Pliny comments:… Read the rest

Padma Lakshmi is on it:

You know what else “everyday Minnesotans” want?

Not to be harassed & interrogated for using their company gym because they don’t look like they “belong” to you (a fellow tenant)

Your perceived ownership of a group space & threat to call 911 is the epitome of racism

— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) May 27, 2020

Damn right.

Let’s read that op ed from October 2017:

Over this past summer, I met with virtually every homeowner who lives directly along Lake Calhoun, plus another couple hundred neighbors who live within a few blocks. Why? To listen to what they had to say about the renaming of Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska. The results were surprising.

In Morocco, on the other hand, The Authorities can tell everyone what they can say.

Police have opened a preliminary investigation into the criminal acts attributed to the Moroccan actor, Rafik Boubker, after placing him in custody this evening. The procedure follows the decision of the public prosecutor of Casablanca’s Court of First Instance. 

The General Directorate for National Security (DGSN) said in a statement that it had “monitored digital content published on social media, in which the suspect appears in an abnormal condition, insulting the Islamic religion and violating the reverence for acts of worship.”

The DGSN added that it has received several complaints from citizens on the matter which prompted them to open a judicial investigation. Security

Oh no, the game is up, Trump is going to sign an executive order “on social media companies” so they will all have to salute and say “Sir yes sir!” and do what he says.

U.S. President Donald Trump will sign an executive order shortly regarding social media companies, a White House spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

Spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany made the remark to reporters aboard Air Force One, traveling with Trump to Washington from Florida a day after Twitter Inc attached a warning to some of his tweets prompting readers to fact-check the president’s claims.

White House says Trump will sign an executive order "pertaining to social media" tomorrow, but provides no details on what it might say or do.

Twitter’s new plan for dealing with Don the Liar’s tweets:

Sadly, it’s a joke, but it should be the reality.… Read the rest

Oh good, another one. Smart move, gym dude.

a group of young black entrepreneurs have owned a office building in uptown minneapolis for over a year& got racially profiled at the private gym today🤦🏾‍♀️smh pic.twitter.com/iKmAuW5Tli

— nisa (@anisalrh) May 27, 2020

This utter bozo demands to know what office they’re in, and then announces he’s calling 911 now.

I have to say, though, I don’t see anyone calling him a Bob or a Joe or a Kevin. It’s almost as if there is no generic name for a racist white guy who calls the manager.… Read the rest

Oh nothing, just declaring a set of people outside the law, as one does.

TERF’s, like all Nazis, have no right to a peaceful existence or steady employment. They have declared their support of fascism and have therefore declared their intent to directly harm the trans community wherever they’re found. They threaten the safety and dignity of others and therefore deserve none themselves until they choose to be human once more.

The usual caveats to the direct action approach apply. Be careful of misidentifying people. Attacking bystanders just makes TERF’s look sympathetic. Don’t do anything you can’t handle the consequences of.

Don’t kill them unless you’re sure they’re radical feminists.

Doxxing is another effective tool against fascists, just as

Now people are making death threats to Amy Cooper, and Christian Cooper is saying please stop that immediately.

Christian Cooper told CNN that he recently learned that Amy Cooper, who is unrelated, has been receiving death threats following her call — and he wants them to stop.

“I am told there has been death threats and that is wholly inappropriate and abhorrent and should stop immediately,” he said. “I find it strange that people who were upset that … that she tried to bring death by cop down on my head, would then turn around and try to put death threats on her head. Where is the logic in that? Where does that make any kind of sense?”

No death … Read the rest

Uh oh, protests:

Hundreds of protesters lined a south Minneapolis intersection Tuesday night calling for justice in the Memorial Day death of George Floyd after a video surfaced showing a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as the man told the officer repeatedly he couldn’t breathe.

The video sparked outrage across the country, and led to the firing of four officers tied to the incident. It also set triggered waves of anger that led to violent clashes in the rain Tuesday night between cops and protesters in south Minneapolis.

Protesters, some carrying signs saying “I can’t breathe,” spilled onto the street in front of Cup Foods, in 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South, where police were called about

So basically they’re working hard to…raise their own body count?

In perhaps his most overt effort to shun the wearing of masks, Trump retweeted a tweet from Fox News analyst Brit Hume ridiculing Joe Biden for appearing with a face mask during a Memorial Day ceremony in Delaware.

This might help explain why Trump doesn’t like to wear a mask in public. Biden today. pic.twitter.com/9l1gw1ljBE

— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 25, 2020

Trump hates the masks, Trump refuses to wear the mask, Trump keeps telling everyone the masks are voluntary. Last week he even made a point of saying he didn’t wear a mask in public view on his visit to the Ford plant because he didn’t want to give … Read the rest

Audubon Society statement on Incident in Central Park’s Ramble:

“Black Americans often face terrible daily dangers in outdoor spaces, where they are subjected to unwarranted suspicion, confrontation, and violence,” said Audubon SVP for State Programs Rebeccah Sanders, who is white. “The outdoors – and the joy of birds – should be safe and welcoming for all people. That’s the reality Audubon and our partners are working hard to achieve. We unequivocally condemn racist sentiments, behavior, and systems that undermine the humanity, rights, and freedom of Black people. We are grateful Christian Cooper is safe. He takes great delight in sharing New York City’s birds with others and serves as a board member of the New York City Audubon

The other horror yesterday was the police murder of George Floyd.

Four Minneapolis police officers have been fired after a black man was restrained by the neck and died in custody on Monday night. Bystander video captured a white police officer kneeling on the man’s neck for several minutes, despite the man’s pleas that he could not breathe. The man has been identified as George Floyd by an attorney for his family.

Kneeling on someone’s neck. Wtfffff.

The account from Darnella Frazier, who filmed the now-viral video showing part of the police encounter and said she watched Floyd being suffocated, differs from that of the police, who said Floyd was stopped because he matched the description of a

Zowie!

Newly discovered just outside of Verona, what could be this year's biggest discovery – an almost entirely intact Roman mosaic villa floor! pic.twitter.com/tZwy0yfvNL

— Myko Clelland (@DapperHistorian) May 26, 2020

H/t Rob… Read the rest

Graham Linehan asked a question.

I think it's useful to ask this question every now and then. What first made you realise that gender ideology was a load of harmful, homophobic, regressive, misogynistic tosh? https://t.co/r3qCP9UTRI

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) May 26, 2020

It was this, on a post about women and abortion rights.

Yes, if you’re going to talk about abortion rights please keep in mind that not all women are women and not all men are not-women.

Glinner goes on:

Ronson’s alarm showed me he was far more interested in protecting his career than protecting the girls in the photo. The kind of self-serving cowardice I wouldn’t have thought possible from anyone I knew personally.

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner)

Franklin Templeton has now fired Amy Cooper.

“I don’t think there’s an African American person in America who hasn’t experienced something like this at some point,” Christian Cooper, a 57-year-old science editor, told The Washington Post in an interview. “I don’t shy away from confronting the scofflaw when I see it. Otherwise, the park would be unusable — not just to us birders but to anybody who enjoys the beauty.”

Christian Cooper — who is not related to Amy — had gotten up early on Memorial Day to head to the Ramble, a heavily wooded section of Central Park designed to resemble a wild garden. With its rocky outcrops and thick canopy, the area makes for an especially inviting

Who is Christian Cooper? This guy.

This is Christian Cooper. pic.twitter.com/gOQyVztX5h

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) May 26, 2020

… Read the rest

Now there’s a headline:

He asked Twitter to remove Trump’s false tweets about his dead wife. Twitter refused.

Six times this month, in a vile attempt to punish a political rival, President Trump has tweeted about a decades-old conspiracy theory about MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.

Twitter (TWTR) has come under increasing pressure to remove the tweets, but the company is not bending, despite being called out by some of the people personally hurt by the posts.

This is the same Twitter that summarily bans women who say on Twitter that men are not women. Saying men are not women not only gets tweets deleted, it gets the women who say it permanently banished from the platform. That’s worth … Read the rest

Is that a fact.

➡️Transphobia is intolerance of gender diversity. It is based around the idea that there are only two sexes – male or female, which you stay in from birth. @GalopUK

— Student Support Services – University of Leicester (@uolsupport) May 26, 2020

It’s not an “idea” that humans are sexually dimorphic, it’s a fact. It’s an idea that humans are not sexually dimorphic and that there’s a joyous rich tapestry of sexes open to us: a silly, childish, fantasy-based idea.

It’s not any kind of phobia to refuse orders to agree with and endorse and submit to fantasy-based ideas, especially ones as sweeping and fundamental as that.… Read the rest

I watched this unfolding on Twitter yesterday afternoon and didn’t post about it because…skatey-eight million people already were posting about it, and some of the facts were unclear at the time. But given the lynching “in effigy” of the governor of Kentucky on Sunday, and the death by cop of yet another black guy in Minneapolis last night, and the facts that have been clarified by now – there are things worth saying.

The tweet that everyone was talking about yesterday:

Oh, when Karens take a walk with their dogs off leash in the famous Bramble in NY’s Central Park, where it is clearly posted on signs that dogs MUST be leashed at all times, and someone like my brother

This is horrifying to watch – more so than I expected. It’s “in effigy” so I didn’t think it would be all that disturbing, but I was wrong.

The song is deeply ironic. We are ashamed to be American right now.

Armed white men lynching Kentucky’s governor in effigy outside his home while children watch and Lee Greenwood blares in the background is peak 2020 America. https://t.co/CscsUG1u5j

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) May 25, 2020

… Read the rest