Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Biden AG Nominee Merrick Garland Wrote in 70s That Song About ‘Military Rape’ Was ‘Hilarious’

President Joe Biden’s attorney general nominee Merrick Garland as a college student at Harvard University wrote in a review of a musical that a song about rape was one of the play’s “hilarious group numbers.”

In a Harvard Crimson article published January 22, 1976, he wrote in a critique of the play (emphasis added):

A combination of factors, however, keep the vocal problems from becoming disastrous. Most important are the Jones-Schmidt songs themselves, simple and engaging melodies with a few tender ballads like “Try to Remember” and some hilarious group numbers like “it Depends on what You Pay,” which provides a shopping list of rapes for sale (e.g. “the military rape–it’s done with drums and a great brass band.”)

The play was “The Fantasticks,” performed by an all-freshmen cast. It is about a nearly 20-year-old college student and a 16-year-old girl, who are young lovers.

The article was submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 26, 2020, as part of a questionnaire Garland filled out for consideration by the committee next week. Question 12 asks the nominee to list published writings — books, articles, reports, letters to the editor, etc. — and public statements.

The song about rape has come under public scrutiny in the past for its lyrics, which include:

We’ve the obvious open schoolboy rape,
With little mandolins and perhaps a cape.
The rape by coach; it’s little in request.
The rape by day, but the rape by night is best.

Just try to see it.
And you will soon agree, señors,
Why
Invite regret,
When you can get the sort of rape
You’ll never ever forget.

You can get the rape emphatic.
You can get the rape polite.
You can get the rape with Indians:
A very charming sight.
You can get the rape on horseback;
They’ll all say it’s new and gay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
It depends on what you
Pay.

The song’s lyricist, Tom Jones, made changes to the song in 2006 when the play was revived in 2006.

“For years I didn’t think and then gradually it began to seep into my consciousness. My consciousness was raised. I really began to think, you know, rape isn’t funny,” Jones told NPR in 2006. The word “rape” was later changed to “abduction.”

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Twitter Will Enforce a ‘Strike System’ Against Coronavirus Vaccine ‘Misinformation’

Social media giant Twitter announced this week that it will begin labeling tweets that share “misleading information” about the coronavirus vaccine and will implement a strike system for repeat offenders of the “misinformation policy.”

The Verge reports that Twitter announced on Monday that it will begin labeling tweets that share what the company decides is misleading information about coronavirus vaccines. The labels will link to relevant information from government bodies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a system allowing for five strikes will be implemented for users that repeatedly violate its misinformation policies.

Repeated violations of the policies could lead to Twitter locking or permanently suspending accounts. The new labels are similar to Facebook’s anti-misinformation banners which were launched as part of Facebook’s attempts to curb what it considers coronavirus misinformation last December.

Twitter plans to apply the new labels through a combination of human and automated review systems and will begin the rollout with English language content first. The criteria for labeling coronavirus posts have been outlined in Twitter’s misleading information policy but overall Twitter is focusing on five categories of false or misleading information, according to the Verge:

Misinformation about the nature of the virus
Misinformation about the efficacy of treatments and preventive measures
Misinformation about regulations, restrictions, and exemptions in association with health advisories
Misinformation about the prevalence of the virus and the risk of infection or death
Misleading affiliations (for example, claiming to be a doctor or public health official)

Labels will also play a major part in the new strike system. Twitter has stated that a tweet deemed harmful by the company counts as one strike. A tweet that adds to a larger conspiracy connected to the virus that Twitter deems dangerous, such as the idea that vaccines include microchips to track people, may also be deleted by the platform.

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‘Follow the Science’ With Dr. Fauci

No matter what we are told by the “experts,” science is constantly evolving and is rarely ever as settled as those in power want us to believe. Doctors are often forced to make consequential decisions and recommendations based on partial or incomplete sets of data and information. Perhaps no one knows this better than Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

According to Fauci, it is now safe for schools to reopen. All it took was the passing of President Biden’s “COVID relief bill,” which will likely be signed into law this week. “As we now have the relief bill signed at $1.9 trillion — a lot of that is going into addressing COVID-19 including help to the schools to allow them to more safely bring the kids back,” Fauci said on Monday. Considering that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 95 percent of the money appropriated from the bill to fund schools will not be spent this year, there was no reason for Fauci to present its passing as a prerequisite for reopening schools — unless of course we fool ourselves into believing that he is motivated by science, and not by whatever the Biden administration tells him to say.

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Twitter sues Texas AG to avoid investigation into its censorship practices

On Monday, Twitter filed a complaint in court against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who launched an investigation into the platform’s content censorship policies. Twitter argues that Paxton launched the investigation in retaliation to the de-platforming of former president Trump, which the company ironically claims is an abuse of power.

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

“Twitter seeks to stop AG Paxton from unlawfully abusing his authority as the highest law-enforcement officer of the State of Texas to intimidate, harass, and target Twitter in retaliation for Twitter’s exercise of its First Amendment rights,” the company wrote in the court filing.

Following the suspension of Trump’s accounts on most mainstream social media platforms after the Jan 6 riot, Paxton launched an investigation into the moderation policies at Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon.

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