PoliticsQuickies

Quickies: Fascist Trump Children’s Book and States Taking on Private Prisons

Plus more on the depressing private takeover of .org domains

  • Metaxas’ “Donald Builds the Wall” Recalls Nazi Children’s Books, at Love, Joy, Feminism: “I watched a video of Metaxas doing a ‘dramatic reading’ of his book. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being unfair to him—I do try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and my friends still [tell] me I hand out way too many second chances. Anyway, at one point during his reading, Metaxas paused, noted the scaly swamp creatures in that page’s image, and called it ‘a Maurice Sendak homage.’ I cannot get over how damnably disrespectful this is. Sendak was born in New York City in 1928. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants. His childhood was overshadowed by the death of much of his extended family in the Holocaust. To drag Sendak in, as though he would approve of this project, is horrific—and Sendak died in 2012, so he can’t exactly object.” H/t Muscadine
  • Oh, and in case any of you missed it, Mike Godwin, who coined Godwin’s Law, has officially declared it moot in the Trump era:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • Private Prisons Face an Uncertain Future as States Turn Their Backs on the Industry, at Vox: I am fascinated (and often heartened) by how states are stepping up where the federal government under Trump is failing. We were so close to getting rid of the abomination of private prisons, which shouldn’t exist ever, at all, period. So of course, Trump went in the opposite direction to help his friends and himself cash in. I wish all states would simply abolish these prisons.
  • Powerful Internet Authority Says It’s Powerless to Stop Billion Dollar .org Takeover, at Mashable: And speaking of the evils of privatization, apparently ICANN can’t (or won’t) do a thing about .org domains going into private hands. This is horrible news for nonprofits, and another sign that we are going in the WRONG direction in terms of privatization.

Melanie Mallon

Melanie is a freelance editor and writer living in a small town outside Minneapolis with her husband, two kids, dog, and two cats. When not making fun of bad charts or running the Uncensorship Project, she spends her time wrangling commas, making colon jokes, and putting out random dumpster fires. You can find her on Twitter as @MelMall, on Facebook, and on Instagram.

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One Comment

  1. In reality, ICANN had never had much actual authority over who is allowed to have certain TLDs (three letter domains) such as .com, .org, and so on. They don’t even regulate who can get a .gov domain; the US Government does that separately. This is why some of the first .org domains were used by for profit companies. After public backlash, the domain servicers (i.e. GoDaddy and the like today) privately promised to only sell the .org domains to non profits, but only well recognized ones. I could always buy abcxyz.org, but redCross.org or something else recognizable was harder to get them to agree to.
    In short, there are literally no requirements to buy a .org domain except good faith from the registrars. Even if there were requirements, ICANN has no teeth to enforce any requirements anyway. They have literally no power to regulate anything.

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