Saboteur Zinke wants the National Archives to destroy lots of documents from the process of deciding questions such as how and whether to protect endangered species.

Their loss would make it impossible to investigate whether the department operated honestly or not.

(satire) Russian president Vladimir Putin condemned on Monday the unprovoked 1,000-year Ukrainian occupation of South Russia.

The Taliban attacked Afghan government forces, so they called in an air strike, which killed Afghan civilians.

Mistakes happen even in peacetime; in the fog of war, avoiding them is even more difficult. While the war continues, things like this will happen. Thus, the decision about whether to continue the war includes deciding whether more things like this will happen.

The real question is, is there a reason to continue the war?

When big companies use AI to "predict" (i.e., shape) people's decisions, it hardly matters whether that is called "capitalism" or "communism". Because either way, it is dehumanisingly totalitarian.

The result of prohibiting online ads for sex work is that prostitutes have to seek customers on the street -- where they tend to be raped, harassed, and arrested. It does not help them that their would-be customers are arrested, too.

The article refers to arrested customers as "predatory". Perhaps some of them really were predatory, but if so that was by chance, if the criterion for arresting them was that they were looking for a prostitute to hire. Supposedly this practice is justified because they might by chance have hired a prostitute who was enslaved. However, for those prostitutes who are indeed enslaved, arresting their customers does not help free them, and neither does arresting the prostitutes.

Applying the same logic to other fields, the state would arrest would-be customers of manicures, fish, fruits and vegetables, laundry, and houses, because those things too are sometimes provided by enslaved workers. Fortunately, this misguided solution is not proposed for those fields.

To "hold abusers accountable" is a laudable goal, but I have a disturbing feeling that when the DA says "abusers" it means "customers", not violent men.

I hope these women find a better life, but the repressive laws are part of the obstacles in their way.