Being a calm, gentle, non-reactive person is really hard work, which is probably why many people are none of these things. Personally I think it’s worth it but sometimes one does want to just roll around on the floor wailing at the top of one’s lungs
fun fact uncontacted peoples are not ignorant they are fully aware of the "outside world" and are CHOOSING not to have contact because they (rightly) feel it would add no value to their lives and place them in an exploited position. it's voluntary. they are isolated on purpose.
sentinelese people aren't like some ignorant noble savages, or actual savages who are all about warfare and killing (wildly racist take i see very often), they are literally regular ass fucking people who have seen the exploitation of their neighbors (other andamanese people) AND the massive disease outbreaks caused by contact, and decided they want no part in that. they are literally regular people choosing to survive. that's it.
glad that this is getting traction, but if you're saying things like "yeah, and they are right! modern society is a curse! they are living The Right Way and are more enlightened have better lives than us!" you are also the people i'm talking about. sorry. they are regular people living regular lives. please internalize this fact and stop exoticizing.
The rule could have heavy impacts towards trans people across society.
Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"
The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.
Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitation—hospitals could be targeted not just for providing care to minors but for providing gender-affirming care to adults, because prescribing hormone therapy to a transgender patient of any age could be deemed promoting the belief that "sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic."
This is all very bad and horrible, but I want to be clear that it’s worse and more sweeping than just eliminating trans research.
This torches everything. And I do mean everything.
A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):
ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives
allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason
preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies
requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.
What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.
Please, if you only ever write one public comment, this is the one to do.
Bringing back this guide to writing an effective public comment. This gives you the basics you need to know, what you need to include, a basic outline you can follow, etc.
Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:
"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"
But also, if possible, don't stop at writing a comment. Don't stop at calling your representatives. You should ideally be talking to people in your community about this and organizing resistance on-the-ground; there is a good chance people are already doing that even if you aren't hearing about it.
Like they said- get the noise up. The administration has tried lots of ways to ban being transgender, and they've always failed. Make sure to tell community members and ask them to pass the word as well.
Don't let fear or feeling doomed stop you. If you're overwhelmed that's okay, but take a break, take a breath, talk to someone about how you're feeling, and continue.
We've beaten them before and we'll beat them again.
Skeleton of a Scythian queen and her jewelry, found in the Chertomlyk barrow, near Nikopol, Katerynoslavsk Governorate (today Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine)
Headdress and ornaments of the clothes of the priestess Dimitra / Demeter, found in the tomb.
For LGBTQ history month, HWO are very pleased to republish Anna Hájková's piece on the need for a queer history of the Holocaust.
Homophobia has had a far-reaching impact on historical memory. At a basic level, there are next to no queer Jews in Holocaust histories. If you find any, they are usually deviant figures. But more importantly, homophobic prejudice has come to shape all the oral history collections of Holocaust survivors around the world. The large USC Shoah Foundation has over 52,000 interviews with Jewish survivors; next to none of them speak about same-sex desire. This does not mean that none of them were queer – I know for a fact that some of them were. But they did not dare to bring it up in the interview given the heteronormative framing of the inquiry. With missing testimonies, it is as if these people never lived and haven’t left a trace, which for survivors of a genocide is a devastating fate.
[...]
Let me be honest, even in the context of Holocaust studies this is a hard research. Some people will tell you that queer history is irrelevant and should not be written about. They believe that homosexuality is dishonorable to the reputation of Holocaust victims. Sadly, these lines of enquiry have sometimes led to painful personal attacks on myself; I have had my professional path, research integrity, sexual orientation and family history attacked. But more often, I have been able to change people’s opinions and to show why should we strive for a less judgmental and more inclusive history.
1. How do you lose a Giraffe? She apparently scaled a cliff that served as part of the enclosure (which the other giraffes in the herd had shown no interest in climbing.)
2. Well it should be easier to find her, she's a whole ass giraffe? Yeah, you'd think, but Texas ranches are fuckin huge. The man has apparently hired a helicopter and several drones to aide the search, but no luck yet. She's been seen on some game cameras on the nearby ranches though. But she's sneaky.
3. Why does a random guy in Texas have a herd of giraffes? Because it's Texas and we have basically no exotic animal regulations. No really. If you have enough land out in the hill country, you can just own stuff. It's fuckin nuts.
What's sending me is the "described as having rounded ears", as if to distinguish her from other stray giraffes that concerned neighbours might encounter.
I downloaded a fishing app to help me find places to fish near me but it turns out it's also a social media app for people who like to fish and I'm losing my entire mind over it
in 2026 let’s start actually noticing and taking seriously the true scale and impact of jkrs transmisogyny and how she’s been funneling decades of royalties and ip owner cash directly into anti trans lobbying thats been making the uk hell while gradually worsening conditions elsewhere through impacting the zeitgeist
[ID: tumblr tags reading #she effectively venmo'd a known hate group 70000 usd equivalent on a whim #she personally bankrolled the political campaign to keep Scotland from gaining independence over their intention to legalize(?) trans people #she started HER OWN hate group last year which intends to "protect" women and girls from having their "autism exploited" by trans activists #she used to slip off Forbes' richest person list bc she gave so much money away #she hasn't slid position in YEARS because she has started entrenching herself in transphobic investment funds effectively #she's worth some shit like 1.2B now because of that #she has explicitly stated that engaging with - even on a fandom only level - her works makes her money that she then uses to do all of this #we cannot just let people remain ignorant to the damage she is intentionally doing #and we cannot let people forget that she got her bc she befriended an echo chamber of radfems who never criticized her in order to do this #do not let that shit slide. End ID.]
Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!
Transcript below the cut.
Page 1:
There are currently THREE FEDERAL BOOK BAN BILLS aiming to ban all TRANS BOOKS from U.S. public schools! HR 2616, HR 8705, HR 7661
June 2026 / Maia Kobabe (a trans author, for three years in a row the most challenged author in the U.S.)
Page 2:
HR 2616 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools if they “teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology,” as defined by an Executive Order signed by Trump in Jan 2025. It would also cut funding from schools unless they require “parental consent before changing a minor's gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form.” HR 2616 HAS ALREADY PASSED IN THE HOUSE! Please call your Senators to say NO ON HR 2616!
Page 3:
HR 8705 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools which teach “discriminatory equity ideology or gender ideology,” as defined by two Executive Orders aimed at suppressing “critical race theory” and trans representation. This bill is named after the late far-right activist Charlie Kirk, “The Charlie Act.” HR 8705 has passed out of committee, but has not yet been introduced in the House. Please call your House Reps to say NO ON HR 8705!
Page 4:
HR 7661 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools which offer material deemed “sexually oriented," treating any LGBTQIA+ identity as sexual content. It specifically forbids “gender dysphoria or transgenderism,” and “lascivious dancing” (drag). This bill, titled “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” has 22 co-sponsors and has passed out of committee but has not yet been introduced to the House. Please call your House Reps to say NO ON HR 7661!
Page 5:
CALL SCRIPTS
“My name is [name] and I’m calling from [city, state, zip code]. I’m asking [Senator] to vote no on HR 2616. I oppose HR 2616 because it would restrict student’s access to books and it would specifically harm trans, nonbinary, and intersex students. Please stand against book bans and protect queer students!”
“My name is [name] and I’m calling from [city, state, zip code]. I’m asking [Rep] to vote no on HR 8705 and HR 7661. I oppose these bills because they would restrict student’s access to books and accurate history, and would especially harm BIPOC, trans, nonbinary, and intersex students. Please stand against book bans and support public education funding!”
Page 6:
Author Maia Kobabe: If HR 2616, HR 8705, or HR 7661 pass, it would be almost impossible for any public school in the U.S. to offer or teach my books, unless they’re willing to risk their federal funding. Students would be even less likely to learn about trans stories or accurate U.S. history.
Page 7:
Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!
Follow AUTHORS AGAINST BOOK BANS on insta & bluesky for updates on these bills!
insta / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my books / print store / bluesky
Maia always makes these actions clear and accessible and I so appreciate eir work.
If you don't know who your Senators or Representatives are, you can use Ballotpedia's Who Represents Me tool! (Note: there's a field for you to input your email address on their page, but it's not necessary to get your results. They just need a mailing address to confirm who your reps are.)
Once you've got names, you can look up and save your Reps' phone numbers in your phone. I find this makes it easier when I'm wavering about feeling brave enough to place a call. Just pressing a button instead of going and looking up the phone number all over again makes it just a liiiiittle easier, and sometimes that makes the difference between calling and not calling!
Lost my mind a little and added (if my math is correct) 5,615 beads to Nim Teasdale's Odenwald pattern. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!
The goal was “soothingly weighted but not uncomfortable to wear, even as someone with chronic pain.” It could have been a little heavier, so maybe I’ll make a shawl with larger beads another time, but I’m very pleased with this one. I used size 6/0 seed beads, applied as I go with a .6mm crochet hook.
Yarn-wise, used 2 cakes of YarnArt Flowers. I knitted the fully purple sections from both, then knitted all the way through the yellow-oranges with a single ball. When I hit the beginning of red-oranges, I used yarn from both cakes, alternating between them. (Not the entirety of both, I played it by ear to make sure I made it through the full rainbow.)
I do have edited charts with bead placements. I will only share them with Nim's permission.
I've done A LOT of knitting/crochet this year while chronic illness kept me from my sewing machine, but I'm feeling much better now. There will be new quilts to look forward to soon, plus a few more yarn crafts to share in the meantime!
we don't talk about the bonus army (the time that a bunch of WW1 veterans, both white and Black, organized during the Great Depression to demand the pay that had been promised to them early so they wouldn't starve to death, and camped out at the capital in peaceful protest alongside their wives and children, and the active-duty army was brought in to beat them into submission resulting in the deaths of two infants)
or the business plot (the time a bunch of billionaires in America tried to a genuine fascist coup on the government because they feared FDR would bring socialism to the US, and were only outed because they tried to get a guy who had been a famous Marine but become outspokenly against US imperialism and called himself a former "racketeer for capitalism", and who was beloved by the Bonus Army, to help them out, and then the US government redacted the names of the billionaires in question and major newspapers mocked this as a hoax even though the government itself KNEW this was a real thing that happened)
nearly enough. hmmm its almost like this country is rotted from the core outwards and its really fucking suicidally ridiculous to act like our current problems are caused by some sort of corruption of the Pure True Primordial Soul Of America