Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.net

Cleveland Plain Dealer’s new owners massacre staff

The owners of the Cleveland Plain Dealer laid off all but 14 of the newsroom staff, then prohibited the survivors from covering the beats they’ve mastered over decades, giving those roles over to the non-unionized staff at cleveland.com. …

Among those affected: Ginger Christ, the paper’s health reporter, who has been stripped of her beat during a pandemic.

This during the largest public emergency in the last 75 years. Peak parasitic capitalism.

The TSA wanted to inspect a 16-year-old trans girl’s genitals

The scanner operator “she told Jamii she must go to a private room, expose herself, and let her ‘feel up in there.’ That is, a TSA supervisor demanded to molest a child.”

When her mother refused, TSA called in the police and top TSA managers. They were eventually released and drove 600 miles rather than flying.

The TSA previously strip-searched a grandmother on Mother’s Day to get a look at her sanitary napkin, and penetrated another woman’s vulva and “falsely told her that she could not refuse the search and abandon her trip and threatened to physically restrain her if she didn’t submit.”

Also:

  • The 400-year-old Bannatyne Manuscript may not be the oldest surviving F-bomb. Roger Fuckebythenavele ftw.
  • Excellent public domain Zoom backgrounds. Alas, my MBP is too underpowered to use Zoom backgrounds. I have not been moved to buy a greenscreen but these backgrounds may change my mind!
  • Monster-themed COVID PSAs.