So, since Trump lost the election, QAnon has gotten quieter, but also a lot more weird. I’m not sure the cult has gotten any smaller? A whole bunch of QAnon accounts got kicked off Twitter, so that makes it seem smaller and less active, but those that got kicked off Twitter migrated to sites that are harder to track, like Telegram, along with the various Trumpy social media sites like, I dunno whatall they’re called, Gab, and that weird thing Trump rolled out, and others.
But while they’ve been out of the public eye, QAnon seems to have metastasized into an even more blatant doomsday cult, and seems to think that several of their dead Boomer-childhood celebrities are getting resurrected to… I guess? …lead the country with Trump?
Dude, I don’t know. These people are sad and weird and terrified, and like, we should be doing something to help them. Some kind of mental health program or something. This shit ain’t right.
Anyway, Ben Collins, an NBC News reporter, has some coverage of their most recent rally on Twitter, and you can read about it in this thread.
🗡️ Gawker: True Crime is Rotting Our Brains
The gist of this article is basically that True Crime (the genre) is very popular and maybe it makes us more afraid of crime than we need to be? And I’m not entirely sure I’m down with this article, but it does raise a few interesting points.
⚕️ The Atlantic: The Abortion Backup Plan No One Is Talking About
Mail-order abortion. No, for real. You can order abortion pills through the mail, often for pretty cheap or free, and abortion pills are pretty safe to take at home, unsupervised. Which is an option for folks who can’t get abortions in their crappy states. (*coughTEXAScough*)
Look, as far as I’m concerned, abortion is healthcare. If you’re knocked up and don’t want to be, you should be able to head right into your doctor and get that quickly and safely taken care of. No judgement, no protests, no bullshit. So I don’t love the idea that sneaking some abortion pills off a website because your backwards-ass state (*coughTEXAScough*) won’t let you get an abortion at the doctor’s office is necessary, but since it is, this article details how you make that happen.
💻 The Facebook Papers
Poynter has links to a few of the Facebook Papers articles from a week or so ago, as well as a bit of a summary of the situation, and Protocol has a looooong list of the articles written about the Facebook Papers.
- Poynter: Here come The Facebook Papers
- Protocol: Here are all the Facebook Papers stories
This is A LOT of reading. Like, it’s a lot of reading by my standards. So here’s the upshot: Basically every awful, harmful thing you’ve ever heard about or suspected Facebook of doing is true, for exactly the reasons you suspected they’d have (I.E., money), and the Facebook Papers have the thousands of internal documents and memos to prove it. Except that thing about Facebook listening to you through your phone; that’s still not true. Facebook does that creepy shit using your location data.
🐘 January 6 Insurrection
Rolling Stone has an article detailing how Jan. 6 organizers met and worked with members of Congress and White House staff to organize the rally. Washington Post, meanwhile, has an extensive timeline of the insurrection, that starts from the initial planning phases and leads right through the whole mess.
- Rolling Stone: Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff
- Washington Post: Red Flags (Gift article link, in case you’re out of freebie articles.)
☠️ ProPublica: Poison in the Air
“The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into ‘sacrifice zones’ where residents breathe carcinogens. ProPublica reveals where these places are in a first-of-its-kind map and data analysis.”
So the first place I looked up on their map was good old Midland, Michigan, home of Dow Chemical, and I was pretty surprised to see that their pollution radius wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be. Considering the stories I’ve heard from Dow Chemical employees, though, I’d expected to see all of Midland County and the surrounding counties to be a pulsating red pustule on the map, so, y’know. I feel real bad for the folks working in the plant, though, that’s for sure. 😬
ProPublica lists the top polluters as the Dow Chemical Company (obviously; anyone who grew up around Dow headquarters could have told you that for free), Huntsman Corp., Eastman Chemical Co., BASF, and LyondellBasell Industries. The emissions from these assholes are spreading cancer-causing garbage over more populated square miles than any other company.
Notes & Thoughts 