No new Insider content this week, although if you missed them you should check out my
American League draft recaps and National League draft recaps. No Federal League draft recaps, though, as the league folded in 1915. I held my weekly Klawchat on Thursday.
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And now, the links:
- Should pediatricians refuse to treat vaccine refusers? It’s not as easy a question as you might think – and while you (and I) would likely want our kids’ pediatricians to shun patients who might be carriers, there’s a larger social issue at play here.
- Oh, hey, the Republican Presidential nominee is a vaccine denialist. Unlike the author of that post, I am a single-issue voter when it comes to science. I will not vote for a science-denier, period.
- An Australian mum who went from anti-vax to pro-vax calls the vaccine-denier movement a sort of cult. Hard to dispute that, given the deniers’ clinging to false beliefs in the face of undeniable fact.
- Other cult-like behavior from anti-vaxxers: harassing pro-vaccine activists by using sockpuppet social media accounts.
- A reporter in Philadelphia – about 30 miles from me – bought an AR-15 assault rifle in seven minutes. No civilian has any need whatsoever for this kind of gun, yet they are legal and available with little to no restrictions in most states.
- Oakland cops who were supposed to be working to fight sex trafficking themselves raped and trafficked an underaged sex worker. And that’s just the beginning of the accusations of crime and corruption in the Oakland PD.
- My former colleague Bill Simmons gave a great interview to the Boston Globe‘s Chad Finn, who I should mention was one of my earliest supporters in the mainstream sports media, so I enjoyed this Q&A for a lot reasons.
- A first-person account from a gay woman and her mother in Iran, where homosexuality is not just seen as a sin, but a crime, with a third offense punishable by death. And, if you were wondering, here’s a world map showing where being gay is illegal.
- Oklahoma’s extreme right-wing governor and legislature want public schools to teach a pro-life curriculum. I see no way this is permissible under the First Amendment’s “establishment clause,” as teaching that life begins at conception is fundamentally a religious belief, not a scientific one.
- The Brock Turner case highlighted how an entire justice system crafted and run by men fails to serve female victims of sexual assault.
- One woman responded to an unsolicited dick pic by sending her harasser a barrage of pictures of penises and outing him. Of course, Facebook then froze her account for posting nudity. The actual back-and-forth exchange, along with this idiot’s comment that “you’re a girl so you should like it,” is posted here.
- A US Marine who was working as a bouncer at Pulse nightclub in Orlando is credited with saving dozens of lives by keeping his head during the panic on Saturday night. His name, by the way, is Imran Yousuf.
- Jessica Luther, who has done outstanding work covering the Baylor sexual assault epidemic and institutional coverup, writes on espnW about what the 30 for 30 OJ documentary doesn’t say about domestic violence.
- More on Peter Thiel’s vendetta against Gawker and underlying attack on the free press: He’s bankrolled other, largely frivolous lawsuits, including a new one against Gawker over their investigative report on Donald Trump’s hair. Within this article is a note on Shiva Ayyadurai, a crackpot who erroneously claims to have invented email.
- Still think Gawker had it coming? Read the Columbia Journalism Review on how billionaires are using money and intimidation to silence media critics and tell me you’re not concerned about the state of our free press.
- Climate change has claimed its first mammal extinction, as a rodent that lived on a reef island off the coast of Queensland, Australia, has been declared extinct.
- I thought this speech on the Orlando massacre by the Utah Lieutenant Governor was moving, well-written, and, I think, unusually sincere for any speech by a politician.
- Jezebel interviewed a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks because the fetus was nonviable. Remember that closing abortion clinics – or shooting at them or blowing them up or merely turning your back when others do so – affects a lot of people for a lot of different reasons.
- I found this piece on growing up without the father who left the author when she was seven just heartbreaking from start to finish.
- Basra, Iraq, a city run by Islamist politicians supported by Iran, has a rather remarkable Western-style shopping mall that has become a new cultural hub for the city. Where there is life – and commerce – there is hope.
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