Free Republic

Are you about to post a tweet containing “harmful” language? Don’t worry — Twitter is experimenting with a feature that will warn you ahead of time, so you don’t accidentally infect any users with your wrongthink. “When things get heated, you may say things you don’t mean,” wrote Twitter’s official support account in a tweet yesterday. To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful.” It’s a bit like “precrime” in the 2002...

A 28-year-old Sydneysider who 3D printed guns with the aim of selling them on Facebook has on Tuesday been given a suspended sentence by the New South Wales District Court. Sicen Sun 3D printed replica guns and advertised one of them for sale for AU$1 million on the social network site. Judge Penelope Wass sentenced the man to a 12-month suspended sentence after finding he posed a low overall risk to the community and assessing him as having a low risk of reoffending. "No gun was loaded nor was it capable of being loaded with ammunition," she said. "They were...

In recent weeks, the Ombudsman's Office received complaints from listeners and readers about a handful of specific words used by the newsroom. These listeners and readers argued that the words have racial histories that made them inappropriate. This is an ongoing concern of NPR audience members: words that are in common usage, but that a growing number of people now understand have racial or ethnic roots that make them offensive to some, at least in some situations. What is NPR's obligation here, when language that may seem innocuous to some, or is being used by people in the news, also...

Cue the Papa John vanishing act. Papa John’s, the embattled 5,212-unit pizza chain, has sent precise instructions to its store owners on how to remove every last image and signature of founder John Schnatter from its locations. Store owners should remove Schnatter’s signature from the wooden paddles used to take pizzas out of the oven — and replace it with images of vegetables or cheese...

As PJ Media is reporting, “YouTuber Calum Long-Collins announced he would be effectively shutting down the channel EnglishShooting, a YouTube channel that racked up more than 15,000 subscribers and more than 12 million views in the past four years. Long-Collins said the police had marked his YouTube channel as a ‘forum of extremism,’ and that he had to ‘show the police that I am a fit character to own firearms within the U.K.'” Here’s the video that Long-Collins made confessing his sins in a last ditch attempt to placate the British authoritarians authorities and convince them to let him keep...

A new program in the United Kingdom seeks to ban advertisements featuring thin women. The Committee of Advertising Practice, which provides all guidelines and restrictions for advertisements throughout various mediums in the United Kingdom, is considering adopting a proposal that would ban the use of “body shaming” advertisements featuring thin women. The proposal would also eliminate ads that feature gender stereotypes such as a man struggling to change a baby’s diaper or a woman failing to park a car. Ella Smillie, the lead on the proposal, argued that certain forms of stereotyping can be harmful. “Our review of the evidence...

The climate change summit in Copenhagen was in jeopardy tonight with the complex negotiations falling far behind schedule as the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, warned of a "farce". With just two days remaining, the inability to overcome disagreements about the shape of a deal to combat global warming led to hours of inaction today , while outside the negotiations police clashed with protesters who broke through a security cordon but failed in an attempt to storm the conference centre. "We have made no progress" said a source close to the talks. "What people don't realise is that we are now...

“Man and Woman”, “Wife”, “Husband”, “Widow”, “Widower” Banished From all Ontario Law Terms, when referring to spouses, are banned from all government programs, services, documentsToronto, February 25, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – With the obscenely rapid, three-day introduction and passage of its same-sex “marriage” Bill 171, the Ontario government has advanced a revolutionary change in the way all laws and government programs and institutions refer to marriage and married persons. Everything referring to spouses must now be gender neutral. No longer can a married couple be referred to as “husband and wife” or “man and woman”. The terms “Widow” and “widower” are...