In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today! (Your daily shutdown thread is here.)

[Content Note: Misogyny] The government shutdown, currently being negotiated exclusively by men, is having a disproportionate effect on women.

[CN: Violence] Sailors aboard the vessel captained by Richard Phillips, currently the subject of a motion picture starring Tom Hanks, say that Captain Phillips was actually kind of a d-bag. Whoops!

[CN: Racism; slur] Famous sportscaster Bob Costas says the "Redskins" team name is "an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present day intent." Oh goody. Maybe now that a white man has said it, racist dipshits will finally believe it's true! Don't worry, though—Costas still definitely knows where to draw the totally racist line: "Objections to names like Braves, Chiefs, Warriors and the like, strike many of us as political correctness run amok. These nicknames honor, rather than demean. They're pretty much the same as Vikings, Patriots, or even Cowboys. And names like Blackhawks, Seminoles and Chippewas, while potentially problematic, can still be okay provided the symbols are appropriately respectful." Good grief.

Carmen Segarra, formerly a senior examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, says she was fired from her job after she was asked, and refused, to falsify her findings that Goldman Sachs' conflict of interest policy was insufficient. Segarra's finding "potentially had serious implications for Goldman, which was already under fire for advising clients on both sides of several multibillion-dollar deals and allegedly putting the bank's own interests above those of its customers. It could have led to closer scrutiny of Goldman by regulators or changes to its business practices. Before she could formalize her findings, Segarra said, the senior New York Fed official who oversees Goldman pressured her to change them. When she refused, Segarra said she was called to a meeting where her bosses told her they no longer trusted her judgment. Her phone was confiscated, and security officers marched her out of the Fed's fortress-like building in lower Manhattan, just 7 months after being hired." Segarra has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the New York Fed.

[CN: War] Photographer Lalage Snow has done a portrait series of British soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, which is extremely powerful and sad. "Presented as triptychs, they portray British soldiers at points before, during and after a seven month deployment to Afghanistan." You can click here to go directly to the gallery.

What—did you think James Franco isn't a shameless self-promoter? You're so weird. He definitely is!