It’s time for the return of news and views that you can peruse. It’s time for your Weekly Reader! Got some hot links, blog posts, or articles from a local paper you’d like to share? Head over to the comments and let us know. We love sharing, after all.
Parler CEO Says Service Dropped By “Every Vendor” And Could End His Business (from Deadline): “Matze said that the services are unfairly targeting Parler. “They’re trying to falsely claim that we’re somehow responsible for the events that occurred on the 6th,” he said, the date of the Capitol building takeover by protesters.
“It would put anybody out of business,” he said of the tech bans. “This thing could destroy anybody.””
Family: Trump supporter who died followed QAnon conspiracy (from the Associated Press): “Before she died in Wednesday’s siege at the U.S. Capitol, Rosanne Boyland was a recovering drug addict who wanted to become a sobriety counselor. But she also believed, wrongly, that President Donald Trump won the November election, and she’d begun following a dark conspiracy theory that has circulated online, her family said.
“It just spiraled,” her sister, Lonna Cave, said Friday outside her home in suburban Atlanta.”
Analysis: Facebook and Twitter crackdown around Capitol siege is too little, too late (from Reuters): “After the violence, right-wing social users on smaller platforms were retelling the story with videos from the siege to bigger, new audiences, while the major sites showed users sharing false claims about the unrest and groups dedicated to “Stop the Steal.” The slogan refers to the pro-Trump followers’ belief that the Nov. 3 election was fraudulent in favor of Democrat Joe Biden, a claim that has been encouraged by Trump without evidence.
Facebook said it “removed content and accounts that violated our policies against inciting violence and dangerous organizations in the lead-up to January 6” and was continuing to monitor and remove dangerous content.”
Why Are The Proud Boys So Obsessed With Not Masturbating? (from Medium): “And the Proud Boys are hardly the only organization to unite its members through a rejection of some sort of sexual practice. Although the organization positions its rejection of masturbation as a way of pushing back against the decadence of a modern, liberal culture that’s fueled by hookup apps and internet porn, a suspicion of self-pleasure is hardly a modern phenomenon. The Catholic Church — itself a bedrock of the Western civilization that the Proud Boys so dearly adore — has long positioned self-love as a sin, and various religious figures and moral leaders throughout history have cast aspersion on the practice.”
‘Coward’: MAGA internet turns on Trump (from Politico): “The despondency among the MAGA faithful online represented perhaps the sharpest break the community has ever made with a president they’ve exalted. But it also prompted a familiar brand of skepticism that has marked the past four years: Was Trump merely trying to placate his establishment handlers? Or did he truly betray the MAGA movement, days after several of his followers died while following his instructions to storm the Capitol?”
Random Observations on an Insurrection (from The Rude Pundit): “So when Trump asked his MAGA drones to show up in Washington, DC for a rally on the day that Congress would certify that Trump lost and Joe Biden won the presidency, what the fuck else would you expect to happen? And then he implored them to march to the Capitol, where Congress was meeting. Oh, sure, he dropped in the word “peacefully,” but he also told them, “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” Whether he intended violence or not (and I think he was desperately hoping for violence because that’s the kind of bitch he is), the idiots who think Joe Biden is a pedophile and hundreds of thousands of votes just disappeared heard exactly what they wanted to hear: It was finally, at long last, go time.”
Mass Delusion in America (from The Atlantic): “I told the woman in the cat costume that I would walk with her group. “Only if you take off your mask,” she said. The media is the only real virus, she explained, knowing that I was a part of the media. I told her I would keep my mask on. Trumpists had asked me periodically to remove it. Some were polite about it, a few others not. It seemed to me that only 5 percent or so of the thousands of people gathered for the insurrection wore masks. At one point, when I was caught in the thickest part of the crowd, near the Ellipse, a man told me, “Your glasses are fogging up.”
“Yep, masks,” I said.
“You don’t have to wear it. It’s not a mandate.””
Video shows Capitol mob dragging police officer down stairs. One rioter beat the officer with a pole flying the U.S. flag. (from the Washington Post): “The video shows that after the man grabbed the police officer, yanking him down the stairs, others kicked and beat the officer on the ground. As the crowd attacked, people chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and a man shouted, “Take him out.”
At the same time, other people in the crowd threw flagpoles, metal crutches and other projectiles at police standing just inside an archway, trying to prevent the mob from entering the Capitol.”
FBI, NYPD told Capitol Police about possibility of violence before riot, senior officials say (from NBC News): “It was immediately obvious after the Capitol was seized by a violent mob Wednesday that Capitol Police, whose job is to defend the facility and the lawmakers who work there, had completely misjudged the security threat. The chief of the force was quickly forced out of his job, as were other key legislative security officials.
As evidence mounts that some extremists had told the world what they had in mind through social media, questions are emerging about whether the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies took the postings seriously enough — and why, if they did, they didn’t step in until well after the building was under attack.”
Baby Megalodons Were 6-Foot-Long Womb Cannibals, Study Suggests (from the New York Times): “That bigness for the fearsome fish might have started even within their mother’s bellies, a new study suggests. Measurements taken from fossils show that even at birth, these sharks might have already been six and a half feet long, potentially a result of in-womb cannibalism that’s still characteristic of some modern sharks.
Considering the heft of adult megalodons, it’s probably not shocking that they’re born big, too. But the study’s findings represent some of the first insights into the sharks’ size when they’re fresh from the womb.”
Capitol assault a more sinister attack than first appeared (from ABC News): “Only days later is the extent of the danger from one of the darkest episodes in American democracy coming into focus. The sinister nature of the assault has become evident, betraying the crowd as a force determined to occupy the inner sanctums of Congress and run down leaders — Trump’s vice president and the Democratic House speaker among them.
This was not just a collection of Trump supporters with MAGA bling caught up in a wave.”
Man in ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt during Capitol riot identified (from CNN): “An image of Packer inside the Capitol, whose sweatshirt bore the name of the Nazi concentration camp where about 1.1 million people were killed during World War II, has evoked shock and disbelief on social media. The bottom of his shirt stated, “Work brings freedom,” which is the rough translation of the phrase “Arbeit macht frei” that was on the concentration camp’s gates.”
Facebook Forced Its Employees To Stop Discussing Trump’s Coup Attempt (from BuzzFeed News): “In less than an hour, Facebook moved to silence them. Without any apparent explanation, administrators froze comments on at least three threads in which employees had discussed removing Trump from the site.
“Donald Trump has directly incited a terror attack on Capitol Hill,” one Facebook employee wrote on a post where comments were later halted. “We need to take down his account right now. This is not a moment for half measures.”
“Our employees are actively discussing today’s horrible events internally,” Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. She did not answer questions about why the company had temporarily paused discussion on some threads.”
That’s all for today. Drop by again for more posts that you’ll want to read. Until then, stay safe, enjoy the rest of your week and happy reading!
Iacon East 