Month: June 2017

npr:

NPR journalists David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna died a year ago this week, ambushed on a remote road in southern Afghanistan while on a reporting assignment traveling with the Afghan National Army.

Since their deaths, NPR has been investigating what happened, and today we are sharing new information about what we learned. It’s a very different story from what we originally understood.

The two men were not the random victims of bad timing in a dangerous place, as initial reports indicated. Rather, the journalists’ convoy was specifically targeted by attackers who had been tipped off to the presence of Americans in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

Gilkey, an experienced photojournalist, and Tamanna, an Afghan reporter NPR hired to work with him, were sitting together in a Humvee when they were attacked.

“After the loss of our colleagues, we wanted to be sure we understood what really happened on the road that day,” said Michael Oreskes, senior vice president of news and editorial director at NPR. “So we kept reporting.”

Not A Random Attack: New Details Emerge From Investigation Of Slain NPR Journalists

Illustration: Isabel Seliger for NPR
Caption: Journalists David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna were killed on the road to Marjah, Afghanistan, last year during a reporting trip.

Source: NPR

CALL YOUR SENATORS BEFORE COMEY HITS THE FAN – SHORT SIMPLE SCRIPT BELOW

machawicket:

runwithskizzers:

pleasedontsqueezetheshhh:

The Senate Republicans will hide in the shadows cast by Comey’s testimony to gut health care. Remember to call your Senators and say:

Hello, my name is _____ and my zip code is ______. I am calling today to tell Sen _______ to demand that Senator McConnell and his cronies bring their “response” to the AHCA into the light. Their work on healthcare affects all people in America; it should be done with complete transparency. Senator _______ must also fight to save the ACA. Lives are on the line and rely on the actions of Sen _______. They must fight to save the Affordable Care Act. Thank you.

Congressional Switchboard : 202-224-3121

Copy + Paste To Share

DO THIS

DO THIS

DO THIS

DO THIS 

DO THIS 

GUYS, this is not a drill. The Comey/obstruction/Russian interference thing will take MONTHS.

MCCONNELL IS PUSHING TO REPEAL OBAMACARE IN THE NEXT WEEK OR TWO. They’re going to do the same rushed bullshit as in the House and it might work. Millions will lose health coverage, preexisting conditions protections will be GONE, and they will gut Medicaid.

GET MAD GET LOUD GET CALLING YOUR SENATORS!!!

Election 2017: Conservative’s Romford candidate Andrew Rosindell and Hornchurch and Upminster Julia Dockerill both win majority vote

It was announced after 2am that Andrew Rosindell – who has been the Romford MP for 16 years – retained his seat in the constituency for a fifth time and with the biggest share of the votes that he has ever had…

It was revealed that 68per cent of residents in the Romford constituency attended the polls yesterday.

Yeah, what a surprise. I had held off on checking the margins there until this evening, but as I had half-expected, the locals doubled down.

The guy’s politics are about what you might expect. (Some previous highlights here.) Good old Andy is a complete tit, and he has stayed in office this long. 

A lot of his constituents apparently like that just fine, and I wasn’t expecting that to suddenly change. Still a bit disappointing, of course.

Election 2017: Conservative’s Romford candidate Andrew Rosindell and Hornchurch and Upminster Julia Dockerill both win majority vote

oh-glasgow:

alanaisalive:

If you live in Scotland and your constituency just went from SNP to Labour or Tories, there is one thing you must do: keep a close eye on your representative. Send them letters and call their offices when important legislation is going through. Let them know what you think, even if you think you know how they’re going to vote.

We could rely on our SNP reps to show up and do their job. Labour and Tories need to be babysat and micro-managed.

They said that they wanted to “hold the SNP to account”. For those MPs that have just been elected, we are going to hold them to account.

For those people that voted for Scottish Labour and Scottish Tories on the basis that there should be “no more referendums” which seemed like the only policy that they had. The independence question will remain because these parties continue to talk about it. If you so dearly want Scotland to remain part of the union, then you must make a positive case for it. But will you though? The reason why the other parties were decimated in the General Election in 2015 was because they took Scottish votes for granted. The SNP actually attended parliament and talked about Scottish issues unlike in previous years where there were there was a complete lack of respect and attendance from Scottish Labour and Lib Dem MPs when it came to Scotland.

The terms of Brexit still have to be negotiated. Now with the Tories having no majority, and being propped up by the backwards batshits at the DUP this is going to be very interesting. Hard Brexit looks less likely, thank goodness, and the rights of EU citizens should almost certainly be retained. So everything you said about controlling borders could well be in the bin, particularly when it comes to the land border at Northern Ireland and the Republic. I’m sure the Daily Mail is delighted at the fact that freedom of movement is probably still going to continue. Man, if I could see what is going on in their offices right now that would be fun.

Strong and stable?

Never has the UK been more weakened by the thought of leaving the European Union, and never has it looked more unstable in the past forty years.

samanticshift:

coincidenceiscancelled:

karnythia:

strangeasanjles:

lordhellebore:

athenadark:

dollsahoy:

luvtheheaven:

samanticshift:

samanticshift:

“i don’t judge people based on race, creed, color, or gender. i judge people based on spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.”

i hate to burst your pretentious little bubble, but linguistic prejudice is inextricably tied to racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and ableism.

ETA: don’t send me angry messages about this…at all, preferably, but at least check the tag for this post before firing off an irate screed.

no one seems to be following the directive above, so here’s the version of this post i would like all you indignant folk to read.

no, i am not saying that people of color, women, poor people, disabled people, etc, “can’t learn proper english.” what i’m saying is that how we define “proper english” is itself rooted in bigotry. aave is not bad english, it’s a marginalized dialect which is just as useful, complex, and efficient as the english you’re taught in school. “like” as a filler word, valley girl speech, and uptalk don’t indicate vapidity, they’re common verbal patterns that serve a purpose. etc.

because the point of language is to communicate, and there are many ways to go about that. different communities have different needs; different people have different habits. so if you think of certain usages as fundamentally “wrong” or “bad,” if you think there’s a “pure” form of english to which everyone should aspire, then i challenge you to justify that view. i challenge you to explain why “like” makes people sound “stupid,” while “um” doesn’t raise the same alarms. explain the problem with the habitual be. don’t appeal to popular opinion, don’t insist that it just sounds wrong. give a detailed explanation.

point being that the concept of “proper english” is culturally constructed, and carries cultural biases with it. those usages you consider wrong? they aren’t. they’re just different, and common to certain marginalized groups.

not to mention that many people who speak marginalized dialects are adept at code-switching, i.e. flipping between non-standard dialects and “standard english,” which makes them more literate than most of the people complaining about this post.

not to mention that most of the people complaining about this post do not speak/write english nearly as “perfectly” as they’d like to believe and would therefore benefit by taking my side.

not to mention that the claim i’m making in the OP is flat-out not that interesting. this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook. the only reason it sounds so outlandish is that we’ve been inundated with the idea that how people speak and write is a reflection of their worth. and that’s a joyless, elitist idea you need to abandon if you care about social justice or, frankly, the beauty of language.

and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real ramifications–in employment (tossing resumes with “black-sounding names”), in the legal system (prejudice against rachel jeantel’s language in the trayvon martin trial), in education (marginalizing students due to prejudice against dialectical differences, language-related disabilities, etc), and…well, a lot.

no, this doesn’t mean that there’s never a reason to follow the conventions of “standard english.” different genres, situations, etc, have different conventions and that’s fine. what it does mean, however, is that this standard english you claim to love so much has limited usefulness, and that, while it may be better in certain situations, it is not inherently better overall. it also means that non-standard dialects can communicate complex ideas just as effectively as the english you were taught in school. and it means that, while it’s fine to have personal preferences regarding language (i have plenty myself), 1) it’s worth interrogating the source of your preferences, and 2) it’s never okay to judge people on the basis of their language use.

so spare me your self-righteous tirades, thanks.

Oh my gosh YES, this post got so much better.

this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook. 

and

and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the
basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real
ramifications

(Also, most of what people loudly defend as “proper English” is nothing more than an adherence to one particular style guide over another–it was what they were taught, therefore it is the only way.  Heh, nope. Learn some more.  Linguistic descriptivism for all.)

most of what is taught isn’t even based on English but the rules for teaching latin

yes, you can split the infinitive because in English it’s two words, but in latin it’s one

so it is based on a structure designed by a very small educated elite to remind others of their place, and that place was as subhuman, the educated gentlemen who made these rules generally considered anyone who lacked in some way – no matter what it was – as subhuman and that they should be kept down by any means necessary and so created a labyrinth of traps to reveal them- including language

Lingustic prescriptivism is outdated and can be used far too easily as a tool for perpetuating classism, racism, and misogyny.

This post cleared my fucking skin up and completely hydrated me.

This whole thread. Listen, I have seen people assume that someone for whom English is a 7th language is ignorant because their accent or phrasing. Meanwhile they are scrolling through their mental rolodex & trying to remember whatever petty bitch rules apply in English instead of the grammar from Italian or German. 

I judge people on language too. How they talk, what they say…Not saying it’s a good thing. I’m probably an elitist. But I’m fine with that.

i will pay people not to leave comments like this. go work on your insufferable self and leave my post alone.

unbossed:

Treat a cop just like you treat a gun when you don’t know whether it’s loaded or not. Assume that it is loaded and that it could cause someone’s death at any time. Remember that a cop, unlike most firearms, has no safety mechanism or standard method for “clearing” them. Never point a cop at anyone whose blood you could not accept having on your hands.