"This is an investigative report about how Baen’s Bar, the private forum run by the science fiction and fantasy publishing company Baen Books, is being used to advocate for extremist political violence. Evidence will be presented. Comments by a number of the forum’s users will be shared." Jason Sanford finds the receipts. Baen's current publisher has suspended the operations as it looks into this problem, good for them. Jason is facing a backlash for this in the form of death threats and harassment. Just shows what small people with small minds these supposed tough people are. Baen's Bar at one time was being pushed as a way to get published by Baen. You could post your stories there and they would be voted up or down, also you'd receive feedback and could rewrite (IIRC). It's unfortunate, but not entirely unforseeable given their market focus and previous problems. It's a place the radical right would gather beleiving they have a sympathetic corporate sponsor (weither it's true or not). As SWFA cleaned it own house and pushed to modernize, Baen became a symbol for conservatives/the right.
"Five people have now died from Ebola in Guinea as the government launched an urgent contact-tracing search after the disease’s latest reappearance… Guinea announced the outbreak on Saturday – the first in West Africa since a 2013-2016 epidemic that left more than 11,300 dead in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone."
"For decades, the prevailing theory about the extinction of the dinosaurs was that an asteroid from the belt between Mars and Jupiter slammed into the planet, causing cataclysmic devastation that wiped out most life on the planet… But new research out of Harvard University theorizes that the Armageddon-causing object came from much farther out than originally believed." If you're the dinosaur, it's a difference without much meaning.
"North Korean hackers tried to break into the computer systems of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in a search for information on a coronavirus vaccine and treatment technology, South Korea's spy agency said Tuesday, according to a South Korean lawmaker."
"Energy prices jumped Tuesday as a deep freeze in the South boosted demand for fuel and hampered production… More than 4 million people were without power across Texas on Tuesday morning, according to poweroutage.us, as the electric grid couldn’t keep up with heightened demand, forcing utilities to implement rolling blackouts in some cases."
"President Joe Biden is extending a ban on housing foreclosures to June 30 to help homeowners struggling during the coronavirus pandemic."
On the Media on taxes… "Few clichés are as well-worn, and grounded in reality, as the dread many Americans feel towards doing their taxes and the loathing they have for the IRS. But as much as the process is despised, relatively little is known about how it could be improved. Pro Publica's Jessica Huseman said that's largely because tax prep companies keep it that way. Brooke spoke to Huseman in 2017 about what an improved system might look like and how tax prep companies work to thwart any such changes."
"Ashenfelter is an economist at Princeton University, and he's spent a couple decades studying McDonald's. Back in 2012, when he was president of the American Economic Association, he even dedicated part of his big presidential address to the company… He views McDonald's as a kind of natural 'laboratory' to compare and contrast different labor markets… each McDonald's restaurant is pretty much the same; the workers have almost identical jobs, regardless of which part of the world they're in; the food they make is generally the same; and McDonald's are basically everywhere." Yeah, not really. Now, if it's a study of the corporate owned McD's, sure. And this seems to leave out that restaurants do have widely varying prices depending on the markets (such as how much you pay for a Big Mac at an airport, toll road rest stop, or side street in a small town).
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced plans for Congress to establish an outside and independent commission to investigate "the facts and causes" related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6… In a letter sent to her Democratic colleagues on Monday, the California Democrat said the commission will be modeled on the commission established after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."
"On the heels of the Senate's acquittal of Donald Trump, the NAACP, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson and civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll filed a lawsuit against the former president, Rudy Giuliani and two white supremacist groups, citing their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection."
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