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 appointeeânot a career expert or peer reviewerâto 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 existâthrough its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processesâcould be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to âsupport the notion that sex is mutableâ and have its federal funding blocked.
Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitationâhospitals 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."
Several times on here I've seen the take "I know local theater is bad and cringey, but you have to support it anyway!" And while I understand what they're getting at, I'm always like, why do you assume it's going to be "bad" just because the artists are members of your own community? I just saw a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest and it was HILARIOUS. Everyone was DELIGHTFULLY funny and we thoroughly enjoyed it! There have been so many times I've been greatly moved by "amateur" or student art, and if you can't allow yourself to appreciate anything but "the Best" (and who decides what "the Best" is anyway? This production of "Earnest" was way funnier than the version that Judy Dench and Rupert Everett were in, as deservedly "famous" as they might be) then you are just being a joyless snob. There's beauty and talent all around you. And if that makes me "easy to please," then well... That means I'm pleased more often! And why should I want to apologize for that?
Recipes from Portland's famous but long-closed Rheinlander restaurant. This cookbook was produced in a limited window before Chef Mager's death. All of these fucking slap.
The lentil soup post is yeah beyond amazing. I know lentil soup doesn't seem like it could be that good. You simply don't Know how beloved the rheinlander lentil soup was. This was a famous soup here.
BLM has published a plan to maximize logging in Oregon forests, including old growth forests, without due regard to wildlife (including endangered species) and waterways. They're claiming it will help prevent forest fires, though that seems to be contrary to current science, including that published by the forest service (you can find a list of sources here). This is in response to Trump's executive orders 14223, Addressing the Threat to National Security From Imports of Timber, Lumber, and Their Derivative Products and 14225, Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production.
We have 30 days to submit comments if we want to prevent this. This article has suggestions for what you can say, and how:
One billion board feet per year... 30 days to make your voice heard.
You can read more about it here:
Conservationists say proposal to âmaximizeâ logging across nearly 2 million acres of Western Oregon BLM lands would devastate fish, wildlife
If you live in Oregon and you love our forests, please submit a comment before March 23rd.
If you don't live here, it would be super helpful if you could reblog to spread the word.
I remember first discovering this site five or six years ago and they havenât even cracked a million names yet. I think itâs a really wonderful memorial that emphasizes each name as an individual rather than just a statistic and doubles as a teaching moment to show the sheer devastation to the global Jewish community and emphasize exactly how large a number six million is.
How do you feel about people who call themselves a familial relationship they do not have? Like cousins calling themselves uncle and nephews, or siblings calling themselves cousins, in-laws called aunt or uncle...
It's okay in real life and fiction
It's not okay in real life but okay in fiction
It's okay in real life but not okay in fiction
It's not okay in real life nor fiction
Nuance
Results
How do you feel about people who call themselves a familial relationship they do not have? Like cousins calling themselves uncle and nephews, or siblings calling themselves cousins, in-laws called aunt or uncle...
We actually have something similar in India. Itâs done for the festival of Janmashtami which celebrates the birth of Krishna. The story goes that when he was a baby, Krishna was always getting into pots of yogurt and white butter and just eating it by the handfuls. So his parents and village took to hanging the pots from the ceiling to keep it from him. But he and his friends would get long sticks and climb on each otherâs shoulders and steal the pots anyway. So on Janmashtami now, people attempt to recreate his heist and itâs just the most adorable thing.
Castellers from Catalonia found out about this tradition in India, and they thought it was amazing that we had such a similar tradition so far away. So they went to India to meet them. They filmed it all and released it as a documentary on YouTube (called Dahi Handi - Documental viatge a lâIndia, you can find it easily).
Then in 2006, they invited a team of govindas from India to perform in Vilafrancaâs square during their festivities. Vilafrancaâs central square, especially during the Sant FĂšlix festivities, is the place for castells. Itâs the most important center for this tradition (people from Tarragona please donât kill me for saying this but you know itâs true). And the Vilafranca colla (casteller group) is one of the best and most important ones in all Catalonia, theyâre like superstars in the world of castells. So this is a huge honour to be invited by the castellers of Vilafranca. The govindas also received an official welcome in the city hall, and invited to a rehearsal of the Vilafranca castellers. They rehearsed together and then made a tower all together in Vilafrancaâs central square, where the Vilafranca castellers were at the base to make the govindasâ structure stronger and higher:
(The ones with white shirt and black trousers are Indian govindas, the ones with white trousers and green shirts are the Catalan castellers from Vilafranca)
Everybody was very happy and the govindas and castellers got along together very well so, in 2019, 200 castellers from Vilafranca (including the mayor, who is a member) went to India to visit them again for the Janmashtami festivity (that @thepivanquisherâ explained) in Mumbai.
The day they arrived in India, the Vilafranca castellers did some castells in front of the Gateway of India monument, ending with two pilars where the anxenetes (the kids on top) unfolded a flag of India and a flag of Catalonia.
The castellers and govindas also rehearsed together in Mumbai. Iâve seen a video and itâs so lovely, it was in a square of a working class neighbourhood and it was full of people waiting to meet them.
The castellers were also invited to take part in the ritual before Janmashtami, and they were also received by the Islamic community of a neighbourhood of the city. They were very happy to be so well received.
And then the day came:
(Thatâs govindas doing their tower and behind you can see the Vilafranca castellers, in their usual clothes, cheering for the govindas).
(And thatâs the castellers doing their castell after!)
The castellers also performed in a school in the Mumbai and used their rest of the time there to give support to the NGO Mumbai Smiles which helps fight against poverty in the slums.
(The castellers in a school)
Again, they got along very well and were happy to celebrate together their shared passion. They have also learnt from each other: the Catalans showed their method to the Indians so they now can build higher towers, and by looking at how Indians climb they learned how to be faster. Thatâs why they have invited each other to their countries more times after that.
I think itâs wonderful and I hope to see more of such exchanges đ
(By the way, we donât call them âhuman towersâ. In Catalan, âcastellâ means âcastleâ. They are human castles, and âcastellersâ, the people who do it, means âcastle-ersâ or âcastle buildersâ.)
Dear Yuletide author, thank you so much for writing for me! I'm so looking forward to reading your work.
To help spark some ideas, Iâm listing both my general and fandom-specific likes. Go ahead and run with whatever strikes your fancy, because Iâm sure Iâll enjoy whatever you come up with!
general likes:
Canon side stories where Our Heroes go on an adventure, monster of the week style. I love a good mystery, whether itâs mundane or focused around some weird phenomenon, mostly because I donât ever even try to solve it and am always delighted and surprised when the threads all come together.
AUs - canon divergence, what-ifs, coffee shops and bakeries, dragon companions, you name it - that still find ways to echo the core parts of canon (solving crimesâŠIN SPACE!) and the characters we know and love
Found families!! Disaster parent figures doing their best!!! Siblings being the most ride-or-die for each other!!!!! Chosen family relationships being as important (or more) as romantic ones!!! Platonic relationships outside the main romance - or even platonic relationships between the primary characters! found families/friendship feels make me want to punch myself in the face and cry in the best way
Competent characters being good at what they do. Really good at what they do, even.
If you choose to write a romance, Iâm ridiculously into the process of two people falling in love slightly begrudgingly or unexpectedly - so all the associated tropes of friends-to-lovers, fake dating, marriage of convenience, etc. are my kryptonite, especially if there is pining. I mean: sarcastic banter and characters kind of wanting to throttle each other leading to affection and fondness (AND FOREHEAD TOUCHES <3 <3 <3)
A million bonus points for enemies to reluctant allies to grumpy âweâre friends now I GUESSâ to people who would die for each other (and may still be mad about it) - either romantic or platonic!!
Happy endings for the main characters, whatever that looks like! And regardless of whether the fic is romance or gen.
Vespertine: god this book makes me so feral and I wish there were a hundred thousand more words of it. I would love something that shows the process of rebuilding and navigating being a renowned hero when the structure you built your life around has totally fallen apart; if you ship Artemisia and Leander and want to explore how the Revenant and Artemisia navigate that together, Iâm on board, but Iâm also okay if you focus on other parts of their future, or put them in an AU. The interesting part to me is Artemisia and the Revenant figuring out what it means to really commit to being long-term partners, with all the bumps and obstacles that entails. These two are the ideal of platonic enemies-to-oops-we're-literally-ride-or-die-now, and I would love anything that gives me more of that!! I particularly adore: snark and banter, that awkward moment when you realize you have friends now, the Revenantâs reluctant slide into the role of grumpy mother hen, and Artemisiaâs horse Priestbane being a very good boy.
Some Desperate Glory
Honestly I just think Avi and Kyr are SO INCREDIBLY MESSY and it's delightful, because if they can figure out a way to happiness with all their trauma and universe-bending nonsense then maybe there's some hope for the rest of us. I'd love a post-canon story about whatever is next for either or both of these two, whether that means figuring things out with Mags and/or Yiso, connecting with the ship that is not NOT the Wisdom, trying to atone or move forward or both or neither; at the same time, given canon, I think there are so many fun things to play around with other timelines, other versions of self, AUs that are still canon compliant because of Shenanigans(TM)...the world and spacetime are your oyster, and anything that gives me some good character work will be delightful.
The Goblin Emperor
Sometimes you just want two people who have committed to spending at least a good chunk of their lives in each other's pockets but who are also (at least initially) at BEST passing acquaintances if not strangers to each other to get more page time, you know??? The idea of these two looking at traumatized brilliant teenager Maia and having all these unspoken conversations about and around him, figuring out how they're going to work and live so much of their lives together, disagreeing about how they should relate to him and finding a way forward....IT'S SO GOOD AND WE DON'T GET TO SEE HARDLY ANY OF IT. Whether or not you ship them is up to you, I just really want to see more of this partnership and the growing pains (and triumphs!) that they have together.
please actually reblog this post this time, as this one will gut national parks for more fucking paper. we have 14 days to stop it, giving us literally no time to do so.
they are literally betting on us to not do anything about it, because they're that desperate on keeping control, and ruining lives for everyone, but themselves.
The proposed rule would rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (2001 Roadless Rule) (66 FR 3244, 36 CFR Subpart B (2001)), which prohibits road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvesting in inventoried roadless areas, with limited exceptions.
