Saturday, September 9, 2017

Big Saturday roundup

Sorry guys, I've been traveling.

 Heart-wrenching photos from Yemen.

 One of many memorable sentiments from Coates' Trump Is the First White President:
And so the most powerful country in the world has handed over all its affairs—the prosperity of its entire economy; the security of its 300  million citizens; the purity of its water, the viability of its air, the safety of its food; the future of its vast system of education; the soundness of its national highways, airways, and railways; the apocalyptic potential of its nuclear arsenal—to a carnival barker who introduced the phrase grab ’em by the pussy into the national lexicon.
This is a really good thread about protest and violence.
And here's another.

I wonder if Houston has taught us anything about the merits of regulation and the dangers of under-regulation.
 “There could have been ways to have more green space and more green infrastructure over the years, and it just didn’t work that way, because it was fast and furious,” said Phil Bedient, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Rice University. Many developments were not built with enough open land or enough detention areas to take in floodwaters, Dr. Bedient said. “It’s been known for years how to do it,” he said, “it just costs the developers more money to do it that way.”
As Mr. Rogers would say, look for the helpers.

And FFS, do NOT give to the Red Cross. I gave to Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston, Baker Ripley, and Houston PetSet. If none of those appeal to you, here's a longer list.

Ag-gag is rampant and egregious.

Why I'm not here for Chelsea Manning, whose commitment to human rights is limited to her own.
According to The New Yorker, when the United States tried to locate “hundreds” of Afghans named in the documents and move them to safety, “many could not be found, or were in environments too dangerous to reach.” When pressed by a journalist about the possibility of redacting the names of Afghans who cooperated with the United States military, Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, reportedly replied: “Well, they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.” 
Meantime, Mr. Assange gave a Russian Holocaust denier 90,000 of the cables. That man, who goes by the pen name Israel Shamir, delivered a trove to the Belarussian dictatorship, which then utilized the material to detain opposition activists. In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe used a leaked cable detailing a United States Embassy meeting with opposition figures as pretext for an investigation into “treasonous collusion.”
and
Celebrating Chelsea Manning just a few years after gay and transgender people were permitted to serve openly in the military discredits the L.G.B.T. cause. Throughout most of the 20th century, homosexuality was associated with treason and used as a basis for purging gay people from government jobs, denying them security clearances and restricting their service in the armed forces. The decision by Ms. Manning’s defense team to argue that untreated gender dysphoria was a factor in her decision to leak classified information unwittingly aids those who say that L.G.B.T. people cannot be trusted in sensitive government jobs. And it dishonors the L.G.B.T. people who have served in the military throughout history without betraying their country.
I hope I could be as forgiving as the people of this mosque.
Who knew that movies could jump-start arms control?
After signing a 1987 nuclear treaty with the Soviet Union’s Mikhael Gorbachev, Reagan sent a telegram to Meyer, saying, “Don’t think your movie didn’t have any part of this, because it did.”
It's not easy to negotiate with North Koreans.

Words matter; don't be carried away by mistranslations.

What China's bike-share crisis reveals about people:
Some say abuse of the bicycles reflects an every-man-for-himself mentality in China that has its roots in the extreme poverty of the last century. Others are bothered by what they see as a lack of concern for strangers and public resources. The transgressions have been chronicled in the local news media with a tone of disbelief, in part because Chinese generally see themselves as a law-abiding society and crime rates are relatively low.
The immigration debate has shifted.

 Do your best not to torture your fellow passengers by way of your imp-children.

Read every line of Lindy West's take-down of the Princess Royal's non-feminism. 

 Are you facing professional disrespect as a woman? Invent a male coworker.

Awww, someone didn't make it onto a best-dressed list.
Yep, the "liberals are snowflakes and crybabies" crowd spent the better part of today whining about how the first lady was omitted from a fashion list in a magazine. Weird.
Conspicuous consumption has been out of favor for a while (just no one told Louise Linton, who, to be fair, did apologize well).

Women are getting mixed messages about whether breasts are in.
This couple of the poop-in-window are my heroes; I hope they stay together.


These mock Prince-op-ed headlines are priceless. As are these Tumblr comments. Together, they are almost as good as Megan Amram's take on Jared Kushner's Harvard admissions essay.

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