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Cancel Culture is “Beneficial for Social and Racial Justice”, Says Training Course for Academics at 100 U.K. Universities

Cancel culture has “benefits”, academics at almost 100 U.K. universities have been told as part of an anti-racism course. The Telegraph has the story.

The Open University has devised a training programme titled Union Black, backed by £500,000 of Santander investment, which offers teaching staff lessons including “white people have a responsibility to solve the problem of racism”.

Academics taking the course are urged to become “active allies” in advancing racial justice, course materials reveal, and taught about the advantages of “cancelling” people and institutions.

Material in one online module states: “In relation to racial/social justice, cancel culture has been shown to realise benefits.”

Examples of these benefits in the material include “holding people or entities accountable for immoral or unacceptable behaviour” and “promoting collective action to achieve social justice and cultural change through social pressure”.

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Washington Starts Blame Game Over Defeat In Ukraine

The New York Times, here via Yahoo, has some rather weird piece over alleged lack of intelligence on Ukrainian warplanes:

U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has provided near-daily updates of Russia’s invasion on social media; viral video posts have shown the effectiveness of Western weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces; and the Pentagon has regularly held briefings on developments in the war.

But despite the flow of all this news to the public, U.S. intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures, according to current and former officials.

Governments often withhold information from the public for operational security. But these information gaps within the U.S. government could make it more difficult for the Biden administration to decide how to target military aid as it sends billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine.
…
Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, testified at a Senate hearing last month that “it was very hard to tell” how much additional aid Ukraine could absorb.

She added: “We have, in fact, more insight, probably, on the Russian side than we do on the Ukrainian side.”

One key question is what measures Zelenskyy intends to call for in Donbas. Ukraine faces a strategic choice there: withdraw its forces or risk having them encircled by Russia.

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Google plots to curb the effectiveness of ad-blockers

It’s common for corporations to take actions that ultimately are to the detriment of most consumers and Google is one of the world’s biggest. The tech giant is making changes to its Chrome Web Store, specifically an end to supporting Manifest v2 (Mv2) extensions, which will make it more difficult for adblockers to operate.

Currently, Mv2 supports all extensions on the Chrome Web Store, including ad-blocker extensions such as uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc. Ad-blockers are extremely popular features of the Chrome Web Store with millions of currently active users due to their functionality in blocking ads and maintaining privacy. However, starting in January 2023, Google will shift from Mv2 to Mv3, making most of these popular features obsolete.

The shift wouldn’t make it entirely impossible to adapt existing extensions; however, Mv3 would certainly reduce the functionality of ad-blockers and limit innovation in the ad blocking space.

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Factcheckers? AP Issues Correction After Saying Last Week It Interviewed Radio Host … Who Died In 2020

Everybody gets something wrong every once in a while.

Even the Associated Press. But the international wire service is often considered the arbiter of truth and has a website that features “fact-checking, accountability journalism and misinformation coverage from AP journalists around the globe.”

The AP published a piece on Thursday about a new group led by prominent liberals buying up Spanish-speaking radio stations.

“The Latino Media Network, a startup founded by two political strategists who worked for President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, reached a $60 million deal to acquire 18 AM and FM stations in ten U.S. cities from Televisa/Univision,” the AP reported. “The agreement announced June 3 still needs Federal Communications Commission approval.”

In the piece, the reporter claimed to interview one prominent Hispanic, Martha Flores, who served for years as a host of a show on Radio Mambi.

The only problem is Flores died in 2020.

In one correction, the AP wrote: “This story was first published on June 9, 2022. It was updated on June 11, 2022 to remove comments erroneously attributed to Martha Flores, former host of a show on Radio Mambi in Miami, one of the stations in the proposed deal. Flores died in 2020. The comments were made by another woman. This version of the story removes those comments.”

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Man Told Officers He Set Satanic Temple on Fire as ‘Hate Crime

A fire was set at the Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts, late Friday night, and a man from Chelsea was arrested on charges including arson, police said.

The suspected arsonist described his own actions as a “hate crime,” according to the Salem Police Department.

Daniel Damien Lucey, 42, was arrested at the scene of the fire, Salem police confirmed Saturday. Lucey faces multiple charges in connection with the fire at the Satanic Temple on Bridge Street.

Several people called 911 about the fire around 10 p.m. Friday. Police found the front porch up in flames when they arrived and tried to put it out with fire extinguishers, but were unsuccessful.

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Rents across U.S. rise above $2,000 a month for the first time ever

Kim Drotar is a public school teacher who rents an apartment in St Louis. But she doesn’t have the best neighbors.

“They’re 19, 20 and have parties and bang on my door in the middle of the night and, you know, just to be jerks,” she says.

Drotar’s a single mom with a daughter in 5th grade. She’s been trying to find a house she can afford to buy.

“I just want some place where she can ride her bike and make friends with the neighbors and play with the kids and they can come over.”

But she keeps getting outbid when she makes offers. And now with mortgage rates up sharply she says she’s just been priced out completely. Meanwhile, continuing to rent is getting harder to afford, too.

Kim Drotar says her rent rising by 22% this year is making it harder for her to save for a down payment on a house.

“My rent is increasing 22% this year,” she says. “It’s harder and harder to save more for a down payment.”

A new report from Redfin shows that nationally listed rents for available apartments rose 15% from a year ago. And the median listed rent for an available apartment rose above $2,000 a month for the first time.

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US lawmakers reach deal on gun control

Members of the US Senate have announced an agreement on a bipartisan deal that could mark the nation’s most significant gun control legislation in three decades. The news comes as lawmakers are facing increasing pressure to find ways to reduce gun violence amid a series of mass shootings.

The legislation will include funding to help states implement ‘red flag’ laws, which enable police to take weapons away from people who are deemed to pose a risk to others or themselves, Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), one of the lead negotiators, said on Sunday. It also will feature billions of dollars in new funding for mental health services, including a nationwide network of clinics, as well as school safety initiatives.

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PayPal and Etsy ban evolutionary biologist Dr. Colin Wright

Dr. Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist, has been banned from PayPal and Etsy. The online financial service and e-commerce platform did not specify why he was banned.

At the end of May, Dr. Wright provided an expert declaration for the Women’s Liberation Front, which is working to protect single-sex prisons.

“The only factual, objective meaning of the words ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are as references to adult human females, and adult human males, respectively,” Wright wrote in the declaration.

“From an objective standpoint, a person’s subjective feelings do not define or change their sex, which is factually and statically either male or female, determined before birth, and defined by objective reproductive anatomy.”

Dr. Wright announced the PayPal ban on Twitter, saying that he used the service to receive both recurring and one-time donations from his supporters.

PayPal wrote to Dr. Wright that, “after a review, we have decided to permanently limit your account as there was a change in your business model or your business model was considered risky.”

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