In South Dakota news:

South Dakota lawmakers killed a bill that would [have] required trans student athletes to compete according to their sex assigned at birth.

That is, their physical sex as opposed to their “gender identity.”

“We’re thrilled with the committee’s decision,” said Libby Skarin, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, in a statement. “No one is harmed by allowing transgender people to compete consistent with who they are. The committee’s motion to kill this bill sends a clear message of inclusion and acceptance for our transgender friends and neighbors and that there is no place for discrimination like this in South Dakota.”

Hmm. Is it true that no one is harmed by … Read the rest

First this.

There are countless photos of Stacey Abrams and her glorious smile.

Axios must have had to search to find an image to fit the “angry black woman” trope. pic.twitter.com/NvH5HrVOlV

— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath) January 29, 2019

Textbook: https://t.co/FSi0PmF4pZ

— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) January 29, 2019

And then an update.

https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1090353193731661828

I’m not sure what I think about it. There is more than one trope, and another trope is “women must not ever look angry or determined or authoritative or anything other than sweet.” To be honest in the first picture she doesn’t really look angry, to me, so much as…well, serious. Serious while talking. Do we want to flinch away from that?

I don’t think I do.… Read the rest

Ah those pesky breasts. What shall we do about them?

An African practice of “ironing” a girl’s chest with a hot stone to delay breast formation is spreading in the UK, with anecdotal evidence of dozens of recent cases, a Guardian investigation has established.

Community workers in London, Yorkshire, Essex and the West Midlands have told the Guardian of cases in which pre-teen girls from the diaspora of several African countries are subjected to the painful, abusive and ultimately futile practice.

…

“It’s usually done in the UK, not abroad like female genital mutilation (FGM),” [an anonymous activist] said, describing a practice whereby mothers, aunties or grandmothers use a hot stone to massage across the breast repeatedly in order to

Interesting. Public service media report on how Facebook helps advertisers target users of Facebook, and Facebook creates code to stop them. ProPublica is one:

A number of organizations, including ProPublica, have developed tools to let the public see exactly how Facebook users are being targeted by advertisers.

Now, Facebook has quietly made changes to its site that stop those efforts.

ProPublica, Mozilla and Who Targets Me have all noticed their tools stopped working this month after Facebook inserted code in its website that blocks them.

No transparency for you-oo, sorrreee.

“This is very concerning,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who has co-sponsored the Honest Ads Act, which would require transparency on Facebook ads. “Investigative groups like ProPublica need

Time to refresh our memories, again, on why Trump can’t enforce NDAs against people who work in his administration:

But such NDAs for government workers, when they go beyond prohibiting the disclosure of classified information, are unconstitutional on their face. I know, because I have litigated more pre-publication-review classification challenges against the government during the past 25 years than any other attorney. For decades, courts have made it clear that the government may not censor unclassified material, “contractually or otherwise.” Legal challenges during the 1970s and 1980s against the CIA settled the question that the government has no legitimate interest under the First Amendment in censoring unclassified information.

Oddly enough, Trump’s engorged ego doesn’t overrule that.

No

Asia Bibi is free to leave, at last.

Asia Bibi, the Christian farm labourer who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy, is expected to leave the country after the supreme court upheld her acquittal.

The court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to October’s ruling brought by an extreme Islamist party, which led violent protests across the country in the autumn and called for Bibi to be killed.

Bibi, who has been held at a secret location since her death sentence was overturned, could be flown out of the country within hours. Two of her children are reportedly already in Canada, which has offered Bibi asylum.

Her lawyer told reporters she will probably leave today. … Read the rest

Dave Ricks alerted me to this item in the CHE:

Two years ago, Harvard’s fraternities, sororities, and “final clubs,” which are not officially affiliated with the institution, faced an order from the university’s president: Go coed, or your members will lose the ability to hold campus-leadership positions and to be endorsed for outside scholarships. On Monday, Greek life struck back. A group of fraternities, sororities, and three students filed lawsuits against Harvard’s leaders, in both state and federal court, for allegedly discriminating against the organizations with the new policy.

It’s like single-sex schools and universities – I think they’re bad for male people and useful for female people. For similar reasons, all-white organizations are not the same kind of … Read the rest

Yer doin it rong.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have been ridiculed after it emerged that all of the winners of an initiative designed to foster gender equality in the workplace were men.

Well they have a gender too ya know!

“We are proud of the success of Emirati women and their role is central to shaping the future of the country,” a tweet from the official Dubai media office said. “Gender balance has become a pillar in our government institutions.”

But that doesn’t mean we nominate them for awards, for heaven’s sake. Let’s have a little common sense here.

However, according to rights groups, gender discrimination is still an entrenched problem across the UAE, particularly in

Oh christ he’s serious.

The question I think we all should be asking ourselves is: at this time in America when there's so much evidence that our political system is broken – that both parties at the extreme are not representing the silent majority of the American people – isn't there a better way? pic.twitter.com/Gy1wf1cf8F

— Howard Schultz (@HowardSchultz) January 28, 2019

What an idiot. We don’t need another one of those. The fucking silent majority for god’s sake? That Nixonian relic?

And he emphasizes “extreme” in that empty little word-porridge. “Both parties at the extreme” – the extreme of what? It’s ludicrous to pretend the Democrats are at the extreme left in the same sense that … Read the rest

Mister Starbucks shyly confesses his plans.

I love our country, and I am seriously considering running for president as a centrist independent.

— Howard Schultz (@HowardSchultz) January 28, 2019

In other words he’s hoping to throw another election to the orange criminal by running as a third party-er. So that right there is reason enough to tell him to fuck off.

But also…a centrist independent? Wtf? Center between what and what? Lunatic conservatives and reasonable conservatives? So, what, he’ll be a little bit wack but not as wack as Trump? Gee, that’s alluring.

We don’t need any new “centrists” because we’re already stuck between two conservative parties. People scream in horror about the extremism of Alexandra Ocasio Cortez because she … Read the rest

Siva Vaidhyanathan reminded us of this thing he wrote four years ago about Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz, who has apparently announced that he’s running for president ffs.

The next time you order one of those faux-Italian-named sweetened coffee drinks at a Starbucks store, you are likely to receive a cup with the hash-tagged words “Race Together” written on it, just above your misspelled name. If you ask the Starbucks employee what it’s about, she or he will tell you that it’s part of a new corporate initiative to inspire customers to discuss racial issues with employees and among themselves.

Dear god. Why would I want to do that? Why would anyone?

Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz is no

They’ve done it – on a Sunday afternoon. Everybody’s watching the game, so nobody will notice!

We notice.

Trump and his co-conspirators have lifted the sanctions on Deripaska.

The Trump administration on Sunday lifted sanctions on three companies, including the aluminum giant Rusal, linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Democrats had led a push in Congress to continue the restrictions.

Earlier this month, Senate Republicans blocked an effort to keep the sanctions on Rusal, En+ Group and JSC EuroSibEnergo.

Some lawmakers from both parties have said it is inappropriate to ease sanctions on companies tied to Deripaska, an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, while special counsel Robert Mueller investigates whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Moscow

Roger Stone is fighting back (or punching himself in the face – one of those.)

Since Friday, Stone has engaged in a blitz of media interviews, an unusual approach for someone who has been indicted.

Asked what he hopes to gain, Stone said he wanted to draw attention to what he saw as the inappropriate way his arrest took place.

“This was an expensive show of force to try to depict me as public enemy number one, the OG, to attempt to poison the jury pool,” Stone said, using a slang expression that means “original gangster.”

“These are Gestapo tactics,” he said.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) later told ABC that Stone used arguments that are typical

James Kirkup points out that Women get treated far worse than men in Labour’s transgender debate.

[I]f general run-of-the-mill Twitter is angry and stupid, gender-identity Twitter is angry and stupid on steroids. Simply liking the ‘wrong’ bit of content on Twitter can have you branded a transphobic witch and burned at the electronic stake, at least if you’re a woman. No one, or more accurately, no woman, is safe from the online inquisition’s charges of transphobia. You might think that JK Rowling was about as insulated as a person can be from online vitriol, since she’s lovely, kind, thoughtful, the creator of the world’s most popular wizard – and a billionaire. But you’d be wrong, because even JK has

The CBC points out that men who think they are owed sexual access to women are a large and threatening group. Quite a few of them are murderous.

Involuntary celibates or incels are an online brotherhood of men who say they are unsuccessful in their romantic attempts with women.

Romantic attempts? Sexual attempts, mostly. They want access a lot more than they want cozy evenings in front of the fireplace.

Incels interact in forums online, like 4chan, Reddit and a few public incel boards, and even on popular social media platforms including Facebook and YouTube. They often express extreme feelings of misogyny and hatred.

In the worst cases, their online misogyny turns to violent fantasies, where many online encourage

In memory of

In memory of Charlotte Shalomon, Yva, Malva Schalek and Otti Berger, Jewish artists murdered in Nazi concentration camps, among the 17 million victims of the Holocaust #womensart

#HolocaustMemorialDay pic.twitter.com/UqyaCzeHPw

— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) January 27, 2019

 … Read the rest

Perfectly normal, not a problem, move along, don’t stand there gaping. Trump meets with off the charts lunatic right-wing activist who is married to a Supreme Court justice.

President Trump met last week with a delegation of hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, listening quietly as members of the group denounced transgender people and women serving in the military, according to three people with direct knowledge of the events.

For 60 minutes Mr. Trump sat, saying little but appearing taken aback, the three people said, as the group also accused White House aides of blocking Trump supporters from getting jobs in the administration.

It is unusual for the spouse of a sitting

CNN is rubbing his nose in it.

The most shocking thing about Trump’s statement announcing the end of the shutdown was how diminished the President seemed.

He appeared to acknowledge his weakness later in a tweet he posted after absorbing the unflattering TV news coverage of his climbdown.

“I wish people would read or listen to my words on the Border Wall. This was in no way a concession,” he insisted.

Hours before, aides had clapped as Trump entered the Rose Garden, often a setting reserved for grand presidential victory laps.

The man who bills himself as the ultimate winner was forced to disguise the most humbling loss of his two years in power.

Geddit? He lost. He’s … Read the rest