Sunday, May 16, 2021

And another day of ‘dead ends’ for the virus, a dark money group bragging about writing voter suppression bills, no impunity for Columbian police abuses, UFOs, and sexual activity is natural and normal so get consent and then get to fucking comes to a close:

"The Republican Party's decision, in effect, to excommunicate Liz Cheney is a watershed event. It marks the final transformation of the party from an ideologically-driven enterprise, to one that is tribal, marked less by ideas and more by group loyalty." — Fareed Zakaria 

Deaths

US: 600,147 (+284)

World: 3,393,303 (+10,073)

Cases

US: 33,715,951 (+20,035)

World: 163,716,139 (+550,566)

Fauci: Vaccinated people become 'dead ends' for the coronavirus. Fauci explained to host John Dickerson that fully vaccinated people can go without masks, even if they have an asymptomatic case of COVID-19, because the level of virus is much lower in their nasopharynx, the top part of their throat that lies behind the nose, than someone who is unvaccinated. "So even though there are breakthrough infections with vaccinated people almost always the people are asymptomatic and the level of virus is so low it makes it extremely unlikely - not impossible - but very, very low likelihood that they're going to transmit it," Fauci said. — If you’re not vaccinated, please get it done soon. 

Leaked Video: Dark Money Group Brags About Writing GOP Voter Suppression Bills Across the Country. In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”...All of these recommendations came straight from Heritage’s list of “best practices” drafted in February. With Heritage’s help, Anderson said, Georgia became “the example for the rest of the country.”...Republican legislators claim they’re tightening up election procedures to address (unfounded) concerns about fraud in the 2020 election. But what’s really behind this effort is a group of conservative Washington insiders who have been pushing these same kinds of voting restrictions for decades, with the explicit aim of helping Republicans win elections. The difference now is that Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 have given them the ammunition to get the bills passed, and the conservative movement, led by Heritage, is making an unprecedented investment to get them over the finish line...“I don’t want everybody to vote,” he said. “Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”...In addition to pushing state-based voting restrictions, Heritage Action is leading the effort to block the passage of HR 1, Democrats’ sweeping democracy reform bill that would preempt many of these voter suppression laws by enacting policies like automatic and Election Day registration, two weeks of early voting, and expanded mail-in voting on a nationwide basis.

Is Sex Outside Marriage Dehumanizing? Because conservative Christians ground their vision of the divine in their understanding of an authoritarian family structure, their defense of that family structure is particularly fierce. In the United States, of course, this understanding of the family and its concomitant social politics are inseparable from whiteness, and from the history and present realities of patriarchal white supremacist social hierarchy. Indeed, evangelical purity culture is rooted as thoroughly in notions of “racial purity” and “national purity,” as Onishi himself recently noted, as it is in theologized notions of “bodily purity.” And for all their efforts to distance themselves from the excesses of purity culture, not to mention white evangelical racism—no matter whether they couch their claims in lofty-sounding theological rhetoric or seemingly “objective” appeals to history—what Keller, Mohler, French, and the rest are really doing with their vigorous insistence that heteronormativity is “basic Christianity” is upholding unjust social hierarchies. And that, if you ask me, is dehumanizing.

How purity culture and anti-Asian racism intersect in some white evangelical circles. “Sexual purity theologies are tied to white supremacy because Asian women have a transcontinental history of being hypersexualized and fetishized.” “Purity culture,” a subculture of evangelical Christianity that peaked in the 1990s — with young girls pledging to their fathers to abstain from sex until marriage by wearing “purity rings” — is still present today. It forbids sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage and places the responsibility on women to manage men’s sexual desires by dressing modestly and not tempting them.

There will be no impunity for Colombia police abuses, top cop says. Members of Colombia’s national police force who are responsible for abuses or acts of violence amid ongoing protests will be punished to the full extent of the law, the head of the force said. Demonstrators and human rights groups have repeatedly accused police officers of killing civilians, excessive use of force, sexual abuse and the use of firearms, both during current protests and previous ones. Accusations of possible abuse of a minor in the city of Popayan have sparked violent protests there this week.

Neymar accused of plotting armed assault against LGBT+ activist investigating homophobic claims. Brazilian footballer Neymar is accused of plotting an armed assault against a journalist investigating his alleged homophobic conduct.

According to a study conducted by a team of computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, many facial recognition algorithms they tested had a harder time making out differences in Black, Asian and female faces.

UFO studies and the possibility of alien origin. We've always been fascinated by aliens, and that's putting it mildly. And mathematically speaking, aliens should exist..."That's always the biggest question: Is it Chinese? Is it Russian? Could it be their technology? And if it is, we're in trouble, because they're way ahead of us."

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.