Go ahead, make our day The parallels between Prime Video’s “Jack Ryan” Season 3 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are simply eerie, says actor and producer John Krasinski. “But even having to explain that we wrote and shot the show before the conflict even happened seems like an alternate reality.” The Ukrainian government’s cocky messaging crew, however, is not above drawing purposeful parallels between its fight against Vladimir Putin’s invaders and a popular David-versus-Goliath tale from Hollywood. Enjoy, MFers. Here’s another.
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Wasted days and wasted lives “This is a foreign language unto itself,” tweeted author Tom Zoellner. He responds to an “I quit” rant by a follower of QAnon. Except QAnon is just an add-on here. The woman is not leaving the QAnon cult. She is just so pissed at “Q” that she’s decided to go culting by herself. Q, it seems, is an ancient alien affiliated with alien “orbs.” So, the New Age is not as old-hat as I believed. It may have largely dropped out of sight where I live (once nicknamed “the Sedona of the South”), but has not died out. The rant below is confirmation. I don’t speak the language, but some of it is familiar. She’s taking down “the ET transmissions” in retaliation for Q’s failure to acknowledge her six years of “disclosure” and for failing to stop the “pandemic of child trafficking.” “During the sinking of Atlantis, the Archons took over,” she says, “and that’s how long it’s taken you to get back here and do anything at all.” Atlantis, Archons, alchemy, aliens, angels.
They finally overturned Roe 2022 marks the year that they finally got the Supremes to overturn Roe vs. Wade. I’ve been following this issue from the very first days of writing this blog. It’s been a depressing trajectory. On the 10th anniversary of this blog, I wrote the following: My advocacy for a woman’s right to abortion predates this blog by decades. It’s a fundamental struggle for half the population and I’ve very much appreciated the attention and support of my readers over these last 10 years of writing about it. In this last election rape unexpectedly became a campaign issue. Oddly enough the concept of “legitimate rape” was something I’d written about some years ago when South Dakota tried to pass a ban on abortion without an exception for rape or incest (pending reversal of Roe vs Wade, of course.) This was, at the time, an unusual position. It’s much more mainstream in the pro-life community today.
It’s so hard to choose! It’s fair to say that the Republican Party of 2022 is a much broader coalition than it used to be. Once upon a time it was defined as the party of Main Street and the country club: white middle-class and upper-middle-class guys in gray flannel suits. But in recent years they’ve opened the doors and invited in a whole bunch of other Americans who don’t fit that mold. Starting in the 1960s they willingly veered into overt racism mantle and with their embrace of the Christian right in the ’80s, all the anti-gay, anti abortion flock began to move their way as well. The new Trump majority within the party captured a chunk of the previously nonvoting public that believes in fringe conspiracy theories and far-right ideologies and worships at the altar of vapid TV celebrity. That said, the Republican coalition still isn’t very diverse. It’s nearly all white, of course, with only a tiny fraction of racial and ethnic minorities. It’s almost all Christian and most are non-college-educated and rural.
Aaron Rupar caught Santos’ appearance on Fox last night with none other than Tulsi Gabbard who was a surprisingly effective interviewer. Oh boy: "I am not a fraud. I am not a fake. I didn't materialize from thin air" — George Santos to Tulsi Gabaard George Santos goes full whataboutism after Tulsi Gabbard asks him, "Have you no shame?" George Santos: "Everyone wants to nitpick at me" "These are blatant lies and it draws into question how your constituents and the American people can believe anything you may say on the floor of the House — Tulsi Gabbard actually did an impressive job grilling George Santos, who was clearly flustered George Santos's Fox News interview was a complete disaster. Check out how it ended. Here is the entire Tulsi Gabbard-George Santos interview in one video Originally tweeted by Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) on December 28, 2022. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Pathological lying is perfectly respectable in the new GOP. Just look at their Dear Leader. Why should this guy be held to a different standard?
Stock buy-backs and dividends instead of fixing infrastructure This is stunning: As travelers and airline workers reel from mass flight cancellations, a corporate watchdog noted Wednesday that Southwest Airlines spent nearly $6 billion on stock buybacks in the years ahead of the coronavirus pandemic instead of spending that money on technological improvements that unions have been demanding for years.
Why are we doing this? I know why Trump put in place all the draconian policies that have now forced Cubans to try to emigrate to the US in massive numbers. But why are they still in place? This article doesn’t adequately provide an answer, particularly since many of the refugees now assembling at the southern border are Cubans. Living conditions in Cuba under Communist rule have long been precarious, but today, deepening poverty and hopelessness have set off the largest exodus from the Caribbean island nation since Fidel Castro rose to power over half a century ago. The country has been hit by a one-two-punch of tighter U.S. sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic, which eviscerated one of Cuba’s lifelines — the tourism industry. Food has become even more scarce and more expensive, lines at pharmacies with scant supplies begin before dawn and millions of people endure daily hourslong blackouts. Over the last year, nearly 250,000 Cubans, more than 2 percent of the island’s 11 million population, have migrated to the United States, most of them arriving at the southern border by land, according to U.S. government data.
Permalink to this post AI is getting better at performing mass categorization of photos and text. A developer can scrape a bunch of photos from, say, Facebook — either directly, likely violating the terms of service, or through offering an app by which people consent to the access — and then use a well-trained categorizer […]
Permalink to this post This essay was originally published in November of 2017 as part of a series commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Zeran v. AOL case. Twenty years after it was first litigated in earnest, the U.S. Communications Decency Act’s Section 230 remains both obscure and vital. Section 230 nearly entirely eliminated the liability […]
Permalink to this post A version of this piece as it originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review on September 19, 2018 is accessible here. I used to be largely indifferent to claims about the use of private data for targeted advertising, even as I worried about privacy more generally. How much of an intrusion was it, […]