In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today!

Good news! CeCe McDonald will be released from prison this month.

[Content Note: Racism; homophobia; misogyny; rape culture] Welp, despite engaging in racism and homophobia, Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson will be back on the show, following A&E's decision to lift his suspension, because principles. Immediately thereafter, a video surfaced of Robertson saying it's a good idea to marry teenage girls, because he's a good Christian or whatever. In other Duck Dynasty news, the family launched a branded line of guns, because of course they did, and ha ha everyone was SO SURPRISED to find out that the Duck Dynasty dudes looked like the Romneys before they got their own TV show where it was way cooler to look like people they exploited on their way to the 1%.

[CN: War on agency] Rachel Benson Gold and Elizabeth Nash of the indispensable Guttmacher Institute: More Abortion Restrictions Were Enacted from 2011 to 2013 than in the Entire Previous Decade. It would be really helpful if the dudes who scream at me about Roe every election if I even hint at not voting for a Democratic candidate would give a fuck about reproductive rights beyond their value during attempts to bully me into voting the way privileged dudes think I should.

This sounds neat: "In room-size metal boxes ­secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world. According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build 'a cryptologically useful quantum computer'—a machine exponentially faster than classical computers—is part of a $79.7 million research program titled 'Penetrating Hard Targets.'" Insert all the jokes here.

[CN: Disablism] The White House "is proposing two more executive actions that it says will help prevent individuals who are prohibited from having a gun for mental health reasons from obtaining a firearm," one of which is "a regulation that would clarify who is ineligible to possess a firearm for specific situations related to mental health, like commitment to a mental institution." I'm pretty sure that exactly zero of the mass shooters in the past couple of years would have been prevented from owning a gun under this provision. And I don't have anything else to say about this garbage that I didn't already say here.

[CN: Homophobia] Opponents of same-sex marriage in Utah are calling for an uprising in response to the legalization of same-sex marriage. What a bunch of contemptible fools. Meanwhile: "The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday put same-sex marriages in Utah on hold, granting the state's request for a stay while it appeals a ruling that laws banning such marriages was unconstitutional." Fuck.

Mitt Romney wishes he could "turn back the clock" to take another run at the presidency. Ha ha I bet he also wishes he could turn back the clock to a time when he wasn't being sued for criminal racketeering. Whoops!

[CN: Addiction] Tom Hardy is very blunt about his addiction and being afraid. I mean, y'all know how I feel about Tom Hardy blah blah, but I find it really compelling when anyone speaks honestly and vulnerably about being afraid, when there's so much cultural pressure to never admit any kind of fear.

Cool: In 2013, Failing the Bechdel Test Was Bad for Your Movie's Bottom Line. Take note, film industry!