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Warren Buffett has been quietly funding birth control access

Warren Buffett has been quietly funding birth control access

By on 31 Jul 2015commentsShare

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for reproductive rights. Planned Parenthood is under vicious attack: In addition to its site being hacked — hampering access to crucial reproductive healthcare services for women around the country — the absurdly named Center for Medical Progress has released, as of today, four separate videos attempting to villainize the organization. The cherry on top of this nightmare sundae is that on Monday, the Senate will vote on a bill that would strip Planned Parenthood of its funding.

Planned Parenthood is not, contrary to deluded conservative belief, the abortion factory that it’s painted as. It actually gives women all over the country access to birth control that, you know, prevents them from having to get abortions. And, as it turns out, much of the credit for the access that we do have is due to none other than Warren “Richer Than Your Entire City” Buffett.

Bloomberg Business reports:

In the past decade, the Buffett Foundation has become, by far, the most influential supporter of research on IUDs and expanding access to the contraceptive. “This is common-sense, positive work to help families meet their dreams and their needs in planning their pregnancies,” says Brandy Mitchell, a nurse practitioner who coordinates family planning at Denver Health, a state-run provider. “Why we have to rely on a donor to make this happen is beyond belief.”

Quietly, steadily, the Buffett family is funding the biggest shift in birth control in a generation. “For Warren, it’s economic. He thinks that unless women can control their fertility—and that it’s basically their right to control their fertility—that you are sort of wasting more than half of the brainpower in the United States,” DeSarno said about Buffett’s funding of reproductive health in the 2008 interview. “Well, not just the United States. Worldwide.”

Buffett’s great mountains of money have funded not only crucial medical research of IUDs, but also the landmark CHOICE project that started in St. Louis, Mo., in 2007 and the wildly successful Colorado initiative that provided free IUDs to adolescent girls, reducing teen pregnancy by 40 percent in four years as well as — surprise, surprise! — the teen abortion rate by 42 percent in the same time period. (Colorado Republicans, by the way, voted to defund that program in spite of its success.)

See, everyone? Money doesn’t always have to be evil! Incredibly rich people can do incredible things!

But then, of course, we can always count on the GOP to step in and fuck it all up.

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Warren Buffett has been quietly funding birth control access

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If the EPA relaxes deadlines for CO2 cuts, will the U.S. still be able to keep its climate promises?

If the EPA relaxes deadlines for CO2 cuts, will the U.S. still be able to keep its climate promises?

By on 29 Jul 2015 3:53 pmcommentsShare

Like pigeons to bread crumbs, climate hawks have been pecking for final details on President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Now, in what is perhaps slightly more loaf than crumb, there’s some actual news: Sources familiar with the plan report that the timeline for its implementation will likely be extended.

The plan, which is expected to be finalized next week, will require CO2 emission cuts from coal-fired power plants and will allow states to craft their own strategies for reaching specific emissions targets. The original proposal, released last June, asked for states to begin making cuts by 2020. Sources now suggest the date will be pushed out to 2022. States are also expected to be given an extra year, up from 2017 to 2018, to submit their action plans.

The extended timeline could give rise to a potential problem: The United States just told the U.N. that it would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26–28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025. Which is pretty soon — especially if states have longer to curb their power plant emissions. The Clean Power Plan is a major mechanism for hitting the target the U.S. submitted to the U.N., so the more time states have to draw up and adhere to new standards, the more difficult it could be for the country to follow through on its pledge.

The U.S.’s commitment, submitted in advance of the climate negotiations that will take place in Paris this December, is regarded as ambitious but achievable by those familiar with the lay of the emissions landscape. Referred to in climate negotiation parlance as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), the U.S.’s emissions target is one of 22 pledges (of varying degrees of ambition) put forth by countries around the world and the European Union. Success of the INDC process — and of the Paris negotiations in general — hinges on participating countries’ abilities to implement their pledges at home. Uncertainty around the Clean Power Plan’s implementation demonstrates again the tight coupling between international negotiations and domestic politics.

As The New York Times notes, the Clean Power Plan has already been subject to a steady stream of Republican and industry attacks:

Several coal-producing states and business groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce are already preparing to file suit against the rules, in a legal clash that is widely expected to end up before the Supreme Court.

The looser deadline came after states and electric utilities spent months appealing to the E.P.A. for more time to comply. The leaders of major electric utilities warned that the tighter timeline could threaten electric reliability, saying that the race to shut down polluting plants and rapidly replace them with wind and solar plants and miles of new transmission lines could lead to rolling blackouts and brownouts.

Conservatives and the utility industry have also been warning that electric bills could soar under the plan, disproportionately affecting the poor. A recent report, however, suggested that early state compliance with the plan coupled with clean energy investment and energy efficiency action could actually reduce residential electricity bills. Another report by a coalition of smart grid and energy companies from earlier this year argued that GOP and industry warnings about grid reliability are overstated, and that plenty of strategies exist to avoid blackouts.

Without knowing further details, though, it’s difficult to say whether the date extension will constitute a net weakening of the new power plant rules. Anonymous officials familiar with the discussions told The New York Times that the extended timeframe could be balanced by tighter requirements in other sections of the plan. The final plan might also include incentives for states to beat the deadlines. We could find out as early as Monday.

Source:
Later Deadline Expected in Obama’s Climate Plan

, The New York Times.

Timing is the element most likely to change in EPA’s final Clean Power Plan

, ClimateWire.

Sources: EPA will ease deadlines on pollution rule to help states comply

, The Washington Post.

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If the EPA relaxes deadlines for CO2 cuts, will the U.S. still be able to keep its climate promises?

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on If the EPA relaxes deadlines for CO2 cuts, will the U.S. still be able to keep its climate promises?

Warming waters are destroying your salmon burger

Spoiler Alert

Warming waters are destroying your salmon burger

By on 28 Jul 2015 4:52 pmcommentsShare

The Columbia River is many things: the fourth largest U.S. river by volume, the river that generates more hydroelectric power than any other in North America, and now, a mass salmon gravesite. Warming river water has killed or will kill more than 250,000 sockeye salmon this spawning season. Welcome to the latest installment of Spoiler Alerts, where climate change deflates all the balloons.

Al Jazeera America lays out the grisly details:

Federal and state fisheries biologists say the warm water is lethal for the cold-water species and is wiping out at least half of this year’s return of 500,000 fish and by the end of the season that death toll could grow to as high as 400,000.

“We had a really big migration of sockeye,” Ritchie Graves of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told The Associated Press. “The thing that really hurts is we’re going to lose a majority of those fish.”

He said up to 80 percent of the population could ultimately perish.

One of the problems is that record low snowfall in the surrounding mountain ranges has resulted in little runoff that would normally cool the river. The fish, which start to experience stress around 68 degrees F, have been subjected to 70 degree waters since June, with some tributaries reaching 76 degrees. Which means you should wasabi up that Columbia River sashimi while you can — it might be going out of style. In addition to composing a healthy link in the Pacific Northwest ecosystem, Pacific domestic salmon made up about 80 metric tons of food for Americans annually between 2000 and 2004.

Not only are the effects of warming temperatures on the salmon population extreme, climatologists and animal scientists suggest that they’re an expected extreme. Al Jazeera America continues:

The devastation to the local sockeye salmon population is just one of climate change’s effects on wildlife and will “likely” reoccur intermittently over the next decade, James J. Anderson, a University of Washington fisheries scientist whose research focuses on the fish of the Columbia basin, told Al Jazeera.

“The larger problem is that the climate is changing faster than our ability to comprehend the magnitude of the problem,” he said. “Warmer rivers and salmon die-offs can be added to the many events that individually may be random, but which together reveal a rapidly changing world.”

This rapidly changing world has made for a bad month for animals and the climate. The sockeye news follows reports of climate-induced bee deaths and climate change culpability in the extinction of woolly mammoths.

When asked about the salmon deaths, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife fisheries manager John North told Reuters, “We’ve never had mortalities at this scale.” When the effects of climate change start sounding like a war zone, we’ve got a problem.

Source:
In hot water: Columbia’s sockeye salmon face mass die-off

, Al Jazeera America.

Thousands of salmon die in hotter-than-usual Northwest rivers

, Reuters.

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Warming waters are destroying your salmon burger

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Obama’s power plant rules could cut your electricity bill

Obama’s power plant rules could cut your electricity bill

By on 24 Jul 2015commentsShare

What will happen to your electric bill after the Obama administration starts limiting CO2 emissions from power plants? It could come down quite a bit, a new report finds — if your state leaders are smart.

Republican lawmakers have claimed that residential electricity bills will rise by up to $200 annually under Obama’s Clean Power Plan, based on a study put out in May 2014 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. While the study has been widely discredited, opponents of Obama’s plan continue to cite it.

Now, a report by consulting firm Synapse Energy Economics suggests that state compliance with the plan — paired with investment in renewables and energy efficiency initiatives — could actually lead to big reductions in what Americans pay for power. The key? Early action.

Two of the report’s authors lay out the logic in EcoWatch:

By investing in high levels of clean energy and energy efficiency, every state can see significant savings with a total of $40 billion saved nationwide in 2030 … However, consumers will typically see the largest savings in states that build renewable resources early. Under the Clean Power Plan, these first movers will profit by becoming net exporters of electricity to states that are slower to respond. States that keep operating coal plants well into the future will tend to become importers after those plants retire, and energy consumers in those states will miss out on substantial benefits of clean energy and energy efficiency.

According to the report, if two-thirds of consumers participate in energy efficiency programs, electricity bills could be $35 cheaper per month than a “business-as-usual” scenario would predict for 2030. In fact, bills would be cheaper than they were in 2012, write the authors. The firm projects that the $35 savings would leave household electric bills at an average of $91 per month in 2030. (The EPA also expects household electric bills to drop under the plan, but the agency estimates they would be $8 lower per month.)

Keep in mind, though, that Synapse’s $35 figure is averaged across the U.S. as a whole. Since electricity prices already vary widely around the country, and the Clean Power Plan will be implemented differently by different states, the projected savings are subject to some massive variance. North Dakota residents, for example, could save $94 per month if their leaders are aggressive with renewable energy and efficiency.

But so far six governors have said they won’t draw up strategies for implementing the Clean Power Plan — so don’t expect early action from their states. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote an op-ed in March calling for states to defy the Obama administration over the power plant rules.

While the Synapse report wasn’t funded by a group with an obvious financial interest in the outcome (like, say, the corporate-backed Chamber of Commerce), it was supported by a group with a viewpoint: the Energy Foundation, “a partnership of major foundations with a mission to promote the transition to a sustainable energy future.” Which is something we can get behind.

Source:
A Clean Energy Future: Why It Pays to Get There First

, EcoWatch.

Climate rule to bring lower energy bills, report says

, The Hill.

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Obama’s power plant rules could cut your electricity bill

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Fossil fuel emissions want to ruin carbon dating, too

Spoiler Alert

Fossil fuel emissions want to ruin carbon dating, too

By on 21 Jul 2015commentsShare

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, fossil fuel emissions are here to prove you otherwise. Today’s victim: carbon dating.

A new paper by Heather Graven of Imperial College London suggests that rising greenhouse gas emissions will limit scientists’ ability to date artifacts using radioactive carbon. The carbon dating technique relies on measuring the concentration of radiocarbon to non-radiocarbon in old organic material — the less radiocarbon, the older the object. It’s a slick technique that scientists have been using for decades. But now, fossil fuels are mucking everything up by putting a bunch of extra non-radioactive carbon into the atmosphere, thus meddling with the ratio. Welcome back to Spoiler Alerts, where greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic climate change upend our hopes and dreams.

The BBC reports:

The study looked at the likely carbon emissions pathways over the next century and suggested that the increases in non-radioactive carbon by 2020 could start to impact the dating technique.

“If we did any current measurements on new products, they will end up having the same fraction of radiocarbon to total carbon as something that’s lost it over time due to decay,” said Dr Graven.

Fossil fuels are old: They’ve had millions of years to let their radioactive carbon decay, which is why they’re such good sources of non-radioactive carbon. As more and more of the non-radioactive carbon ends up in our atmosphere, the more the atmosphere will look as if it has “aged.” The ultimate effect will likely be an inability to reference artifacts to a standard atmospheric touchstone.

Here’s more from the BBC:

At current rates of emissions increase, according to the research, a new piece of clothing in 2050 would have the same carbon date as a robe worn by William the Conqueror 1,000 years earlier.

“It really depends on how much emissions increase or decrease over the next century, in terms of how strong this dilution effect gets,” said Dr Graven.

“If we reduce emissions rapidly we might stay around a carbon age of 100 years in the atmosphere but if we strongly increase emissions we could get to an age of 1,000 years by 2050 and around 2,000 years by 2100.”

Which would leave the atmosphere a bit like Tom Hanks in Big — only instead of waking up 20 years older and getting a job at a toy factory, the atmosphere wakes up 2,000 years older, ruins a fundamental plot device of Discovery Channel documentaries, and goes on to turn everything we know and love into a tinderbox.

Source:
Emissions from fossil fuels may limit carbon dating

, BBC.

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Fossil fuel emissions want to ruin carbon dating, too

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Big trouble ahead for ocean’s tiny microbes

Big trouble ahead for ocean’s tiny microbes

By on 20 Jul 2015commentsShare

It’s never good when a scientist says “I try not to be an alarmist, but …”

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what MIT’s Stephanie Dutkiewicz recently said about how ocean acidification and warming waters could massively disrupt the world’s phytoplankton populations, aka the base of the entire marine food web.

For a refresher on ocean acidification, check out this short Grist video featuring our office beta fish and a soda maker. Otherwise, here’s the gist: As the ocean absorbs CO2, it becomes more acidic. In the last 200 years or so, the ocean’s acidity has increased by about 30 percent, and scientists expect it to go up way more by the end of the century.

So Dutkiewicz, an oceanographer, and her colleagues wanted to know what exactly that would mean for all those cute little micro-plants floating around out there, and today, in a paper published online in the journal Nature Climate Change, they deliver the sobering news: Ocean acidification will likely kill off some phytoplankton species and let others thrive, while warming waters will likely cause mass phytoplankton migrations toward the poles. In short: The base of the marine food web could be in for some serious upheaval in the coming decades. Here’s more from MIT News:

“I’ve always been a total believer in climate change, and I try not to be an alarmist, because it’s not good for anyone,” says Dutkiewicz, who is the paper’s lead author. “But I was actually quite shocked by the results. The fact that there are so many different possible changes, that different phytoplankton respond differently, means there might be some quite traumatic changes in the communities over the course of the 21st century. A whole rearrangement of the communities means something to both the food web further up, but also for things like cycling of carbon.”

To get these results, Dutkiewicz and her colleagues studied 154 published experiments on how different types of phytoplankton respond to different acidity levels. They categorized certain species as “winners” and “losers” and then fed that information into a global ocean circulation model. Dutkiewicz told MIT News that more experiments need to be done on how multiple species interact under different acidity levels, but so far, things aren’t looking good:

“Generally, a polar bear eats things that start feeding on a diatom, and is probably not fed by something that feeds on Prochlorococcus, for example,” Dutkiewicz says. “The whole food chain is going to be different.”

On the plus side, we don’t like polar bears anymore, so perhaps this is all for the best.

Source:
Ocean acidification may cause dramatic changes to phytoplankton

, MIT News.

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Big trouble ahead for ocean’s tiny microbes

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Big Coal is freaking out over this latest Obama move

Big Coal is freaking out over this latest Obama move

By on 16 Jul 2015commentsShare

The Obama administration’s less-than-stellar relationship with the coal industry is about to get worse. The Interior Department is rolling out new rules to protect waterways and groundwater from the various toxic messes made by coal mining companies.

The proposed regulations are aimed at the controversial process of mountaintop-removal mining, a way of getting at coal seams by lopping off mountaintops and dumping them into valleys, thereby burying the waterways that run through those valleys. More than 2,000 miles of waterways have been destroyed through the practice, which also leads to substances like selenium, iron, and aluminum showing up in streams and causing significant health problems for humans and wildlife.

The proposed rules would require mining companies to test water quality before they start mining, as they mine, and after they mine, creating a data set showing how their operations affected the area. It would also require the companies to restore streams that were “mined-over,” and replant areas with native trees and vegetation, and to put up bonds to make sure there’s funding for restoration.

Interior’s new proposal has been in the works for years, ever since the department admitted in 2009 that Bush-era rules were flawed. Those rules were struck down in 2014, so the regulations currently in place date from 1983.

The coal industry — which is suing the EPA over the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan and recently won a sort-of victory with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the EPA’s mercury regulations — is real upset about all this, and so are its allies in Congress.

“It’s outrageous that less than a month after being rebuked by the U.S. Supreme Court for ignoring the costs of its regulations, the administration is doing it again with this job-crushing, anti-coal rule,” said Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso (R). “It’s no secret that this overreaching rule is designed to help put coal country out of business.”

National Mining Association President Hal Quinn hit the same no-jobs line. “This is a rule in search of a problem,” he told The Washington Post. “It has nothing to do with new science and everything to do with an old and troubling agenda for separating more coal miners from their jobs.”

Green groups, meanwhile, welcomed the long-overdue proposed regulations, but said they don’t go far enough to fix this problem, and will in fact weaken existing requirements barring mining activities within 100 feet of a stream.

“Appalachian communities rely on the rivers and streams covered by these protections, and today’s proposal doesn’t adequately safeguard those communities,” said Bruce Nilles of the Sierra Club. “We need the federal government to create thoughtful stream protections that ban valley fills and ensure an end to this destructive practice.”

The rules aren’t a done deal yet. There will be a 60-day public comment period and five public hearings, after which the proposal could be revised. Final rules might be put in place next year.

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Big Coal is freaking out over this latest Obama move

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These biodegradable computer chips are made from wood

These biodegradable computer chips are made from wood

By on 14 Jul 2015commentsShare

What if I told you that we could make computer chips out of biodegradable wood, instead of the semiconducting materials like silicon that we currently use and then promptly dump in landfills? Would you call me a dirty hippie and tell me to get real? How about if Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin, told you?

According to MIT Technology Review, Ma and his colleagues have indeed made such a chip:

The inventors argue that the new chips could help address the global problem of rapidly accumulating electronic waste, some of which contains potentially toxic materials. The results also show that a transparent, wood-derived material called nanocellulose paper is an attractive alternative to plastic as a surface for flexible electronics. …

In two recent demonstrations, Ma and his colleagues showed they can use nanocellulose as the support layer for radio frequency circuits that perform comparably to those commonly used in smartphones and tablets. They also showed that these chips can be broken down by a common fungus.

It’s worth noting that the nanocellulose doesn’t replace the actual electronic components on these chips, just the base on which those components lie. That’s still a big deal, though, because the electronic components on a chip are tiny compared to the base.

Ma told Technology Review that the chips are even ready for commercialization — but that the market might not be ready for them:

… He thinks it’s likely to take heightened environmental pressure, or a spike in the price of rare semiconductor materials like gallium, for the mainstream electronics industry to change its current practices and consider making chips from wood.

I’d say the environmental pressure is already there, but then again, who are we to make decisions based on what’s good for the environment?

Fortunately, there’s another reason to push for biodegradable computer chips. John Rogers, a materials scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Technology Review that the military might be interested in using this technology for “transient electronics” that could conveniently disappear before they fall into the wrong hands. And if the military wants it, that means we’ll probably do it.

Source:
A Biodegradable Computer Chip That Performs Surprisingly Well

, MIT Technology Review.

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These biodegradable computer chips are made from wood

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There are sharks living in a volcano, and this is not a drill

sharkcano

There are sharks living in a volcano, and this is not a drill

By on 10 Jul 2015 5:05 pmcommentsShare

Just when you think the world can’t get any surprise you any more, you learn that there are sharks swimming around in a volcano. Truth really is stranger than fiction: Syfy brought us Sharknado and then the universe counters with Sharkcano, otherwise known as Kavachi. This very, very active volcano off the Solomon Islands is 60 feet underwater, and sharks and rays have apparently been hanging out in its caldera between eruptions.

From National Geographic:

It’s a dangerous place though. “Divers who have gotten close to the outer edge of the volcano have had to back away because of how hot it is or because they were getting mild skin burns from the acid water.”

So the team strategically deployed their instruments—including disposable robots, underwater cameras, and National Geographic’s deep-sea Drop Cam—to get a broad look at the whole volcano, including what the bottom looks like. Their biggest surprise was that hammerheads and silky sharks showed up on their deep-sea Drop Cam footage—in numbers. …

“These large animals are living in what you have to assume is much hotter and much more acidic water, and they’re just hanging out,” Phillips says. “It makes you question what type of extreme environment these animals are adapted to. What sort of changes have they undergone? Are there only certain animals that can withstand it? It is so black and white when you see a human being not able to get anywhere near where these sharks are able to go.”

Despite the fact that Kavachi was not actively erupting, the video shows carbon dioxide and methane gas bubbles rising from the seafloor vents, and the water appearing in different colors due to reduced iron and sulfur.

Cue the delighted squeals of scientists having their minds blown — and the terrified screams of everyone else within 100 miles of Kavachi.

That this news comes at the end of Discovery Channel’s much-maligned and marveled-at Shark Week is just another little trick-or-treat from the Universe. After the series came under fire for unfair and un-factual treatment of sharks in the past, it’s almost like reality and reality TV agreed to meet in the middle this year: Yes, Discovery portrays sharks as ruthless, bloodthirsty monsters — but there have been a record number of (largely explicable and by no means panic-worthy) shark attacks in North Carolina this year. And while “Mega Shark” might have been a little misleading, scientists just found REAL SHARKS in a REAL VOLCANO. Life, you’ve really outdone yourself this time.

Source:
Deep-Sea Cameras Reveal “Sharkcano”

, National Geographic.

Researchers Discover Sharks Living In An Active Underwater Volcano

, io9.

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There are sharks living in a volcano, and this is not a drill

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The Houston Rockets Fired Their Social Media Person for an Emoji Joke

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Tuesday night, the Houston Rockets played their intrastate rivals the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Late in the game, the official Houston Rockets Twitter account sent out the following:

Screenshot via Deadspin

The internet being the stupid place that it is, a thousand crybabies immediately began to cry. Oh pray for the emoji horse! How dare the stupid Twitter account joke about horse slaughter! Wah wah wah!

The internet is a place where people cry about bullshit. If outrage is a currency—and it is—then the online market is drowning in counterfeits. People like to feign outrage because it allows them to demonstrate their humanity and show the world that they feel things strongly and people like to sleep with people who feel things strongly. Outrage allows people to define themselves in opposition to something, which is much easier than defining yourself on your own.

The Rockets went on to win the game (and thus the series) but not before the tweet was deleted. Today we learned that simply taking the tweet down and apologizing wasn’t enough. The Rockets fired the dude who tweeted it, their social media manager Chad Shanks!

This is such bullshit. Emoji violence lost this dude his job. EMOJI VIOLENCE. Like, who was really outraged by this? Were you? Of course you weren’t. You are smart and normal and very attractive and people like you. But let’s pretend you were outraged by it. Here is my question: What outraged you about it? Did you not know that horses get shot when they are lame? Of course you knew it. Everyone knows that! Here’s what I know about horses:

They are beautiful.
We don’t eat them.
For thousands of years they were second only to our legs when it came to helping humans get around.
Now they’re sort of ridden recreationally.
Also we race them.
They have shoes.
They get shot when they are lame.

Is merely mentioning the reality that horses are shot when they are lame outrageous? If you are outraged by the fact that horses are shot when they are lame, be outraged about the fact that horses are shot when they are lame, not someone remarking on the fact that horses are shot when they are lame.

In conclusion:

The Houston Rockets are cowards.

The Los Angeles Lakers are the best team in sports.

Originally posted here: 

The Houston Rockets Fired Their Social Media Person for an Emoji Joke

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