A Rumpus Roundup
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Philando Castile: A Rumpus Roundup
On Wednesday evening, police shot and killed St. Paul Minnesota resident Philando Castile after stopping him for a broken tail light. More than five hundred police shootings have occurred so far this year, and Alton Sterling’s Philando Castile’s death might…
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Peter Thiel’s War on Free Speech: A Rumpus Roundup
Last week, tech billionaire Peter Thiel admitted to funding lawsuits against Gawker Media, including the lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan. Hogan won a $140 million judgment against Gawker after the site published a small portion of a recording of Hogan…
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The Panama Papers: A Rumpus Roundup
Over the weekend, journalists announced a leak of 11.5 million files from the law firm of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm specializing in corporations designed to take advantage of offshore tax havens. On April 1st, Mossack Fonseca sent a…
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Alain Bourget: A Rumpus Roundup
Associate professor Alain Bourget refused to assign his students the $180 textbook recommended by the department at the University of California at Fullerton because he found an alternative that cost half as much. Unfortunately, unlike the more expensive book, the…
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Amazon Reviews: A Rumpus Roundup
Amazon filed suit against more than a thousand fake reviewers earlier this week. Amazon is going after reviewers who sold their reviews for $5 on Fiverr, an online platform for minor tasks. In July of this year, users began to notice…
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Ellen Pao: A Rumpus Roundup
On Friday, Ellen Pao resigned as CEO of Reddit, one of the largest sites in the world by traffic. She left amid a controversy created by efforts to civilize an online community often seen as hostile towards women and other…
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Rachel Dolezal: A Rumpus Roundup
Six months ago, Rachel Dolezal, an academic and the president-elect of NAACP Spokane chapter, wrote an op-ed piece piece describing the importance of the #BlackLivesMatter protest movement. On Monday, she resigned her post at the NAACP surrounded in controversy. Dolezal…
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World Cup Slaves: A Rumpus Roundup
Earlier today, the United States Attorney General charged 14 FIFA officials with 47 counts of corruption, racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. FIFA is the international association that oversees football (soccer), including the World Cup. Pundits have already begun to…
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Emma Sulkowicz: A Rumpus Roundup
Emma Sulkowicz graduated from Columbia University yesterday. She might have gone unnoticed had she not also been carrying around a mattress. In her sophomore year at Columbia, Sulkowicz was raped. Like many rape victims, Sulkowicz considered her attacker a friend,…
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Saida Grundy: A Rumpus Roundup
Dr. Saida Grundy, a recently hired Assistant Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Boston University, turned to Twitter to gripe about white privilege, writing, “White masculinity isn’t a problem for America’s colleges, white masculinity is THE problem for America’s…
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Baltimore: A Rumpus Roundup
On April 12th, four Baltimore bicycle police arrested 25-year-old Freddie Gray. Gray sustained injuries while in police custody. He asked for medical assistance repeatedly before slipping into a coma. A week later, he died.
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Save the Birds: A Rumpus Roundup
Jonathan Franzen is an avid bird lover, as anyone who read Freedom might have guessed. Two weeks ago, Franzen wrote a piece for the New Yorker that, among other things, condemned the Audubon Society for focusing too much on climate…