The Blue Bird of Titan

[rewiredotnews]

In withdrawing the Obama administration's guidance on Title IX and transgender student rights, the Trump administration showed neither compassion nor an understanding of how federal law works.

The minute Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was confirmed as U.S. attorney general, the Trump administration set its sights on rolling back civil rights gains of the last 40 years. And it started with one of the most vulnerable populations: transgender kids.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Sessions and the administration withdrew an Obama administration joint Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Education (DOE) guidance to schools receiving federal funding that their transgender students have a right to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identities.

The move doesn’t change the law. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972still protects the rights of transgender students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their gender identities, as it always has. What the move does change is the federal government’s recognition of the fundamental humanity of those children. Continue reading at Rewire

[p-hnx-deactivated20170823]

In the instances when POC say shit like ‘Oh I can’t stand white folk’ or ‘Damn white people’, they aren’t saying ‘Oh I think they are inferior, I want to humiliate them, abuse them, enslave them and wipe out their people!’, they’re saying ‘Damn, after a couple hundred years of white people thinking I’m inferior, humiliating me, abusing me, enslaving me, and trying to wipe out my people, I don’t wanna deal with them.’ The context is completely different.

(via idontcareimjustinspired)

[titanianbluebird]

Sarah Stillman: The Use and Abuse of Civil Forfeiture : The New Yorker

[tgstonebutch]

Like a lot of people with mental illness, I spend a lot of time fronting. It’s really important to me to not appear crazy, to fit in, to seem normal, to do the things “normal people” do, to blend in. As a defense mechanism, fronting makes a lot of sense, and you hone that mechanism after years of being crazy. Fronting is what allows you to hold down a job and maintain relationships with people, it’s the thing that sometimes keeps you from falling apart. It’s the thing that allows you to have a burst of tears in the shower or behind the front seat of your car and then coolly collect yourself and stroll into a social engagement… We are rewarded for hiding ourselves. We become the poster children for “productive” mentally ill people, because we are so organized and together. The fact that we can function, at great cost to ourselves, is used to beat up the people who cannot function. Because unlike the people who cannot front, or who fronted too hard and fell off the cliff, we are able to “keep it together,” whatever it takes.

s.e. smith, I Hide My Mental Illness (via joonas)

[sandandglass]

[mypubliclands]

From Skyscrapers to Forests:  Introducing Inner City Youth to Nature Oregon State University recently recognized the BLM-Oregon for its work with the Inner City Youth Institute or ICYI to introduce young people to fields of study and careers in natural resources. The BLM received the OSU Extension Service Cooperator Award for its work that began back in 1995 as a partnership between the BLM and ICYI in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service, the Pacific Northwest Research Station, the Urban League of Portland and Portland Public Schools. The BLM provided access to laboratories and facilities on public lands to help inner city youth study nature first-hand. In addition, the BLM provided critical financial assistance through OSU to support on-the-ground, outdoor educational activities as well as job-shadowing and career mentoring with BLM professionals.  Also, the BLM supported the annual Natural Resources Camp hosted by OSU that is designed to give inner city youth a college experience and create a safe atmosphere where the students can develop leadership skills, gain confidence, and hone teamwork abilities. Since 1998, the BLM supported the programs and outreach that have successfully provided natural resources education and experience to youths from the Portland metro area. Thank you to everyone who helped make this program a great success – and who knows, we may very well have provided the spark that launches the career of a future BLM State Director!  For more photos and info about the BLM/ICYI Partnership, visit the BLM-Oregon’s Flickr Photoset, From Skyscrapers to Forests. Story by: Mike Mottice, Associate State Director, BLM-Oregon; photos by Matt Christenson, Public Affairs Specialist, BLM-Oregon

[sciencesoup]

Ginkgo Trees Stand Test of Time

“Living fossil” is an informal term used by biologists to describe species that lack living relatives.  While you might not personally think being called a fossil is a compliment, these organisms are actually quite impressive survivors.  The Ginkgo biloba tree, for example, is strange and unique amongst contemporary plants but incredibly similar to fossils dating back to the Permian, almost 270 million years! This means that even though every single other lineage of the Ginkgo’s relatives changed and adapted beyond recognition or died out, there are still Ginkgo trees growing today that would be indistinguishable from trees from hundreds of millions of years ago. If that fails to impress you, consider this: in Hiroshima, Japan there are still a handful of Ginkgo trees that survived the dropping of the atom bomb in 1945 living to the present day! If these hardy trees can withstand a disturbance of an A-bomb’s magnitude, it is no wonder they have managed to remain viable when so many other ancient plants could not.

Guest post written by Reggie Henke

[inothernews]

[hexusprime-blog]

I would say that I am deeply spiritual but not religious, and that I arrived at my spirituality through science. Science is a mechanism by which we discover the nature of the universe, and what we have revealed is tremendously beautiful in it’s order, complexity, and scale. How could one not be spiritual about living in a universe with (at least) ten thousand billion billion stars? A universe where the ash of stars can form patterns which grow, change, experience and think about themselves? Through science I have also discovered that all things are interconnected. For example, a single sodium atom moving in the axon of a neuron experiences a small gravitational and electromagnetic force from every other particle in the universe. The origin of these forces are distributed over time at the speed of light, so in this moment that atom is simultaneously experiencing the moon from 2 seconds ago, and the big-bang from 13.7 billion years ago. The nature of our existence is dependent on every past event that has ever occurred within our light-cone, and our every action creates the future of universe for trillions of years. All boundaries or separations are illusions created by time. To me this is the most wonderful implication of science; We are the universe, creating and experiencing itself.

Infinity-Imagined (via theantidote)

[laurensaysrelax]

whoa

[reallyclippy]

THERE’s A WORD FOR THAT?

[theartofanimation]

Megatruh

[theartofanimation]

syh3iua83

[thesecretaryofnagriculture-blog]

Missouri Pastor’s Fiery Speech Against Equal Rights for Homosexuals Has Stunning Twist Ending

Pardon my French, but this Pastor is a badass mothafucka.

The entire speech is further enhanced by the insight provided in this YouTube comment:

(Source)

[madlori]

Watch till the end.  Trust me.

[milesjai-deactivated20190613]

[meghantonjes]

HE WINS THE AWARDS

[odditiesoflife]

Dew-Soaked Dandelions

Anything photographed with macro photography takes on a whole new level of beauty. Color, form, depth seen at a perspective only available when magnified. Size does not exist without the ability of comparison. Form must continue infinitely towards the smallest levels just as its inverse continues to the largest, without end in either direction.

[bobbycaputo]

Incredible, Ornate Camouflage Wallpaper Portraits By Cecilia Paredes

[theartofanimation]

Jie He

[thisismyspitesong]

Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France’s (and more than twice as high as Germany’s), especially considering most doctors here won’t perform them? The answer is any country that has universal health care, where contraception is free, where child care is free or inexpensive, where there is less poverty because people don’t become bankrupt over medical bills — those societies are simply going to have fewer unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. And there the mask gets pulled off the Bart Stupaks and the “Christians.” If the statistics show that countries with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn’t the Right be the first in line to support universal health care? Because it isn’t about “universal health care.” It’s about controlling women, period. It’s about sticking your nose in other people’s business. It’s about pushing your religious beliefs on everyone else because voices in your head tell you your Jesus is The One — even though your Jesus never said one single solitary word in any of the four gospels of the Bible about abortion or fertilized eggs being human. You’ve just gone and made it up about “life beginning at conception.” Jesus never said that. The little voice in your head said that, the same little voice that wants your grubby paws on women’s uteruses. You need help. Please get some help and leave the rest of us alone, Mr. Stupak and friends.

Michael Moore: My Congressman, Bart Stupak, Has Neither a Uterus Nor a Brain (via veruca-assault)

I wish I could reblog this 1,000 times.

(via evangotlib)