Sex, Drugs & Tapas

doctorswithoutborders:

REMINDER: Join our live webcast tonight at 8-9:30 PM EST

Register here or log on here at 8 pm EST.

Humanitarian negotiations are life-and-death issues for people in need, but they also raise troubling political and ethical dilemmas for the organizations that are engaged in them.

Please join us for a live online discussion of these issues featuring several experienced MSF aid workers, who will share their first-hand experiences from past assignments. They will describe the often complicated process of negotiating with governments, armed groups, public health officials, international actors, community leaders, and local officials; as well as the struggle to define what compromises are acceptable in order to run programs in crisis zones.

During the event, join the discussion on Twitter by following @MSF_USA and tweeting with the hashtag #AnyPrice.

futurejournalismproject:

Via the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Twitter’s increasing need to remove content comes as a byproduct of its growth into new countries, with different laws that they must follow or risk that their local employees will be arrested or held in contempt, or similar sanctions. By opening offices and moving employees into other countries, Twitter increases the risks to its commitment to freedom of expression. Like all companies (and all people) Twitter is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates, which results both in more laws to comply with and also laws that inevitably contradict one another. Twitter could have reduced its need to be the instrument of government censorship by keeping its assets and personnel within the borders of the United States, where legal protections exist like CDA 230 and the DMCA safe harbors (which do require takedowns but also give a path, albeit a lousy one, for republication).

Twitter is trying to mitigate these problems by only taking down access to content for people coming from IP addresses the country seeking to censor that content. That’s good. For now, the overall effect is less censorship rather than more censorship, since they used to take things down for all users. But people have voiced concerns that “if you build it, they will come,”—if you build a tool for state-by-state censorship, states will start to use it. We should remain vigilant against this outcome.

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note-a-bear:

whamola:

“We’re taught to turn the other cheek—that being kind in the face of hostility is the better way to respond to conflict so love can overcome hate. According to psychologist Clifford N. Lazarus, writing for Psychology Today, that sort of reaction just teaches…

You’ve probably heard too many times to count that “in this economy, you should be happy to have any job at all.” Perhaps that’s true, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to find something better if you hate the job you’ve got.

science:

In the scientific limelight, that is. Sort of. In the 1950s and 60s, there was a great deal of optimism about the potential of psychedelic drugs for therapeutic use. Drugs like LSD and psilocybin, the active substance in magic mushrooms, were touted as the cure for everything from depression and…

motherjones:

Watched the GOP debate? Then you probably heard a lot chatter about something called “self-deportation.” Adam Serwer explains what it is, and why it’s such a chilling concept.

Stats on the January 18th blackout strike - complete with numbers and gratuitous screenshots.

Ever since the Obama administration announced a new benefit that gives women access to birth control coverage without co-pays, anti-women’s health groups and their allies in Congress have been fighting tooth and nail to take it away from women.

After a massive outcry from Planned Parenthood supporters, President Obama has rejected their demands and protected the women’s birth control benefit. Planned Parenthood health centers around the country are writing thank-you cards to President Obama — fill out the form to add your name.