That’s it, now I’m CERTAIN that 2017 is an alternate reality designed as a psychological experiment to test our credulity. The Columbia Lions Are The Best Football Team In NYC

The thing is, it would be pretty trivial to set up a geofencing system that would sent emergency alerts only to people in an affected area. It’s likely that several Silicon Valley companies have the capability to do so now for large swaths of the population.

But that would require a trustworthy government, one that never used access to location information for any other reason, and one that never pushed messages for anything but life-saving purposes. The distance between that government and the one we have is perhaps something to keep in mind.

Emergency alerts get scrutiny after deadly wildfires

Trump’s threat to abandon Puerto Rico presupposes that he hasn’t done so already. 1/3 without drinking water; perhaps 1/2 without adequate food; upwards of 3/4 without power. Puerto Rico: US officials privately acknowledge serious food shortage

Not mentioned: how batshit crazy it is for the free market to regard itself as twenty percent more valuable in less than a year. Opinion | Stock markets aren’t a good measure of presidential success. But even if they were, it’s not clear Trump would look great.

Apparently it’s not just me. Gay Producer Harvey Fierstein Is Getting A Ton Of Abuse From People Who Have The Wrong Harvey

Holy shit. Fucking moron does not begin to cover it. This is how you go down the path of eradicating humanity. Trump wanted dramatic increase in nuclear arsenal in military meeting

I may have said positive things about FEMA recently. I retract them. FEMA director: ‘We filtered out’ San Juan mayor ‘a long time ago’

?PSA: Knowing that you will tell any man to shove this sideways up his ass makes you wife material in my book.? chris on Twitter

?“Hi, I’m a Congressman, and I want All The Credit for nibbling around the edges of the actual problem in a telegenic fashion.”? David Cicilline on Twitter

You have got to be shitting me, part #17,382 Equifax blames hack on state actors, but breach followed spat with security contractor

The excellent RadioLab podcast is kicking off this week with a discussion of the trolley problem, Patrick Matthews. Podplayer – Podcast Addict web player

Worth noting that you’re only guaranteed to be allowed to see this if you live in the EU. I asked Tinder for my data. It sent me 800 pages of my deepest, darkest secrets

This kind of crap is why I generally don’t give a fig about animal rights. I’ll never understand the people who will curtail 1,000 civil rights in an effort to reduce harm, but who think random charismatic megafauna are more important than potentially millions of humans.

Yes, by all means, treat animals humanely. And give more consideration to species capable of more advanced forms of suffering. But when the question is “who’s more important, us or them?”, we win, every time. FDA halts monkey research denounced by Jane Goodall as ‘shameful’

Philadelphia folks: I’m looking to improve my local news radar. Right now I’m missing things like last night’s free performance of Marriage of Figaro, which I absolutely would have gone to, and which I just read about in the fricking Washington Post.

I’m doing a daily headline skim of Philly.com and Billy Penn. I follow a bunch of Philly government and tourism people on Twitter. Much more interested in events and communities than in whether someone got mugged last night. Suggestions? Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes – Philly.com

Police beat up a protestor, chief says “mighty fine job, boys,” and oops, he was an undercover cop patrolling the protest. Undercover cop, Air Force officer, med student among those police swept up Sunday night