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Inside the Bakersfield raids that showed how Trump’s immigration policies will sow chaos

On Jan. 7, the phones of immigration advocates in Bakersfield began lighting up with calls from immigrant farmworkers. The messages said the U.S. Border Patrol was conducting an indiscriminate dragnet in the area, pulling over vehicles presumed to be carrying immigrants to work and taking dozens into custody.

[...] Rather than “targeted” enforcement, the Border Patrol conducted “random stops of vehicles exclusively founded on racial profiling of individuals,” Ambar Tovar, director of legal services for the UFW Foundation, told me.

The officers raid locations where they knew they would find farmworkers gathering — such as at a Home Depot, where immigrant laborers come to seek day work, and along California Route 99, the highway traveled by immigrant farmworkers heading to their jobs. At some spots, where they were asked to show warrants naming targeted individuals, the officers simply drove away without answering.

[...] One aspect of these raids elicits broad agreement: Their effect was to sow fear.

[...] Creamer estimates that about 25% of immigrant workers in the area stayed home from work in the first day of the raids, and 75% afterward. That continued until Jan. 10, when word spread that the Border Patrol had left the county and gone back to El Centro.

Until then, he said, “the raids sent shock waves through the entire Central Valley,” the breadbasket of California and of the entire country. [...] It’s hard to overestimate the impact that raids like these could have on California agriculture, which, like other states, is highly dependent on immigrant labor. The raids occurred as the harvesting of California oranges, mandarins and lemons was entering a peak period for fresh fruit. California accounts for about 90% of the domestic supply of oranges, mandarins, lemons and grapefruit.

About 20% of the estimated 24,000 citrus farm employees in California work in Kern County, Creamer says. In this case, he adds, the immediate impact was muted because the raids occurred over only four days and the schedule of citrus harvesting can be somewhat flexible.

[...] What struck immigrant advocates about the raids was the sheer thuggishness of the operation, which dovetailed neatly with the uncompromosing rhetoric about immigration sounded by Trump during his campaign and in his inaugural speech Monday.

Agents transported detainees from Bakersfield to El Centro, a drive that can take as long as six hours, instead of processing them locally, where they would be available for local legal advice and representation. Detainees said they were released in El Centro without transportation home.

[...] Agents in an unmarked car pulled over Ernesto Campos, the owner of a Bakersfield gardening service who was naturalized as a U.S. citizen more than 10 years ago. According to a video Campos shot on the scene and that was aired on Bakersfield TV station KGET, the agents demanded that Campos’ passenger, an undocumented employee step out of the truck. Campos informed them that the passenger already had an asylum hearing scheduled. Campos shut off his engine and gave the agents his driver’s license.

Nevertheless, according to an exchange captured on the video, an agent slashed Campos’ truck tires, which can be seen deflated on the video. When Campos asked why the agent had immobilized his vehicle, the agent replied, “I’m not going to argue with you, bro. You did what you did, I did what I did.” He verified that Campos was a U.S. citizen, but he was arrested on suspicion of “alien smuggling.” Campos was released about four hours later. The border Patrol didn’t respond to my request to identify the agent and explain his conduct.

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Lots of ominous news nowadays, but there are good things too! Thailand's Marriage Equality Law took effect today!

This tweet takes you to the top of a thread that lists all the changes, like replacing gendered terms like husband and wife with spouses, same-sex marriages have full legal status that, same-sex couples can adopt and use IVF and create pre-nups, just a whole lot of steps to make them equal.

It's all just so amazing and joyous. They hosted a parade for the newlywed couples!

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Marriage Equality Achieved!

Today, January 23, the marriage equality law officially takes effect. Thailand now recognizes the right of all couples, regardless of gender, to legally register their marriage.

At 6.15am, the first couple, 33 year old Ploynapas Jirasukon and 32 year old Kwanporn Kongphet arrived, hand in hand, to register their marriage. Together for 17 years since high school, the Bangkok-based couple radiated joy as they became Thailand’s first officially recognised LGBTQ+ married couple.

Ploynapas shared her excitement, “We’re thrilled to be the first couple to register our marriage. It’s a proud moment, but there’s still more to achieve, like equality in child custody and legal titles.”

Sumalee, 64, and Thanaporn, 59, became the first same-sex couple to register their marriage at Bang Rak today.

Traveling all the way from Phetchabun, they chose Bangkok's "district of love" for this special occasion.

Permsap and Puangphet, the second couple to register their marriage in Pathumwan District, shared that they had waited 17 years for this moment, calling it a meaningful achievement.

Although they could have registered in Pai, they chose Pathumwan to express pride in exercising the same legal rights as other Thais. They wore traditional Tai Yai attire from Mae Hong Son, reflecting one partner's heritage, to make the occasion special.

They described the milestone as a collective success for the LGBTQ+ community, achieved through shared efforts.

They hoped future legal changes would address honorific titles for transgender individuals, ensuring fairness for all. The couple encouraged others to stay determined in the fight for equality, believing that persistence leads to success. They also urged countries without equal marriage laws to continue advocating for change.

Reflecting on a past accident, they shared the difficulties caused by the lack of legal recognition. Despite being together for eight years at the time, one was unable to sign medical consent due to the law, underscoring the need for equal marriage rights.

Source: Thai Enquirer, Thairath & The Thaiger

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the aquarium cafe had a thing they called "garden eel dog"

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"But NORMAL People's Bodies Didn't Look Like That!" ...right?

Some of you may have seen my post about Baroque artists and their realistic depictions of human bodies as having skin and fat.

I've had a lot of negative and frankly fatphobic comments on that post, calling the people in the paintings "fat" and "obese," mostly along the lines of this:

"It's because the artists are depicting rich people, who were fat and lazy. Normal people didn't look like that!"

The idea, of course, is that these artists wouldn't have ever drawn bodies that looked like those in the Baroque paintings, if they weren't painting super-rich people that stuffed themselves with food all day.

Supposedly. We'll see how well that holds up.

Today I was in the library looking at a collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer, and learned that in the early 1500's, Dürer tried to put together essentially a "how-to-draw" book, showing how to draw people. His work was controversial, because of his technique of "constructing" figures using rules about proportions. (A quick and easy method of inventing realistically proportioned bodies out of thin air? Cheating!!)

However, in his "constructed" drawings, Dürer had to figure out how to handle the range of variety in bodies, and ended up breaking down how to create a variety of body types in correct proportions.

I'm showing the women, to contrast with the post on Baroque paintings. Here are some of his drawings that I thought y'all should take a look at.

These are a couple of his more "average" women—the one on the left is from his drawing book, and the one on the right is one of his drawings.

Here's a "strong woman" and "A very strong, stout woman"

This is what he refers to as a "stout woman."

Here's where it gets interesting: this is what Albrecht Dürer refers to as a "peasant-type" woman

^That. That's what a "peasant" body type looks like.

He labeled this one "A peasant woman of 7 head lengths"

in case you missed it: this figure drawing by a guy in the 1500's is literally labeled as being of a peasant woman! this is what a "peasant woman" body type looks like!

He did draw similar amounts of thinner figures, but they're not particularly emphasized over the "Strong" and "Stout" figures. Nor is there exactly a "default" figure. He's just...going over the range of variations that there are?

Here's another "stout woman," covered in notes on how to draw the proportions:

now that's too technical for me to make any sense of but

this was in the 16th century!! This body type was apparently not incredibly rare in the 16th century. This body type was important enough for you to be able to draw, as an artist, in the 16th century to be handled in detail in a 16th century artist's drawing advice

In conclusion: yes this is just what people look like, yes it's important to know how to draw fat bodies, even this dude from the early 1500's is telling you so, Die Mad About It

all of this is from "The complete drawings of Albrecht Dürer" by Walter L. Strauss

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a raven father (i call him "pants") I've been feeding sometimes likes to sit outside my window and either wait for more food or just listen to the stuff I'm watching while I draw. Today's a colder day so he likes to fluff up a bit, and I kid you not :

this is an accurate representation of my view

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‘While bats can only sense the outer shapes and textures of their targets, dolphins can peer inside theirs. If a dolphin echolocates on you, it will perceive your lungs and your skeleton. It can likely sense shrapnel in war veterans and fetuses in pregnant women. It can pick out the air-filled swim bladders that allow fish, their main prey, to control their buoyancy.

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

-Ed Yong, An Immense World

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first rald draws of the year 🤧 <3

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If I tell you this is a horror dance number it still won't prepare you. That last move was so terrifying even the judge was like "Let go! Let go!" If you told me they're actually possessed I'd believe you.

One of the most perfectly choreographed and executed dances I have ever seen and comes closest to Shobana's original performance in Manichitrathazhu. Incredible!

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I don't think that's how it's supposed to work

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Polynesians did also rely on a form of a physical map called a stick chart, illustrating the specific wave and swell patterns surrounding different island chains. These were particularly helpful during cloudy conditions when the sun and stars were less useful. To navigate the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese represented ocean swell patterns using parts of coconut fronds and shells as islands. Like a subway map, they don’t so much represent distances as they do relationships. The complex and decorative stick charts were often only understood by the person who made them. They were memorised before a voyage by the pilot who would lie on the floor of a canoe to get a sense of swell movement and often lead a squadron of 15 or more boats.

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This is moreover complicated by the fact that the [South African] apartheid state did not acknowledge itself as engaged in a war. The apartheid state in the late 1970s saw itself as engaged in a ‘total onslaught’, preferring to refer to its ‘enemy’ as terrorists rather than declaring an outright war. According to Cock and Nathan, the choice for the apartheid state to define the conflict as unrest or terrorism as opposed to war implied that liberation movement fighters were denied the prisoner of war status granted by the Geneva Protocols to those engaged in war against colonial powers.

— Women combatants and the liberation movements in South Africa (2015) by Siphokazi Magadla

its refreshing to see this so plainly laid out in writing. a terrorist is just someone the state has decided has no rights

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Just found out there's a group on inaturalist dedicated to showcasing the silliest observations

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“When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor can become a leading war hawk candidate for the Presidency, only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events.”

— Martin Luther King Jr., on Ronald Reagan’s 1968 campaign for the Presidency (via afloweroutofstone)

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Flit-knapped Godzilla

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this wouldn't drive me so thoroughly insane if i didn't think the skeleton of the story was good and interesting. if i didn't feel like every Werlyt Guy Moment was, like, an enormous waste of screentime that could be improved by adding basically anything of substance. like - here, try this one on. imagine if at any point during that whole section, wuk lamat's experience of having been raised by someone who came from this mess was somehow relevant. throw in like two lines about it. immediate improvement, even if it could still be better

god this part of the msq is like watching someone take the most lusciously marbled piece of steak you've ever seen in your life and try to cook it in the microwave though