Bill Maher tries to take credit for Milo's downfall over views Bill agrees with

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Wednesday February 22, 2017 · 9:32 AM PST

2017/02/22 · 09:32

As everyone knows by now, Milo Yiannopoulos has finally become, for now at least, persona non gratis. Was it for his harassment of people, his bigoted and transphobic views or his just general desire to be an asshole at every opportunity? Well, no, it was after video surfaced of him defending pedophilia. A video eerily similar to a video of Bill Maher taking the same position, and acting generally surprised that none of his panel agreed with him:

if bill maher thinks sunlight is the best disinfectant then here's him saying the same shit as milo, that it's ok for adults to fuck kids pic.twitter.com/tqPAzbGY3J
Ã¢ÂÂ warrior cop (@wyatt_privilege) February 22, 2017

And now he wants credit for Milo’s downfall? That takes some chutzpah. Everyone tried to tell Bill Maher that booking Milo was a bad idea, but Bill also likes stirring shit up just for the sake of stirring shit up. I’ll admit I am late to opposition of Bill Maher. I don’t watch every week, but last week was the first time I intentionally didn’t watch. Usually I’d just turn the channel when he went off on one of his islamophobic rants. But apparently Bill is still defending Milo’s transphobic views. Saying it is legitimate for a woman to not want to share a bathroom with a transwoman is like saying it is legitimate for a woman not to want to share a bathroom with a black woman. And you could have found women to tell you that, too, 75 years ago[truth be told if you know the right people you could probably find someone to take that position today].

Will this be fatal for Bill Maher’s career too? Late as I may be to the party, I no longer think it is worthwhile to watch his show. But it is also interesting that when clips like these surface, they weren’t hidden mike jobs. They were intended for public consumption, but for whatever reason didn’t spark significant controversy when they first aired. So maybe Bill will be able to lean into this, play himself as the victim as he likes to do, and survive.

Two congresspeople introduce bill to reduce overtime, because of course

shaso

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Wednesday June 29, 2016 · 5:37 PM PDT

2016/06/29 · 17:37

Kentucky congressman Brett Guthrie and Illinois congresswoman Cheri Bustos have come up with the brilliant idea that minor league baseball players that work as many as 50-60 hours a week don’t deserve overtime. Minor league players are only paid a minimum of $1100/month. If we assume 200 hours a month, that only comes out to $5.50/hour. I could argue over what player activities constitute working, but why bother. Even with per diems, I can’t imagine it is easy to live on that and most players don’t receive significant signing bonuses. To top it all off, players at the lowest levels are only paid for 3 months a year as if they aren’t expected to train 12 months a year. Baseball is a multi-billion dollar sport, and the teams could easily afford to pay the players double without breaking a sweat. 30 teams * 170 players * $4k ≈ $20 million in a sport with revenues of $9 billion and is less than what some MLB players make in a year. The fact that MLB is even fighting the lawsuit to get minor league pay up to the bare minimum is mildly reprehensible.

As for the idea that minor league teams would go out of business if they were forced to pay their players fairly, the first franchise that contracted one of their minor league teams would be laughed out of the league and would struggle to put a MLB team on the field in 5 years.

shaso

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Thursday April 21, 2016 · 1:55 PM PDT

2016/04/21 · 13:55

On the PA primary ballot, there is a vote for president, and then there is a vote for delegates. For president I am obviously voting for Roque Rocky de la Fuente, because that is just such a cool name. But what is the best strategy for voting for delegates? Do I need to vote for my candidate’s entire slate, or does that just cancel itself out? Does it harm my candidate to vote for a delegate pledged to the other candidate[the only delegate who I recognize]?

As for aboloshing the Philadelphia traffic court, that seems a little random. As I don’t live in Philly, what is that even about? Do people have strong feelings?

SpaceX successfully lands first stage at sea

shaso

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Friday April 08, 2016 · 2:38 PM PDT

2016/04/08 · 14:38

SpaceX Falcon-9 DSCOVR launch, February 12, 2015.

For the first time, SpaceX has successfully landed its first stage on its droneship. After successfully taking off and delivering Dragon on its way to the ISS, it performed a perfect landing on its droneship. I’m not sure why I still get excited at every SpaceX launch since I have no personal connection to them, but I do. It really feels like we are entering a new era of space travel. Successfully landing the first stage reliably is the key to cutting the cost of going to space by an order of magnitude. While it had landed once before at its land based landing pad, due to mission needs it seems like it will more frequently need to try to land at sea and it had failed in its first 4 attempts. Also, after the failure last June and it being space travel, even the success of the primary mission can’t be taken for granted. Watching this landing it almost seems to be too easy, but if anyone has watched the previous attempts it isn’t. People, read me, were starting to think landing at sea might just be too hard.

YouTube Video

Falcon 9 first stage on our droneship in the Atlantic after propelling the Dragon spacecraft to the @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/Cnnej7zEnt
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 8, 2016

Note: the title image I used isn’t from today.

shaso

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Thursday March 31, 2016 · 2:22 PM PDT

2016/03/31 · 14:22

Fox screen grab of Team USA after winning the 2015 Women's World Cup soccer championship

There are stories that pop up because I am a soccer fan that are emblamatic of larger issues in our society. At moments like this they even seem to illustrate them more starkly and clearly. Today, in other step in their longer simmering collective bargaining dispute with US Soccer, some of the most prominent members of the US Women’s National Team filed suit with the EEOC alleging pay discrimination. Despite reportedly bringing in more money for US Soccer, the USWNT is payed significantly less than the Men’s team. The USMNT gets payed more than the USWNT even if they lose. If the USWNT loses they don’t even get paid which boggles the mind. This has all been brought to a head by the Olympics this summer where the USWNT will be favorites while the US U-23s didn't even qualify.

There is no rational reason that the women shouldn’t be getting paid as much as the men. And yet here we are. I guess you could try to make the argument that the men might not want to play if they weren’t being paid enough considering how much they make playing professionally. But in reality that is even more reason to pay the women equally. They need the income stream more to continue playing at the highest level. There is also the chicken and egg problem of the fact that US Soccer doesn’t promote the women's team as aggressively as the men’s.

People like to watch winners. That is why Serena Williams is more popular than whoever is the top US men’s tennis player. Meanwhile people were watching with dumb fascination tuesday night watching the possibility that the USMNT might be effectively eliminated from the 2018 World Cup. They managed to avoid that ignominious fate for now in a round where frankly it shouldn’t even have been close.

For all the times that people try to point to other reasons than blatant sexism that women don’t make as much as men in the workplace[the EEOC is where all pay discrimination suits are filed], just remember this story.

On another note, I hate to sully a discussion of the USWNT’s issues with this, but I'm not sure how much interest people would have in two separate soccer stories. A ger man team posted a picture of their team in blackface. More unbelievably, the initial reaction to the picture, presumably from the team’s supporters, was positive. Instead of what you would expect of WTF someone must be getting fired over this which was the initial reaction in my twitter fead. I couldn’t find any evidence of this team playing professionally at least in the top 2 flights of the Bundesliga so they are likely semi-pro at best. Also the picture is apparently digitally altered so it isn’t as if the team sat down for makeup and none of them objected. The fact that the genesis of the picture was as a show against racism just goes to show how far the world has to go before racism is no longer a problem. Not just in the USA.

Union collective bargaining fees upheld by split SCOTUS

shaso

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Tuesday March 29, 2016 · 7:32 AM PDT

2016/03/29 · 07:32

SCOTUS announced this morning that Friedrichs v California Teacher’s Assn that they had upheld the decision of a lower court:

PER CURIAM.

The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.

That is the extent of an explanation we get for what was considered a major case when most decision are thirty or more pages. The plaintiffs were hoping to avoid paying the fees that support collective bargaining and workplace arbitration and etc. Additionally they were hoping to force the non-required fees[for lobbying and other things] to be opt in instead of opt out. If they had prevailed it would have led to a downward spiral of unions where they no longer have enough money to be an effective advocate for their workers and so less people would join leading to even less money to be effective and eventually no unions at all. That may be a little over the top, but regardless it wouldn’t have been good.

This is the first 4-4 case since Scalia’s death. It would almost surely have been decided differently if he were still on the court so this is the first very big shoe to drop and a reminder that even an 8 member court is going to be a more liberal court than the nine member with Scalia court. While it doesn’t establish a precedent as a 4-4 case, the plaintiffs were working to overturn a precedent so the existing precedent survives.

Kathleen Kane not running for reelection

shaso

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Tuesday February 16, 2016 · 8:11 PM PST

2016/02/16 · 20:11

As what should probably come as no sh** to anyone familiar with the situation, Kathleen Kane announced today that she won’t be seeking reelection as Pennsylvania Attorney General. Once seen as a rising star of the Pennsylvania Democratic party, her first term has been marred by scandal amidst accusations that she leaked grand jury testimony for political gain culminating in her having her law license suspended and rising doubt that she could even stay in office until the end of her term.

For those wondering at the timing, nominating petitions were due today so she couldn’t keep her decision secret any longer even if she wanted to.

Heresy. I like DK5

shaso

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Sunday November 08, 2015 · 7:09 AM PST

2015/11/08 · 07:09

I had looked at the beta periodically as they were working on it, and I must say I wasn’t a fan originally. But they spent months on it, and most of the complaints were addressed. I half expected when the DK5 went live that people would would actually be happy with it. Oh naive you little me. I don’t have much of a problem with the white space; if you wanted to see bad white space you should have seen the initial iterations of the beta. I love the new site.

I thought I’d give people a space to post everything they love about the new site. Try to only be positive; there are other diaries to complain in. I’ll start:

I love the keyboard navigation of the comments and the new comment function. New comment functionality was virtually nonexistent in dk4. There was no way to mark old comments as read without reloading, and that would still leave old comments as new that showed up while you were reading. You’d almost have to reload twice in succession. And why would you want to reload at all if new comments are supposed to show up without reloading? DK5 just works. I can sit with one finger on ‘j’ and the other on ‘r/f’ and quickly cycle through all the new comments including the ones that show up mid-cycle. It will also make it much easier to recommend comments just by hitting f.

Go.

Puppies shut out of Hugos

shaso

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Sunday August 23, 2015 · 8:09 AM PDT

2015/08/23 · 08:09

As you may remember, some a**holes known as sad/rabid puppies tried to freep the Hugo awards, because they didn't think they were conservative enough. The Hugos are a prestigious award in various categories of SF/Fantasy as decided by the attendees/supporting members of the Worldcon, held this year in Spokane, WA. The winners were announced last night along with details of the voting where you can also see who might have been nominated if it weren't for the slates.

There was some doubt as to the outcome as a lot of supporting memberships, which allow you to vote even if you don't attend the convention, had been purchased and it wasn't completely clear by who. The answer is mostly real fans of SF/Fantasy. The Sad/Rabid Puppies lost to No Award, an option for voters to express the belief that nominees below it don't deserve an award regardless, across the board. And just as importantly worthy winners won. A couple of coincidental slate nominees, who surely had no knowledge of the slates, finished above No Award mostly in the Dramatic Presentation, but all the most egregious slate nominees finished below.

Karmically, with the sad/rabid puppies claiming to protest against too much diversity[yeh they are that kind of conservatives], these seem to have ended up one of the most diverse awards yet. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, a chinese work translated to English, claimed the top prize for best novel. Ms. Marvel, a muslim version of the character, took home best graphic story. Wesley Chu took home best new writer.

Congrats again to all the winners and non-slate nominees.

SpaceX announces cause of crash

shaso

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Monday July 20, 2015 · 3:44 PM PDT

2015/07/20 · 15:44

Over three weeks after their attempted resupply of the ISS failed with a second stage explosion/disintegration, SpaceX have finally announced what they believe to be the cause. They think a strut holding one of the helium tanks in place failed causing the tank to come loose and cause an overpressurization.

shaso

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Friday February 27, 2015 · 2:01 PM PST

2015/02/27 · 14:01

HA HA. In a remarkable show of unity, the Democrats stuck to their guns and forced Boehner to come up with Republican votes to pass their 3-week CR. He couldn't do it. The clown car is now full speed ahead. They've kept the vote open for a long time, and only 3 democrats have voted YEA[all late in the vote, 25+ minutes in; now up to 11 after 218 NAYs was hit]. And there is 219 NAYs. Congratulations to Minority leader Pelosi. Let's see where they go from here.

shaso

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Saturday August 30, 2014 · 1:07 PM PDT

2014/08/30 · 13:07

He had a good preseason, but got caught in a number crunch and doesn't appear to be based on anything other than football ability. Still could very well be picked up on waivers by another team. I think they probably waited til the last minute in an effort to trade him so there will probably be some interest. That will be announced tomorrow at noon.

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Bill Maher tries to take credit for Milo's downfall over views Bill agrees with

Two congresspeople introduce bill to reduce overtime, because of course

Clarification needed on PA primary ballot

SpaceX successfully lands first stage at sea

Two soccer stories: USWNT sues for equal pay; German team in black face

Union collective bargaining fees upheld by split SCOTUS

Kathleen Kane not running for reelection

Heresy. I like DK5

Puppies shut out of Hugos

SpaceX announces cause of crash

3-week CR for Homeland Security fails

Michael Sam released