My favorite category of government program to run across is "program you've never heard of doing extremely important work to solve a major problem which you have also never heard of." On that note, the US drops millions of pounds of sterile bugs over Panama each week in order to prevent a parasite infestation from moving into North America. Everyone say thank you to the Panama-United States Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of the Cattle Borer Worm (COPEG)
This program had its funding cut during the DOGE cuts last year and now the parasitic worm they were trying to slow the spread of has officially arrived in the United States.
Iranian resilience in the face of US-Israeli assault
The Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s exposed the vulnerability of the revolutionary state to a conventional assault by a materially superior adversary, revealing the limits of Iran’s military capabilities and the constraints imposed by its relative isolation in the international system. Iranian planners did not only seek to compensate for these weaknesses by raising the costs of external intervention in a narrowly reactive sense. They also developed a doctrine of “forward defense,” which involved displacing the conflict outside Iran’s borders. This meant cultivating relationships with allied nonstate actors, extending influence across neighboring theaters, and embedding deterrence within transnational networks capable of operating below the threshold of conventional war.
This kind of asymmetric warfare was not just a second-best substitute for conventional force, but a strategic reconfiguration of how and where conflict would be waged—one that sought to externalize risk, fragment adversaries’ operational environments, and render escalation diffuse, protracted, and difficult to contain. The American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq decisively underwrote the rationale for this strategic pivot. While the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime removed Iran’s principal regional rival, it simultaneously transformed its security environment by placing US forces directly on its eastern and western flanks. This gave forward defense a renewed urgency, as a means of preemptively shaping the regional balance of power and ensuring that any confrontation would have to take place across multiple theaters.
Iran thus sought to fashion, in coordination with its allies, what would later be termed the “Axis of Resistance”: a loose network of allied political movements and armed organizations extending across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Palestine. The aim was not military parity with the US or Israel, but the creation of a deterrent environment in which the costs of direct attack would become prohibitively high. The strategy reflected the predicament of a semi-peripheral state and aspiring middle power faced with fiscal constraints and a deeply unfavorable balance of military power. While deterrence could not promise victory, it was carefully calibrated to secure the survival of the Islamic system.
I am continuously astounded by how much pro-homeschooling rhetoric flies in youth rights circles.
Homeschooling (yes, that includes unschooling) consolidates massive amounts of power into the hands of parents. Homeschooling causes horrific abuse and isolation.
The homeschooling movement is far-right and blatantly pro-abuse. The HSLDA called a man who kept children in cages a “hero.” They has helped to block the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child AND the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, has backed legislation banning both same-sex marriage and civil unions, and helped kill a bill that would define isolation as abuse, among countless other offenses. Its founder, Michael Farris, wrote in his dramatized narrative of CPS “stealing” children from their Christian homeschooling parents that hitting children to the point of bruising is not abuse.
Libby Ann has extensively documented HSLDA’s support of abuse, including praising abusers and attempting to block all bills that define abuse more strictly, even if “more strictly” simply expands the definition to include bruises and welts.
I grew up in a household that donated to the HSLDA and was homeschooled and all that.
HOMESCHOOLING IS THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY TO ENABLE CHILD ABUSE.
You know how we on the left are opposed to nuclear families because they are a historical outlier from the larger multigenerational households humans have largely had across history? Because nuclear families isolate kids so that if one or two adults in their life fail them they have no recourse?
Modern homeschooling is that turned up to eleven. It is a life where if your parents are guardians are abusive you literally have no way out. No help. No one to turn to. It is ENTIRELY opposed to children’s rights as autonomous individuals.
A lot of very ignorant reblogs going on about “but disabled kids!” like there aren’t numerous cases of homeschooling parents using it as an excuse to neglect and abuse their disabled children, including just not educating them at all. And unlike abuses in school, they tend to go much longer undetected, because no one is checking in on them.
Schools can be regulated to be better to disabled children. Much better solution than funneling disabled children out of the reach of authorities.
I say this as an autistic kid who often had issues at school. The assumption from some here that those of us who are anti-homeschooling aren’t considering disabled kids is insulting (on this website?) and dangerously ignorant. Disabled kids are all the more reason to protect kids from the rampant abuse that homeschooling enables, and instead to have them in places where their education is regulated by laws designed to look out for them, they are being educated by trained professionals and more importantly, there are so many more adults keeping an eye out for them if anything bad does happen.
So, on one hand most kids are not homeschooled for disability reasons, but for “moral” ones - 75% of parents want to provide “moral instruction”, 53% explicitly state it’s religious. Comparatively only 15% of parents cite health special needs (which encompasses any health or developmental condition lasting longer than six months) as a reason for homeschooling. So they’re creating a straw child with this argument in the majority of cases.
With that being said…
Disability rights activists fought for decades to be allowed equal rights and access to public schooling and IDEA, which was only passed in 1979, is under threat of repeal by the Trump administration because they believe parents should “handle kids themselves” or better yet just institutionalize them. This combined with threats to Section 504 and other laws which mandate accommodations mark concerted efforts to force disabled children out of public life entirely and is part of the right-wing anti-social safety net agenda homeschoolers push specifically because they actively want parents to have absolute legal and practical authority over their children—which means, in reality, impunity to abuse.
It is absolutely spitting on the legacy of disabled activists like Judith Heumann, many of whom got their start as young people self-advocating for their own rights to be educated to condone the prioritization of homeschooling.
A bit more info/stats but it is, obviously, related to child abuse of all kinds so cut for that.
Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.
At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.
At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.
“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.
The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.
I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.
I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.
I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.
i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.
i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.
as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.
disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.
at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.
i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.
i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.
Just in case anyone needs a reason to not feed wildlife- this story out of Washington is a pretty good reminder. This lady has been feeding raccoons for years and now she’s just had to call authorities for help because hundreds of them are parked out on her property and are so aggressive trying to get food that she can’t get into her house.
Neighbors have been reporting excessive raccoon mortality on the adjacent road and several attacks on pets, but still everyone on this video was just talking about how cute it is. Why can’t people see how unfair it is to disrupt an animal’s life like this? What do they think will happen to these raccoons? They should be scampering through a forest or marsh eating crayfish and berries and bugs, not hotdogs and cat food. This is a nightmare situation and it’s entirely one person’s fault.
Rush to develop fossil fuel infrastructure in Canada collides with laws meant to protect endangered species
Environmental groups in Canada fear endangered orcas could become a casualty of Mark Carney’s push for a new oil pipeline, as the rush to develop fossil fuel infrastructure collides with laws meant to protect threatened species.
The decades-long tragedy of the critically endangered southern resident orcas has become emblematic of an ecosystem in crisis. But fishermen, whale-watching companies and the marine transport industry have long feuded over who bears the most blame.
The southern resident orcas can only survive on a diet of chinook salmon, a species that itself is in steep decline. While there were more than 200 orcas at the beginning of the 20th century, nowadays only about 70 swim the waters between British Columbia and Washington state.
Environmental groups have raised the alarm over increased ship traffic along the south-west coast of British Columbia – the result of a busy Trans Mountain oil pipeline that terminates near Vancouver and a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal further north.
On Friday, Carney announced plans for a new oil pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast, with construction expected to begin by fall of 2027.
And a new policy discussion paper has raised fears that in pursuit of the project, the federal government might bypass legal protections for the orca.
The document, titled Getting Major Projects Built in Canada, called the process for building mines, ports, airports, pipelines “slow, expensive, and confusing”, and suggested a number of changes to existing rules to fix this issue.
But one part of the paper, which proposes exempting major projects from the “jeopardy test for species at risk” has caught the eye of environmental advocates.
Part of Canada’s endangered species legislation forces regulators to ask whether a project would jeopardize the survival or recovery of a protected species.
“In practical terms, this provision is intended to prevent projects from pushing endangered species into extinction. Weakening this safeguard has direct implications for southern resident killer whales and their protection under [the Species at Risk Act],” said Misty MacDuffee, a biologist at Raincoast Conservation Foundation. “As the federal government has acknowledged in its imminent threat determination, these whales face extinction under the existing conditions.”
The proposed changes are open to public comment until 9 June.
The development, first reported by the Toronto Star, prompted the federal government to respond that the reporting “could not be further from the truth”.
But critics says that while the government has made key promises to protect whales, they also appear to be looking for a carve-out by exempting projects of national interest from stringent reviews where endangered species might be affected.
After the new pipeline deal was confirmed, environmental groups swiftly condemned the agreement.
Environmental law charity Ecojustice said the move “jeopardiz[ed]” Canada’s ability to protect whale habitats.
“No project that threatens the extinction of iconic southern resident killer whales and puts communities’ health at risk could be ‘nation building’. Increasing tanker traffic in the already busy Salish Sea ups the risk of small and large oil spills and will also increase ocean noise – pushing the critically endangered southern resident killer whales further towards extinction. Expanding the Trans Mountain pipeline has overwhelmed the modest noise reductions put in place to protect whales from pre-pipeline expansion levels of shipping noise,” director Margot Venton said in a statement.
“Experts have been unable to find a way to offset the noise from increasing tanker traffic. These whales cannot handle any more tankers in their habitat.”
In the past, threatened or endangered species have delayed construction of major projects. When the government was trying to build the TransMountain pipeline, a rare species of humming bird temporarily halted work.
But the effectiveness of Canada’s species at risk laws has also been called into question, especially when the requirements clash with lucrative industries.
Successive environment ministers have declined to designate chinook salmon as a species at risk – largely over the implications such a decision would have for the fishing industry.
Nature Canada, one of the country’s oldest conservations groups, said it was calling on supporters to urgently contact lawmakers to vote against any fast-tracked legislation, warning it could lead to zones of “environmental lawlessness”.
