In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

Hillary Clinton just gave a speech responding to Donald Trump's heinous garbage speech yesterday. She got huge applause just for saying that candidates need to respond with decency. This is where we are. I'll have more on this later, time permitting.

[Content Note: Rape culture] More pushback on the heinous sentence handed down in the Stanford rape case: "[O]ne of the jurors who convicted Turner of sexual assault wrote a letter to [Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky]. The juror wrote of being 'absolutely shocked and appalled' at the sentence. 'After the guilty verdict I expected that this case would serve as a very strong deterrent to on-campus assaults, but with the ridiculously lenient sentence that Brock Turner received, I am afraid that it makes a mockery of the whole trial and the ability of the justice system to protect victims of assault and rape,' the juror wrote to Persky. 'Clearly there are few to no consequences for a rapist even if they are caught in the act of assaulting a defenseless, unconscious person,' the juror wrote in the letter, which was obtained by the Palo Alto Weekly."

"The White House is holding an event focusing on women's issues on Tuesday, and as part of the day-long summit it announced actions it is taking to try and reduce the gap in pay between men and women. One brand new step is calling on private sector companies to make a promise that they will look at their own internal gender wage gaps. Any company that signs up for this 'White House Equal Pay Pledge' agrees to conduct an analysis of pay by gender across its entire workforce, review its own hiring and promotion practices to reduce bias, and include equal pay in overall efforts to promote equality within its own ranks, as well as look for any other practices that can ensure women are paid equally with men. The pledge already has a number of high-profile companies signing on out the gate, from industries ranging from technology to consumer products. There are 28 signatories so far, among them Amazon, American Airlines, Dow Chemical, Gap Inc., Johnson & Johnson, L'Oréal USA, PepsiCo, and Staples." Well, let's hope this is the start of their actually doing something meaningful!

[CN: Anti-choice terrorism] Wonder when we are going to have a national conversation about this? Is it never? I bet it's never! "Eleven Months, Five Clinic Arson Attacks, One Arrest, and Countless Unanswered Questions: Arsonists have attacked five Planned Parenthood clinics around the country since last July, wreaking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, closing down the facilities, and sowing fear among staff and providers." And patients.

This is a truly weird story: "Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach. The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC's system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts. The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some GOP political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available." Since Trump and Putin are besties after meeting backstage at 60 Minutes once, I presume the Russians will be giving the oppo dump to Trump. (That's a joke.) (Sort of.)

[CN: Climate change; animal harm] Fuck: "Human-caused climate change appears to have driven the Great Barrier Reef's only endemic mammal species into the history books, with the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lives on a tiny island in the eastern Torres Strait, being completely wiped-out from its only known location. It is also the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change. An expert says this extinction is likely just the tip of the iceberg, with climate change exerting increasing pressures on species everywhere."

RIP Margaret Vinci Heldt, creator of the the beehive hairdo, who has died at age 98. "Heldt ran a salon in Chicago, where she was born, and first debuted the hairstyle for a magazine cover in 1960. According to the Chicago History Museum, Heldt attended the Columbia College of Hairdressing before opening her own salon. 'She had a zest for life, the most positive attitude,' her daughter Carlene Ziegler told Reuters. 'She was the life of the party right up to her last days.'"

Neat! "Astronomers say they have discovered the largest planet outside the solar system that orbits two suns. The newfound world, about the size of Jupiter, is 3,700 light-years from Earth. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles. It was detected by a team led by NASA and San Diego State University using the planet-hunting Kepler telescope. The discovery was announced Monday during a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego." Insert your Tatooine jokes here.

Paul Feig on Ghostbusters: "I think you'll have a good time. We made this movie with such love and excitement. We made it big, action-packed and with tonnes of special effects." Yay! I think I'll have a good time, too!

[CN: Images of snails at link] If you love snails (I do!) then you will probably love this gallery of photographs of "the magical world of snails."

And finally! Baby lemurs! "Three curious and active Red Ruffed Lemur babies born at the Nashville Zoo are a boost to this critically endangered species. The two females and one male were born on May 24, the eighth birthday of their mother, Lyra." Aww.