@GottaLaff Notice that MSM articles about David DePape rarely mention he's an illegal alien. Compare this with how the MSM covers the death of Laken Riley. This is an example of White Privilege.
A must-read article from Anne Applebaum. It has been obvious for a while that pro-Trump social media is mostly foreign propaganda. The irony of using “America First” to sabotage America is no doubt something foreign trolls find amusing.
Fear, cynicism, nihilism, and apathy, coupled with disgust and disdain for democracy: that is what modern autocrats sell and there are far too many people falling for it.
@TonyStark I thought Applebaum would argue that Chinese owned #TikTok was spreading propaganda to sabotage America, but she doesn't mention it at all. This is surprising since that's the primary argument in support of the #TikTokBan
One of the odd things people say about #Israel is that it's a "Western state" when it's no more a #Western state than Japan and, in my opinion, far less so. For example, #marriage is determined by religious authorities even though The #West stopped doing this over a century ago. #politics#international
#Bernie Sanders likes to pretend he's against #Netanyahu now. But in 2016, he fired Simone Zimmerman, the founder of #ifnotnow, for making remarks critical of #Israel. The mass murder being committed by Israel right now is a continuation of the imperial policies of Israel that has been happening for decades but Bernie has refused to acknowledge up to now (and maybe still doesn't acknowledge). #usa#protests#CollegeProtests
One of the striking things about the #tiktok ban is it makes certain type of source code, even #opensource, effectively illegal. Aside from intellectual property law, source code has never been made illegal. The bill specifically says it is illegal to "distribute, maintain, or update" TikTok source code and it is also illegal for an "internet hosting service" to enable such actions. #TikTokBan#usa
I'm wondering if there's a precedent for one country deliberately bombing another country's embassy (killing a senior government official) in a third country?
"The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, along with several consulates, will have some 15,000 workers, making it the largest U.S. diplomatic operation abroad. Those diplomats will be protected by a private army consisting of as many as 5,000 security contractors who will carry assault weapons and fly armed helicopters."
Supreme Court to weigh #Trump immunity, keeps D.C. trial on hold— Bloomberg #SCOTUS
“Supreme Court to decide Trump’s immunity claim in election interference case
“Even if the justices ultimately rule against Trump, the court’s intervention adds a further delay, meaning his trial will not start for weeks, if not months.
Okay, we've had some banger posts on Techdirt today so I'm sharing. First up, a summary of yesterday's Supreme Court hearing on the future of the internet, in which (incredibly) I try to explain what Alito meant when asking about the weight of YouTube (it was dumb, but not for the reasons everyone thinks). https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/27/sir-this-is-a-supreme-court-not-a-wendys/
@mmasnick I would say the Thomas/Gorsuch view Section 230 turns media companies into common carriers makes more sense than you make it out to be. Section 230 allows companies to legally do content moderation but only if such actions are "taken in good faith". For example, if left wing spam, but not right wing spam, is blocked, it's not in good faith. But this inability to be partisan about spams is what is meant by calling them "common carriers".
I just realized in the classic 80's Dungeons And Dragons cartoon in The Garden of Zinn episode, a much older man asked a 13 year old Sheila to marry him and people didn't find this objectionable. #DungeonsAndDragons#DnD
@cstross For a USA analogy, this is like if Trump set up his own party and Republicans decided to vote for the Trump Party instead of the Republican Party.
everyone in the west is obsessed with the cultural event that is the super bowl, but did you know what is SIX TIMES BIGGER? the cctv spring festival gala, viewership of which yesterday is estimated at 679 million vs the 113 million of the last super bowl 🐉🏈
BTW, the easiest (but by no means the only!) way for the Supreme Court to justify turning down Colorado's trying to keep Trump off the ballot would be to declare that the 14th Amendment in this respect is not self-executing. Problem solved, as far as the Court is concerned, and they avoid a flood of similar attempt by other states to keep Trump or Biden off the ballot -- or others further down the line.
@lauren@Hash Congress doesn't have the power to define the terms in the Constitution. This power is solely in the courts. This was directly addressed in City of Boerne v. Flores where Congress tried to define the terms in the 14th amendment which, by the way, the Insurrection Clause is part of.
AT&T is sending out letters warning they want to kill virtually all landlines (and perhaps related data circuits where fiber is unavailable) across essentially their entire coverage area throughout California. This would have devastating effects. Related CPUC meetings will be taking place through March.
Landlines provide crucial services for individuals, businesses, and other organizations in a wide variety of situations -- not just emergencies when cellular and Internet service tends to rapidly fail, but also for vast numbers of people in areas with poor, unreliable, or in many cases (even in large sections of major cities!) NO cell service, NO fiber, etc.
Landlines often provide the only available communication in a wide variety of security and safety situations, from elevators to interior spaces of all sorts where cell service simply doesn't work.
Many disabled and other persons have crucial equipment that depends on landlines. Often they are not tech-savvy and do not have friends or relatives to help them through forced technology changes.
AT&T has been shirking its public safety responsibilities for years, while still leveraging their effective monopoly on services in so many areas.
Their new effort must be stopped. I'll have much more to say about this as the situation progresses.
fearing Lincoln’s election would lead to the national abolition of slavery (a hyperbolic, reactionary response), a series of southern states seceded from the union and formed an avowedly white supremacist confederacy of slave states. that was the cause of the civil war.
@GottaLaff Ask the same question of Supreme Court Republicans and they won’t be able to answer the question either even though their job is to know the Original Understanding of the Constitution, including the Civil War amendments.
Today we celebrate the birth of Sir Isaac Newton. Without his invention of calculus we would have no way to stop people who are bad at math from becoming engineers.
It's a bit of a problem for 2024 that most of the Dem leadership—but not majority of the Dem base, nor a majority of independents—believes that the highest priority at the end of 2023 is providing political cover to Netanyahu's campaign to raze Gaza.
@maxkennerly It's incredibly strange that so many leaders of the Democratic Party believe that being pro-Israel is a winning position for getting independent votes.
I've just been noticing this last weeks how much better things have gotten over on Threads than in the earliest days of its launch. The feature parity is vastly improved, my timeline is useful and interesting, and a lot more people are over there.
And then today Joe Biden and The White House joined it. I think Threads is probably going to be the winning replacement for X/Twitter.
Finally, one of the #billionaires threatening to end donations to #colleges and threatening college students due to #antisemitism has spoken about #Elon Musk. And the billionaire is defending Elon. #Israel#Gaza
Notice that none of the people who have ended donations to universities or threatened college students due to alleged antisemitism have yet to say one word criticizing Elon's antisemitism. That's because they have no problems with Elon's antisemitism. #Elon#Israel#antisemitism
@taylorlorenz 1. There are a lot of videos out there of Israel killing people from the air and destroying buildings in Gaza. There is no need to create fake videos. The difference is normally the MSM doesn't show them because of its pro-Israel bias. Biden's real problem is with the internet itself.
2. Has anyone else noticed how often "Palestine" is used? In the old days, people called it the Palestinian Territories in order to delegitimize the Palestinian state.
