Russia's invasion of Ukraine has many of us using new words and phrases, from geopolitical terms like "rump state" to military lingo such as "MANPADS."

We're also learning to decipher slogans and spot differences between Russian and Ukrainian spellings during a conflict in which information is treated as its own battlefield.

Tracking surges in the words we use is part of linguist Grant Barrett's job. He is the co-host of A Way with Words, a public radio show about words and language, and a vice president of the American Dialect Society.

"As a word watcher, we get a sense of the worries of the world," he told NPR.

Barrett points out how the term Cold War has now been supplanted by the term "hot war" — a violent conflict with many of the worst burdens borne by civilians.

With Barrett's help, NPR created a kind of war glossary, explaining some of the terms people are using to discuss the war Russia and President Vladimir Putin are waging on Ukraine.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/21/1086709135/russia-ukraine-war-military-terms-lingo-phrases
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they forgot "Vladolf" for Putin, which I see all the time on Twitter. Slava Ukraini!

Kira’s boyfriend never actually pulled the trigger. But during the four years they dated, he often used his assault-style rifle and a slew of other guns to threaten and intimidate her.

He would load his AR-15 and point it at her while she was working out on the living room floor. He sometimes threatened to kill himself and described how the apartment would look with his brains scattered everywhere. He often used weekends to clean and disassemble each firearm as he described in detail how he would kill her if she cheated on him. On some mornings, he would tell her how he stood over her with a gun while she was sleeping, trying to figure out if he wanted to shoot her.

“He would always have his finger on the trigger, as if he was teasing me. He would pull back a little bit with his finger, not pulling the trigger back fully, but just touching it and letting go,” Kira recalled. “And then he’d say, ‘You see how easy this is? Just one pull of a trigger and you’re everywhere.’ That was something that he did a lot.”

Kira tried to leave her boyfriend three times after years of physical, mental and financial abuse, and finally did escape. (For her protection, HuffPost is only using her first name.) Her ex-boyfriend was charged with misdemeanor assault and criminal mischief after the last domestic violence incident, and she now has an order of protection against him.

But due to something called the “boyfriend loophole,” people like Kira’s ex could still be able to own firearms despite their domestic violence charges.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/violence-against-women-act-boyfriend-loophole_n_62324f9be4b0d39357c25448
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Because of course.

Republican Senate primary candidates Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel stunned Ohio audiences Friday night when the two got in each other’s faces at a forum and Mandel appeared to call Gibbons a “pussy.”

“You’re dealing with the wrong guy,” Mandel, the race’s evangelical-backed candidate, appeared to say after a heated exchange about Gibbons’ business interests in China, seemingly mumbling under his breath: “You watch what happens. Pussy.”

Mandel’s campaign denied it was Mandel who used the slur, citing a different video purporting to show Gibbons uttering the word.

Meanwhile, Gibbons’ campaign spokeswoman Samantha Cotton said, “It was Mandel” who said the word. In a press release after the forum, Gibbons denounced Mandel as “unhinged, unfit and flailing — because he’s losing.”

Making the incident all the more disturbing, the two men are the current front-runners in the primary to replace Republican Sen. Rob Portman, who is retiring. It underscores just how intense Ohio’s primary has gotten and the extreme plays the candidates are willing to make to get Donald Trump’s attention. (The former president was famously caught on tape saying that as a celebrity he could he do anything he wanted with women, including “grab ’em by the pussy.”)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/josh-mandel-mike-gibbons-ohio-senate-republican-heated-exchange_n_623511dae4b0d39357c7faaa
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Schoolyard namecalling now?

An Inspector General Report That Called For Immigrants To Be Removed From Unsanitary Conditions Has Sparked A Big Interagency Fight

A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report issued Friday called for the immediate removal of immigrants held in a New Mexico detention facility, a rare move that has sparked an unusual fight with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In the report, the inspector general’s office wrote that the immigrants held at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico should be removed due to unsanitary living conditions and security lapses. Inspectors reported that they found clogged toilets and faulty sinks and that mold was present throughout the facility. ICE officials, along with the company that operates the facility, Core Civic, disagreed with the findings and are calling the integrity of the report into question.

"We recommend that the Acting Director of ICE immediately relocate all detainees from Torrance County Detention Facility and place no detainees there unless and until the facility ensures adequate staffing and appropriate living conditions," the report states.

The report comes months after Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that under the Biden administration immigrants would not be held in substandard conditions. The findings also prompted outrage among immigration advocates who have long claimed that the detention system needs reform.

“Following this new report on the Torrance County Detention Facility in NM, I call on @ICEgov to immediately terminate the contract & close the center,” Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California wrote on Twitter Friday. “I'm alarmed conditions became this unsafe, unsanitary, & unfit for humans. This cannot be overlooked.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/ice-inspector-report-detainees-conditions
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IMNSHO, both agencies should be abolished, especially ICE. DHS should be broken up and the component agencies sent back where they came from.

Dr. Aletha Maybank joined the American Medical Association as its first chief health equity officer in 2019, determined to fight racial disparities in medicine.

That work grew more urgent in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic exposed deadly inequities in health care, and as George Floyd’s murder turned the country’s attention to the pervasiveness of systemic racism. The AMA issued a statement decrying racism as an urgent threat to public health, and Maybank focused on the organization’s efforts to “dismantle racist and discriminatory policies and practices across all of health care.” That included supporting training for medical workers on implicit bias, as well as advocating for solutions to problems that had not traditionally been a focus for the organization, such as housing inequities and police violence.

But by the fall of 2021, these equity initiatives were facing growing pushback from pundits, think-tank researchers and doctors — both liberal and conservative — who contended that the medical organization had overstepped its mission of supporting health care professionals and was now embracing a “woke” ideology. And out of public view, that backlash was turning vicious — particularly for Maybank.

After the AMA issued a communication guide last October describing words and phrases that doctors should avoid so as not to offend certain groups of patients, messages directed at Maybank, who is Black, escalated from trolling on social media to threats of violence. Maybank said she arrived home to discover someone had spray-painted a vulgar death threat on her front door in New York. The AMA hired a security detail for her and scrubbed her online presence in an attempt to restore her privacy.

“When it comes that close, it’s really scary,” Maybank, a physician who is also an AMA senior vice president, said of the harassment. “But I think it’s just really important that people do know about it — I’m not the only one.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/doctors-racism-medicine-harassment-threats-rcna20660
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This is fcuking appalling---and I'm not even Black, just female

The Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams has been made president – of United Earth.

The honour, which a leading conservative website said Abrams did not deserve, was bestowed by the Paramount+ TV series Star Trek: Discovery, in its season four finale.

Abrams is a self-confessed Star Trek superfan. In 2019, she told the New York Times she binged on episodes during her last run for governor.

“I love Voyager and I love Discovery and of course I respect the original,” she said, “but I revere The Next Generation.”

Michelle Paradise, executive producer of Star Trek: Discovery, told Variety the show decided it needed a figure of suitable gravitas.

“When the time came to start talking about the president of Earth,” she said, “it seemed like, ‘Well, who better to represent that than her?”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/19/stacey-abrams-president-earth-star-trek-georgia-governor
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Man, they can get bent out of shape over the least little thing!

The report from Blue Star Families found some service members are passing up career-advancing moves because they don't want to relocate to certain cities.

Almost a third of the military families in a recent survey said they had turned down duty assignments over concerns about the racial climate at the new installation — even though they knew it could hurt their careers.

The study by Blue Star Families is the latest effort to fill in the knowledge gap about the impacts of diversity in the military, and it’s one of a handful in recent years that explores how race and discrimination affect the everyday lives of service members and their families.

The results were mixed. Most respondents said the military has had an overall positive effect on them, but many also reported outright discrimination like racial slurs and fear for their safety both on and off base.

“Active duty family respondents of color are making very big decisions about military life, based on perceptions of racism and fear for their family’s safety,” said Jennifer Akin, Director of Policy and Social Impact Research at Blue Star Families.

https://americanhomefront.wunc.org/news/2022-03-09/for-service-members-of-color-fear-of-racism-in-military-towns-weighs-heavily-in-career-choices
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"Murica

Julia Salazar

Jesse Shannon said he was incarcerated at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 2011 when a correction officer sexually abused him.

Shannon filed a lawsuit in 2013 against a group of prison officials, alleging that a correction officer had, on four occasions, grabbed him inappropriately and aggressively while conducting a pat frisk in an invasive manner unrelated to any legitimate search for contraband.

Shannon alleged that he reported the abuse to supervisors, but that they failed to act. On the contrary, Shannon said, they retaliated against him by fabricating a misbehavior report.

Despite his persistent efforts to protect his civil rights, Shannon was ultimately denied justice. A federal appeals court in New York dismissed his case, granting qualified immunity to the officer and the other officials.

"Although the conduct alleged in the amended complaint is reprehensible both then and now, when it occurred in 2011," the court said, "our precedent did not establish that such conduct was clearly unconstitutional."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/03/20/prison-guards-sex-abuse-qualified-immunity/9379739002/
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Qualified immunity is what should be unconstitutional!

A Canada police force has been accused of ignoring an indigenous mother's warning about leaving her toddler with the man now charged with his death.

Tanner Brass was found dead hours after police arrested his mother, Kyla Frenchman, when she argued with them about her son's safety, she said.

The boy's father, Kaij Brass, has been charged with second-degree murder.

Indigenous leaders say Ms Frenchman was racially profiled and have demanded the local police chief's resignation.

Two Canadian police officers in the city of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, have been suspended.

Police responded to reports of a domestic dispute in the early hours of 10 February and found Ms Frenchman standing outside the apartment building, she said.

Ms Frenchman told the officers she had been kicked out of her apartment and feared her 13-month-old son was in danger.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60797948
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Sounds remarkably like US police

"The Godfather" holds a revered position in film history with the Corleone crime family saga – starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and James Caan – perched at No. 2 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest American Films of All Time.

However, the 50th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 mob masterpiece has resurrected the negative opinion of one influential critic: Frank Sinatra.

The Chairman of the Board was not a fan of "The Godfather," an opinion Sinatra made abundantly clear as Mario Puzo's 1969 novel was being adapted for film. In a legendary blowup at Hollywood eatery Chasen's, Sinatra snarled, "Choke. Go ahead and choke" at Puzo, who was taking a meal break from writing the film's screenplay.

The infamous confrontation sparked the imagination of Michael Tolkin, creator of "The Offer," a new Paramount+ series (premiering April 28) about the making of "The Godfather," which features a re-creation of the fracas.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2022/03/18/godfather-50th-anniversary-frank-sinatra-famous-fight-mario-puzo/6997604001/