Here's my Cosmo piece about how segregated bathrooms have impacted my own health www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a6...

Avoiding Public Bathrooms Damaged My Bladder—Now, As a Trans Man, I’m Finally Letting Go

Inside the emotional and physical toll of holding it in.

cosmopolitan.com

Sandy Ernest Allen@sandyernestallen.bsky.social · 8h ago

Efforts to police bathrooms are evil and will impact peoples' health. Segregated bathrooms themselves must be done away with, it's the only solution. I reported this question out, years ago for @99pi.org 99percentinvisible.org/episode/wher...

I wrote about how weird and bad it is to have a future AG going around claiming he'll make Dobbs "permanent in every single state"—unless he understands Dobbs to be a national abortion ban, and thinks his job is to force states to comply

Todd Blanche Is Claiming That He Can Ban Abortion In Any State

As he fights to be confirmed as attorney general, Blanche is trying to appease Christian-right groups with wild legal theories about restricting abortion.

newrepublic.com

Generative AI is catnip to the men who miss female sycophants katemanne.substack.com/p/a-culture-...

A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants

And we have missed a central reason why AI is a feminist issue

katemanne.substack.com

In today's GOP, violence against women is prerequisite, not a disqualifier.

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · 5h ago

this is so fucking disgusting.

the obsession with trans women in sports is, apart from the abject bigotry, a symptom of how we take amateur sports participation way too seriously in this country.

Been thinking about this in the context of education a lot. Right when the pandemic started I was trying to a long piece on the integration of segregation academies and how homeschooling and “travel ball” are related

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · 2d ago

the obsession with trans women in sports is, apart from the abject bigotry, a symptom of how we take amateur sports participation way too seriously in this country.

The van hands out food, water, clothes, first aid and free HIV tests. Locals recognize "Thrivey" as it drives across the Twin Cities. The van, and everything in it, is funded by federal money that has been suddenly revoked, as the government reroutes grants from nonprofits to state health agencies.

Running on empty: Can a red HIV outreach van outlast federal cuts?

The Aliveness Project says that nobody else can replicate what they do for the high-risk communities they reach. They're still being defunded.

19thnews.org

why do I often put scare quotes around "vulnerable" and "at risk"? because people are *made* vulnerable, and people are *put at-risk"—these are not stable categories. we all live in a state of risk, some more than others, and risk is not distributed evenly. we can all be made vulnerable.

Please stop saying “lockdowns.” There were never true lockdowns in the US, and it fuels far right narratives to repeat this inaccurate statement. You can say closures, you can say restrictions, or better, you can say public health measures which saved many lives.

Dr. Lucky Tran@luckytran.com · 6d ago

People still complain about “lockdowns” but we had none in the US. We had stay-at-home orders, where although businesses were closed, you could still go outside whenever you wanted. Other countries had far stricter rules, and yet have been much more accepting of them as they saved many more lives.

this ROCKS lmao just throwing it out there but would anyone wanna do something similar in chicago with Kapow after primaries maybe 👀

wishda@wishda.bsky.social · 5d ago

The DSA in Wilmingotn, N.C. has created a "crisis" by putting benches at city bus stops, after literal decades of the city promising and failing to do so.

This week, we stumbled across two (very different!) places where white men greet dogs. A craft fair in the parking lot of a vegan restaurant and a British pub that gives dogs complementary bacon and carrots if they sit on the patio.

New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo

She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.

Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.

wapo.st

Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.

Am told at the blue ash Ohio ICE office today that a bunch of springfield Haitians were told to just “check in” at are now having ankle monitors put on them, which, uh….. they’re not supposed to be fucking doing that

One of the striking things about studying sexual violence is realizing how many people became abolitionists *because* they were victims of crime.

Em, midly@lefttheprairie.bsky.social · 4d ago

It’s so funny when people are like “sure you’re an abolitionist now but wait until you’re the victim of a property crime.” Buddy, the most useful thing the police have ever done for property crime is put the form you need to submit to your insurance online.

It really really really bugs me how many people simply do not understand what it means when the government tries to convict you even IF THEY FAIL TO DO IT. Do you know how many thousands of dollars in legal fees it costs? You will most likely lose your job. You might lose your home.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz responds to Trump: “DOGE took an axe to CISA and left the U.S. exposed to cyber attacks."

Trump Claims Minnesota Is Behind Cyberattack on Its Own Water Systems, Not Iran

"Iran's got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota," said Trump.

gizmodo.com

Hard to overstate how much of a threat leaders and public officials who actually govern and serve the people pose to those whose political careers depend on fomenting cynicism and delegitimizing democracy

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 5d ago

Now this is the kind of trash talk we can get behind. We’re containerizing neighborhoods by taking trash off our sidewalks and allowing mid-size buildings to trade in their wheelie bins for a bigger, better, cleaner alternative: Empire Bins. It’s time to put a lid on it, New York.

One of the groundbreaking parts of Minnesota’s new law is that it opens the door to lawsuits against the platforms (like X) that allow users to nudify images. For the most part, other regulations of online behavior have punished users, not platforms. This is one to watch.

Mar Hicks@histoftech.bsky.social · 5d ago

“Minnesota in May became the first state in the nation to pass legislation banning the practice of using AI to digitally remove clothing from a pictured individual.” www.upi.com/Top_News/US/...

This is why you dont try to compromise or concede anything to these horrors

JK Rowling centre says Amnesty apology does not solve ‘reputational damage’ — The Independent

Beira’s Place was among organisations labelled ‘anti-rights’ in a briefing document.

apple.news

I never thought I'd live in a world where Amnesty International would dishonor itself by capitulating to transphobes.

Lee Hurley@hleehurley.com · 5d ago

Amnesty have issued an apology to JK Rowling and the rest. Adjust your expectations, and donations, accordingly www.amnesty.org.uk/latest/an-ap...

I was just thinking about how "you need to become an influencer to sell books" is ruining everything

Delilah S. Dawson@delilahsdawson.bsky.social · 5d ago

I hate how what I need to do is write books, and yet I keep thinking, "Maybe if I wore increasingly weird glasses and sat in front of my taxidermy with a bubble pipe and did unhinged houseplant reviews I could go viral and sell some books." Doing the work doesn't feel like enough, some days.

“The 2024 State of Higher Education Study found that 71 percent of current and prospective students said reproductive healthcare policies were at least somewhat important in their college enrollment decisions. Eighty percent of current and prospective students preferred states with greater access.”

19thnews@19thnews.org · 5d ago

For generations, students chose colleges based on factors like their academic reputation, tuition costs or social scene. But in today’s divided nation, politics has emerged as a rising influence on where young people pursue higher learning.

For generations, students chose colleges based on factors like their academic reputation, tuition costs or social scene. But in today’s divided nation, politics has emerged as a rising influence on where young people pursue higher learning.

For college students, a school’s state politics can matter as much as its academics

Students are looking beyond the usual admissions rankings and tuition prices to consider whether a campus — and the state its in — reflects the rights and values they need to feel safe.

19thnews.org

As a PSA: In the last week, two people I know got tricked by scam websites that used AI to replicate the websites of real businesses they had bought things from in the past.

I believe this 100%. The moral injury of the period, the grief from not just the too and so many deaths but the kinds of lives we had before, the laying bare of disposability, the non covid deaths it sped, the institutional strain, the collective fear and distrust, the prioritization of work anyway

The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · last wk.

One of my Crank Theories of Everything, at least of Everything in the Recent Past, is that we are dealing (badly) with COVID trauma we’d mostly prefer to pretend never happened.

I wrote about how immigration arrests are at all-time highs, even as ICE is trying to assume a lower public profile. How are they doing this? Look to your local police.

ICE’s Secret Weapon Is in Your Community

While attempting to maintain a relatively lower profile, ICE is managing to arrest record numbers of people. Here’s how it’s doing that.

newrepublic.com

People here "social construct" and think "fake" but social constructs are very real! The US Army is a social construct, it's not just a million guys with guns and it wouldn't be very effective if it was, but knowledge of its social construction ain't gonna help you when the bombs start falling

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 5d ago

there are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5

Let’s be clear here, when scientists say mistakes were made at the start of the pandemic, we DO NOT mean that we did too much. We mean not socially distancing quickly enough, not making tests widely available, and not acknowledging COVID is airborne and distributing N95 masks to everyone.