"In the 1960s, after his seminal work on barn owls, Roger Payne switched his attention to whales. In 1971, he published two historic papers. (...) The second showed that fin whalesâthe second-largest animals after blue whalesâmake extremely low-pitched calls that can be heard across entire oceans. It nearly destroyed Payneâs career.
That controversial paper was born of the Cold War. To listen for Soviet submarines, the U.S. Navy installed chains of underwater listening posts in the Pacific and Atlantic. This network, known as the Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS, picked up a deluge of oceanic noises. Some were clearly biological. Others were more mysterious. One especially enigmatic sound was monotonous, repetitive, and low, with a frequency of 20 Hzâan octave below the lowest key on a standard piano. This hum was so loud that people doubted it could be coming from an animal. Did it have a military origin? Was it produced by underwater tectonic activity? Did it come from waves crashing on some distant shoreline? The actual source only became clear when Navy scientists started following the sounds to their sources, and often found a fin whale at the end.
Human hearing typically bottoms out at around 20 Hz. Below those frequencies, sounds are known as infrasound, and theyâre mostly inaudible to us unless theyâre very loud. Infrasounds can travel over incredibly long distances, especially in water. Knowing that fin whales also produce infrasound, Payne calculated, to his shock, that their calls could conceivably travel for 13,000 miles. No ocean is that wide. Together with oceanographer Douglas Webb, Payne published his calculations, speculating that the largest whales âmay be in tenuous acoustic contact throughout a relatively enormous volume of ocean.â The response was brutal. Leading whale researchers told him that his paper was pure fantasy. Colleagues hinted that critics had been questioning his mental health behind his back. âWhen you get to distances like that, people just refuse to believe that itâs true,â Payne tells me.
Payneâs work made a more positive impression on Chris Clark. A young acoustician and former choirboy, Clark was recruited by Roger and Katy Payne to be a sound technician on a 1972 trip to Argentina to study right whales. It was a thrilling and formative time. Camped on a beach beneath the Southern Cross, with penguins bumbling past and albatrosses wheeling overhead, Clark began listening to whales. He placed hydrophones in the water to eavesdrop on their songs and found ways of assigning specific recordings to individual whales. He went on to compile libraries of whale calls, recorded all over the world, from Argentina to the Arctic. And all the while, Payneâs idea of giant whales talking over oceans stuck with him.
In the 1990s, with the Cold War over and the threat of Soviet subs diminished, the Navy offered Clark and others a chance to observe real-time recordings from their SOSUS hydrophones. Amid the spectrogramsâvisual representations of the sounds that SOSUS picked upâClark saw the unmistakable signal of a singing blue whale. On his first day, Clark saw that more blue whale vocalizations had been recorded from a single SOSUS sensor than had been described before in the entire scientific literature. The ocean was awash with their calls, and those calls were coming in from enormous distances. Clark calculated that one individual was 1,500 miles from the sensor that recorded it. He could listen to whales singing in Ireland with a microphone situated off Bermuda. âI just thought: Roger was right,â he says. âIt is physically possible to detect a blue whale singing across an ocean basin.â (...)
Although blue and fin whale songs can traverse oceans, no one knows if the whales actually communicate at such ranges. Itâs possible that theyâre signaling to nearby individuals with very loud calls, which just happen to extend further afield. But Clark points out that they repeat the same notes, over and over again, and at very precise intervals. A singing whale will stop calling when it surfaces for air, and come back on the beat when it submerges. âThatâs not arbitrary,â he says. It reminds him of the redundant and repetitive signals that Martian rovers use to beam data back to Earth. If you wanted to design a signal that could be used to communicate across oceans, youâd come up with something similar to a blue whaleâs song.
Those songs might have other uses, too. Their notes can last for several seconds, with wavelengths as long as a football field. Clark once asked a Navy friend what he could do with such a call. âI could illuminate the ocean,â the friend replied. That is, he could map distant underwater landscapes, from submerged mountains to the seafloor itself, by processing the echoes returning from the far-reaching infrasounds. Geophysicists can certainly use fin whale songs to map the density of the ocean crust. But can the whales do so?
Clark sees evidence in their movements. Through SOSUS, he has seen blue whales emerging in polar waters between Iceland and Greenland and making a beelineâa whaleline?âfor tropical Bermuda, singing all the way. He has seen whales slaloming between underwater mountain ranges, zigging and zagging between landmarks hundreds of miles apart. âWhen you watch these animals move, itâs as if they have an acoustic map of the oceans,â he says. He also suspects that the animals can build up such maps over their long lives, accruing sound-based memories that lurk in their mindâs ear. After all, Clark recalls veteran sonar specialists telling him that different parts of the sea had their own distinctive sounds. âThey said: If you put a pair of headphones on me, I can tell you if Iâm near Labrador or off the Bay of Biscay,â says Clark. âI thought that if a human being could do this in 30 years, what could an animal do with 10 million years?â
The scale of a whaleâs hearing is hard to grapple with. Thereâs the spatial vastness, of course, but also an expanse of time. Underwater, sound waves take just under a minute to cover 50 miles. If a whale hears the song of another whale from a distance of 1,500 miles, itâs really listening back in time by about half an hour, like an astronomer gazing upon the ancient light of a distant star. If a whale is trying to sense a mountain 500 miles away, it has to somehow connect its own call with an echo that arrives 10 minutes later. That might seem preposterous, but consider that a blue whaleâs heart beats around 30 times a minute at the surface, and can slow to just 2 beats a minute on a dive. They surely operate on very different timescales than we do. If a zebra finch hears beauty in the milliseconds within a single note, perhaps a blue whale does the same over seconds and minutes. To imagine their lives, âyou have to stretch your thinking to completely different levels of dimension,â Clark tells me. He compares the experience to looking at the night sky through a toy telescope and then witnessing its full majesty through NASAâs spaceborne Hubble telescope. When he thinks about whales, the world feels bigger, stretching out in space and time.
Whales werenât always big. They evolved from small, hoofed, deer-like animals that took to the water around 50 million years ago. Those ancestral creatures probably had vanilla mammalian hearing. But as they adapted for an aquatic life, one group of themâthe filter-feeding mysticetes, which include blues, fins, and humpbacksâshifted their hearing to low infrasonic frequencies. At the same time, their bodies ballooned into some of the largest Earth has ever seen. These changes are probably connected. The mysticetes achieved their huge size by evolving a unique style of feeding, which allows them to subsist upon tiny crustaceans called krill. Accelerating into a krill swarm, a blue whale expands its mouth to engulf a volume of water as large as its own body, swallowing half a million calories in one gulp. But this strategy comes at a cost. Krill arenât evenly distributed across the oceans, so to sustain their large bodies, blue whales must migrate over long distances. The same giant proportions that force them to undergo these long journeys also equip them with the means to do soâthe ability to make and hear sounds that are lower, louder, and more far-reaching than those of other animals.
Back in 1971, Roger Payne speculated that foraging whales could use these sounds to stay in touch over long distances. If they simply called when fed and stayed silent when hungry, they could collectively comb an ocean basin for food and home in on bountiful areas that lucky individuals have found. A whale pod, Payne suggested, might be a massively dispersed network of acoustically connected individuals, which seem to be swimming alone but are actually together."
- Ed Yong, An Immense World : How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
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.
The man who won't rest until the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is cleaned up has successfully tested his system for doing so.
ââThe Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned,â announced Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, the wonderkid inventor whoâs spent a decade inventing systems for waterborne litter collection.
Recent tests on his Ocean Cleanup rig called System 002, invented to tackle the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic pollution, were a success, leading Slat to predict that most of the oceanic garbage patches could be removed by 2040.
Intersections of ocean currents have created the massive floating islands of plastic trashâfive slow-moving whirlpools that pull litter from thousands of miles away into a single radius.
The largest one sits between California and Hawaii, and 27-year-old Slat has been designing and testing his systems out there, launching from San Francisco since 2013.
GNN has reported on his original design for the floating device, but his engineering team improved upon it. System 002, nicknamed âJenny,â successfully netted 9,000 kilograms, or around 20,000 pounds in its first trial.
Itâs carbon-neutral, able to capture microplastics as small as 1 millimeter in diameter, and was designed to pose absolutely no threat to wildlife thanks to its wide capture area, slow motion, alerts, and camera monitors that allow operators to spy any overly-curious marine lifeâŚ
Slat estimates ten Jennies could clean half the garbage patch in five years, and if 10 Jennies were deployed to the five major ocean gyres, then 90% of all floating plastic could be removed by 2040.â -via Good News Network, 10/19/21
Recent update from this org: theyâve launched System 03 (in 2023) and have gone on over 100 expeditions and collected over 1 million pounds of trash! They also are working on cleaning up rivers :)
We are cleaning up ocean plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Learn more about the technology used and the cleanup progress here.
Tell your reps that under no circumstances will you stand for them bringing back high risk pools and pre-existing condition limitations to insurance.
Republican Senator John Kennedy, on an interview with CNN, suggested bringing back "high-risk pools" an insurance practice outlawed by the ACA which creates separate, limited pools of resources for individuals with pre-existing conditions (this would include any person who has ever been pregnant, people with mild conditions like asthma or borderline high or low blood pressure, up to more serious conditions like cancer and hereditary immune issues), in which those individuals can be given terrible plans at over 200% of the cost of standard insurance plans. This is one feature of the ACA that has been largely popular across the aisle, and removing it will see millions of people lose health care and likely die. (Source)
Below, I will be writing a script that doubles as an email template to contact your congresspeople about this possibility and make it clear that, under no circumstances will you support them if they support these efforts.
Find your congresspeople
Call script/Email template:
[If calling] Hello, my name is [blank] and I am a constituent calling from [address]. [If you want to hear back from their office, you may also provide your email address. Not all offices will email you back]
I am reaching out today to demand that [Representative/Senator blank] stand against Senator John Kennedy's attempts to repeal portions of the ACA that prevent high-risk insurance pools. These pools, as well as flat out denial of coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions, were practices that were shown to be incredibly inefficient at best, and outright cruel at worst. Even today, over a decade later, there are millions of Americans that are still impacted by the medical debt that was incurred as a result of life-saving treatment and care that they were unable to get covered because of these flimsy insurance structures. Attempts to repeal the protections offered by the ACA are either misguided or cruel. Other countries that have better healthcare access than the United States don't achieve it by making the sickest in their society scrape by and die. They have better access because they do not give insurance companies so much free reign over people's lives and healthcare. They do not let insurance monopolies run unchecked. If the [Representative/Senator] wants my vote in any future election, they will not humor such cruel, misguided efforts as the ones being brought forth by Senator John Kennedy. They will stand strong to protect equitable coverage for American with pre-existing conditions, and they will work to dismantle the stranglehold that health insurance companies have on our medical systems.
[If calling] Thank you for your time and consideration. Have a good day.
I wanted to post about this because I know many of my mutuals are avid crafters and I don't know how much attention this endeavour is getting outside of end-of-life spaces-
The Loose Ends Project matches crafters with a project that is unfinished because of death or disability. They offer help with a spectrum of textile mediums in over 80 countries. One project I find particularly lovely:
âMy mom was making this octopus for me. She was 67 years old when she passed away from COPD. She was hospitalized for pulmonary rehab several times and would always take it to work on while she was there and loved to talk about it with people."
(the red heart marks the last stitch made by this person's mom)
Anyway, if something like this is something you'd like to be involved in, they are always looking for more crafters <3
My favourite recent finishing project that they posted about wasn't precisely something that the crafter left unfinished. The knitter in question had had dementia, and thought she was knitting scarves. So a finisher was found to piece all the little bits of knitting together into a blanket.
use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.
use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).
use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.
get rid of bloatware
use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite
use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.
use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.
use storygraph instead of goodreads.
use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions
use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.
use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp
make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge
use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google
use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)
use flashpoint to play archived online flash games
find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books
burn your music onto cds
use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe
use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes
use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail
remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X
remove bloatware on samsung X
use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta
use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.
feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3
I can't do much but maybe this will interest someone. This cookbook is by a classically trained autistic chef, made for people with sensory issues. It's sold 1/6th of its initial run because apparently no one wants to have an autistic person interviewed on TV.
Apparently it's also very funny.
An accessible family cookbook that offers solutions rather than tricks to empower the food-averse, autistic, and picky eater, with 46 recipe
Spread this around! I bet someone here can use this.
"An accessible family cookbook that offers solutions rather than tricks to empower the food-averse, autistic, and picky eater, with 46 recipes.
This much-needed cookbook combines tips and techniques with a dash of understanding about food aversion and how to help your kidsâand yourselfâcook beautiful meals in an empowering way, and is a groundbreaking resource for anyone who has ever been called âpickyâ or âdiscerning.â Learn how to alter the texture or taste profile of a dish, or even fit it within a specific palette with a unique color-coded guide. Delicious, nutritious, and easily tailored recipes (including for gluten-free and vegan eaters) include:
the perfect smashed cheeseburger
Italian sausage and potato soup
the best omelet
stuffed focacciaÂ
chocolate pinwheels
and dozens more
Professional chef Matthew Broberg-Moffittâs advice is broken down by category (The Five Tastes, Texture, Color, Aroma, Presentation, and Plating) in order to address each and every aspect of food aversion, and a Food Preference Profile and Worksheet is included for you and your child to quickly identify and summarize their preferences. Instead of leading to mistrust by disguising or slipping in foods your kids donât want to eat, this cookbook supports caretakers in a way that maintains a healthy relationship with food, and a joyful, less stressful experience around the table."
oh boy do i love posting news and links about what the us is doing so that maybe folks are aware and can maybe do something to slightly hold back the enshittification of basic decency and human rights..
The FDA announced it will limit access to Covid-19 vaccines going forward to people 65 and older and others at high risk of serious illness
There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer.
I grew up in Whitehorse, Yukon, a small town in the northernmost part of Canada. I always knew I wanted to do something bigger with my life. I left home early and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I built a career spanning multiple industries â acting in film and television, owning bars and restaurants, flipping condos and managing Airbnbs.
In my 30s, I found my true passion working in the health and wellness industry. I was given the opportunity to help launch an American brand of health tonics called Holy! Water â a job that would involve moving to the US.
I was granted my trade Nafta work visa, which allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the US in specific professional occupations, on my second attempt. It goes without saying, then, that I have no criminal record. I also love the US and consider myself to be a kind, hard-working person.
I started working in California and travelled back and forth between Canada and the US multiple times without any complications â until one day, upon returning to the US, a border officer questioned me about my initial visa denial and subsequent visa approval. He asked why I had gone to the San Diego border the second time to apply. I explained that that was where my lawyerâs offices were, and that he had wanted to accompany me to ensure there were no issues.
After a long interrogation, the officer told me it seemed âshadyâ and that my visa hadnât been properly processed. He claimed I also couldnât work for a company in the US that made use of hemp â one of the beverage ingredients. He revoked my visa, and told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the US, I would need to reapply.
I was devastated; I had just started building a life in California. I stayed in Canada for the next few months, and was eventually offered a similar position with a different health and wellness brand.
I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it. Hours passed, with many confused opinions about my case. The officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I hadnât been aware I needed to apply that way, but had no problem doing it.
Then she said something strange: âYou didnât do anything wrong. You are not in trouble, you are not a criminal.â
I remember thinking: Why would she say that? Of course Iâm not a criminal!
She then told me they had to send me back to Canada. That didnât concern me; I assumed I would simply book a flight home. But as I sat searching for flights, a man approached me.
âCome with me,â he said.
There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. A woman immediately began patting me down. The commands came rapid-fire, one after another, too fast to process.
They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.
âWhat are you doing? What is happening?â I asked.
âYou are being detained.â
âI donât understand. What does that mean? For how long?â
âI donât know.â
That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: âI donât know.â
They brought me downstairs for a series of interviews and medical questions, searched my bags and told me I had to get rid of half my belongings because I couldnât take everything with me.
âTake everything with me where?â I asked.
A woman asked me for the name of someone they could contact on my behalf. In moments like this, you realize you donât actually know anyoneâs phone number anymore. By some miracle, I had recently memorized my best friend Brittâs number because I had been putting my grocery points on her account.
I gave them her phone number.
They handed me a mat and a folded-up sheet of aluminum foil.
âWhat is this?â
âYour blanket.â
âI donât understand.â
I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them, looking like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.
For two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no one answered our questions. No one in the cell spoke English, so I either tried to sleep or meditate to keep from having a breakdown. I didnât trust the food, so I fasted, assuming I wouldnât be there long.
On the third day, I was finally allowed to make a phone call. I called Britt and told her that I didnât understand what was happening, that no one would tell me when I was going home, and that she was my only contact.
They gave me a stack of paperwork to sign and told me I was being given a five-year ban unless I applied for re-entry through the consulate. The officer also said it didnât matter whether I signed the papers or not; it was happening regardless.
I was so delirious that I just signed. I told them I would pay for my flight home and asked when I could leave.
No answer.
Then they moved me to another cell â this time with no mat or blanket. I sat on the freezing cement floor for hours. Thatâs when I realized they were processing me into real jail: the Otay Mesa Detention Center.
I was told to shower, given a jail uniform, fingerprinted and interviewed. I begged for information.
âHow long will I be here?â
âI donât know your case,â the man said. âCould be days. Could be weeks. But Iâm telling you right now â you need to mentally prepare yourself for months.â
Months.
I felt like I was going to throw up.
I was taken to the nurseâs office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me. She had never seen a Canadian there before. When I told her my story, she grabbed my hand and said: âDo you believe in God?â
I told her I had only recently found God, but that I now believed in God more than anything.
âI believe God brought you here for a reason,â she said. âI know it feels like your life is in a million pieces, but you will be OK. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help others.â
At the time, I didnât know what that meant. She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept.
I felt like I had been sent an angel.
I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet.
The best part: there were blankets. After three days without one, I wrapped myself in mine and finally felt some comfort.
For the first day, I didnât leave my cell. I continued fasting, terrified that the food might make me sick. The only available water came from the tap attached to the toilet in our cells or a sink in the common area, neither of which felt safe to drink.
Eventually, I forced myself to step out, meet the guards and learn the rules. One of them told me: âNo fighting.â
âIâm a lover, not a fighter,â I joked. He laughed.
I asked if there had ever been a fight here.
âIn this unit? No,â he said. âNo one in this unit has a criminal record.â
Thatâs when I started meeting the other women.
Thatâs when I started hearing their stories.
And thatâs when I made a decision: I would never allow myself to feel sorry for my situation again. No matter how hard this was, I had to be grateful. Because every woman I met was in an even more difficult position than mine.
There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas â often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.
If someone is a criminal, I agree they should be taken off the streets. But not one of these women had a criminal record. These women acknowledged that they shouldnât have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration wasnât about being held accountable; it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they had been trapped in.
The real issue was how long it took to get out of the system, with no clear answers, no timeline and no way to move forward. Once deported, many have no choice but to abandon everything they own because the cost of shipping their belongings back is too high.
I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didnât have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.
I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.
Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadnât had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?
One woman had a 10-year visa. When it expired, she moved back to her home country, Venezuela. She admitted she had overstayed by one month before leaving. Later, she returned for a vacation and entered the US without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to Los Angeles, she was picked up by Ice and detained. She couldnât be deported because Venezuela wasnât accepting deportees. She didnât know when she was getting out.
There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her masterâs degree and was handed over to Ice due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.
There were women who had been picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes. All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months. One womanâs daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release.
That night, the pastor invited me to a service she was holding. A girl who spoke English translated for me as the women took turns sharing their prayers â prayers for their sick parents, for the children they hadnât seen in weeks, for the loved ones they had been torn away from.
Then, unexpectedly, they asked if they could pray for me. I was new here, and they wanted to welcome me. They formed a circle around me, took my hands and prayed. I had never felt so much love, energy and compassion from a group of strangers in my life. Everyone was crying.
At 3am the next day, I was woken up in my cell.
âPack your bag. Youâre leaving.â
I jolted upright. âI get to go home?â
The officer shrugged. âI donât know where youâre going.â
Of course. No one ever knew anything.
I grabbed my things and went downstairs, where 10 other women stood in silence, tears streaming down their faces. But these werenât happy tears. That was the moment I learned the term âtransferredâ.
For many of these women, detention centers had become a twisted version of home. They had formed bonds, established routines and found slivers of comfort in the friendships they had built. Now, without warning, they were being torn apart and sent somewhere new. Watching them say goodbye, clinging to each other, was gut-wrenching.
I had no idea what was waiting for me next. In hindsight, that was probably for the best.
Our next stop was Arizona, the San Luis Regional Detention Center. The transfer process lasted 24 hours, a sleepless, grueling ordeal. This time, men were transported with us. Roughly 50 of us were crammed into a prison bus for the next five hours, packed together â women in the front, men in the back. We were bound in chains that wrapped tightly around our waists, with our cuffed hands secured to our bodies and shackles restraining our feet, forcing every movement into a slow, clinking struggle.
When we arrived at our next destination, we were forced to go through the entire intake process all over again, with medical exams, fingerprinting â and pregnancy tests; they lined us up in a filthy cell, squatting over a communal toilet, holding Dixie cups of urine while the nurse dropped pregnancy tests in each of our cups. It was disgusting.
We sat in freezing-cold jail cells for hours, waiting for everyone to be processed. Across the room, one of the women suddenly spotted her husband. They had both been detained and were now seeing each other for the first time in weeks.
The look on her face â pure love, relief and longing â was something Iâll never forget.
We were beyond exhausted. I felt like I was hallucinating.
The guard tossed us each a blanket: âFind a bed.â
There were no pillows. The room was ice cold, and one blanket wasnât enough. Around me, women lay curled into themselves, heads covered, looking like a room full of corpses. This place made the last jail feel like the Four Seasons.
I kept telling myself: Do not let this break you.
Thirty of us shared one room. We were given one Styrofoam cup for water and one plastic spoon that we had to reuse for every meal. I eventually had to start trying to eat and, sure enough, I got sick. None of the uniforms fit, and everyone had menâs shoes on. The towels they gave us to shower were hand towels. They wouldnât give us more blankets. The fluorescent lights shined on us 24/7.
Everything felt like it was meant to break you. Nothing was explained to us. I wasnât given a phone call. We were locked in a room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out.
I tried to stay calm as every fiber of my being raged towards panic mode. I didnât know how I would tell Britt where I was. Then, as if sent from God, one of the women showed me a tablet attached to the wall where I could send emails. I only remembered my CEOâs email from memory. I typed out a message, praying he would see it.
He responded.
Through him, I was able to connect with Britt. She told me that they were working around the clock trying to get me out. But no one had any answers; the system made it next to impossible. I told her about the conditions in this new place, and that was when we decided to go to the media.
She started working with a reporter and asked whether I would be able to call her so she could loop him in. The international phone account that Britt had previously tried to set up for me wasnât working, so one of the other women offered to let me use her phone account to make the call.
We were all in this together.
With nothing to do in my cell but talk, I made new friends â women who had risked everything for the chance at a better life for themselves and their families.
Through them, I learned the harsh reality of seeking asylum. Showing me their physical scars, they explained how they had paid smugglers anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to reach the US border, enduring brutal jungles and horrendous conditions.
One woman had been offered asylum in Mexico within two weeks but had been encouraged to keep going to the US. Now, she was stuck, living in a nightmare, separated from her young children for months. She sobbed, telling me how she felt like the worst mother in the world.
Many of these women were highly educated and spoke multiple languages. Yet, they had been advised to pretend they didnât speak English because it would supposedly increase their chances of asylum.
Some believed they were being used as examples, as warnings to others not to try to come.
Women were starting to panic in this new facility, and knowing I was most likely the first person to get out, they wrote letters and messages for me to send to their families.
It felt like we had all been kidnapped, thrown into some sort of sick psychological experiment meant to strip us of every ounce of strength and dignity.
We were from different countries, spoke different languages and practiced different religions. Yet, in this place, none of that mattered. Everyone took care of each other. Everyone shared food. Everyone held each other when someone broke down. Everyone fought to keep each otherâs hope alive.
I got a message from Britt. My story had started to blow up in the media.
Almost immediately after, I was told I was being released.
My Ice agent, who had never spoken to me, told my lawyer I could have left sooner if I had signed a withdrawal form, and that they hadnât known I would pay for my own flight home.
From the moment I arrived, I begged every officer I saw to let me pay for my own ticket home. Not a single one of them ever spoke to me about my case.
To put things into perspective: I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks.
Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.
A small group of us were transferred back to San Diego at 2am â one last road trip, once again shackled in chains. I was then taken to the airport, where two officers were waiting for me. The media was there, so the officers snuck me in through a side door, trying to avoid anyone seeing me in restraints. I was beyond grateful that, at the very least, I didnât have to walk through the airport in chains.
To my surprise, the officers escorting me were incredibly kind, and even funny. It was the first time I had laughed in weeks.
I asked if I could put my shoelaces back on.
âYes,â one of them said with a grin. âBut you better not run.â
âYeah,â the other added. âOr weâll have to tackle you in the airport. Thatâll really make the headlines.â
I laughed, then told them I had spent a lot of time observing the guards during my detention and I couldnât believe how often I saw humans treating other humans with such disregard. âBut donât worry,â I joked. âYou two get five stars.â
When I finally landed in Canada, my mom and two best friends were waiting for me. So was the media. I spoke to them briefly, numb and delusional from exhaustion.
It was surreal listening to my friends recount everything they had done to get me out: working with lawyers, reaching out to the media, making endless calls to detention centers, desperately trying to get through to Ice or anyone who could help. They said the entire system felt rigged, designed to make it nearly impossible for anyone to get out.
The reality became clear: Ice detention isnât just a bureaucratic nightmare. Itâs a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.
Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. Itâs a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.
The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.
Available for Chrome and Firefox, the insanely great Library Extension saves you time and money.
âLibrary Extension immediately shows you if any given book is available at your local library. Itâs available now for Chrome and Firefox.â
âFrom there, anytime you browse at an online bookstore like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads or even Audible (yep, it works for audiobooks, too), Library Extension will appear with library availability information for any selected book.Better still, one click is all it takes to visit the associated library or e-book service page, where you can then borrow the book or get on the waiting list.â
hey chat did you guys know there's a whole website with informational videos on the rights you hold when interacting with ICE or witnessing interactions with ICE. all written by immigrants and for immigrants. idk man it'd be a shame if people watched these informational videos y'know.
It's never too late to fill in the gaps in your education
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) â Sushila Gautam, 77, checks her smartwatch, a gift from her son living in the United States, to see if she should lea
By  NIRANJAN SHRESTHA 10:34 PM EST, February 13, 2025
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) â Sushila Gautam, 77, checks her smartwatch, a gift from her son living in the United States, to see if she should leave for her reading and writing lessons.
âAt home, I get bored when my son and daughter-in-law go to work and grandchildren are at school. I want something to do,â she says with a smile.
When Sushila was young, girls in her village werenât sent to school.
Sushila Gautam, 77 laughs as she becomes nervous before writing her name on the board during a writing practice in a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Elderly women attend a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Kamala K.C, 66, writes on a note book during a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
For about a year now, she has been going for free lessons near her home on the outskirts of Nepalâs capital Kathmandu, at the Ujyalo Community Learning Center. The center was set up three years ago by the local council to provide basic education to women like her.
âNow, I finally have the chance,â says Sushila.
She can now read signs in English and Nepalese, is able to check her heart rate on a smartwatch, and use a smartphone. But the skill she is most proud of is her ability to sign her name on official documents. Previously, she had to put thumbprints.
A woman writes her name on a note book provided by her teacher before the start of a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Bimala Maharjan Bhandari, who runs the center, says she had difficulties at first to convince women to join.
âI had to tell them that being able to read phone messages, product labels and signing documents can benefit the whole family,â Bhandari said.
Women attend a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
An elderly woman Sushila Gautam, 77, attends a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Women attend a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Women sit at desks reading aloud from their Nepali language textbooks, following their instructor. Some write down simple sentences in their notebooks. During a break, they file out of the classroom to play soccer on a small hard court.
Bhandari believes that the center encourages friendship and physical well-being among the learners, creating a supportive environment for personal and collective growth.
Women play football during a break at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Chandra Kumari Ghimire, 71 plays during a break at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Among the older students is 88-year-old Thuli Thapa Magar, who has spent her entire life as a homemaker. She, like Sushila, never went to school and was illiterate before joining the center.
She is proud of the fact that she is finally learning.
88-year-old Thuli Thapa Magar, left and other women leave after attending a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
An elderly woman reads a text book before the start of her class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
An elderly woman student worships a picture of Saraswati, Hindu goddess of wisdom and education before the start of a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Women write their names on the board during a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
An elderly woman attends a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Elderly women attend a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
A woman drinks water during a break from her class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
An elderly woman student offers a pen and money as a gift during Saraswati puja, worshiping day of Goddess Saraswati for wisdom and knowledge, celebration at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
A man watches as women play football during a break at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Kanchi Lama, 78, participates in a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Thuli Thapa Magar, 88 left and Kanchi Thapa Magar, 70 wave as they leave Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
âwomen used to marry young and have a lot of childrenâ VS âmen used to marry women when they were still little girls and force them to be pregnant and give birth their whole lifeâ.
âin the past women didnât get educationâ VS âin the past, men stopped women from getting education and excluded them from all cultural spheresâ.
âmuslim women must wear hijabâ VS âmuslim men force muslim women wear hijabâ.
âin this country, abortion is illegalâ VS âmen in this country made women getting abortion illegalâ.
womenâs oppression doesnât happen by itself. womenâs oppression isnât passive. there is an oppressor class that actively chooses to oppress women, and the oppressor class is MEN.
Working in the yarn shop on Sundays, I have a group of regulars who come in specifically then for my advice on their knitting projects and over the years I've gotten to know a lot about them - their ailments and their spouses and their children and their careers and their mothers are all things they find themselves telling me about over the course of trying to bring forth a knitted piece. Most of them are women, most of them are over 50, and most of them have been through a lot and are trying to reclaim something for themselves through the act of creation. A while back, one of these older women opened up to me about how when she first came to this country it was just her and her daughter and they were so happy until her husband joined them, when he promptly began making her miserable. Now, decades later, all her children live far away, she spends all her time taking the husband to dialysis, her sciatic is bad and she may need heart surgery (who will take care of her, I find myself wondering), and she comes to see me once a month or so to talk about a new project and tells me it is the only thing she does for herself.
Today she came in with a smile on her face and delightedly introduced me to her son, who will soon move closer to home with his family. Then she says, as if commenting on the weather, that on Friday her husband died, and tomorrow they will hold the funeral. For a second I had tonal whiplash from the conversation and then I realized, oh, you're unburdened now. Like the relief in her face and her body were palpable. The son shows a picture of a cardigan to me and asks if it can be knitted, and we pick out yarn and a pattern. She's so excited to make it for him. She beams when she looks at him; he is tall and handsome and polite, and wants to wear something she made for him. She is proud of this man she raised.
It just made me think of the many, many women who come from cultures where leaving a crappy spouse isn't an option so they shuttle along doing their best and trying to find some beauty and joy in whatever way they can. Kids may not visit often because their spouse isn't welcoming or there is bad blood, so they are lonely. I remind her, we have our social group. She hasn't come to it much before because she is always taking him to dialysis, but now she says she will come often and meet the other women. Many of them are like her, but in the craft they find companionship that has been absent for so much of their lives. I hope there will be renewal for this dear lady and that she can learn more about herself and what brings her joy.
I went looking for more info on this school, and found it's part of a larger! effort in educating women both in modern skills and in traditional local arts. (Educating girls is a proven way to improve health and fight poverty for the whole community).
Great quick read if you need a break from doomscrolling :
BUILDING OF THE YEAR 2021 AD100: ADxHansgroheMuse Design Gold Winner The Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls SchoolJaisalmer, India In rural Jaisalmer
