Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Now that the UK has left the EU, racists and xenophobes there feel encouraged to be more open about their hostile feelings towards immigrant communities and people of color and speakers of other languages, assuming that they do not belong there, similar to Donald Trump supporters here.
A poster telling residents of a block of flats “we do not tolerate” people speaking languages other than English in the building has been reported to police.
The typewritten poster, bearing the title “Happy Brexit Day”, was reportedly found stuck to fire doors in Winchester Tower in Norwich on Friday morning. The discovery came hours before the UK officially left the European Union at 11pm later that day.
A photo of the poster shared in news reports and on social media revealed that it declared: “We finally have our great country back.”
As is usually the case, the people who are such fans of the ‘Queen’s English’ made errors in writing their screed. They also do not realize that their dream of making the UK white again is simply not going to become reality.
I have been wondering about Hillary Clinton’s recent attack on Bernie Sanders and what purpose she thinks it will serve. At first she suggested that she may not even support him in the general election should he be the Democratic nominee but later, after being roundly criticized for the implication that she preferred Donald Trump over Sanders, she walked back her remarks and said that she would support the party nominee.
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Samantha Bee takes on the whining by conservatives that they are being restricted on social media when in fact sites such as Facebook bend over backwards to accommodate them. The clip also shows the extraordinary amount of time and attention Donald Trump pays to the minutiae of social media metrics. His superficiality knows no bounds.
I like puzzles that are simple to state and understand. This one is not too difficult.
“There are three boxes. One contains apples. One contains oranges. One contains both apples and oranges.
However, the boxes are mislabeled. One is labeled apples, but contains either oranges or the mix. One is labeled oranges, and contains apples or the mix. And the box labeled Both contains apples or oranges, but not both.
Removing only one piece of fruit from one box, how can you correctly identify all three boxes?”
His weekly show Last Week Tonight blends a mixture of long-form investigative reporting and humor, a formula that fellow Daily Show alum Hasan Minhaj has adopted in his own successful show Patriot Act.
Last Week Tonight draws 5 million viewers each week, is consistently among the top series on HBO’s digital platforms and routinely penetrates the helter-skelter news cycle (the 2016 segment “#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain” racked up 85 million video views in its first month, a record for any piece of HBO content).
I like optical illusions but I have to say that my enjoyment has diminished somewhat now that there is always a possibility that it involves computer trickery and not created out of real, physical objects. The illusion below is nice but the fact that it was created by a VFX artist may mean that it is not the real thing.
Chemist Peter Atkins writes that it is only science that can answer real big questions, as opposed to invented ones such as Why are we here? What are the attributes of the soul?.
They are not real questions, because they are not based on evidence. Thus, as there is no evidence for the Universe having a purpose, there is no point in trying to establish its purpose or to explore the consequences of that purported purpose. As there is no evidence for the existence of a soul (except in a metaphorical sense), there is no point in spending time wondering what the properties of that soul might be should the concept ever be substantiated. Most questions of this class are a waste of time; and because they are not open to rational discourse, at worst they are resolved only by resort to the sword, the bomb or the flame.
Sometimes, especially in reactionary times like the one we are living in in the US at this moment when social progress seems to be in retreat under a determined assault from Donald Trump and his Republican party and supporters, it is easy to become discouraged. At such times, I remind myself that major social changes on race and gender and sexuality have been achieved in my own lifetime and these are irreversible because they involve changes in social attitudes.
Natasha Lennard reports on another area in which a major change has been quietly occurring and that is with the move to decriminalize sex work.
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I have not been writing much about the impeachment trial in the US senate because I view it as political theater with a predetermined outcome since Trump and the Republicans are working together to make sure that no new information comes out, no witnesses are called, and no new documentary evidence presented, so that they can vote on acquittal as quickly as possible. All the posturing by a few Republican senators that they might vote to call witnesses is just that, posturing, so that they can pretend to be thoughtful people rather than hacks and craven Trump toadies.
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