Avoiding politics and religion in polite society

We are all aware of the advice that in gatherings of family and friends, two topics that should be avoided are politics and religion. I was under the impression that this was a fairly recent development but in reading the book The Scientific Revolution by Steven Shapin (1996), I learned that it dates at least as far back as the 17th century and that such prohibitions were even included in the constitutions of scientific societies.
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Fun times with ceremonial prayer

Thanks to commenter Timothy, I saw the video below of what happened at the meeting of the Pensacola city council in Florida when a Satanist gave the opening invocation, taking advantage of the US Supreme Court ruling that if government agencies are going to allow ceremonial opening prayers, then they cannot favor or discriminate against any single group. (You may have to turn on the sound by clicking the icon at the bottom right.)
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The Pursuance Project: Responding to the ongoing crisis of democracy in the US

The situation in the US under the Donald Trump administration has become so bad that some people even look back with nostalgia to the era of George W. Bush, even though that administration gave us two criminal wars, the horror of Guantanamo and global black sites, indulged in widespread use of torture, promoted rampant homophobia, and committed horrendous violations of civil rights. Before journalist Barrett Brown was thrown in jail (I have written about this before), he started something called Project PM as a means for getting better civic collaboration and media analysis in order to advance democratic principles and counter the strong authoritarian tendencies that currently exist.
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Why I dislike the New York Times

My liberal friends are always shocked when they discover that I treat the New York Times with contempt. How could I dislike that vanguard of liberal thought? I then have to go through the tedious exercise of showing how, by being seen as the gatekeeper of ‘acceptable’ liberal thought, it manages to advance the interests of the neoliberal, neoconservative, corporate, pro-Israel lobby, and anti-Palestinian agendas, not to mention being a cheerleader and apologist for the worst excesses of militarism in US history.
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Google is evil

UPDATE: Email exchanges between Slaughter and Lynn have been released.

Google long ago effectively abandoned its original motto of “Don’t be evil” that was part of its code of conduct. They still paid lip service to it for a while but then quietly abandoned even that pretense in 2015. It has become as dangerous a monopoly as Facebook, Amazon, and the old-style mega-corporations like ExxonMobil. While it likes to portray itself as a mere platform for the free exchange of ideas, in reality it is a marketing behemoth.
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The peddler of sensational but false news

We are nowadays awash with news stories based on dubious and/or anonymous sourcing. The goal of such stories seem to be to fire up those who want to believe the stories because it supports their preconceptions. While I understand the power of confirmation bias, I am surprised that some people are so willing to believe things that are so obviously outrageous.
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Become a ‘Citizen Sleuth’ and investigate Trump administration corruption

The administration of Donald Trump probably has the most wealth of any administration in US history. It is also the administration that has the most open contempt for ethics and thus one can expect that many of them will have no compunction about using their offices to enrich themselves by making decisions that are advantageous to their private interests. This was also likely true for many members of previous administrations but the Trump cohort will be different in that they think they are entitled to do so. After all, the head of this corrupt organization, Trump himself, clearly sees being president as a way to advance his business interests.
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Trump’s worst nightmare coming true

Forget his difficulties with getting funding for his beloved wall. Forget his failure to repeal Obamacare. Forget the fact that he has had to reverse himself and commit to an indefinite war in Afghanistan. What Donald Trump really, really cares about is that he be able to command large crowds of adoring fans at will to stoke his ego that people love him, they really, really love him. This is the main reason that he is having campaign rallies almost from the time he took office where he can regale his followers with an imaginary reality. He even bragged about the size of the crowd that came when he visited the areas stricken by Hurricane Harvey.
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