“[N]one of the people who submit grievances to the form will have their accounts restored or content promoted. They won’t get explanations for why social media isn’t working the way they think it should, and they almost certainly won’t get satisfying regulation out of their complaints. Instead, they’ll be advertised to about Trump — and whatever else the Trump campaign uses the list for — for the rest of their digital lives, on the very platforms they feel completely alienated from.”
“Escaped pet parrots are now naturalized in 23 US states, study finds”.
Clarence Thomas should be required to recuse himself from all voting rights cases for the rest of his term on SCOTUS.
“In the end, then, we have an old story: basically a Ponzi scheme enabled by lots of money sloshing around and a lack of regulation from the people who should have been protecting the victims. The story about Uber and Lyft is mostly just a fairy tale invented to hide what really happened.”
A thread about the smallpox vaccine, on the 270th birthday of Edward Jenner. (Warning: first post contains a disturbing photo of a child with smallpox.)
“Yet Romania’s prohibition of the procedure was disproportionately felt by low-income women and disadvantaged groups, which abortion-rights advocates in the United States fear would happen if the Alabama law came into force. As a last resort, many Romanian women turned to home and back-alley abortions, and by 1989, an estimated 10,000 women had died as a result of unsafe procedures. The real number of deaths might have been much higher, as women who sought abortions and those who helped them faced years of imprisonment if caught. Maternal mortality skyrocketed, doubling between 1965 and 1989.”
“For both women who abort their pregnancies and women who consider adoption, abortion is a pregnancy decision and adoption is a parenting decision, and they’re made at separate times.”
“Trump Has Assembled the Worst Cabinet in History”.
“Coca-Cola will bring New Coke back to market for a brief time, all part of a partnership with Netflix, which has featured Coke in its cult-favorite series Stranger Things.”
Great white shark, doot de doo de doo. (I’ll just show myself out.)
“In terms of Impeachment, we are on the second 30 day cease and desist letter, metaphorically speaking.”
“In fact, the souring of Game of Thrones exposes a fundamental shortcoming of our storytelling culture in general: we don’t really know how to tell sociological stories.”
“Don’t be like those people. Never open attachments in emails you were not expecting. When in doubt, toss it out.”
“What could possibly lead someone to embrace that kind of complacency about our current situation? Can a political analyst be so entrenched in Washington, D.C. elitism that they completely lose touch with what the rest of us are witnessing on a daily basis?”
This is, by far, the nicest thing you will read today.
“Fortunately, there’s a handy-dandy principle you can rely upon to determine when Congress should win and when the president should. It’s this: Congress should get the information it needs to do its job of legislation and oversight, and the president should be able to withhold what is necessary for him to do his job well.”
RIP, John Pinto, New Mexico State Senator and Navajo code talker.