Link Roundup January 2020

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Transcript: NPR's Full Interview With Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo

I'm not going to comment on things that Mr. McKinley may have said. I'll say only this. I have defended every State Department official. We've built a great team. The team that works here is doing amazing work around the world.

Sir, respectfully [crosstalk] where have you defended Marie Yovanovitch?

I've defended every single person on this team. I've done what's right for every single person on this team. [crosstalk]

Can you point me toward your remarks where you have defended Marie Yovanovitch?

I've said all I'm going to say today. Thank you. Thanks for the repeated opportunity to do so. I appreciate that.

Pompeo Won't Say Whether He Owes Yovanovitch An Apology. 'I've Done What's Right'

Immediately after the questions on Ukraine, the interview concluded. Pompeo stood, leaned in and silently glared at Kelly for several seconds before leaving the room. A few moments later, an aide asked Kelly to follow her into Pompeo's private living room at the State Department without a recorder. The aide did not say the ensuing exchange would be off the record. Inside the room, Pompeo shouted his displeasure at being questioned about Ukraine and asked Kelly to identify the country on a map, which she did. He used repeated expletives, according to Kelly, and asked, "Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?" He then said, "People will hear about this."

Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

The employee who shared the content decision with the staff was pressured to resign, according to multiple sources familiar with the incident, and six workers said they believed it was because of her posting in Slack.* (That staffer declined to comment, and Kickstarter said, “Nobody was fired or threatened with termination in connection with this issue.”) Multiple former and current employees familiar with the incident told me that managers warned the Trust and Safety team not to question their decisions and that the general counsel of Kickstarter told employees on the team that New York is an “at will” employment state and they could be fired at any time.

The IRS Decided to Get Tough Against Microsoft. Microsoft Got Tougher.

Microsoft fought back with every tool it could muster. Business organizations, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to tech trade groups, rallied, hiring attorneys to jump into the fray on Microsoft’s side in court and making their case to IRS leadership and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Soon, members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, were decrying the IRS’ tactics and introducing legislation to stop the IRS from ever taking similar steps again. The outcome of the audit remains to be seen — the Microsoft case grinds on — but the blowback was effective. Last year, the company’s allies succeeded in changing the law, removing or limiting tools the IRS team had used against the company.

New Jersey becomes ninth state to officially ban ‘gay panic’ defence, remaining 41 states busy washing their hair

California, Illinois, Rhode Island, New York, Nevada, Maine, Hawaii and Connecticut have also banned the ‘gay panic’ defence, while a bill proposed in Congress by Democratic representative Joe Kennedy III seeks to outlaw its use federally.

Google warns its employees that Pride protests are against the company’s code of conduct

“Employees are free to make whatever statement they want personally, apart from our corporate sponsored float/contingent,” the inclusion lead told the member of Gayglers. “But they are not permitted to leverage our platform to express a message contradictory to the one Google is expressing.”

A Better Body Is Possible. These Anarchist Biohackers Want to Build It

Just as traditional medicine has its biases, so too does biohacking. People who self-describe as “biohackers” and run biohacking events tend to be white and middle class, and are frequently more interested in questions of theory or chic “tryborg” stunts than in the material needs of marginalized people. Often, the result is conferences filled with white academics discussing magnetic implants in a building that isn’t wheelchair accessible.

Iranian Student Deported From Boston Despite Court Order; Federal Judge Dismisses Case

A federal judge in Boston issued an emergency stay Monday night, stating Abadi's removal should be delayed for two days and scheduling a hearing in Boston federal court Tuesday. Despite this, Doyle said her client was removed. In court Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the case, declaring it moot because Abadi had already been deported. He added that he did not believe he had the authority to order CBP to allow Abadi to return.

Aaron Carter accused of stealing lion artwork — again

Carter was previously accused of stealing artwork — also an artistic take on a lion — in September 2019, that time deleting the photo and releasing the following statement: “I’m pulling the lion image I was accused of stealing this and bullied and I’m throwing it in the trash and suing everyone coming [at] me for clout I’m going to render a new one for myself.”

Instacart Workers Are Calling for a National Boycott of the Grocery Delivery App

In November, thousands of workers staged a 3-day national strike, demanding the app restore its default tip to 10 percent. But less than 48 hours later, the company slashed bonus pay—one of Instacart’s last pay perks, which can amount to 40 percent of earnings.

Animorphs comes to graphic novels in this exclusive first look

On sale October 6, Animorphs: The Invasion has Grine taking on full adaptation duties as he scripts, draws, colors, and letters the story, bringing a fresh perspective that revitalizes the 24-year-old story for a new generation. “It’s a huge relief to finally be able to share what I’ve been working on over the last year,” says Grine. “I love this series and I can’t wait to share it with the fans who have been wanting this to happen for so long. Having never adapted a book into a graphic novel before, let alone a series so deeply ingrained in pop culture, it was both super exciting and panic-inducing at times.”

Farmers Are Buying 40-Year-Old Tractors Because They're Actually Repairable

The tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s look and run like modern tractors, but lack the computer components that drive up costs and make repair a nightmare. That’s made them popular at auctions around the American midwest. A Nebraska area auctioneer sold off 27 older model John Deere tractors in 2019. The old work horse tractors are so popular that one with low mileage can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. A 1980 model with 2,147 hours of use sold for $43,500. A 1979 model sold for $61,000. That’s a lot of cash, but it’s still cheaper than a new model which can run between $100,000 and $150,000.

Increasing the minimum wage by $1 could reduce US suicide rates, study finds

A new 25-year observational study published this week in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that a $1 increase in the minimum wage resulted in an estimated 3.4% to 5.9% decrease in suicide rates among adults ages 18 to 64, and a $2 increase could have prevented an estimated 40,000 suicides alone between 2009 and 2015. In 2017, there were an estimated 1.4 million attempted suicides among American adults and 47,173 suicide-related deaths. An estimated 1.7% of unemployed US adults attempted suicide in 2017 compared with 0.4% of those working full-time and 0.7% of those working part-time, the study said.

He was sexually abusing underage girls. Then, police said, one of them killed him.

On Feb. 22, police searched Volar’s house. They confiscated laptops, hard drives and memory cards, along with women’s pajamas, bikini bottoms and underwear. Volar was arrested. The charges: child enticement, using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime and second-degree sexual assault of a child, a felony punishable by up to 40 years in state prison. Miriam Falk, a veteran sex crimes prosecutor in Wisconsin, said those charges typically lead to a substantial cash bail, upward of $100,000 if the person involved is wealthy. Add in video evidence and the case would be a “dream” for prosecutors. “That would be a very difficult case to defend,” Falk said. But on the same day police arrested Volar, they released him. Records indicate he paid no bail but was told he would be summoned to court. The court summons never came.

Medicaid Should Cover Gender Treatments for Trans Youth in Every State

Transgender adolescents in Minnesota can now rely on their state’s Medicaid program to cover transition-related medications like hormones and puberty blockers, as The Star Tribune reported over the past weekend.

Jailing And Fining Chelsea Manning Constitutes Torture, Top U.N. Official Says

Manning was fined $500 the first 30 days of her confinement and then $1,000 a day for each day after that for refusing the testify. The accumulation of fees are set to continue for as long as the grand jury investigating Assange is convened, typically a period of 18 months.

Thousands of Google’s cafeteria workers have unionized

Around 2,300 cafeteria workers who work at dozens of Google campuses in the Bay Area, including the search giant’s main headquarters in Mountain View, have unionized. The workers — who include dishwashers and food preparers who serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner for Google employees — voted last month to form a union after a campaign that’s been two years in the making, according to a source involved in the campaign.

Revealed: the true identity of the leader of an American neo-Nazi terror group

At the time of the photograph, “Ron Nazzaro” was described as a junior in philosophy, which is consistent with a 1973 birthdate. A source who has met “Spear” in person believes that the 1994 photo of Nazzaro is the same person he met.

Prepping for a race war: documents reveal inner workings of neo-Nazi group

Under the motto “there is no political solution” the group embraces an “accelerationist” ideology, which holds that acts of violence and terror are required to push liberal democracy towards collapse, preparing the way for white supremacists to seize power and establish an ethno-state. Members remained defiant following the arrest of seven alleged members of the group in mid-January, calling it an “unjust political witch-hunt” from the “liberal globalist system”.

YouTube moderators are being forced to sign a statement acknowledging the job can give them PTSD

“I understand the content I will be reviewing may be disturbing,” reads the document, which is titled “Acknowledgement” and was distributed to employees using DocuSign. “It is possible that reviewing such content may impact my mental health, and it could even lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I will take full advantage of the weCare program and seek additional mental health services if needed. I will tell my supervisor/or my HR People Adviser if I believe that the work is negatively affecting my mental health.”

Leaked Memos Show Instacart is Running a Union-Busting Campaign

In recent months, Instacart has faced a series of gig worker-led strikes and protests led by the app’s gig workers over pay cuts. In November, several thousand Instacart workers launched a three-day strike, demanding the app reinstate a 10 percent default tip. Days later, the app eliminated its “quality” bonus—a reward for good service, which can account for up to 40 percent of pay— causing widespread outrage among workers and customers alike on social media.

Chinese Uighurs in Saudi face impossible choice

The Chinese mission in Saudi Arabia stopped renewing passports for the ethnic Muslim minority more than two years ago, in what campaigners call a pressure tactic exercised in many countries to force the Uighur diaspora to return home.

Over 36,000 Flash Games Have Been Saved And Are Now Playable Offline

Flashpoint uses open-source tech to allow folks to download and play a large list of games and animations. The full list contains just over 36,000 games and you can suggest new games to be added if something you love isn’t on here.

How Lobbyists and Insiders Could Override Voters to Choose the Democratic Presidential Nominee

Many superdelegates also work as professional influence peddlers seeking to shape policy debates around heated issues such as taxation, finance, technology, health care, and defense contracting. The Intercept has reviewed lobbying records and identified at least eight superdelegates who are currently working with health care clients lobbying against Medicare for All. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase each have lobbyists who double as superdelegates. And a growing number of superdelegates are currently employed by presidential candidates, an arrangement that means some will enter the convention with less than neutral standing.

DNC members discuss rules change to stop Sanders at convention

In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

Here Are the Fare-Evasion Enforcement Data the NYPD Fought to Keep Secret

After the NYPD and the city repeatedly blew deadlines to report the data, Lancman and the Community Service Society sued the city and the department for failure to comply and then filed a request for the data under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. The NYPD finally did start releasing some data in 2018, but the spreadsheets included only the top 10 stations per category per quarter, and many of the stations aren’t properly identified. (For example, one station is referred to as 125th Street; there are four different stations that could be referencing, in different neighborhoods, with different racial and economic makeups. Another is identified as Jay Street-Borough Hall, which is the old name for the new and expanded Jay Street-Metro Tech station.) While the data the NYPD has made available can be used to identify general trends about fare evasion enforcement, they’re not enough, as CSS senior economist Harold Stolper told VICE, to discern “any useful information about law enforcement patterns at the station level.”

America’s Radioactive Secret

The levels of radium in Louisiana oil pipes had registered as much as 20,000 times the limits set by the EPA for topsoil at uranium-mill waste sites. Templet found that workers who were cleaning oil-field piping were being coated in radioactive dust and breathing it in. One man they tested had radioactivity all over his clothes, his car, his front steps, and even on his newborn baby. The industry was also spewing waste into coastal waterways, and radioactivity was shown to accumulate in oysters. Pipes still laden with radioactivity were donated by the industry and reused to build community playgrounds. Templet sent inspectors with Geiger counters across southern Louisiana. One witnessed a kid sitting on a fence made from piping so radioactive they were set to receive a full year’s radiation dose in an hour. “People thought getting these pipes for free from the oil industry was such a great deal,” says Templet, “but essentially the oil companies were just getting rid of their waste.”