Review: American Vandal (2017)

This roughly 4.5-hour long series spread over eight episodes was created by Funny or Die and currently streaming on Netflix, is a satire on the true crime genre that has become increasingly popular in recent times. This is where there has been a real crime that has either gone unsolved or where there has been a conviction and the case is considered closed. But then a private group, usually journalists or lawyers, start looking closely at the case and discover new evidence that either exonerates the person who had been thought guilty or, for an unsolved case, draws attention to a possible suspect.
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The Mercer family takeover of the Republican party

We have recently seen three Republican senators (Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, and John McCain) voice harsh criticisms of Donald Trump. But each of them have almost unfailingly voted in favor of issues that Trump supports, such as voting to advance the Republican budget and in yesterday’s vote to reduce consumer protections against fraud by the banks that issue credit cards. This is not surprising. These senators are all solid conservatives and supporters of the oligarchy. What is surprising is that they are being lauded as heroic truth-tellers when they are not. All three are not running for re-election, the first two choosing to withdraw and the third due to ill-health. So only those people not interested in re-election feel free to say what they feel about Trump. That is not heroism, just face-saving.
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Book review: Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief & Experience (2014) by Christopher C. French and Anna Stone

Following my recent post and discussion on the issue of psychics, I read three very different books on the subject, all shedding different perspectives. The first of these was the memoir In Search of the Light: The Adventures of a Parapsychologist (1996) by Susan Blackmore that I reviewed two weeks ago. The second of these was the book Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief & Experience (2014) by Christopher C. French and Anna Stone who are both academic researchers, the former at the University of London and the latter at the University of East London.
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And then there were two was one (climate accord holdouts)

[UPDATE: On November 7, 2017, Syria said it would also sign the Paris accord leaving the US as the only holdout.]

Nicaragua has agreed to sign on to the Paris accord on climate change, leaving the US and Syria as the only two nations on the planet who are not signatories. Nicaragua held out for so long for reasons opposite to that of the US, in that it felt that the accord did not go far enough in protecting the environment. The reasons for Syria’s abstention have not been made clear.
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Elie Wiesel accused of groping woman

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, more and more women feel confident to come forward with their own stories of being sexually harassed, groped, and raped where once they chose to remain silent because their attackers were powerful people and they feared being shamed and retaliated against. Some of these things happened years ago. One of latest allegations comes from Jennifer Listman who is now an anthropological geneticist working at New York University. In a detailed blog post, she describes how in 1989, when she was 19 years of age, she was shocked when she was groped by Nobel peace prize winner Elie Wiesel during a photographing at a public charity event. Wiesel died in 2016 at the age of 87.
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When the use of stock images misleads

Articles like to use photographs to liven up their appearance. But getting your own photographs is time-consuming and expensive so many publications resort to using stock images from the various sources that provide them and that can be easily searched on to provide one that seems to most closely fit the needs of the article. But Adam Jonson at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) has noticed that not enough care seems to go into selecting images and that, for example, a single trope tend to dominate in reports about Iran that perpetuate myths about that country.
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The real John Kelly revealed

Some time ago, I read a piece by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo that anyone who comes into the vicinity of Donald Trump ends up having their reputation trashed because they get forced to do things that they would not otherwise do simply to stay on in their jobs. That article was in the context of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who according to Marshall, had a good reputation before his role in the firing of James Comey was revealed.
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