Politics

While Twitter has mercifully decided to wipe political ads altogether, political actors have gotten a jump on trolling. Ahead of this month’s U.K. general election, Tories reportedly set up a fake “fact-checking” Twitter account to prop up Boris Johnson during a recent debate. Politicians are still free to baldly lie and microtarget voters for another election cycle anyway in the lawless waste of Facebook. … [Read more...] about Donald Trump to Freak Out About Political Ads on Google in 3, 2, 1

It’s long been taboo to discuss politics in the workplace, and as the national atmosphere becomes more politically charged, arguments have grown both for and against bringing political discussions to professional settings. The Onion looks at the pros and cons of talking politics at work. … [Read more...] about Pros And Cons Of Talking Politics At Work

Executive branch officials must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public,” the chief justice wrote. “Accepting contrived reasons would defeat the purpose of the enterprise. If judicial review is to be more than an empty ritual, it must demand something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in this case.” … [Read more...] about SCOTUS Blocks Census Citizenship Question, but Rules Political Gerrymandering Constitutional

Gina Apostol’s novel Insurrecto is a tale of dual visions and dueling scripts, one written by an American filmmaker, Chiara Brasi, and the other by a Filipino writer and translator, Magsalin. Magsalin isn’t given a last name, and this reader suspects that her first is a fake one: magsalin, we are told, means to translate in Tagalog. She is what she does in the eyes of the white foreigner, what she does for her. Translation is a precarious occupation, a profession historically populated by people in slavery or servitude who, defeated by enemy armies, were forced to interpret their native language for the benefit of their captors. These translators’ relationships—to language, to nation, to family—were uneasy ones, and conquerors tended to view these natives-made-other, these double-tongued strangers, with suspicion. This mistrust lingers, still, in the Italian idiom: traduttore, traditore. Translator, traitor. … [Read more...] about The Fractured Politics of Naming

The crux of recent tension between Starbucks and Arizona’s Tempe Police Department occurred on July 4, but the aftermath is ongoing—and, shocking for 2019—incredibly civil. For those who missed the initial news, here is the CliffsNotes version: A group of six Tempe cops visited a Starbucks, and after receiving their orders, were asked by a barista to move or leave the store because they were making a customer uncomfortable. The officers chose to leave, but the Tempe Officers Association followed up with a statement that brought the encounter to national headlines. … [Read more...] about Everyone acting exceedingly polite in this Starbucks-cops kerfuffle