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http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/24/caitlyn-jenner-halloween-costume-sparks-social-media-outrage-.html

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...een-costume-labeled-817515?utm_source=twitter

It's nowhere near October, but one ensemble is already on track to be named the most controversial Halloween costume of 2015.

Social media users were out in full force on Monday criticizing several Halloween retailers for offering a Caitlyn Jenner costume reminiscent of the former-athlete's Vanity Fair cover earlier this year.

While Jenner's supporters condemned the costume as "transphobic" and "disgusting" on Twitter, Spirit Halloween, a retailer that carries the costume, defended the getup.

"At Spirit Halloween, we create a wide range of costumes that are often based upon celebrities, public figures, heroes and superheroes," said Lisa Barr, senior director of marking at Spirit Halloween. "We feel that Caitlyn Jenner is all of the above and that she should be celebrated. The Caitlyn Jenner costume reflects just that."
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Ahriman said:
Source.

Despite how much we might laugh at indians and their designated proclivities, I'd say that 'muricans shouldn't really laugh all that much...
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It probably is very much superior to using plain old toilet paper, but I think (one reason) Americans won't do it is because it's just a part of the American experience to have smug Europeans talk down to you about how backwards and inferior your culture is, and so it's often hard to separate that from genuinely useful information
 
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www.cwbchicago.com

Cops: Arsonist set Lakeview apartment ablaze on Facebook Live |

Sharrod Hill and the beginnings of the apartment fire are seen in Facebook Live images. | Facebook UPDATE: In their report, police said that fires had been set in the apartment living room and on a mattress in the rear bedroom. The victim told police that approximately $500 was missing from her...
www.cwbchicago.com www.cwbchicago.com

A Lakeview man is facing attempted arson charges after he allegedly set a woman’s apartment on fire and then posted the video to Facebook Live.

Police and fire personnel were called to the woman’s apartment in the 1000 block of West Dakin around noontime Saturday after a man reported an apartment fire. Moments later, the woman who rents the unit called the Town Hall Police District desk to report that she was watching her apartment burn via video.

Sharrod Hill, 21, who lives on the same block as the victim was taken into custody by arriving officers. Police did not detail the kind of relationship that exists between Hill and the victim, if any.

“Everyone, I want you guys to see this,” Hill says as the 17-second Facebook Live video begins.

Swinging the door open, Hill continues: “Her house is on fire right now, so she better come do something.”

The fire caused limited damage to the residence, which is located near the Sheridan Red Line station.

Prosecutors charged Hill with one felony count of attempted arson. He was due in bond court on Monday.
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https://www.spectator.com.au/2019/04/roxane-gays-toxic-feminism/

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Here's the highlight reel, in a nutshell - CH Sommers continues to be the least objectionable feminist around, and Roxane Gay continues to be the same kind of exceptional that once claimed she spent 45 minutes explaining to a minimum-wage drone and McDonald's why "the gender binary was a patriarchal construct", after the drone asked if the happy meal toy was for a boy or girl.

Dear Roxane - If we live in a "patriarchal society", the binary is a given, because to have "patriarchy", one sex must be "fathers" in order to assume the role of the "fathers" in a "society lead by fathers."
 
LinuxVoid said:
There are butt towels, I don't really see the issue though. A good bidet should clean you completely, if you have fecal matter left on your butt, then your bidet is crap.
So using a towel should be identical to using a towel after shower.
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Really?

Because, this is bullshit(no pun intended, but I was delighted nonetheless). When you wash your hands, do you just spray water at them then dry them off? Fuck no, because if you did that they're just dirty and wet instead of just dirty. So I'm supposed to believe firing water at my asshole is just going to scrub it clean? No, it'll take off any loose shit particles but without some scrubbing, just like with hand washing (Which also typically uses soap) that shit(is this a pun?) ain't clean. So yeah, your post-bidet ass towel is getting crusty shit on it.

Dishwashers have to add some grit to achieve some abrasion, otherwise the water jets are useless. So unless you weirdos are sandblasting your ass while bideting it, you're fooling yourselves to think you've got extra clean assholes. Your asshole is just dirty and wet instead of just dirty.

Also, doesn't that water... like... splash around? What keeps the poop off the bidet spray nozzle? Is it a completely separate fixture? Does the floor around the thing tend to get wet?
 
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https://actionnetwork.org/petitions...mmigrant-extremist-on-your-ai-ethics-council/

Today, more than 180 Google employees are speaking out against the appointment of Kay Coles James to its Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC), a Board setup to inform Google’s decisions around Artificial Intelligence and other technologies.

James is the President of the Heritage Foundation, and is vocally anti-immigrant, anti-trans, and anti-LGBTQ.

AI technology can be used to target marginalized groups and violate human rights in an automated fashion at a mass scale. It’s unthinkable that Google would put someone with such extremist views in a position to influence technology that can be used to discriminate and cause harm.

We need to send a strong message to Google leadership right now to make sure James is removed from their AI Board. Google employees are speaking out, and one member of the board already resigned over the controversy. We can win this but we need to turn up the pressure.

Sign the petition calling on Kent Walker, Google’s Senior Vice President for Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer, and all Google leadership: “Take action against transphobia and hate: remove Kay Cole James from your AI ethics council.”
 
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Corbin Dallas Multipass said:
Really?

Because, this is bullshit(no pun intended, but I was delighted nonetheless). When you wash your hands, do you just spray water at them then dry them off? Fuck no, because if you did that they're just dirty and wet instead of just dirty. So I'm supposed to believe firing water at my asshole is just going to scrub it clean? No, it'll take off any loose shit particles but without some scrubbing, just like with hand washing (Which also typically uses soap) that shit(is this a pun?) ain't clean. So yeah, your post-bidet ass towel is getting crusty shit on it.

Dishwashers have to add some grit to achieve some abrasion, otherwise the water jets are useless. So unless you weirdos are sandblasting your ass while bideting it, you're fooling yourselves to think you've got extra clean assholes. Your asshole is just dirty and wet instead of just dirty.

Also, doesn't that water... like... splash around? What keeps the poop off the bidet spray nozzle? Is it a completely separate fixture? Does the floor around the thing tend to get wet?
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I have one. It works. You dry off with toilet paper. All the water stays in the toilet. You have to clean it a few times a year, just like you have to clean everything else on the inside of your toilet a few times a year.

All that extra shit you came up with is irrelevant nonsense.
 
Weppers said:
I have one. It works. You dry off with toilet paper. All the water stays in the toilet. You have to clean it a few times a year, just like you have to clean everything else on the inside of your toilet a few times a year.

All that extra shit you came up with is irrelevant nonsense.
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Hey man, if getting your ass wet before wiping it really makes your day, go for it. I'm just saying people acting like water contacting something = clean are being silly.
 
Did the media botch the Russia story? A conversation with Matt Taibbi.

“In purely journalistic terms, this is an epic disaster.”

This part stood out:

I don’t understand this notion about “making the press gun shy.” What journalist feels gun shy about a story he or she believes is important? This is all backwards. If you think there was an improper relationship between Trump and the Russian government, go and prove it out, and then publish it. The reason there’s all this criticism now is because so many implications and insinuations were made ahead of the proof.

There are a million things to write about, if Donald Trump is your focus. One of the reasons I was never terribly interested in Trump’s personal dealings is because I thought he was a symptom, not a cause, of a larger political movement. This was obvious during the campaign. There was tremendous anger out there, on both sides of the aisle. If you were paying attention to Trump the candidate, he did what all good con artists do — he read his mark.

If the final report has damaging details in it, nobody would be surprised, I don’t think. But the central question of whether or not Trump conspired with a foreign country to fix the election seems to have been decided. If there are other details in there that are nasty but not criminal, sure, let’s talk about it, but frankly, I just don’t find it all that interesting. Who needs more reasons not to vote for the guy? That question was settled for me a long time ago. He’s already got so many personal scandals out there that eclipse by miles anything we’ve ever seen in a presidential candidate.
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Even if you dislike Trump, the media failed by presuming guilt without the necessary proof, which is a violation of journalistic standards. All they had were a bunch of bits of details but nothing that linked Trump to election fraud. The media failed to provide the necessary proof, because there was none, but they ran with the narrative anyway.

But it's more than just the financial incentives of running what seems like the perfect reality TV show; it's also about ideological incentives (a certain non-Trump story from Rolling Stone being the Platonic model). Illing, when he's not engaging in apologetics, gets at that:
"A lot of people simply did not want to believe that Trump was a legitimate president, that someone this vulgar and this dishonest could win a presidential election. And I think that disbelief and the emotional devastation of his election colored a lot of our judgments."

Even this is a weak-ass apology. It's also about explicitly ideological hiring and journalistic activism. Neither of those things should be any more common than extremely rare in the press, but they're not only common place, they're default. The Russian collusion story is what it would have looked like if the Birther movement had control of much of the media. There seems to be a certain segment of the population that sees "My candidate didn't win" as a rebuke to them, personally, and can't adjust to the idea that people just... disagree.

There's also no incentive against the press assuming guilty until proven innocent either. Until the calculus changes, expect the state of journalism to remain in the toilet.
 
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www.dn.se

Johan Schück: Fler nya svenskar ger ökad chans att klara välfärden - DN.SE

Krönika. Det går bra för Sverige, jämfört med de flesta länder. Samtidigt växer befolkningen vilket i längden är till fördel.
www.dn.se www.dn.se
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Dagens Nyheter 2015: The birth rate is too low! We need more immigrants in order to save the Swedish welfare state!

www.dn.se

Vill du göra en stor insats för klimatet – skaffa inte barn - DN.SE

Skaffa färre barn för miljöns skull?Det är det mest effektiva sättet att minska sin miljöpåverkan, visar forskning från Lunds universitet.
www.dn.se www.dn.se
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Dagens Nyheter 2019: Don't have kids! The more kids you have, the more you contribute to climate change! (But we will still advocate for lax immigrant laws)

I sometimes think Swedish mainstream media couldn't possibly become more shameless, but they manage to prove me wrong every time.
 
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Tahoma said:
Who woulda thought that murder stories, arson stories, more collusion garbage, and other shit is only a footnote in the grander How To Get Shit Off Of Your Sphinc thread?
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One of these things is an activity we've all participated in.
 
Chicongo elected a Wakandan carpet muncher in a runoff against another angry black woman.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/po...cago-mayoral-election-to-replace-rahm-emanuel
Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot was elected Chicago mayor on Tuesday, becoming the first black woman and first openly gay person to lead the nation's third-largest city.

Lightfoot, 56, defeated Toni Preckwinkle, who served in the City Council for 19 years before becoming Cook County Board president. Lightfoot has never been elected to public office; she and her wife have one daughter.

She emerged as the surprising leader in the first round of voting in February when 14 candidates were on the ballot to succeed Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who decided against running for a third term.

Lightfoot promised to rid City Hall of corruption and help low-income and working-class people she said had been "left behind and ignored" by Chicago's political ruling class. It was a message that resonated with voters weary of political scandal and insider deals, and who said the city's leaders for too long have invested in downtown at the expense of neighborhoods.

Chicago will become the largest U.S. city to elect a black woman as mayor when Lightfoot is sworn in May 20. She will join seven other black women currently serving as mayors in major U.S. cities, including Atlanta and New Orleans.

The vote to succeed Emanuel, came just days after Chicago state prosecutors stunned the nation by opting to drop charges against actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of faking a hate-crime attack that implicated supporters of President Trump. Prosecutors have said they did not intend to vindicate Smollett, but the actor publicly claimed exoneration -- leading comedians to mock him, and police unions and the mayor's office to cry foul.

Lightfoot seized on outrage over the deadly shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald -- at the hands of white officer Jason Van Dyke -- to launch her campaign. That was even before Emanuel announced he wouldn't seek a third term amid criticism for initially resisting calls to release video of the shooting.

"I'm not a person who decided I would climb the ladder of a corrupt political party," Lightfoot said during a debate last month. "I don't hold the title of committeeman, central committeeman, boss of the party."

That was a not-so-veiled reference to Preckwinkle, who also leads the county's Democratic Party and had countered that her opponent lacked the necessary experience for the job.

"This is not an entry-level job," Preckwinkle said repeatedly during the campaign. "It's easy to talk about change. It's hard to actually do it. And that's been my experience — being a change maker, a change agent, transforming institutions and communities."
J
oyce Ross, 64, a certified nursing assistant living on the West Side, said she cast her ballot Tuesday for Lightfoot. Ross also said she believed Lightfoot would be better able to clean up the police department and curb the city's violence.

In addition, she said she was bothered by Preckwinkle's association with longtime Alderman Ed Burke, who was indicted earlier this year on charges he tried to shake down a restaurant owner who wanted to build in his ward.

"My momma always said birds of a feather flock together," Ross said.

The campaign between the two women got off to a contentious start, with Preckwinkle's advertising focusing on Lightfoot's work as a partner at Mayer Brown, one of the nation's largest law firms, and tagging her as a "wealthy corporate lawyer."

Preckwinkle also tried to cast Lightfoot as an insider for working in police oversight posts under Emanuel and police oversight, procurement and emergency communications posts under former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

In one ad, Preckwinkle criticized Lightfoot's oversight of emergency communications in 2004 when a fire killed four children. A judge ordered Lightfoot to preserve 911 tapes after questions were raised about how the emergency call was handled. The ad noted some of the tapes were destroyed, prompting the judge to rebuke Lightfoot. The ad sparked a backlash from the family of three of the children killed, with their sister accusing Preckwinkle of trying to take advantage of her family's tragedy.

Lightfoot also responded by scolding her opponent for being negative while also airing ads pointing out Preckwinkle's connection to powerful local Democrats, including one under federal indictment.

Preckwinkle spent much of her time during the campaign answering for her ties to Chicago's political establishment. She and her supporters asserted her rise to Democratic Party leadership did not hinder her ability to oppose policies promoted by the city's ever-powerful mayors.

"My whole career has been about change, and change is action and results, not simply words," said Preckwinkle, who said her experience made her better positioned to lead a city with financial problems and poorer neighborhoods hit by gun violence.

Despite the barbs on the campaign trail, the two advanced similar ideas to boost the city's finances.

Both candidates expressed support for a casino in Chicago and for changing the state's income tax system to a graduated tax, in which higher earners would be taxed at a higher rate.

Preckwinkle said that while downtown development should remain a priority, it should not be at the cost of neighborhood growth. She promoted additional investments in neighborhood schools, affordable housing and criminal justice reform.

Lightfoot said that as mayor, she would focus on investing in neighborhoods on the West and South Sides and bring transparency and accountability to City Hall. She added she also wanted to end City Hall corruption and restore people's faith in government.

"The machine's been in decline for a while, but it still has a grip on certain things," Lightfoot said. "This is our opportunity to send it to its grave, once and for all."
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