Liz Sherman drawing because I cherish her deeply

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@indigosepiacarmine
Liz Sherman drawing because I cherish her deeply
I worry a little bit that people who refuse to learn about ai as a part of their anti ai position are going to be extremely unprepared to understand whatās actually scary about it and already have their digital literacy at risk tbh
not that I am some genius in this regard but if you follow ai developments even slightly you might change the things you are most worried about. do people know the extent to which ai is already eating itself and how meaningless this is making swaths of the internet. do people know that there are plenty of random mid-sized companies today buying their employeesā likenesses to create digital clones and using these to make hundreds of videos. I am so much more worried about labor and surveillance and abuse than people becoming lazy about writing emails. and idk man I sort of like and respect people who are willfully ignorant about it as a way of minimizing its force in their lives and I am in some ways jealous but also when I see posts that basically still boil down to āchatgpt will never fool meā I am like ššš for one thing not the only thing to be concerned about, for another thing I am really sorry but I donāt think youāre right
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 appointeeānot a career expert or peer reviewerāto 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 existāthrough its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processesācould be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to āsupport the notion that sex is mutableā and have its federal funding blocked.
Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitationāhospitals 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 OPEN TO COMMENT UNTIL JULY 13, 2026
This is all very bad and horrible, but I want to be clear that itās 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 presidentās agenda.
What this means, and if anything Iām 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; āif 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.Ė®"
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.
Some added 101-level context from someone (me) whoās worked in federal grantmaking for 20 years and is literally certified on this document - this is a document that governs all federal grantmaking. Itās been around for over a decade and is a mega-document that combine multiple previous smaller documents that have been around for ages. It is updated every few years and generally the updates are minor - a notable change in the previous update was raising the small procurement threshold from $10,000 to $15,000 for example. Deeply dry boring minutiae that no one outside of federal grantmakers need concern themselves with. It was also federal GUIDELINES, which means there was flexibility.
This yearās is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means thereās no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.
This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how theyāre going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasnāt covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.
So yes, please comment. You donāt have to read all 400 pages before doing so, itās dry and dense as fuck, but I thought this information might be helpful. Also, while there is a public comment period, this isnāt voted on by Congress. The OMB just fucking issues it. Pressuring your elected officials into publicly saying āhey what the fuck are you doing hereā is good, though.
Please note the comment period is open through JULY 13th, not JUNE 13th. I saw a lot of relogs yesterday saying "last day!" and I just want to say it is very much not too late.
As of today, 7/8/26, we have five days for public commentary on this to go through. I am begging y'all: if you care about independent science in the country that produces the most global science funding in the world, please leave a comment.
Pedestrian traffic lights
everybody follow me down the old woman yuri rabbithole
nobody followed me do i gotta do everything myself around here.
The best part of getting older is aging out of the demographic that gets killed in horror movies. I am now the age of the kooky local at the gas station who warns the band of college kids not to go to Camp Murderblood
Is Tumblr aware of Count Binface, current hope for our nation?
Let me explain:
Grotesque fascist grifter, Nigel Farage, is the leader of Reform, the racist far right party he created because UKIP got what it wanted (Brexit) and it sucked.
Having tried and failed to be an MP many times (but somehow getting more screentime than any Liberal Democrat or Green politician), he finally succeeded in the last election because people were so overwhelmingly pissed off with the Conservatives, and many right-wing people saw Reform as the new Conservative Party; partly because it's full of rejects from the Conservative Party.
Speculation: he doesn't really want to be an MP, he wants to be a fascist grifter. He's annoyed by suggestions he do things like Be In His Constituency and Serve His Constituents.
He's recently been caught having accepted a VERY large amount of money from some unsavory people that he insists was a totally legitimate 'donation' and not breaking any rules.
Only it did break the rules and it's very clear that it did and things are in motion to hold him to account.
To avoid this, he has resigned as an MP, saying this is a protest at his treatment by the 'establisment' (he is a rich fascist grifter, but he likes to cosplay as a Man of the People). This has triggered a by-election, in which he is standing, with the hope that the people of his constituency will either elect him in a resounding win, indicating they don't care that he's corrupt (having not heard everything the investigation is uncovering), or someone from Labour or the Conservatives will win and he can swan off to America, free to grift again because of what the 'establishment' did to him.
Only, all the major political parties have agreed not to stand, stating openly that this is an obvious stunt and they won't legitimise it. So if he doesn't win, he can't say it was because he was too much of a rebel and the Establishment went against him, he'll just be a loser, which doesn't play too well with the right-wingers he wants to grift. And if he does get back in the investigation will go forward without any kind of 'mandate' from his constituency buoying him up.
But. There is another option.
COUNT BINFACE IS RUNNING.
Count Binface is part of the grand British tradition of joke candidates who stand as a protest option. They usually don't get enough votes to get their deposit back (which is supposed to deter unserious people) but they don't care, because DEMOCRACY.
Of course, Count Binface has never won, but it is hilarious to see a completely serious pathetic fascist concede defeat while standing next to a man with a bin on his head to whom they are democratically equal.
But if nobody else is standing. And if enough people in Clacton-on-Sea are finally cheesed off enough with Farage not doing anything for them, there is just a chance that one of the funniest things to ever happen in politics will happen.
Imagine. Imagine for just a moment that the Grotesque Fascist not only loses, but loses to Count Binface.
i think the scientology speedrunners should start visiting the hospital mitch mcconnell is supposed to be in. i think it would be enriching for them
Intelligent alien species based on bugs but specifically those moths that donāt have mouths and only live for a week after they pupate. This speciesā whole conscious life is actually in the larval phase; larvae are the ones considered people, larvae are the ones with conscious and complex brains who build society, and each instar of the larva is treated as a different phase of life. Larvae become emotionally and socially and cognitively mature without ever becoming sexually mature. When they pupate, they metamorphose into something different and strange and close to mindless, with no mouth and no digestive system, whose only instincts are to mate and then quickly die. Metamorphosis is treated, functionally, like a personās death, and the imago phase is a kind of proto-afterlife of majestic flight and the continuation of the species. Birth and death inextricably intertwined. Sex is not something people do during their lives, itās a thing that is done as an imago after youāve passed on from your life but before you return to the soil in death. Resultant eggs are collected by family members to raise. I think this would be fun.
Man notices an Eagle eyeing the fish he just caught
*gets back to the nest* baby you are NEVER gonna believe how i got this fish
Being small Nobody quite recovers from being a child: the asymmetry of power between parents and children always leaves a trace
I am about going to gripe about something that's been really annoying me lately.
First let me start with a disclaimer that I am speaking generally here. Of course both the U.S. and Europe are both massive and diverse places containing hundreds of millions of people, and a lot of regional differences. Neither the U.S. or Europe are a monolith (although a lot of people on the internet speak of both places as a monolith, which I wish people would stop doing, since neither are).
I could be wrong about this, since I don't live in the U.S., and haven't visited everywhere in Europe. But between where I have visited in the U.S., and where I have visited / lived in Europe, and from what I know from my friends in the U.S. and friends in other European countries, I get the feeling that overall the U.S. has stricter disability access laws than a lot of places in Europe do, especially in regard to building codes.
Of course there are exceptions, I know New York city is abhorrently hostile in its design towards anyone elderly and/or disabled. Although when I visited New York city it really just felt on par with a lot of major European cities with how abhorrently inaccessible it was.
One example of this is that recently I saw a Reddit discussion where a USAmerican vacationing in France was surprised at how many staircases didn't have handrails, because according to this man handrails are required by law in the U.S.
The comments were all Europeans having an absolute field day with this. Pretty much all of the comments were some variation of "I can't believe Americans are too stupid and lazy to use the stairs without a handrail š¤£š¤£š¤£ what's wrong with you fat lazy stupid Americans that you can't even use stairs without a handrail š¤£š¤£š¤£ thank GOD I was born in Europe where I was just taught how to walk up and down the stairs on my own and don't need a handrail like a lazy fat stupid American š¤£š¤£š¤£"
A few people tried to gently point out that this was about accessibility for elderly and disabled people, and it's not cool to laugh at building codes that are about accessibility, but those commenters were usually shut down with some variation of "yeah well in MY European country if someone is disabled or becomes elderly we either move to a more accessible building or we modify our home to be more accessible, we don't sit around whining like a bunch of Americans that our building isn't already accessible š"
Which is, such a cruel way to talk about accessibility. Why wouldn't disabled and elderly people deserve the same access to a building as anyone else? Are elderly and disabled people not allowed to visit friends and family? Anyone could get hit by a car today, and after that struggle with going up and down stairs without the use of a handrail for the next several months, years, possibly the rest of your life. It's so easy to feel smug when you can easily trot up and down the stairs without a handrail, but so cruel to be unwilling to consider anyone who struggles with stairs should maybe be allowed access to the same places as you.
Honestly when I go on vacation abroad with my elderly + disabled mother, it's often easier to go to the U.S. with her than other places in Europe, because the U.S. does tend to be more accessible (in my experience, and except for New York city ofc) making going around to different public places with my mom generally a lot easier than somewhere like France or the Netherlands.
Out of all the things you could clown on the U.S. about, why you gotta go for accessibility of all things? It's disgustingly ableist and ageist, and I have to wonder if these people actually just hate disabled people / accessible design, and are using the U.S. as an excuse to hate on disabled people and accessible design.
Iām a Canadian. Our disability access is probably better than much of Europe (although I havenāt visited a lot of different European countries). But itās definitely worse than the USA.
The USA has something called the Americans With Disabilites Act (ADA), and apparently it works fairly well. An American in my WhatsApp group went to a figure skating championship in Toronto a while back and was stunned that the arena didnāt have wheelchair access for spectators. Because an American arena would have.
Not everything about the USA is awful. Not everything about Canada and Europe is great.
Also, I live in Vancouver. We didnāt have a subway system until 1986, thatās when the Skytrain was finally built. Several of the Skytrain stations were originally built with no elevators. People with wheelchairs were expected to enter or exit the system at a different station that did have wheelchair access. In 1986.
The system wasnāt built in 1896 or 1926, when wheelchairs were a newfangled idea. It was built in 1986. British Columbian Rick Hansenās Man In Motion world wheelchair tour started in 1985 (in Vancouver).
Or well, the Skytrain was opened in 1986. Letās say the plans for it were finalized by 1983, since it wouldāve taken a few years to build. In 1983, there was already a substantial disability rights movement in Canada, but several Skytrain stations didnāt have elevators anyway, presumably because it was cheaper.
Naturally, it eventually became politically unacceptable to make wheelchair users (and people with strollers, and people with canes or walkers, and people with suitcases) skip a station because they hadnāt bothered to put an elevator in that station.
So those stations had to be retrofitted at vast expense to make them wheelchair-accessible. It probably wouldāve been cheaper to just build them accessible from the start, in retrospect. But we didnāt have a Made In Canada version of the ADA, so it didnāt happen.
Also, wheelchair accessibility does not only help wheelchair users. It also helps people with babies or toddlers in strollers, people using walkers, crutches, or canes, travellers with heavy suitcases, elderly people, etc, etc. I take the Skytrain several days a week, and I see all those people taking the elevator instead of the stairs or escalators.
Rick Hansen - Wikipedia
You know I'm really not used to being grateful to live in the US especially now but uh. Huh. Jesus fucking christ.
Also, bluntly, clowning on the USA for having comparatively good disability rights is spitting in the face of all of the disabled activists who made that happen. The USA didnāt just wake up with the ADA one day, and we sure as fuck didnāt just up and decide to enact it become so many of our non-disabled citizens were lazy and fat.
The fight for the ADA was long, and bitter, and every single line of it is thanks to decades tireless activism work. Evangelical religious groups widely opposed the ADA because they believed that disability (and especially particularly disabling conditions, such as being HIV+) was Godās will, and wanted disabled people to be reliant on (religious) charity. Most large corporations and business interest groups opposed the ADA, because complying with accessibility requirements might hurt their bottom line. The US Chamber of Commerce came out swinging against it. The National Federation of Independent Business called it "a disaster for small business" and fear-mongered about it shutting down mom & pop shops and throwing hard-working American out of work. Greyhound Bus Lines literally testified before Congress that they were ~so concerned~ about the costs of requiring disability accommodations that they believed that passing the ADA would be tantamount to denying all rural people access to any buses, because apparently having to install a few fold-out ramps and fold-up seats would instantly bankrupt every extant bus company.
The bill was trapped in limbo for months. It looked hopeless. A lot of people thought it couldnāt happen ā that the lobbies against disability rights and the disabled were simply too strong.
And in response, hundreds of disabled protesters showed up in Washington, DC and crawled up the steps of the Capitol.
Meet the protesters whoĀ crawled their way into historyāand changed how all Americans live.
How dare anyone call the USA ālazyā for our disability rights laws. We had second graders with cerebral palsy drag themselves up 100 stone steps in order to win those rights. Get the word out ālazyā out of your fucking mouthes.
Most of the pictures I have seen of the Capitol Crawl Protest are in black and white, which is bizarre because it happened in 1990. Here's a couple pics in full colour.
Amazing
"fruit has sugar" warning post reminds me of my coworker who told me to make sure I don't get "addicted to fruit". yeah i'm also addicted to a nice walk on the beach
me after developing a debilitating fruit addiction
IDENTITY EMERGES ORGANICALLY FROM ACTION
IF YOU DONT DO ANYTHING YOU ARENT ANYONE. SORRY
birdfolks