The truck bomb in Mogadishu yesterday killed at least 230 people.

Hundreds more were wounded when a lorry packed with explosives detonated near the entrance of a hotel.

It is the deadliest terror attack in Somalia since the Islamist al-Shabab group launched its insurgency in 2007.

It is not clear who staged the bombing, but Mogadishu is a target for al-Shabab militants battling the government.

…

A BBC Somali reporter at the scene of the main blast said the Safari Hotel had collapsed, with people trapped under the rubble.

An eyewitness, local resident Muhidin Ali, told news agency AFP it was “the biggest blast I have ever witnessed, it destroyed the whole area”.

Meanwhile, the director of the Madina Hospital,

Even Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist who has been defending Trump in the Washington Post for months, is disgusted. Susan Glasser talked to him for a New Yorker piece.

And yet when I met Rogers, at his usual table in the back of the room at Tosca, the expensive but understated Italian restaurant across the street from his lobbying firm, where he goes to lunch almost every day, he was in no mood to defend Trump. The constant tweeting, the personal attacks on his own team, were taking a toll. “Every week!” Rogers said. “It’s surreal.” Then he paused, almost groaning when he asked, “Why does it have to be this way?”

Because Trump is what he is and … Read the rest

In Puerto Rico:

Jose Luis Rodriguez waited in line Friday to fill plastic jugs in the back of his pickup truck with water for drinking, doing the dishes and bathing.

But there is something about this water Rodriguez didn’t know: It was being pumped to him by water authorities from a federally designated hazardous-waste site, CNN learned after reviewing Superfund documents and interviewing federal and local officials.

But he has no other water source. More than 35% of Puerto Ricans still don’t have access to safe water. Without water, you die.

The water comes from a Superfund site but it’s not clear that the particular well in question is contaminated. The EPA is going to test it over the … Read the rest

Rebecca Solnit looks at the pathological absence of empathy it takes for men to exploit or destroy women in the horrifying way we see from the chopping up of Kim Wall to the reported abuse by Harvey Weinstein.

Underlying all these attacks is a lack of empathy, a will to dominate, and an entitlement to control, harm and even take the lives of others. Though there is a good argument that mental illness is not a sufficient explanation – and most mentally ill people are nonviolent – mass shooters and rapists seem to have a lack of empathy so extreme it constitutes a psychological disorder. At this point in history, it seems to be not just a defect from birth,

BuzzFeed published a story the other day on the secret life of Breitbart – specifically about its “legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, suburbia, and everywhere in between.”

“I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “But everyone who knows me also knows I’m not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots.

Krugman.

Start with a clear-eyed assessment of Trump's character: he basically has negative empathy — that is, enjoys seeing others hurt 2/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 13, 2017

Yes. That exactly describes him – not completely of course, but exactly. He loves seeing others hurt. He loves it all the more if he’s the one doing the hurting.

At this point, however, it's clear to everyone — probably even him — that he just can't do this president thing, and won't get better 4/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 13, 2017

So we're getting into the end game. He can't save his presidency. He can, however, still hurt a lot of people. And he surely wants to 6/

Boys will be boys.

Polly Toynbee was on Radio 4’s Today with a pompous bloviating Tory commentator –

If you didn’t hear Today, you can imagine what transpired. He took a swing at “our new establishment”, the “new elite … schmoozing and networking”, the “mass of people forever wagging fingers” and “telling us how to live our lives”. And as he did so, he betrayed again that curious paranoia of those who hold power, wealth and influence, and their defenders in the Tory press, pretending that they are the victims. For most of my life, the Tories have been in power, with brief social democratic interludes showing that democracy still functions, if intermittently. They are the captains of just

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on An ordinary, malignant symptom of systemic sexism.

It’s hardly surprising that Hollywood, or the movie industry in general, should be such a hotspot of misogyny and sexism when you look at some (most?) of the stuff it produces. A while back (inspired by Anita Sarkeesian) I went through my own movie collection (not a vast one, but not exactly tiny either) and tried to identify all the problems (from a feminist perspective) I could find. Unsurprisingly most of my movies failed to pass the Bechdel test. Objectification/sexualization of female characters etc. was obviously a recurring theme. The Damsel in Distress as well as the even darker Woman in Refrigerator trope* were depressingly … Read the rest

Twitter has a terrible record of dealing with long-term systematic harassment and abuse. I know this from personal experience; most of the people I know know it from personal experience. Hannah Jane Parkinson knows it.

It was a great development when Twitter introduced inline gifs and videos, but not so great when Jewish women routinely receive messages such as “go back to the gas chambers” and it somehow doesn’t violate their terms of service. Some 2.6 million antisemitic tweets were sent last year. One woman was even suspended for reporting a tweet that told her: “Welcome to Trump’s America. Welcome to the camps!”

Rose McGowan, however, the actor at the forefront of calling out Harvey Weinstein’s alleged