RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?

July 2023
An overview of the criminal and civil cases against former president Donald Trump: where they stand and when trials are set to begin. How Paramount buried a Vice documentary on Ron DeSantis at Guantanamo Bay. "Extreme weather: the climate crisis in four charts – As much of the northern hemisphere endures blistering heatwaves and parts of Asia are deluged with rain, a number of climate records are being challenged" Emily M. Bender on "AI ethics vs. AI safety": Talking about a ‘schism’ is ahistorical. Shaun takes us through a very in-depth analysis of Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull's ideological history and her current connections to neo-Nazis. No, Ukraine shouldn't join NATO right now, and the ongoing debate over this is pulling attention away from the more urgent issue of ending the war. The internet's "town square" is dead Inside Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s biggest public Slack channel. The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con. Some researchers may be fooling themselves just like some psychics do. Far-righters have started claiming the recent Philadelphia shooter, who was himself a far-right Trump supporter who was obsessed with the idea of protecting the 2nd Amendment, was actually transgender. For non-ideologically motivated people, the genuine confusion seems to have come from several social media posts showing him dressed in women's clothing. David Hume vs. the UFO Whistleblower: Why we should be skeptical of reports of the extraordinary without evidence.

June 2023
It's likely that SCOTUS' recent strike-down of Biden's student loan relief plan wasn't even legally accurate, not that the GOP shills that dominate the Court care. Pride Month ends as it began, with LGBTQ lives viewed as an imposition. Why a historic 101 people are running for Mayor of Toronto this election, including a dog. Dead Cats and Transphobic Lies: The British media's latest insane circus tour based on children identifying as cats turns out to be completely bogus. A day in the life of a woke third-grade teacher, as imagined by a far-right politician (satire from McSweeney's) Why Some Boycotts Work – And Others Fizzle Independent LGBT creatives in the US are seeing their incomes impacted as large companies halt business collaborations with them amid an intensifying conservative pushback against Pride Month. The ecological problems of recycling solar panels.

May 2023
Bob Zeidman: How I Won $5 Million From the MyPillow Guy and Saved Democracy "...if more people sought truth, even when that truth is contrary to their beliefs — such as when a Republican like me destroys a Republican myth — then I think we really can save democracy in America. In fact, I think that’s the only way." Private Spies Hired by the FBI and Corporate Firms Infiltrate Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp Henry Kissinger is now 100 years old. Is he a championed statesman or war criminal? Or amoral champion of political intrigue or madman who brought the word to the brink of nuclear disaster? A troubled legacy of genocide and cold war madness. Kissinger's Killing Fields: Henry Kissinger is responsible for even more civilian deaths in Cambodia than was previously known. Experts say Kissinger bears significant responsibility for attacks in Cambodia that killed as many as 150,000 civilians. The Skeptic (UK) argues that skeptics should be anti-monarchists. [https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/may/12/why-would-we-employ-people-experts-on-five-ways-ai-will-change-work "Why should we employ people?" Experts look at how AI may change work.] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/12/coronation-protest-arrests-police First they came for the anti-monarchist protestors... how the rights of effective protest is becoming increasingly limited in Britain.] Chris van Tulleken identifies ultra processed food as harmful to health even when controlled for fat, sugar and salt. Snake oil alert: the AI industry and the field of AI research has a history of pseudoscience.

April 2023
Just because marijuana is legal doesn't mean the stench should be everywhere all the time. While legalization may be for the best, there should be at least as much stigma against blazing in public areas as there now is for tobacco smoking. AI Is a Waste of Time. Dazzling technology can make us more productive and less productive at the same time. Why libertarian cities fail. How attempting to be free of the "tyranny" of regulation and taxation can result in running out of clean water or neighborhoods being overrun by wild bears. DeSantis claims the Federal Reserve is looking to restrict Americans' purchases of guns, meat and gasoline. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims they're going to freeze the assets of unvaccinated people. NBC's Brian Cheung and Ben Collins explain what they're actually doing.

March 2023
Twitter is dying: reflections on the state of the site in the five months since Elon Musk overpaid for the social media platform How veterinary ivermectin as a new "cure" for autism in kids compares with other past quack cures for the same, such as MMS. (MMS being a bleaching agent) National Academies: We can’t define “race,” so stop using it in science [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/19/tories-migrants-fear-immigration-culture-war Facing an electoral crushing due to thirteen years of misrule, all the British Conservatives have left is to peddle 'culture wars' nonsense. One of the main targets: migrants.] How conflict minerals make it into our phones [https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/02/23/sommers-explains-why-he-wont-assign-parental-rights-bill-others/ Wyoming's GOP House Speaker, Albert Sommers, has repeatedly shut down anti-transgender bills, causing the state to defy national trends. Here's why]. Dark money and special deals: How Leonard Leo and his friends benefitted from judicial activism.

February 2023
Conspiracy theories are claiming the war in Ukraine is fake The 10 most important things court filings in the Dominion case have revealed about Fox News. When Your Boyfriend Becomes an Andrew Tate Fan The global ripple effects of Russia's war in Ukraine, mapped country-by-country. Biden went to Kyiv; DeSantis went to Fox and Friends. Or, Ron DeSantis finds the wrong side of Ukraine. How Milton Friedman aided and abetted segregationists in his quest to privatize public education. The Onion takes on the media's recent wave of anti-transgender fearmongering: "Is the point of reporting to illuminate the world around us, so that we may make meaning of it? Or is it to cause people in minority groups to question their humanity and persuade others to demonize them?" What US abortion legislation looks like in 2023. How the wealthy save billions by skirting a century-old tax law. Why sex education doesn't need to be awkward. Elon's profiting off of unbanning far-righters. Inside r/Obsessive_Love, the 2019-spawned subreddit that has users swapping tips on getting access to the webcams of the victims of their stalking using specialist search engines such as Shodan, which archive electronic devices. The St. Louis Children's Hospital anti-trans "whistleblower" story debunked point-by-point. You Are Lied To Every Day – DarkMatter2525 goes over the spread of social media disinformation and the propaganda used by anti-vaxxers, anti-LBGTQ+ bigots, and others. Why are politics in Peru in disarray? Inside the halls of its Congress As per the usual right-wing hypocrisy, Chinese spy balloons flew over the US three times during the Trump administration, and, unlike Biden, Trump never shot down a single one. Turns out they were not detected during Trump administration - US defense abilities to detect them have only been instituted under Biden The Anti-Trans State of the States as of February 4th.

January 2023
The latest target of conspiracy theories over the deep state and climate change, your humble TV weather forecaster. Why are American churches in decline? Long story short: a one-two punch of drastically fewer young people continuing to attend of their own accord (as a result of not having time to attend, feeling alienated and/or shunned due to political and social factors, or both) and the pandemic breaking existing churchgoers' attendance habits. US media is already presenting the debt ceiling fight as a "both sides" problem when it's not even remotely true, and this is playing into the GOP's strategy. How scientific theories on the origin of Covid evolved Don’t Call the Brazil Insurrection ‘Anti-Democratic’: The new threat isn’t fascists. It’s dupes who think they’re fighting for democracy. Did anti-vaxxer deaths from COVID swing elections? The Guardian tries to explain why Oxford's experimental traffic reduction scheme is attracting so many conspiracy theorists, including Jordan Peterson, Laurence Fox and GB News' Neil Oliver. [https://apnews.com/article/technology-politics-michael-flynn-business-48b079e6b87cd9ebcf45d9e24d7861b7 On the anniversary of the January 6th Capital riots. Twitter has removed the ban on] Michael Flynn. [https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146841362/house-speaker-vote-struggle-100-years-explainer The last time the House struggled to elect a Speaker was 100 years ago, in 1923. Here's what happened then]. [https://www.dw.com/en/rich-people-billionaires-emissions/a-64146449 Questions are being asked about the carbon footprint of some of richest people in the world, including private jets and multimillion-euro yachts. This is coming back from new research which shows the vast carbon footprint of such people.]