The FBI. (is using right wing blacklists to question pro-palestine activists)

@GodEmperorDune Speaking of Pruitt...

@TimStone this bro

love how the First Lady is saying to do the opposite of what her husband does

@Memor-X civility is a tool to maintain the status quo

example of clixkbaity news

actual thing

> Pauline Hanson has alleged that Clive Palmer threatened to withhold preferencing One Nation through his new political party if she didn't back the company tax cuts.

election ballot preferencing is negotiation, not threats

infact on the opposite the parties generally work out who to preference higher by finding out who would support them

ie. Clive Palmer saying "if you don't support my side i preference One Nation lower" is the same as Pauline Hanson saying "i'll support your side if One Nation is preference higher"

operations at the varick street immigration court, 201 Varick St. New York, NY are now shut down

unrelatedly:

Migrant children are required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in detention centers, 'out of respect' for America

WTF?

america deserves no respect

@MadScientist to America? or to Trump?

I think it's to the flag (whatever the hell that means), but then the pledge of allegiance always seemed extremely weird to me anyway

to the flag

WHY FOOTBALL MAN DON'T STAND

Oh damn did I miss this somehow

213-211 is quite close in this house so it's possible that it could die in the senate?

Ah, I see the retaliation campaign against the Red Hen is going as expected with people harassing completely unrelated restaurants that just share the same name

So respectful of u Sarah Sanders

Uh oh :|

@TimStone man, I hope Trump makes it so that the US stops being the center of all the things and everything becomes cheaper in countries other than US (sorry if it comes at a cost of everything becoming more expensive in the US)

more companies need to move to Canada, so I can get my stuff cheaper ;)

Destroying the domestic job market to own the libs

maybe Trump is actually a trained spy, sabotaging the country from the inside

@Chippies "trained"

@TimStone ... Great.

Everything is still coming closer to my headcanon of any dystopian thing that the rest of the world is fine and looking at america like "Wtf is going on there"

@Yuuki I mean, if he were to be a spy, he's fucking amazing

SCOTUS punted the NC gerrymandering case

Rationale for the Perez decision was that the lower courts relied too much on the 2011 plan for determining if the 2013 plan was racially discriminatory, and thus didn't give the legislature a presumption of good faith

Which like lol gtfo

Oh, there was this Justice Department e-mail leaked over the weekend about how they're diverting attorneys from work on smuggling cases (such as drugs) to handle the overload of border crossing cases due to zero tolerance.

@KevinvanderVelden wouldn't say the rest of the world is fine, but the US is certainly deep in WTF territory right now

No that's just my headcanon in any dystopian movie/book/whatever that doesn't explicitly state that it's worldwide

(Amex wins, and is allowed to prohibit merchants from steering customers to cards with lower transactions fees)

tbh that's pretty confusing anyway because like can you imagine a merchant being "Yeah we accept your credit card but we don't like it, try this other credit card instead"? Unless I misunderstood the premise? 🤔

@TimStone Counterpoint: positive news

Countercounterpoint:

Not in any way related to Erie, PA but that doesn't matter because jfc 🤦

> NRA Reporter Claims Immigrant Child Detention Facilities 'Too Nice'

Why the heck is a gun rights reporter talking about immigration policy?

The A now stands for agitprop

@ToxicFrog Destroying the domestic job market because "Trade Wars are easy to win" so who cares about collateral

/cc @Unionhawk

We're now up to A Whole Handful of sitting congresspeople calling for the abolishment of ICE

friendship ended with Bernie Sanders now Mark Pocan is my best friend

Oh yeah, speaking of destroying domestic job markets...

Ahahahaha

> because we need these cruel strict border control procedures otherwise these illegal aliens are going to flood us and vote to get rid of the 2nd

Basically, Trump backing out of multilateral trade agreements and targeted tariffs from Europe are hitting the Wisconsin dairy market hard.

@TimStone I've seen some places offer perks for using certain cards (I think it's usually for debit, maybe?), because of the lower transaction fees, I'm assuming. That might be what they are prohibiting?

@Yuuki Harley is also in Paul Ryan's district, lol

@Chippies yeah then it might also be specifically a slightly higher fee for AMEX

since they charge merchants more than Visa and others do

Backing out of multilateral trade agreements means that Europe can convince other countries to uphold its geographic indications without carving out exceptions for American cheesemakers.

So now Mr. Wisconsin cheesemaker can no longer sell his cheese in Mexico as "asiago".

And targeted tariffs are persuading major cheese buyers to look to Europe.

@TimStone That milk producer in the article is kinda annoying me though. Most of his income is apparently derived from selling milk to one of the cheesemakers that's being hit by the double-whammy of trade agreements and tariffs and he still says Trump is standing up for agriculture.

@TimStone lol i drove past there on saturday

AT&T continues service to NSA

> NSA systems are designed to go after certain "selectors"—a name, email address, or phone number. But if that selector is simply mentioned, for instance, in a single email, "NSA will acquire a copy of the entire inbox, not just the individual email messages that contains the tasked selector."

> "Hypothetically, under 12333 the NSA could target a single foreigner abroad," Tye continued then. "And hypothetically if, while targeting that single person, they happened to collect every single Gmail/Facebook message on the company servers from everyone—then the NSA could keep and use the data from those three billion other people. That's called 'incidental collection.' I will not confirm or deny that that is happening, but there is nothing in 12333 to prevent that from happening."

so trump tweeted about the red hen restaurant that booted SHS out. and lulz

@GodEmperorDune Slime in the ice machine!

Actually, that's a pretty local (and somewhat old) meme. I don't think anyone outside of Houston and born later than like 1998 would get that reference.

There was this TV beat reporter that would do local stories and had a regular segment where he would list off recent restaurant food safety violations.

Lemme see if I can find a video on YouTube.

He was very colorful and clearly loved his job.

Yes, there were kids that would cosplay as him.

@Yuuki wow that's so 90s

@GodEmperorDune He was incredibly 90s.

Ahh they let Miller write the WH mailer again...

> When separation is permanent

🙄

Also

> Ending the Human Rights Council farce

@TimStone "Hey guys, we totally spelled it right this time, whoo party!"

lol

Arg, curse you length limit on messages

> It is telling that many of those who make their living in the political industrial complex, whether Democrat or Republican or Washington Post editorial page, find the idea of socially shunning people because of their politics to be abhorrent. Their shudders are a symptom of the fact that DC is indeed a swamp—a friendly swamp, where all the gators and slugs and mudfish meet up at the end of the day for cocktails, because to them, politics is a job.

> To the rest of us, politics is the use of power in a way that has very real effects on our lives.

splinternews.com/this-is-just-the-beginning-1827099100/…

I mean, on the other hand, socially shunning people because of their politics (and also actually incarcerating them and stuff) was the Red Scare.

Not saying that Trump people being kicked out from restaurants is on the same level as the Red Scare but it's weird to see lefties talking about social shunning like this.

Honestly, the reason why I've been enjoying this is a sense of ironic schadenfreude. Private businesses arbitrarily discriminating against individuals is the exact kind of thing that Trump supporters have been pushing for and now they're being hit by arbitrary discrimination.

@Yuuki trying to bring about a european ethno state is not a protected class entitled to public accomodations

this is not a blanket thing against all republicans, but against specific people cheering/covering for child abuse of brown kids at the border

(along with a laundry list of white supremacist and racist stuff that the trump admin has done)

@Yuuki Incidentally, the comparison people are going to here is not this one, but lunch counters lol

@Unionhawk civility is a tool of the status quo. there are more pressing concerns, such as how the trump admin is stomping on minorities

CNN is a tool of the status quo

> Adobe had 93 execs. But none were black.

To be fair, I expected no less (more?) of Adobe.

I also feel like it's weird and doesn't really fit the message that they followed "nVidia has terrible diversity" with "its stock has done really well in recent years".

@MadScientist wow

i heard RT and russian bots were trashing maxine waters all weekend

anyone on the Trump side complaining about civility is just entirely hypocritical, Trump doesn't even meet the lowest imaginable bar there

(I'm not a fan of calling people up to confront Trump admin members, it's mostly a distraction from actual issues, and I really doubt it achieves anything useful)

@MadScientist it provides some actual consequences (and mild ones at that) to a group that is hell bent on doing terrible things and is not being held accountable by the other govt agencies that are supposed to hold them accountable

i don't remember democrats straight up ignoring court decisions they don't like and refusing to hold special elections, but scott walker did just that

it also means we're now talking about this, instead of the children at the border or other things.

that news cycle was already disrupted by melania's jacket choices

and unlike fashion choices, this is a tangible thing that real people can do to feel empowered

it is also non violent and much more civil than armed revolt

lmao at the name of the libertarian socialist caucus discord channel that is effectively this room (#yelling-about-the-state)

(it's a new one, we've been using #the-hell-sites for The Discourse)

> Opinion | What's Wrong with Republicans? - wapo.st/wharrgarbl

oh man

this is going to be good assuming it's not totally paywalled?

eh it was ok

Not sure I want to look at that

it goes along "what the hell is wrong with you guys why aren't you speaking out against this, oh, I guess I shouldn't be surprised"

so at least it wasn't a "Why Republicans Not Welcome At Virginia Restaurant"

so on the comprehensive scale from meh to democracy dies in broad daylight that is wapo opinion, this was a solid meh

Speaking of WaPo

Oh whoops. I saw it elsenet this morning.

@ToxicFrog its a good thread :D

Does anyone have any happy non-animal news today? I'd appreciate shares :)

tbh I expected a war but I did not anticipate we'd trigger a crusade

is he talking about us from a "rich people have a disproportionate level of influence on our democracy" angle or

Things you can do besides calling your Congressperson

@Unionhawk Sweeping atrocities under the rug kind of angle more so but

Like...intentionally, or are they just throwing their arms up because they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing?

I mean yeah because that's just rational

I like that CNN just sees that as an insult and not an accurate analysis of his political views

White people white peopling :|

if you're not nice to stephen miller, then trump wins

it actually is not baffling at all matt

if that is your real name

Okay this brings up an interesting question of whether a device labeled-Old Batman style-"Nazi Detector" that beeps whenever pointed at Steve King would in fact violate the House decorum rules

Let's find out!

turns back to Twi... What in the fresh hell

We have to be in hell that's really the only explanation for this

That's so stupidly contrived

shakes fist

Good news for Frontier

> Now, three researchers at Oxford have taken a new look at a famous equation that has given us confidence for decades that there's life somewhere.

Uh... I don't think it was the Drake Equation itself that gave anyone confidence that there's life (or intelligent life) out there.

I always figured the Drake Equation as some kind of pop science-y way to get people to fund or support deep space exploration.

The thing is that the Drake Equation is just "make up some numbers and then plug them into an equation". You can make it say that there is no intelligent life, or a million intelligent civilizations

@Yuuki a lot of people like to point at the first three terms and point out that we now know them and they're actually pretty high, so for us to be the only ones the remaining terms need to be really unsettlingly tiny

To which there at least three concise counterarguments

:/

@TimStone :/

(and I suspect the one with the most weight is "for any of the other terms to have weight, L has to be relatively high, and based on our own track record that isn't looking like a safe bet")

> The conclusion can be changed if: - We reduce the uncertainty of past terms to less than 7 orders of magnitude

I get that this is astronomy, but that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence

What's a few zeroes between friends, of which we have none, because we're alone in the galaxy?

Maybe it's best if we're alone. Seems like we'd piss off the neighbors all too easily.

If the aliens do show up, just have everyone disappear for a few weeks while Canada handles everything.

Also, if I understand the presentation correctly, it's actually giving something like a 40% chance that we're alone in the universe, and slightly over 50% chance that we're alone in the galaxy

Though, the conditional probability stuff at the end just confuses me, so maybe it's actually saying something else

But the point is that I think "We are most likely alone in the galaxy" is overstating it just a bit. I guess "there is a slightly higher than 50% probability that humanity is the only intelligent species in our galaxy" is a worse headline

"most likely" vs "more likely than not"

fun times

@Unionhawk This is how civil disobedience works, right? If you choose to break actual laws while protesting something, you have to be ready for the consequences of breaking those laws.

I feel like if they were breaking an actual law, this order would've come a lot sooner. I mean, the occupy ICE thing has been going on for more than a week right?

Hmm... I'm probably describing that incorrectly.

@murgatroid99 Absolutely, though the federal overreach with this particular law is also pretty dumb

I can't really tell. From the pictures in that thread it looks like the camp is physically blockading the pictured entranceway

Actually, I'm not sure that's what civil disobedience is. I always thought civil disobedience was purposely breaking laws that you considered unjust or immoral and then serving the consequences in protest. If you break laws in the course of protesting something else, that technically wouldn't be civil disobedience.

@murgatroid99 I'm going to sidestep here and just state that the feds trying to resume ICE operations here is bad, regardless of whether or not it is illegal to prevent them from doing so (which it is)

@murgatroid99 I just meant in a general sense, the federal government has made illegal dissent in any area that might remotely inconvenience the people holding the actual power. Not a recent development in any sense though

@TimStone I like section (paragraph? idk) (a) in particular

Like I'll buy (b) I guess

I don't like it but it makes sense

(c) is broad, (d) fine

but (a) lol

@TimStone From another perspective, the government has made it so that you can't shut down whatever part of the government you want if you just disagree with it

That sounds bad when they're doing something shitty, but most of the stuff the government does is not shitty

"Well, 30 people really hate welfare and are physically blockading the office, so I guess we just can't do food stamps for a while"

I mean they did let a bunch of obnoxious, armed white dudes take over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge for a while and didn't do much in the way of punishing those people

But I meant more like the same law was used to arrest BLM activists protesting outside a federal courthouse

They weren't even blocking the doors in that instance, but because there was a crowd of people that was sufficient for it to be used against them

Being arrested for actively blockading a building is the cost of the fight, definitely

I do agree with @Uni that paragraph (a) of that law is unreasonable. But the emphasized bit of that flyer thing indicates that that is not the part of the law that was relevant to that case

@murgatroid99 I can assure you, people who dislike welfare are not nearly organized enough to pull this off

I mean hell we're barely organized enough to pull this off

@Unionhawk Sure, that was just an example. My point was that there are a lot of important functions that the federal government performs that could have real negative consequences for people if they were disrupted.

It is certainly unsurprising that the feds are rolling in, it was only a matter of time. Portland not rolling in only bought us so much time

@murgatroid99 good thing this isn't one of them

It's going to own tomorrow when the DHS or some other agency rolls up with fifty riot officers with chemical weapons

Just to reopen this one cog in their monstrous machine

@Unionhawk I know. I'm not trying to say that the enforcement of this law in this particular case is a good thing, just that it is the law and that there are good reasons in general for that law to exist.

@Unionhawk And it seems to me that this is basically the goal of civil disobedience: a photo op of cops in riot gear removing peaceful protesters in order to resume/continue one of the most monstrous programs in modern US history.

@murgatroid99 I think everyone at the camp is prepared for this eventuality, but I'm not confident enough to say it was a goal.

I don't really have a coherent analysis on what victory looks like here, is shutting down operations here temporarily and building the movement a victory?

@TimStone love to culturally appropriate

@Unionhawk they used kid gloves on y'all queda

> while the North Korean national anthem played

flat what

@Unionhawk i just read an article in wapo about "abolish ICE" becoming a thing with real politicians so awareness is spreading

even kamala "as a prosecutor" harris is now hedging and apparently wants to "reevaluate ice" or somesuch

wow he is M A D O N L I N E today

@GodEmperorDune doesn't he have people to ask such questions to? If there was no twitter, would he ask questions on yahoo answers?

@Chippies he just wants to whine and spin a narrative for his followers