The Present Age

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The Present Age Weekly Recap: May 27
www.readtpa.com
TPA Weekly Recap

The Present Age Weekly Recap: May 27

Too much news, too much news

Parker Molloy
May 27, 2022
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The Present Age Weekly Recap: May 27
www.readtpa.com

Welcome to the weekly recap. In this post, I’ll be linking to my work from the week, sharing some stories from others I thought were interesting, and providing a few casual thoughts on [gestures at everything]. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “TPA Weekly Recap.” If you don’t want to receive the weekly recap, leave all boxes except “TPA Weekly Recap” checked.


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From me this week: Speech, Gervais, Yglesias, scapegoats

On Monday, I published a piece about free speech and why content moderation can be a powerful tool in favor of more speech.

The Present Age
Bad arguments about speech, made better
Happy Monday, everyone. I’m here to write a little bit about free speech today. As this is a topic that comes up a lot, I even created a new section for it, called Speech Bubbles. This changes absolutely nothing on your end, but it helps me organize my own thoughts a little better…
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8 months ago · 30 likes · 22 comments · Parker Molloy

On Tuesday, I wrote about Ricky Gervais’s boring trying-to-offend-for-the-sake-of-offense Netflix yawnfest.

The Present Age
Ricky Gervais, rinse, repeat
Netflix has a new Ricky Gervais comedy special out today. Based on the news stories I’ve seen about it, he seems to have once again decided to make trans people the butt of a whole bunch of his jokes. Not exactly surprising. I watched a couple of the clips, and eh, oh well, what are you going to do, right…
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8 months ago · 34 likes · 5 comments · Parker Molloy

On Wednesday, I wrote about the reactionary contrarianism of Matt Yglesias.

The Present Age
Why is Matt Yglesias?
At 11:32 AM yesterday, an 18-year-old man armed with an AR-15, a handgun, and high-capacity magazines opened fire on students at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Two adults and 19 children between the ages of seven and 10 were slaughtered before police killed the shooter, making it the…
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8 months ago · 69 likes · 22 comments · Parker Molloy

And on Thursday, I wrote about the right-wing attempt to blame trans people for the shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

The Present Age
Just like they did in 2015, Republicans are falsely blaming trans people for a mass shooting
On November 27, 2015, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, Robert Lewis Dear Jr. walked into a Colorado Springs, Colorado, Planned Parenthood clinic. There, Dear shot and killed three people and injured nine others. “No more baby parts,” Dear told police after his arrest…
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8 months ago · 34 likes · 4 comments · Parker Molloy


Stories from others I’d like to highlight

Earlier in the week, State Farm Insurance, the company my dad has worked for throughout my entire life, caved to phony right-wing outrage over a program designed to give support to trans kids. I remain extremely angry about this, and I’ve struggled to put those feelings into words. Charlotte Clymer wrote something that gets to the heart of a lot of my frustrations.

Charlotte's Web Thoughts
State Farm Gives Up on LGBTQ Rights
Listen now (8 min) | [Quick personal note: my kind and patient speaking agent wants me to remind you that Pride Month is a week away. If you’re looking for a speaker for your company, conference, college or some related Pride event, I’m available. Just click that link…
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8 months ago · 48 likes · 5 comments · Charlotte Clymer

Over at The Column, Adam Johnson has a piece that every member of the press needs to read: after Uvalde, “police lie” should be the default position. The days of just writing down whatever the cops tell you and putting it in the paper need to be over. Trust in the press depends on it.

The Column
After Uvalde, “Police Lie” Should Be the Default Position
I’ve been hesitant to comment on the Uvalde shooting because I think, as Jay Caspian Kang points out today in the New York Times, there is very little anymore to add of value to what is, at this point, an entirely predictable media cycle, or what he calls “The Museum of Unbearable Sorrow.” In the Take Economy, there’s incentive to say something on major…
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8 months ago · 36 likes · Adam Johnson

Lyz Lenz has a story about the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial that’s worth a read.

Men Yell at Me
We Keep Telling the Same Story
I wrote this newsletter before I read the news of the shooting in Texas that took the life of 21 people, including 19 children. That’s another story that we keep telling over and over again with no results. More blood, no change. I took a break from the newsletter last week after the mass shooting in Buffalo. Now there is another one in Texas. We keep t…
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8 months ago · 111 likes · 23 comments · lyz

Curious about who funds the anti-abortion movement in America? Teddy Wilson has you covered at Radical Reports.

Radical Reports
Mapping the Right: Anti-Abortion Movement Database
Mapping the Right is a project from Radical Reports to create searchable databases, interactive tools, and other research resources for understanding the landscape of the U.S. Right. The U.S. anti-abortion movement is a dynamic and complex coalition of groups that form the organized opposition to sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and individ…
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8 months ago · 1 like · Teddy Wilson

Rusty Foster over at Today in Tabs included a bunch of my AI art tweets in one of his recent posts. I was trying to create images for every song on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea album.

Today in Tabs
Bad News About Henry Kissinger
The body of Henry Kissinger was discovered in Davos, Switzerland yesterday, unfortunately still alive and urging the world’s rich and powerful to be nice to one of his fellow war criminals, Vladimir Putin, reports The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard…
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8 months ago · 16 likes · Rusty Foster


Today’s tunes:

“Great Cop” by Fugazi

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The Present Age Weekly Recap: May 27
www.readtpa.com
1 Comment
Randy Southerland
May 27, 2022Liked by Parker Molloy

I thought your comments to Molly Jong-Fast on Bill Maher’s anti-LQBTQ rant were right on target. “Bill Maher is, as he has always been, an out-of-touch nincompoop.” Old white guys with big platforms discovering they’re actually right wingers has become a depressingly familiar trend.

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