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Elon Musk calling the commander of the International Space Station the R slur was certainly something to wake up to.

Completely unsurprising, but come on America. What the fuck are you doing? Get the finger out. These cunts are burning through any goodwill or political capital and are alienating every ally you have.

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(Quds) Despite the massive destruction caused by the Israeli army to the hospital and its surroundings, Palestinians have reopened Kamal Adwan Hospital and set up tented field clinics to treat civilians in desperate need amid the devastation in northern Gaza.

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(Quds) “There is no language in the world that can truly express the meaning of freedom.”

Released Palestinian detainee Khaled Al-Shouli, from Asira al-Shamaliya in Nablus, describes freedom after being freed as part of the prisoner exchange deal with the Palestinian resistance last Saturday.

Al-Shouli had spent more than 22 years in Israeli prisons.

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No Other Land (2024 🇵🇸 Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor)

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(The Cradle) Internationally wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu laments the handover of the four Israeli captives killed by Israel during its genocidal war on Gaza.

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The WH posted an “ASMR” video of shackled deportees

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(Quds) Israeli right-wing group Nachala Movement called for a demonstration on February 27, demanding the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the re-establishment of illegal settlements there.

"We must return to fighting now, and this time decisively! With a clear goal: occupation, expulsion, and settlement!” the group said in a statement on Facebook.

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A lot of leftist accounts are suspiciously quiet on the section 504 lawsuit, proposed medicaid cuts, and the "make America healthy again" executive order.

I know other leftists are not the enemy but if we don't have able bodied allies and general population support, there's no hope of pushing back against these ableist policies. These big accounts ignoring a massive minority at risk is scary. The current admin is the problem but there's no hope of a solution without allyship.

We need visibility. We need allies.

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I found out during our department DEI committee meeting today that the major federal granting agencies (e.g., NSF, NIH) now have "lists of banned words" that, if found, can cause your grant application to basically go into the shredder.

Among the words the government really hates is "transition" (because RaDiCal GenDEr IdEolOGiEs!). Our committee members are all chemists. If you want to study liquid-vapor phase transitions, you're screwed. Transition states in a chemical reaction? Nope.

I'm a mass spectrometrist. My little corner of the analytical chemistryverse uses a technique called "multiple reaction monitoring", where your instrument is simultaneously monitoring a precursor ion and a certain fragment. That specific-combination-of-ions is called a transition.

...I literally can't even talk about fucking mass spectrometry.

But hey, some trans girl in Iowa can't play badminton anymore! Victory! Yeah! Cheaper eggs! Make America Great Again!

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Brandi Buchman at HuffPost:

Despite promoting debunked far-right conspiracy theories popular with movements like QAnon — including the claim that the FBI incited the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and a very public record of calling for so-called “deep state” operatives who oppose President Donald Trump to be punished, Kash Patel has been confirmed as director of the FBI. The Senate confirmed Patel 51-49. He will oversee more than 38,000 civil servants, of whom 13,000 are special agents, over a 10-year term. Patel’s confirmation hearing in January before the Senate Judiciary Committee featured the president’s avowed ally working hard to repel concerns that he would weaponize the bureau and return it to an era of retribution and paranoia promulgated by the agency’s first-ever director, J. Edgar Hoover. Patel deflected last month when grilled about a list of “deep state” enemies he published in the appendix of his book, “Government Gangsters.” Patel called it a “glossary” and told legislators that describing it as an enemies list was a “total mischaracterization,” even though the 60 names on the list are almost all known public critics of Trump. Before Patel was confirmed, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) urged lawmakers to understand the gravity of their decision. “For the ordinary nominee, any of the defects in character or experience or performance in past jobs would have been disqualifying. We live in a time that is not ordinary, and this nominee is not normal. I’ve never seen any nominee to a position of significant responsibility that has as many disqualifying factors in his or her background,” he said before invoking the words of Trump’s onetime national security adviser John Bolton.

The Senate voted 51-49 almost entirely on party lines to confirm far-right conspiracy theorist and MAGA acolyte Kash Patel to head up the FBI for a 10-year term. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins were the two Republicans to vote against, along with all Democrats.

Patel is Trump’s 3rd FBI director in his two terms, as Obama-appointed James Comey served the first few months until his firing and Christopher Wray served the remainder of his first term and the entirety of Joe Biden’s.

If a Democrat becomes President in 2029 (hopefully then) or 2033, they have a prerogative to fire Patel.

See Also:

The Guardian: US Senate narrowly confirms Kash Patel as next FBI director

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Get ready to learn Chinese, everyone

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In 1999, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then an environmental lawyer, was named by Time magazine as a “hero of the planet” for his pioneering work to clean up America’s waterways. On February 14 of this year, his second day as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he ended HHS funding for climate change and health programs at the National Institutes of Health, a move that will likely terminate this work.

That day, Ken Callahan, a senior adviser for policy and implementation in the Immediate Office of the Secretary for HHS, sent an email to Dr. Matthew Memoli, the acting director of NIH, noting that HHS would no longer support three programs run by the agency: the Climate Change and Health Initiative, the Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center, and the Climate and Health Scholars Program. In the email, a copy of which was obtained by Mother Jones, Callahan cited Executive Order 14154, titled “Unleashing American Energy,” which President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office last month to revoke executive orders President Joe Biden had previously issued to implement actions to address climate change.

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🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️

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Former Minnesota Vikings punter, Chris Kluwe, who was blacklisted from the league for standing up for marriage equality, speaks at a city council meeting where he calls Trump a Nazi. He is subsequently arrested and carried out by police.

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Literally IDGAF if it feels useless and you’re tired of it everyone needs to start going to palestine protests again it’s pathetic how small they are now but they ARE still being organized in like every major us city. I don’t care if protests don’t feel effective to you we were never going to be the protagonists of history from the imperial core above anything it is a show of solidarity and support for our people and regular mobilization is vital to maintaining any kind of mass movement. Fucking go