Daily Links #114: Mississippi passes 15-week anti-abortion bill

My stomach has launched a coup, the house is freezing and I had to spend almost an hour troubleshooting my laptop. Have some quick ’n’ dirty links whilst I numb my mind with some movies and a big steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup.

• Following a Senate vote two days ago, the Mississippi Legislature has now passed a 15-week abortion ban that leaves no exceptions for rape or incest and which Gov. Phil Bryant (R) plans to sign, marking the first steps towards an eventual Supreme Court challenge of Roe v. Wade.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• In other Christian-fascist news: Days after a Kentucky Christian-conservative group stalled an anti-child-marriage bill (which has since advanced), a similar bill in Tennessee is dead after another Family Research Council affiliate told Republican lawmakers it would interfere with their planned lawsuit against the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling legalizing gay marriage.

• Saint Louis, MO prosecutor wants an independent body to investigate police shootings. For some reason, the police union isn’t happy with this.
  (via The Watch | The Washington Post)

• Kansas legislature is considering a bill that would stop drug convicts from being lumped in with sex offenders in the state’s public registry. Because that’s apparently a thing.
  (via The Watch | The Washington Post)

• Iran sentences a woman to two years in jail for publicly removing her hijab. Also, happy International Women’s Day.

• Finally, just so you know, Australia has found a new way to kill you: Birds that spread wildfires on purpose.

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

Daily Links #113: Abstinence advocate controls family planning funding

Valerie Huber

• The perils of having Republicans in power: Almost $300 million in family planning funding is now controlled by an anti-abortion abstinence advocate. ^[pictured]

• Appeals court throws out a man’s conviction after a trial judge ordered him to be electrocuted three times to silence him. That judge needs to be fired yesterday.
  (via @washingtonpost; retweet by @Popehat)

• The Arctic just had its warmest winter on record.

• Oregon becomes the latest state to pass its own law protecting net neutrality.

• Finally, here’s everything you need to know about Jehovah’s Witnesses in five minutes:
  (via Friendly Atheist)

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

Stupid quote of the day: Florida senator defends “thoughts and prayers”

FL State Sen. Kelli Stargel (R)

I thought I’d finished my blogging rounds for the day, but that was before I saw this breathtaking pronouncement from Florida State Sen. Kelli Stargel:

At a Saturday debate on a proposed assault weapons ban in the Florida legislature, Stargel said “it’s not the weapon, it’s the evil from within” that leads people to commit deadly crimes.

“When we say ‘thoughts and prayers,’ it’s frowned upon. And I take real offense at that because thoughts and prayers are really the only thing that’s gonna stop the evil from within the individual who is taking up their arms to do this kind of a massacre,” Stargel said.

I don’t suppose actually taking “their arms” out of their hands and making it harder for the to buy guns in the first place would help any. Better just keep praying to Jebus for a miracle instead.

You know what I “take real offense” at? Pious fools, elected by an equally pious and foolish voter base, who use their pulpit to babble about asking an imaginary sky-being to intervene in the country’s gun violence epidemic in lieu of actually doing anything substantive, such as passing even the most basic laws to make it harder for deranged individuals to buy guns. Those people deserve every ounce of contempt they receive and then some.

Who the fuck keeps sending these nattering kooks to legislative office? Can we just vote out their voters? Seems like that might fix several problems in one go, and possibly save some lives to boot.

(via Joe.My.God.)

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.

Kentucky Christian-Right group stalls anti-child-marriage bill

Some remarkably backwards practices are still remarkably commonplace in some parts. For instance, Kentucky still has child marriages, at least in some cases: Kids 17 and younger can marry if they have their parents’ permission (and you know some of those parents are roping them into it), and in particular, a boy can marry any young girl he impregnates. Not only are kids who are too young to figure out birth control also too young to make this sort of decision, it opens the door to kids marrying adults, particularly young girls pushed by their parents into shacking up with the predatory older man who impregnated them.

But that’s changing, or so it was until recently. A new bill would ban marriages for anyone under the age of 17 and force 17-year-olds to get a judge’s permission.

[State Sen. Julie Raque] Adams filed the bill after media reports detailing how Kentucky has the third-highest rate of child marriage in the country — with more than 10,000 children married from 2000 to 2015, according to the Tahirih Justice Center — and the accounts of women like Donna Pollard, who was encouraged by her mother to marry an abusive man who was nearly 31 when she was just 16.

A law to stop impulsive kids from entering wedlock, or more realistically, to ban meddling dinosaurian parents from pushing antiquated social customs on their children. What reasonable people could oppose that?

The religious-conservative Family Foundation of Kentucky are not reasonable people.

Asked Thursday morning who was lobbying against her bill, Adams told Insider Louisville that it was the Family Foundation of Kentucky — one of the more prominent groups in Frankfort advocating for socially conservative causes — who argued that it “diminishes parental rights.”

Adams added that she and other legislators are now working on a compromise bill that she hopes will satisfy the concerns of opponents, but added that the problem is that “many times the parents are the problem,” as abusive ones sometimes send their own kids “into the arms of a predator.” Noting Kentucky’s shameful national ranking on child marriage, Adams added: “This is not kids marrying kids. This is kids marrying adults.”

Any parent who doesn’t see a problem with child brides is not a parent whose rights deserve respect.

The Society For Keeping Kentucky a Punchline has weighed in with an objection. https://t.co/79uqODfzWc

— John Scalzi (@scalzi) March 3, 2018

(via Friendly Atheist & a retweet by @fark)

This Week in Puppycide #30

Relatively quiet on the pet-killing front these days. Fewer reports mean it’s happening less frequently, right?

Hey, a guy can fantasize.

• Unjustified | Oklahoma City, OK (02/22/18): Off-duty police captain accuses a neighbor’s dogs of bothering his cattle, then shoots the man’s pit bull in the head with his personal rifle. He claims the dog “kept charging aggressively at him”; the neighbor says that’s a lie and that his dog just “sat there and barked twice”. An internal investigation is underway.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

If you know of any similar stories I haven’t mentioned, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Not sure what those colored labels mean? See my puppycide ruling explainer.

Daily Links #111: House passes bad anti-sex-trafficking bill

• US House of Representatives passes an anti-sex-trafficking bill that would restrict online speech, endanger sex workers, and do absolutely nothing to fight sex trafficking.

• As Trump ^[pictured] makes noises about violent video games causing mass shootings, remember that endless studies have proven him completely and utterly wrong.
  (via @mccanner; retweet by @Popehat)

• New York man wins $1 million lawsuit after an NYPD officer tried to frame him for drunk driving to cover up how the cop blew through a stop sign and crashed into his car.
  (via @natemcdermott; retweet by @KFILE)

• Pamela Gellar’s daughters did not fall far from the bigoted tree.

• Finally, your headline of the day (and an uncomfortably informative article):
  (via @radleybalko)

Source: The Hill

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

National Geographic promotes new show with magic crystals

Once, there were three edutainment channels that made an honest effort to raise the American masses’ scientific and historical literacy. Then History tossed out reality in favor of ancient aliens and finding Bigfoot, Discovery took up every “tough-guys brave the totally-not-staged wilderness” pitch in between fake documentaries, and as for National Geographic … well, it held out a little longer, but you knew things weren’t going well when it was bought by Rupert Murdoch in 2015, and they aren’t likely to get better.

Here’s what it’s up to these days: Magic rock water!

National Geographic, usually known for photos of animals and the adventures of rich people visiting other countries, is premiering their Will Smith-narrated, Darren Aronofsky-produced series, One Strange Rock, on March 26. I had a chance to watch one of the episodes at a screener last month—it was fine and very wide-eyed. There were lots of shots of Earth from space. It was very pretty. But I guess I’ve been concerned about Nat Geo ever since Fox bought them back in 2015—and this bottle makes me question whether they’re turning into a high-budget Goop.

The huge box Nat Geo sent me contained a book, some press material, and this glass water bottle with their name printed on the side. The >$70 bottle’s package advertises that it contains “carefully selected and ethically sourced gemstones representing the building blocks of earth,” including “wood,” “water,” “earth,” “metal” and “fire.” It came with an instruction and information manual.

Why does my water bottle have an instruction manual? It reads: “For the most precious moments in life! Gems raise the energy level of water. That’s been known for hundreds of years and scientifically proven. VitaJuwel Gemwater Accessories are not only Jewelry for Water, they’re a great tool to prepare heavenly gemwater like fresh from the spring.” The instructions are: screw in the gemstone vial, fill with water, and then wait 7 minutes.

Here’s the thing—this is a water bottle containing a sealed jar of gemstones. At no point will the water even come into contact with any of said gemstones. A warning tells you to discard the bottle if there is any way for water to seep into the vial of gems. All of the “science” cited in the brochure comes from widely debunked research from the likes of Japanese author Masaru Emoto—you know, the researcher who claimed humans could impact the chemical structure of water with their thoughts—or unnamed “German scientists.”

Hey now, they know precisely how many minutes you should wait after putting on the lid with the magic rocks, so it must be scientific. Or do you doubt the credibility of a company with a name like “VitaJuwel”?

NatGeo must have thought the article was harsh, man, because they responded, tut-tutting the author for “missing the point” of them sending a magic-crystal water bottle to a pop-science writer. The gist of their rebuttal:

The water bottle was just meant to be a clever and harmless representation of some of the themes of the show, and nothing more. Sure, the accompanying guide might read a little silly to some – but I think you are missing the point. […]

Of course National Geographic does not subscribe to pseudoscience, and I think you full well know that. But it doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.

Even if they don’t believe in the woo they’re sending out with their name stamped on it, they’re forgetting that far too many people do subscribe to this bullshit – Gwyneth Paltrow’s shop wouldn’t be in business otherwise – and that they happily use it as a substitute for actual medicine, with predictably disastrous results. When you fleece the gullible, people inevitably get hurt. Trying to pass this nonsense off as a spot of harmless fun plays right into the hands of crock-mongers everywhere and undermines the efforts of actual science educators and medical experts who warn against this garbage.

I think it’s time to write NatGeo off as a lost cause. Once there were three; now there are none.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Alex Jones sued for discrimination and harassment. News at 11

I have some shocking news. You sitting down? Glass of water still on the desk, un-sipped? Here you go:

Two former staffers at InfoWars have accused founder and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of discrimination and sexual harassment, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. Jones allegedly bullied staffers, made anti-Semitic and racist comments, and groped one worker, according to two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints obtained by the publication.

That’s right: The man who built his company on being a screaming train wreck on camera is actually a terrible person generally, and he fosters a workplace culture that encourages shitty behavior in his staff as well. Who could’ve guessed.

Next they’ll be telling us there are jerks over at Breitbart, too. I don’t know what to believe anymore.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Daily Links #110: Seriously, please sign that petition to prevent censorship of Canada’s Internet

Oy, Canadians! Have you signed that petition to save our Internet from censorship yet? The deadline is tonight.

Once you’ve done that, here’s your news dump.

• US Supreme Court refuses to review a lower court ruling blocking Trump’s attempt to end DACA.

• More good judicial news: A federal court rules that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination, rebuking the Trump admin. which argued the contrary.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• In reaction to the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal, Michigan lawmakers want to greatly extend the statute of limitations for sex crime victims. For some reason, the Catholic Church isn’t happy with this.

• Florida Republicans advance two bills to put more guns in classrooms, because when you reject all sensible solutions, cartoonish ones are all that’s left.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Finally, Ed Brayton at Dispatches From the Culture Wars addresses the terrible, tribalistic defenses of Lawrence Krauss against his sexual harassment allegations. You know it’s bad when the pro-Krauss arguments are the same used by Roy Moore’s supporters.

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

A petition to prevent censorship of the Canadian Internet

Are you Canadian? Do you like the free and open Web? Do you want ISPs like Bell and other companies to band together to decide, with no legal oversight, which websites you can visit and which you can’t, just as SOPA threatened to do in the US some years back?

If you answered respectively “yeah”, “sure” and “fuck that”, then haul ass to sign this petition and share it with any other Internet-loving Canadians you know, because the deadline for comments is tomorrow.

And to think I sporadically considered switching over to Bell. Man, I’m funny. (Then again, my current ISP, Vidéotron, is owned by Québecor, which is a sponsor, so crap.)

Watson on Krauss and the future of organized atheism

Rebecca Watson gives some background to BuzzFeed’s thoroughly researched exposé on Lawrence Krauss’s history of sexual harassment.

Meanwhile, PZ Myers at Pharyngula takes apart some of the usual roaches leaping out of the woodwork to Krauss’s defense. Skeptics, these people are in name only. The ongoing attacks against Melody Hensley are particularly repugnant – but this is from the same assholes who drove her out of the movement in the first place, so that’s only to be expected.

Organized atheism continues to crumble with each passing day, and its stalwarts stick their fingers in their ears and screech that all is well even as sensible people flee in droves. I agree with Watson – there’s no reason to believe anything will seriously change at this point, not until the old guard is thrown out or, more likely, sinks into an irrelevance of their own making. I’m hoping whatever is built upon the ashes will be a stronger, more vibrant movement … ideally, one that chooses to keep out the dead weight that caused the original to founder.