Make no mistake, Warhammer, and the hobby of tabletop miniatures in general, is not for Nazis, PETA’s shenanigans, Politics, or just hatred of any kind.
The time for action is now, with no quarter asked for or given. Keep our hobby and its communities safe from events like these, and we will all be better for it!
That MAGA hat may indicate a higher likelihood of dying from COVID-19 | Boing Boing
In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.
You’d think the demographics of this would make the GOP rethink things…
Because at this rate they’re losing a million voters a year.
U.S. cops race to hit 1000-kill target for year | Boing Boing
After shooting, beating, choking and kicking their way to 1,021 kills last year and 2019's near-miss count of 999, U.S. police officers are racing to bring 2021's death toll over the the line: Statista reports this week that police killed 716 civilians in the first nine months of 2021. They'll need a busy Christmas season to make it, though, especially with turnout depressed by anti-vaccine politics.
Why didn’t Mayor Jacob Frey insist on an after-action report following the death of George Floyd? And why is it that Minneapolis voters still don’t have one? | MinnPost
The eyes of the world are upon Minneapolis, understandably and deservedly so. Voters in Minneapolis and people around the world are questioning the conduct of city employees all the way up the chain of command to the mayor.
Here it’s important to remind people once again that in Minneapolis’ current system of governance, the mayor has sole authority and oversight of the Police Department and is at the top of the chain of command. Put another way, when it comes to the Police Department, Minneapolis already has a “strong mayor” system of government. So the failure to provide a timely after-action report is, like the Police Department itself, the mayor’s responsibility.
Former Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges basically answers why we need to say No to more executive control by the mayor’s office and Yes to police department reform… On that front, doing Nothing is what we’ve essentialy done so far, so doing Anything is better and the city council is more directly representative of their wards, more answerable to them.
Why saying “I don’t see race at all” just makes racism worse |
In a way, color blindness makes the civil rights movement a victim of its own success: Legal segregation is over, so now it must be up to people of color to finish the work themselves. As Bonilla-Silva puts it, if racism is no longer actively limiting the lives of people of color, then their failure to achieve parity with whites in wealth, education, employment, and other areas must mean there is something wrong with them, not with the social systems that somehow always benefit white people the most.
Social scientists look to this question — whether you believe that racism is to blame for disparities or that Black people just need to work harder — to help them determine what they call racial resentment. And racial resentment, in turn, is a predictor of opposition to policies that would improve the economic security of millions.
Video shows Minneapolis police's aggressive actions during unrest | MPR News
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office would eventually charge Stallings with attempted murder and assault. The 28-year-old African American Army veteran rejected a plea deal from prosecutors that included a 12-year sentence.
Stallings — who has no criminal record and a permit to carry a handgun — took his case to trial. In their complaint, prosecutors said Stallings “did not comply and resisted” police. But body camera and surveillance video played in court contradicted those claims.
MPD is sick, as in there’s a cancer in it’s bones… It’s resisted every kind of reform, and doubled-down on bad behavior when pushed for accountability. The Mayor’s office has proven unable to affect change while they answer only to it.
Doing nothing is not an option - it hasn’t worked so far. I support the charter ammendment to reform the department, and to share authority of the new department between the city council and mayor’s office, because it’s constructive and it’s different, and the status quo isn’t working.
Leaked records open a 'Pandora' box of financial secrets | MPR News
The statements are part of a massive trove of data hacked from the Oath Keepers website. The data, some of which the whistleblower group Distributed Denial of Secrets made available to journalists, includes a file that appears to provide names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of almost 40,000 members.
A search of that list revealed more than 200 people who identified themselves as active or retired law enforcement officers when signing up. USA TODAY confirmed 20 of them are still serving, from Alabama to California. Another 20 have retired since joining the Oath Keepers.
One man who filled out the form claimed he was a federal police officer and once worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
These men are almost certainly just a small fraction of the law enforcement officers who joined the militia over the years, since the vast majority of people listed did not volunteer information about their employment. The leaked data does not indicate whether the people on the list are now dues-paying members.
Every person who can be verified to be a member of this org should be fired from law enforcement if still employed there. The two are mutually exclusive.
Watch a violent scuffle at a school board meeting after a man praises masks | Boing Boing
After a man praises masks at a school board meeting in Eastern Carver County, Minnesota, things get ugly. The only accessories missing in the room are pitchforks.
The taint of the GOP, this is maybe an hour drive from where I sit.
Five Ways Donald Trump Tried to Push a Coup - The Atlantic
Last year, John Eastman, whom CNN describes as an attorney working with Donald Trump’s legal team, wrote a preposterous memo outlining how then–Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 election by fiat or, failing that, throw the election to the House of Representatives, where Republicans could install Trump in office despite his loss to Joe Biden. The document, which was first reported by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their new book, is a step-by-step plan to overthrow the government of the United States through a preposterous interpretation of legal procedure.
I love drop-cap typography, but it shouldn't break the actual text on the page.
For something this important, I wish the big sites had exceptions to their paywalls, because this should be public record.
Nothing #2, this may be paywalled when you try to read it. I normally wouldn't link to potentially paywalled content but ... Big Deal stuff.
A first printing of the United States Constitution is headed to auction in November. It's one of just eleven known copies of the 500 printed for the Constitutional Convention and Continental Congress back in 1787, and the only one still privately-owned.
It’s probably good that Lord Dampnut is functionally broke, or we’d be seeing this show up on Faux News with a bunch of new ammendments in sharpie that suddenly prove he actually won.
I did a spit-take on the title, as it’s true in too many ways…
A talk show host on why rich republicans want us to hate the word "antifa" in witty video | Boing Boing
While Republicans have turned "antifa" into a dirty word, with such success that most on the left won't go near it, the San Francisco KGO commentator does the opposite, embracing it with gusto. He reminds us what fascists are (when the rich sector of a party "changes the law, making it impossible for you to vote"), then points to the poor sector of the same party: "Now these Republicans, I don't know what the fuck they're thinking." This group, he explains, are bamboozled by the anti-anti-fascist movement of the right to their own demise."
FDA decision Thursday could reshape vaping industy
In the years since I switched from smoking to vaping, I have noticed significant improvements in my health. I breath easier when walking, for example.
The people trying to destroy vaping as a replacement to smoking are going to create a new generation of smokers… And if I can’t have access to the kind of nicotine salts that have replaced my smoking, I’ll likely go back to smoking.
E-Cigarette vaporizer components and products are displayed at Smoke and Gift Shop on June 25, 2019 in San Francisco, Calif.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
A monumental set of decisions is expected Thursday from the Food and Drug Administration that could reshape the tobacco industry for years to come by limiting, or altogether blocking, the sale of millions of e-cigarette products.
Though the FDA has long regulated the marketing and sale of traditional tobacco products like cigarettes, the agency had long not required the same scrutiny of vapes, allowing a market to flourish.
The imminent decisions by the FDA could impact almost all of that. About 6.5 million products made by more than 500 companies are under evaluation about whether they are “appropriate for the protection of public health.”
If the agency finds that they are not, companies could be required to pull their products — including rechargeable vape pens, disposable e-cigarettes and the liquids that fill them — from the market.
“I’m guessing that the decisions over the next couple of days will result in a fundamental change in the e-cigarette market,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
The FDA is looking closely at the health effects of e-cigarettes
E-cigarette companies, including Juul, argue that their products are safer than traditional tobacco products like cigarettes.
Though vaping allows users to avoid some of the harmful carcinogens caused by smoking traditional cigarettes, studies have found that e-cigarettes are still harmful.
Additionally, virtually all e-cigarette products contain nicotine, some in very high levels — including Juul’s 5% pods, each of which contains as much nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes. Nicotine affects prenatal and adolescent brain development, making it dangerous for both teenagers and pregnant people to vape.
“If any e-cigarette could actually help a smoker quit, they would apply to be a drug through other pathways that the FDA [has], and they would demonstrate that they are safe and effective in helping smokers quit,” said Erika Sward of the American Lung Association, which has advocated for the denial of all applications to the FDA for any flavored tobacco product.
“Instead, what we’ve seen is another generation of kids addicted and a whole situation where we have millions of smokers — who might otherwise try to end their addiction — try to use this product,” she said.
The FDA's decisions are due Thursday, but it's not clear yet what they'll decide
In 2019, a federal judge ordered e-cigarette manufacturers to submit applications to the FDA by 2020. Their products would be allowed to remain on the market for one year while the agency reviewed them. That year-long deadline is up Thursday.
The agency may not respond to every application by Thursday’s deadline. It has said it will prioritize based on market share, meaning companies like like Juul, along with British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands, which respectively own the brands Vype and blu, may face decisions as soon as Thursday.
Possibilities range from a major crackdown on virtually all vape products to a more targeted approach, perhaps blocking the sale of flavored products or disposable e-cigarettes, or creating marketing rules similar to those that govern traditional cigarettes.
“If they approve any of these, they definitely will have restrictions on both marketing and some of the product design that will be [intended] to reduce youth initiation and use,” said Kathleen Hoke, a professor of public health law at the University of Maryland.
Last month, the agency made its first set of marketing denials for some 55,000 flavored vape products from three companies, ordering them to pull their products from the market. It has also denied applications for companies marketing flavors designed to appeal to kids such as Apple Crumble and Cinnamon Toast Cereal.
Regulators said the applications from its first set of denials “lacked sufficient evidence” that any benefit to adult smokers outweighed “the public health threat posed by the well-documented, alarming levels of youth use of such products.”
Some researchers worry that a major crackdown on Juul and other manufacturers will simply send teenagers reaching for traditional cigarettes instead.
“I think it would be a public health disaster,” said Dr. Michael Siegel, a researcher at Tufts University who studies youth tobacco and alcohol use. “Vaping is not causing a culture of smoking. It’s actually replacing that culture.”
Youth smoking rates have fallen dramatically in recent years as vaping has exploded in popularity. But other researchers are skeptical the trend would reverse.
“Whether those people chose to choose to go back to a cigarette that tastes like a cigarette or a vape product that tastes like a cigarette, I think is anyone’s guess,” said Hoke.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit [www.npr.org.](https://www.npr.org.)
Online Trolls Also Jerks in Real Life: Aarhus University Study
Instead, their data pointed to online interactions largely mirroring offline behavior, with people predisposed to aggressive, status-seeking behavior just as unpleasant in person as behind a veil of online anonymity, and choosing to be jerks as part of a deliberate strategy rather than as a consequence of the format involved.
7 hurt after 2 people exchange gunfire in Minneapolis
I think I have figured out what all shootings have in common: guns.
And places that have fewer guns have fewer shootings (without a proportional increase in non-gun killings).
Seven people were injured, including one critically, after two people began shooting at each other outside a business in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood early Thursday, police said.
Police said the shootout happened at about 12:30 a.m. Thursday on the 3000 block of Lyndale Avenue South, a prominent thoroughfare in the city.
Police arrived to find what they called “a very chaotic scene." Three people at the scene had gunshot wounds. Officers were told that three others had been taken to an area hospital before police arrived, and a fourth person showed up at another hospital with gunshot wounds. All seven are expected to survive.
Investigators are working to determine if the injured people were suspects, intended targets or innocent bystanders. Police did not say what might have motivated the shooting.
Living Wage Calculator - Living Wage Calculation for Hennepin County, Minnesota
The living wage shown is the hourly rate that an individual in a household must earn to support his or herself and their family. The assumption is the sole provider is working full-time (2080 hours per year). The tool provides information for individuals, and households with one or two working adults and zero to three children. In the case of households with two working adults, all values are per working adult, single or in a family unless otherwise noted.
Afghanistan pullout: Biden's biggest call yet - will it be his most calamitous? - BBC News
Afghanistan… The decision of the President to withdraw from the region is no doubt hard, but I think there’s good reason to understand that lasting change there can’t be made from the outside.
As a mystery reader/viewer, I was … struck… when watching Sherlock the first time, specifically for how little one thing had changed.
“Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, ‘Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.’ The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.”
I didn't know, I saw.
Your haircut, the way you hold yourself says military. But your conversation...
Bit different from my day.
...said trained at Barts -
so Army doctor, obvious.
Your face is tanned... but no tan above the wrists.
You've been abroad, but not sunbathing.
Your limp's bad when you walk, but you don't ask for a chair when you stand, like you've forgotten about it, so it's at least partly psychosomatic.
That says the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic.
Wounded in action, then. Wounded in action, suntan - Afghanistan or Iraq.
Mass shootings are extremely rare in the UK. Before this year, there had been four in modern times - the last one was in Cumbria in 2010, when a gunman killed 12 people.
Meanwhile, in 2019 alone, there were 417 shootings in the US where at least four people were shot.
The U.S.’s Deep Partisan Divide on COVID Vaccinations
32 percent of Trump voters say they have no plans to receive one
of the three coronavirus vaccines available in the U.S., compared
to only 3 percent of Biden voters, the poll found.
86 percent of Biden voters say they’ve already been vaccinated,
while 54 percent of Trump voters said the same.
The Republican Party is a death cult. There’s no other way to put it.
And the one person who could most affect this — a man who himself was vaccinated as soon as possible — refuses to say a word.
While on the subject of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's sexual harassment allegations, Doocy, who had already asked several questions on the subject, decided to press on. "Does the administration want the Justice Department to initiate a civil rights investigation into these harassment allegations revealed today?"
With many other reporters in the room waiting for their turn, the press secretary made a decision: the driest of Psaki bombs was in order. “We do something new here that feels foreign from the last four years and allow the Justice Department to act independently on investigations.” Deadpan at its finest.
Two-thirds of Southern Republicans want to secede - by Christopher Ingraham - The Why Axis
A new YouGov survey conducted on behalf of a democracy watchdog group finds that 66 percent of Republicans living in the South say they’d support seceding from the United States to join a union with other Southern states.
Secession is actually gaining support among Southern Republicans: back in January and February, 50 percent said they’d support such a proposal.
It sure is a good thing there aren’t any troubling historic precedents for what happens when large numbers of Southern conservatives, motivated in large part by a sense of grievance and victimhood, want to break away from the Union.
Florida breaks record with more than 21,000 new COVID cases
Florida reported 21,683 new cases of COVID-19, the state’s highest one-day total since the start of the pandemic, according to federal health data released Saturday, as its theme park resorts again started asking visitors to wear masks indoors.
The state has become the new national epicenter for the virus, accounting for around a fifth of all new cases in the U.S.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted mandatory mask mandates and vaccine requirements, and along with the state Legislature, has limited local officials’ ability to impose restrictions meant to stop the spread of COVID-19. DeSantis on Friday barred school districts from requiring students to wear masks when classes resume next month.
The latest numbers were recorded on Friday and released on Saturday on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. The figures show how quickly the number of cases is rising in the Sunshine State: only a day earlier, Florida reported 17,093 new daily cases. The previous peak in Florida had been 19,334 cases reported on Jan. 7, before the availability of vaccinations became widespread.
The Florida Hospital Association said Friday that statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations are nearing last year’s peak, and one of the state’s largest health care systems, AdventHealth’s Central Florida Division, this week advised it would no longer be conducting nonemergency surgeries in order to free up resources for COVID-19 patients.
Universal Orlando Resort and SeaWorld on Saturday became the latest theme park resorts in Florida to again ask visitors to wear masks indoors, with Universal also ordering its employees to wear face coverings to protect against COVID-19, which has been surging across the state.
All workers at Universal’s Florida park on Saturday started being required to wear masks while indoors as the employees returned to practicing social distancing. The home to Harry Potter and Despicable Me rides also asked visitors to follow federal and local health guidelines by voluntarily wearing face coverings indoors.
“The health and safety of our guests and team members is always our top priority,” Universal said in a statement.
Health officials on Friday announced that coronavirus cases in Florida had jumped 50 percent over the past week with COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state nearing last year’s peak.
SeaWorld on Saturday posted on its website that it was recommending that visitors follow recently updated federal recommendations and wear face coverings while indoors.
The change in policy this week at the theme park resorts came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that everyone wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status.
Crosstown rival Walt Disney World started requiring employees and guests older than 2 to wear masks on Friday, but it also went a step further. The Walt Disney Company said in a statement that it will be requiring all salaried and non-union hourly employees in the U.S. who work on-site to be fully vaccinated.
Disney employees who aren’t already vaccinated will have 60 days to do so and those still working from home will need to show proof of vaccination before returning. Disney said it was discussing the vaccine requirements with the union, and added that all new hires will be required to be fully vaccinated before starting work at the company.
Most of the videos we analyzed were filmed by the rioters. By carefully listening to the unfiltered chatter within the crowd, we found a clear feedback loop between President Trump and his supporters.
As Mr. Trump spoke near the White House, supporters who had already gathered at the Capitol building hoping to disrupt the certification responded. Hearing his message to “walk down to the Capitol,” they interpreted it as the president sending reinforcements. “There’s about a million people on their way now,” we heard a man in the crowd say, as Mr. Trump’s speech played from a loudspeaker.
1) It leads opponents to underestimate the ability and intelligence of the buffoon.
It provides deniability — “it was only a joke.”
It appeals to core supporters (many Africans loved Amin’s teasing of the former colonial masters).
It serves as a distraction from the more serious, perhaps frightening or incompetent, actions of the leader, what we now call the “dead cat” tactic.
It leads to ambiguity (was it a joke or not?), producing confusion and uncertainty about how to respond.
Behind all this is clearly what Freud recognized as the aggressive nature of joking. I suggest that buffoonery is, at root, a quintessentially masculine characteristic.
“Here’s what people get wrong about Carter,” Will Pattiz, one of the film’s directors tells me. “He was not in over his head or ineffective, weak or indecisive — he was a visionary leader, decades ahead of his time trying to pull the country toward renewable energy, climate solutions, social justice for women and minorities, equitable treatment for all nations of the world. He faced nearly impossible economic problems — and at the end of the day came so very close to changing the trajectory of this nation.”
Florida reported 21,683 new cases of COVID-19, the state’s highest one-day total since the start of the pandemic, according to federal health data released Saturday, as its theme park resorts again started asking visitors to wear masks indoors.