March 31, 2023

Gwyneth Paltrow not at fault in ski crash trial, jury decides

A jury sided with actor Gwyneth Paltrow on Thursday, deciding she was not at fault for a 2016 ski accident with a retired Utah optometrist who sustained broken ribs and a concussion after the fall.

Terry Sanderson filed a $300,000 lawsuit against Paltrow, alleging that reckless skiing caused her to run into him from behind on Feb. 26, 2016, at Utah’s Deer Valley Resort. The collision left Sanderson with four broken ribs, a concussion and lasting brain damage that affected his daily life and personal relationships, he said.

The jury, which began deliberations earlier in the afternoon, agreed that Sanderson was, in fact, at fault, not Paltrow.

Paltrow countersued for $1, as well as her legal fees, insisting that she did not run into Sanderson.

"I felt that acquiescing to a false claim compromised my integrity," Paltrow said in a statement after the verdict. "I am pleased with the outcome, and I appreciate all of the hard work of Judge Holmberg and the jury, and thank them for their thoughtfulness in handling this case.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/jury-reaches-verdict-gwyneth-paltrow-ski-accident-trial-rcna76831

March 30, 2023

Gwyneth Paltrow's ski trial is a sham

I, like the rest of humankind, am predisposed to dislike Gwyneth Paltrow. I don’t like that she’s one of Hollywood’s foremost beneficiaries of nepotism. I don’t like that she essentially left acting to become a professional Gwyneth Paltrow instead. I don’t like her lifestyle brand, where you can plunk down $35 for a product earnestly named “Pure Delight Orgasm Balm.” I don’t like her ex-husband’s music. I still think it’s weird that she named her kid Apple. And I’m still bitter that “Shakespeare in Love” beat out “Saving Private Ryan” for best picture at the 1999 Oscars, even though a) I actually thought it was a very good movie (can’t go wrong with a Tom Stoppard screenplay!), b) Paltrow was excellent in it, and c) she had nothing to do with its victory over America’s Favorite Dad Movie.

So when I tell you that I am 100% on Paltrow’s side in her legal wrangle with a retired optometrist — a man who went the full Sol Rosenberg and claims the actress ran his old ass over on a ski slope at the Deer Valley resort in Park City, Utah, in 2016 — you can trust that I’m being sober in my assessment. It is EXTREMELY weird for a legal fight like this to end up in trial. Usually, the parties involved reach a settlement behind closed doors, sign 5,600 nondisclosure agreements and then walk away. No one wants to risk the exposure, both financial and personal, of a public trial. But this feud has gone the distance. They even allowed cameras into the courtroom for it, resulting in the kind of absurd moments I haven’t seen since the OJ Simpson trial was broadcast to the world nearly three decades ago.

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/gwyneth-paltrow-ski-trial-explained-17867126.php

March 27, 2023

Nashville shooting - citizen takes over mic.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1640406172573351943

We need more people doing this.

March 19, 2023

Detransition Among Transgender and Gender-Diverse People--An Increasing and Increasingly Complex Phen

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 107, Issue 10, October 2022

Detransition Among Transgender and Gender-Diverse People—An Increasing and Increasingly Complex Phenomenon

The largest study to look at detransition was the U.S. Transgender Survey from 2015 which was a cross-sectional nonprobability study of 27 715 TGD adults (4). This survey included the question “Have you ever de-transitioned? In other words, have you ever gone back to living as your sex assigned at birth, at least for a while?” The survey found that 8% of respondents had detransitioned temporarily or permanently at some point and that the majority did so only temporarily. Rates of detransition were higher in transgender women (11%) than transgender men (4%). The most common reasons cited were pressure from a parent (36%), transitioning was too hard (33%), too much harassment or discrimination (31%), and trouble getting a job (29%).


https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/107/10/e4261/6604653

March 19, 2023

America's bad bet on expanding legal sports gambling

The United States is in the midst of a sports gambling boom, and it may be a generational policy mistake.

Anyone who has watched the Super Bowl, listened to a sports podcast, walked into an arena that has a gambling parlor, or, in my case, opened my mailbox to see direct mail from DraftKings offering “free bets” has seen the explosion in sports betting throughout the US.

-snip-

The result has been an explosion in gambling. And based on the research we have, the harm such widespread adoption has caused is not trivial. With the United States’s boom so recent and therefore data somewhat sparse, the United Kingdom is a useful comparison. It has had a legalized and regulated system for over 15 years, one that includes not just sports but casino gambling.

An extensive report by Bloomberg cataloged the harms since legalization: Sixty percent of industry profits come from the top 5 percent of users; the industry, supposedly regulated, has an estimated 36,000 children addicted to it; the government estimates 8 percent of suicides are gambling related.

In 2016, the situation was already so bad that the co-founder of Paddy Power, an industry leader, resigned from the company’s board while “fighting back tears” because he believed he was complicit in an immoral industry, Bloomberg reported.

Since then, the situation has only gotten worse, and amid a surge of suicides linked to gamblers deep in debt, the UK government has promised a policy plan on the gambling industry paired with reforms and new regulations.

https://www.vox.com/23641580/draftkings-fanduel-sports-betting-gambling-problems-march-madness

The Pareto principle predicts this outcome, they knew most of the profits were going to come from problem users, that's how it works.

March 19, 2023

German tourists visiting Israel attacked by Palestinians in Nablus

German tourists visiting Israel were lightly injured on Saturday when they were attacked by Nablus residents for entering the Palestinian city with an Israeli vehicle registration plate.

Photos and videos taken at the scene show the tourists were driving in a Tel Aviv share car that featured an Israeli flag on its rear end.

The two tourists managed to escape the crowd and were eventually escorted back to Israel by security forces, where they will be given medical treatment for their injuries.

German Ambassador to Israel Steffan Seibert condemned the attack on the two German tourists, stating that "a mob attacking tourists because they don‘t like their license plate is disgusting and cowardly."

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-734715

Short video:
https://twitter.com/AboAlezswafery/status/1637091380991238144
https://twitter.com/JoeTruzman/status/1637296401284734977

March 10, 2023

Tweet from Gisele Fetterman

https://twitter.com/giselefetterman/status/1634188814741536768

💙

March 10, 2023

A World Without Men

Youngmi’s childhood was a difficult one. The 25-year-old nurse was born to a poor family in Daegu, South Korea, known for being one of the most conservative cities in the country. Youngmi’s mom left the home when Youngmi was young to escape her husband’s physical abuse, leaving her and her sister behind with him and their paternal grandmother. When she was 5, her 8-year-old sister started losing her hair from stress.

As she grew older, Youngmi found herself depressed, unsure of what her future held, and financially unstable. In Korea’s patriarchal society — in which women are generally expected to defer to their fathers and to adhere to rigid beauty standards — she felt like a perpetual victim, obsessed by the wrongs done to her by her father and pressured into maintaining her appearance in order to please men. Despite her meager budget as a nursing student, she purchased new clothes each season, spending a lot of money on cheap, poor-quality clothes from H&M. She wore makeup religiously. “I could not go outside without any makeup. I felt ashamed of my face,” she said. “I had this pressure of wanting to look beautiful and wanting to be desirable, physically or sexually.”

While scrolling through Twitter in 2018, Youngmi came across footage of protests taking place in the streets of Seoul. In South Korea, where cases of femicide, revenge porn, and dating violence are widespread, a surge in spy-cam sex crimes, overwhelmingly committed by men, had mostly resulted in fines and suspended jail sentences, if they were prosecuted at all. That was not the case, however, for one 25-year-old woman who had taken a nonconsensual photo of a nude male model at art school and posted it online; she was sentenced to ten months in prison and court-ordered sexual-violence counseling. The demonstrations were a reaction to the blatant hypocrisy.

https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/4b-movement-feminism-south-korea.html

March 9, 2023

It's notable that the authors don't buy the apartheid smear.

Proof that it's just an antisemitic lie.

March 8, 2023

US state department.

Currently, officials are telling U.S. citizens:

Do Not Travel to:

Colima state due to crime and kidnapping.
Guerrero state due to crime.
Michoacan state due to crime and kidnapping.
Sinaloa state due to crime and kidnapping
Tamaulipas state due to crime and kidnapping.
Zacatecas state due to crime and kidnapping.

Reconsider Travel To:

Baja California state due to crime and kidnapping.
Chihuahua state due to crime and kidnapping.
Durango state due to crime.
Guanajuato state due to crime and kidnapping.
Jalisco state due to crime and kidnapping.
Morelos state due to crime.
Sonora state due to crime and kidnapping.

Exercise Increased Caution When Traveling To:

Aguascalientes state due to crime.
Baja California Sur state due to crime.
Chiapas state due to crime.
Coahuila state due to crime.
Hidalgo state due to crime.
Mexico City due to crime.
Mexico State due to crime.
Nayarit state due to crime.
Nuevo Leon state due to crime and kidnapping.
Oaxaca state due to crime.
Puebla state due to crime and kidnapping.
Queretaro state due to crime.
Quintana Roo state due to crime and kidnapping.
San Luis Potosi state due to crime and kidnapping.
Tabasco state due to crime.
Tlaxcala state due to crime.
Veracruz state due to crime.

Exercise Normal Precautions When Traveling To:

Campeche state
Yucatan state

https://www.abc15.com/news/national/officials-urging-u-s-citizens-to-avoid-travel-to-areas-of-mexico-due-to-crime-kidnappings