Nobody Cares: PRS

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Fartenberry - "Strong Odor", lol

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

For £50 donation, Channel 4 will insult Piers Morgan.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Sahle-Work Zewde: Ethiopia appoints first female president - CNN

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Free]

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Obama slams Trump and the Republican Party, saying "they are robbing you blind"

Former President Barack Obama launched a scathing attack on Donald Trump and the GOP during speeches in Detroit, Michigan and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, saying the party was "robbing you blind."

He strongly criticized President Trump and others in his party, saying they were “making stuff up,” suggesting that the “character” of the country was "on the ballot," the Associated Press reported.

In Wisconsin, the former President told the crowd that the Republicans were lying when they said they wanted to protect people with pre-existing conditions, while trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“What we have not seen before in our public life is politicians just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly, lying. Just making stuff up,” Obama said. “Calling up, down. Calling black, white. That’s what your governor is doing with these ads, just making stuff up,” he said, referring to Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker.

Obama also spoke of how Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” during the 2016 election campaign had not come to fruition, noting instead that "they have gone to Washington and just plundered away. In Washington they have racked up enough indictments to field a football team,” he said. “Nobody in my administration got indicted.”

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Free]

Pilot arrested, accused of having gun in carry-on suitcase at airport, report says

 

[Isabeau]

 

[Isabeau]

Brazilian media report that police are entering university classrooms to interrogate professors

In advance of this Sunday’s second-round presidential election between far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro and center-left candidate Fernando Haddad, Brazilian media are reporting that Brazilian police have been staging raids, at times without warrants, in universities across the country this week. In these raids, police have been questioning professors and confiscating materials belonging to students and professors.
The raids are part a supposed attempt to stop illegal electoral advertising. Brazilian election law prohibits electoral publicity in public spaces. However, many of the confiscated materials do not mention candidates. Among such confiscated materials are a flag for the Universidade Federal Fluminense reading “UFF School of Law - Anti-Fascist” and flyers titled “Manifest in Defense of Democracy and Public Universities.”

 

[Innula Zenovka]

MI5 to take over in fight against rise of UK rightwing extremism

MI5 is to take the lead in combating extreme rightwing terrorism amid mounting fears that white supremacists are increasing their efforts to foment violent racial conflict on Britain’s streets, The Guardian has learned.

The switch from the police – which has always previously taken responsibility for monitoring far right extremism – to MI5 means that the ideology will now sit in the same portfolio as Islamist terrorism and Northern Ireland-related terrorism, which are both covered by the domestic security service.

The decision also means that extreme rightwing activity will now be officially designated as posing a major threat to national security.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

NOT good

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Misc thinking:

Source:
Pookleblinky on Twitter: "Rule by seemingly random mechanisms, spontaneous events.

It only looks like an idiocracy from inside. From outside, the root cause is horrifically, violently obvious."

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Neolithic site uncovered in Switzerland shows evidence of social stratification

"Every eight to 15 years or so, these settlements were abandoned and the house groups reorganized to form new settlements," Bleicher told Live Science. Between 3234 B.C. and 3060 B.C., the groups of houses tended to be arranged in quarters within a settlement.

"These were strictly organized with parallel houses in rows," Bleicher said. And the zones had some significant differences. For example, during one phase of the settlement, a zone the researchers labeled Sector A held the largest houses. Sector B did not contain any bear-fang pendants or high-status axes like the other zones did. Sector A and Sector B were also separated by a fence of thin poplar posts.

"We were very surprised to find that within one settlement, people built a fence to segregate themselves from the adjacent quarter," Bleicher said. "Such ostentatious social segregation is something nobody really expected in the late fourth millennium B.C."

Humans have always been dicks. The "D" in our DNA stands for "dick".

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Interesting development in the UK, where the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, has announced a new tax aimed at tech giants. The amount he intends to raise, at least initially, is trivial to companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon, but as The Guardian (not normally supportive of Hammond or the Government of which is he is a member) comment:

The technology titans will not be trembling in fear. The sum of £400m that Philip Hammond says will be raised annually via his new digital services tax is a relative trifle. Even if the tax is concentrated among a small group of global companies, which seems to be the chancellor’s plan, the likes of Amazon, eBay, Facebook and Google can afford to pay. One suspects their enthusiasm for investing in the UK will not be affected one jot.

But the firms will be irritated by the UK’s go-it-alone approach. Hammond, assuming his plans are not watered down, will have demonstrated that countries do not have to wait for international agreement on how tax rules should be updated for the digital age. New taxes can be invented unilaterally, in this case a 2% charge on the UK revenues of “specific digital business models”, meaning search engines, social media platforms and online marketplaces.

Hammond, after muttering vaguely for ages, deserves credit for finally taking the plunge. The EU’s equivalent proposal for a 3% tax on revenues is currently bogged down in internal bickering and worries about a backlash from the US since most of the affected companies will be American. If the chancellor get his way, the UK’s digital services tax will be up and running from 2020.

UK finally takes on arrogant tech giants with digital services tax | Nils Pratley

 

[Salome]

 

[danielravennest]

Benjy Sarlin tweets

To anyone who understands statistical distributions, the result is obvious. Trump supporters fall on a spectrum, from moderate to conservative to batshit crazy. When Trump and conservative news sources keep moving what is considered "normal" to the right, more people get slid into the batshit crazy end of the spectrum. So we get more violent attacks.

 

[Govi]

Does it really work that way? It does if you're grading on a curve. However, the situation is different if someone (Trump) is preaching conspiracies and blaming enemies, using all the authority and credibility of his position to give credence to wacko conspiracies.

.​

 

[Dillon Levenque]

Neolithic site uncovered in Switzerland shows evidence of social stratification



Humans have always been dicks. The "D" in our DNA stands for "dick".

I don't know why that was such a surprise to the archaeologist; Egyptian civilization was getting up and running around 3000-3200 BC. There was some heavy-duty stratification going on there. Maybe the fact it was in the boonies of Europe. Stratification even on the wrong side of the tracks. Or Med, in this case.

 

[Free]