Talia Lavin explains the profound meaning of “Learn to Code.”

Last Thursday, I received the news that the HuffPost Opinion section—where I’d been opining on a weekly basis for a few months—had been axed in its entirety. The same opinion column had had a home at The Village Voice for some 21 weeks before that entire publication shuttered as well. “This business sucks,” I tweeted, chagrined at the simple fact that I kept losing my column because of the cruel, ongoing shrinkage of independent journalism in the United States. Dozens of jobs were slashed at HuffPost that day, following a round of layoffs at Gannett Media; further jobs were about to be disappeared at BuzzFeed. It was a grim day for the media, and I just wanted to channel my tiny part of the prevailing gloom.

I follow a lot of journalists and columnists so I saw a lot of tweets about that grim day for the media.

Then the responses started rolling in—some sympathy from fellow journalists and readers, then an irritating gush of near-identical responses: “Learn to code.” “Maybe learn to code?” “BETTER LEARN TO CODE THEN.” “Learn to code you useless bitch.” Alongside these tweets were others: “Stop writing fake news and crap.” “MAGA.” “Your opinions suck and no one wants to read them.” “Lmao journalists are evil wicked cretins. I wish you were all jail [sic] and afraid.”

She looked at the mentions of a lot of other journalists and columnists and saw the same swarming. She suspected a coordinated attack.

My suspicions were confirmed when conservative figures like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. joined the pile-on, revealing the ways in which right-wing hordes have harnessed social media to discredit and harass their opponents.

Been there, seen that, got no T shirt.

Often hatched in the internet’s right-wing cesspools, these campaigns unleash a mass of harassment on unsuspecting targets. 4chan’s /pol/ board—a gathering-place for people who want to say the n-word freely, vilify feminists, and opine on nefarious Jewish influence—has an oversize role in organizing brigade attacks, in part due to the fact that all its users are anonymous.

While it’s difficult to trace the origins of brigading—like most of internet history, its beginnings are ephemeral—the term, and its tactics, came to new prominence during the loosely organized and militantly misogynist harassment campaign known now as GamerGate, which unfolded over the course of 2014 and 2015.

I remember it well. First GamerGate, then Trump. It’s almost as if there’s a pattern.

And another thing about this business of the police calling people on the phone to “raise awareness” of complaints about a blog post that says cadavers reveal sex…

“A number of people”. Trans rights activists are using the police to harass people with gender critical views. HOW IS THIS NOT BIGGER NEWS? https://t.co/1Z8P8Ihb2n

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) February 4, 2019

Another thing about that…What the hell makes them think anyone needs awareness raised when social media already exist? Not to mention phones, and Margaret Nelson said she’s easy to find. The people who have complaints can express them to Nelson; what makes the police think they need to help out? Since when is it part of the police’s job to amplify tweets and blog comments?

Also…they are the police. They don’t just “raise awareness” by phoning people early in the morning to say there’s bin complaints about u. They scare the bejeezus out of people by doing that. And guess what, they’re perfectly well aware of it. A phone call from the police to report complaints about your activities is not just a friendly sharing of information, and they fucking know it.

So don’t give us this “for no other reason” shit. They are the police. They’re not in the business of “raising awareness” of random gripes, they’re in the business of putting the frighteners on people, as well as of forcibly arresting people when need arises. They are the police. They’re not an arm of Twitter, they’re not social media outreach assistants, they are the police.

Anyway what do they mean “for no other reason”? Why do they think awareness needs raising at all? They don’t call us to raise our awareness of the sale on at Tesco, so why would they call us to raise our awareness of “comments made online”? Other than to give us a very broad hint that we should stop doing whatever it is we’re doing?

The answer: they fucking wouldn’t. Calling us to “raise our awareness” of complaints is telling us to shut up. It’s the police, telling us to shut up, because men who want us to pretend they are women have been whining to the police about us. That’s what it is.

You have got to be kidding.

What a way to start the day! 2 early cold callers, one saying they're from the "call-blocking department", and a policewoman to tell me my online activity has caused offense to "transgenders", though she agreed a blog post wasn't untrue. Whoever's been offended tracked me down!

— Margaret Nelson (@Flashmaggie) February 4, 2019

The police. PHONING. Phoning to tell you your “online activity” has “caused offense.”

What blog post?

This blog post was mentioned. Apparently it's offensive.https://t.co/tnXG8VDLkW

— Margaret Nelson (@Flashmaggie) February 4, 2019

Let’s read it, to see if we can find what “caused offense” and of what type the caused “offense” was.

It starts with a tweet.

https://twitter.com/SamanthaMesse10/status/954267968183193600

It goes on to point out that cadavers are easy to sex.

If a transgender person’s body was dissected, either for medical education or a post-mortem examination, his or her sex would also be obvious to a student or pathologist. Not the sex that he or she chose to present as, but his or her natal sex; the sex that he or she was born with. Even when a body has been buried for a very long time, so that there is no soft tissue left, only bone, it is still possible to identify the sex. DNA and characteristics such as the shape of the pelvis will be clear proof of the sex of the corpse. Any surgery that had been intended to make someone appear different from his or her biological sex, the sex they were born with, will make no difference. It will still be obvious. There is a very small number of people who are described as intersex, because their anatomy isn’t typical of a male or female, but their existence doesn’t validate the claim that a man can be a woman or vice versa. They are very different from transgender people. So no, in life or in death, trans women are not women, no matter how many times you say it’s so. It’s simply impossible to change your sex.

It’s a factual question, not a political one, yet we keep being told it is factual (see the tweet from Sammy68). And the police call Margaret Nelson on the phone to tell her that her factual statements have “caused offense.” It’s both ludicrous and terrifying.

Mind you the police did later tell her it was just to “raise awareness.” But to what end? The police don’t normally call us up to tell us somebody disliked one of our tweets or blog posts, so why this time? Why? Why? Why? What red flag is up in what bureaucracy that warns police departments all over the UK that they have to be hypervigilant about perceived “offense” in blog posts and tweets about whether or not men can become women?

Hi Margaret, we had a number of people contact us on social media about the comments made online. A follow-up call was made for no other reason than to raise awareness of the complaints. Kind regards, Web Team.

— Suffolk Police (@SuffolkPolice) February 4, 2019

Funny how the police never phone up the angry men who target feminist women for days and weeks and months on end.

I’ve seen headlines saying the Trump administration started grabbing children away from their parents at the southern border a lot earlier than it had admitted, but I didn’t follow them up. I should have. The law library blog at Stanford collected some blood-chilling details.

Via Truthdig:

Following reports on Thursday that federal officials forcibly separated thousands more migrant children from their families than previously reported, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D.-Ore.) released a document to NBC News revealing the Trump administration intended to “traumatize children and intentionally create a humanitarian crisis at the border.”

…

The December 2017 draft memo—which Merkley shared with NBC News after receiving it from a government whistleblower—shows that Trump administration officials wanted to deport children more quickly by denying them asylum hearings after taking them away from their parents.

Daily Kos:

Toss a few more on the vast pile of lies we know the Trump administration has told about its cruel family separation policy. Sen. Jeff Merkley released a draft memo, leaked by a whistleblower, showing that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security thoroughly gamed out different ways they could tear children from their parents and use it as a deterrent to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border.

The memo dates to December 2017, when border crossings were dramatically lower than in December 2016, yet is titled “Policy Options to Respond to Border Surge of Illegal Immigration.” In the memo and in comments on it, Trump administration officials floated the possibility of taking children from their parents but then denying them a hearing before an immigration judge and deporting the whole family—without necessarily reunifying them first. “It appears that they wanted to have it both ways,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said. “To separate children from their parents but deny them the full protections generally awarded to unaccompanied children.”

The draft memo also considered restricting green cards available to abused, abandoned, or neglected children, as well as previewing the policy of intensive background checks of people who agreed to sponsor unaccompanied migrant children. Publicly, the Trump administration claims that this is for the safety of the children—children they held in detention camps—but the memo acknowledged that the policy would lead to kids being held longer.

A lot of Trump administration policies are based on whim-tweets by Donald Trump and then implemented by his loyal flunkies. This was not. This was carefully gamed-out cruelty to children.

And to parents through their children, which is excruciating, and monstrous.

It seems the Washington Post ran a rather compelling ad during the “Super Bowl” yesterday, expanding on its post-Trump inauguration masthead slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Paul Farhi explained in February 2017:

The Washington Post added a new phrase beneath its online masthead this week — “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — and the commentary flowed immediately. The slogan quickly trended on Twitter, drawing tweets even from the People’s Daily newspaper in China. It was fodder for a few late-night cracks from Stephen Colbert, who suggested some of the rejected phrases included “No, You Shut Up,” “Come at Me, Bro” and “We Took Down Nixon — Who Wants Next?”

Why that particular quartet of words? It goes back to Woodward, who says he got it from a judicial opinion, which Farhi traces back to

Judge Damon J. Keith, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, who ruled in a pre-Watergate era case that the government couldn’t wiretap individuals without a warrant. In his decision, Keith apparently coined a variation on The Post’s motto, writing that “Democracy dies in the dark.”

Flatter, isn’t it. “The dark” just sounds like what you find in the back of the closet; “darkness” is more spooky, more abstract and general, more of a metaphor.

So anyway. Keep lighting candles and passing them around.

Lynne Featherstone celebrates LGBT history month with the Liberal Democrats:

We have a long way to go.

It is our duty and responsibility to fight for equal rights everywhere we can. For LGBT+ people to express who they are, without fear. For trans people to be seen as people and welcomed into all spaces. For people of any sexuality and gender to come and live here without persecution.

Wait a second.

First – who doesn’t see trans people as people? That’s a red herring. The issue isn’t whether they’re people or not, the issue is whether they can change material reality just by declaration.

And second – welcomed into all spaces? Like, for instance, into all our living rooms, even if we’re busy? That’s a ludicrous demand. Nobody is welcomed into all spaces, and that’s ok. We get to have some personal space, and we also get to have some social spaces where we can choose whom to welcome. Yes, that does include spaces for women, and that can mean literal / physical / natal women only if that’s what the women in question want.

But it turns out that Lynne Featherstone is downright hostile to women who decline to pretend that trans women are women exactly as women are.

I also have a message to those people who believe they can restrict trans women’s rights, deny their human rights, or exclude them from women-only spaces in the name of feminism: You are not feminists. Your views are not welcome in the Liberal Democrats.

I don’t know of any feminists who want to restrict trans women’s rights or deny their human rights; that’s another red herring. But the third item? Feminist women are not allowed to exclude men who say they “identify as” women from women-only spaces? That’s another matter, and I don’t think it’s one that Lynne Feathersone gets to adjudicate quite that abruptly. I also don’t think she gets to try to exclude feminist women from the Liberal Democrats quite that abruptly or to re-define feminism so that it excludes women who think that men are not women so abruptly.

Originally a comment by Seth on 13 bible verses.

I just watched an interview wherein Neil deGrasse Tyson sat in Stephen Colbert’s chair and interviewed Stephen as a guest on his own show (I suspect, since they’ve been such good friends over the last fourteen years, they thought it was a welcome change of pace to have the conversation go somewhat the other way). The slice of conversation relevant to my point here begins at the 6:15 mark, though there is more context and banter that can also work to frame it from the preceding minute or two.

In summary, Tyson, who is publicly agnostic in the most milquetoast way but obviously an atheist in every way that matters, asks Colbert, who is perhaps the most famous progressive Catholic in the world, how he resolved his desire to know and his respect for the evidence with the tensions of his faith; Colbert rejected this as a false dichotomy, in a friendly but nevertheless tension-inducing way, and he went on to describe his faith as the answer to ‘why is there something rather than nothing’. It was founded upon his deep and utter gratitude at existing, his inability to explain why, and his personal tradition of channeling that majestic awe through the framework of Catholicism and, more specifically, his ‘…gratitude for Christ, through Him all things were made’.

Which, naturally, got uproarious applause from the progressive audience, who doubtless felt their heartstrings pulled by such piety; and it got an indulgent non-response from Tyson, who doubtless judged his comradeship the better part of valour. And, arguably to his credit but I think ultimately to his shame, Colbert defused the tension by saying he was ‘…taught by intellectual Catholics who believed you could be a Catholic and still question your Church’, and followed up with a joke about how the proper term for such a belief was being a Protestant.

And, of course, Stephen Colbert is not personally responsible for this sort of tragedy. The members of his church are likewise blameless. But the high-minded personal faith he espouses in that banter, the guiding light and reassuring answer to the mystery of his existence, is inextricably bound up in the same base urges and failed pattern-seeking that led this little band of psychopaths to feel righteous for torturing a child to death. They come from the same taproot, the same wellspring of desire for order and for answers.

This sort of thing is what inevitably happens when one group of apes holds itself as beyond any critique or inquiry, and the very same faith that Colbert espouses is the most reliable source of such constructions. And the Colberts of the world are somehow never held to account for this.

They are, disgustingly, applauded.

A pretty story about faith and discipline:

Three [people] have been charged in the death of a 7-year-old Wisconsin boy who, according to a criminal complaint, was punished for not knowing Bible verses.

“Punished” in the sense of being slowly murdered.

Timothy Hauschultz, his wife Tina Hauschultz and their 15-year-old son Damian Hauschultz have all been charged in the death of Ethan Hauschultz. Ethan died in April 2018 from hypothermia and blunt force trauma to the head, chest and abdomen.

…

WLUK TV reports that Timothy ordered Ethan to haul a 44-pound log around for two hours a day for a one-week period. Damian told the police that while Timothy picked out the logs for Ethan and his twin, who was given the same punishment, he was instructed by his father to supervise the enacting of it.

“Ethan had been performing punishment ordered by Timothy which required Ethan to carry a heavy wooden log, weighing approximately two-thirds his body weight, while being monitored by Timothy’s 15-year-old son,” a release from the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office says.

The punishment was for “not knowing 13 Bible verses to Timothy’s satisfaction,” WLUK TV reports.

How old was the murdered child, again?

Oh yes: 7.

A medical examiner’s report indicates that there were injuries on Ethan’s body, including blunt force trauma to the head, abdomen and chest as well as a fractured rib. Those injuries correspond with Damian’s statement to police that he thought he had struck Ethan 100 times. He also allegedly hit Ethan’s twin.

“Over the course of 1-1.5 hours, the 15-year-old hit, kicked, struck and poked Ethan numerous times. He repeatedly shoved Ethan to the ground and rolled the heavy log across Ethan’s chest. He stood on his body and head while Ethan was face-down in a puddle,” the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office said.

Damian also admitted to authorities that he covered Ethan with snow, placing him “in his own little coffin of snow,” the criminal complaint says.

Amen.

But I've felt that all my life. Wrong body, wrong family, wrong century, wrong country.

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) February 2, 2019

No, I don’t think so, I think those are two different things. Glinner means literal “born into the wrong body” and I think that’s not what Pullman means. I think Pullman is talking about not feeling entirely at home in one’s circumstances, and longing for different ones – a kind of homesickness, it can be, or a feeling of other possibilities and wishing one could live them. I think lots of us or maybe most of us have at least glimpses of that. But the current orthodoxy about being “born in the wrong body” is very literal, and backed up with menaces. It’s the opposite of imaginative, and it also tends strongly toward narcissism.

Mister Coffee, again, defending the honor of billionaires.

Howard Schultz: "We shouldn't get to a place where there are people yelling from the rafters that because you have been successful, you are a bad person and we're going to be punitive to you. That's, to me, the antithesis of the spirit of the country." pic.twitter.com/73to3c0Tee

— The Hill (@thehill) February 2, 2019

It’s interesting that he thinks “the spirit of the country” has something to do with being nice (grateful? subservient? flattering?) to rich people. It’s interesting that he apparently doesn’t give the tiniest of shits about the millions of people in the country who struggle to keep from going under, and dragging their children with them. He doesn’t seem to be even aware that “the spirit of the country” seems all too comfortable with letting people go under because they get sick, because they lose a job, because they work two jobs and still can’t make rent, because they tried to acquire some higher education and got overwhelmed by debt, because they got injured on the jobs and then got addicted to opioids, because their job disappeared when the company moved to Mexico or outsourced the work to China. Our biggest problems here have nothing to do with how much we bow and scrape to rich people, and Mister Coffee’s egotistical concern with such a thing is fucking contemptible.

Makin’ history, people – a new tv show on the way with a – hold on to your chairs – a non-binary character. Are you verklempt?

US television network The CW has ordered a new pilot for a series that will feature a non-binary lead character.

Glamorous – which is written and directed by Jordon Nardino of Desperate Housewives – will make history when it airs as the first US television show with a non-binary lead character, according to Digital Spy.

The show will follow a non-binary character who lands an internship at a cosmetics company whose products they have criticised on YouTube.

I’ve got goosebumps.

Only…what does it mean? Not woman, not man, neither, non-binary, I know – but what does that mean? Not many people are fully “binary” in the sense of “conforming to the stereotypes that match their sex” – and what other sense can it have? It doesn’t mean intersex, so what can it mean other than not conforming to gender roles in every particular? Well big honkin’ deal; who does conform to gender roles in every particular? It’s just a new and more boring way to be self-obsessed, and we don’t need any of those.

Speaking of measles outbreaks caused by damn fools who refuse to vaccinate their children, in 2015 NPR did an explainer about how the measles vax appears to cause huge drops in other infectious diseases too.

Back in the 1960s, the U.S. started vaccinating kids for measles. As expected, children stopped getting measles.

But something else happened.

Childhood deaths from all infectious diseases plummeted. Even deaths from diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea were cut by half.

Scientists saw the same phenomenon when the vaccine came to England and parts of Europe. And they see it today when developing countries introduce the vaccine.

“In some developing countries, where infectious diseases are very high, the reduction in mortality has been up to 80 percent,” says Michael Mina, a postdoc in biology at Princeton University and a medical student at Emory University.

“So it’s really been a mystery — why do children stop dying at such high rates from all these different infections following introduction of the measles vaccine,” he says.

Mina and his colleagues think they now might have an explanation. And they published their evidence Thursday in the journal Science.

The gist is that measles appears to wipe out existing immunities to other diseases for three or four years. It’s interesting; read on.

It’s also another reason to get the god damn vaccine.

To the incredibly brave women all over the world who wear the hijab despite the islamophobia & discrimination that exists, I am proud to be standing with you. The crown on your head is a symbol of our religion & there aren’t enough words to express our gratitude. #WorldHijabDay pic.twitter.com/OJeS3RWfNb

— Yasin (@yescene) February 1, 2019

And yet, he doesn’t wear the “crown” himself. Why is it only the female half who is told to wear it? If it’s a symbol of their religion why doesn’t he wear it? If he’s so grateful why doesn’t he wear it?

The Times (London of that ilk) reports that students are being told they can’t ban speakers for “transphobia.”

Feminists who believe that transgender women are still men should not be barred from speaking at universities because their views do not break the law, students have been told.

What an odd way of putting it. We’re not the ones using our “beliefs” as bludgeons here. It’s not a matter of believing trans women are men, it’s just a matter of acknowledging obvious and slightly banal facts. It’s the people who insist that trans women are women [in every possible sense] who are resorting to beliefs, not the people who say no, the word “trans” isn’t that magical. By the same token we don’t believe dogs aren’t cats and oak trees aren’t daffodils, we just recognize the facts of the matter.

The guidance has been written by the Equality and Human Rights Commission with the National Union of Students and university leaders.

The guidance says that hate speech has “no legal meaning. The criminal law balances the right to freedom of expression with the protection of individuals and communities from threats, abuse and harassment both on and offline. Where this line is crossed, the perpetrator may be prosecuted.”

Universities have struggled most with the issue of transsexual rights. Linda Bellos, a feminist, has had invitations to speak revoked, and there have been attempts to stop Germaine Greer speaking. In November Dame Jenni Murray, the broadcaster, pulled out of an event at the Oxford University History Society after demonstrations were threatened. All have been accused of transphobia for expressing the view that trans women cannot lay claim to full womanhood. The guidance makes clear that this view is “lawful” and that a decision to “no-platform” the speaker or revoke an invitation would breach their right to free speech and that of students to “receive ideas”.

The view is lawful; imagine that!

It could be fatal to drive a car with expired tabs in Detroit if you’re not white.

A veteran Detroit police officer has been demoted and reassigned after posting a Snapchat video showing a black woman whose car he had just impounded walking home alone while he and another officer make derogatory remarks about her to each other in the background.

Meanwhile, pre-made captions that say “What black girl magic looks like” and “celebrating Black History Month” appear at the bottom.

A very young woman: a teenage girl. And this was Tuesday night, during the polar vortex.

The Snapchat video, which was first published by ABC affiliate WXYZ, shows the woman walking away down a snow-covered street.

“Priceless,” one of the officers says.

“Walk of shame,” the other responds.

“In the cold,” the first one says again. Later one of the two says, “Bye, Felicia.”

The temperature low on Tuesday was 2 degrees in Detroit, according to AccuWeather.

People died in the polar vortex.

Steele* has had issues with the law himself. In 2008, he was charged with attacking an ex-girlfriend and firing a gun near her head, according to the Detroit News. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was able to keep his job at the police department, the newspaper reported.

*one of the cops

Maybe he shouldn’t have been able to keep his job at the police department, huh? Maybe violent people don’t make the best cops?

It’s time for Bangladesh’s annual book fair…but watch out.

DMP chief warns against publishing books that hurt religious sentiments

Legal action will be taken against writers and publishers if any book hurting religious sentiment or disrupting communal harmony is published at this year’s Amar Ekushey Book Fair, Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia has said.

He made the comments while inspecting the security measures at the annual event’s venues—Bangla Academy and Suhrawardy Udyan in Dhaka—on Thursday morning.

“We have requested writers and publishers not to bring any book that can hurt religious sentiments, or instigate communal violence,” he said.

Any book that can hurt religious sentiments? That would be almost any book, because people who are determined to find something that Hurts their Sentiments can nearly always do so.

More to the point, if any place needs books that challenge religious sentiments, it’s Bangladesh (along with a lot of other places). If any subject in the world needs challenging, it’s religion, especially patriarchal religion. Is Islam a patriarchal religion? Yes, it is. Islam in many places has a nasty habit of grinding women into the dirt. This is, ultimately, human beings giving themselves permission slips in the form of “religious sentiments,” but that’s exactly why such sentiments need challenging.

A committee under Bangla Academy, aside from police detectives, has been formed to monitor books scheduled to be published for the month-long book fair that is slated to start on February 1.

“If we receive information about any such book, the committee will evaluate them first. Then, legal measures will follow, if necessary, in line with the law, related to the type of crime,” he said.

Yeah great. Brilliant. Treat it as a crime to challenge religion, and set the police to sniffing out this bogus crime.

I was alerted this by a tweet from Taslima.

National Book Fair started in Bangladesh. Police checking whether anybody has written anything against Islam in any of the books. It is kind of mobile-'fuck-freespeech'-court. Cry, the beloved democracy! pic.twitter.com/KKAx9DgUzf

— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) February 2, 2019