Nicholas Kristof on Trump on Saudi Arabia and MBS and Khashoggi:

Turkey claims to have audiotape of Saudi interrogators torturing Jamal and killing him in the Saudi Consulate. None of this is confirmed, and we still don’t know exactly what happened; we all pray that Jamal will still reappear. But increasingly it seems that the crown prince, better known as M.B.S., orchestrated the torture, assassination and dismemberment of an American-based journalist using diplomatic premises in a NATO country.

That is monstrous, and it’s compounded by the tepid response from Washington. President Trump is already rejecting the idea of responding to such a murder by cutting off weapons sales. Trump sounds as if he believes that the consequence of such

Why are we so cozy with Saudi Arabia, again?

Each year, Saudi Arabia employs, through consultants or otherwise, a host of retired American generals, diplomats, intelligence experts and others. Until now, they could assure themselves this was a win-win: lucrative for them, to be sure, but also enhancing mutual understanding with an important U.S. ally.

Now, as more and more evidence implicates Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the reported murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Saudi diplomatic property in Istanbul, the equation has changed.

Not really. Saudi Arabia is a theocratic hell-hole that abuses women and girls, foreigners, atheists, dissenters – most people it can reach, in fact. The murder of Khashoggi is … Read the rest

Talk about shameless…

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1050840825842860032… Read the rest

More shameless voter suppression, this time in North Dakota.

The high court decided 6 to 2 Tuesday to leave in place a state law that requires residents to provide an ID displaying a residential address rather than a P.O. box number to vote. Republican lawmakers who pushed for the measure say the rule is designed to combat voter fraud.

But tribal officials and Democrats say it appears aimed at making it harder for thousands of Native Americans to vote, particularly those who live on reservations without conventional street names. The law specifically bans the use of P.O. boxes as an alternative form of address, rendering many tribal ID cards invalid.

But tribal officials have a plan.

Native American activists

Back in March there were news stories about Jared Kushner sharing intelligence with the Saudi dictators.

Jared Kushner discussed classified information from the president’s daily briefing with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who bragged that he had Kushner “in his pocket,” The Intercept reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed source.

Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser,had access to the briefing, a highly sensitive intelligence update meant to be seen by only the president and his top advisers, before being stripped of his top-secret security clearance last month.

And, if this is accurate, he blabbed about it. To Saudi assistant-dictator Mohammed bin Salman, who apparently had Jamal Khashoggi killed last week.

When Salman

Jane Clare Jones explains to us about deconstruction and social construction and identity and trans doctrine.

The notion of identity, and what we mean by identity, is key to this whole story. And the infinite irony of the way mangled-post-structuralism is currently washing around in the background of this debate is that if I had to sum up the core of deconstruction in one line, I’d say ‘it’s the critique of identity.’ That is, deconstruction properly interpreted is actually a really useful tool for explaining what’s so wrong with trans rights claims that ‘I AM WHAT I SAY I AM,’ and ‘I am the determinant of my identity,’ and, equally, the idea that identity is ‘a simple case of individual

Originally a comment by latsot on The AI did not like women.

The interesting part (well. at least to people like me) is this:

It penalized resumes that included the word “women’s,” as in “women’s chess club captain.” And it downgraded graduates of two all-women’s colleges, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nobody told it to take notice of the word “women’s”, it worked that out all by itself. This is one of the deeper problems of machine learning: the software can generate unexpected concepts and make decisions based on them and there’s often no way to know this is happening. Sometimes these concepts can perform well in a task, but then start to do badly when input … Read the rest

The Post reports that Turkey says there is video of the torture and murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

The recordings show that a Saudi security team detained Khashoggi in the consulate after he walked in Oct. 2 to obtain an official document before his upcoming wedding, then killed him and dismembered his body, the officials said.

The audio recording in particular provides some of the most persuasive and gruesome evidence that the Saudi team is responsible for Khashoggi’s death, the officials said.

Turkey doesn’t want to share the recordings because they’re not supposed to be spying on other people’s consulates.

Mohammed has billed himself as a reformer and moderating force in Saudi Arabia, and he has become a key strategic

So nice, everyone wants Ivanka Trump to be the new United Nations Ambassador. She would be incredible, but I can already hear the chants of Nepotism! We have great people that want the job.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2018

Special meaning of “everyone” – everyone he talks to, everyone on Fox, everyone in his administration.

Actually, in reality, probably not even all of them. Trump’s abysmal theory of mind is quite capable of translating one person who nervously said (when asked) that it would be okay into everyone actively wanting it.

Because why would anyone actually want Ivanka Trump as UN ambassador? She’s a fashion marketer with no obvious intelligence and very obviously no expertise or knowledge. … Read the rest

About that citizenship question on the census…

Wilbur Ross spoke with Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, before including on the 2020 census a question about people’s citizenship, the Justice Department said in a court document that appears to contradict what the commerce secretary told Congress.

The disclosure came in a lawsuit by more than a dozen states, cities and advocacy groups seeking to block the U.S. from asking the question, claiming it’s discriminatory and designed to reduce the accuracy of the count by cutting participation.

In other words, Ross “appears to” have lied to Congress. That’s a no-no.

Ross has denied speaking to Bannon, a vocal opponent of immigration, telling a congressional committee in March that

John Kelly really doesn’t like women.

Remember the lies he told about Representative Frederica Wilson? It was just a year ago.

Kelly claimed Wilson had boasted of securing “$20 million” in federal funding to build a new FBI field office in Miami during the dedication ceremony for the building in 2015. He also called the congresswoman an empty barrel, saying her remarks focused more on her own actions than the heroism of the two FBI agents for whom the new building had been named.

But a Sun Sentinel video of the building dedication ceremony confirmed that she had not taken credit for the building’s funding.

Asked Monday if he felt like he needed to apologize for his comments about

Oh good grief.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are taking their show on the road.

You what? What show? They’re not performers.

The famous political couple, who individually charge well into six figures for an address, is launching a 13-city joint public speaking tour of the U.S. and Canada titled “An Evening with the Clintons” that kicks off Nov. 18 in Las Vegas.

Ew. Ew ew ew. The famous centrist couple, who have been way too cozy with the billionaire set all along, want you to give them even more money for the high privilege of watching them talk some more. Can you say “vanity project”?

The tickets are expensive; surprise surprise.

“Experience a one-of-a-kind conversation with two individuals who

Reuters reports:

Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

Garbage in garbage out, ya know. Misogyny in misogyny out. Underestimation of women in underestimation of women out.

The trouble is, they used resumes from the past ten years to train the computer models, and most of those came from – you’ll never guess – men.

Top U.S. tech companies have yet to close the gender gap in hiring, a disparity most pronounced among technical staff such as software developers where men far outnumber women. Amazon’s experimental recruiting engine followed the same pattern, learning to penalize resumes including the word “women’s” until the company discovered the problem.

Did … Read the rest

The Post has more on Trump’s refusal to say “boo” to Saudi Arabia:

President Trump said Thursday that “it would not be acceptable to me” to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the disappearance last week of a Washington Post columnist after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said he was open to other actions but questioned the wisdom of not selling military weapons, saying Saudi Arabia could instead turn to Russia or China, hurting U.S. defense companies.

“What good does that do us?” Trump asked.

Spoken like a true narcissist. The issue isn’t doing us good, the issue is not supporting a regime that murders dissenters.… Read the rest