The EXPLORE Act is intended to increase access to national parks/public lands in the US:
The report below focuses on how it addresses another issue - filming in national parks. There are legal and financial challenges involved in regulating that activity, complicated further by new technologies and social media. There’s also the problem of parks in locations like Washington D.C. that host many protests (and efforts to control filming of those events):
I had no idea that collecting DNA in this way was a common practice in CA. The conflict between the needs of medical researchers and patients who expect privacy (as well as transparency) continues:
An interesting report on why it’s sometimes important to do nothing, as well as why many cultures frown upon idleness:
I’m doing nothing right now!
…so that I can recharge my batteries to get back soon to doing all the everythings! 
I Will do the everythings tomorrow…
To do nothing, and then rest afterwards is beautiful.
– old Spanish saying
@anon73430903 - I’m curious if you’ve ever watched his videos and what you think about his POV?
There are more and more papers in the literature about this topic, and more efforts underway to press folks to examine their prejudices. It can be uncomfortable for us at times, but it is way past time to address this issue. I am fairly happy with the efforts being put forth now, only compliant is that they should have started before I began my training. That said, I was, in 1987(ish) in one of the first classes required to take a course in subtle discrimination (what would now be called microaggressions) at WVU, of all places. In this area, I have to say, there is hope. It is getting better.
I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe that groups of people conspire secretly against our interests to line their pockets, cover their backs or achieve political goals. By this definition I suspect you are, too. We see evidence of these conspiracies every day. We see them in the Horizon scandal, in which the Post Office kept prosecuting innocent operators. We see them in the government’s use of a “VIP” lane for procuring PPE from friends and donors at extortionate prices. We see them in the Windrush scandal, in which people were denied their legal rights and unlawfully deported by the UK government. In the Cambridge Analytica scandal: a secretive micro-targeting campaign likely to have influenced the Brexit vote. In the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers, showing how the ultra-rich hide their money from taxes and legal scrutiny.
All these are conspiracies in the true sense: hidden machinations that advance particular interests while causing harm to others. A theory is a rational explanation, subject to disproof. If you accept these scandals are the result of hidden machinations, which they evidently are, you are a conspiracy theorist.
As so often with matters of public importance, the language we use is deficient and misleading. We need better terms, that distinguish wacky and often malign fairytales from the very essence of democracy: the reasoned suspicion of those who exercise power over us. I prefer to call the fairytales “conspiracy fictions” and those who peddle them “conspiracy fantasists”.
An extraordinary aspect of this issue is that there’s so little overlap between conspiracy fantasists and conspiracy theorists. Those who believe unevidenced stories about hidden cabals and secret machinations tend to display no interest in well-documented stories about hidden cabals and secret machinations.
Why might this be? …
Emphasis added.
I will be borrowing these terms for future use.
The rest of Monbiot’s piece is an interesting read, and he does come from a place of fact and compassion.
tl;dr =
Jason Liosatos and I have the same desire for a better world, the same anger towards those who thwart it. What differentiates us, I think, is rigour. I think he is insufficiently rigorous in choosing what to believe. As a result of this lack of rigour, his instinct for justice and his potent sense of his own persecution have taken him to a very dark place. This has led someone trying to be good to spread great harms. It’s a warning to us all.
Swiped from @GagHalfrunt :
This covers a lot of complex issues from toxic team sports dynamics, problematic parents, and butthead or criminal cops:
What concerns me more is the potential to skew public opinion and warp our perception of reality. Since many victims of crimes rely on recordings for evidence, having LEOs and the press claim they are fake without any proof is bad. That it took so long for those false claims to be debunked is worse.
It’s a measure of my mood and my slow intake of my first cup of coffee that I first read this line:
as this:
I know I didn’t get enough deep sleep last night but maybe I should step away from the ol’ keyboard 'n screen for a while.
Thanks for posting… I need to read this a bit later…
I’m not sure if either of these have been posted on the BBS, but good old Judith is always worth listening to and reading about…
OK, y’all want to feel totally inadequate and borderline stupid? Because I certainly did.
And, just in case that wasn’t sufficient:
