“The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base,” Zuckerberg said during one such forum on June 18, according to a report this week from . “Maybe ‘a little’ is an understatement...If we want to actually do a good job of serving people, [we have to take] into account that there are different views on different things, and that if someone disagrees with a view, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re hateful or have bad intent.” ... "That's not invented by social media — you just see those reflexes mirrored in social media, they’re not created by social media," the executive added. "It's why tabloids do better than the [Financial Times], and it's also a human thing. People respond to engaging emotion much more than they do to, you know, dry coverage. ...This wasn't invented 15 years ago when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook."

The fat bears have grown exceptionally fat, even for fat bears. A prodigious, record-breaking salmon run in a major river feeding Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve provided the brown bears — who are livestreamed on explore.org — an abundance of fish this year. The bears munch the skin, red flesh, and brains of the salmon throughout the summer, amassing fat stores to survive their long winter famine (aka hibernation). On Friday, Katmai and wildlife webcam operators explore.org released the 2020 Fat Bear Week bracket, comprised of 12 bears. The 2020 competition, which starts next week and is voted on by the public, is robust. "The competition is going to be between the fat bears and the really fat bears," said Mike Fitz, the resident naturalist for explore.org and a former park ranger at Katmai. "All the bears are fat this year," he said.

My family picnic could use that kind of . . .

Neoliberal culture has no idea what to do with losers or has-beens who don’t present themselves as saved, reformed, or at least rehabbed. As Robin James writes, “Neoliberal melancholia is the inability to adapt to crises and transform them into healthy, social opportunities.”14 Sean Young isn’t making meaning for any mythical audience. She isn’t “healed,” or triumphant, nor is she making anyone feel that society has progressed into a less sexist, less exploitative version of itself. No, Young has chosen instead to restage her greatest humiliation and end with an unadorned and confrontational gaze back at the tabloid camera that had defined her life.

More than a year after Amazon, New York developers lose second major battle in the AOC era. (Ignore Politico’s developer-friendly tutting and celebrate the left’s steady advance into the great halls of New York)

The Palm Beach County state attorney abandoned Thursday morning what was left of the criminal case against Patriots owner Bob Kraft, declining to pursue any further the charges against Kraft related to the Orchids of Asia prostitution bust in February 2019. So that’s how it all fizzles out, all of that, the whole big salacious scandal—piddly little misdemeanor charges quietly toggling from open to closed on the clerk’s office case-tracking web portal... So what was once the explosive story of one of the NFL’s most powerful owners—and, by extension, one of the handful of most powerful people in North American sports—involved in the genuine abomination of human trafficking has instead turned out to be just another story of reckless and illegal policing. The collection of video evidence was sleazy and improper. The self-glorifying talk about thwarting human traffickers was entirely trumped-up bullshit, almost certainly utilized from the beginning in order to allow police to overstep in their investigation. The giveaway there, beyond the utter lack of evidence of trafficking, was how authorities treated the people they’d referred to as “victims” of what State Attorney Dave Aronberg described as “evil in our midst”: The therapist who allegedly treated Kraft was charged with felony prostitution and eight more misdemeanor counts of offering to commit prostitution, and had tens of thousands of dollars of personal savings seized from a safe deposit box. The difference between this instance of police abuse and all the others is that this time, in the extremely narrow case of solicitation charges against Robert Kraft, the police were thwarted. It happened because this time the person they tried to railroad is rich as hell. Compare the results in Kraft’s case to the charges filed against the women who worked at the massage parlor who were not rich as hell. Lei Chen, 45, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of offering to commit prostitution, per the Palm Beach Post, and the cases against Shen Mingbi, 60, Hua Zhang, 59, and Lei Wang, 41, are still open, according to online court records.

Fred Perry does not support and is in no way affiliated with the Proud Boys. Read our statement to find out the steps we are taking to end that association and why we stopped selling the Black/Yellow/Yellow Fred Perry Shirt in the USA & Canada.

A state investigation into the country's largest natural gas utility is steadily piecing together details of how the company may have cloaked its advocacy by recruiting local politicians and minority groups to promote fossil fuels at California ports, according to people familiar with the probe and documents obtained by POLITICO. Southern California Gas was already facing accusations of charging customers for its advocacy at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, which have long worked to reduce their air pollution. But public misrepresentations of campaign efforts may be against the law, and state utility watchdogs are examining whether SoCalGas acted unlawfully in its lobbying efforts as the company fights the state's transition away from oil and gas. The Public Advocates Office, an independent branch of the California Public Utilities Commission, launched an investigation last year when it found SoCalGas spent ratepayer dollars to start a group opposed to cities phasing out or banning natural gas in new buildings. The company "is working to undermine state policy through lobbying and other efforts to misinform the public and encourage the continued usage of natural gas," the PAO wrote this summer. The PAO probe has since widened to include other SoCalGas activities, including the company's relationship with Imprenta Communications Group, a public affairs firm focused on issues in minority communities. Three years ago, SoCalGas and Imprenta recruited Latino and Asian American politicians to support natural gas-fueled "near-zero emission" trucks, rather than electric ones favored by environmentalists. Newly obtained internal company emails show SoCalGas worked with Imprenta throughout 2017 to enlist politicians of color ahead of a key climate vote by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest in the country, as they sought to reduce emissions from ships, trucks and other infrastructure. The company ultimately scored a win as port officials exempted natural gas trucks from a fee levied on other trucks this year. Officials also allowed port users to meet stricter rules for new trucks in 2023 by buying natural gas vehicles, which environmentalists wanted to be banned entirely.

Police in Vietnam said they found about 320,000 recycled used condoms that were being repackaged as new, local media reported on Thursday, according to the Associated Press. Market inspectors in the Binh Duong province raided a factory near Ho Chi Minh City, where they discovered used condoms being repackaged to be sold at the market. An inspector said the factory's 34-year-old owner, a woman, confessed they purchased the condoms from someone else, the state-owned Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, according to the AP.

A Canadian whose widely-publicized account of conducting executions for ISIS fueled public outrage and debate in the House of Commons has been charged with allegedly making it up. Shehroze Chaudhry, 25, who has portrayed himself as a former ISIS member living freely in Canada, was charged with faking his involvement in the terrorist group. The Burlington, Ont. resident is to appear in court on Nov. 16 to face a terrorism hoax charge. He declined the comment.

PENINSULAR MALAYSIA (AP) — Jum’s words tumble out over the phone, his voice growing ever more frantic. Between sobs, he says he’s trapped on a Malaysian plantation run by government-owned...

The controversy over a white professor passing herself off as Black reveals an underlying contradiction in how we view race, Peter C. Herman writes.

On Saturday, Proud Boys from around the country plan to rally in Portland, a city the hate group has torn through repeatedly since 2017. Update: Just after this story was published, news broke that Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency in Portland for the rally. The move puts Oregon State Police and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in charge of rally response, circumventing Portland's ban on tear gas.​ After waging a pitched political battle on the streets for years, their aims have become all too predictable: to provoke confrontations with counterprotesters, blame any resulting violence on the left, and press for further repression and retaliation against those they consider their political adversaries. While antifascists stand at the top of that list, journalists, Black Lives Matter activists, anti-capitalists and anyone organizing and protesting peacefully for economic and racial justice are included as well. After months of nationwide protests and the looming possibility of a contested election, Americans are anxious about the road ahead. In a nationwide survey recently conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, 77% of respondents reported that they are concerned about civil unrest. Sixty-one percent said they feel the country is on the wrong track.

Nice to see what Demi Adejuyigbe is up to.

Kentucky state Representative Attica Scott was arrested Thursday during protests in Louisville after the grand jury declined to charge three officers for Breonna Taylor's death. Scott was arrested at First Unitarian Church in downtown Louisville. Although the city had been placed under a curfew which began at 9:00 p.m. EDT, churches were exempt from the deadline. Some protesters, including Scott, were arrested while trying to enter the church. In a tweet, State Representative Josie Raymond called for the release of Scott and community organizer Shameka Parrish Wright.

Ron Paul, a former presidential candidate and a pioneering figure in the libertarian movement, was hospitalized Friday after an apparent medical incident during a livestream on his YouTube channel. Paul, 85, was talking about federal stimulus money when his speech began to slur.

The Trump administration has finalized a plan to open previously protected areas of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska to logging.

Invasive test-taking software has become mandatory in many places, and some companies are retaliating against those who speak out. As a privacy-minded computer science student preparing to start his first year at Miami University, Erik Johnson was concerned this fall when he learned that two of his professors would require him to use the digital proctoring software Proctorio for their classes. The software turns students’ computers into powerful invigilators—webcams monitor eye and head movements, microphones record noise in the room, and algorithms log how often a test taker moves their mouse, scrolls up and down on a page, and pushes keys. The software flags any behavior its algorithm deems suspicious for later viewing by the class instructor. In the end, Johnson never had to use Proctorio. Not long after he began airing his concerns on Twitter and posted a simple analysis of the software’s code on Pastebin, he discovered that his IP address was banned from accessing the company’s services. He also received a direct message from Proctorio’s CEO, Mike Olsen, who demanded that he take the Pastebin posts down, according to a copy of the message Johnson shared with Motherboard. Johnson refused to do so, and is now waiting to see if Proctorio will follow up with more concrete legal action, as it has done to other critics in recent weeks.

Hollers are sort of like the yodels of the American South.

Over the past week, Trump declined to commit to a peaceful, orderly transition of power, no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election, declaring at one point: “We’re going to have to see what happens.” To horrified voters, onlookers, and the Democratic opposition, it was another clear instance of the sitting president openly telegraphing his plans to seize power, something some administration officials fear will soon take form within the federal government and among major party organs. But to Trump, it was… funny as hell.