What's in the News? 2.0

[gaggedLouise]

Yup.  Panicking crowds not fun.

I was thinking they were worrying mkre about undetected spread of the disease through movie theaters, but you're probably right.

[Sara Nilsson]

F.D.A. Bans School Electric Shock Devices

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/us/electric-shock-fda-ban.html

Yes.. the FDA has banned schools from using electric shock devices. I honestly had to triple check the date on that one. Yeah its.. now. Not 80 years ago. Or so.

The ban is national, but it is targeted at a single school: the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Mass., which serves students — both children and adults — who have intellectual disabilities or behavioral, emotional or psychiatric problems.

It appears to be the only school in the United States that uses painful electric shocks to discipline students, and the practice has been in place there for decades.

Ok I now feel a little bit better. Still...

Some of the students’ relatives have defended the practice — saying that it worked to change students’ behavior when nothing else could — and denounced the F.D.A.’s decision.

oh ffs.... Good feelings gone.

[legomaster00156]

Jesus. I've read about that school before, but it's just... still hard to process.

[Oniya]

The festering boil on top of the shit sundae is that the school renamed itself to honor a judge that ruled it was okay for them to keep using the ESDs back in the 1980's.

[Tolvo]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/guardian-staff-trans-rights-letter

Members of the Guardian in the USA, UK, and Australia, have signed a letter with over 300 people signing from various positions across the companies and its branches in response to the rampant transphobia present in its editorial staff with a letter to the editor. This letter urges the Guardian's editorial staff and it's leaders to stop publishing and pushing anti-trans stories and lies. This came after another article full of transphobia being published with it being the "straw that broke the camel's back" causing another trans member of the Guardian to resign and leave due to the hostile working conditions towards trans people and the damage that the Guardian is globally doing to a marginalized group by publishing these falsehoods.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2020/mar/02/women-must-have-the-right-to-organise-we-will-not-be-silenced

The article in question is here so people can see how severely transphobic it can be such as defending the hate group Women's Place UK.

https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2019/10/23/trans-exclusionary-group-womans-place-uk-set-to-hold-a-panel-in-oxford/

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/03/03/womans-place-uk-selina-todd-oxford-university-feminism-transphobia-lola-olufemi/

As well as some reporting on it.

[gaggedLouise]

Max von Sydow has passed on, aged ninety. A legendary actor with an amazingly wide array of roles, from Jesus Christ to Father Perrin in The Exorcist, from St. Peter to Emperor Ming (Flash Gordon) to the Devil, from Swedish-American settler Karl-Oskar in wooded Minnesota (The Emigrants) to the knight Antonius Block playing chess with Death and probing the meaning of life (The Seventh Seal). On stage he played Faust and Peer Gynt, around the same time as the medieval knight, all three directed by Ingmar Bergman.

I used to say that if anyone had done a biopic drama about the life of Dante, Max would have been the ideal man for the lead role: he often did this kind of stubborn, heroic, defiant men, larger than life and driven or rattled by their conscience and by a sense of quest. He was such an expressive character actor, his face and voice exuded that special heroic gravitas, like Laurence Olivier, but he could also portray people who had been broken or defeated by life but still tried to be there for others. He was a huge asset to film and tv directors in the Nordic countries for several decades, quite apart from his Hollywood career, and he will be lovingly remembered by a host of fans around the world.

[Callie Del Noire]

https://nypost.com/2020/03/10/conspiracy-theorist-alex-jones-arrested-on-drunk-driving-charge/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

NOT QUITE at the legal limit but damn close...So of course Alex Jones will be using this as a campaign to get him

[gaggedLouise]

Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years in jail.  C:) Expect a round of appeals, perhaps all the way up to the Supreme Court.

[ShadowFox89]

 Presidential pardon in 3..... 2.... Either that or his guards "accidentally" leave him alone with the security cams turned off.

[legomaster00156]

Presidential pardon in 3..... 2.... Either that or his guards "accidentally" leave him alone with the security cams turned off.

Why would Trump pardon him? He's neither a Republican donor, a Trump cultist, nor a regular on Fox News.

[Callie Del Noire]

Why would Trump pardon him? He's neither a Republican donor, a Trump cultist, nor a regular on Fox News.

Hasn't the President used him in the past as a 'valid source?' and/or speak up in his defense in the past?

[legomaster00156]

Not that I'm aware of, but he has used Weinstein, among many others, as proof that "you can't do anything" around women anymore.

[Callie Del Noire]

This is intersting/frustrating.. Kansas City Mayor turned away at the polls.. He wasn't 'in the system'. Yeah..
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/kansas-city-mayor-is-turned-away-from-polls-told-he-wasnt-in-the-system/ar-BB110dNL

[Tolvo]

Content warnings for suicide and torture by the US government.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/11/chelsea-manning-suicide-126452

Recently Chelsea Manning attempted suicide after being imprisoned by the US government. She has been in solitary confinement for a long time, something recognized largely as a form of torture which is known for destroying a person's sense of self and grasp on reality.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/12/chelsea-manning-jail-release-virginia

Now soon after an order has come through to free Chelsea Manning, and I want to cry tears of joy. Though it looks like she is still being fined 250,000 dollars for being imprisoned by the US government.

[Sara Nilsson]

The poor woman :(

[Tolvo]

She's a hero and this is what she gets. I cannot describe the pure hatred I feel when I think about what has happened to her. I'm on the verge of tears.

[Callie Del Noire]

She's a hero and this is what she gets. I cannot describe the pure hatred I feel when I think about what has happened to her. I'm on the verge of tears.

I disagree about her being a hero, but I do agree this is torture.. not cruel and unusual but outright cruelty. NO one should be psychologically tortured by it.

[Lustful Bride]

Welp, this looks like another hit on online privacy.

https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/3/12/21174815/earn-it-act-encryption-killer-lindsay-graham-match-group

[TheHangedOne]

You beat me to the post, Lustful. I popped on to mention it.

Needless to say, I'm pretty cynical about their intentions. At this point, the moment the government tells me something is "good", my knee-jerk response is "How is it bad?". And of course, they're trying to pass it through on the down-low, while the whole world is in the grips of a pandemic. That they're trying to keep it hush-hush, and passing it at a time like this, is hardly a coincidence, IMO. If it was a slower news week, so to speak, people would be up in arms about it.

[Aiden]

Anytime a government wants a backdoor past security and privacy should raise suspicion.

[Callie Del Noire]

Anytime a government wants a backdoor past security and privacy should raise suspicion.

Exactly and this doesn’t even begin to cover how much easier it makes other to gain access. If they do something like some proposals it will weaken the encryptions to a point that defeats the security it provides and that will pretty much kill internet businesses within the US.

I doubt any smart country will agree to let their citizens data be stored in US servers and I can see international business taking their data off shore. Hell I see banks quickly off shoring all their data to protect their assets

[TheHangedOne]

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/20/21188074/tucker-carlson-richard-burr-stock-sale-coronavirus

So some senators engaged in insider trading. What's new? The fact that there might be enough outrage to finally make an example of 'em.

[Callie Del Noire]

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/20/21188074/tucker-carlson-richard-burr-stock-sale-coronavirus

So some senators engaged in insider trading. What's new? The fact that there might be enough outrage to finally make an example of 'em.

I’ve see long term members of Congress making profits off of knowledge beforehand.  I doubt any reform will ever cover all the loopholes that are in place.

[Oniya]

I’ve see long term members of Congress making profits off of knowledge beforehand.  I doubt any reform will ever cover all the loopholes that are in place.

A good portion of the outrage is that Burr, in particular, was downplaying COVID-19 to the public, but warning his wealthy donors privately.  He manipulated the information knowing that once it got out, the market would crash. 

[Callie Del Noire]

A good portion of the outrage is that Burr, in particular, was downplaying COVID-19 to the public, but warning his wealthy donors privately.  He manipulated the information knowing that once it got out, the market would crash.

And while I agree that he did it, and it should be something illegal but Senators and Congressmen has gotten away with it for decades. Given the huge stack of invited bills still sitting on Tortoise McConnels desk I doubt any reform would be considered, even if such a bill came up.

No one in congress would dream of sponsoring much less voting on it