RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?/May 2019

May 2019
The World’s Most Annoying Man (Steven Pinker) Why freeing Julian Assange might be a miscarriage of justice. Re the Sweden rape allegations. As well as common law freeman on the land and German Reichsbürgerbewegung, you also have Russians who believe that the Soviet Union hasn’t been dissolved and state that they are Soviet citizens. Digital property rights and how corporations infringe on them Is the modern mass extinction overrated? Ref also Betteridge's law of headlines. Woman walking alone at night picks up pace after spotting truck driven by Alabama state lawmakers slowly following her - The Onion America is better at assimilating immigrants than Europe [https://www.polygon.com/comics/2019/5/18/18627983/game-of-thrones-season-8-petition-rewrite-star-wars Fans do not own franchises. If you don't like the direction in which Star Wars, Game of Thrones, etc. are currently going, stop watching them, instead of demanding that the people who do own them decanonize and remake them to suit you]. In a surprising stopped clock moment, Pat Robertson denounces Alabama's new anti-abortion law as "extreme" and that "Alabama has gone too far." These five are held up as superfoods, but the amount you'd need to eat is staggering Sam Harris up to his usual Islamophobic tricks "Green New Deal" by John Oliver Let People Not Enjoy Things. These days, a good portion of the fandoms of nerd franchises such as the MCU, Star Wars and Game of Thrones - which is to say, consumer products fielded by megacorporations - gets far too defensive upon reading criticism thereof, and would do well to engage in some self-reflection. What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt-Right Two of this years' shitty teach the controversy laws shot down. "What it's like to live in a California ghost town "The Invention of Hell" - Internet Infidels  Inside India's powerful Hindu nationalist group that seeks to write Hindu scripture into law and strip Indian Muslims of equal rights.  "The Man who went to the Place in North Korea that Doesn't Technically Exist"  Why did Bush go to war in Iraq? - Al Jazeera