The Guardian has a letter plus answer thing under the headings In it together Women.

Headline: When I went home with period pains I told my boss I had a cold. Should I have told the truth?

Letter:

Last month I had to leave work in the middle of the day. I was in a great deal of pain from my period, a problem I have had for several years. Sometimes I can manage it with painkillers, but not always. Even when I can cope with the pain, my periods affect my sleep, and make me slower and less productive. When my (female) boss saw how unwell I was, she kindly suggested I go home. I told her the next day I must be coming down with a cold. I’ve been thinking, why didn’t I just say “I have bad period pains”? I know it’s because I don’t want to be seen as weak and I don’t want to play into stereotypes that women can’t work or have important jobs because of their periods. That said, I worry about using a sick day or two every month. What are my rights in this area regarding sick leave? Should I speak up next time? Am I letting the side down by not coming out and being honest about my period?

Reply by Poppy Noor:

Something happens to you once a month that is painful and out of your control. You are not alone. Last year, YouGov asked 538 menstruators about their experiences of period pain in the workplace; 57% said it had affected their work.

screeeeeeeeeeech Wait, what?

Menstruators?

What happened to “women”?

It says “women” at the top of the page, before the headline. The writer mentions that her boss is female, and then cites “stereotypes that women can’t work or have important jobs because of their periods.” The piece is about a thing that women have to deal with that can hinder them at work and school and life in general. It’s about an issue that affects women, it’s from a woman, it’s about a physical process inseparable from the female reproductive system. Why was the hideous contemptuous reductive word “menstruators” used instead of “women”?

Poppy Noor herself promptly uses the dreaded word:

Last year, YouGov asked 538 menstruators about their experiences of period pain in the workplace; 57% said it had affected their work. And yet, you feel you will be seen as weak or unreliable if you tell someone about it. Your fears aren’t unfounded: a number of studies show that women’s pain is routinely dismissed by health professionals, especially when it comes to gynaecological issues. And other women seem to share your fear. YouGov found that only 27% of women affected by period pains told their boss and many of them (33%) pretended, as you did, that it was something else affecting their work.

“Women” three times and “gynaecological” once. So why use “menstruators” at all?

Originally a comment by latsot on He’d blab all the secrets if only he knew anything about them.

As the text says, it’s not only secret information that’s damaging. We all routinely give away far more information than is good for us. We tend to assume that the minutia of our lives are uninteresting and cannot harm us (if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear).

We do crazy things like tell Amazon who our friends and family are, when their birthdays are and the sort of stuff they like. In fact, it’s worse than that, because we tell them the sort of stuff we think they like. Of course, if they are Amazon customers too, they can compare what we think they like with what they think they like, which is one hell of a powerful way to target ads. Amazon constructs complex social networks based on the information we freely and unguardedly give them. It uses them to manipulate us into buying things in complex and subtle ways. It encourages us to flesh out the weak or hypothesised links in those social networks by, for example, sending us ads for things we think a person it guesses is connected to us would like, round about the time it thinks their birthday might be, in the hope that it will remind us of that person and trigger us to buy them something. They don’t really care about making money from whatever we’ve bought, they want us to flesh out the bones of the social network they’re building. It’s a long game and Amazon isn’t selling what you think they’re selling.

This is a really cheap thing for Amazon to do. It doesn’t lose anything with these fishing expeditions. In fact, it learns something from every time we don’t take the bait, too.

And this is just us. We’re nobody. We don’t have any big important secrets. Amazon doesn’t care about big important secrets because it knows it can manipulate us using the stuff we actually want to tell it. And all it wants is to make money. And Amazon is not targeting us specifically to achieve specific goals. It doesn’t care whether it adds a link to an aunt or to a friend. It doesn’t care what you buy for them. It cares about what you bought for them after it sent you some fishing ads.

So imagine the sort of thing that can be gleaned by monitoring Trump’s calls and data traffic. He’s a highly specific target and there are presumably vast resources aimed at him, with fairly specific goals. This makes him a much easier target than any of us, if the goal is to find ways to manipulate him. Imagine foreign governments building up the same sort of social network around him and his contacts as Amazon does about us, with the added benefit of highly trained and creative analysts, all focused on this one person…

So this is where we are.

Authorities said Wednesday they had intercepted packages containing “potential explosive devices” addressed to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in New York and former president Barack Obama in Washington, while another possible bomb was discovered at CNN’s offices in Manhattan.

These devices and other suspicious packages were located after an explosive device was found this week in a mailbox at the Bedford, N.Y., home of George Soros, the liberal philanthropist who is a frequent target of criticism from far-right groups.

Not a “target of criticism” so much as a bogey-man, a scarecrow, a hate-figure, a protocol of the elders of zion in one person.

Anyway. This is where we are. Not yet two years of Trump playing president and they’re trying to kill us off.

Authorities were quick to label the string of packages terrorism, something that is often debated after attempted or successful violent attacks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement “condemning today’s attempted acts of domestic terrorism.” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), speaking alongside O’Neill and Miller at a news briefing near CNN, used similar language.

“This clearly is an act of terror, attempting to undermine our free press and leaders of this country through acts of violence,” de Blasio said.

And who has done more than anyone else to foster and inspire and promote this kind of thing? The president of the US. You could say people like Mike Cernovich spend more time at it, but if you combine time and effort and reach, Trump wins by miles.

These devices were sent to people and an organization that have all prompted anger among the far right. Soros, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, has funneled much of his fortune into liberal projects around the world and is the focus of considerable conspiracy theories. Clinton and Obama have also long been the focus of intense far-right anger, while CNN has repeatedly come under intense criticism from a range of figures on the right, including President Trump.

Including President Trump, who detests free journalism and critical reporting, and feels no responsibility to restrain his public explosions of rage at them.

Another law enforcement official said the packages sent to the public officials this week shared similar markings, and at least one of them had a return address from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). Authorities do not believe she is involved, an official said. Law enforcement officials were also investigating a suspicious package sent to her. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

A similarly-constructed package addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder Jr. was intercepted by law enforcement officials, according to people familiar with the investigation.

So that should have been in the headline and the lede. Soros, Obama, the Clintons, CNN, and Holder.

Unlike the packages intercepted before reaching Obama and Clinton, the device sent to CNN was found while its building was teeming with employees. CNN’s headquarters at the Time Warner Center in New York evacuated suddenly Wednesday morning after the suspicious package was discovered there.

Will Trump stop screeching about “fake news”?

Nope.

Deb Haaland on the voter suppression in North Dakota:

On Oct. 9, our U.S. Supreme Court green-lighted voter suppression of Native Americans in North Dakota in a move that should outrage all of us. It comes just two short years after the Native American environmental movement skyrocketed into the national spotlight through the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. Now, those same Water Protectors are under attack again.

As a Pueblo Indian woman, I traveled to North Dakota and stood with the Water Protectors to protect land and water. Now, I support them and Native Americans across North Dakota as they organize to keep their right to vote during a contentious election year.

…

As a country, we should be moving forward, but instead conservative lawmakers keep dragging us back. As an organizer in the most underrepresented communities in my state, I have felt the frustration that so many voters must feel when other states limit polling locations, require photo IDs, and put unnecessary barriers in front of voters. In this case, targeting Native American voters is shameful and wrong.

This moral bankruptcy is exactly what November’s “blue wave” candidates seek to correct. The stark number of women candidates, primarily women of color, seek to change the trajectory of our country and offer leadership that is both compassionate and fierce.

And that’s why conservatives are so determined to suppress the vote: it will be mostly Democratic voters who will be suppressed.

Tribal leaders and activists are working around the clock to ensure our sister nations in North Dakota can vote.

The Turtle Mountain Band is printing free IDs for anyone who needs one to vote—demand has been so high that the machines have melted the IDs. The Native American Rights Fund, according to their latest news update, “is working in conjunction with the Spirit Lake Tribe, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and the Three Affiliated Tribes (‘MHA’), as well as community organizations Four Directions and Western Native Voice, to ensure tribal members living in North Dakota who come to the polls on Election Day will be provided voter identification free of charge.”

We all have work to do. I joined dozens of New Mexicans to knock doors and educate voters on how and when to vote. Join us. Knock doors, make phone calls, donate. If our friends at Standing Rock and Turtle Mountain are giving this their all, we should too. Together, we can fight back by ensuring more, not fewer, people vote.

This is the spirit I want to carry with me to Congress. There is no higher patriotic duty than when we exercise our right to vote, ensure others do the same, and fight so that all of us are represented. Come November, let’s elect fierce candidates who will melt the machines, fighting for equity and justice for all.

Unite and fight.

Hangin’ with Hannah:

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1054208545812434944

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1054210534390685696

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1054211818535546880

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1054509307897638912

Awww – sister!

Oh no.

They murdered his Dad, dismembered his body, orchestrated a cover-up, lied about the murder, then lied about the cover-up…and now are forcing Khashoggi's son, who is a captive in his own country, to participate in a photo-op shaking hands with the prince who murdered his Dad. https://t.co/LfEym9CxAR

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) October 23, 2018

Business Insider:

The son of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi was pictured with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the man widely believed to have orchestrated the journalist’s death.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency reported that Khashoggi’s son, Salah Khashoggi, met the king and crown prince on Tuesday in Riyadh.

…

The journalist had four adult children, all of whom were US-educated, NPR reported. It is not clear whether Salah, who was pictured with the Saudi monarchs, has US citizenship. His siblings were neither mentioned nor pictured on Tuesday.

Karen Attiah, Khashoggi’s editor at The Washington Post, has tweeted concern about Khashoggi’s family. She said that Saudi Arabia had imposed a travel ban on his children to put pressure on him for his writing.

But I’m sure he went in for that photo op completely voluntarily.

There was this guy on a plane in Barcelona the other day.

Police say they have identified a man filmed racially abusing an elderly woman on a Ryanair flight.

The woman, Delsie Gayle, 77, said she had been left stunned and depressed after a man shouted at her to move seats as they boarded a plane last Friday.

In footage shared on social media, Gayle’s daughter tries to stand up to the man and tells him her mother is disabled. The man says he does not care “whether she’s fucking disabled or not. If I tell her to get out, she gets out”.

I watched the clip a couple of days ago; it’s horrible.

In the footage, the man appears to call Gayle an “ugly black bastard” and shouts: “Don’t speak to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow.” The incident is believed to have taken place on Ryanair flight FR015 at Barcelona airport before it left for London Stansted.

Bafflingly, Ryanair did not call security and have the man removed from the plane.

In an interview with ITV News, Gayle, from east London, said the incident had left her feeling very low. “He pays his fare, I pay mine. So why did he abuse me for that? Because of the colour of my skin … If I had done that to him, I’m sure they would have called the police,” she said.

Ryanair apparently did not remove the man from the flight, instead moving Gayle from her seat. Gayle said it had put her off flying with the airline in the future. “I feel really depressed about it. I go to bed and say ‘what have I done?’,” she said.

Her daughter, Carol, 53, criticised Ryanair’s response and claimed they had not yet received an apology from the airline. “He should have been moved or taken off the plane and nothing was done … Nobody has apologised. We’ve not had nothing. We just want an open apology from Ryanair,” she said.

The guy should be on a no-fly list forever. Ryanair should apologize to Delsie Gayle and her daughter and fly them free forever.

Speaking of gender and stupid rules about gender and stupid cruel bullying about stupid rules about gender – a thread.

https://twitter.com/DaddyFiles/status/1054527579204530176

https://twitter.com/DaddyFiles/status/1054527834121736193

https://twitter.com/DaddyFiles/status/1054528067601948675

https://twitter.com/DaddyFiles/status/1054528220727558144

Kids do that. I suppose it’s part of the process of learning to live in the social world – they police each other and are policed in turn. It’s awful.

Trump thinks women don’t get enough shit yet, he wants to make sure they get more.

The Trump administration is expected to soon issue regulations that would expand religious and moral exemptions for covering birth control in employer health insurance plans, a move that critics say would limit women’s access to contraception.

“a move that critics say would limit women’s access to contraception” – why do news outlets say stupid things like that? Of course it would limit women’s access to contraception, by definition; if you remove an item from insurance coverage, then access to that item becomes limited. That’s like saying if you cut workers’ pay then workers have less money.

The exact details of the exemptions, and when they would take effect, remain unclear. But women’s health advocates are bracing for a legal fight. They expect the rules to mimic earlier regulations enacted by the Trump administration last year before being blocked by federal judges.

The rules allowed nearly any employer — nonprofit or for-profit — with a religious or moral objection to opt out of the Affordable Care Act provision requiring the coverage of contraception at no cost for the employee. The rules vastly expanded which companies could be exempt from the mandate and why, including a broad exemption for a “sincerely held moral conviction” not based in any particular religious belief. Perhaps most significantly, it required employers to provide no other accommodations for employees seeking birth control coverage.

Or, to put it more simply, fuck women. Take everything away from women; load women with every burden; make women responsible for everything; ignore the fact that it takes two people to create a pregnancy; just fuck fuck fuck women. Beat them into the ground and then dance a tarantella on the dirt.

The birth control rules are part of a broader effort by conservatives inside and outside of the White House to prioritize what they call religious liberty.

And what “religious liberty” means is sticking it to women. Making women second-class and subordinate, forcing women to stay home and have 43 children apiece; denying women education and freedom of movement; keeping women broke barefoot and pregnant until they drop dead during the last childbirth.

I saw a thing today. I was out in the neighborhood, walking to and fro in the world and up and down in it; it’s very foggy here so there is heavy condensation on the bushes and trees and everything else. What happens when there’s condensation like that? You see how many spider webs there are everywhere. I stopped to look at one, because a spider web beaded in condensation is a damn pretty thing, and I looked so closely that I noticed a thing new to me. Webs have long radial lines, like spokes, and short lines between them. At the sides of the web, but not top and bottom, the short lines make a Y – they have 2 tiny lines to meet the radial line instead of just one – but only at the upper end.

I walked on and looked at another web and saw the same thing, then a bigger one and that had three lines on many of the short lines, a fork instead of a Y.

I searched Google images and found a perfect illustration:

See? Both Ys and forks on that one. Isn’t that interesting? Charlotte would be proud.

All the webs I looked closely at had a spider sitting placidly at the center, waiting for lunch.

This is a thing from October last year but I’m curious about it. A friend posted it on Facebook yesterday (probably not noticing the date – it happens to all of us), and there are a lot of angry comments and a lot of comments saying it looks fake. My reaction when first reading it was it’s fake. I still think it’s fake. I’m curious about what others think.

A daycare center received this letter. This is trump’s America. 😥😡

The text of the letter:

Hello I am writing this as a concerned parent and friend!

So most of us noticed you have a black girl working for the daycare. Our problem is she’s too dark most of the kids is scared of her. I am only telling you this because some of us are planning to pull our kid form the daycare shes an eye sore. I see you’re trying to touch all of the nationalities but maybe hire a light skinned black she would blend more and not look like a “NANNY”. She’s not the first thing a child nor the parents want to see soon as they walk in the daycare. So the choice is yours! Choose wisely remember WE THE PARENTS PAY YOUR MORTAGE. I hope you make her aware shes not wanted. I’m sending her a copy as well. However if she needs a job Mcdonalds is always hiring her kind. So work your magic and make it disappear!!!

P.S. Just trying “TO MAKE YOUR DAYCARE GREAT AGAIN”

Why do I think it’s fake? I’m not sure. Partly I think because the tone is wrong – too perky for what it’s saying. Too facetious for what it’s saying. It sounds too Milo-like, too 4chan-like. Not that the racism is fake, but I think the note is a provocation of some kind rather than a serious request.

Snopes reports the day care center confirmed getting the note:

Although it is not uncommon for nasty letters and other controversies to be faked by social media users for attention or viral fame, this appears to be genuine — at least to the extent that we reached out to the daycare center, who averred that they received the letter but didn’t know who sent it or why.

Sarah Wojcik, a reporter for the local Morning Call, told us that that police were also aware of the letter:

Whitehall police Chief Michael Marks said he has never seen a letter so offensive in his 20 years in police work.

“It’s disturbing. This is not something you want to see in your community,” Marks said. “This is something we as a police department are going to take very seriously.”

Marks said such a letter could carry harassment and ethnic intimidation charges, though he conceded locating the sender is tricky. He said there’s been no similar incidents reported in the township.

The day care already has security measures in place for the safety of its children, but McKelley said staff is on added alert.

If it is a fake that doesn’t make it any better – it’s a “real” fake and doubtless made the staff at that day care center feel horrible and threatened.