There are bigger things to talk about in relation to the G7, but all the same…

Bolsonaro jeers at Macron because Bolsonaro’s wife is hot and Macron’s isn’t.

That’s how we’re doing the G7? Playing Whose Wife Is Most Fuckable? Really?

French President Emmanuel Macron has lashed out at Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro for endorsing “rude” remarks about his wife.

A supporter of the Brazilian president mocked Mr Macron’s wife, Brigitte, 66, in a Facebook post.

The post contained a photo contrasting the French first lady’s appearance with that of Mr Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, 37.

“Now you understand why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro?” it reads.

In response to the comment, Mr Bolsonaro wrote (in Portuguese): “Do not humiliate (him)… man, ha ha.”

Hur hur. Hur hur hur hur. She ugly, geddit? That means he eunuch, geddit? Stud man get sex goddess, 37. Eunuch get urrggghhh, 66. Let the Amazon burn!

Mr Macron is spearheading efforts to get world leaders to do something about the fires ravaging parts of the Amazon rainforest.

Mr Macron has described the wildfires as an “international crisis”, which critics have blamed on Mr Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental rhetoric and lack of action on deforestation.

But Mr Bolsonaro, whose country is not in the G7, accused Mr Macron of having a “colonialist mentality”.

And a Nugly wife!

The right-wing Brazilian president has a long track record of making abusive comments about women, black people and minorities.

One of his most infamous remarks came during a heated debate in parliament with left-wing congresswoman Maria do Rosario in September 2014.

“I wouldn’t rape you because you don’t deserve it,” Mr Bolsonaro told Ms Rosario.

Mr Bolsonaro also caused uproar while talking about his own daughter during a public event in April 2017. “I have five children. I had four boys, and in the fifth, I weakened and a girl came,” he said at the time.

But his wife is hawwwwwwwt so let’s cut down some more rain forest before it all goes up in smoke.

Karen L. Blair asks the age-old question, Who will date a trans person?

Who is Blair?

Karen Blair is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia; an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia; and Chair of the Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Issues (SOGII) Section of the Canadian Psychological Association.

So, not just a random activist on Twitter but an expert.

Regardless of your current relationship status, imagine for a moment that at some point in the future you were to find yourself single and looking. Under such hypothetical circumstances, which of the following people would you consider as a potential dating partner:

• a cisgender[1] woman
• a cisgender man
• a transgender woman
• a transgender man
• or a person with a non-binary gender identification?

In a recent study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 87.5% of the participants who were asked this same question only chose the cisgender options and excluded transgender and non-binary individuals from their hypothetical dating pool.

But, she goes on, romantic relationships are important and healthy, so…what about the trans people?

What then, does this mean for trans people’s overall well-being if the majority of people within society won’t even consider them as potential dating partners under hypothetical conditions?

I don’t know, but the fact that romantic relationships are important and healthy does not impose an obligation on other people to provide them to people they don’t want to have romantic relationships with. This idea is an echo of Amnesty International’s infamous claim that sex [with someone else] is a human right. People who are not trans are under no obligation to be attracted to trans people.

However, despite the fact that most participants were unwilling to consider dating a trans person, there were certain demographic characteristics that were associated with more inclusion of potential trans partners. For example, while only 3.1% of cisgender, heterosexual individuals were willing to date a trans person, 55% of individuals who identified as queer or bisexual included trans persons as potential dating partners, perhaps due to their pre-existing ability to look beyond gender when choosing a partner.

Aka their confusion of gender with sex and their overall confusion on the whole subject and their burning need to be woke about it.

While the study did not ask participants about their reasons for including or excluding trans persons, the authors speculated that exclusion was likely the result of factors ranging from explicit transprejudice, such as viewing trans persons as unfit, mentally ill, or subhuman…

“Subhman”? I call bullshit.

Ultimately, each individual has the freedom to decide whom they date or are interested in dating, and thus the article does not suggest that any single individual must include trans people within their dating pool. However, the article does suggest that examining and following the overall societal patterns of including or excluding trans people within the intimate realm of dating can be used as an indicator of overall acceptance and social inclusion of trans people. In other words, it is one thing to make space for trans people within our workplaces, schools, washrooms, and public spaces, but it is another to see them included within our families and most intimate of spaces, our romantic relationships. We won’t be able to say, as a society, that we are accepting of trans citizens until they are also included within our prospective dating pools; at the very least, on a hypothetical basis.

In other words we’re not saying you have to include trans people in your dating pools but we are saying that you have to include trans people in your dating pools. Entirely up to you of course! But you have to.

The Guardian on Trump in Biarritz:

Senior aides in Donald Trump’s entourage have accused the G7 host and French president, Emmanuel Macron, of seeking to embarrass his US counterpart by making the summit focus on “niche issues” such as climate change, according to multiple US media reports.

Good scare quotes but there should be more of them, or else GIFs of scorn and derision.

Can we focus for just a second? CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT A NICHE ISSUE.

Not in any sense. Climate change is making the planet less inhabitable for most mammals, fish, birds, insects, and plants right now and it’s getting worse all the time, at a much faster clip than was predicted even a few years ago. It’s getting much worse much sooner than anyone thought, and that means for all of us, so how can that possibly be a “niche” issue? How stupid are these “senior aides”?

The spark for the fuse appeared to be lunch. Macron whisked the US president away for an impromptu meal for two on an oceanfront terrace at the Hotel du Palais. Trump initially appeared frosty but later called it “the best meeting we have yet had”.

That probably means he liked the dessert.

Senior administration officials quoted by the New York Times among others were not so sure, complaining the summit had moved from core issues such as global economics and trade to “niche issues” such as climate change, gender equality and development in Africa. The topics were chosen to appeal to Macron supporters, and even to embarrass Trump, who pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord, they said, as protesters marched the streets of the French city calling for action to tackle the fires ravaging the Amazon rainforest.

I guess these senior aides think they will go on being able to eat and drive their cars and live in their big houses even after all the peasants have starved to death? Because the food and fuel and police protection will be provided by Market Magic or The Ghost of Ayn Rand or careful prudent saving?

“It’s our view that with France trying to drive these other issues outside of global economics, national security and trade, they’re trying to fracture the G7,” one official told White House reporter Gabby Orr.

Trade is everything! Trade is God! Trade soars free of the earthly realities of growing seasons and people who know how to plant and harvest! Shut your eyes and just keep trading!

Days earlier, Larry Kudlow, the director of the White House’s national economic council, criticised Macron’s decision to ditch the usual consensus communique at the end of the summit in favour of “coalitions’ of like-minded states. “These coalitions produce politically correct bromides such as calls to ban everything from straws to fossil fuels,” he said in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

Sure, Larry, just keep calling it politically correct while the forests vanish and the tundra burns and Greenland melts and suddenly the food supply is nowhere to be found. That’ll work.

Trump at the G7 is whining because Macron is doing things his way instead of Trump’s way. Isn’t the entire world supposed to do things Trump’s way? If not, why not?

Macron had ripped up the script before anyone even landed in the seaside resort of Biarritz: picking a fight with Brazil over Amazon forest fires, surprising the Europeans with a threat to block a trade deal with Latin America, and keeping allies guessing about what trick he would pull next.

Did Macron “pick a fight” with Brazil over Amazon forest fires, or is Bolsonaro picking a fight with all of us by clear-cutting the Amazon? Who is really the baddy here?

With mounting threats to the global economy, divisions over Iran, and the Amazon fires creating a sense of crisis about the environment, the French organizers also want to avoid leaks that could lead to the kind of public bust-ups that have marred other recent international gatherings. For better or worse, G-7 meetings are a critical institution when it comes to addressing truly worldwide problems.

What the French hosts can’t control is a U.S. leader who already seems on edge, after spending Friday lashing out at the Federal Reserve and China as the trade war he began risks tipping the world into recession.

Trump “already seems on edge”? Trump is permanently both deranged and stupid. He’s not in a mood, he’s always on the edge of some abyss or other.

As soon as they landed, U.S. officials complained that Macron was trying to fashion the weekend’s agenda to isolate Trump, framing it around climate change and straying from the G-7’s original purpose as an economic bloc. French officials at every level had been difficult to deal with in preparation for the summit, the Americans said.

How do these US official propose to separate economic issues from climate change? Do they think there’s no connection? Do they think global fires and rising sea levels and crop failures are not going to touch the economy? Do they think famines and mass migrations and wars float free of economics?

Trans activism does wonders for your feminism, I must say. Stamps it right out.

Sally Hines, Professor of Sociology and Gender Identities:

Re GC feminist protest pranks @ManchesterPride, please, just…[GIF of woman making the “sit down and be quiet” gesture]

Thing is, most of them are (at least!) my age and they really have only *just* discovered protest! Such a yawn. I don’t want to people watch them. They have nothing to teach me. I say, with #pride, Please. Just. Go. Away. You are not fun. You are not pretty (though yep, vacant)

Old, boring, and ugly, the professor of gender identities calls feminist women.

We get more progressive every day!

(It’s a Sex Pistols joke, the people cry. Oh well then, not misogynist at all!)

And he wasn’t even elected.

Boris Johnson has asked the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, whether parliament can be shut down for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit, according to leaked government correspondence.

An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 – written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer – makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of such a move, known as prorogation. The initial legal guidance given in the email is that shutting parliament may well be possible, unless action being taken in the courts to block such a move by anti-Brexit campaigners succeeds in the meantime.

On Saturday Labour and pro-Remain Tory MPs reacted furiously, saying that the closure of parliament, as a method for stopping MPs preventing a potentially disastrous no-deal Brexit, would be an affront to democracy and deeply irresponsible, particularly given the government’s own acceptance of the economic turmoil no-deal could cause.

And the fact – striking to an outsider at least – that Johnson isn’t even an elected PM.

Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said: “Any plan to suspend parliament at this stage would be outrageous. MPs must take the earliest opportunity to thwart this plan and to stop a no-deal Brexit.”

The prominent Tory remainer and former attorney general Dominic Grieve added: “This memo, if correct, shows Boris Johnson’s contempt for the House of Commons. It may be possible to circumvent the clear intention of the House of Commons in this way but it shows total bad faith. Excluding the house from a national crisis that threatens the future of our country is entirely wrong.”

Maybe the idea is to get ahead of climate change by smashing everything ourselves first.

Rebecca Kukla – Philosophy, Georgetown, and cop of all things trans – has a public Facebook post from last week about how her piece for the Institute of Art and Ideas was drastically cut without her knowledge and how the Institute of Art and Ideas didn’t tell her it was a multi-person piece and that she would be posting in the company of TERFs. She includes the uncut piece, and what she says in one of the cut parts is interesting.

There is no such thing as ‘the’ transgender experience and identity of course; the experiences of transgender folks are as varied as the experiences of anyone else, and transgender people also do not share a single identity. Some trans folks identify with one of the two binary genders and some do not. Some take themselves as always having had their current gender; others experience their gender as shifting. Some care about medically altering parts of their body and others do not. No philosopher can speak to ‘the’ experience or identity of a whole group.

No doubt, but on the other hand, if it’s that various and undescribable, I have to wonder what the word “trans” even means. Some identify with one of the genders and some don’t – ok so what does it mean then? Anything and everything?

But what comes next is what really interested me.

That said, I think that philosophy can contribute a lot to contemporary discussions of gender and transgender identity. Indeed, each of the traditional major branches of philosophy provides useful tools and lenses for thinking about these issues. Using the tools of metaphysics, or the study of what exists and how, we can ask what it is to have a gender, and what personal identity is. A metaphysician might ask what role gender plays in identity, whether one’s gender is (or is sometimes) essential to one’s personal identity, and what it means for gender and identity to change. Epistemologists, who study knowledge and justification, can examine how each of us knows our own gender, and by what standards, and – separately – how we take ourselves to know other people’s genders. If I feel certain of my gender, is my certainty warranted, or could I be wrong?

We can do all that, can we? We can ask what it is to have a gender, and what personal identity is? If we can, why is it that we get yelled at and called names when we do? We can ask what role gender plays in identity, whether one’s gender is (or is sometimes) essential to one’s personal identity, and what it means for gender and identity to change? But the people Kukla calls “TERFs” do ask those questions, and Kukla ostracizes them and demonizes them. We can examine how each of us knows our own gender, and by what standards? We can ask how we take ourselves to know other people’s genders? We can ask if we could be wrong about our gender? We who are not trans can ask that too? But then why does Kukla call philosophers who do ask those questions “TERFs”?

That’s a real question. I don’t get it. She lays down how people can systematically think about this subject, but meanwhile she is prominent among the philosophy academics who do their best to ostracize and punish people who do try to systematically think about this subject. She was one of the fiercest voices attacking Rebecca Tuvel for her attempt, and at the beginning of this post she says:

Today I found out that without giving me any hint of this in advance, it was published as part of a symposium including Bindel, Stock, and Lawford-Smith, among others. This completely recontextualizes my original piece. I would not have agreed to what looks like a friendly ‘debate’ with them and would have written a different piece if I had.

Because they ask what it is to have a gender, and what personal identity is.

You couldn’t make it up.

If you read the post don’t miss the comments, because “Rachel” McKinnon turns up under the name “Her Thighnes” [sic] and goes on at massive length about how important it is to nail these things down first and how he does lots of meeja and here is his whole correspondence with the BBC and are you impressed? It’s hilarious, in a disgusting way, and all the more so because Kukla after an initial groveling acknowledgement ignores him.

Isaac Chotiner at the New Yorker introduces us to an academic who thinks white people are Superior:

Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, is the academic who perhaps best represents the ideology of the Trump Administration’s immigration restrictionists. Wax, who began her professional life as a neurologist, and who served in the Solicitor General’s office in the late eighties and early nineties, has become known in recent years for her belief in the superiority of “Anglo-Protestant culture.”…

Last month, in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, in Washington, D.C., Wax promoted the idea of “cultural-distance nationalism,” or the belief that “we are better off if our country is dominated numerically, demographically, politically, at least in fact if not formally, by people from the first world, from the West, than by people from countries that had failed to advance.” She went on, “Let us be candid. Europe and the first world, to which the United States belongs, remain mostly white, for now; and the third world, although mixed, contains a lot of non-white people. Embracing cultural distance, cultural-distance nationalism, means, in effect, taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer non-whites.”

“Let us be candid” – that’s academic for “This is not politically correct but.”

Also, does the US belong to Europe and the first world? Are we sure? It’s an outlier on a hell of a lot of metrics – proportion of the population locked up in prison; maternal mortality rates; infant mortality rates; proportion in poverty; levels of inequality; number of people in debt; murder rates; gun violence – and so on. Does that look very first world?

Chotiner interviewed her.

During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Wax expounded on her beliefs that people of Western origin are more scrupulous, empirical, and orderly than people of non-Western origin, and that women are less intellectual than men. She described these views as the outcome of rigorous and realistic thinking, while offering evidence that ranged from two studies by a eugenicist to personal anecdotes, several of which concerned her conviction that white people litter less than people of color.

He asked her if she was promoting cultural-distance nationalism, and she said she was.

I was basically speaking to my fellow-conservatives. I was speaking bluntly, and with elision. I was saying, “Well, if you do discuss it or you even advocate for it, people are going to say, ‘Oh, you are saying we are better off with more whites than non-whites. That is the equivalent of the position you are taking, and that is going to spook conservatives.’ ” Not knowing that there would be this limousine-liberal meltdown, I probably should have spelled out in more explicit terms that the media and people on the left are going to interpret your neutral criterion as a racial one, or at least they will be upset that it has racial effects, and you will be tarred with that.

Ah yes, limousine-liberal, because liberals are all rich and conservatives are all poor but honest. Trump for instance – never seen a limousine in his life, or even a golf cart. Did not take a golf cart while the other G7 leaders walked that one time.

The rest of the interview is just bizarre because there’s no mention of scholarship or research, it’s just Wax talking off the top of her head about trying to figure out why some countries are So Awesome and others are shitholes, and she offers up some explanations she thought up inside her own head. But the subject is an empirical one, and there is research on it. I’m pretty sure Jared Diamond brought a lot of it together in Guns, Germs and Steel and I’m also pretty sure there are syntheses for more scholarly readerships too. It’s not a subject people can figure out by just thinking about it and offering examples of what they see when they visit France.

We can make observations about this, and, frankly, every summer I do the grand tour of the upper-middle-class, cognitive élite watering holes to visit all my friends, and I notice that these are places that people love to go. They love to go and hang out with other people from the quote-unquote “same ethnicity” in nice, quasi-European, decorous, neat, clean, quiet, litter-free, beautifully maintained, orderly places. That’s where they like to go.

People like to hang out with people of the same ethnicity. Is that what you said?

Yes. Yes, they do. I mean, I was recently in the Berkshires. If you look around, it’s ninety-eight-per-cent white. Why do people go there? It’s not very vibrant. It’s not very diverse.

You think they go there to be with other white people, you mean?

Well, I don’t think they think about it that way, but that’s the result.

Is that why you go there, or that’s why you think other people go there, or both?

I go there because it’s nice.

When you asked—

That’s how we have nice things. It’s nice. We go to places that we consider nice.

There’s a funny bit where she explains how Trump has his good points.

I mean, the President is impulsive, crude, boorish. He’s indecorous. That whole indictment is absolutely right. But, on the other hand, there are many things he says and does that I think are completely consistent with our core values. He engages in locker-room boasting about grabbing women, but, the fact is, he’s a serial monogamist but at least he’s gotten married. He’s never fathered a child out of wedlock.

Chotiner delicately hints that she doesn’t actually know that, but if I’d been there I would have zeroed in on the “at least he’s gotten married” bit. Well, yes, but he was violent to Ivana and he was fucking Stormy Daniels while Melania was recovering from childbirth so, you know…how does that count as a plus, exactly?

But, anyway, he does believe in freedoms. He does believe in free speech. He does believe in democracy.

Inexplicably, Chotiner ignored that one. He what? The hell he does. He believes in free speech for himself; for everyone else it’s subject to conditions, especially the condition “how does it affect Donald Trump?” And he doesn’t believe in democracy either; he’s trying his best to suppress the vote of anyone who might not vote for him. He insults everyone in government who doesn’t kiss his ass. He insults people who don’t vote for him, he insults whole states, he insults Democrats and liberals and independents and socialists, he pretends he can make us do what he wants just by saying “I hereby order.” He loves Putin, he loves Kim, he loves the Saudis. He doesn’t in the least believe in democracy.

The University of Pennsylvania Law School is apparently embarrassed by her.

Marina Hyde on Andrew Windsor’s claim to be shocked, shocked by the news about Jeffrey Epstein:

Or as Buckingham Palace finally put it in a statement denying any impropriety on behalf of the prince: “The Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes.”

I’m slightly sorry for the royal flunkies who had to issue this line, given that most of us are suffering eyeball strain from all the rolling we’re doing. Even so, I do feel we need further clarification on what precisely the Duke is appalled by. Is it just the “recent reports”? Because if we’re meant to believe that Prince Andrew is appalled by ALL of the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein – both the ones alleged and the ones he served actual jail time for – then allow me to treat this statement with all the dignity it deserves. To wit: BULL. SHIT. Bullshit Prince Andrew didn’t know what sort of guy his friend was when he was snapped walking with the Tier 1 sex offender, after he got out of jail, in a photo the New York Post headlined “PRINCE & PERV”. Bullshit he didn’t know why his close friend WENT TO PRISON FOR A YEAR, but kept hanging out with him anyway. Bullshit if, as Brockman recounts, he lay on his back in that guy’s house, with a Russian attending to his feet, talking over her head to men of the world about the nocturnal licence afforded to minor European royals, and he didn’t know roughly what he was swimming in. Bullshit. I get we have to pay for Andrew’s lifetime of jollies; but we don’t have to have our intelligence insulted by him.

Andrew was complaining because Prince Albert of Monaco got to go out in the evenings and nobody cares but if Andrew does he’s in big trouble. Wah. Sounds like Trump, doesn’t he.

The plain fact is that Andrew continued to be friends with Epstein even after he pleaded guilty to procuring an underage girl for prostitution. I guess it was the old she-said, he-said thing. Or as the then-Palm Beach police chief put it: “This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ – and the shes all basically told the same story.” Obviously, Epstein got away lightly with his grotesque plea deal, because 50-something:1 isn’t the ratio you need. Even last year, they still needed 60 accusers to stop Bill Cosby. Donald Trump’s 17:1 she-he ratio is nowhere near enough to keep him from the highest office on the planet.

As for where we go from here, perhaps a multimillion-pound royal wedding would indeed be helpful. It should be quite the opposite. Where Princess Anne pointedly didn’t, Prince Andrew demanded all the titles and trappings for his two daughters – security details, civil list money, full royal weddings – and was furious when denied some of them. Yet Beatrice and Eugenie still live like … well, princesses.

So instead of distracting from the miserable stories of the female attendees of various Epstein mansions, these gilded lives should throw them into even more shameful relief. They suggest the kind of man – and we’ve all met them – who has a two-tier view of the female sex. There is a world for their daughters, hopefully insulated from men like their friend Jeffrey, and then there is another world for the girls who service their friend Jeffrey.

Yet decent, humane people know there aren’t two kinds of women and girls – there are just women and girls.

But there aren’t as many decent, humane people as we would like there to be.

And so with the girls in the stories that swirl around Epstein and his circle, which includes the Duke: either broken, or yet-to-be-broken. But ultimately, breakable. They are all daughters, too, your Royal Highness. The Russian masseuse on your feet, the 17-year-old runaway on whose bare hip you have your hand in that fateful picture in London, the terrified 14-year-old who ran screaming from your great friend’s house in her underwear, who you must have read about at the time, because I did, and I didn’t even know the guy. And all the others.

Because there aren’t two kinds of women, the good and the slutty. There is only the one kind.

Back in June I did a post about a lawsuit by a trans woman against the Times.

The hearing at the Edinburgh Employment Tribunal, which began on Wednesday, could have far-reaching implications for UK’s news outlets. In addition to the standard employment law charges such as discrimination and victimisation, the case also rests on an argument that has never before been tested.

O’Donnell and her lawyer — Robin White of Old Square Chambers — allege that it wasn’t just what happened in the newsroom but also what those inside it published in the newspaper about trans people that constituted a hostile, anti-transgender place to work.

Sly. Very very sly. Bring one case and (if you win) make it so that the news media can no longer write or broadcast anything critical of trans activism or trans ideology. Wouldn’t that be awesome.

The Tribunal has ruled.

A transgender former journalist at The Times has lost an employment tribunal claim that she was the victim of discrimination and unfair dismissal.

Katherine O’Donnell had claimed that there was a “toxic environment for trans people” at the newspaper and criticised its reporting of transgender stories.

…

John Witherow, the editor of The Times, appeared as a witness at the tribunal and defended the paper’s coverage of transgender issues. He denied that there was bias or inaccuracy in its reporting.

Judge Jane Porter dismissed Ms O’Donnell’s claims of direct discrimination, harassment, victimisation and unfair dismissal after hearings that lasted a total of 19 days. In her judgment she wrote: “The tribunal does not accept the evidence of a ‘boys club’ during the claimant’s employment . . . there was a significant number of senior women in powerful positions.”

A spokeswoman for The Times said: “We are pleased this judgment dismisses all the claims made by the claimant and confirms that The Times took reasonable and appropriate decisions and did not show any anti-transgender bias towards its staff.”

I don’t think trans women should be complaining about boys’ clubs as applied to themselves.

The evil David Koch is dead but his evil will live on until planet death snuffs it out too.

While he certainly enjoyed the fruits of his labors to deregulate U.S. industry and reduce taxes on the super-wealthy like himself, he will never have to experience the consequences of his biggest achievement: putting the entire planet on the brink of crisis in the service of enriching himself and a few other fossil fuel billionaires. And we, the people and future generations who are going to live with the fallout, will never see him or the small cadre of wealthy conservatives who funded decades of climate denial face any form of justice.

Koch’s death was first reported by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer Friday morning and confirmed by his surviving brother, Charles, shortly thereafter. The two brothers were tied as the 11th richest people on the planet on the Forbes 100, with an estimated net worth of $50.5 billion each. They amassed so much wealth in part through business savvy—you likely don’t go a day without coming in contact with something made by some subsidiary of their privately owned Koch Industries conglomerate—and in part because they spent a comparative pittance of that fortune on turning our political system into a fucking nightmare. Funding astroturf groups like Americans for Prosperity and conservative politicians has led to widespread deregulation and huge tax breaks for their businesses, allowing them to take an even bigger share of the pie.

And above all it has blocked efforts to deal with global warming.

[T]he Koch brothers’ businesses from fossil fuel extraction and refining to petrochemical and fertilizer production all rely on being able to emit carbon pollution with abandon. In the 1990s, as the world moved toward an awakening on climate change and the need to address it, the Koch machine moved to block any regulations or price on carbon that would cut into their profits by funding doubt and denial. Greenpeace estimates the brothers spent $127 million from 1997 to 2017 funding 92 organizations that muddied the waters on climate change, a move that helped make international efforts to combat climate change, like the Kyoto Protocol, worthless. They funded a network of overlapping climate denial organizations to kill a 2009 bill that would have created a cap and trade system, a very business-friendly climate solution they rejected on principle.

It’s a pity they didn’t both die decades sooner.

The smoke from wildfires was bad here last summer but it didn’t actually get dark in the afternoon. Stinky and unhealthy, yes, but dark, no. São Paulo on the other hand…

In the middle of the afternoon on August 19th South America’s largest city went dark. Under a thick, black cloud at 3pm, the lights flickered on in São Paulo’s skyscrapers; on the motorways brake lights started to glow in the city’s bumper-to-bumper traffic, and many Paulistanos were worried. Social-media users posted pictures of the gloom, juxtaposing the dystopian afternoon sky with fictional apocalyptic places such as Gotham City from “Batman”, Mordor from “Lord of the Rings” and “the upside down” from “Stranger Things”.

Meteorologists scrambled to explain what was going on. But the most likely explanation, most accept, is that fires burning far away in the rainforest are to blame. Climatempo, a popular private meteorology website, reported that a cold front brought low-lying clouds which then combined with smoke to form the thick black smog.