Category Archives: Fail!

Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw | Alex Hern | Commentisfree | The Guardian

For one week in January 2012, Facebook deliberately made about 155,000 people sad, just to see if it could.

Stated that bluntly, it’s not hard to see why the company’s study, which was published in the prestigious PNAS journal on 17 June, has elicited such a strong negative reaction.

via Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw | Alex Hern | Commentisfree | The Guardian.

Empty Words: The Supreme Court’s unequal view of speech

Sexual harassment often involves speech; so does slander; so do threats; so do hate crimes, often as not. Most of these things remain legally actionable—if only barely, sometimes. Online harassment is notoriously difficult to prosecute and most police departments either fail to take it seriously or elect to play ping-pong with the FBI over jurisdiction.

What the valiant free speech absolutists of our time, both on the Court and in the comment sections of countless blogs and websites, fail to grapple with is the fact that we do not live in a truly equal society. Some of us do have more speech than others, more right to that power than others, creating cultural distortions that actually prevent people from exercising the full range of their rights. By protecting the speech of pro-life protestors (which in and of itself was never under threat by a buffer zone; they were allowed to say the same things from that distance), we have yet again chipped away at a woman’s right to choose—and, frankly, it is a right that some genderqueer people and trans men might need to avail themselves of as well. As our own Alexandra Brodsky argued, a history of very real violence and aggression is often sired by the “speech” of those protesters.

via Empty Words: The Supreme Court’s unequal view of speech.

Sick Majority of Supreme Court rules in favor of Hobby Lobby – chicagotribune.com

Major fail – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that business owners can object on religious grounds to a provision of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law that requires closely held companies to provide health insurance that covers birth control.

The court held on a 5-4 vote on ideological lines that such companies can seek an exemption from the so-called birth control mandate of the healthcare law. The decision means employees of those companies will have to obtain certain forms of birth control from other sources.

In a majority opinion by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, the court said the ruling applies only to the birth control mandate and does not mean companies would necessarily succeed if they made similar claims to other insurance requirements, such as vaccinations and drug transfusions.

via Supreme Court rules in favor of Hobby Lobby – chicagotribune.com.

Thousands rally against expected decision by Japan to allow greater military role

The Cabinet is expected to announce the decision Tuesday. It is one of the biggest changes in Japan’s security policy since World War II. Previously the constitution has been interpreted as allowing the use of arms only for Japan’s own self-defence, and critics say the change undermines the charter.

Abe says the revision is needed because of China’s military expansion and missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.

via Thousands rally against expected decision by Japan to allow greater military role.

Deja vu WWII build up? In September 18, 1931, a group of Jap­anese soldiers stationed in the no­rthern Chinese province of Manchuria, masquerading as Chinese bandits, blew up a few feet of the Japanese-controlled South Manchurian Railway. The clumsily orchestra­ted incident was used as a pretext to launch an attack by the Kwantung Army (Japan’s field army in China), which aimed to occupy the whole of the province and bring its rich resources under Japanese control. This was the start of a decade of escalating violence that would culminate in the German assault on Poland and the start of World War II.

Within months of the Japanese seizure of Manchuria, the fragile international order of the 1920s was in tatters. The League of Nations did little to protect China from Japanese aggression, and in February 1933 Japan left the League altogether. Japanese statesmen and military leaders had grown frustrated by an international political and economic order that they thought gave them a second-rate status. 

Charitable? Red Cross Cites ‘Trade Secrets’ to Redact Details of Sandy Donations | News | PND

If those details were to be disclosed, it argued, “the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross’s business model for an increased competitive advantage.”

via Red Cross Cites ‘Trade Secrets’ to Redact Details of Sandy Donations | News | PND.

Taking advice from CIA Candy Makers? Israel drops anti-Hamas lollipops in the WB | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

BEIRUT: The Israeli military scattered lollipops and matchboxes with anti-Hamas messages attached in the West Bank.

Residents of Ramallah and Nablus were surprised Sunday to see large amounts of lollipops thrown all around their streets.

Attached to every candy was a small paper with an anti- Hamas message in Arabic:

“Ramadan Kareem. Here are some sweets because Hamas is making life bitter in the West Bank.”

An IDF officer told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he knew nothing about the issue, but residents of the towns reportedly saw Israeli soldiers spreading the lollipops.

via Israel drops anti-Hamas lollipops in the WB | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

Boom Meets Bust in Texas: Atop Sea of Oil, Poverty Digs In – NYTimes.com

One day in May, Colt Ringer, 28, limped along near Ms. Vargas’s trailer wearing a dusty black cowboy hat and carrying a .22-caliber Magnum revolver and .45-caliber pistol in holsters at his hip. He was returning home empty-handed after hunting feral hogs, which he kills for sport and for food.

“All of us are poor, in our own way,” he said. “I don’t get nothing off these wells right out here, because I don’t own the land. That just goes to show the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rule.”

via Boom Meets Bust in Texas: Atop Sea of Oil, Poverty Digs In – NYTimes.com.

Mexico Rape Victim Faces Prison Time for Self-Defense

While her various wounds were being treated, including a 14-centimetre gash on her arm, Luis Omar Anaya arrived and accused her of murdering his brother in a lovers’ quarrel, a specious argument according to her defense lawyers, since Rubio is a lesbian.

via Mexico Rape Victim Faces Prison Time for Self-Defense.

ISIS declares leader al-Baghdadi ‘caliph of the Muslims,’ changes name | News | DW.DE | 29.06.2014

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Sunday released an audio recording declaring its leader the caliph, also saying that it would change its own name, removing references to Iraq and Syria to call itself Islamic State.

“The Shura (council) of the Islamic State met and discussed this issue,” ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani said in the recording. “The Islamic State decided to establish an Islamic caliphate and to designate a caliph for the state of the Muslims. The jihadist cleric Baghdadi was designated the caliph of the Muslims.”

via ISIS declares leader al-Baghdadi ‘caliph of the Muslims,’ changes name | News | DW.DE | 29.06.2014.

The Many Reasons to Dislike Facebook’s Mood Manipulation Experiment – The Wire

For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its service. Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post either especially positive or negative words themselves.”

via The Many Reasons to Dislike Facebook’s Mood Manipulation Experiment – The Wire.