…it’s sunday…so clearly none of you fine folks need slapping in the face first thing in the morning
Most of us have drifted through these often-disastrous last few months rather than really lived them. And now, while we have all been hoping for a clear conclusion to the pandemic, it’s likely that there won’t be a single day to mark in celebration. Rather, “the end” may be a series of small events and gradual re-emergences into a changed reality as changed people, and it may be more difficult to navigate than we imagine.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-will-we-know-if-the-covid-pandemic-is-really-over-and-how-will-we-feel-when-it-is
…although I feel a little like I have been?
…you’d think maybe that was the shock
Canadian Conservative party votes not to recognize climate crisis as real [Guardian]
…except apparently the world is a little backwards about moving forward
The citizen regulators taking on big polluters when the EPA won’t [Guardian]
…but honestly it’s not the surprising stuff that has me feeling that way
Democrats want ‘illegal aliens and child molesters’ to vote, Ted Cruz says – report [Guardian]
…apparently his preferred brand of voter is more likely to be a violent racist
FBI releases new Capitol attack footage as it seeks to identify 10 suspects [Guardian]
…or maybe a “sex addict”
The man accused of killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent, blamed “sexual addiction,” a disputed term used in parts of evangelical culture.
Atlanta Suspect’s Fixation on Sex Is Familiar Thorn for Evangelicals [NYT]
…how fucked up is it that that’s ever worked
…let alone still does?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/19/women-harmed-every-day-invisible-men
Amid institutional indifference, social media and other digital tools have allowed Asian Americans to prove the various forms of discrimination they’ve long experienced, organize mutual aid groups and pressure authorities to respond.
Experts say “receipt culture,” or showing evidence of a wrongdoing typically on social media, has helped change the way people see challenges for Asian Americans, long thought of as the “model minority.”
“Social media is an equalizing force not previously available to marginalized communities,” Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director at the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council and a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, told NBC Asian America.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/asian-americans-have-often-needed-prove-racism-then-social-media-came-along
[…]
Beyond social networks, technology has also made it easier for people to report verbal and physical abuse, helping grassroots groups gather accurate data on pandemic-related discrimination.
[…]
Some experts, however, say it’s just as important to reckon with the limits of digital platforms, which are often more adept at eliciting emotional reactions than facilitating difficult conversations about healing.
Atlanta shootings: why US hate crime data is so lacking [Guardian]
Asian Americans across the country have spent the past few days drawing a connection between racist rhetoric and the anti-Asian violence that has spiked in the past year, particularly in Wednesday’s shooting in Atlanta.
But some conservative lawmakers — particularly those close to former president Donald Trump — have made it clear that they don’t think their comments have had any bearing on the situation, and they have no plans to adjust their language.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/19/republicans-who-dont-want-to-reexamine-anti-asian-rhetoric/
Atlanta spa shootings: Georgia hate crimes law could see first big test [Guardian]
…& I forget the exact numbers but for all that individual minorities are called that for a statistical reason…if you look at the stuff that effects them collectively…it kind of seems like the majority of people getting the raw deal?
John, who is Black, and his wife, who is Japanese American, purchased a family home in a suburb of Atlanta in 2004.
[…]
But the family’s time in College Park didn’t last long. Because of the relatively low home values in their neighborhood and the resulting low property taxes, the public schools in the area were underfunded. So after their second son was born, they decided to move to an area with a better-funded school district.This time, they bought in Candler Park, an area that is 87 percent white and less than 5 percent Black. In 2014, John and his wife sold their College Park home in a short sale for $60,000 — $144,000 less than what they paid for it.
Were they just unlucky? No. Is this massive loss through real estate unusual? Not for Black families.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/opinion/home-value-race-taxes.html
[…]
This is where the past meets the present. “There’s a carry-over of the redlining and steering days, before the fair housing laws were passed. So the difference in property values almost tracks 100 percent with the demographics of the area,” said Wayne Early, an Atlanta-based realtor and community economic activist.
[…]
Today, if you sell your home at a gain, you can receive up to $500,000 of gain tax-free. If, however, you sell your home at a loss, you get no tax break. (Contrast that with the way the tax law allows losses to be deductible when you sell stock.) John’s $144,000 loss did him no good in terms of taxes. However, if he and his wife sell their Candler Park home, they’ll receive a significant tax-free gain.
[…]
This is just one of many ways that the U.S. tax code perpetuates the racial wealth gap. There are dozens more examples that touch areas of life like marriage and paying for college. But the outcome is always the same: Tax policies tend to disadvantage Black Americans while subsidizing their white peers.
…& while we’re on the subject of shit that shouldn’t work but none the less seems to
On Wednesday, the Rev Raphael Warnock, elected in January as Georgia’s first African American US senator, gave his first speech in Congress. He used the opportunity to condemn voter suppression and urge his colleagues to support legislation to make it easier for Americans to vote. Here are his remarks:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/raphael-warnock-senator-condemns-voter-suppression
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/republicans-voter-suppression-crusade-may-cost-them-corporate-donors-they-don-t-care
Republican lawmakers in Arizona have introduced at least 22 restrictive bills, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. More than half the proposals address mail voting, with one particularly contentious bill seeking to kick infrequent voters off something called the Permanent Early Voting List, or PEVL. Arizona voters have been voting by mail for 30 years, while the GOP-led Legislature created the PEVL, which sends voters who have opted in ballots in the mail automatically, in 2007.
“We are seeing this as a full on assault on voting rights and democratic institutions in Arizona,” Emily Kirkland, executive director of the advocacy group Progress Arizona, said, arguing that the same state lawmakers advancing voting restrictions had spread Trump’s lie of a stolen election. “This is part of a pattern.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/arizona-republicans-push-new-laws-to-limit-voting
…not to mention the whole projection thing when it comes to that side of the aisle complaining about fraud in elections
The recruitment of the sham candidate began with a Facebook message at around 4 a.m. on May 15, 2020. “Call me,” a Florida legislator turned lobbyist wrote to an old friend. “I have a question for you.”
Later that day, former State Senator Frank Artiles, a Republican, asked Alexis Pedro Rodriguez by phone whether he still owned a home in the suburban Miami village of Palmetto Bay. Because in that case, Mr. Artiles wanted something else: to put his friend’s property and last name to use in the upcoming election.
The incumbent Democrat, State Senator José Javier Rodríguez, was on the ballot. And Mr. Artiles, a crafty political operator with a dubious reputation, had a plan: to plant his friend as a candidate and siphon off votes that could defeat Senator Rodríguez.
The plan worked, setting off one of Florida’s most brazen electoral scandals in years — even by the heady standards of a state that has long been fertile ground for political scammers. What is still uncertain is how broad the scandal is, whether it had touched other races and whether it was part of an organized effort by Republicans or an interest group to sway legislative races.
How a Sham Candidate Helped Flip a Florida Election [NYT]
…then there’s stuff like this
A claim that the company illegally prohibits employees from discussing pay has been added to a lawsuit accusing it of paying women less than men. Disney has aggressively pushed back.
Pay Discrimination Suit Against Disney Adds Pay Secrecy Claim [NYT]
…& let’s face it…this sounds like it would have been right up ol’ walt’s alley, too
If the government was going to force Southern businesses to “serve Negroes,” then the government should have to pay the businesses for each Negro they allowed on their property.
[…]
No doubt muffling its laughter, the Supreme Court responded simply, “The cases are to the contrary.” The cases it cited interpreted the Fifth Amendment to require “just compensation” only for literal seizures of land. These cases permitted the government to pass civil rights laws, fair housing laws and anti-retaliation laws. They did not require the government to pay people not to discriminate.But the Supreme Court controls what cases it takes. And the court of today is far more conservative than the court of 1964. No one will be laughing on Monday, when the justices will consider whether to resurrect Mr. Rolleston’s argument as the law of the land.
The new case, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, involves California agribusinesses that each employ hundreds of farmworkers. Instead of discriminating against Black people, these businesses want to discriminate against union organizers.
Do We Have to Pay Businesses to Obey the Law? [NYT]
…because you know someone’s getting paid, right?
“We’re spending lots of money to save the hospitality industry, the airlines, travel. It will all come to naught if the rest of the world is not protected,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who questioned drug executives at a recent House hearing over their refusal to share vaccine patents openly.
Drug companies defend vaccine monopolies in face of global outcry [WaPo]
…& sometimes it’s not clear how that works
Eco-Baby, TrailBuddy, Quility and TapeKing aren’t exactly household names, but they’re working on it. Their products are among the most popular in their categories on Amazon, accounting for millions of dollars in yearly sales.
They’re also owned and operated by a single company called Thrasio, which recently raised $750 million in financing. It’s just one among dozens of firms snapping up successful Amazon brands for millions of dollars.
Several of the largest firms, including Perch, Branded and SellerX, aspire to become, loosely speaking, the Unilevers and Procter & Gambles of Amazon’s third-party seller economy.
The Great Amazon Flip-a-Thon [NYT]
[…]
These companies are already reshaping Amazon in ways both visible and invisible to its customers, few of whom have heard their names but plenty of whom have ordered their products. They’ve given Amazon sellers a way to cash out of their businesses and helped create a new class of listing flippers.
…let alone if they deserve it
…so it’s probably good that I’m out of time even if I’m not out of links…because I’m pretty sure the rest of us don’t deserve some of this shit any more than we need it?
The mysterious individual behind a new and rapidly growing online disinformation network targeting followers of QAnon, the far-right cult, can be revealed as a Berlin-based artist with a history of social media manipulation, a prominent anti-racism group claims.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/20/revealed-man-behind-fast-growing-cult-becoming-the-new-qanon-sabmyk-network
…won’t somebody think of the children?
…still…before we all wind up feeling like this
…clearly we all ought to be heeding @elliecoo’s advice…certainly according to the NYT
Last year, over the course of the 33-episode season, which follows the growing season from March through late October, something remarkable happened: “Gardeners’ World” went from being comfort TV to indispensable viewing.
How a British Gardening Show Got People Through the Pandemic [NYT]
…although…maybe someday there’ll be some good news about things where the term justice might even seem like it means something?
The ex-wife of a Trump Organization executive has spoken “multiple times” with investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, she told NBC News, as the probe into Donald Trump’s financial dealings intensifies.
Jennifer Weisselberg said it appears investigators have been seeking information related to the role of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer and the father of her ex-husband.
Allan Weisselberg, whose relationship with Trump spans decades, is likely the one person outside of the family who has the most complete understanding of the Trump Organization’s inner financial workings.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-wife-of-trump-org-executive-has-spoken-to-investigators-multiple-times
…until then…there’s always the effigy route to catharsis, I guess
Trump wax figure pulled from Texas display after visitors attacked it – reports [Guardian]
…I mean…if it’s good enough for guy fawkes?
I wonder if Canada’s Conservative Party is not just considering the interests of their big supporters in the oil and mining industries. Maybe they’re thinking, “It’s Canada. We could stand to be a degree or two warmer…”
They should think again. I first got interested in “global warming” in the early or mid-1990s after reading a long piece and the premise was exactly that: what if New York got a little warmer? We’d have a longer growing season, for one thing, and maybe winters wouldn’t be so harsh, especially in the belt around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
The article spent a lot of words on the topic of insects. They are very invasive and unstoppable, and once introduced to new areas they thrive, as long as they can survive the climate. It also talked about the oceans. It glossed over rising sea levels (those can be dealt with somewhat, at great effort and expense) and instead focuses on the settling of more and more CO(2) was making them slightly warmer and more acidic. So? Well, the creatures who live in the oceans don’t like this. When their habitat gets even slightly warmer they’ll eventually leave it. But the increasing acidity is the more alarming concern, because if it doesn’t directly kill them off it will kill off their food supply, so they’ll starve.
Very sobering, all of it. This is when the phenomenon was widely called “global warming.” “Climate change” is, I have no doubts, more accurate, meaning that our friends in Buffalo and Rochester might face even worse winters, and we Gothamites might find, to our surprise, that we’re living in a hurricane zone with a hurricane season, for which we are not equipped. We are still not recovered from “Superstorm” Sandy almost nine years later (civic and state inertia and incompetence has much to do with this) and if we got a couple more in the next couple of years we conceivably might never recover.
Happy Sunday everyone!
You’re correct, rising seas are the least problem for changing climate. We’ll move. Bigger issues are habitat destruction — particularly in the ocean, as you note. Dying coral reefs (from heat and acidity) take huge swaths of the ecosystem with them, and once the oceans start unraveling we are fucked. I don’t like the thought of looking for pythons while I mow my yard, but a huge chunk of the world uses the ocean to EAT.
If Canada gets a few wildfires like Siberia or (God help them) California, they’ll be praying for the cold to come back. Warm sounds great until your entire country is on fire. Florida hasn’t had serious wildfires in a few years, but I remember the misery vividly. And ours were NOTHING like California’s. I went to Chico, CA during wildfire season once and it was very literally hell. Couldn’t see five feet through the smoke, ashes falling from the sky like nasty snowflakes, it was horrible.
And finally, people don’t realize how much of their infrastructure is organized around climate. Sandy’s a good example. If we get a hurricane in Florida it’s called Tuesday and our roofs are rated for 145 mph winds and our power lines are mostly buried and other than that, we don’t have stuff underground at all. We pick up all that shit and put stuff back together and move on. New York isn’t structured that way. Atlanta doesn’t have snowplows, because it snows a little bit twice a year. So those days you just stay home. Texas doesn’t either, and look how that worked out for them.
I’m reasonably certain Canada’s conservatives, like most conservatives, are too stupid and self-centered to consider the ramifications of all the problems that are erupting and will continue to do so. When they’re trying to keep their houses from burning using garden hoses, it’s going to be too late.
I mean I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but there’s a decent chance that St. Louis area will be close to the Gulf of Mexico if the oceans rise significantly. Then it will still be disgusting and buggy in the summer, but hey convenient for weekend trips!
I could probably use a slap. A tickle too, if there’s one available.
I would settle for a goodnight kiss…
It might be my increasing
slide into dementiaeccentricity but I have noticed that our current dog, a black Lab, is more than a little bit of an empath. He has excellent vision, and likes to sun himself in front of windows and watch people and things on the streets five stories below. He is an avid TV watcher and if we’re in bed together and The Better Half is watching an action movie it gets his full attention. When it’s just the two of us in bed and I want him to settle down I’ll move beside him and sing softly. My slow, soft baritone version of this is one of his favorites:@Loveshaq – thank you for the puppy kisses!!!!!
I know how we DON’T get this shit over with!
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/20/us/miami-beach-crowds-clevelander-covid/index.html
My wife showed me crazy huge crowds in Cabo too but I don’t have a link, it was on TikTok.
and if that doesn’t sober you up to how stupid our country is, maybe this will…
I’m not sure who to point this out to, but the copyright notice at the bottom of the page says 2020. I’m not a copyright lawyer, but I think that means Mark Zuckerberg now gets to eat out of our fridges any time he wants.
Online algorithms are insidious things. The more I give in to morbid curiosity, or hate-read conservative opinion pieces, the more Google chokes up my news feed with Fox news, and the more I’m forced to give in to morbid curiosity and hate-reading of conservative think pieces.
Let us hope this is a portent, or a foreshadowing:
https://us.cnn.com/2021/03/19/politics/trump-757-repairs-gold-plated-glory-days/index.html
And who knows what led me to research this, but I decided to look at what White House Christmas trees looked like through the years. I expected the third Mrs. Trump’s to be the strangest but I was mistaken. They’re ALL strange. It’s a 20-slide slideshow, that’s fine in this case. The first one starts you off in the Kennedy White House. When we had our huge holiday open houses we used to put up two trees, and the one in “the children’s room” (the den where the younger ones could snack and drink non-alcoholic punch and watch DVDs and flirt with each other or whatever, under the watchful eye of a volunteer mother or two, anything to get away from the boring old people) looks eerily similar to that Kennedy one, but on a much smaller scale. Scrolling, clicking, until you finally get to slide 20, which is Mel’s, and it has…a rope line around it? Like Eastern Europe’s most exclusive “models'” hangout, reinterpreted for the “Who gives a fuck about Christmas?” theme? There are a couple of good “Charlie Brown Christmas” trees in there too.
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/galleries/christmas-themes
@SplinterRIP, thank you for the Gardener’s World shout out. It is so relaxing after having nightmares from the intensity of The Expanse. Although I do miss my friend Amos.
…I think some days we could all use an amos in our corner…he might get you into trouble but he certainly takes no shit…& it feels like one way or another we’ve all had to do too much of that this last year?
…either way…you’re more than welcome
Welp we’re on lock down forever here
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/03/coronavirus-upward-trend-continues-rules-wont-be-relaxed-for-easter/
Not even bothering with the false promises anymore…we got till further noticed…
Also after the gubment fell over we just elected the same bunch of wankers all over again…
You might say we are stuck in a rutte over here
(Oh god I’ve caught punitus)
Atlanta Suspect’s Fixation on Sex Is Familiar Thorn for Evangelicals [NYT]
I saw the alert for this article and wanted to throw my phone across the room. Stop contributing to the media problem, NYT.