Daily Links #112: Mississippi Senate passes 15-week abortion ban

Apologies for the lack of posts these last couple days. Been busy learning the ropes in Cities: Skylines, much of which involves dealing with my whiny industrial zones. (WTF does “Not enough services” even mean?)

• Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Senate passes 15-week abortion ban, the worst in the country, that’s explicitly intended to launch a Roe v. Wade challenge. A challenge that could run perilously close to success.

• Andrew Wakefield’s lethal legacy lives on as a measles outbreak spreads across Europe, thanks to antivaccinationists.
  (via @EsotericCD; retweet by @Popehat)

• “Internal NYPD files show that hundreds of officers who committed the most serious offenses — from lying to grand juries to physically attacking innocent people — got to keep their jobs, their pensions, and their tremendous power over New Yorkers' lives.”
  (via @michaelhayes; retweet by @radleybalko)

• Roy Moore claims he’s broke. I hope he finds more money; the more he has, the longer he can keep getting sued by the women he preyed on when they were teens.

• Finally, a follow-up: The FCC’s ethics lawyers must’ve rang, because Ajit Pai has now turned down the NRA’s gun award for killing net neutrality rules.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 10/18/17 – Trump ban gets court-blocked again, redux

Daphne Caruana Galizia

• Trump’s latest travel ban gets court-blocked again by a Hawaiian federal judge the day before it was to take effect.

• Jesus. Journalist ^[pictured] who led the Panama Papers investigation was murdered with a car bomb.
  (via The Watch | The Washington Post)

• Family business bankrupted by IRS told they can’t get their stolen money back, and other civil asset forfeiture horror stories.

• Lawsuit: New Orleans DA used fake subpoenas and bogus arrests to force witnesses and victims to testify.
  (via @ethanbrown72; RT: @radleybalko)

• After weeks of player protests over criminal (in)justice, the NFL now backs a criminal justice reform bill.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Antivaccination, a play in three acts: 1) Cranks publish study claiming a link between vaccines and autism. 2) Study is widely debunked. 3) Study is retracted. And scene.

• Finally, all aboard Trainy McTrainface … train.
  (via @fark)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 10/04/17 – Trump’s personal lawyer scuttled fraud case against Ivanka & Don Jr. after large donation

Ivanka Trump (l) & Donald Trump Jr.

Got me some computer-related fiddling to do, so have a quick & dirty links dump.

• Bombshell from ProPublica: In 2012, NYC prosecutors were readying a federal fraud case against Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. Then came a hefty donation and a visit from Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz. The D.A. overruled his staff and dropped the case.
  (via @Yousefzadeh; RT: @Popehat)

• Ed Brayton explains the cold truth: The US Supreme Court is one inevitable retirement away from likely reversing Roe v Wade and axing 44 years of reproductive rights progress.

• Bell Canada, a major ISP and TV provider, is asking the Canadian government to blacklist piracy sites to stop people from “leaving the regulated [TV] system”.
  (via Privacy Online News)

• Today in stupid, from Fox News: Maybe the Las Vegas shooter just “didn’t believe in God”. Even her co-hosts look dubious.

• Today in stupid, from British Home Secretary Amber Rudd: “I don’t need to understand how encryption works” to know it’s helping baddies and that we need to stop that.

• It took the Georgia State Supreme Court to remind local law enforcement, by overturning a man’s conviction, that merely flipping someone off quietly, even in a church, is protected by the First Amendment.

• Follow-up: After declaring she’d rather go to jail than obey a court order to vaccinate her son, Michigan woman gets sentenced to seven days.
  (via @religionnews)

• Finally, the latest award for predictable “traditional family values” hypocrisy goes to … Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA). (No, he didn’t get caught with a male hooker. This time.)
  (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Study shows refusing to vaccinate causes outbreaks. News at 11

That vaccines prevent illnesses, and that refusing to vaccinate leads to outbreaks, is something that’s so self-evident that anyone who’s too deep in an anti-reality zone to understand it isn’t going to be swayed by studies. But that won’t stop researchers from proving the obvious nonetheless:

People who don’t get vaccinated are the most likely reason for the steady increase in the rate of measles and major outbreaks in the United States, according to an analysis released Tuesday.

The findings, published in JAMA, add to the body of evidence linking failure to vaccinate with the spread of the highly infectious and potentially fatal disease. Once common in the United States, measles was eliminated nationally in 2000 but has made a return in recent years largely because of people who reject vaccinating their children, experts say.

[…]

In the latest findings, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed 1,789 measles cases among U.S. residents reported to the CDC from January 2001 through December 2015. They found that nearly 70 percent, or 1,243 individuals, were unvaccinated.

Babies and toddlers had the least protection. Of 163 infants ages 6 to 11 months who became sick, only two had been vaccinated. Among 106 toddlers ages 12 to 15 months, 95 were unvaccinated.

The very young, as well as the very old and the very ill (and the rare few who are genuinely allergic to vaccines), are the reason it’s crucially important that everyone who can vaccinate themselves and their children do so. Failure to do this not only puts their own health at risk, it endangers anyone around them who relies on herd immunity to keep them safe. Vaccines aren’t a personal choice; they’re a matter of public health.

As long as misinformed people put their refusal to vaccinate above public safety, these outbreaks will continue, and people, especially children, will die.

(via @radleybalko)

Detroit mother prefers jail to vaccinating her kid

Brave vaccine martyr or stubborn fool?

Rebecca Bredow, of the Detroit area, told ABC News that she would "absolutely" rather go to jail than vaccinate her son.

“I would rather go to jail for standing up for what I believe in than vaccinating my child,” Bredow said, adding she believes the decision to vaccinate your child is a “personal choice.”

“I choose not to vaccinate, but that's my choice," she said. “I'm not against vaccines, it's everybody's personal choice."

If you’re willing to go to prison for defying a judge’s order to vaccinate your kid, you’re against vaccines. Further, if she goes to jail for taking a stand against vaccinating her son, she won’t be around to stop him from getting vaccinated by whomever becomes his guardian. That’s 0–2 for logic.

The problem with her position, as with everyone else like her, is that vaccines aren’t a personal choice. They’re a matter of public health. When people choose not to vaccinate, that reduces herd immunity, which makes it easier for vulnerable people (such as the very young, the very elderly, and those too sick to get vaccinated) to fall victim to vaccine-preventable diseases. And then they die. People who reject vaccines aren’t just hurting themselves, they’re endangering the people around them as well. That’s why some countries have started instituting mandatory vaccines with penalties for those who refuse. And that’s how it should be everywhere.

When your “personal choice” puts other people’s health at risk, particularly when that choice is rooted in stubborn denial of science and reality, it’s really no contest.

Daily Links: 08/06/17 – Saudi Arabia to execute government critics

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)

Slow couple news days (ain’t that a change?), so have a shortened Links post.

• The US’s wonderful ally, Saudi Arabia, is about to execute 14 people, including three who were juveniles when sentenced, who were convicted by a sham trial for criticizing their government.
  (via @radleybalko)

• White House issues their “guidance” for implementing Trump’s trans military ban: encouraging early retirement and firing trans officers up for promotion. Combat troops’ status is unclear. LGBTQ advocacy group Lambda Legal plans to challenge the ban in court.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Solid write-up in The Week about why so many on the Left don’t trust politicians like Kamala Harris ^[pictured] and Cory Booker, and why race has nothing to do with it, despite the sleazy accusations from establishment leaders. Not mentioned but also troubling is Harris’s support for civil asset forfeiture and defense of the death penalty.
  (via @ggreenwald)

• And finally, skepticism alert: Are Brooklyn antivaxxers refusing to vaccinate their pets over autism fears? Reports all point to one source, a local weekly newsletter, that features anecdotes from two vets who report “concerns” from an unknown number of clients, and quotes from several people on the street who don’t buy it. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if this were real to some extent, but let’s wait for actual data before drawing conclusions.
  (via Friendly Atheist; thanks to Lan for the Snopes link)

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Bill Nye has had it with dingbats and antivaxxers

Bill Nye

I’ve always known the Science Guy as a passionate yet mild-mannered promoter of reason and critical thinking, but it seems his patience is wearing thin with the rise of unscientific attitudes in the United States. He explains where the country’s anti-intellectual bent is likely to take it:

[I]t’s hard not to be critical of people who want to be ignorant, but I don’t think it can last. I don’t think the celebration of “dingbatitude” can stick with us because we’ll get out-competed by the non-dingbats. People will want to look to non-dingbats to innovate and keep the United States competitive.

It’s simple logic: Smart, healthy people will outperform and outlive dumb, sick people. This goes for individuals as well as entire nations. It’s only too bad the US is currently ruled by a party of cranks, morons and shills, all voted into power by an electorate that increasingly distrusts education. Already the country’s reputation is slipping around the world, and that trend isn’t likely to reverse itself within the next four years.

But Nye saves the brunt of his frustration for the special, dangerous kind of stupid that is antivaccination lunacy:

And for all the anti-vaxxers out there [in the theater audience], you have to get vaccinated. I don’t care about you. If you go ahead and get sick and die, knock yourself out. The reason I insist you get vaccinated is to protect me from you. Me! You get sick, the virus, the bacteria, mutates inside of you. You are the petri dish of death for the rest of us. Vaccines were discovered in the 17-freaking-hundreds, people. It’s not some new freaking thing! So we push back against that.

The thing with vaccines is that whilst they protect you (obviously), the larger goal is to protect your community at large through herd immunity. The more people are vaccinated, the easier contagious diseases are contained, which also ensures that more vulnerable people who can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons (such as AIDS sufferers, chemotherapy patients, and those with actual allergies to vaccines) remain protected by the wall of immunized people around them.

This is why when it comes to vaccines, the community’s right to not get sick trumps the individual’s right to reject modern medicine. People, especially children, die every year from vaccine-preventable illnesses, either because their parents refused to vaccinate them or because they couldn’t get vaccinated and there wasn’t enough herd immunity around them to keep them safe.

That strikes me as a far greater injustice than forcing people to vaccinate their kids and penalizing those who don’t.

Daily Links: 06/07/17 – Plague of FGM in England

Shiva Ayyadurai

• Today in terrible numbers: Over 5,000 new cases of female genital mutilation were reported in England in 2016. Who even knows how many weren’t reported.

• France to make childhood vaccines mandatory in 2018 in the wake of a serious (antivax-related) measles outbreak. Good. Public health trumps parental ignorance every time.

• Dull candidates, bad strategy, cringe-worthy slogans: How can the Democratic Party be so damn terrible at anything political-party related?
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• I’m with PZ Myers regarding “HanAssholeSolo”’s apology for his gleeful neo-Nazi behavior. To quote my favorite show: “Ethics are what we do when no-one else is looking.”

• And finally, the self-styled “inventor of email” (who didn’t invent email) ^[pictured] plans to challenge Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for her seat. May he crash and burn just as hard as he hopefully will in his bogus SLAPP lawsuit against Techdirt.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 06/29/17 – Canadian court censors Google results globally

Anita Sarkeesian

Quick status update: Working on getting my (rebooted) art blog back up with all my music, writings and miscellaneous creative bric-a-brac. No idea how long it’ll take, but hopefully less than a couple weeks.

Also, we now have a “related posts” section displaying beneath each post. Of course, expect them to be limited until this blog grows some more.

Canadian Supreme Court sets a worrying precedent in forcing Google to censor certain results from its global search. How can one country dictate what an international company may or may not display to the rest of the world?

Maine sees its first Measles case in 20 years, most likely due to anti-vaccination lunacy.

Predictable survey: What happens when you elect a clueless, arrogant man-child in order to “restore America’s standing” in the world.
(via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

Solid write-up about Anita Sarkeesian ^[pictured] and her “garbage human” moment. Also don’t miss @alexandraerin’s fantastic Twitter thread, which gifts the world with “Calgon of Kumquat” and “Sardine of Aqualung”, and that’s all I’ll be calling Carl Benjamin from now on.

And finally, marvel at Piers Morgan’s face as he realizes his co-host just toppled him onto his own sword:

This moment was just too beautiful for words, @susannareid100... 😂😂😂@piersmorgan @CharlotteHawkns pic.twitter.com/hK2n88nBS4

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) June 28, 2017

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

John Oliver on the non-science of antivaxxers

The host of Last Week Tonight devoted last night’s main segment to the anti-vaccine lunacy and why so many parents are quick to jump onto this particularly terrible bandwagon. Much of it boils down to basic science illiteracy: Those who don’t have a firm understanding of medicine and risk are more liable to be convinced by cranks peddling sciencey-sounding theories than by experts who actually know what they’re talking about.

Oliver takes pains to explain the basics, such as the ridiculous amount of safety research conducted and the importance of herd immunity, and to address some of the more prominent myths about vaccines. But the fact remains, as he also mentions, that no hours-long, point-by-point refutation of every conceivable antivax argument will ever be enough. The layfolk who merely pay attention to the wrong information sources may still be reached, but many antivaxxers are die-hard true-believers, the kind who show up to any vaccine debate with a ready-made list of spurious counter-arguments. These are people who have often been on the receiving end of lectures by medical professionals and who have come away just as benighted as before they began, if not more so (the backfire effect in action). There’s little point in debating people who don’t want an actual debate.

Nonetheless, Oliver’s piece is a good one (as per usual) and is definitely worth setting aside a half-hour for.