1/10th of the whole Fediverse, on a single instance. Worse, Mastodon-the-software is often identified as the whole social network, obscuring the fact that Fediverse is a much broader system comprised of a much more diverse software.
The 49th Seattle International Film Festival (May 11-21) opens next week, featuring 264 shorts, docs, and narrative films from 74 countries. As always, the looming question is – where to begin? I’ve found the trick to navigating festivals is developing a 6th sense for films in your wheelhouse (so I embrace my OCD and channel it like a cinematic dowser). (deep breath) Let’s dive in. This year’s Opening Night Gala selection is Past Lives (USA/Korea), the latest offering from A24 (Ex Machina, Ladybird, Moonlight, Everything Everywhere All at Once, et.al.). Billed as “a heartrending modern romance”, the drama was written and directed by Celine Song, who will be attending and participating in a Q&A following the screening. Always with the personal drama: Dean Kavanagh’s Hole in the Head (Ireland) is a character study about a mute projectionist who uses the tools of his trade as a conduit for coming to terms with long-repressed memories. Adolfo (Mexico, U.S.
“I don’t think we’ve spoken enough about what Black women have had to endure here,” said Chicago prosecutor Kim Foxx, a Gardner ally.
The post Why St. Louis’s Reform DA Kim Gardner Quit appeared first on The Intercept.
It’s going to take work to educate people about this issue: Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children, a Washington Post-KFF poll finds, offering political jet fuel for Republicans in statehouses and Congress who are pushing measures restricting curriculum, sports participation and medical care. Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth. A 57 percent majority of adults said a person’s gender is determined from the start, with 43 percent saying it can differ. This is the saddest part: And some Americans have become more conservative on these questions as Republicans have seized the issue and worked to promote new restrictions. The Pew Research Center found 60 percent last year saying one’s gender is determined by the sex assigned at birth, up from 54 percent in 2017. Even among young adults, who are the most accepting of trans identity, about half said in the Post-KFF poll that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth.
En av den svenska popmusikens största banbrytare, Pugh Rogefeldt, har gått ur tiden. Pugh skrev den sorts musik som glömskan inte rår på. Tack för allt. Vila i frid min vän.
That does not make me feel confident Washington Examiner: I know you cannot get into any of the specifics about your grand jury appearance, but I’m wondering if you could just peel back for readers what the was process like? Mike Pence: I really can’t speak in any detail about the proceedings. But I can tell you that the American people can be confident that the story I wrote in my memoir about those difficult days, the story I’ve told in numerous interviews and in the wake of the release of my book, is the same story that I tell in every respect. And so, for me, I just have a lot of peace about the process. I’m very concerned about what I see as the politicization of the Justice Department. I’m very concerned about what I see as the criminalization of politics, but we obeyed the law. We did our part, and the American people can be confident that the story we’ve written, the story we told, is the same story that took place in that setting. In other words, he didn’t come through with the full truth about Trump’s coup plotting. He never has.
Carbon Capture and Storage, nothing but an inadequate fig leaf for obscene government endorsed corporate practices. Direct Air Capture may play a useful climate role in a few decades. Banks still lending trillions to fossil fuel companies. Capturing carbon: where are we? Part 2 of 2 Last week I described the difference between absorbing CO2 Continue reading »
Eighteen months ago, when Australians first learned of the AUKUS proposal for their country to build nuclear-powered submarines, it came as a stunning shock. So great was the shock, in fact, that for a time it eclipsed any serious debate about this revolutionary and quite unprecedented idea. An initiative of such scale and audacity seemed Continue reading »
Speech at The Persecution of Truth conference According to Dr Suelette Dreyfus, Julian Assange was the most original voice in twenty-first-century journalism. She justified this claim by referencing the invention of the anonymous digital dropbox that WikiLeaks and Assange pioneered, which allowed whistle-blowers to transfer information to the public, while preserving their anonymity. This invention Continue reading »
Minister Mark Butler’s Hugh Stretton Oration (April 27) demonstrates he gets it. He may be the first Minister we have had in Aged Care who understands the issues of ageing and is prepared to speak out. Policy makers and those in the professional age care industry (both advocates and providers) seem to be trapped in Continue reading »
Perhaps now – more than ever – is the time when Australia needs outstanding foreign policy thinkers. It has lost one of its best with the death of Allan Gyngell after a short illness. When he relinquished the National Presidency of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) a few months ago, he saw it Continue reading »
Enclosure in the US and Israel The nature of Enclosure is not often associated with the settler-colonial societies of the US and Israel. Yet it is an important aspect to the exceptionalism of both these states and their righteous sectioning off of land for their own religious aims. Both states got their foothold on the Continue reading »
When the western media and politicians speak of China’s treatment of minorities it is always taken for granted that such treatment is a violation of the minority’s human rights. I would venture to differ. China has a complex framework of ethnic-regional autonomy enshrined in its constitution that is poorly understood in the West. Having worked Continue reading »
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And he said it overseas… A day after federal prosecutors won their latest high-profile cases against leaders of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, former president Donald Trump lashed out in a social media post at the Justice Department, claiming it and the FBI are “destroying the lives of so many Great American Patriots.” “Back in the USA, but sadly I see so many really bad things happening to our Country,” Trump, who broke ground earlier this week on a golf course in Scotland, wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. “The DOJ and FBI are destroying the lives of so many Great American Patriots, right before our very eyes,” he wrote. “The Court System is a RUBBER STAMP for their conviction and imprisonment. All this while the Radical Left protects and coddles extremists and murderers at a level, and with intensity, never seen before. GET SMART AMERICA, THEY ARE COMING AFTER YOU!!!” On Thursday, former Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and three other leaders of the far-rightextremist group were found guilty of seditious conspiracy in the attack on Capitol.