All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[CaptainEurope]

Fentanyl smuggler and tiki torch wielding Nazi "Ted von Nukem" (he had his name legally changed to that) killed himself before his trial for smuggling drugs.





Oh, and I will have a salad for dinner because I am working on my beach body.

[Tendrin]

175 contributors to the New York Times have signed a letter conmdening the NYTs coverage of trans issues.

The letter is here.

https://nytletter.com/

We write to you as a collective of New York Times contributors with serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender nonconforming people.

Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly. Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front⁠-⁠page Times coverage debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone.

The newspaper’s editorial guidelines demand that reporters “preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias” when cultivating their sources, remaining “sensitive that personal relationships with news sources can erode into favoritism, in fact or appearance.” Yet the Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources.

[aja_christopher]

It is also a ludicrous argument advance when speaking as a conservative about gun violence.

I'd prefer a real dialogue on the issue but as they tend to devolve into talking points I took the opportunity to try to understand why factual evidence is ignored by many conservatives when it supports a "liberal" position.

The facts show that regulation has worked effectively in other nations yet those facts -- like many others -- become irrelevant when they go against the "conservative" ideology.

Instead we get the usual excuses and nothing gets done.

[SquirrelMan]

What matters is being right. If people are mistaken on facts, they will encourage policymakers to use finite resources poorly. That will lead to more people dying prematurely and/ or failing to reach their full potential. This does not seem like an ideal outcome for anyone calling for empathy.

Jesus Christ. I'm kind of hoping you will sleep on these two posts and then apologize to all of us and to your creator and delete them.

[Username taken]

I'd prefer a real dialogue on the issue but as they tend to devolve into talking points I took the opportunity to try to understand why factual evidence is ignored by many conservatives when it supports a "liberal" position.

The facts show that regulation has worked effectively in other nations yet those facts -- like many others -- become irrelevant when they go against the "conservative" ideology.

Instead we get the usual excuses and nothing gets done.

Exactly.

It’s a reasonable discussion to have but these arguments have been drained of nuance.

[Tendrin]

On Monday, notoriously pro-NRA and anti-trans rights Gov. Kristi Noem (R) signed the bill into law, according to Vice. Though all bans regarding trans healthcare have been irreparably harmful, South Dakota’s law is explicitly violent and the first of its kind: Healthcare professionals have until the end of the year to stop treatment for patients currently receiving gender-affirming care, from hormone therapy and surgery to puberty blockers. Doctors who don’t comply will be at risk of losing their medical license or could be sued.

“South Dakota’s kids are our future. With this legislation, we are protecting kids from harmful, permanent medical procedures,” Noem said in a statement. The Republican majority state senate had previously passed the legislation, known as House Bill 1080, in a 30-4 vote.

The facts couldn't be clearer about the benefits of gender affirming care for trans youth but instead we get this legislation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/so...dcf9a1200f4bd3

[Tami]

Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections

A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed in a new investigation.

The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.

He is being unmasked by an international consortium of journalists. Hanan and his unit, which uses the codename “Team Jorge”, have been exposed by undercover footage and documents leaked to the Guardian.

Hanan did not respond to detailed questions about Team Jorge’s activities and methods but said: “I deny any wrongdoing.”

The investigation reveals extraordinary details about how disinformation is being weaponised by Team Jorge, which runs a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace. The group also works for corporate clients.

Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as “black ops”, were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe.

One of Team Jorge’s key services is a sophisticated software package, Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims. It controls a vast army of thousands of fake social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some avatars even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.

The consortium of journalists that investigated Team Jorge includes reporters from 30 outlets including Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País. The project, part of a wider investigation into the disinformation industry, has been coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.

[AnakinFlair]

Florida law prevents seizure of assets for the payment of legal judgements, although government assessed penalties might be treated differently than civil judgements (and out of state stuff may also be different than in state stuff).

I had forgotten about that. That was the whole reason OJ moved to Florida.

It's not really pure luck. There are roughly 128,961 schools in the United States. There would have to be a lot more mass shootings in schools for there to be a one in ten chance that any of your relatives is attending at the time.

Mets, there are two students in Michigan State that have already survived a school shooting. One was present at Sandy Hook, another was present at a school shooting that happened less than 15 MONTHS ago.

Hell, the ad I'm seeing the most of on Facebook now is for the ballistic bookbag, a bullet-proof backpack that has a quick deploy panel that you can pull up and over your front like a vest. Do you get it? SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ARE SO COMMON NOW THAT WE HAVE TO SEND KIDS TO SCHOOL WITH KEVLAR BACKPACKS!!!!

[mogwen]

Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections

A journalist from BFM TV, france's most important news channel has been investigated for this recently, he's on current leave.

[aja_christopher]

Hell, the ad I'm seeing the most of on Facebook now is for the ballistic bookbag, a bullet-proof backpack that has a quick deploy panel that you can pull up and over your front like a vest. Do you get it? SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ARE SO COMMON NOW THAT WE HAVE TO SEND KIDS TO SCHOOL WITH KEVLAR BACKPACKS!!!!

According to DeSantis and many other Republican leaders, the solution is obviously more guns and less training requirements.

Never mind the facts.

-----

States with right-to-carry concealed handgun laws experience increases in violent crime, according to Stanford scholar"

"Donohue and his team employed a new statistical technique that creates a “synthetic control,” which attempts to find the best possible comparison for the RTC-adopting state drawn from among other states that had no RTC law at the time.

The synthetic control approach, a research method now widely applied in economics and political science, uses an algorithm that combines crime patterns from several non-RTC states – or during the time before states adopted RTC – to create an artificial or synthetic state. Take Texas, which passed RTC laws in 1996. Donohue’s comparison for Texas came from combining data from California – a non-RTC state – and Nebraska and Wisconsin, which hadn’t pass RTC laws at that time. By weighting the violent crime data from these three states for the period from 1986 to 1996, he produced a synthetic crime rate similar to Texas’ crime rate in the 10 years prior to adopting RTC laws.

Donohue then projected the synthetic state’s crime rate for the next 10 years and compared it against Texas’ crime rate post-RTC passage. He performed the same analysis on the 33 states that enacted RTC laws over his data period and found a strikingly consistent picture.

On average, RTC states had aggregate violent crime rates around 7 percent higher than the synthetic states five years after RTC law passage. After 10 years, the gap increased to almost 15 percent.

“All this work is based on statistical models,” Donohue said. “When the models all generate similar estimates, it increases your confidence that you have captured the true effect.”

Donohue applied the synthetic control approach using four previously published statistical data models that had generated conflicting panel data estimates of the impact of RTC laws on violent crime. In all four cases, the synthetic control estimates showed increases in overall violent crime of 13-15 percent.

“There is not even the slightest hint in the data that RTC laws reduce overall violent crime,” Donohue stated in the paper."

To put the significance of a 15-percent increase in violent crime in perspective, the paper notes that “the average RTC state would have to double its prison population to counteract the RTC-induced increase in violent crime.”"

https://news.stanford.edu/2017/06/21...-carry-states/

[AnakinFlair]

Today is the 5th Anniversary of the Parkland Shooting. And we are dealing with the fallout of yet another mass shooting in a school.

Florida law prevents seizure of assets for the payment of legal judgements, although government assessed penalties might be treated differently than civil judgements (and out of state stuff may also be different than in state stuff).

One of the saddest things from the Michigan State Shooting is that one of the woman injured was also injured in the Sandy Hook School Shooting. So less then 22 and has been injured in 2 school shootings.

What matters is being right. If people are mistaken on facts, they will encourage policymakers to use finite resources poorly. That will lead to more people dying prematurely and/ or failing to reach their full potential. This does not seem like an ideal outcome for anyone calling for empathy.

It's not really pure luck. There are roughly 128,961 schools in the United States. There would have to be a lot more mass shootings in schools for there to be a one in ten chance that any of your relatives is attending at the time.

According to DeSantis and many other Republican leaders, the solution is obviously more guns and less training requirements.

Never mind the facts.

-----

States with right-to-carry concealed handgun laws experience increases in violent crime, according to Stanford scholar"

"Donohue and his team employed a new statistical technique that creates a “synthetic control,” which attempts to find the best possible comparison for the RTC-adopting state drawn from among other states that had no RTC law at the time.

The synthetic control approach, a research method now widely applied in economics and political science, uses an algorithm that combines crime patterns from several non-RTC states – or during the time before states adopted RTC – to create an artificial or synthetic state. Take Texas, which passed RTC laws in 1996. Donohue’s comparison for Texas came from combining data from California – a non-RTC state – and Nebraska and Wisconsin, which hadn’t pass RTC laws at that time. By weighting the violent crime data from these three states for the period from 1986 to 1996, he produced a synthetic crime rate similar to Texas’ crime rate in the 10 years prior to adopting RTC laws.

Donohue then projected the synthetic state’s crime rate for the next 10 years and compared it against Texas’ crime rate post-RTC passage. He performed the same analysis on the 33 states that enacted RTC laws over his data period and found a strikingly consistent picture.

On average, RTC states had aggregate violent crime rates around 7 percent higher than the synthetic states five years after RTC law passage. After 10 years, the gap increased to almost 15 percent.

“All this work is based on statistical models,” Donohue said. “When the models all generate similar estimates, it increases your confidence that you have captured the true effect.”

Donohue applied the synthetic control approach using four previously published statistical data models that had generated conflicting panel data estimates of the impact of RTC laws on violent crime. In all four cases, the synthetic control estimates showed increases in overall violent crime of 13-15 percent.

“There is not even the slightest hint in the data that RTC laws reduce overall violent crime,” Donohue stated in the paper."

To put the significance of a 15-percent increase in violent crime in perspective, the paper notes that “the average RTC state would have to double its prison population to counteract the RTC-induced increase in violent crime.”"

https://news.stanford.edu/2017/06/21...-carry-states/

Not five minutes after I made my last post, I was scrolling through Instagram and the FIRST ad that came up was for a kevlar tactical vest. I kid you not.

But no. Let's legislate against Trans kids some more. They are clearly the real threat.

[aja_christopher]

Not five minutes after I made my last post, I was scrolling through Instagram and the FIRST ad that came up was for a kevlar tactical vest. I kid you not.

But no. Let's legislate against Trans kids some more. They are clearly the real threat.

It all makes sense when you consider their longstanding alliances with both the NRA and the evangelical base -- money and power (votes) in exchange for promoting guns and "Christian" nationalism on a national stage.

In many ways, both have delievered for one another in the past and see no reason to change course, especially after the Republicans overturned Roe vs. Wade while blocking the vast majority of gun regulation over the past few decades.

It's only complex if we pretend not to see the obvious agenda, which is problematic in multiple ways because we also should know based on history exactly where such an agenda leads.



And it's not just America -- the world in general is in uncharted territory with regards to right-wing authoritarianism and we need to be aware of the example we set to others.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The facts couldn't be clearer about the benefits of gender affirming care for trans youth but instead we get this legislation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/so...dcf9a1200f4bd3

So much for Qpublicans keeping government out of the lives of the people. But then, what they really meant was keeping government out of THEIR affairs, everyone is is fair game. And when trans kids, denied the care they need find themselves with no option other than suicide (worst case scenario) rather than deal with the anguish of not being able to transition, what will cretins like Noem say about that? This is just another stupid and senseless battle in right wing culture wars, but one that could actually cost lives.

[Vakanai]

What matters is being right. If people are mistaken on facts, they will encourage policymakers to use finite resources poorly. That will lead to more people dying prematurely and/ or failing to reach their full potential. This does not seem like an ideal outcome for anyone calling for empathy.

Alright, let's follow this line of reasoning...
1. America has the most gun deaths per capita and more mass shooting events than any other "developed" nation in the world.
2. The trend for many years now has been an increase in such mass shooting incidents year over year.

Now, how does saying "you know, considering the thousands of schools in the nation, someone's chances of, statistically you're still unlikely to have a loved one die in a school shooting, even if it's more likely here than any other first world nation" save lives? How does this fact decrease the number of deaths in any way? How is my worry for my cousin or brother's safety at school put them or anyone else in more danger?

The line of reasoning here seems kinda suspect to be perfectly honest.

Let's not ignore the obvious fact that if it were not for Republicans, effective gun control legislation would have likely been passed long ago, just as it was in many other nations who dealt with this issue.

One can make many arguments about what should be done, but one can't make the factual argument that effectively doing nothing -- or expanding gun rights as per Republcan legislation -- is the "right" solution to curb gun violence.

Oh I don't ignore that. I've blamed the republicans several times now for our inability to pass gun reform a majority of this nation agrees with. And I will keep blaming them for a long time to come. I just don't have faith that we can overcome them and exact any change this decade or likely the next.

Fentanyl smuggler and tiki torch wielding Nazi "Ted von Nukem" (he had his name legally changed to that) killed himself before his trial for smuggling drugs.





Oh, and I will have a salad for dinner because I am working on my beach body.

Outside of certain world figures with a death count of tens of thousands to their names (like Putin), I don't wish suicide on anyone, and I try to be sensitive to the loss their loved ones are feeling. But in this case I feel it's appropriate to call this man a coward for taking the easy way out than facing the consequences of his actions.

The facts couldn't be clearer about the benefits of gender affirming care for trans youth but instead we get this legislation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/so...dcf9a1200f4bd3

Republicans care for neither facts nor trans children. Despite claiming to be a pro-life party, trans lives aren't considered a "pro" in any way. If there were fewer trans people in the world, that would suit this party of hypocrites just fine.

My own youth was...complicated. Perhaps because I lacked the information, or was unwilling to consider the possibility and dismissed the thought numerous times (deeply conservative area), I never pieced together that I was trans as a kid. I just thought I had a lot of separate and unconnected problems. Terrible self body image, thinking I was ugly even though I knew rationally I was "normal looking", an inability to relate to most "other males" in my life, and a lot of odd moments and thoughts that feel like blazing neon signs now as to my nature but only confused me then so dismissed. I just believed that I was broken in many, many unrelated and different ways, and it caused me more dark periods in my life than I care to reflect on now.

As bad as I had it not knowing "why" I was the way I was, I can only imagine that it's much harder for youth who do understand what's wrong, to know that there's a way to "be fixed" and feel happy, to actually know that there's something that can be done to alleviate all these horrid emotions. And to be denied that day after day after day, to be told you can't have this? I have trouble imagining a crueler torture than that. Especially for our youth - I'm having trouble not thinking about this all the time myself now as an adult, feeling like for the first time in my life I have an answer to some of the problems that have frankly haunted me all my life and not being willing/able to act on it - I can't imagine what that must be like for someone who lacks the coping mechanisms and emotional maturity and resiliency I do as an adult with a lifetime of experience behind me. Our youth are under attack to score culture war points instead of having their emotional, psychological, and frankly valid medical needs met.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I had forgotten about that. That was the whole reason OJ moved to Florida.



Mets, there are two students in Michigan State that have already survived a school shooting. One was present at Sandy Hook, another was present at a school shooting that happened less than 15 MONTHS ago.

Hell, the ad I'm seeing the most of on Facebook now is for the ballistic bookbag, a bullet-proof backpack that has a quick deploy panel that you can pull up and over your front like a vest. Do you get it? SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ARE SO COMMON NOW THAT WE HAVE TO SEND KIDS TO SCHOOL WITH KEVLAR BACKPACKS!!!!

Oh sure, let’s advertise to the world that Kevlar backpacks are a thing. So, the next time there’s a school shooting, the bad guys will either shoot kids in the head, or in the legs to sever the femoral artery, leaving victims to bleed out. What in the hell are we doing here?