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Oh no. MAGA is mad that the NYT shared the names of DOGE staffers. Don’t share this! Would be a shame

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Texas’ HB 3399 bill will kill people if it passes. It will make hormone therapy illegal. For all ages. Period. This was never about women’s sports. It was never about bathrooms. It was never about “protecting the children”. They want us dead. If you’re a fellow trans person and you live in Texas, I strongly urge you to be ready to move somewhere safer.

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Sen. Cindy Winckler, D-Davenport, reflected on her 2007 vote to add civil rights protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. She said, “I am so ashamed” of the bill passed Thursday and ended her remarks in tears.

Iowa Republicans voted, over the objection of every Democratic member of the State House and Senate to remove trans rights from Iowa's Civil Rights Act. Rights Democrats added 18 years ago.

This is a dark moment for sure, but it's only ever over when you give up. If you're in Iowa gear up there's an election in 2026 and I don't want to hear "oh we're a red state" fight, fight for it. Sign up to volunteer if this made you SICK to your fucking bones, don't tweet, don't post, do something.

where ever you are in America, if this shit makes you sick? look around, if you're in a red state and you find "hey no one is running against my gross MAGA state rep" you do it, if Elon Musk can be President, you can funding RUN FOR SOMETHING! you can find cool local candidates running in 2025 to help here and get signed up to help fight in elections in 2026 and beyond here and here

But I think the most important thing any of us can do is this: Have the hard conversations with the people in your life. You have the power to shift the people in your own life more than any TV ad or speech by a politician can. If you've been avoiding talking to a family member, if you haven't been as open at work as you could be etc, now or never. You shouldn't have to educate people, but if you don't, someone will do it for you and you won't like it.

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[IMAGE ID: A series of Threads (I think? or Bluesky or Twitter, not sure tbh) from user arosenfield2016:

Boycotts. I've worked corporate retail for twenty years. It's literally my job to know how and why consumers spend. ONE DAY WON'T MEAN SHIT. Stop buying EVERYTHING except essentials. Until further notice. If you're serious about making companies pay attention, long term action is the only way.

Delete all of your retail apps. Unsubscribe from all emails. Go to the actual site and leave site reviews telling them exactly what you're doing and why. Every company tracks NPS scores, consumer sentiment, to direct future plans. Email customer service. Daily.

Fill your carts and abandon them. But don't fill with crazy high ticket ones. Fill with what you would normally purchase. High ticket items they'll ignore as flukes/bots. People whose shopping data they already have, who fill and abandon, they'll pay more attention to.

Not everyone can boycott places like Walmart, I know, I grew up in a super rural area. Research brands they carry that are the lesser of all evils if nothing else and buy those. The big brands will lose market share. They HATE to lose market share. They'll scramble to figure out why and where it's going.

Seeing the impact will take time. Its earnings call season for most retailers who ended their fiscal years on 1/31. We won't see their Q1 2025 results until May. HOLD THE LINE. //END IMAGE ID]

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Elon Musk; an unelected bureaucrat claimed during a Trump cabinet meeting that DOGE accidentally canceled funding to target Ebola treatment but then quickly reversed it.

It was not an accident. They intentionally cut things until things hit the fan and then claim to fix it.

Ebola has been quickly spreading in Uganda with some cases even discovered in the United States.

The lack of communication coming from health agencies especially during cases of Ebola being found and a ravaging measles outbreak is sickening.

DOGE actually never reversed its Ebola treatment funding as USAID’s efforts have been halted due to severe layoffs and cuts to aid and funding.

Get vaccinated.

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if you are in the united states, trump WILL be banning MANY books that were previously banned then unbanned. he will censor anything and everything that goes against his bigoted, ignorant rhetoric. these books will be taken off shelves for sale, and removed from libraries and public domains. if you have the funds, please buy these books or download them. get your hands on these books in any way possible.

knowledge is resistance. resistance is power. do not let fascism win.

EDIT: here is the list i have compiled so far

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I don't see enough people mourning over the slow death of physical media. And I don't just mean TV shows, video games, or movies--which don't even get me started about how we don't really 'own' anything anymore. It includes notes, journals, and letters to one another...so much of our history is lost when we lose a password, a website goes down, a file/hardware is corrupted, or a platform disappears. History that doesn't seem important until you no longer have access to it. Physical media does a lot for memory recall. How many memories will we lose because we don't have something tangible to tie it back to? Something to hold in our hands and stir up those memories we thought were once lost? Sometimes I wonder what the difference between burning a book and losing access to physical media is when someone can pull the plug and remove your access so easily.

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public libraries in the usa offering free digital library cards to people not in their areas (as of october 2023):

brooklyn (13-21yo us residents)

seattle (13-26yo us residents)

boston (13-26yo us residents, EDIT: just commonly banned books)

los angeles (13-18yo california residents)

san diego (12-26yo us residents, not the whole collection just commonly banned books)

these books unbanned cards (unless otherwise stated) get you access to each library's complete libby/cloud library collection, no hoopla/kanopy/physical copies included.

ebook collections are expensive to maintain (many american libraries have annual fees for non-residents because of this) but because of an uptick in book banning (particularly brutal in mississippi last summer) larger libraries have opened their doors more, which is very kind of them!

i've used my seattle card for the last several months and their libby collection has about three times the books that my local library does, which is wonderful for accessing more niche titles or skipping a waiting list. would love to hear of similar ebook initiatives internationally!

i use library extension (firefox/chrome/edge compatible) to check all my collections (+ the internet archive) at once, works for several different countries highly recommend it.

spotify seems to be offering 15hrs/month of audiobook listening to premium subscribers and while that does seem useful if you're already paying and are after a new release with a long library waitlist, libraries are better for everything else.

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Instead of just releasing all of the Epstein files to the public at once. The Trump White House decided to give Phase 1 of the files to a hand-picked group of influencers who are favorable to them. This is not transparency. This is a PR event.

Why are they smiling? The sex trafficking of minors is nothing to be celebrating or smiling about.

Chaya Raichik from LibsofTiktok is grinning ear to ear, gleefully flaunting her useless Epstein binder, packed with information that’s mostly already public, while 250 real victims are still fighting for actual answers.

The level of tone-deafness here is off the charts. Imagine treating a case of child sex trafficking like a cheap prop for social media clout while the people who actually suffered are left in the dark. It’s performative, it’s grotesque, and it’s exactly the kind of distraction they want.

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A professor and former Department of Labor economist is warning that unelected White House advisor and multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk is sending the United States headlong into a huge recession.