In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Extreme weather; death] We had terrible storms in Chicagoland last night, and the storm system "spawned at least two tornadoes across the north central portion of [Illinois], leaving one woman dead and at least seven others wounded." Because there are a lot of family farms in the area, some animals were killed, too. This is, I fear, just the beginning of what will be a bad tornado season.

[CN: Disablism; guns; violence] Despite rhetoric about and (bad) policies designed around mental illness and gun control, a new study published this month in Behavioral Sciences and the Law has found "little overlap between participants with serious mental illnesses and those with a history of impulsive, angry behavior and access to guns. 'Gun violence and serious mental illness are two very important but distinct public health issues that intersect only at their edges,' [Jeffrey Swanson, Ph.D., professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke Medicine and lead author of the study] said." One thing I'll note about the findings is that they include this: "Fewer than one in 10 angry people with access to guns had ever been admitted to a hospital for a psychiatric or substance abuse problem, the study found." and this: "Angry people with ready access to guns are typically young or middle-aged men, who at times lose their temper, smash and break things, or get into physical fights." So, one of the things that definitely needs addressed here is the known gap in men seeking mental healthcare.

[CN: Death penalty; torture] Oklahoma is one of several US states which has tortured a death row prisoner to death, because of the lack of availability of execution drugs, and, instead of revisiting their policy on state-sanctioned killing, they are just determined to find a new way of killing people: "Oklahoma is set to become the first state in the US to allow the use of nitrogen gas as a method of execution. The state legislature has passed a bill, which now awaits the governor's signature to become law." End the death penalty now.

[CN: Homophobia; abortion] Michelangelo Signorile warns that we can't get complacent about the fight for LGBTQIA rights, and (quite rightly) points to abortion as an issue we thought we'd won once upon a time and now is a complete clusterfuck of rollbacks and restrictions.

[CN: Animal endangerment] Damn: "The most extensive genetic analysis of mountain gorillas ever conducted has found the critically endangered apes burdened with severe inbreeding and at risk of extinction but the researchers still see reasons for optimism about their survival. ...The researchers said the main threats to these gorillas are from humans: habitat loss, hunting and diseases transmitted from people. [Geneticist Chris Tyler-Smith of Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute] said, 'We just need to continue to conserve them: their future lies in our hands.'"

Did you like Season One of True Detective? Well, then you might be excited to hear that a trailer for Season Two has finally been released! I am still very dubious about the rumored plot, though! Especially since the only plot I can discern from this trailer is "brooding and mustaches."

And finally! Just ONE MILLION PUGS in need of adoption playing with a bearded gentleman on a beach! Who doesn't need that in their life?