More on the apparent “tragic death of non-existent person” hoax from Ed Cara at Gizmodo:

A bizarre saga of events played out on social media over the weekend, embroiling much of the close-knit world of scientists, academics, and researchers on Twitter. It started with accusations that Arizona State University’s actions had exposed one of their faculty members, an Indigenous woman and anthropologist, to an ultimately fatal case of covid-19. But it ended with allegations that the death was a hoax, carried out by someone who also faked the supposed professor’s entire existence.

Given that many colleges and schools are debating if and how it’s possible to reopen physically this fall in the midst of the pandemic, the accusations of negligence

How that went:

Interviewer: John Lewis is lying in state in the US Capitol, how do you think history will remember John Lewis?

Trump: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He chose, uh – I never met John Lewis, actually, I don’t believe.

Interviewer: Do you find him impressive?

Trump: [pause with mouth open and disdainful “tsk” sound] Uhhh…I can’t say one way or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive – but – [shrug] no – but I didn’t uh – [hands come up in accordion gesture; meanwhile interviewer is asking “Do you find his story … Read the rest

An ego that blots out the sun and an empathy that can’t be found with any tool of human inquiry.

.@jonathanvswan: "How do you think history will remember John Lewis?"

President Trump to #AxiosOnHBO: "I don't know…I don't know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration." pic.twitter.com/LDv76rrIFc

— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020

… Read the rest

Trump has been shouting at us again.

Donald Trump used his White House coronavirus press conference on Monday to repeat his opposition to lockdowns as a means of bringing the contagion under control, claiming falsely that under his leadership the US has done “as well as any nation”.

If by “as well as” he means “worse than” he’s right on the money.

On a day that the US had surpassed 4.7m confirmed cases of infection – more than a quarter of the global total – Trump tried to deflect criticism of his administration’s handling of the pandemic on to other countries.

Finland! Blame Finland! Also Senegal – why not? And how about Peru? Blame Peru!

He cited Spain, Germany,

Sir about those tax returns sir.

A New York City prosecutor fighting to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns told a judge Monday he was justified in demanding them because of public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”

In other words we have a hardened criminal as president of the US. Ain’t life grand.

Manhattan District Attorney District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. is seeking eight years of the Republican president’s personal and corporate tax records, but has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records, other than part of the investigation related to payoffs to two women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Trump.

Probably a thousand newspaper articles … Read the rest

Weird occurrences on social media.

There’s an advocacy person called BethAnn McLaughlin who founded MeTooSTEM.

MeTooSTEM has accomplished much since it was founded in 2018 to fight sexual harassment in academic science. Since November alone, according to the group’s accounting, it has engaged with more than 750 individuals requesting assistance, filed hundreds of open-records requests about harassment cases and made dozens of complaints to funding agencies regarding researchers’ conduct.

The group has visited some 20 campuses to discuss federal laws governing gender-based discrimination and sexual misconduct in education, put on webinars and awarded $12,000 to advocates for women in science. Its founder BethAnn McLaughlin, also received the Disobedience Award from Massachusetts Institute of Techonolgy’s Media Lab last year, alongside

Transwoman Dawn Ennis summons allies to bully the women who don’t want to include men in women’s sports:

Outsports has obtained the names of more than 300 women athletes who signed a letter sent to the Board of Governors of the National College Athletic Association last week, expressing their opposition to transgender inclusion.

No, not to “transgender inclusion”; to the inclusion of men in women’s sports. Include trans women by all means, but not competing against women.

The anti-trans group, Save Women’s Sports, collected the 309 names in the interest of pressuring the NCAA leadership ahead of its meeting this week.

The group is not anti-trans. It’s in the name – the group is pro-women’s sports.

In June, the NCAA

Originally a comment by Claire on Losing sight of women’s rights.

If you have not witnessed these kind of shenanigans, then you are lucky. I am aware of several, including stories about the infamous Wakefield autism paper that should have gotten the editor fired, although in this case it was the other way around.

Two people I know were reviewers, who roundly rejected the paper citing grave concerns about methodology, result and conclusions. One said to me that they didn’t even think the introduction was good, failing to cite some seminal work that would have rather undermined his central premise. Two bad reviews from respected authors in the field should have been enough to kill it. Instead the editor … Read the rest

Over 300 female athletes send a private letter to the organisation that regulates sporting opportunities for students in the US asking for a fair playing field for women and girls.

The private letter is leaked by trans activists. /1https://t.co/o7GA6I44ka

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 3, 2020

These bullying tactics are plain for all to see. These transgender activists care little for fairness or safety. They strong arm their way into women’s sports excluding women as they go. This is why women are scared to speak up. This is why we do what we do. /3

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 3, 2020

The courage of women who do speak up in this hostile environment must be celebrated and not condemned /5

From the Department of New Milestones for Women –

A transgender female prisoner received her gender confirmation surgery after three years of legal battles, her attorney Lori Rifkin confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

Adree Edmo has been in custody of the Idaho Department of Correction since 2012 and petitioned for her gender confirmation surgery in 2017.

She was convicted of sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy while he was sleeping, according to court records.

That is, he was convicted of sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy while he (the boy) was sleeping. That isn’t something a woman did, it’s something a man did. Statistics on crime need to be accurate. Women are much less likely to rape teenage boys than men … Read the rest

Goodness, he is cross.

Radical right-wing pastor Greg Locke is apoplectic after being told by the manager that he needs to wear a mask when getting his coffee at Dunkin Donuts. pic.twitter.com/tiFrNGRc83

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 30, 2020

… Read the rest

Barr’s performance on Capitol Hill last week underlined how thoroughly he works for Trump and not for us.

During the five-hour session on Capitol Hill in Washington this week, Barr made clear why he has been dubbed Donald Trump’s faithful protector and personal henchman. He defended using federal forces in US cities, denied giving Trump’s allies favorable treatment and demurred on issues such as foreign election interference or whether November’s poll can be postponed.

For critics, it was proof positive that Barr’s unswerving loyalty to the president has torn down the wall that separates the White House and justice department and ensures law enforcement operates independent of politics. Some believe he now poses an existential threat to democracy itself.

Oh look, how funny, haha.

Navy SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce used “Colin Kaepernick stand-in" for K-9 demonstration at fundraiser last year #BecauseFlorida https://t.co/COHFCeJ3GN pic.twitter.com/EpcELHxrSe

— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) August 2, 2020

K-9 demonstration of dogs attacking a guy in a Kaepernick shirt.

The Guardian reports the Navy says it’s sorry.

The US Naval Special Warfare Command said Sunday it is investigating a video that showed military working dogs attacking a stand-in wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey during a demonstration at the Navy Seal Museum last year.

The video, first posted to Instagram in January 2019, resurfaced on social media on Sunday morning. The caption read: “Colin Kaepernick stand in Josh gets attacked by 5 Navy SEAL dogs for

The authors of the paper issued a statement on the attempt to shut them up:

This time last year, our article ‘Losing sight of women’s rights: the unregulated introduction of gender self-identification as a case study of policy capture in Scotland’ was published in the journal Scottish Affairs.

A couple of months prior to publication, we were made aware of an effort from within the publishing house, Edinburgh University Press (EUP), to prevent publication on the grounds that our article was transphobic.

This clarifies a point I didn’t fully grasp via the Times article – EUP simply publishes the journal Scottish Affairs, it doesn’t edit it or oversee it. The officious complainer works for EUP, not for Scottish Affairs. … Read the rest

Let’s shut it down just in case.

Three female academics have complained about an attempt to censor an article that had been accepted for publication in an academic journal published by Edinburgh University Press (EUP).

The women say they were falsely accused of being transphobic as a way to silence their views and stifle academic freedom. In recent years several women academics have had talks cancelled, articles refused or speaking dates withdrawn after transgender activists accused them of transphobia.

PhD student Lucy Hunter Blackburn and research fellow Dr Kath Murray, both at Edinburgh University, together with independent policy analyst Lisa Mackenzie make their claim in a submission to the Scottish parliament.

They are giving evidence in a consultation on

Trump continues to think he knows better than Fauci.

Donald Trump has again publicly contradicted Dr Anthony Fauci, claiming the US’s top infectious disease expert is “wrong” to attribute the surge in US coronavirus cases to the country’s failure to sufficiently shut down its economy.

The US president came in hot on Saturday after a lengthy-for-him 15-hour hiatus from Twitter, responding to a clip of Fauci’s testimony before Congress from Friday with the largely debunked claim that Covid-19 cases in the US are surging exclusively due to increased testing.

“Wrong!” Trump said. “We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases. How did Italy,

John Lewis wrote us a farewell letter in the New York Times, which is not behind the paywall.

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington,

The news that Jared Kushner wanted the virus to kill off Democrats hasn’t gone over well with everyone.

In the wake of devastating new reporting by Vanity Fair, a chorus of voices Friday called for the immediate resignation of Jared Kushner, a top White House advisor and the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, for disastrous—and deadly—failures by the administration that appear to have put the political desires of the president above the public health needs of the American people.

This is a total outrage. Jared Kushner commissioned and then abandoned a rational plan for dealing with #COVID19 because it would only affect blue states! Or so they thought. Jared Kushner should resign. https://t.co/Ni3JU1Lw7u

— Claire Finkelstein (@COFinkelstein) July

Apparently it has finally dawned on Trump that a lot of people really don’t like him. Really don’t like him.

You’d think he would have known that all his life, given what an up front unabashed asshole he is…except he’s a narcissist so if you understand about narcissists you wouldn’t think that. Understanding narcissists is not easy.

In a week that saw a devastating global pandemic worsen, a record economic meltdown confirmed and an all-out bid to stoke racial tensions for political gain deepen, Trump is finding himself more and more the odd man out: absent and detached from the leadership of either party, locked in antique cultural battles and increasingly unpopular among voters.

In other words most … Read the rest

Alexander Vindman

After 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian. I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by President Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career.

…

At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving.

Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants