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Another HORRIFIC terror attack in London. Many people dieing. And naturally @SadiqKhan did a "remain calm" statement. Remember "no reason to be alarmed"? What pathetic excuse will he tell Fake News MSM this time?

These animals are CRAZY -- incredibly Wacky -- and must be dealt with through toughness and strength!

This is the same guy that let their alt-left fly that HORRIBLE Blimp. To make me feel VERY UNWELCOME -- and unsafe. Trust me, that one's going to go up like the Hindenburg -- possibly worse. If they keep flying it, it's going to be a disaster. So I said, no reason for me to go to London.

foxnews.com/world/2018/08/14/pedestrians-injured-in-crash-outside-parliament-in-london.html
foxnews.com/world/2018/08/14/latest-police-treat-london-crash-as-terrorist-incident.html
foxnews.com/world/2018/08/14/london-car-ramming-treated-as-terror-incident-police-say-suspect-in-custody.html

To the people of the Great State of Wisconsin -- today is the big day! Election day.

Scott Walker is a marvelous Governor who has done incredible things for your Great State. He has my complete & total Endorsement! He brought the amazing Foxconn to Wisconsin with its 15,000 Jobs -- and so much more. Vote for Scott in the Republican Primary. Trust me, I don't give these endorsements easily!!!!

People are telling me, Paul Nehlen is running too. But I don't know who he is. They tell me he's a Republican. Running for Paul Ryan's seat in our House. To replace Paul Ryan who, as everyone knows, is retiring. I don't know Paul Nehlen, never met the guy. And I have NO OPINION about him. ZERO opinion. But, you can vote for him if you want to. Or, you can vote for somebody else. Hopefully you'll vote for somebody, whether it's Paul or one of the others. Lot of choices today. A lot of decisions.

New tape shows Trump campaign aides discussing possibility of N-word tape

The use of "dog" to describe Manigault Newman, who was the highest ranking African-American in Trump's White House during her tenure, did little to dampen the renewed allegations of racism against the President.

Some of his top aides rushed to defend him, claiming they'd never witnessed him use racist language in their interactions.

"I've been around @realDonaldTrump publicly & privately for 25yrs. I've NEVER ONCE - EVER - have heard him say the disgusting & terrible word that the Opportunistic Wacky Omarosa claims," wrote Dan Scavino, Trump's longtime social media director.

Breakthrough: Trump close to calling his critics "bitch-ni**as".

Jack Whitehall faces backlash as Disney's 'first gay man'

Jack Whitehall has received backlash online after news broke that he'd been cast as Disney's first major gay character in Jungle Cruise.

The comedian wrote that he was "honoured" to be a part of the 2019 film, and it was later reported that he would be playing an openly gay man.

The news has led some people to ask why a gay actor wasn't cast for the role.

"Could they seriously not pick someone actually gay?" one person tweeted.

Others have argued that hiring gay actors to exclusively play gay roles is "typecasting".

15 years ago, or maybe last year, this headline would have had a very different meaning. But it's 2018.

Related: ScarJo Cast as a Transgender Man, Outrage Ensues

Very smart move by David Bowdich, Deputy Director of my FBI. He fired Agent Peter Strzok, the Chief Witch Hunter -- finally. The Office of Professional Responsibility said, "oh, demote, oh, suspend." David didn't demote, he didn't suspend. He FIRED! And hopefully he'll fire the Office of Professional Responsibility too. Need to get those Obama people OUT!! And many more -- FBI & DOJ full of bad players. No Accountability!

Former Agent Strzok was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. Which almost cost me the election. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone.

And Strzok was in charge of the Phoney Russia Witch Hunt. With nobody running it, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. Millions of dollars spent -- big waste of Taxpayers Money. 💸 No Obstruction and no collusion, as in never any collusion, ZERO collusion, just my honest opinion, folks!!! 😇

A recent (off-topic?) discussion touching on Sci-Fi revealed to me that some people see hope and promise in science fiction stories. Those people don't see the warnings, it would seem. To me, science fiction has always been filled with dire warnings.

We recently discussed Ms. Le Guin, when she passed away. https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/01/25/011250
More about her here: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/UKL_info.html

I must admit that I wasn't a "fan" - that is, I didn't read everything she wrote, and wait impatiently for her to write more. But, yes, I did read some of her work. I've been reading a little more of her work, since her death. And, that work is filled with dire warnings!

The Diary of the Rose tells about a psychiatric doctor (Rosa), with access to some really marvelous technology, which helps her to see into the minds of her patients. Rosa spends her early career working with children, and people with truly disabling problems. Rosa is engrossed in psychiatric problems, diagnosis, and prognosis. She is the doctor's doctor - everything is about making people healthy, or at least as healthy as possible.

Then, Rosa is brought her first political prisoner. Of course, Rosa isn't aware that he IS a political prisoner. She is only told that he has to be "fixed". Unaware that the diagnosis and prognosis has already been determined, Rosa gets into Sorde's (the patient) head. She is shocked to learn that there is really nothing wrong with Sorde. But, as she learns more, both she and Sorde know exactly where "therapy" will lead, and where it will end. The patient's mind must be destroyed!

The story is scary, in that, it doesn't so much "predict" real life in some future dystopia, as it reports on real life in the modern world. In much of the world in the past few hundred years, it would be political suicide to imprison, then execute a political dissident. But, having that same dissident "hospitalized" for some form of "insanity" can be expedient.

Oh, there is indeed some "science" in this fiction. The tools that Rosa has to work with are amazing. But, the story would be much the same with or without those tools. The psychiatric doctor is being used to effectively euthanize a potential political dissident.

I do invite people to get acquainted with Le Guin. Further, I invite those people to extrapolate some of today's technology into her stories. 24/7 surveillance? Genetic mapping? Digital mapping of the brain? The deeper we dig into who and what we are, as people, the closer Rosa's diagnostic tools come to reality.

I haven't been a Le Guin fan in the past, but I am becoming one.

For those who might search for this story - it is part of Volume 1 of the 'Where on Earth' collection of short stories. It may or may not be published in other anthologies, but this is where I found it.

Enjoy!

Charlottesville remembered: 'A battle for the soul of America'

It could only happen in the birthplace of Christian Weston Chandler.

She’s the world’s top empathy researcher. But colleagues say she bullied and intimidated them

Tania Singer, a celebrated neuroscientist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, is known as one of the world’s foremost experts on empathy. In her research, she has sought to demonstrate that meditation can make people more kind and caring. The title of a profile of Singer written by this reporter in 2013 summed up her public image: Concentrating on Kindness.

But inside her lab, it was a very different story, eight former and current colleagues say in interviews with Science. The researchers, all but one of whom insisted on remaining anonymous because they feared for their careers, describe a group gripped by fear of their boss. “Whenever anyone had a meeting with her there was at least an even chance they would come out in tears,” one colleague says.

Singer, one of the most high-profile female researchers in the Max Planck Society (MPG), sometimes made harsh comments to women who became pregnant, multiple lab members told Science. “People were terrified. They were really, really afraid of telling her about their pregnancies,” one former colleague says. “For her, having a baby was basically you being irresponsible and letting down the team,” says another, who became a mother while working in Singer’s department.

[...] In a plan presented to the researchers on 25 July, MPG said it would separate Singer from her current colleagues and allow her to set up a new, smaller research group in Berlin for 2 to 3 years while the postdocs and Ph.D. students in Leipzig finish their projects and move on. (The Leipzig group, which once numbered more than 20 scientists, has dwindled to just five.) She would then return to her lab.

“It appears the Max Planck Society decided it would rather sacrifice another generation of students than risk a scandal,” says one former colleague. Asked how MPG would ensure that future students are treated better, a spokesperson says details of the plan are still being discussed.

[...] [Colleagues] say working with Singer was always difficult. She wanted to be in control of even the most minute research details but was often not available to discuss them. In-person meetings could quickly turn into a nightmare, one colleague says: “She gets extremely emotional and when that turns dark it is terrifying.” Another co-worker describes what happened after he told Singer some people in her group were unhappy: “She was very hurt by this and started crying and screaming,” he says. “It escalated to the extent that she left the room and went door to door in the institute in our department, crying, yelling to the people in the room ‘Are you happy here?’ When she came back, she said: ‘I just asked and everyone said they’re happy so it’s obviously you that’s the problem.’” (A colleague who says he was present corroborates the story.)

Almost every current or former lab member brought up Singer’s treatment of pregnant women; the issue was also on a list of grievances, shared with Science, that lab members say they drew up after a meeting with the scientific advisory board in February 2017 to record what was said. “Pregnancy and parental leave are received badly and denied/turned into accusations,” the notes say.

How Goop's Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow's Company Worth $250 Million: Inside the growth of the most controversial brand in the wellness industry. (archive)

On a Monday morning in November, students at Harvard Business School convened in their classroom to find Gwyneth Paltrow. She was sitting at one of their desks, fitting in not at all, using her phone, as they took their seats along with guests they brought to class that day — wives, mothers, boyfriends. Each seat filled, and some guests had to stand along the back wall and sit on the steps. The class was called the Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports. The students were there to interrogate Paltrow about Goop, her lifestyle-and-wellness e-commerce business, and to learn how to create a "sustainable competitive advantage," according to the class catalog.

She moved to the teacher's desk, where she sat down and crossed her legs. She talked about why she started the business, how she only ever wanted to be someone who recommended things. When she was in Italy, on the set of "The Talented Mr. Ripley," she'd ask someone on the crew about, say, where the best gelato was. When she was in London, on the set of "Shakespeare in Love," she asked a crew member where to find the best coffee; in Paris, she asked an extra where to find the best bikini wax; in Berlin, the massage you can't miss. She wasn't just curious. She was planning this the whole time. The first iteration of the company was only these lists — where to go and what to buy once you get there — via a newsletter she emailed out of her kitchen, the first one with recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins. One evening, at a party in London, one of the newsletter's recipients, a venture capitalist named Juliet de Baubigny, told her, "I love what you're doing with Goop." G.P., as she is called by nearly everyone in her employ, didn't even know what a venture capitalist was. She was using off-the-shelf newsletter software. But De Baubigny became a "godmother" to Paltrow, she said. She encouraged her vision and "gave permission" to start thinking about how to monetize it.

[...] G.P. didn't want to go broad. She wanted you to have what she had: the $795 G. Label trench coat and the $1,505 Betony Vernon S&M chain set. Why mass-market a lifestyle that lives in definitional opposition to the mass market? Goop's ethic was this: that having beautiful things sometimes costs money; finding beautiful things was sometimes a result of an immense privilege; but a lack of that privilege didn't mean you shouldn't have those things. Besides, just because some people cannot afford it doesn't mean that no one can and that no one should want it. If this bothered anyone, well, the newsletter content was free, and so were the recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins.

[...] A gynecologist and obstetrician in San Francisco named Jen Gunter, who also writes a column on reproductive health for The Times, has criticized Goop in about 30 blog posts on her website since 2015. A post she wrote last May — an open letter that she signed on behalf of "Science" — generated more than 800,000 page views. She was angry about all the bad advice she had seen from Goop in the last few years. She was angry that her own patients were worried they'd given themselves breast cancer by wearing underwire bras, thanks to an article by an osteopath who cited a much-debunked book published in 1995. Gunter cited many of Goop's greatest hits: "Tampons are not vaginal death sticks, vegetables with lectins are not killing us, vaginas don't need steaming, Epstein Barr virus (E.B.V.) does not cause every thyroid disease and for [expletive] sake no one needs to know their latex farmer; what they need to know is that the only thing between them and H.I.V. or gonorrhea is a few millimeters of latex, so glove that [expletive] up."

But something strange happened. Each of these pronouncements set off a series of blog posts and articles and tweets that linked directly to the site, driving up traffic. At Harvard, G.P. called these moments "cultural firestorms." "I can monetize those eyeballs," she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about G.P. herself and turn them into cash. It's never clickbait, she told the class. "It's a cultural firestorm when it's about a woman's vagina." The room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, "VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!" as if she were yodeling.

Who would hate on a pseudoscientific goop-peddling succubus with steam-cleaned nether regions (and an egg)?

Previously: NASA Disputes Origins of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop "Healing Stickers"

Original Submission

Crazy Rich Asians isn’t about money, it’s about entitlement—and that’s a good thing

Why Did It Take So Long to See a Cast Like ‘Crazy Rich Asians’? (archive)