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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product

There’s something oddly comforting about the idea that “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product,” namely, the corollary: “If you can afford to pay for a product, you won’t be the product.” But it’s bullshit. Companies don’t make you the product because you don’t pay — they make you the product because you can’t stop them.

The theory behind “if you’re not paying for the product…” is that old economist’s saw: “incentives matter.” Companies that monetize attention are incentivized to manipulate and spy on you, while companies that you pay just want to make you happy.

This is a theory of corporate behavior grounded in economics, not power, a creature of theory and doctrine that never bothers to check in with the real world to see how that theory and doctrine map to actual events. Reality is a lot uglier.

Apple has blanketed the planet with billboards and print and online ads extolling its privacy-forward system design (e.g. “Privacy. That’s Iphone.”). There’s something to this: in 2020, the company made it very easy to opt out of third-party Ios surveillance, and 96% of its users opted out:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

That decision cost Facebook $10 billion in a single year, and the losses keep coming. Facebook launched a campaign that accused Apple of privacywashing an anticompetitive maneuver, claiming that Apple didn’t care about its users’ privacy, they just wanted to eliminate competition for Apple’s own ad brokerage:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/facebooks-laughable-campaign-against-apple-really-against-users-and-small

Facebook’s campaign poses itself as the true champion of its users, accusing Apple of shamming. It’s laughable. Facebook manifestly despises its users and proves that fact every day in a thousand ways, large and small. Facebook’s true objection to Apple’s privacy tools is that they reduced Facebook’s earnings by $10b. Obviously.

But that doesn’t mean that Facebook is wrong about Apple’s cynicism. Apple exercises enormous control over its users. It’s a direct control. Apple blocks you from installing software of your choosing or from using third-party repair services of your choosing. They pour millions into engineering to make this technically challenging, and lead a coalition of large corporations that kill right to repair legislation whenever it is mooted:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

Some of Facebook’s critics accuse it of exercising similar control, but via a far more insidious method: they say that Facebook’s voracious surveillance of its users, combined with machine learning, allows Facebook to control its users’ minds, stripping them of their free will and turning them into algorithm-addled zombies who do whatever Facebook directs them to do.

This is an extraordinary claim, given that every previous claim of mind-control turned out to be bullshit, from Mesmer to MK Ultra. The best evidence for these mind-control claims comes from Facebook’s own marketing materials, where the company assures advertisers that they should spend their money on FB’s platform because of its mind-control features.

When FB critics repeat these claims, they’re engaged in “criti-hype,” Lee Vinsel’s useful coinage describing criticism that serves to bolster the target’s own propaganda. If FB are evil geniuses, well, at least they’re still geniuses.

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Some Facebookers doubtless believe their own hype, but that doesn’t mean we have to join them in self-delusion. We can criticize Facebook for seeking control over its users, and for using that control to do things that serve its own interests at the expense of its users’ interests.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

That’s the true sin of Big Tech: using deception and coercion to control users. Companies that gain this control can be reliably expected to use it in whichever ways they can get away with. They are paperclip-maximizing artificial life-forms bent on devouring the human race, not ethical actors.

Apple’s commitment to privacy is best understood as instrumental. Apple thinks that protecting your privacy will attract your business, and they’re right. I would like to have privacy! But while Apple can increase its revenues by telling you they’ll protect your privacy, they can increase them even more by lying about it.

That’s just what they do. Earlier this month, a small security research firm called Mysk released a video revealing that when you tick the box on your Iphone that promises “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether,” your Iphone continues to spy on you, and sends the data it collects to Apple:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JxvH80Rrcw

The data Iphones gather is extraordinarily fine-grained: “what you tapped on, which apps you search for, what ads you saw, and how long you looked at a given app and how you found it.”

https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-when-off-app-store-1849757558

It doesn’t stop there: “The app sent details about you and your device as well, including ID numbers, what kind of phone you’re using, your screen resolution, your keyboard languages, how you’re connected to the internet — notably, the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.”

The researchers had to jailbreak an Iphone in order to find this lie. Apple has gone to extraordinary lengths to make jailbreaking illegal. Apple claims that allowing users to disable the locks on their phones will make them vulnerable to bad actors who will install deceptive, coercive software.

That is true, but it’s also true that these locks make it impossible to determine whether Apple’s software is deceptive and coercive. The walled fortress that keeps you safe from third parties is also a walled prison that leaves you at the mercy of the warlord who owns the fortress.

Once a company attains a certain scale, it becomes too big to jail, and then it monetizes you however it can. If you think the future of technology is battle is between Google’s approach and Apple’s, think again. The real fight is between the freedom to decide how technology works for you, and corporate control over technology.

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

Apple and Google are like the pigs and the men at the end of Animal Farm: supposed bitter enemies who turn out to be indistinguishable from one another. Google also has “privacy” switches in its preference panels that do nothing:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#goog

Indeed, there are so many places in Google’s location privacy settings where you can tick a box that claims to turn off location spying. None of them work. A senior product manager at Google complained to her colleagues that she had turned off three different settings and was still being tracked:

https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1398359580275523590

Apple is now the subject of a California class action suit over its deceptive practices, which violate the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/LibmanvAppleIncDocketNo522cv07069NDCalNov102022CourtDocket

As Gizmodo’s Thomas Germain notes, Apple has a good — if self-serving — reason to spy on its users. It has launched its own ad network, and is selling advertisers the ability to target its customers based on their activities:

https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-analytics-class-action-suit-1849774313

Companies will only protect your privacy to the extent that it is more profitable than not doing so. They can increase those profits by advertising privacy promises to potential customers. They can increase them more by secretly breaking those promises, And they can increase them even more by using privacy claims to block their rivals’ spying, so they’re the sole supplier of your nonconsensually collected personal information.

That’s what’s happening with Google’s endless proposals to “increase privacy” in Chrome that block third parties from spying on users, while letting Google continue to invade our privacy:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea

If we want our privacy, we need both transparency (so third parties can investigate companies’ claims to protect privacy) and regulation (so cheating companies will face consequences when they’re caught by those third parties).

That’s why it’s so exciting that the FTC has announced its intention to treat privacy invasions as antitrust violations:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

For so long as corporations can use technology and law to hide their misdeeds and power to avoid consequences for those misdeeds, “voting with your wallet” is as useless as opting out of Ios tracking.

We had advertising-supported media for generations — centuries — without mass surveillance. The problem with advertising isn’t incentives — it’s impunity.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: An Apple 'Privacy. That's iPhone.' ad. The three rear-facing camera lenses have been replaced by the staring, red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.]

#pluralistic

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strangebiology · 4 months

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How Funding Affected my Journalism Jobs

The different places I’ve worked as a journalist, and in related fields, have all had different funding. Here are my experiences at different places–and it seems to me that grant-funded stuff is the best.

Internship at Nat Geo

Grants sponsored both of the other interns, but not me. Nat Geo makes a lot of its money through things like books at TV.

Mine was low-paid, but probably normal for an internship in 2016? LOVED the experience. Freelance at Nat Geo afterward was MUCH better paid. $14/hour part-time. IDK how much the grant-funded interns made. 2016.

Fellowship at PBS Newshour

A grant from the National Science Foundation funded me, but PBS is state-sponsored media. Interestingly, that’s a huge red flag in China and Russia, but I found the US-funded Public Broadcasting Service very fair to its subjects. Good experience, but even worse pay, at $13/hour full-time. 2016-2017

Job at Newsweek

Their funding is from clicks. This place was crazy bad and paid garbage. Everyone hated it and almost everyone quit, unless they were being fired for making a living wage. Some people even got fired for accurately reporting on the company itself on assignment from their editors–there was no obscuring it, that was cited as their reason for termitation. Newsweek is Hellfire and damnation. I suspect the nonsense demand for 5 stories/day/person and silly demand that we make them go viral stemmed from the following: the fact that the company primarily made its money from clicks and higher-ups didn’t appear to care about the long-term reputation of the company or its reporters, and perhaps an ego-fueled refusal to try to understand what actually got clicks. $39k/year. 2017-2018

Freelance at VOX

Funded by clicks/ads and grants at the time, but halfway through they started a contribution campaign. The difference I noticed between VOX and Newsweek was that VOX practices were smarter and they actually paid attention to analytics and sane business practices. Also, it's much easier to qualify for and get grants if you're actually doing good journalism, so I don't believe that Newsweek's policy of "lots of garbage" was actually business-savvy in any way.

Vox was a good experience, even though I wasn’t working as a journalist, but doing SEO/social media for journalists. $35/hour, then $50/hour part-time. Then I was laid off due to the pandemic. 2019-2020

Freelance at Alzheimer's Association

Remote, not really journalism, but I liked it anyway. Nonprofit, so, funded by donations and grants. $65/hour part-time. 2021

Job at Bay Nature

My job was entirely funded by a grant. Odd situation–I got the grant and I could bring it to any legit journalism employer. Bay Nature was supposed to contribute 40% of my salary but flexibility happened and they just paid health insurance and such. They got basically no money at all from clicks, like, pennies a year. Not much from subscriptions. They have fundraisers, and at the time, there were 3 writers/editors and 2 fundraisers on staff. Later they hired another writer whose entire salary was paid by a philanthropist, and then I’m told they got another salary funded by a UC Berkeley journalism grant program. So, like half of their editorial staff was grant-funded.

Great experience, but low pay for the Bay Area. $50k/year, all from Poynter-Koch, 2021-2022.

Freelance at Politifact

A nonprofit and they probably get lots of grants. My particular position was also funded by a grant entirely. Loved it. $250/article fact check. 2022.

Book

REALLY love it. $50k is from MIT Press, which is a not-for-profit, and it gets some grants and endowments. Then I got $56k from a grant from the Sloan Foundation on top.

Future?

I also got $500 (plus gas and hotels) to attend a day of learning with a program called Investing in Wyoming’s Creative Economy, and that means I’m one of 100 people eligible to apply for 10 $25k grants for future projects. The idea is to support creatives to stay in Wyoming and have sustainable businesses here. Maybe do some art that will bring in tourists.

_____________________

Note that a grant sort of does, and sort of doesn’t, mean free money. It means money to support a project that usually has to have a mission and a public good, like educating the public. You don’t pay these back, and the org giving the grants doesn’t require a percentage of the profits or anything. But, for instance, the $50k grant from Poynter-Koch was more like a gift to Bay Nature, so they could pay me, and I worked for a year to actually have the funds.

However, I’m not yet convinced that there is any objectively good funding model to ensure the most fair and accurate journalism. In theory, the capitalistic ones would be the best, but the public desire to read inflammatory stories about how their political enemies are evil, or a different generation is full of idiots, adversely affected the accuracy of headlines at Newsweek IMO.

You might think that the worst funding source would be Poynter-Koch, which is a program run by Poynter and funded by the Charles Koch Institute. But neither Poynter nor Koch even asked me to tell them what I was writing, let alone try to stop me from writing it. (Poynter hosted mentor-led auxiliary groups to talk about our careers/lives and such, so the topics of our articles came up sometimes if we chose to share that.)

Anyway, I’m thinking of writing an article on how funding models affect journalism, for better and worse. There are some high-profile examples of grant funding causing harm. But for now, the above is my experience–pretty much all good, except not enough funding sometimes.

#funding #journalism #not biology

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coochiequeens · 1 year

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Oh Canada! Oh no!

A trans-identified male athlete has taken the top spot in yet another Canadian women’s running competition, adding to the growing list of victories against female athletes he has claimed since transitioning.

Tiffany Newell, 50, has now placed first in the women’s indoor 1500 meter running competition for women aged 50-54, which was held in Toronto, Ontario this past week. This is Newell’s latest victory and has added to his long list of first-place rankings and records in women’s running competitions.

On January 8, Newell took the top spot in the women’s 3000 meter for women aged 45-49 at the Winter Mini Meet, and would rank first in the women’s 5000 meter for women aged 45-49 just days later.

He then went on to rank first in the 1500 meter for women aged 45-49 on February 5, and, following a birthday which placed him in a new age category, ranked first in the 1500 meter in the category for women aged 50-54 in a competition held from February 23 to February 26 in Toronto.

The news of Newell’s latest victory was announced by the International Consortium on Women’s Sport, a campaign group advocating for sexed categories, prompting anger and disbelief from those concerned with the preservation of women’s sport.

“That is ridiculous and no fan of athletics will view it as any sort of achievement,” wrote Colin Winter in response to the announcement. “It is a farce & everyone knows it but too many are too frit to say so. Frit is no excuse. If one’s job is to protect the integrity of a sport, that is what one has to do. If unable to do so, resign.”

Some have also expressed concern that Newell’s new age classification will result in him now seizing the 5000 meter title from Maria Zambrano, a female athlete with multiple records across the age groups she has competed in.

Last year, Newell set a Canadian record in the 5000 meter indoor running competition for women aged 45-49 held at Toronto’s York University. Newell ran 18:02.30over the distance, besting the previous record by six seconds. His record was ratified by the Canadian Masters Athletics in December, and it became the first time a trans-identified male athlete in Canada broke a national record in track.

At that same competition, Newell also placed first in the women’s 800 meter race for women aged 45-49.

His victories earned him an “honorable mention” as the Ontario Master’s Athlete of the Month in March of 2022, just one month after snatching the top spots.

In January of 2023, Newell placed first in the women’s 5000 meter for women aged 45-49 once again during the Ontario Master’s Mini Meet held in Toronto.

Previously, Newell won a silver medal at the 2021 Canadian XC Championships in the masters 8K, and also finished second at the 2022 Hamilton Marathon.

Newell began transitioning in 2017, but began competing in women’s sport in 2020 after claiming to have met the recommended testosterone levels as set by the World Athletics guidelines on transgender athletes.

Last June, the global regulator for swimming, diving and water polo issued a ruling barring transgender athleteswho experienced male puberty from swimming and other aquatic sports. FINA opted to create an “open category” instead in order to preserve the fairness of sexed categories. The decision came after international backlash surrounding the success of Lia Thomas, a trans-identified male, in women’s swimming.

In an interview with Running Magazine earlier this year, Newell rejected the concept of an “open category” for transgender athletes in running, and claimed he should be allowed to compete against females as he identified as such.

“The policy makes sense for non-binary athletes, but I don’t feel comfortable racing against men. It categorizes me in the sex I am not identified as,” Newell said. “I am a woman, and I feel most comfortable racing against women or other transgender women. I believe an open category can work if athletes can continue to race against athletes of the same gender.”

Despite protests from trans activists, studies have consistently affirmed that trans-identified male athletes retain a significant edge over their female counterparts, even after starting hormone therapy.

In 2020, a study released in the British Journal of Sport Medicine noted that trans-identified males were able to complete 31% more push-ups and 15% more sit-ups in one minute on average than a female Air Force service member. They also ran 1.5 miles 21% faster.

But even after two years on testosterone suppression treatment, the males were still 12% faster on average than biological females.

#Canada #ontario #Toronto #Tiffany Newell is a man #Women’s sports are for women #Winter Mini Meet #International Consortium on Women’s Sport

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schraubd · 1 year

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Wisconsin Man's Upward Fall Arrested

Democracy may finally be coming to Wisconsin, as Janet Protasiewicz defeated arch-conservative Daniel Kelly to flip a key seat on the state supreme court.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has been a national embarrassment for years. This was the court where a justice tried to choke out one of his colleagues, after all. More recently, it was by far the court that came closest to endorsing Donald Trump's authoritarian campaign to overturn the 2020 election. Members of the conservative faction have since openly questioned the validity of President Biden's victory, putting them far outside even the conservative judicial mainstream and marking them as little more than partisan thugs.

Can you imagine the sort of totalitarian hellscape where the votes of the majority play essentially no role in determining who wins elections? pic.twitter.com/VScxrZV5CR

— David Schraub @[email protected] (@schraubd) July 8, 2022

And yet, even among this sorry bunch, Daniel Kelly would have stood out.

I first wrote about Daniel Kelly when he was initially appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court by then-Governor Scott Walker. He had made an argument comparing affirmative action to slavery, something that -- even restricted to the "civil rights programs are the new slavery!" field -- was jaw-dropping in its stupidity (and "civil rights programs are the new slavery!" is already a field saturated with stupidity).

Over the course of his career, and over the course of this campaign, Kelly has proven himself to be the definition of a mediocrity who's managed to fall upward via the beneficent hand of the right-wing gravy train. His academic pedigree is undistinguished. He had no judicial experience when he was appointed to the court by Walker in the first place, and after his (first) defeat he stayed plugged into Wisconsin GOP politics by providing legal advice to the effort to steal the state for Trump after Joe Biden's 2020 victory. And of course, all have now witnessed his petulant response to being defeated by Protasiewicz:

"I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent," he said at an event held at the Heidel House Hotel in Green Lake. "But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede."

Kelly called Protasiewicz's campaign "deeply deceitful, dishonorable and despicable." "My opponent is a serial liar. She's disregarded judicial ethics; she's demeaned the judiciary with her behavior. This is the future that we have to look forward to in Wisconsin."

Adding: "I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it."

[...]

"The people of Wisconsin have chosen the rule of Janet. I respect that decision because it is theirs to make," he said. "I respect the decision that the people of Wisconsin have made, but I think it does not end well."

If ever there was a definition of "lacking in judicial temperament," he personifies it.

Yet beyond that, Kelly is a familiar, if not archetypical figure. He is suffused with entitlement for that which he has not earned, and consumed by rage when he doesn't get it. There are thousands -- millions -- of men (almost always men) just like him. Most don't go on to become state supreme court judges, though many do bully themselves into positions far beyond their talents or capacities by a mixture of being useful to the right people and being an impossible menace when they don't get what they want. When they do, finally, see their upward fall arrested, they are incredulous and infuriated at the injustice of it all. Hell hath no fury like a mediocre White man scorned.

Indeed, perhaps Kelly's only mistake was being appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court instead of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals -- a position from which he could never be dislodged no matter how apparent it became that he was ill-suited for the position. On the federal bench, with life tenure, he could have prowled and fulminated and lashed out with impunity, forever; secure in the knowledge that it would be constitutionally impossible to ever hold him accountable. One can only imagine the law school classes he would have baited and berated.

But alas, Daniel Kelly is a creature of the state bench, and in Wisconsin, supreme court justices must meet the approval of the voters. Twice now, the voters have resoundingly rejected Daniel Kelly as unsuited for the role of state supreme court justice. Kudos to them. And while Democrats are celebrating Protasiewicz's win, the bigger winner is the small-d democracy that has been under siege in Wisconsin for far too long.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/lRL0wm7

#democracy #judiciary #men #Wisconsin

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waffletoasters · 7 months

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The original photograph comes from Brioni’s ‘Bespoke Experience’ ad campaign, made in 2023. I simply used it as a base and added some adjustments to kind of give a look and feel for what I had in my head while writing without having to spend days on actually drawing from scratch, something I may do in the future because I like drawing, but I only had only given myself a few hours to do this and with limited time I figured this worked best.

The illustration was made for this short-story I've written for the Top Gun's - Trick or Treat 2023 Exchange. The link can be found below.

Be aware it is an M-rated fic.

“You don’t know what you want, Bradshaw. You don’t want me, you may think you do, but you don’t.”

When Bradley finds out about Jake's deepest and darkest secret, he begins to understand the meaning behind those words. He just never imagined it was going to take magic, pheromones, a life or death situation and sex for him to win Jake back.

#top gun fanart #top gun fanfiction #top gun maverick

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justinspoliticalcorner · 21 days

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Carter Sherman and Lauren Gambino at The Guardian:

Kamala Harris’s Friday visit to Arizona was planned before the state’s top court upheld a 160-year-old law that bans almost all abortions. But the news galvanized the vice-president’s message, one that has already yielded stunning victories for liberals since Roe v Wade fell nearly two years ago. That message is simple: abortion bans happen when Republicans are in charge.

“Women here live under one of the most extreme abortion bans in our nation. … The overturning of Roe was without any question a seismic event, and this ban here in Arizona is one of the biggest aftershocks yet,” Harris said at the Tucson event. “Overturning Roe was just the opening act of a larger strategy to take women’s rights and freedoms … We all must understand who is to blame. Former president Donald Trump did this.”

The ruling from the Arizona supreme court arrived on Tuesday, just days after a Florida supreme court ruling cleared the way for a six-week abortion ban, a decision that will cut off access to the procedure before many women even know they are pregnant. These back-to-back rulings roiled the United States, raising the already high stakes of the 2024 elections to towering new heights. Activists in both states are now at work on ballot measures that would ask voters to enshrine abortion rights in their states’ constitutions in November.

Democrats are hopeful these efforts – and the potential threat of more bans under a Trump administration – will mobilize voters in their favor, because abortion rights are popular among Americans, and Republicans have spent years pushing restrictions. Democrats have made abortion rights a central issue of their campaigns in Arizona, which was already expected to be a major battleground, and Florida, a longtime election bellwether that has swung further to the right in recent years. For Joe Biden, who is struggling to generate enthusiasm among voters, turning 2024 into a referendum on abortion may be his best shot at defeating Donald Trump. But it remains an open question whether the backlash to Roe’s overturning will continue to drive voters in a presidential election year, when they may be more swayed by concern over the economy and immigration.

“In public polls that might just ask: ‘What’s your most important issue?’ You’re going to see abortion in the middle, maybe even towards the bottom,” said Tresa Undem, a co-founder of the polling firm PerryUndem who has studied public opinion on abortion for two decades. “But when you talk to core groups that Democrats need to turn out, it’s front and center.” A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump held double-digit leads when swing state voters were asked who would best handle the economy, inflation and immigration, but they trusted Biden more on abortion. A Fox News poll in March found that most voters in Arizona believe Biden will do a better job handling the issue of abortion, but it was less of a priority than the economy, election integrity and foreign policy.

For Biden, abortion is “the best issue for him right now”, Undem said. “All of the data I’ve seen on this upcoming election, young people are not nearly as motivated to vote as they were in 2020. And so in places like Arizona, the total ban – and I don’t make predictions ever – I do think it is going to turn out young people, especially young women.” The Biden campaign has released two abortion-focused ads this week, including one that features a Texas woman who was denied an abortion after her water broke too early in pregnancy. (She ended up in the ICU.) Indivisible, a national grassroots organization with a local presence in states across the country, said volunteer sign-ups to knock on doors in Arizona spiked 50% following the state supreme court’s ruling. Its members in Arizona are helping to organize rallies in support of reproductive rights as well as events to collect signatures for the ballot measure.

When Roe fell, abortion rights’ grip on voters was far from guaranteed. Mitch McConnell, Senate Republicans’ longtime leader and an architect of the conservative supreme court majority that overturned Roe, brushed off outrage over its demise as “a wash” in federal elections. Although most Americans support some degree of access to the procedure, anti-abortion voters were more likely to say the issue was important to their vote than pro-abortion rights voters. The fall of Roe changed that. Anger over Roe was credited with halting Republicans’ much-promised “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections, while pro-abortion rights ballot measures triumphed, even in crimson states such as Kansas and Kentucky. Last year, when Virginia Republicans tried retake control of the state legislature by championing a “compromise” 15 week-ban, they failed. Democrats now control both chambers in the state.

“When Republicans offer compromises, I think a lot of voters are inclined not to see those as what the Republican party really wants long-term but what the Republican party thinks is necessary to settle for in the short term,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California at Davis School of Law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. “They know that Republicans are aligned with the pro-life movement and the pro-life movement wants fetal personhood and a ban at fertilization.”

With the respective state supreme courts in Arizona and Florida upholding cruel abortion bans, Democrats are set to pounce on backlash against abortion bans to guide them to victory in Arizona, Florida, and the whole nation.

#Abortion Bans #Abortion #Democrats #Democratic Party #2024 Elections #Arizona #Florida #2024 Presidential Election #2024 Election Polls

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

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By: Bernard Lane

Published: Jan 5, 2024

The World Health Organisation’s new guideline project for transgender health has ignored the intense international debate about youth gender medicine and overlooked key reformist experts, according to the prominent American gender clinician Dr Erica Anderson.

“[The WHO] seem to be oblivious to the issues with transgender healthcare, particularly as they are playing out in the developed world,” she told GCN, adding that the agency had failed to draw on the expertise of leading clinicians who come informed by systematic reviews of the evidence base.

Dr Anderson, a “gender-affirming” clinician and past president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, said none of the 21 panel members chosen by the WHO to develop the new guideline seemed qualified to address the issue of social influence as a factor in the explosion of trans and non-binary identities.

“Social media and peer influence have had a huge impact upon the rise in minority sexual and gender identities,” she said.

“Previous research done on prior cohorts of youth cannot account for the rise in such identities. We may need a new biopsychosocial epidemiology in this social media era.”

The WHO’s panel is due to make crucial decisions about development of the guideline at meetings in Geneva on February 19-21.

One of the expert clinicians overlooked by the WHO, Finland’s Professor Riittakerttu Kaltiala, an early adopter of paediatric gender transition and now a reformist critic, said she was “really worried that the WHO—which should represent responsibility for the health of all people—appears to have committed itself to a fully political initiative promoting treatments based on no evidence.”

“The WHO initiative openly seeks to promote medical gender reassignment, not to find out what is [the quality of the] evidence base, in the best interests particularly of adolescents who, in increasing numbers, problematise their gender.

“Several countries have carried out their own systematic reviews after Finland did so in 2019-2020, and all have concluded that particularly the gender-identity based, body-modifying medical treatments on minors have not been researched appropriately, lack evidence of beneficial effects and have great potential to harm.”

Professor Kaltiala told GCN that the WHO “should seek to balance this overheated and over-politicised field of medicine, not go along with political initiatives. Medicine must be based on science, not on politics.”

On December 18, the WHO announced the guideline project and the final seven members of the panel. Public comment on issues such as conflicts of interest affecting panel members ends on January 8.

A near identical announcement of the WHO project—together with biographies of the first 14 panel members—was issued on June 28, also with a short period for public comment. Both announcements came during holidays in affected parts of the world.

Trans rights activists should “get ahead of the government agenda and the media story” by early intervention in policymaking, according to a notorious 2019 report spon.sored by queer lobby IGLYO, the Thomson Reuters media foundation and law firm Dentons.

The report also warns activists to limit “press coverage and exposure” because it seems that “public campaigning has been detrimental to progress, as much of the general public is not well informed about trans issues, and therefore misinterpretation can arise.”

“It has become a throwaway line in some media coverage of transgender care in the United States that even liberal European countries are restricting care for transgender children. But this is a misleading notion. No democracy in Europe has banned, let alone criminalised, care, as many states have done in the US. What has happened is that under increasing pressure from the right, politicians in some countries have begun to limit access to certain kinds of treatment for children…”—Journalist Lydia Polgreen, opinion column, The New York Times, 1 December 2023

“Polgreen is repeating [misinformation in The Times] about what’s motivating European health systems to restrict kids’ access to gender [prescriptions]. It’s not ‘pressure from the right,’ it’s [systematic] reviews of the evidence finding it too weak to justify high risks, e.g., to brain [development], sexual function, fertility.”—Journalist Jennifer Block (author of the BMJ investigation feature on the rise of youth gender dysphoria), tweet, 31 December 2023

Who’s pushing back?

The new WHO guideline is to cover “gender-affirming care, including hormones” and “health policies that support gender-inclusive care”, among other aims such as “legal recognition of self-determined gender identity [known as self-ID].”

The timing and activist language of the WHO announcement, together with the makeup of the panel membership, have mobilised organisations and individuals worried about the international spike in medicalised gender change that disproportionately affects teenage girls who present with atypical gender dysphoria.

A fast-growing petition calls on the WHO to cancel next month’s meetings in Geneva; deal with conflicts of interest and bias affecting the guideline development panel; consider hiring an independent methodologist; and include expert members alert to the potential harm of gender-affirming interventions, as well as detransitioners.

At the time of writing, the petition had more than 5,000 signatures, including many health professionals, as well as detransitioners and LGB groups critical of Queer Theory-driven trans activism. Also signed up is the LGBT Courage Coalition, which was founded by gender clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed and trans man Aaron Kimberly.

“The current panel is highly biased in favour of ‘gender-affirming’ approaches, with an absence of critical perspectives,” says the petition, which was reportedly organised by an informal coalition of those concerned about the safety of the gender-affirming model.

The petition says: “The majority of the [WHO] panel members have expressed strong views in favour of hormonal and surgical interventions for transition, dismissed known and potential risks associated with these interventions, and denigrated psychotherapeutic approaches as [unethical] ‘conversion therapy’.”

“The panel does not include any experts in child and adolescent development or any critics of the affirmation model. Detransitioners and desisters are also excluded. Given the panel’s composition, there is strong reason to believe that the guideline will be similarly biased.

“The final composition of the panel was only announced on December 18 but, according to the WHO, this group will evaluate the evidence and formulate recommendations across a range of topics including healthcare, clinician education, health policies, and laws by February 21.

“To call this a rushed procedure would be a dramatic understatement. Compare this to the process embarked upon by the Cass Review in the UK, for example—a multi-year effort to address the health care needs of just one patient demographic (under-18s) within a single country (England).”

Video: ‘One of the people on that [WHO] panel has said we should be stopping all children’s puberty, we should give all children puberty blockers, so that they can make a decision, when they are old enough, what [gender] they want to be’—Helen Joyce of the group Sex Matters; from the 4:06 time mark

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No panacea

A 2023 study by Professor Kaltiala and colleagues using a Finnish healthcare register to follow up patients after gender reassignment delivered results contradicting the familiar claim that the mental health problems of troubled young people will resolve after medical transition.

“The number of people contacting specialised [gender clinics] has increased vastly since the 1990s… and their mean age has become steadily younger,” say the authors of the paper in the journal European Psychiatry.

“Along with this, their needs for psychiatric treatment have increased. Both before and after contacting [the clinic], they present with many more common psychiatric needs than do their matched population controls, even when medical [gender reassignment] interventions are carried out.

“Among people seeking [gender reassignment], psychiatric needs have to be carefully assessed and addressed… This vastly increased pursuit of [gender reassignment] with increases in psychiatric comorbidities warrants cautious assessment of the timeliness of medical [gender reassignment] and of other [non-gender] treatment needs that may be more urgent.”

The WHO’s statement says its “new guideline will provide evidence and implementation guidance on health sector interventions aimed at increasing access and utilisation of quality and respectful health services by trans and gender diverse people [Emphasis added].”

Asked about criticism of the guideline project, a WHO spokesman said “this is a notice phase for the Guideline Development Group [or panel] process, so WHO can solicit feedback”.

“All views will be weighed on the composition of the GDG as part of the guideline development process,” he said.

He said WHO guidelines were “always based on balancing of available evidence, human rights principles, consideration of harms and benefits and inputs of end users and beneficiaries.”

He told GCN that the WHO’s trans health guideline would be “focused on adults only”. He did not reply when asked for documentary proof of this; the WHO announcements simply refer to “people”.

“It is probable that the few cases currently before the courts in the United States, Australia and elsewhere, will be the beginning of a torrent of malpractice suits against doctors and surgeons given the massive increase in children and adolescents attending gender clinics. The WHO guideline therefore must address comprehensively the issues that medical practitioners should consider, and the precautions they should take, to avoid a conclusion by a court that the doctor has engaged in malpractice.”—Queensland University Emeritus Professor of Law Patrick Parkinson, submission to the WHO guideline project, January 2024

Conflicts aplenty

In its statement of concern about the WHO project, the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) says: “Since adolescents and young adults are the largest and fastest-growing group of transgender-identified individuals, it is likely that the WHO guidelines will apply to this vulnerable group as a target population.”

SEGM says the language of the WHO announcement “does not appear to be neutral.”

“It states the goal of ‘increasing access and utilisation’ of, presumably, gender-affirmative interventions by ‘trans and gender diverse people,’ and declares the goal of legal recognition of ‘self-determined gender identity’,” SEGM says.

“This suggests that the decision to promote gender transition in the respective societal arenas (medical, policy, legal) has already been made before the group has even met to review and interpret the evidence—a step that must both precede and inform the guideline recommendations.”

SEGM says that “even a cursory review” of the guideline panel membership reveals multiple conflicts of interest, including authorship of past papers that would have to be assessed by the panel; membership or past leadership roles in gender-affirming lobby the World Professional Association for Transgender Health; intellectual bias towards gender affirmation; and a record of strong opinions on issues relevant to the guideline and its evidence base.

As an example, SEGM cites a claim by an Australian member of the panel, Teddy Cook, who is a trans man and former vice-president of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH). He is also director of LGBTQ+ Community Health for ACON, the former gay rights lobby responsible for the TransHub website.

In 2021, Mr Cook wrote: “The actual side effects of gender-affirming medical care, for those who can access it, include a significantly improved quality of life, significantly better health and wellbeing outcomes, a dramatic decrease in distress, depression and anxiety and a substantial increase of gender euphoria and trans joy... We are not at risk of harm by affirming our gender.”

This is a mere opinion unsupported by the evidence, according to SEGM. (GCN sought comment from ACON and Mr Cook.)

AusPATH has been critical of the Cass review for “questioning an affirmative approach to gender-affirming care”. The AusPATH board says it does “not support ‘exploratory therapy’ which is often used as a euphemism for conversion therapy.”

“[Given the long waiting list, we] prioritise young people who are in the youth forensic system, young people in out-of-home care and young people who are from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities”—Australian psychiatrist Dr Tram Nguyen, co-head of the Royal Children’s Hospital gender-affirming clinic, media interview, The Age, 30 December 2023

Blots on the escutcheon

Gender-affirming clinician Dr Anderson said she was worried about the WHO making “a new unforced error regarding transgender healthcare” and cited the agency’s “tarnished reputation” after the Covid pandemic and recent scrutiny of its record in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

“Unlike with Covid and HIV/Aids, we have no virus nor well-documented aetiology [for gender dysphoria],” she told GCN.

“The tools of epidemiology and virology will not yield immediate answers on how to address growing controversies with gender-questioning youth.

“Blistering hot disputes over self-ID [gender] have spilled over into major institutions like schools, prisons, sports, and the healthcare delivery system.”

Dr Anderson said it was the WHO that had “set this in motion [by] moving trans identification, as ‘gender incongruence’, out of psychiatry over to sexual health [in the agency’s diagnostic manual the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-11].”

“While this step is a laudable improvement in depathologising trans identities, the hard work of applying such a change across society and its institutions remains to be done.

“I’m deeply sceptical that, without taking time to think, the WHO can do what needs to be done, let alone win support across the world.

“I try to help gender-questioning people every day. I’ve been concerned about the disputes and controversies for years. Now I’m worried that the WHO will make a mess of it.”

“In working with minors, the affirmative approach that I’ve always used involves a lot of mental health therapy, assessment, exploration to really individualise the treatment to the specific young person, to involve the parents in the process, to look through a developmental lens, to really understand all the other complex factors, and the medical [option] was a part of it, if and when it was appropriate for that individual child, but in my experience over the years, it wasn’t always the main focus.”—Dr Laura Edwards-Leeper, who was the founding psychologist at the Boston Children’s Hospital gender clinic, The Umbrella Hour podcast interview, December 2023

Missed opportunity

Dr Anderson noted the absence from the WHO guideline project of leading reformists of youth gender care such as the United Kingdom’s Dr Hilary Cass, Finland’s Professor Kaltiala and Sweden’s Professor Mikael Landén; each being guided by systematic reviews of the (weak and uncertain) evidence base.

To this list Dr Anderson added America’s Dr Edwards-Leeper, Dr Scott Leibowitz and herself as clinicians “at the forefront of youth gender issues” but overlooked by the WHO.

In The Washington Post in 2021, Drs Edwards-Leeper and Anderson, both clinical psychologists who use the gender-affirming approach, expressed concern about a surge in cases of rushed medicalisation of troubled minors without careful exploration of their non-gender problems.

That same year, Dr Anderson talked to journalist Abigail Shrier, author of the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, about her concern that today’s teenage female patients might need a different therapeutic response than the classic male patients with onset of gender dysphoria in early childhood.

This is what institutional ideological capture looks like.

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akuncloudflare · 2 years

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Lila Moss Receives Futuristic for Balmain Drop 2022 Marketing campaign

Balmain looks to the potential for its slide-winter season 2022 marketing campaign photographed by Mert & Marcus. Styles Lila Moss, Chu Wong, Aweng Chuol, Cristina Jugo, and Tanya Churbanova are showcased in these images. The commercials are set in opposition to a desolate landscape that resembles a desert planet’s surface and includes green stairs. The types from innovative director Olivier…

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#august steiner watches any good #authentic chanel button necklace #best ad campaigns 2020 #best pr campaigns 2021 #burberry house #coach tabby denim #farfetch versace jeans couture #jasmine pandora #recent advertisements 2020 #thot shoe

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ultrasofts · 2 years

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so i have been thinking all night about what seb means to me as an athlete, and as a person.

there's no lack of bravery in sebastian.

i got into f1, with hoardes of others, during the covid lockdowns of 2020. for me it was the during the second lockdown in melbourne; the long, absolutely brutal one when things felt so scary and so unknown, when my life shrank to the 5km radius around my apartment and little else. i didn't know at the time that the 2021 lockdown would be even more crushing on my mental health, but still, nothing would really match the fear and uncertainty and anxiety that 2020 bred.

the recommendations tricked in - from my mother, who i've long watched tennis with (we exist on opposite ends of the roger-rafa spectrum) and who has long been witness to the devastation and ecstacy that being a fan of liverpool fc has brought me. from my sister, who has been a similar witness, but never really understood what it meant to be a sports fan. from one of my best friends, who to my knowledge has never been a fan of a sport in their life.

you should watch drive to survive. i think you'd really like it.

and like it i did.

i know there's a tendancy among f1 fans to loathe dts and the fans it brought to the sport, and i'm not immune from that myself, having watched and largely disliked seasons 3 and 4.

but without any other knowledge, the drama of it sucked me in, the distillation of so much of what absolutely enthralls me about sport - humans putting their entire selves into the pursuit of being the best, in the most public, humiliating, and objective (with the biggest asterisk known to man against that one) way possible. of course, the added drama of the teammate dynamics, the quest for a reliable engine, the intricacies of engineering that appealed to my engineering-qualified, physics-minded brain.

but it was seb who truly got to me first, watching the second season as it followed the 2019 season. daniel is undoubtedly the star of the first two seasons, but seb's struggles at ferrari - with a car that wasn't quite right, with a young, brash teammate, against a legacy that he was, to me, clearly buckling under the weight of - it connected with the part of me that's been a fan of football for almost twenty years. The part that only knows unquestioning loyalty to your team, even when they suck so bad it makes watching the sport a weekly exercise in self-flagellation, even when they break your heart so bad you know it's going to leave a permanent scar.

there's something so human about seb. i understand the longtime seb fans who resent people who only came to like him long past his success at red bull - you only like him now that he's not a threat. and maybe that's true, but i wasn't around in 2012 to hate him for that (and to be fair i probably would have). there's just something so intractably human about watching someone strive and fall short, whether through their own failures or things beyond their control. there's something compelling about it, and the more you understand the talent and brilliance of the person you think is falling short, the more compelling it is.

(i can't deny, either, that that is a space so often offered to white athletes, and rarely black ones.)

on the flip side, i understand that if you'd watched him from the start, if your reference point for seb is his red bull dominance, his humanity may not the first thing that comes to mind. (having since watched two and a half seasons of his 2010-2013 campaign, i would disagree. his humanity shines through all of it - in the tears, the insolence, the perfection, the absolute determination to win. that's human too, every bit as much as the struggle.)

but watching him through that fake, dramatised version of 2019, and then trading it in for the awful, embarrassing struggles of ferrari's 2020 season, it was impossible for me not to root for him. it's probably because my own 30th birthday was approaching, but seeing someone struggle through, seeing someone witness their final shot at a childhood dream evaporate, seeing someone who everyone says their best years are behind them persist destpite it - something about it resonated with me in the paralysing winter of 2020 in a way that i can't explain.

on-track, watching him battle against an appalling car and a brilliant but unschooled teammate, but still being the guy who would get out on track and pick up the pieces of his broken front wing himself. watching him yeet his way out of quali in monza but still make sure to watch the cars zoom past with an eye on who missed the apex. watching him pushing, and pushing, and pushing, never giving up, fucked over by a poor pitstop and a poorer strategy in turkey but still waiting to pounce, to make the move that would put him on the podium for the only time in 2020, in a truly magical moment atop it with lewis as he claimed his record-equalling seventh title.

off-track, watching him come alive to the injustices of the world around him. there's no way to know what's in anyone's heart or mind, but watching seb find his voice over the past three years has been a genuine wonder. seeing him understand, even as you sensed he was still figuring out the intricacies of it, the power of a simple gesture of solidarity. seeing him articulate, more and more boldly, just how critical and urgent it is to push for change. racial justice and climate justice are so inextricably linked, and seeing sebastian become a sometimes clumsy, sometimes hypocticial advocate of this has been something i have found genuinely inspiring.

i know there's a hesitancy to give credit for things like this and believe me, i get it. but in a sport like formula 1, so entrenched in whiteness and establishment, in dirty money and dirty oil, packed to the rafters with sons of billionaires and former champions and kids of parents who gave up everything and kids, no less dedicated, whose parents, no less loving, gave up everything to only not see success, to see someone who's reached the peak and benefited from it all to realise, maybe too late but better than not at all, how rotten the foundation on which it's all built has been? that's only a good thing, and it speaks, in my opinion, to the man that sebastian is.

so what does seb mean to me, as a driver, as an athlete?

seb means passion. he puts his whole self out there, as he has from the very beginning. his tears, his emotion, his energy, his love. oh, how he loves this sport.

seb means respect. paying his dues to the history of the sport, to the achievements of all those who have ascended its highest echelons. fangio, senna, mansell. lewis, even as he has raced against him. michael, of course, above all others.

seb means disrespect, whether its for institutions, or mores, or the conventions that a sport as boring and establishment as you could dream up.

seb means humour, and affection, and loving something so deeply even as it encroaches on the limits of what you think is good, or necessary, or moral.

above all to me, seb means striving, even when what you want is out of reach, even when the deck is stacked against you, even when you fear, in the corners of your brain that you don't let anyone else into, that the best things you'll ever do are behind you. being willing to learn, and change your mind, and put all your energy towards things that matter.

seb means being kind, and being cheeky, and a bit shitty, and being brave in the face of the disapproval of powerful people who would love nothing more than for you to shut the fuck up and take what they've so graciously given you.

i don't really know how to end this. maybe you think it's unbearably cheesy and earnest, and that's fine. but i would love to take my cues from lewis on this, and seb too if i'm honest, in loving what i love unembarrassed. cringe but free, if you will. i think there's a real power in sports, and equally in sports fandom, to talk about what's important to us as people, and much more importantly as a community. sport can open up conversations about the most political of subjects - race, gender, sexuality, class - even a sport as fucked and as privileged as formula 1. and i think seb knows that.

danke seb.

#you know what i was gonna save and edit this but #imma just hit post and let the typos and incoherence live with itself #long post #danke seb

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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Uline's billions fund voter suppression

Every billionaire is a policy failure, but every billionaire is also a factory for producing policy failures at scale. The political power conferred by massive wealth accumulation makes a sham of democracy, because “one person, one vote” is easily swamped by “one dollar, one vote.”

That’s why we need to abolish all billionaires, even the “good” ones who promise to support charities or causes we support. But today, I want to focus on some extremely bad billionaires, Dick and Liz Uihlein, owners of the packing-supply monopoly Uline.

The Uihleins are a multi-generational far-right clan of wealthy conspiracy peddlers. The family money starts with the founding of the Schlitz Brewery (and you thought Coors was the only fascist beer!).

The Schlitz fortune let Edgar J. Uihlein pour money into Charles Lindbergh’s America First movement, an antisemitic, pro-Nazi isolationist group that was part of a wider anti-Jewish movement that Lindbergh helped found, whose projects included translated and disseminating an English translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax document purporting to reveal a conspiracy of Jewish bankers to take over the world.

Edgar Uihlein Jr — father of Dick — was a major funder of the John Birch Society, another conspiratorial far-right authoritarian group, who campaigned against secret communists, water fluoridation and civil rights. Edgar lavished funding on pro-segregationists.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Today on Propublica, Justin Elliott, Megan O’Matz and Doris Burke document the vast and shadowy support that Dick and Liz Uihlein provide to far-right causes, using the windfall profits from Uline, whose sales have ballooned along with the rise of ecommerce:

https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial

Back in 2002, Uline was pulling in $18m/year. By 2018, it was $712m. The pandemic goosed Uline’s sales still further. The Uihleins did their best to prolong the pandemic, putting money into local school-board races to oust trustees who advocated for covid safety measures:

https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2021/10/27/uilhlein-bankrolls-mequon-thiensville-recall/

They also campaigned against workplace shutdowns, and turned their own facilities into super-spreader sites where employees sickened at shockingly high rates:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/28/uline-dick-liz-uihlein-workers-covid-safety

That’s just a small corner of the Uihleins’ contributions to culture war bullshit in public schools. They’re also big donors to the American Principles Project and its anti “transgender ideology” attack ads, which also target abortion and “critical race theory.”

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/07/19/uline-chairman-funnels-2-5-million-to-anti-abortion-pacs/

There’s no anti-abortion candidate too extreme for the Uihlines. They spent $50m to support Darren Bailey’s bid for the governorship of Illinois. Bailey says that the Holocaust “doesn’t even compare” to abortion” (and Bailey also condemns “perversion in our schools” in the form of curriculum that acknowledges the existence of queer people).

Dick and Liz named their foundation after Dick’s father. The Ed Uihlein Family Foundation sends tens of millions to the architects of anti-democractic, anti-majoritarian, pro-voter-suppression organizations, including the Federalst Society, the Conservative Partnership Institute and the Foundation for Government Accountability:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-filings-reveal-another-billionaire-dick-uihlein-behind-the-big-lie

The Uihleins play an inside/outside game, funding “think tanks” and other outside/astroturf groups, and also backing election campaigns directly. They’re the GOP’s largest federal donors. They’ve backed campaigns Jim Marchant, who is running for Nevada Secretary of State on a Big Lie platform that denies the 2020 election. They’re also backing the PA gubernatorial bid of Doug Mastriano, the Jan 6 insurrection participant who is associated with notorious antisemites:

https://whyy.org/articles/pa-2022-governor-elections-mastriano-jewish-democrats-press-conference/

The Uihleins epitomize the idea that rich people are born to be in charge of the rest of us, and that their wealth entitles — and even obliges — them to organize the lives of the people around them. They are workplpace tyrants, micromanaging bullies who force their employees to take down their kids’ drawings and ban women from wearing pants (they also ban corduroy!).

Employees who arrive for work one minute late are considered “tardy.” An employee may not display more than four personal items, and no item may be larger than 5x7 inches. “Liz would walk up and down the aisles, and if your desk looked off, you’d be written up.”

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23179330-uline-cubicle-dos-and-donts

The company hosts mandatory “lunch and learn” sessions for employees where they are required to endure speeches from Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and other far-right figures (the Uihleins once hired a Donald Trump impersonator as the warm-up act for one of these sessions).

The Uihleins are ideologues, but it’s a mistake to view their authoritarianism, antisemitism, racism, and homophobia as the main force of their ideology. First and foremost is their belief that they deserve to be rich, and that the rich should be in charge of everyone else.

That commitment to the one dollar, one vote system is the motivating factor behind everything else. The Uihleins fund voter suppression, sure, but that’s to weaken the power of the ballot box, which might otherwise check the power of oligarchs.

Oligarchs like the Uihleins say they believe the government is incapable of doing good, but it’s more true to say that they are committed to ensuring that the government can’t do good. They don’t want a small state — they want a captive one, one that will do their bidding.

In 2017, Donald Trump achieved the only significant policy victory of his presidency: a $2.3 trillion tax giveaway to the ultra-rich. Trump may have been in charge of the Executive Branch, but he lacked the executive function to get anything done. His plutocratic class solidarity overcame his poor impulse control for this issue alone.

The actual tax bill was an incredible mess. Lawmakers literally scribbled illegible hand-written amendments all over the 479-page bill, carving out tax breaks that sent millions to individual donors.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/12/02/handwriting-wall-and-page-senate-passes-tax-bill/915957001/

Two of the biggest beneficiaries of this corrupt bonanza were Dick and Liz Uihlein. Their pet senator, Ron Johnson, threatened to tank the entire tax bill unless he was given a clause that created deductions for “pass-through” entities. Johnson claimed this would “simplify and rationalize the tax code” for a wide range of businesses, but that was a lie.

In truth, only a very small number of businesses benefited from this, and right at the top of the beneficiaries were the Uihlnes, who donated $20m to Johnson’s campaign and got $215m back in the first year. Overall, they stand to make $500m from Johnson’s amendment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory

The rich are a factory for producing policy failures, and the Uihlines operate one of the most efficient policy-failure factories in the world. Yes, they support causes that threaten to exterminate Black people, Jews and queers. Yes, they want to force women and children to give birth.

But most of all, they want to rule. They want to tell us all what we can wear and to dictate the maximum size of the keepsakes we post around our desks. They want to force us to attend their “learning sessions” and to watch their Trump impersonators and clownish politicians.

They derive this authority from being born rich, and from growing still richer. Having won the lucky orifice lottery and then leveraged the advantages of being born on third base, they get to impose their will on millions of others. They believe that some were born to rule, and the rest of us were born to be ruled over.

This is the core of the monopolist’s project — to deprive you of choices, so that you are cornered into doing the monopolist’s bidding. Not only do the Uihlines want to take away your vote, they also want to force you to fund it, by monopolizing the packing materials business, so that every time you ship a box, you support your own disenfranchisement.

https://marker.medium.com/we-should-not-endure-a-king-dfef34628153

[Image ID: A paper shredder that is shredding a document labelled 'official ballot'; the box is emblazoned with the Uline logo, as well as a VOTE HERE instruction and an 'I Voted' disc.]

#pluralistic

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desertpups · 6 months

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Dumba rips NHL over Pride tape debacle: 'They follow and try to save face'

Arizona Coyotes defenseman Matt Dumba ripped into the NHL after the league rescinded its decision to prohibit Pride tape, questioning why the ban was in place to begin with.

"Why is that even a thing?" he told The Athletic's Eric Stephens. "Why did they have to do that in the first place? You'll never get the answers from them. You'll never get the answers for that. That's just something I've come to understand. They don't have answers for a lot of things that they do. They follow and try to save face."

"The league's going to do whatever it wants to do and they don't really think about the meaning behind things," he added. "I think they try to lay it out in whatever format it works out best for the league."

A co-founder of the Hockey Diversity Alliance, Dumba has previously called out the NHL for its lack of action when it comes to social causes. In August 2020, the rearguard said the league is "always last to the party on these topics" when criticizing its response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Wisconsin.

The league sent a memo to all 32 squads earlier in October prohibiting the use of Pride tape on sticks for the season. That decision came after a select few players opted out of wearing Pride jerseys and decals last campaign.

Dumba's teammate, Travis Dermott, became the first known player to defy the Pride tape ban on Saturday, and the league reversed course just three days later.

"After consultation with the NHL Players’ Association and the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition, players will now have the option to voluntarily represent social causes with their stick tape throughout the season," the league announced in a brief statement Tuesday.

Dermott called the NHL's reversal "amazing."

"It's just given the players their voice back," he said, per Stephens. "If everyone wants to wear it, if one guy wants to wear it - no one is going to be forced to wear it - but now just having that voice, I think, really speaks volumes into what the league thinks of us, what the league thinks of the community, and really backs up their line that hockey is for everyone."

Several players voiced their displeasure with the Pride tape ban when it was still in place.

Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar said he could understand the NHL's position, but added that it put players in a tough spot. Toronto Maple Leafs blue-liner Morgan Rielly said he wished players had the right to be more involved, while Philadelphia Flyers forward Scott Laughton said he would "probably" still use the tape despite the ban.

Though Pride tape is back on the table, players are still not allowed to wear specialty jerseys during warmups on theme nights, including Pride night, Hockey Fights Cancer, and military appreciation celebrations.

#Matt Dumba #Arizona coyotes #coyotes #pride tape #nhl

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coochiequeens · 1 year

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This is the perfect example of how transwomen have male socialization. He does something tasteless and gets criticized by women. And instead of looking inward and asking himself if there are more productive ways of breaking down gender roles (like maybe showing himself doing laundry and how to take care of clothes instead of collecting more props) he calls the women hateful.

A controversial male social media influencer is sparking backlash after an Instagram video he made scolding women began to circulate on social media. In the video, Jeffery Marsh, who identifies as non-binary, addressed a past sponsorship he had been offered to promote tampons and other feminine hygiene products.

Last month, Marsh posted a video to his Instagram page speaking to “the ladies of Twitter, especially” over “hate” he received for a tampon ad campaign he took part in. After being uploaded to other social media platforms, the video began to spark backlash, amassing hundreds of critical comments from women concerned about female erasure.

In the video, Marsh addresses the “hate” he received for a paid campaign he took part in with feminine hygiene product brand This is L. The partnership had actually taken place in 2020, but had recently begun receiving new attention after images from the photoshoot with Marsh were shared on Twitter once again.

As new comments began to pile under his campaign photos, Marsh filmed a video addressing his reasons for taking part in a tampon promotion.

“I made the video for 2 reasons. So that women would feel less stigmatized, so that people who menstruate would feel less stigmatized,” Marsh said, noting that menstruation is often seen as “gross, disgusting, a joke” by “cis” men.

Calling himself a “non-binary person who does not menstruate,” Marsh claimed his intentions behind taking the paid gig were to help end the stigma associated with periods. He continued: “And then the hate came for me,” and scolded the women who took issue with his participation in the tampon promotion, claiming that they were “policing” gender by criticizing him.

“We should be working together. The more you police your gender role the more you are policing the idea that one gender role is the best. I will keep fighting for your rights even if you hate me to my core because women are not second class citizens.”

Marsh’s claimed reasons for his participation in the ad campaign fell flat on social media, with many pointing out that Marsh frequently uses the term “TERF” when addressing women who vocally support the basic rights and safeguarding of women and children. TERF – an acronym standing for “trans exclusionary radical feminist” – is often used in a derogatory fashion and coupled with threats and abuse.

Jeffrey Marsh is well-known amongst advocates for women’s rights and child safeguarding due to his catalogue of videos denying the existence of biological sex, as well as those where he directly addresses the “kids” in his audience. Marsh has advocated people to go “no contact” with families or relatives who invalidate their gender identity, and has advised parents to provide“gender affirming care” for their children.

Marsh’s most recent video on his past collaboration also referenced popular trans-identified male influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who similarly defended his decision to become a spokesperson for Tampax last year. Both Tampax and This is L, the brand Marsh promoted, are owned by mega-conglomerate Proctor & Gamble.

In 2020, This is L partnered with the Phluid Project in a promotional video featuring individuals of varying “gender identities” to spread the message that periods are not specific to females. Amongst the “queer” influencers who shilled their “gender neutral” menstrual products were Blair Imani and Alok Vaid-Menon.

Phluid is a “gender free” clothing and lifestyle brandbased in New York which also often involves itself in trans activism. On its website, Phluid states that it “…support[s] the most at risk of the LGBTQIA+ community [by] supporting trans-led organizations.” Phluid has provided direct support to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which provides assistance to incarcerated males who wish to change their gender or be moved to a women’s institution.

Among the inmates the SRLP has worked with are convicted child murderer Synthia Chyna Blast, who was invited to be part of their prisoner action committee, and Xena Grandichelli, who raped a toddler yet assisted with SRLP’s community outreach.

This is L also features multiple partners on their site, most of which equally propagate that women are not the only ones who menstruate. In particular, the Period Project, which strongly advocates for “gender neutral” language around menstruation.

On its website, the Period Project writes: “Not all women menstruate, and not all menstruators are women. At The Period Project, we are dedicated to supporting all menstruators, and we want to make sure our fight for menstrual equity is gender inclusive. We use the term ‘menstruators’ to refer to all people who experience menstruation, including cisgender, transgender, nonbinary, and genderfluid individuals.”

#Jeffery Marsh #This is L #The Phluid Project #Males don’t need tampons #Proctor & Gamble #Sylvia Rivera Law Project #Menstruators #just say woman

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thelensofyashunews · 2 months

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iann dior Shares "I Think You Should Go" Video from Brand New 'BLIND' EP

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24-year-old hitmaker iann dior shares the new video for breakup anthem "I Think You Should Go." A punchy and sharply-written bit of guitar pop, "I Think You Should Go" speaks on the kind of conflicting feelings, commitment issues, and breakups that everyone goes through in their youth. In the video, iann retreats to the Cali desert–where plush pink teddy bears grow on trees and dwells on the potential of betrayal that lurks behind each relationship.

"I Think You Should Go" is a highlight track from BLIND, iann dior's new EP. Spanning six tracks, the new EP is packed with cathartic angst and infectious melodies, with production from seasoned pro John Feldmann (formerly of the band Goldfinger, among others) adding heft to each cymbal crash and cascading riff. Highlights from the EP include recent single "House On Fire," a dramatic power ballad that progresses from gentle acoustic guitar to a thunderous climax, and the driving "Kill You Slowly," which shows off iann's falsetto. BLIND is available everywhere now via 10K Projects.

"I Think You Should Go" and BLIND continue iann dior's run as one of his generation's premiere hitmakers. He scored a #1 hit at just 20 years old when he collaborated with 24kGoldn on "Mood," which spent multiple weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 2020. The 4x Platinum single spent 33 weeks inside the Top 10 and has amassed over one billion audience spins at radio and over career 3.7 billion streams. "Mood" earned iann dior 2 VMA nominations for Song of the Year and Best Collaboration, Billboard and iHeart Radio award nominations, and more.

Since then, he's continued to grow his fanbase, dropping four more GOLD-certified singles, and releasing albums like on to better things in 2022. on to better things earned coverage from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, NME, and many more, and featured contributions from the likes of Travis Barker and Lil Uzi Vert. In 2023, iann dropped leave me where you found me, reuniting the Puerto Rico-born artist with the superstar producer-artist collective Internet Money, home to singles like "do it all" and "10x3." Outside of music, iann dior has become a popular figure in the world of fashion, starring as the face of German luxury house MCM’s 2022 Spring/Summer campaign.

With an international tour in the works, and upcoming performances at So What Festival in Fort Worth, Texas and Stampede! in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, dior is ready to make 2024 his year. Stay tuned for more.

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bizarrequazar · 1 year

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GJ and ZZH Updates — December 25-31

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This is part of a weekly series collecting updates from and relating to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.

This post is not wholly comprehensive and is intended as an overview, links provided lead to further details. Dates are in accordance with China Standard Time, the organization is chronological. My own biases on some things are reflected here. Anything I include that is not concretely known is indicated as such, and you’re welcome to do your own research and draw your own conclusions as you see fit. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or additions. :)

[Glossary of names and terms] [Masterlist of my posts about the situation with Zhang Zhehan]

12-25 → Hsu Fu Chi posted four photo ads featuring Gong Jun.

→ 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ QuelleVous posted screenshots of the data records for Lexus’s Instagram stories, which show that the claims that he posted that something good was about to happen on 2021-12-24 were untrue. It’s also worth noting that Lexus never includes mentions / photos of Zhang Sanjian in his regular Instagram posts, only in these stories that become unavailable after 24 hours. Additionally, Lexus’s claims of owning an apartment in Beijing are untrue.

→ Gong Jun posted a video to his Xiao Hong Shu showing Charlotte Tilbury products he was gifted. [subbed video]

12-26 → 361° posted a promotional video spoken by Gong Jun. (1129 kadian)

→ Sichuan Satellite TV posted a promotional video spoken by Gong Jun advertising a program that will be held on 01-01. [subbed video]

→ Colgate posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

12-27 → 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Gong Jun posted a promotional image advertising that he would be appearing in Hunan Satellite’s New Year’s gala program on 12-31. Caption: “The new year is coming soon, #What attitude will you enter 2023 with#? At 7:30 p.m. on December 31, come to Hunan Satellite TV’s New Year’s Eve party, and let’s welcome the new year together!” His studio reposted this with the added caption: “The end of the year has come, and the new year is coming. Welcome 2023 with boss @ Gong Jun Simon!”

→ BEAST posted the full commercial for their New Year’s product line. Fan Observation: Gong Jun did the little hand twirl while bowing again.

→ Gong Jun flew to Changsha to record a variety show and the New Year’s events. Fan Observation: In the footage of both him arriving at one airport and leaving the other one, he was holding his phone in the same position that inspired the LLD handsign.

→ Fresh posted a promotional video spoken by Gong Jun.

→ Rocco Liu, the editor of GQ magazine, posted a photo of himself and Gong Jun to his Xiao Hong Shu.

12-28 → Fresh posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ BEAST posted a behind the scenes video of Gong Jun from their current ad campaign. (1129 kadian)

→ Canada’s Fairchild Radio primiered a third stolen song. The airing included a sound clip spoken by Zhang Zhehan which those listening mistakenly believed to be new—a haizhe openly admitted to creating this using two clips from 2020, claiming she did not intend for this misunderstanding.

12-29 → Gong Jun posted photos of a bracelet that Tiffany & Co. gifted to him on his Weibo and Instagram. This was reposted by Tiffany.

→ Gong Jun changed his Instagram pfp to one of the silhouette photos he posted on 12-10.

→ Bluebird posted a video exemplifying audio deepfakes, which shows the song Wake Me Up sung by Aloe Blacc being artificially rendered into multiple other languages while still maintaining the artist’s vocal idiosyncracies. There has been some question of if the songs that I’ve been referring to as stolen are even by Zhang Zhehan in the first place.

→ The Weibo TV Series Awards 2022 placed Dream Garden as #1 for best contemporary urban drama, and Gong Jun’s character Lin Shen as #1 contemporary urban drama character.

→ Kangshifu posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ A short video was posted for the Weibo New Year’s Party of Gong Jun wishing everyone a happy New Year: "Hello everyone, I am Gong Jun. 2022 is nearly over. How were you this past year? 2023 is coming, wishing everyone a Happy New Year." [quoted translation]

→ Hogan tweeted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted in response to the TV Series Awards: “Thank you to everyone who supports [Dream Garden], loves Lin Shen, and walks bravely with Lin Shen in the new year!”

→ The third stolen song was scheduled to be released on this day but was delayed to 01-06, no reason given. One of Xie Yihua’s accounts posted a photo of a thermometer to imply that Zhang Sanjian has COVID.

12-30 → Kangshifu posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

12-31 → A Twitter space was held reviewing the events of the year. [recording] [written notes]

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted four photos from the rehearsal the performance that would air that night. Caption: “The old year is coming to an end, tonight welcome the arrival of the new year with joyful singing. Boss @ Gong Jun Simon's energy continues to load, let's go together tonight!” Fan Observation: Gong Jun reportedly had milk tea delivered to fans who were waiting outside for him, as well as to the staff at the venue.

→ Hsu Fu Chi posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ LockNLock posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun with a very sweet caption: “No matter how you say it, I also want to give you an award for self-discipline, single-mindedness, humility, honesty... You who have excellent qualities! I wish you all good luck in 2023, success, health and happiness forever!” (1314 “forever” kadian) This was the last day of his endorsement with them.

→ Gong Jun posted nine photos of himself to his personal Weibo. Caption: “See you tonight, I will be full of joy for the new year!” His studio followed shortly after with two more posts [here] and [here] of photos from this photoshoot, captions: “New Year’s Eve surprises gradually took shape, saying goodbye to the old year and welcoming the new year, and sharing a wonderful night with boss @ Gong Jun Simon , see you tonight!” and “Set the alarm clock and wait on time, the boss @ Gong Jun Simon is ready to go, let’s go to a new future together tonight!” Gong Jun also shared nine of these photos in his Instagram story, and eight to his Xiao Hong Shu, caption: “Happy New Year! See you tonight!”

→ REAL1640 posted nine previously unseen Word of Honor behind the scenes photos of Zhang Zhehan.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted a video of behind the scenes footage from the photoshoot. Caption: “Both movement and stillness are suitable, and you can feel the unique fireworks of this city in winter. Boss @ Gong Jun Simon 's ‘surprise gift’ is in place, see you tonight 😎” BGM was Everything by eevee.

→ Addition 01-01: Gong Jun’s studio posted a douyin of more behind the scenes footage from the photoshoot. Caption: “On the last day of 2022, boss @ Gong Jun Simon delivered the warmth and freshness of spring ahead of time~ See you tonight!” BGM is If I Could by Chris Mazuera.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted six more photos from the photoshoot. Caption: “The preface of the year is updated, opening a new chapter with joy. Boss @ Gong Jun Simon 's surprise stage countdown ing, see you later!”

→ Gong Jun appeared in Hunan Satellite’s New Year’s gala. [cuts of his part] The songs he sang were 快乐颂 by 林必媜 and Small Town Summer by Li Bi. Fan Observations: - There was something in his pocket. - He did the hand twirl while bowing again. Addition 01-03: Small Town Summer is about falling in love in a small town during the summer while listening to Jay Chou. Sound familiar? 😏

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted nine photos of Gong Jun from the event. Caption: “Have you been surprised by the stage prepared by boss @ Gong Jun Simon? Forget about your troubles, let's go to 2023 with a happy mood!”

→ Addition 01-03: Kangshifu posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

Additional Reading: → Flora’s daily fan news

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This post was last edited 2023-01-03.

#Happy New Year!!#Zhang Zhehan #Gong Jun #Word of Honor #woh cast #lld timeline

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