RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?/July 2018

July 2018
CNN write a news story that gives Donald Trump some credit for the booming U.S. economy (but with some significant caveats). Fool’s gold: what fish oil is doing to our health and the planet William Davies in The Guardian debunks the right-wing panic about the suppression of free speech on campus, which arises because the media is significantly more right-wing than students or academics (or most other people); there's publicity value in claiming to be a truth-speaking rebel facing censorship, even if you work at an elite university or wealthy newspaper; and millennial snowflakes are just the latest scapegoat of the right-wing media. (Article is largely UK-centric.) The 'Guerrilla' Wikipedia Editors Who Combat Conspiracy Theories The Baffler states that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)​, often held to be a defender of "digital rights" (civil rights on the Internet), is behind it all just another astroturf group, this time created and funded by Silicon Valley to defend their business model especially in regards to copyright and privacy. Unlike others, however, it's actually very successful into getting real life support and has influenced if not leadered the Internet into what it is today. Why the swamp is not easy to drain. The Guardian Why identity politics benefits the right more than the left

The endurance of democracy in Europe is being tested. Austria is the newest test subject When evangelicals were pro-choice and the NRA was pro-gun control: A history of hypocrisy [https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jul/08/generation-wealth-how-the-modern-world-fell-in-love-with-money Lauren Greenfield has spent years photographing the world’s richest people. Now she’s made a documentary on society’s obsession with extreme wealth and its cost to us all] Donald Trump made Justice Kennedy an offer he couldn't refuse. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/climate/trump-industry-policy-consequences.html “Let’s eliminate big trade barriers”, he said. “It'll be easy” he said.]