*CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search.*

This is an atrocity to records of the past. It is bad for secondary reasons too, as the article says, but the harm to society is the principal issue. I hope these pages are all saved in archive.org.

Google ought to provide instructions for new sites about how how they can obtain, in some other way that deletes nothing, whatever SEO benefit (albeit small) they might have obtained by deleting anything.

The government of Cyprus has taken another try at condemning David Hunter to life imprisonment.

*Gordon Brown [ex-PM of UK] calls for Taliban to face crimes against humanity charges; urges UK and allies to impose sanctions on Afghan regime over its "brutalisation" of women and girls.*

That policy is a massive denial of human rights. But those responses are less effective than one might hope for — especially on Afghanistan. It is not clear to me that they would do any good.

The movie Barbie is end-to-end advertisement, via product placement.

Product placement has corrupted movies for decades.

*When Alito and most of his colleagues were trying to secure their confirmations to the high court, they promised the Senate Judiciary Committee they would adhere to ethics laws from Congress that regulate justices’ acceptance and disclosure of gifts, limit their outside employment income, and mandate recusal in some circumstances.*

Now Alito claims the Senate has no right to set ethics requirements for the Supreme Court.