A1 TRUMP WEIGHS REVIVING CURBS ON CUBA TRIPS
"President Trump* is considering reversing major pieces of the Obama administration's opening with Cuba and reinstating limits on travel and commerce, citing human rights abuses by the Castro government as justification for a more punitive approach."
May 19th article
"Mr. Trump's apparent lack of interest in human rights also suggests that he is unlikely to complain about the justice system or the limited rights of Saudi women."
But all of a sudden, it's a huge issue vis-à-vis Cuba.
C5 SOMETHING NEW, BUT A LOT BORROWED, TOO
"There isn't a flicker of musical edge on this album ..."
Are you fucking kidding me?Jeeeeeezus Christ! Jeeeeeeezus Christ!
C5 A BIG, NEW VOICE, PERFECT FOR POP BANGERS
"When she was 11, Ms. Lipa and her family moved to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. But Ms. Lipa wanted to be a pop singer, and at 15 she persuaded her parents to let her return to London."
That's one persuasive 15-year-old!
"[H]er father, Dukagjin Lipa, is a rock musician ..."
That explains it.
The song she sang on The Tonight Show -- "Scared to Be Lonely" -- was interesting enough. I particularly enjoyed the few short sections where her voice drops out, and some magical effects lift the music above the mundane.
A22 OH DEAR. THE TRUMPS KEEP MULTIPLYING.
Gail, you make me laugh.
"The kids are not alright.
Let's see now. Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is under investigation for weird cloak-and-daggerish meetings with the Russians. Ivanka just took a bunch of money from the Saudis for her favorite charity. Eric and Don Jr. are traveling the world to promote Trump hotels and golf courses while being looked after by the Secret Service on our dime.
... Who's your favorite mini-Trump? I'm sort of attached to Eric, the one who compared waterboarding to a fraternity hazing.
Don Jr. was recently off shooting prairie dogs during their breeding season."
Except it's not funny.
A9 THE CLIMATE DEAL, AND WHAT A U.S. DEPARTURE WOULD MEAN
"The rest of the world will have a lot of heavy lifting ahead of it: Current pledges, when added up, put the planet on pace to warm 3 degrees Celsius or more above preindustrial levels, an outcome with a far greater risk of destabilizing ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, higher levels of sea-level rise, more destructive heat waves and droughts, and the loss of vital ecosystems like coral reefs."
And I keep seeing this.
D1 PARDON MY SWEAT, PASS THE BORSCHT
"Sweat."
"A 'kvetch und shvitz'."
Sounds inviting. Except for the food.
A15 TRUMP'S "COVFEFE" TWEET UNITES U.S. IN CONFUSION
"And on the 132nd day, just after midnight, President Trump had at last delivered the nation to something approaching unity -- in bewilderment, if nothing else.
The state of our union was ... covfefe."
@Diane7A wins the prize:
"'Of course #covfefe is a real word ... it was coined during the Bowling Green Massacre.'"
B1 HOW TWITTER IS BEING GAMED TO FEED MISINFORMATION
Farhad Manjoo admits that Twitter is his "daily addiction." So I'm just gonna let fly some great quotes from his article:
"The service is insidery and clubby. It exacerbates groupthink. It prizes pundit-ready quips over substantive debate, and it tends to elevate the silly over the serious ... this week it was captivated by 'covfefe,' which was essentially a brouhaha over a typo."
Brouhaha?
Hahaha.
"One way to think of today's disinformation ecosystem is to picture it as a kind of gastrointestinal tract."
He then describes the intake-outtake procedure, analogizing Twitter to the digestive system.
"Unlike Facebook, which requires people to use their real names, Twitter offers users essentially full anonymity."
And there go the bots ...
"The biggest prize is to get on Twitter's Trending Topics list, which is often used as an assignment sheet for the rest of the internet."
"[T]he more I spoke to experts, the more convinced I became that propaganda bots on Twitter might be a growing and terrifying scourge on democracy."
Not to mention all the covfefe ...
"'If you can make something trend, you can almost make it come true,' said Renee DiResta, a technologist who studies bots.
And if that's the case, why believe anything?"
A4 U.S. BEGINS ARMING SYRIAN KURDS FOR ASSAULT ON RAQQA
"The United States has started arming Syrian Kurds with heavy machine guns, antitank weapons and other arms, a critical step in preparing a pivotal part of the force that will carry out the final assault on the Islamic State's de facto capital of Raqqa, Pentagon officials said.
The Turkish government has long insisted that the Kurdish militia is closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a separatist group. That group is listed by Turkey, the United States and Europe as a terrorist organization."
All Trump cares about is fulfilling his promise to "wipe out" ISIS; surely he covfefes his path to a second term (God forbid) -- and who cares what kind of thugs he has to hire along the way to get the job done.
A8 AS WORLD WAITS, TRUMP VOWS DECISION ON PARIS ACCORD "VERY SOON"
About two hours from now, our stupid stupid president will begin the Prexit from Paris -- perhaps one of the most monumentally catastrophic decisions ever to be made with regard to life on our fragile little planet.
I guess the best we can really hope for is that we will not have passed the point of no return by the time we get a sane president again.
awesome graphic
little garden planet / oasis in space
A15 OUTRAGE LEADS CNN TO FIRE COMEDIAN
See ya, Kath. Yes you made me laugh the first few New Years ... but Anderson -- dude -- you can do much better!
A23 SPITTING IN THE EYE OF HATRED
Kristof at his best.
"America may seem leaderless, with nastiness and bullying ascendant, but the best of our nation materialized during a moral crisis on a commuter train in Portland, Ore."
"A white man riding on that train on Friday began shouting anti-Muslim insults at a black 16-year-old girl and her 17-year-old friend wearing a hijab. One can imagine people pretending not to hear and staring fiercely down at their phones; instead, three brave passengers stepped forward to protect the girls."
"We don't know if the murderer on the Portland train felt empowered to scream at a Muslim girl because of Trump's own past Islamophobic rants, any more than we can be sure that Trump's denunciation of reporters led a Montana candidate to body-slam a journalist. But when a president incites hatred, civilization winces."
"After coming out of surgery, weak but indomitable, [Micah] Fletcher wrote a poem that offers us guidance. According to The Oregonian, it read in part:
I, am alive.
I spat in the eye of hate and lived.
This is what we must do for one another
We must live for one another."
And his name is Micah! Chapter 6, Verse 8:
He has told you, O man, what is good,
And what the LORD requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love goodness,
And to walk humbly with your God
"President Trump* is considering reversing major pieces of the Obama administration's opening with Cuba and reinstating limits on travel and commerce, citing human rights abuses by the Castro government as justification for a more punitive approach."
May 19th article
"Mr. Trump's apparent lack of interest in human rights also suggests that he is unlikely to complain about the justice system or the limited rights of Saudi women."
But all of a sudden, it's a huge issue vis-à-vis Cuba.
C5 SOMETHING NEW, BUT A LOT BORROWED, TOO
"There isn't a flicker of musical edge on this album ..."
Are you fucking kidding me?Jeeeeeezus Christ! Jeeeeeeezus Christ!
C5 A BIG, NEW VOICE, PERFECT FOR POP BANGERS
"When she was 11, Ms. Lipa and her family moved to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. But Ms. Lipa wanted to be a pop singer, and at 15 she persuaded her parents to let her return to London."
That's one persuasive 15-year-old!
"[H]er father, Dukagjin Lipa, is a rock musician ..."
That explains it.
The song she sang on The Tonight Show -- "Scared to Be Lonely" -- was interesting enough. I particularly enjoyed the few short sections where her voice drops out, and some magical effects lift the music above the mundane.
A22 OH DEAR. THE TRUMPS KEEP MULTIPLYING.
Gail, you make me laugh.
"The kids are not alright.
Let's see now. Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is under investigation for weird cloak-and-daggerish meetings with the Russians. Ivanka just took a bunch of money from the Saudis for her favorite charity. Eric and Don Jr. are traveling the world to promote Trump hotels and golf courses while being looked after by the Secret Service on our dime.
... Who's your favorite mini-Trump? I'm sort of attached to Eric, the one who compared waterboarding to a fraternity hazing.
Don Jr. was recently off shooting prairie dogs during their breeding season."
Except it's not funny.
A9 THE CLIMATE DEAL, AND WHAT A U.S. DEPARTURE WOULD MEAN
"The rest of the world will have a lot of heavy lifting ahead of it: Current pledges, when added up, put the planet on pace to warm 3 degrees Celsius or more above preindustrial levels, an outcome with a far greater risk of destabilizing ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, higher levels of sea-level rise, more destructive heat waves and droughts, and the loss of vital ecosystems like coral reefs."
And I keep seeing this.
D1 PARDON MY SWEAT, PASS THE BORSCHT
"Sweat."
"A 'kvetch und shvitz'."
Sounds inviting. Except for the food.
A15 TRUMP'S "COVFEFE" TWEET UNITES U.S. IN CONFUSION
"And on the 132nd day, just after midnight, President Trump had at last delivered the nation to something approaching unity -- in bewilderment, if nothing else.
The state of our union was ... covfefe."
@Diane7A wins the prize:
"'Of course #covfefe is a real word ... it was coined during the Bowling Green Massacre.'"
B1 HOW TWITTER IS BEING GAMED TO FEED MISINFORMATION
Farhad Manjoo admits that Twitter is his "daily addiction." So I'm just gonna let fly some great quotes from his article:
"The service is insidery and clubby. It exacerbates groupthink. It prizes pundit-ready quips over substantive debate, and it tends to elevate the silly over the serious ... this week it was captivated by 'covfefe,' which was essentially a brouhaha over a typo."
Brouhaha?
Hahaha.
"One way to think of today's disinformation ecosystem is to picture it as a kind of gastrointestinal tract."
He then describes the intake-outtake procedure, analogizing Twitter to the digestive system.
"Unlike Facebook, which requires people to use their real names, Twitter offers users essentially full anonymity."
And there go the bots ...
"The biggest prize is to get on Twitter's Trending Topics list, which is often used as an assignment sheet for the rest of the internet."
"[T]he more I spoke to experts, the more convinced I became that propaganda bots on Twitter might be a growing and terrifying scourge on democracy."
Not to mention all the covfefe ...
"'If you can make something trend, you can almost make it come true,' said Renee DiResta, a technologist who studies bots.
And if that's the case, why believe anything?"
A4 U.S. BEGINS ARMING SYRIAN KURDS FOR ASSAULT ON RAQQA
"The United States has started arming Syrian Kurds with heavy machine guns, antitank weapons and other arms, a critical step in preparing a pivotal part of the force that will carry out the final assault on the Islamic State's de facto capital of Raqqa, Pentagon officials said.
The Turkish government has long insisted that the Kurdish militia is closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a separatist group. That group is listed by Turkey, the United States and Europe as a terrorist organization."
All Trump cares about is fulfilling his promise to "wipe out" ISIS; surely he covfefes his path to a second term (God forbid) -- and who cares what kind of thugs he has to hire along the way to get the job done.
A8 AS WORLD WAITS, TRUMP VOWS DECISION ON PARIS ACCORD "VERY SOON"
About two hours from now, our stupid stupid president will begin the Prexit from Paris -- perhaps one of the most monumentally catastrophic decisions ever to be made with regard to life on our fragile little planet.
I guess the best we can really hope for is that we will not have passed the point of no return by the time we get a sane president again.
awesome graphic
little garden planet / oasis in space
A15 OUTRAGE LEADS CNN TO FIRE COMEDIAN
See ya, Kath. Yes you made me laugh the first few New Years ... but Anderson -- dude -- you can do much better!
A23 SPITTING IN THE EYE OF HATRED
Kristof at his best.
"America may seem leaderless, with nastiness and bullying ascendant, but the best of our nation materialized during a moral crisis on a commuter train in Portland, Ore."
"A white man riding on that train on Friday began shouting anti-Muslim insults at a black 16-year-old girl and her 17-year-old friend wearing a hijab. One can imagine people pretending not to hear and staring fiercely down at their phones; instead, three brave passengers stepped forward to protect the girls."
"We don't know if the murderer on the Portland train felt empowered to scream at a Muslim girl because of Trump's own past Islamophobic rants, any more than we can be sure that Trump's denunciation of reporters led a Montana candidate to body-slam a journalist. But when a president incites hatred, civilization winces."
"After coming out of surgery, weak but indomitable, [Micah] Fletcher wrote a poem that offers us guidance. According to The Oregonian, it read in part:
I, am alive.
I spat in the eye of hate and lived.
This is what we must do for one another
We must live for one another."
And his name is Micah! Chapter 6, Verse 8:
He has told you, O man, what is good,
And what the LORD requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love goodness,
And to walk humbly with your God
TIME MACHINE
June 1, 1915
102 years ago
Page 1 GERMANY THINKS REPLY COMPLETE
"'Time will pass and the opportunity will be given for cooler consideration of the Lusitania case. The cries of horror over American women and children will die down and I hope the views of peaceful neutral persons will gain the upper hand'."
"The German Government ... has replied in all calmness."
It would be nearly two more years until the U.S. declared war on Germany.
Page 14 FOR GERMAN CONSUMPTION
" ... transformed from a race worthy of the world's esteem and admiration into a people who stand apart from other nations, distrusted and feared, disturbers of the peace, a menace to the general security, and now pursuing their ends by the hideous atrocities perpetrated in Belgium and France, by deeds of monstrous inhumanity like the destruction of the Lusitania. Their ideals have been abased, their intellectual development from the high and noble things of life, while their imperial master and those about him have taught them to centre all their thoughts and all their energies upon preparation for war, the creation of an unconquerable force, adequate for defense against all the world, or it may be for establishing dominion over all the world ..."
It would take the coming world war and then another to change this horribly ugly 1915 reality.
*
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