Link Roundup September 2019

Exclusive: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on what’s next for Tumblr

Advertising is definitely something we’re going to explore. We do definitely want to grow Tumblr’s revenue. Right now, they’re burning a lot of money. But long-term, I would say I’m also super interested in experimenting with upgrades. WordPress.com has always been an upgrade-centric model. It’s freemium: use it for free, and then you can buy plans anywhere from $40 to $450 per year to get added functionality. I’m curious about turning on things like some of the e-commerce functionality we’ve been developing with Woocommerce, memberships, those things I think would be very, very interesting to the Tumblr community. So there’s just so much to unlock there.

E-girls and e-boys, explained

Since its origination, “e-girl” has been used to disparage women. The earliest definition on Urban Dictionary from 2009 describes the term thus: “Call her an E girl cause she’s always after the D.” It’s an insult lobbed frequently on gaming sites, where any attractive or popular woman who games can be labeled an “e-girl” as a way of belittling her presence.

A Teen Girl Found Refuge Online — Then Her Murder Went Viral

Claire, 19, said she started talking with Bianca two years ago. They bonded over their experiences with older, abusive men on 4chan. They had both started using the site at a young age, when they were lonely and looking for friends. What happened next was textbook, Claire said. They attracted men who wanted young, “innocent” girls to obsess over. As soon as the girls did anything to break that image, like find a boyfriend or have sex, the spell was broken and the men would retaliate, using anything they had to hurt them, including posting intimate photos of them or their chat logs without permission.

Trump Administration Rolls Back Clean Water Protections

An immediate effect of the repeal is that polluters will no longer need a permit to discharge potentially harmful substances into many streams and wetlands. But the measure, which is expected to take effect in a matter of weeks, has implications far beyond the pollution that will now be allowed to flow freely into waterways.

The Environmental Movement Needs to Reckon with Its Racist History

In light of this history, it is perhaps unsurprising that when Muir and Theodore Roosevelt went on perhaps the most consequential camping trip in American history in 1903, the president conserved 230 million acres of public land—an area larger than Texas—through the expulsion of Indigenous peoples and the rural poor. Dubbed “America’s best idea” by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, these parklands were first and foremost a sanctuary for Anglo-Saxon gentlemen. In truth, then, the origins of environmentalism are closer in spirit to the safari or trophy hunt than the march or sit-in.

Gerrymander guru's secret files: He used racial data to disenfranchise black voters

Though North Carolina Republicans have argued that their maps discriminate based on partisanship and not race, Hofeller’s files show that he compiled maps with overlays of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that racial data was a key part of the gerrymander, which is at the center of a years-long legal battle. The files contradict claims Republicans have long used to defend their maps in court. Republicans had long denied that a congressional-district line that cuts right down the middle of the largest historically black college in the United States, North Carolina A&T State University, was intentionally drawn to dilute the black vote, even though it effectively guaranteed two Republican districts. But Hofeller’s files show that the effort clearly focused on the race of students.

California bans private prisons – including Ice detention centers

Two of Ice’s largest immigrant detention centers in California are operated by the Geo Group through complicated contracts that use cities as middlemen. The city of Adelanto signed an agreement in 2011 with ICE to hold up to 1,300 immigrant detainees facing deportation. Adelanto then subcontracted the prison operations to Geo Group. “What Ice does is they locate in these very poor and remote areas,” said Lizbeth Abeln, of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice. “The private prison comes in and lobbies and promises jobs, and tax money.”

Kickstarter Worker Claims She Was Fired Over Union Effort

The union has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Kickstarter over the agreement she was required to sign in order to receive severance, claiming it was so broad it violated her rights. The severance agreement, a copy of which was viewed by HuffPost, would have forced her to relinquish any claims filed under a litany of laws protecting workers, including the National Labor Relations Act ― the statute that governs collective bargaining in the private sector. Redwine would have also had to agree not to disparage the company in any way, or disclose to anyone the fact that the agreement existed. The union described it as “unlawfully broad” in their unfair labor practice charge.

Guantánamo Has Cost Billions; Whistleblower Alleges 'Gross' Waste

Brown said it wasn't just the spending that shocked him. He also questions whether Guantánamo prosecutors can win death penalty convictions at trial, because so much evidence is tainted by torture. He notes that if trials do happen, the appeals process is expected to last another 10 to 15 years, incurring costs of at least another $1.5 billion. And the government argues that even if the defendants are found not guilty at trial, it can continue to keep them imprisoned indefinitely.

A School Massacre and Toxic Heroism

When the cultural messages we have received have not taught us humility, compromise, or to accept complexity—indeed, when they have formed us instead to expect reward, a clear place in society, and an expression of value through access to sex, adulation, and freedom to do as we wish—we are ill-fit to respond to different contexts and new information. Some people adapt and thrive; the vast majority struggle emotionally. Many fantasize about different possibilities, about breaking the system that disappointed them. A small few turn brutally, unforgivably, and irrevocably nihilistic. And this turn is embedded in heroic narrative itself: if you cannot be the avenging hero or the savior, you can still be the suffering rogue or the tragic king. One city’s savior is another’s slaughtering demon. And when there is no city to save, what remains?

The Game That Made Rats Jump for Joy

Why did the rats play along? It’s possible that they were going after tickles and other social rewards. After all, for two decades researchers have known that rats enjoy being tickled and react by producing ultrasonic chirps that can be compared to laughter. But Reinhold found that once discovered, the rats would often run away and re-hide, delaying their reward and prolonging the game itself. “It seemed really playful,” she says.

ICE Is Building A 'State-Of-The-Art' 'Urban Warfare' Training Facility That Will Include 'Hyper-Realistic' Simulations Of Homes In Chicago And Arizona

In an acquisition form for the procurement of "hyper-realistic training devices" for a new training facility for its expanding Special Response Team (SRT) program, ICE outlined the details of plans for its new training center in a document published on the U.S. Federal Business Opportunities website. While ICE sought to redact the location of the new training facility in the document, it was not successful in doing so. After copying and pasting the document's contents into a separate document, Newsweek was able to establish that the facility will be built at the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs' (OFTP) Tactical Operations Complex (TOC) at Fort Benning, Georgia.

The House just passed a bill that would give millions of workers the right to sue their boss

This time around, the FAIR Act has far more co-sponsors in the House — 140-plus — but only one Republican ended up voting for the final bill. The Senate, on the other hand, hasn’t even put the bill up for a debate.

Here’s why the Amazon climate walkout is a big deal

Organizers told Recode they want to see Amazon set a more aggressive plan for the company to reduce its carbon emissions to zero; they want it to stop selling its cloud services to the oil and gas industry; and they want it to stop donating to politicians who deny climate change’s existence. (Bezos said he would “take a hard look” at whether donations are going toward climate-change deniers but made no promises.) Amazon declined to comment directly on the strike.

The Quiet Disappearance of Birds in North America

But Donald Trump’s administration has recently moved to gut the most important bird-conservation law in the United States: the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act. This proposal would absolve companies of responsibility for millions of incidental bird deaths, and hold them accountable only for purposeful killings, which are negligible. “This is the absolute worst time to be weakening protections,” Rosenberg says.

Benjamin Netanyahu just unveiled Israel’s newest town: “Trump Heights”

The new town has yet to be built; for construction to actually begin, Israel needs to form a government and formally approve it — which won’t happen before a September election, at the earliest. If a party other than Netanyahu’s were to win the election and successfully form a government, the town might not be built at all.

'Corporations Are People' Is Built on an Incredible 19th-Century Lie

The rules of judicial ethics were not well developed in the Gilded Age, however, and the self-assured Field, who feared the forces of socialism, did not hesitate to weigh in. Taxing the property of railroads differently, he said, was like allowing deductions for property “owned by white men or by old men, and not deducted if owned by black men or young men.”

Why Jeffrey Epstein loved evolutionary psychology

Trivers has had a colorful career, hopping from academic post to academic post. While at UC-Santa Cruz, Trivers earned a reputation as a radical and the umbrage of university administrators by co-authoring work on self-deception with revolutionary activist Huey P. Newton and briefly joining the Black Panther Party. Trivers’s apparent commitment to Black liberation may have had its origins in his self-described attraction to Black women: of his choice to specialize in Jamaican lizards, for instance, Trivers has said “I took one look at the women [in Jamaica] and thought, if I have to study lizards to pay for frequent trips to this island, I’ll do it.”

Two men specifically targeted and set fire to Eagle Rock homeless encampment, officials say

Nogueira’s father, Michael, is the president of the Eagle Rock Chamber of Commerce. Property records show a Daniel Nogueira with the same date of the birth as the suspect arrested in the arson living at an Eagle Rock address. Michael Nogueira also lives at that address.

‘Everybody cries here’: Hope and despair in Mexican shelter

For the first time since World War II, the U.S. government is turning away thousands of asylum seekers regardless of their need for refuge. A series of Trump Administration immigration rule changes have effectively sealed the border to the vast majority of asylum seekers, leaving tens of thousands of migrants in limbo, and shifting responsibility for U.S. immigration policy to the Mexican government and dozens of Mexican shelters.

More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

Almost a year after app developer SilverPush vowed to kill its privacy-threatening software that used inaudible sound embedded into TV commercials to covertly track phone users, the technology is more popular than ever, with more than 200 Android apps that have been downloaded millions of times from the official Google Play market, according to a recently published research paper.

Wall Street Democratic donors warn the party: We’ll sit out, or back Trump, if you nominate Elizabeth Warren

Some big bank executives and hedge fund managers have been stunned by Warren’s ascent, and they are primed to resist her. “They will not support her. It would be like shutting down their industry,” an executive at one of the nation’s largest banks told CNBC, also speaking on condition of anonymity. This person said Warren’s policies could be worse for Wall Street than those of President Barack Obama, who signed the Dodd-Frank bank regulation bill in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown.

How and Why The Intercept Is Reporting on a Vast Trove of Materials About Brazil’s Operation Car Wash and Justice Minister Sergio Moro

Today’s articles show, among other things, that the Car Wash prosecutors spoke openly of their desire to prevent the PT from winning the election and took steps to carry out that agenda, and that Moro secretly and unethically collaborated with the Car Wash prosecutors to help design the case against Lula despite serious internal doubts about the evidence supporting the accusations, only for him to then pretend to be its neutral adjudicator.

The Supreme Court Just Made It Easier for Police to Arrest You for Filming Them

In Nieves v. Bartlett, a divided court ruled that individuals can’t sue police officers for retaliatory arrest if those officers had probable cause to arrest them for any crime, no matter how minor—and that’s true even if the real reason for the arrest was speech the officers didn’t like. In other words, if you are jaywalking in violation of a local ordinance, officers can arrest you without fear of liability even if they’re making the arrest only because you’re participating in a Black Lives Matter demonstration or wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap.

‘They Were Conned’: How Reckless Loans Devastated a Generation of Taxi Drivers

The practices were strikingly similar to those behind the housing market crash that led to the 2008 global economic meltdown: Banks and loosely regulated private lenders wrote risky loans and encouraged frequent refinancing; drivers took on debt they could not afford, under terms they often did not understand. Some big banks even entered the taxi industry in the aftermath of the housing crash, seeking a new market, with new borrowers.

Trump labels impeachment a “coup”

When you combine this with his recent tweets accusing Rep. Adam Schiff of “treason” and musing about a “Civil War like fracture” in the event that he’s impeached, you have a president who’s talking like a petty dictator on the verge of being toppled by protesters.