Why is Trump’s son-in-law meeting with “presidential candidate” Kanye West instead of bringing peace to the Mideast and saving America from the coronavirus?

Last week, The Satanic Temple (TST) introduced “the Satanic Abortion Ritual”—a ritual designed to provide religious support and comfort for women who’ve decided to get an abortion. But the ritual has legal consequences as we all spiritual ones: TST claims that if abortion is incorporated into a religious ritual, then states with Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) laws must provide abortion on demand for Satanic women. Mandatory waiting periods or requirements such as reading anti-abortion literature, listening to fetal heartbeats, or viewing sonograms would violate the religious freedom of Satanic women by disrupting their sacred ritual. As Jane Essex, Spokesperson for TST’s Religious Reproductive Rights Campaign puts it, “It would be unconstitutional to require a waiting period before receiving holy communion. It would be illegal to demand Muslims seek counseling prior to Ramadan.” Is TST sincere about sacralizing abortion or is this just a canny legal stratagem? And could this actually corner states with RFRA laws into granting abortion on demand?

A few years back, an innocent Facebook post asked, "Was there ever such a thing as a San Francisco accent?" A long, long debate ensued. Many claimed that it absolutely does (or did) and originated in the old working-class "South of the Slot" neighborhood (now SoMa) and sounded a little like "the Bronx with a twist," others were adamant that the fabled San Francisco accent just doesn't exist. Some 1,200 comments later and everyone was still confused.

It should be no surprise Kamala Harris has been chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate. From her career-long pursuit of right-wing goals to her flexibility with the truth, the two are remarkably similar politicians.

One of the nation's worst-run Democratic parties has a veto power that should be taken away.

Students who die while attending Boston University will be able to undergo an official process to obtain a posthumous degree, starting this Fall. The University released the policy June 12, but did not make an announcement or notify the BU community otherwise. BU spokesperson Colin Riley said the release of these guidelines is not related to the pandemic. Meetings regarding creation of the policy extends back to January of this year, according to Riley. The University has issued posthumous degrees before, but did not instate an official policy until this summer. “There were proposals to formalize this, sadly, when a student passes away, particularly if they’ve been here years,” Riley said. “It’s unfortunate timing. People may misconstrue.” While the discussion has been ongoing since before the coronavirus upended campus life, the process was lengthy and deliberative until it produced an official result in June. A policy for posthumous degrees has been in development at BU since at least 2013, Riley said.

(Spoilers for Book of the Long Sun) The title is a multiplex pun, so typical of Gene Wolfe. The Book of the Long Sun (1993-6) can only closely follow, or mirror The Book of the New Sun (1980-3). And just as Severian, the narrator of the first Book, is the New Son of God, a man becoming Christlike if not Christ himself returned, so Patera Silk, Wolfe’s new protagonist, is the Long Son, the product of a virgin birth, long (tall) in physical and moral stature. And the renovation of the Sun is again implied; and the story, in four volumes, is very long, and is not over yet. Thus Wolfe in six words summarises his second tetralogy; and the critic can add that The Book of the Long Sun is, very likely, the most significant work of SF to be published in the 1990s – the most precise, the most sustained, and the most profound. It is a tale of physical, religious, and philosophical exodus; and, as such, it interrogates, and dismisses, the material world. The result is devious, eccentric, and charismatic, an old story rendered utterly, weirdly new.

For over a decade I have been working towards my personal goal of being the first Black chef in 150 years to master the cooking traditions of my colonial and Antebellum ancestors. Five trips to six West African nations and more on the way, and having cooked in almost every former slaveholding state beneath the Mason-Dixon line, my work is constant, unrelenting mostly because I have to carve my way through a forest of stereotypes and misunderstandings to bring our heritage to life. I also just want to preserve the roots of our cooking before they’re gone.

The dungeon-master Flintwyrm explains to four adventurers over a voice call that the only way to stop the apocalypse is to play the most intense extreme-metal song imaginable. All they have to do is find a concert venue called The Hall of Cacophonous Screams, an endless keg of beer, and five “minstrels of pain” to frontline their jam session, all the while surviving goblins and the forthcoming apocalypse. Flintwyrm, a 29-year-old named Christopher Joel, is excited about the adventure: this is how he and hundreds of strangers are bonding during quarantine, whether they are role-playing gamers, metalheads, or somewhere in between. Welcome to Mörk Borg, the headbanger of a game that is the latest example of the fertile cross-pollination between tabletop role-playing and extreme metal: a love letter to the hellraising imagery, lyrics, and album art of metal. Tabletop role-playing games are collaborative and narrative, relying on improvisation and cooperation more than strict rules or cards – Dungeons & Dragons is the best-known example. In Mörk Borg, players – gathered online or in person – narrate their journeys through flooded crypts, torture dungeons and dark forts, rolling dice to find the result of almost any encounter, from attacking monsters to scavenging food from a corpse (or, depending how desperate they are, eating the corpse itself). Players’ characters die so frequently that Joel constructed a virtual graveyard to house all the dead, each gravestone engraved with a lighthearted epitaph. “The themes are dark, the setting is dark, but what sets the tone is the players,” he says.

The Mozilla Corporation announced today it was laying off approximately 250 staff members in a move to shore up the organization's financial future. The layoffs were publicly announced in a blog post today. Employees were notified hours before, earlier this morning, via an email [PDF] sent by Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Corporation CEO and Mozilla Foundation Chairwoman. Baker's message cited the organization's need to adapt its finances to a post-COVID-19 world and re-focus the organization on new commercial services. Baker said that after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mozilla attempted to minimize the healthcare crisis' financial impact with "immediate cost-saving measures such as pausing our hiring, reducing our wellness stipend and cancelling our All-Hands [meetings]." However, Baker said that Mozilla's "pre-COVID plan is no longer workable."

On Tuesday, as Florida set a daily record for covid-19 deaths, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods prohibited his deputies from wearing masks at work. His order, which also applies to visitors to the sheriff’s office, carves out an exception for officers in some locations, including hospitals, and when dealing with people who are high-risk or suspected of having the novel coronavirus. In an email to the sheriff’s department obtained by the Ocala Star-Banner, Woods disputed the idea that masks are a consensus approach to battling the pandemic. “We can debate and argue all day of why and why not. The fact is, the amount of professionals that give the reason why we should, I can find the exact same amount of professionals that say why we shouldn’t,” Woods wrote in the email.

Sumner Redstone, a media titan and billionaire who, as chairman of Viacom and National Amusements, drew headlines both for his deal-making as well as his turbulent personal life, died on Tuesday. He was 97.

So if it's not rational and it's not a scam, what are people doing when they vote? It's an ethical act. Not in the sense of doing a good deed, but in the sense that by voting people are making a statement about the kind of person they are, the kind of people they are like, the kind of people they are not like, and that this statement is part of becoming that kind of person. It is an ethical act like the choice to be quiet when you see something wrong; by speaking up or sitting down, you define who you have been leading up to that moment and also define your trajectory going forward. If the social scientists are right and our collective preferences have almost no chance of becoming law, and if our votes sway those slim chances none at all, then this is the most significant work that voting does. When you walk away from the ballot box or the mailbox, you have done nothing to sway the result but have done an enormous amount to define your immediate environment, to sour your relationships, to sneer at some, to establish the basis for your interaction with others. Of course, there are always relationships that need souring and people that need sneering at, so it’s not the social cut that matters. It’s that we are stuck having to express these sneers and sours in this artificial environment, pretending that an act of social care is an act of self-government.

John McAfee knows a thing or two about viruses, but not the kind face masks are meant for — so he was apparently arrested in Norway for wearing a thong over his face instead of a proper cover, according to a report. McAfee, 74, the eccentric, eponymous founder of the PC antivirus software giant, took to Twitter on Monday to announce that he had been detained because he refused to don a medically certified mask instead of — or over — the ladies underwear, the Daily Mail reported. “Trivial issue but waiting for high level beaurocrats [sic] to arrive. Slow bastards, as you know,” the British-born crypto baron wrote. “My Coronavirus mask is the problem. I am insisting it is the safest available and I’m refusing to wear anything else — for my health’s sake. Authority!?!?!?!?” he said in another tweet. “Going to have to cancel the Red Scarf Society meeting. I am so sorry. Note to future adventurers: Always joke with you captors. No matter what,” McAfee added, referring to his group. His wife, Janice, then took over his Twitter account and said she’d managed it “until he escapes (usual method), bribes someone (very quick – might be out in a few hours), retains the right lawyer (will be a few days) or becomes warden of the jail, in which case we will have to force him out.”

Ilhan Omar has won her primary, informally securing a hold on Minnesota's historically Democratic-run 5th district, the Associated Press projects. After a high-profile first term in Congress, the freshman representative faced several primary challengers, the most prominent being Antone Melton-Meaux, a first-time political candidate who runs a mediation company. Melton-Meaux ran a campaign "focused on the fifth," telling Minnesota Public Radio's Mark Zdechlik that Omar is, "out of touch with the district and has been focused on her own personal pursuits and celebrity to the detriment of the work that needs to be done." Omar and Melton-Meaux were nearly tied in fundraising totals, both raising just over $4 million — with Omar holding a slight edge. Both candidates were also heavily funded by out of state donors (which made up 91% of Omar's funds and 85% of Melton-Meaux's.)

One of the world's most prominent astronomical observatories has a hole. On Monday, a 3-inch-thick cable at the Arecibo Observatory broke, tearing a gash 100 feet long in the reflector dish of the 20-acre radio telescope in Puerto Rico. The observatory had just reopened after a temporary closure due to Tropical Storm Isaias when the cable, which helped support a metal platform, snapped at about 2:45 a.m. ET. Now the facility is closed again as engineers assess the damage, according to the University of Central Florida, a co-operator of the telescope. It was not immediately clear how the cable broke or whether the damage was related to Isaias.

Amazon Music and the tech giant’s Audible subsidiary plan to offer podcasts from third-party content providers directly on their platforms, significantly expanding their audio offerings and going head-to-head with Apple, Google, Spotify and others major podcast distribution platforms. But first, they’ve got a PR mess to deal with. The company disclosed the plans on Monday in a mass email to podcast content producers, including journalists and media organizations that cover Amazon, declaring that the information about its podcast plans were “confidential” without following the standard practice of first securing their agreement to treat the message as confidential. This information, of course, was promptly tweeted and reported publicly — quickly making it to the home page of Techmeme, the widely followed tech news aggregation site. Then came the real mess. Podcasters who clicked through to submit their shows discovered this clause in the content license agreement that’s a requirement to participate in the program: “Your Content may not (a) include advertising or messages that disparage or are directed against Amazon or any Service; …”

it won't be approved and ready in time to matter but the science was cool

The COB-backed blockades were widely supported by trade unions and social movements. Participants included the Union Federation of Bolivian Mine Workers (FSTMB), the coca growers (the Six Federations of the Trópico of Cochabamba), the Bartolina Sisa women’s federation, the Tupac Katari peasants’ federation, and the trade union Confederation of Intercultural Communities of Bolivia (CSCIB). These forces have a history of mass mobilizations against neoliberal governments, such as the historic 2003 Gas War and the 2000 water wars in Cochabamba. Following the first few days of blockades, on August 6 the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) was forced to open talks with the social movements regarding the final date of the elections. After a tense night of negotiations on August 8, which involved the COB, the TSE and both houses of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, no agreement was reached. The electoral court continues to rebuff any attempts to move the election closer to the original September 6 date. The following day, an attempt by the Áñez regime to convene a national political dialogue ended in a humiliating failure, as not only Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), but practically all political forces boycotted the meeting, except for her own “Together” (Juntos) alliance and two minor right-wing parties. More promisingly, it seems that under Huarachi’s leadership, the COB has now returned to its historic roots of fighting for democracy and against military dictatorship. Indeed, while the COB is now firmly standing against the coup regime’s bid to delay elections, even a few months ago its stand was far less robust. With the coup regime seeking to avoid a test at the polls, the coming developments will test the power of Bolivian social movements — and their willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with Morales and his allies.

Several Jewish advocacy groups are opposing President Donald Trump's nominee to become the US ambassador to Germany in light of his incendiary comments, including some unearthed by CNN's KFile, about Germany, the Holocaust and Jewish groups.