#bullet points are not policy

[orangerosebush]

The tags on this post going "The date here was me being silly but I added some analyses of what I think might happen if Trump dies within the year :)" have the same tenor as this oft-invoked Tumblr classic

[potofsoup]

i love your fourth of july comics every year but this years feels extremely optimistic about biden’s abilities in the face of him letting roe get overturned and funding a gen*cide at worst or letting it happen at best by taking the bare minimum of regulatory action… i mean can he really be trusted at all anymore to do the right thing or act in line with the people’s demands? and how do we know the people behind project 2025 won’t just rig the election again to get in under false pretenses?

Hihi! Thank you for reading and enjoying my July 4th comics every year! I am in a non-US airport en route to a month-long trip in a place with sketchy internet, so sorry in advance for sloppiness in my response (and potentially going radio silent).

But:

I don't think he "let" Roe get overturned, since that was the Supreme Court's overwhelming conservative majority, which really started with Mitch McConnell refusing to approve Obama's appointee and forcing it into a 2016 election issue. The fact that Trump got to appoint 3 Supreme Court Justices is what got us here.

Re: Biden and the Israel/Hamas war ... on the one hand, there's definitely more that he could have done, but on the other hand, they are a whole other country over there. It's Hamas that initiated the Oct 7 attacks and took the hostages. It's Netanyahu and his right-wing government who decided to retaliate to such extreme extent. Biden can talk about how he would really like Netanyahu to stop fighting and step down, but at the end of the day that's not his call, any more than he can stop the Sudan fighting that is near-genocidal either.

So, to come to your question #1: "Can he really be trusted at all anymore to do the right thing or act in line with the people’s demands"?

For me, it's a resounding YES. Guyz, he has passed so much good domestic policies. My spouse works in green energy and the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act halved his anxiety and gave him legitimate hope. The tumblr post I linked to in my comic has links to many of the other great things that Biden has done. Tbh I voted for him in 2020 because "a moldy onion is still better than Trump", and I've been pleasantly surprised. Like how he tried to cancel student loans, the Supreme Court overturned it, and then he came back 6 months later with a different way to do it that didn't lead to a court challenge.

Is he perfect? Hell no. There's tons of stuff that I wish he did more about, or he went further on, but also he's just one guy heading one branch of government who is heading into an election year. (Just like FDR promising not joining WWII, while behind the scenes doing all the Lend-Lease Act stuff). And "the people" have lots of demands, many of them conflicting.

I'd also like to push at the unspoken part of your question... "Can he really be trusted to do the right thing..." compared to whom? Because right now the answer is "compared to Trump." And compared to Trump... I don't even trust Trump to respect the results of a legitimate election. Heck, he might just take his favorite state secrets, sell them to the highest bidder (or just show them off to someone for funzies), and then claim Presidential immunity. A decent Democrat who got stuff done vs someone who probably wants to pardon himself and all his friends and do Project 2025 stuff is not even on the same level. (Do I wish that there was a viable Democratic alternative to Biden? Sure! But who?) Heck, at this point -- imagine if it's Kamala Harris vs. Trump. Who would you vote for?

As for your question #2: "How do we know the people behind project 2025 won’t just rig the election again to get in under false pretenses?"

We don't. But also what can we do besides showing up to vote?

Actually, I need bullet points for this:

The 2022 midterm elections brought in fewer-than-expected election-deniers into crucial electoral offices at the state level, which means that hopefully most state electoral boards will continue to have integrity

Yes, voting is harder but at least we can still vote. So it's about getting out there and getting your vote counted. For some states, it involves waiting in 8 hour lines. For some states, it involves bringing 2 forms of ID. Document. Track. Make sure it's dropped off in a real ballot box and not a fake one. Don't believe messaging that the voting is happening on a different day or location, etc.

A 50.1% majority is easily challenged. A 55% majority, less so. Which means getting people out to vote.

The more people know about and think about the reality of a second Trump term (versus being disappointed by a Biden term), the more they will be motivated to vote against Trump.

Finally, let's be real here: I'm braced for a 2nd Trump term. That said:

I'm still going to go and vote for Biden, because the only way to prevent a 2nd Trump term is to vote.

A Trump term where either the House or Senate is controlled by the Democrats will be *very* different from a clean Republican sweep.

Even with a clean Republican sweep on the federal level, States have so much more power now, and voting the state level stuff will help shore up Democratic goals for the future. States get to draw voting districts however they want. States get to decide on abortion policies. If you live in a deep Red state, there still might be things to vote for that make it easier to live in now, and turn it purple a few elections down the line.

So at the end of the day, it's "Vote AND". Vote and keep living your best life. Vote and tell others about Project 2025. Vote and have hope. Even if Trump wins, at least you'll have voted against him. Vote and stay to build up a progressive wave for the next election.

[prokopetz]

Eat God playtest draft 0.5.1 is now available

This is a minor update incorporating first-pass reader and playtester feedback for draft 0.5. A full changelog is available here, or under the cut below; all page numbers refer to the PDF version.

Removed an erroneous reference to a currently unreleased subsection of Appendix B from the Table of Contents (p. 2)

Reorganised "What You'll Need" for clarity (p. 6)

Reworded definition of "tagging" under "Trait Effects" (p. 10)

Clarified that "Flowing Form" does not allow changing colour or texture (at least not by itself) (p. 17)

Updated "Fulsome Fluids" to remove an inappropriate assumption that the player character has hands (p. 18)

Reorganised "Hearty Humours" to better distinguish descriptive flavour from narrative permissions (p. 18)

Clarified that "Mobile Members" is limited by one's native capacity to multitask rather than a strict "one member at a time" policy (permitting, e.g., interactions with "Polycephalous"); additionally, elaborated on what coordinating multiple members entails (p. 20)

Slight wording update to "Modal Morphology" to clarify that the character has two shapes in total (p. 21)

Clarified timing of effortful application of "Peculiar Poise" (p. 21)

Clarified that the relative-scale-adjusting effortful application of "Striking Stature" is sustained (p. 23)

Clarified that the secondary effect of the Art of Abundance can be activated multiple times (p. 36)

Rolled back changes to deactivation criteria for the Art of Alteration (this was a copy-and-paste error from a larger potential reworking of this Art which was not included in draft 0.5) (p. 36)

Reorganised bullet points under the Art of Exposition for better text flow (p. 37)

Clarified that a test re-rolled via the Art of Iteration can claim an extra die for being made in conjunction with an Art if it hasn't done so already (p. 38)

Reorganised bullet points under the Art of Making for better text flow (p. 39)

Clarified that the Art of Realisation applies to any artistic depiction, not just drawings (p. 40)

Reorganised "Gathering Dice" to make it more explicit exactly when the five-dice cap for tests is applied, and what happens if you go over it (p. 48)

Dialed back some over-wordiness in the preamble to "Forms and Impact" (p. 81)

Discussion of print-and-play NPC cards now refers readers back to "What You'll Need" rather than repeatedly explaining how to obtian them (pp. 88, 100)

Clarified that starting Gizmos in "The Clockwork City" can be taken even if non-Gizmo starting inventory is chosen rather than rolled (p. 102)

Fixed a bug in the Online Character Generator which was causing the names of randomly selected inventory items to appear as "undefined"

Various typographic and formatting fixes

[vaspider]

Measure 110, or the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

So if y'all aren't local to Oregon, you may not have heard that the Oregon state legislature just voted to -- essentially -- gut Measure 110, the ballot measure which decriminalized all drug possession and use in the state. It turned all drug use into a citation instead, and the citation and fine could be waived by completing a health screening. The entire point of Measure 110 was replacing jail with health care and services to help people instead, and while I could probably write a very long side post on the imperfections of that approach, it was at the very least a move in the right direction after decades of the pathetic failure and absolutely racist mess that is the "War on Drugs."

You may hear this pointed to in coming years as a reason why we have to just throw people into jail for using drugs, because Measure 110 failed. And like... it did fail, kinda. Sorta. It failed in that it did not manage to fix everything immediately, and it created some new issues while also exposing older issues more sharply.

It also saved the state $40 million in court costs prosecuting low-level drug offenses, kept thousands of people whose literal only crime was putting a substance into the body of a consenting adult (themselves) out of jail, put at least one addiction services center in every county in the state, invested $300 million in addiction services, and an awful lot more. See the end of this post for more reading.

But where it failed, it failed because it wasn't supported. Police and advocacy groups both asked for specific tickets for this new class of offenses which had the phone number to call to go through the health screening and the information about how going through that health screening would make the ticket go away printed on it prominently - lawmakers declined to fund this. Governor Kotek budgeted $50K to train officers on how to handle these new citations and how to direct people to the treatment and housing supports, but lawmakers thought that training officers on this new law at all was a waste of money. Money moved extremely slowly out to the supports that were supposed to come into play to help people obtain treatment or get access to harm-reduction strategies. People freaked the fuck out about clean-needle outreach, fentanyl testing strip distribution, Narcan training, and other harm-reduction strategies.

And at the end of the day, Measure 110 gets called a failure because it wasn't a silver bullet. Never mind that thousands of people are not sitting in jail right now for basically no fucking reason. Never mind that people have gotten treatment, harm has been reduced, overdoses have been prevented...

So, yeah. You'll probably start hearing this trotted out as proof that, well, we triiiied decriminalizing drugs, but look what happened in Portland! Well, what happened in Oregon is that we got set up to fail, and still didn't fail, just didn't totally succeed.

Measure 110 highlights, quoted directly from Prison Policy Initiative:

The Oregon Health Authority reported a 298% increase in people seeking screening for substance use disorders.

More than 370,000 naloxone doses have been distributed since 2022, and community organizations report more than 7,500 opioid overdose reversals since 2020.

Although overdose rates have increased around the country as more fentanyl has entered the drug supply, Oregon’s increase in overdoses has been similar to other states’ and actually less than neighboring Washington’s. A peer-reviewed study comparing overdose rates in Oregon with the rest of the country after the law went into effect found no link between Measure 110 and increased overdose rates.

There is no evidence that drug use rates in Oregon have increased. A cross-sectional survey of people who use drugs across eight counties in Oregon found that most had been using drugs for years; only 1.5% reported having started after Measure 110 went into effect.

There has been no increase in 911 calls in Oregon cities after Measure 110.

Measure 110 saves Oregonians millions. Oregon is expected to save $37 million between 2023-2025 if Measure 110 continues. This is because it costs up to $35,217 to arrest, adjudicate, incarcerate, and supervise a person taken into custody for a drug misdemeanor — and upwards of $60,000 for a felony. In contrast, treatment costs an average of $9,000 per person. The money saved by Measure 110 goes directly to state funding for addiction and recovery services.

There is no evidence that Measure 110 was associated with a rise in crime. In fact, crime in Oregon was 14% lower in 2023 than it was in 2020.

Further reading/sources:

[jewish-joy]

So I’m in a health care major in college, and I’m having my first season of high holy days as a Jew-ish person. So, being a busy student along with having many days I need to take off in October, I’ve gotten very used to talking to professors.

I’m in a class for cultural advocacy and bias in the medical setting. We’ve spent hours reviewing case studies, talking about social determinants and education, and general cross cultural acceptance. We talked at length about different and equitable approaches for religious minorities- in terms of dietary needs, holidays, and lifestyle.

I didn’t expect any trouble with taking this class off. So I approached my professor and told her that because of Rosh Hashanah next week, I wouldn’t be able to attend class next Thursday.

She turned to me, very sweetly and said “okay! Just make sure to use your golden pass!”

The one time golden pass is provided to every student in the course- specifically for menial situations. You could use this just because you’re hung over, a little sick or just don’t feel like it.

Religious holidays are not- and as noted in my university’s policy on this very matter - “an optional day off.” I should not have to use my one “fun pass” for a genuine cultural obligation. And this isn’t me just saying that. This is the college’s policy.

If this happened in an anatomy class with a STEM driven professor, I’d be a little annoyed but ultimately understanding. But this is a class where we’ve discussed social policy at length and the importance of diversity. The least I could expect was for the fine bullet points on our own school standards to be read.

So as I write an email to her, gently explaining this and having my request in writing, I have to channel my frustration somewhere.

What can I say? I’m very much getting the Jewish experience.

[zxcvbnmj0]

if you call yourself an anarchist/leftist/punk/anti police/anti government/anything of the sort consider at the very least reading this post to the end & reblogging. honest to god i was going to add a d#nation option but it will never reach us quick enough because of reasons you'll figure out if you do read. just know what's going on.

there is an ongoing rebellion in turkiye due to president erdogan canceling imamoglu's (his so far most successful left wing rival in the presidential race who is favored by young people due to his policies + being the most promising rival who could replace erdogan) university diploma, essentially forcibly removing his one true rival from the race since those without a diploma can't be elected as president. this is an act of dictatorship. there are no valid claims of illegitimacy about imamoglu's diploma. erdogan is known to have used tricks and bribery to stay in power throughout his presidency along with being involved with scandals and claims of his own diploma being illegitimate. he is a conservative, right wing, anti queer, fascist dictator. he violently opposes free speech by banning social media + communication apps like whatsapp, instagram, twitter, tiktok, discord & ordering his police to be outright violent to protestors.

(imamoglu got arrested as i was writing this post due to suspicions of "corruption". it's clear they're giving it their all to make sure he cannot be elected & the protests are sure to escalate from now on.)

groups of mainly high school and uni students between the ages of 17-25 are being pepper sprayed, attacked with tear gas, shot with plastic bullets, beaten, kicked, and arrested for practicing their Legal right to protest his dictatorship. protestors are being tracked & arrested at their homes at night hours after the protests. everyone between these ages are going to the protests as much as possible, to the point of abandoning school or work. they are being treated as terrorists and straight up physically attacked by the police. there are countless students with severe injuries. the police is not simply doing their job, they're attacking violently and enthusiastically. they're enjoying doing this.

antiacid medicine + milk to wash away the effects of pepper spray, industrial masks/gas masks, protective eyewear, food and water all cost a lot to distribute to such a huge group of people. even with these materials protestors face serious injuries like cornea damage, blindness, chemical burns on skin, poisoning, even death in the case of those with existing heart/breathing problems. pepper spray is a chemical weapon and it's being used on students using their right to protest. it can and has caused serious health risks. helping out financially is barely an option at this point because of the laws regarding receiving Anything from abroad but i'd like you to at least spread this and talk about it

some examples of how brutal the protests are & how badly people get injured 1 2 3 4 5 6 (<- what they're spraying on people is pepper spray and tear gas) 7 8 (7 is the police screaming at protestors who took shelter in an hotel lobby to come back out. 8 is an officer pulling another back by the neck and yelling "come back to your senses" because of disproportionate violence. an example of what i was talking about. this is not doing your job. this is cruelty)

some general sources on the situation -> 1 2 3 wikipedia page of erdogan's party that lists their harmful ideologies erdogan's anti queer views <- 2

[sonadowwiki]

Correcting Misinformation and Disinformation

If anyone is trying to say that these lines are official in Sonic Frontiers, know that it is misinformation and that they are lying because these lines were cut and are not in the game officially.

In bullet points:

These lines are cut-lines and they never made it to the final version for any platform

Ian, the writer for Sonic Frontiers, didn't even write these lines to be in the game

Since the lines are in the database of the game (but does not occur in the final version of the game), the lines can be modded into the game to make it seem official or that it's in the final version of the game

"Proofs" showing these lines to be in the game have faults within them, such as not occurring on the correct island or weather condition

There are several factors to consider when acknowledging these lines existence. One of the main factors is that these are cut-lines that never made it to the official and final version of Sonic Frontiers. This goes for both the English and Japanese version of the game. These lines can only be found through datamining the game, which means to look through files deep within the game that don't make it to the surface. So, these lines will never be activated because there is nothing to activate it, therefore it is not official lines.

Another thing to know about is that Ian, the one who wrote the story and dialogue lines for Sonic Frontiers, was not even aware of these lines existing in the game because he never wrote them or had anything similar be made for these lines to exist. Therefore, it wasn't even planned to have these lines in the game whatsoever. Someone else, other than Ian, snuck the lines in and had it go against what the original story was in the first place; they tried to have their own story or vision be put in the game aside from what Ian wrote or how it was originally conceived. This makes the lines even more unofficial and not real. Many already acknowledge that these lines are not official and are cut lines.

One more thing to consider is that even if people show "proof" of it existing in the games, these lines and even text can be easily modded into the game for it to seem like it exists in the final game. But just because it is modified in, doesn't mean that it was there originally.

As it can be seen through this individual who is able to make unused conversations be put into the game in some manner through modification, it is also possible to put unused conversations lines in the game in some manner. These lines towards Amy aren't the only lines that are unused in the game. There are many lines that aren't used and that are still in the database of the game, but that doesn't mean that any of them made it to the final game for people to see through normal means.

Another thing to take note about is that these lines towards Amy (the "Umbrella" and "Making up his mind" lines), are lines that occur on Rhea or Ouranos Island, but the first pictures shown in this thread show that the lines were randomly said on Kronos Island, the first island you go to in the game. That shows that this person modified the lines to be said in the game and that they are not triggered under normal means. Another way to figure out that these lines are modified is that the "Umbrella" line is supposed to only be triggered while it's raining, but the line is said randomly while it is only cloudy in the person's "proof" of it existing in the game.

On a side note, datamining and modifying games tend to be illegal depending on what company the game comes from. For example, Nintendo has policies that say that if you are to play their games, you cannot modify their systems or games that are played on that console. So this practice of modifying and datamining is not encouraged by the majority of game companies and isn't welcomed, therefore it should become a common practice to not to try to do these illegal activity towards any game.

[ocean-sunfish-hater]

Straight Out of the Colonial Playbook:

The Myth of Untouched Lands

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is an organisation with charity status all across the world. Many people know them as the people who use their little blue boxes to collect money to plant trees. They seem to be doing well to reach their goals, having planted over 250 million trees since 1901. All this seems pretty innocuous, perhaps even noble. After all, the idea of planting trees seems quite divorced from violent settler colonialism.

ID: A large slice of watermelon. You can see the Red of the flesh, the black of the seeds, and the white and green of the rind. It is set against a light teal background, a colour that may invoke peace and calm, much like a free Palestine would.

But the two have long, intertwined histories. Just look to the National Parks of the US, used to grab land from Native Americans with the justification that they were "uninhabited". Colonisation of the Arabian peninsula was partially justified with the argument that native Arabs had degraded the environment to the point of desertification,  and colonial rule was the only way they could be saved from themselves [1]. Unsurprisingly, most of the ecological damage in that region had been done by the colonialists themselves in the pursuit of resources.

The JNF isn't just some minor organisation that has unfortunate ties to questionable powers. Though they shroud themselves in the soft words of environmentalism,  they currently stand as one of the primary tools of violence for Zionism.

Established in 1901 by the 5th Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, they have always been an organisation with settler colonial intentions. In 1940, their leader Yosef Weitz, said “There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from [Palestine] to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them… not one village must be left… for this goal funds will be found." [2]. You know what happened to him after the first Nakba? He became the head of the JNF's forestry department [3].

According to their own website, they currently stand as the "single largest provider of Zionist programs in the U.S." [4]. They also own about 13% of all state lands in Israel [5]. They have been both a major driver, and unsurprisingly, benefactor from the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people.

So how exactly does planting trees feed into settler colonialism? The model works like this:

The Israeli government violently displaces people from their lands in the name of "self-defence".

The land becomes "uninhabited".

The JNF uses funds they have accrued from overseas donations to buy up the land.

They establish a national park in the area and begin to plant trees.

Settlers move into the surrounding regions. The JNF have a policy of not leasing land or accommodation to non-Jewish people [5].

Any remigration of indigenous people back into those lands is framed as "environmental destruction" and those people are forced out once more.

You know what's sneaky? They are using trees as bodies. They don’t have enough people to colonise all the land they've stolen, so they plant trees to occupy the spaces that human bodies cannot. They deliberately use fast growing trees like pines to aid in this pursuit [3]. Each forest acts as an occupying force, just one that uses seeds instead of bullets and trees instead of soldiers.

Most of their efforts are concentrated on Naqab (Negev in Hebrew), a region in the south of Israel mostly consisting of desert. On their website, the JNF boast of their Blueprint Negev initiative, and how it's "transformed Israel’s Negev Desert, making the Southern Israel an attractive place to live and work" [4]. Their mission statement in the Naqab includes the justification that they are providing homes, jobs and opportunities in the "empty" region [6]. One of the slogans have on their website is "Building the Negev, town by town"[6]. This is explicitly a settler colonial project, and all of it can be found on JNF website, in their own words.

And to top it all off, you guessed it, the Naqab is far from uninhabited. It was never empty land. In August 2018, 350 villagers from Umm al-Hiran were displaced to the state-regulated Bedouin township, Hura to accommodate the expansion of the Beit Yatir settlement in the Yatir forest, which was planted by the JNF [5]. In 2010, Nuri-al-Uqbi presented evidence that his ancestors had owned and lived in the lands of al-Araqib since before the Israeli occupation to the courts. In 2010, a Beersheva judge rejected the case, siding with the government's claims that his tribe had no ownership claims on the land [7]. The indigenous peoples of Palestine are constantly disenfranchised, displaced, and have very little means of winning their land back within an Apartheid legal system.

The JNF are using strategies employed by colonial powers in the past to violently seize land from native peoples. Acting under the guise of environmentalism "launders" the colonisation, adding extra steps in between the expulsion of people from their homes and the eventual settlement of that land by colonists, with the added bonus of making the JNF look very good. And you know what? Their reforestation schemes suck. Fast growing, new growth forests in the DESERT are not a substitute for old growth forests, not to mention the enormous amount of water they must be using to keep these forests as, well, forests.

What boils my blood the most is that you can see them honouring their colonial inspirations and sponsors in how they name their parks. Britannia park in the Hebron district obviously takes its name from Britain, a country instrumental in the establishment of the Israeli state and the Nakba that has ensued. Fittingly, it sits upon the ruins of seven Palestinian villages, destroyed by Israel during the first Nakba [8].

And this isn't just stuff that has happened in the past, but is happening right now. JNF UK is currently receiving donations to plant a memorial forest "to commemorate those who were brutally murdered on October 7." For £100, you can plant one tree. For £250, you can contribute to an outdoor seating area for group events. For £36, you can pay for an irrigation system that will provide enough water for one tree for four years [9]. Doesn't it make you angry? 36,000+ Palestinians have been murdered, and the JNF are collecting money to water trees on their graves.

I hate it when scientists stay neutral. We and our work are not divorced from the world around us. Conservation means nothing if it comes at the cost of human lives; it means nothing if it is used to veil the atrocities of colonialism and apartheid. It is our duty as conservationists, and as human beings to hear those whose voices carry cries for help, and answer the call. Do not be won over by the siren song of green colonialism.

Free Palestine. May all empires fall.

Bibliography

[1] Skandrani, Z., Decolonizing ecological research. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2018. 8(3): p. 368-370.

[2] Stop the JNF, The JNF, Apartheid and Settler Colonialism. (Spring 2024). https://www.stopthejnf.org/the-jnf-apartheid-and-settler-colonialism-spring-2024/

 [3] Stop the JNF, Tower and Stockades, Forests and Jim Crow Vetting Commitees. https://www.stopthejnf.org/jnfs-sordid-history-tower-and-stockades-forests-and-jim-crow-vetting-committees-by-jonathan-cook/

[4] Jewish National Fund, We are JNF. https://www.jnf.org/menu-3/about-jnf

[5] Amnesty International, ISRAEL: APARTHEID IN ACTION. Amnesty international: submission to the 43rd session of the UPR working group, 9 May 2023.

[6] Jewish National Fund UK, Homepage, https://www.jnf.co.uk/

[7] Jonathan Cook, Bedouins defiant despite Israel eviction plan. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2014-06-14/bedouins-defiant-despite-israel-eviction-plan/

[8] Palestine Land Society, Britannia Park - Burial and Treachery. https://www.plands.org/en/articles-speeches/articles/2022/britannia-park-burial-and-treachery

[9] Jewish National Fund UK, Green Sunday 2024 – Memorial Forest. https://israelunderattack.jnf.co.uk/projects/green-sunday-2024-memorial-forest/

[zvaigzdelasas]

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced Thursday that export controls on antimony would take effect Sept. 15. Antimony is used in bullets, nuclear weapons production and lead-acid batteries. It can also strengthen other metals.

“Three months ago, there’s no way [any] one would have thought they would have done this. It’s quite confrontational in that regard,” Lewis Black, CEO of Canada-based Almonty Industries, said in a phone interview. The company has said it’s spending at least $125 million to reopen a tungsten mine in South Korea later this year.

Tungsten is nearly as hard as a diamond, and used in weapons, semiconductors and industrial cutting machines. Both tungsten and antimony are on the U.S. critical minerals list, and less than 10 elements away from each other on the periodic table.[...]

China accounted for 48% of global antimony mine production in 2023, while the U.S. did not mine any marketable antimony, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s latest annual report. The U.S. has not commercially mined tungsten since 2015, and China dominates global tungsten supply, the report said.[...]

The U.S. has sought to restrict China’s access to high-end semiconductors, following which Beijing announced export controls on germanium and gallium, two metals used in chipmaking.

While tungsten is also used to make semiconductors, the metal, like antimony, is used in defense production.

“China has a declining tungsten production, but tungsten is absolutely vital, far more than antimony, in military applications,” said Christopher Ecclestone, principal and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company.

He expects China will put export controls on tungsten by the end of the year, if not in the next month or two.[...]

Starting in 2026, the U.S. REEShore Act prohibits the use of Chinese tungsten in military equipment. That refers to the Restoring Essential Energy and Security Holdings Onshore for Rare Earths Act of 2022.[...]

China is acting more in retaliation “against what it views as an intrusion into its national interests,” Markus Herrmann Chen, co-founder and managing director of China Macro Group, said in an email.

He pointed out that China’s Third Plenum meeting of policymakers in July “put forward a completely new policy goal of better coordinating the entire minerals value chain, likely reflecting the further heightened supply importance of ‘strategic mineral resources’ for both business and geoeconomic interests.”

Stupid games:[X] Prizes [20 Aug 24]

[artbyblastweave]

i only learned recently from a friend's who much more comic literate than I that magneto's backstory as an Auschwitz survivor wasnt planned from the start, which surprised me since it seemed to me a really integral part of his character. anyway, twofold question: how common is it to see capes with backstories tied to very specific historical events, and, as time inevitably passes and real world survivors of those events pass, how do they justify having their characters still alive and kicking? (stay safe on your mountaintop friend)

Depending on how wide you cast the net, this is a pretty big list! There are a lot of comics who's characters cutting-edge ripped-from-the-headlines origin later became a very specific historical event, or at least Of A Specific Moment, in a way the writers had no reason to anticipate the franchise would run long enough to have happen. But to shed pedantry and hone in on some specific ones;

The big one, of course, is Captain America. Superficially Cap's contemporary origin comes with a baked-in means of him making it to the present day- he gets stuck in the ice and then gets unthawed. The fly in the ointment, though, is when he unthaws. When they first brought him back into rotation in 1964, his stint in the ice was only around 20 years; long enough for there to be a significant culture shock, but not long enough that his entire social circle was dead or even culturally sidelined. Nick Fury is still around and kicking ass as a zeitgeist-appropriate 60s superspy. But the further the sliding timeline hauls forward his implicit date of release, the more it changes the tone and tenor of the resulting story. Losing twenty years is different from losing fifty years (as was the case in The Ultimates, where he very explicitly comes back during the Bush years as part of the book's commentary on The War On Terror) and those will both be way different from when we inevitably hit the point where he's lost 100 years and he's the cultural equivalent of a Civil War Vet or something. There's strength to all of those stories but they're undeniably different.

Iron Man's origin was originally explicitly tied to the Vietnam war; he was captured by a detachment of "Red Guerillas" while consulting for the US military and the South Vietnamese government. Unfortunately U.S. foreign policy to this day has prevented this from ever becoming an unresolvable storytelling issue.

The Fantastic Four are a case where their origin was intimately tied to the space race; their untested, cutcorner spaceflight was expressly an attempt to show up the Russians. The extremely specific political context of their test flight is something that sort of gets brushed off; the Ultimate incarnation (written by Warren Ellis) threaded this needle deftly by having the accident be a dimensional expedition instead, circa the early 2000s. I'm not actually sure how the urgency of their test flight is currently contextualized in 616 continuity. Anyone got their finger on that pulse?

The Punisher was also originally a Vietnam vet- but through the jaded cynical lens of the 1980s rather than the straightforwardly peppy and jingoistic lens that defined Iron Man's debut in the 60s. Current continuities I believe have mostly bitten the bullet and updated his origin to the invasion of Afghanistan. However, an interesting decision in the Garth Ennis-spearheaded Punisher MAX continuity of the early 2000s- where Punisher is literally the only costumed vigilante- is that they bit the bullet and posited a version of Frank Castle who really has been killing criminals nonstop since shortly after his return from Vietnam in the 70s, a man well into his 60s who's survivability and efficacy at killing are edging up against the boundaries of magical realism.

Hulk I feel sort of deserves a mention here- he's in a sort of twilight zone on this issue, as there was, uh, a pretty goddamn specific political context in which the Army was having him make them a new kind of bomb, but you can haul that forward in the timeline without complete destruction of suspension of disbelief. Pretty soon it'll be downright topical again.

To circle back around to The X-Men, Claremont introduced a lot of historical specificity with the ANAD lineup. Off the top of my head, Colossus was explicitly a USSR partisan (updated to a gangster forced into crime to survive in the mismanaged chaos of the USSR's collapse in the Ultimate Universe) and Storm was orphaned by a French bombing during the Suez War. More to the point, the timing was such that Magneto, in his upper-middle age, had a pretty strongly defined timeline vis a vis his ideological development vs Xavier; child during the holocaust, Nazi hunter who eventually rifts with Xavier during the mid-to-late 60s, and then the two of them spend their years marshalling their respective resources before coming to blows during the quote-unquote "Age of Heroes," whatever the timeline looked like for that in the 80s. And it was a timeline that held together pretty damn well in the 80s, but it's gotten increasingly awkward as time's gone on. The Fox films completely gave up on having it make sense, near as I can tell. In the comics they've had all sorts of de-aging chicanery occur that very pointedly ignores what an odd timeline that implies for everyone else in the X-books besides Magneto. The Cullen Bunn Magneto standalone from 2014-15 I remember actually leaned into playing up the idea that he's just old as shit and dependent on so many superscience treatments to remain functional that he's basically pickled, which was a take I liked; the comic ended when he died of exertion trying to stop two planets from crashing into each other, right before a brand-wide universal reset. When the MCU was at it's peak and people were wargaming how to integrate the X-Men (lol) you occasionally saw people float "fixes" for the issue, such as making Magneto a survivor of the Bosnian Genocide, or making him black and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide; I remember that this consistently drew a lot of ire from people who (reasonably) thought that his Judaism and connection to the holocaust were deeply important to his character, continuity be damned. But yeah, he's a character dogged by specificity in a way only Cap even slightly approaches. If this is a tractable problem I'm not going to be the one to tract it.

Interestingly, I'm genuinely having a lot of trouble coming up with stuff that's analogous to this at DC comics- almost universally the core roster updates into any given time period much more smoothly. Furthermore, DC stuff has always been much more willing to eschew Marvel's World-Outside-Your-Window philosophy in favor of deliberately obfuscating the time period via the Dark-Deco aesthetic of BTAS's Gotham or the retrofuturism of STAS's Metropolis.

The closest you get to this kind of friction is The Justice Society, who, pre-crisis, were siloed off in a universe where superheroes had existed since the 40s and there was no comic book time, so they were all in their upper-middle-age to old age now, with their kids and grandkids as legacy capes. Post crisis they were (and are) kind of an awkward fit in DC continuity; in the scant few JSA comics from the 90s and early oughts that I read, surviving members of the WW2-era lineup like Alan Scott and Jay Garrick were absolutely written as dependent on their metahuman physiques to have endured up to the present day. I think they're still doing stuff with those guys. I don't know how. I do understand the impulse, though. I also never throw anything out.

[ayeforscotland]

What do you think of the tory idea of bringing back conscription if they win?

Worth saying this is national service which is arguably a type of conscription, rather than the World War version most people think of when they hear it.

Do I think this policy will be implemented well?

No. The Tories are just trying to appeal to the most active voting bloc, old boomers with nostalgia for national service that their parents, rather than themselves, took part in.

The second bullet point isn’t the *worst* idea in the world though although possibly a health and safety nightmare. I still think the reality of the policy would be difficult, but giving kids some form of insight into how organisations like the NHS work would help with a wider appreciation of them.

Except it shouldn’t be on weekends, I did a job experience thing during high school where I was placed for a week. Don’t see why kids in full time education should also have to sacrifice their weekends.

[swaps55]

Twin Souls of the Same Star

Funny, Kaidan thinks as they lie side by side, Shepard’s bare skin illuminated by the fishtank. They’d changed their lives just a few hours ago, assuming Joker actually filled out and filed the paperwork to the hanar and Alliance’s satisfaction.

And yet…everything feels exactly the same.

Shepard strokes Kaidan’s ring figure, then pinches it at the knuckle and examines it closely. “Guess I need to put a ring on this, lest anyone doubt that you are now bound to me by official legal documents. Er, at least as far as hanar law goes. Do we know how binding that little ceremony actually was?”

“Are you questioning the legitimacy of Joker’s ordination within the Enkindler Souls of Stars?” Kaidan asks, tugging his ankle free of the twisted sheet and draping it over Shepard’s leg. “Or are you asking about the return policy?”

Shepard kisses Kaidan’s knuckle and then tugs him until he straddles Shepard’s hips.

“Just try and renege and see what happens to you.”

Kaidan hides his flush behind a chuckle. Shepard pulls him in and traces the shell of Kaidan’s ear with his lips. Bastard. Not even fair to go straight for the ear.

“You’re stuck with me. I just want the entire galaxy to know.” 

No hiding the flush now. “Well, in that case. Don’t need a ring. I know your transponder code. Your baseline biometrics. Your service number. Your mnemonics.”

“Okay, so you know how to take me in a fight, sure.”

Kaidan trails his fingers lightly across Shepard’s belly, smiling in satisfaction when he yelps and nearly shoots out from underneath him.

“I know that.”

Shepard gives him a wary look. “Tickling is just a dirtier kind of warfare than bullets, in my book.”

Kaidan wiggles his fingers in tune with his eyebrows, but pins Shepard firmly in place when he attempts to flee.

“Point is,” Kaidans says between sloppy kisses against Shepard’s neck. “I’m pretty sure I can stake a pretty convincing claim to you without a trinket as proof.”

“Don’t know why I’m worrying. Pretty sure you’re the only one who would put up with me, anyway.”

Kaidan trails kisses down the line of Shepard’s shoulder. “Dunno. Have you seen how pretty you are?”

Shepard preens. “Maybe. But Liara says I’m very vexing.”

“Lucky for you, I like vexing.”

“See? Soulmates. The hanar say so. Joker’s head garment thingy looked very official.”

“If you’re really worried about it we could always hire a hanar to follow us around and tell people.”

Shepard sniggers into Kaidan’s shoulder, then adopts a solemn tone. “This one would like you to know that these two are bound soul stars in the eyes of the Enkindlers.” His eyes widen. “Oh god we cannot tell Javik.”

Kaidan barks a laugh, and Shepard grins.

“Well, we don’t have a hanar on board,” Shepard goes on. “Suppose we could just stick some tentacles on Garrus. No one will know.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

“He’ll think it’s funny.”

He probably would.

Kaidan rests his head on Shepard’s chest, sighing softly as Shepard runs fingers through his hair.

“Should I have taken your name or something?” Shepard asks eventually.

Kaidan’s heart does a somersault at the thought. Not something he’s ever thought about. Not something he’s ever even cared about. But the fact Shepard has…

He swallows. Shepard continues stroking his hair and just…lets him feel it for a minute.

“You married me,” Kaidan says after a moment.

“Yeah, I remember. I was there.”

“Other people saw it.”

“Pretty sure they remember, too. Joker’s hanar impression was very memorable.”

“Wow.”

Shepard chuckles. The sound rattles under his sternum, and Kaidan lets the feel of it wash through him. “So? Should I be Sam Alenko?”

Kaidan huffs. “Well, you hate being called Sam.”

Shepard ponders that for a moment. “Yeah, I guess it would be kind of weird if people started calling me Alenko, huh?”

“Yeah, that would be pretty weird. Thought’s pretty romantic, though.”

“I am so full of romantic gestures. Just you wait.”

“Mmmm,” Kaidan says with what he’s sure is a stupid grin. “I could take yours, I guess.”

Shepard makes a face. “Can you imagine you and me in the same room as my mother? No one will have any idea what the fuck to call us.”

“Okay,” Kaidan says with a laugh. “No name changes.”

“It’s the thought that counts.”

“Definitely.”

They drift off for a few minutes. Shepard’s hand stills, the weight of it on Kaidan’s head warm and comforting. Maybe Kaidan falls asleep. He’s not sure.

“Did you know we get tax benefits for being married?” Shepard asks, startling him awake.

Kaidan raises an eyebrow. “Did you read a manual or something?”

“Well, I can’t suck at this.”

Kaidan stifles a laugh against Shepard’s chest. “You know, Williams even told me once we should get married for the tax breaks.”

“Did she? Do you think she knew?”

“Of course she did.” Kaidan hoists himself up on an elbow to look him in the eye. “Everyone did. Except you. You thought I was into Williams.”

Shepard flashes him a guilty look. “She made you laugh all the time.”

“She was funny!”

“Yeah, but she was funnier than me and I didn’t like it.”

Kaidan raises an eyebrow. “And that didn’t…raise any flags for you.”

The guilty look gets guiltier. “Does it make it any better if I say that when people mistook us for a married couple I’d think to myself, ‘there are a lot worse things than spending the rest of my life with him?’”

“Really? Really?” Kaidan gooses him again, this time with a lot less mercy. Shepard yells indignantly and twists beneath him. They tussle until Shepard manages to trap Kaidan’s back against his chest.

“In my defense.”

“I’m waiting.”

“Hang on, I’m thinking.”

Kaidan laughs. “You realize that this exact line of thinking is what got us in trouble in Vancouver.”

 “Hey, I remember kissing you in the rain in Vancouver, so I think my line of thinking is pretty great, actually.” 

“Yeah,” Kaidan says softly, gripping his hand. “This is pretty great.”

Shepard rests a chin on Kaidan’s shoulder. “You were pretty pissed at me over the Williams thing. I thought I’d really fucked up.”

Kaidan strokes his arm. The memory of Williams still sits like a bruise, but it’s less tender to the touch than it used to be. “Think I was more angry at myself.”

“Why?”

“For being so in love with you and so unable to do anything with it. About it. I don’t know. You were never going to feel the same way and I just…couldn’t even try to get over the way I felt about you.”

“Seems like I wasn’t the only one who was dense,” Shepard murmurs in his ear. “Turns out I was, in fact, very, very into you the whole time.”

Kaidan smiles into the dim room.

“You know I reached out to Beaudoin after that to get his advice?” Shepard asks.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I thought I’d really fucked up, but I didn’t know why and Beaudoin, you know. Knew how to people a lot better than I do.”

“So you thought you’d fucked up your relationship with me, went to the only person we know with any reasonable insights on dating and romance, for advice, and that still didn’t trigger anything for you?”

“No.”

“You have saved the galaxy twice.”

“I contain multitudes.”

Kaidan snorts. “What did he say?”

“His message was one line and it was zero help. It said, ‘You’ll figure it out, I’ve got money on it.’ I had no fucking idea what he was talking about.”

Kaidan laughs softly into the pillow. “He and Aslany had a bet about us.”

“Wait….he knew too? Aslany knew?”

“Told you. Everyone.”

“Motherfucker.”

Kaidan tugs Shepard’s arm tighter around him, thinking of simpler days and places and times you can’t go back to. “Wish Beaudoin could have been here today.”

Shepard kisses the back of his neck. “Me too. Can you even imagine what he would have said about Joker’s ‘vestment?’”

“He would have loved us getting married by a human ordained through the hanar. And yeah, he would have fucking loved that vestment.”

“He really would have.” 

They lapse back into silence. It feels heavier this time.

Williams. Beaudoin. The Normandy. The ‘Yang. And there’s more to come. Kaidan feels it in his bones.

“We have a lot of history, don’t we?” Kaidan murmurs.

“Yeah, we do,” Shepard agrees. He wraps Kaidan up tight. “I want more. Think we made some today.”

“This one now pronounces you twin souls of the same star,” Kaidan intones.

“I like that part,” Shepard says, nuzzling his neck. “Even better than the vestments.”

Shepard has always shone brighter than any star, but Kaidan has always walked willingly and unflinchingly into that light. There’s never been another path. At least not that he wanted to take.

“Kiss me,” Kaidan says, the sudden need for it overwhelming.

Shepard rolls him over and obliges. It feels no different than it did a few hours ago: beautiful. It always has, with Shepard.

The kiss gets deeper. Shepard’s corona kindles, bright and flickering, a fire without heat that graces Kaidan’s nerves with a soft, sweet hum. Kaidan reaches into the gravity well and lights his own star, their auras blending together into one, solid glow.

We’ve always been this, Kaidan thinks as he falls headlong into Shepard’s embrace.

Now they just have the documents to prove it.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 72: More Academy and Pre-Leaving Gallifrey Stuff Because Why Not

Sorry I'm in too my pain to come up with a better title right now lmaooo. Mostly about the Doctor because they occupy the mind.

As a small child, Theta Sigma had an imaginary friend named Binker. (Audio: The Abandoned)

Later, the Sixth Doctor claimed that while most people had imaginary friends, he had had an imaginary enemy in Mandrake the Lizard King, which was really a dead lizard pinned to old engine parts that he would battle with his deadly stick. This phrasing suggests that the Sixth Doctor does not acknowledge any imaginary friends his childhood self might have had. (Audio: The Widow's Assassin)

The Rani claimed that sentimentality was the reason the Doctor graduated with "just a Double Gamma." (Audio: The Rani Elite)

According to Sardon, the Doctor is no common criminal because by the latter years of his first incarnation was a distinguished member of the High Council and was widely regarded as a potential President. He was difficult and rebellious, however, and went too far when he quarreled with his colleagues over something obscure over principle. He then stole an old Type 40 TARDIS and fled. (Novel: World Game)

The Seventh Doctor claimed that he had always believed evil to be a genuine force. This had given his young self quite a name on Gallifrey as most of his contemporaries considered the ideas of "good" and "evil" to be archaic and out-dated. They thought his preoccupation with that morality was incomprehensible. (Novel: Strange England)

Before leaving Gallifrey, the Doctor had successfully campaigned for the ban of a special chemical. This chemical was a weapon sometimes called a disruptor agent that acts as a catalyst to convert vertebrate blood into acid. The formula for the chemical stuck in his brain well enough that the Second Doctor was able to later recreate it. (Short story: The Ages of Ambition)

The Doctor had made powerful enemies on Gallifrey on account of his controversial views on the non-interference policy. (Audio: The Beginning)

The Doctor was told stories about the Kin when he was a small boy on Gallifrey. The Time Lords imprisoned the Kin in a complex of small rooms out of temporal phase with the rest of the universe. So long as the Time Lords existed, the Kin would be in their prison. When the Kin got out, there was still a Time Lord left in the universe - the Eleventh Doctor. (Short story: Nothing O'Clock)

In his youth, the Doctor feared that Grandfather Paradox was hiding under his bed or underneath the table in the refectory or making noises he could hear outside at night. (Novel: The Gallifrey Chronicles)

As a young man, the Doctor read about an infection on Gallifrey that had happened over one thousand years before his birth. The Spore - which was actually the von Neumann seeding probe - killed several hundred thousand Time Lords before it was dealt with. The Time Lords engineered an inherited immunity into their genes, so they would never be vulnerable again. Everything organic seemed to be necrotic and decaying to a black gunk. (Please skip to next bullet point if you are squeamish about descriptions of bodies.) When the Eighth Doctor investigated an outbreak, he found a body wearing boots, jeans, and a checkered shirt. Inside the clothes was a mess of bones barely held together by a few pieces of remaining flesh. The skull had a few pieces of white hair, but the scalp and other pieces of soft organic matter were gone as black slime ran out of the cuffs. (Short story: Spore)

The Doctor used to sit by the sea a lot in their childhood, watching and listening to it. He used to think that that was where the dead went, that they were all out there in the sea, and that you could hear them whispering in the waves. (Novel: Matrix)

Three students at the Academy who often conducted rebellious and anti-hierarchical activities include: the Master, whose title was earned from his constant bullying of others, a good cosmic theoretician but but not very good in practice; the Doctor, who often carried out silly chemical experiments with a friend called Drax; and the Rani, who "was brilliant at everything, and chemistry in particular." (Short story: The Legacy of Gallifrey)

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[thesiltverses]

Feeding into the parasocial by sharing an article on a theme that made me think of the lack of wording on TSV (not once is capitalism said) and the way we all (me included) end up criticising capitalism without any actual arguments

https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/ugh-capitalism

Thanks!

I mean, I'd be a great deal more generous-minded to you / me / all of us than the article author Jeremiah Johnson, who I note is co-founder of some extremely vague enterprise called the Center for New Liberalism.

I think that complaining as he does that leftists keep conversationally using 'capitalism' as a broad-stroke catch-all term of complaint without drilling down into specific policy problems they want addressed (and that this amounts to poseury) is both craven and obtuse. It seems telling of the author's approach that he understands the concept of 'The Man' straightforwardly as a puerile conspiracy theory / blame-game for losers "taken from blaxpoitation movies", rather than stopping to think about the layers of joke and deadly sincerity for black communities in the US that might have given rise to that slang in the first place.

The very worst excesses of global capital are frequently broad, crude and childish - just as capitalist motivations of endless accumulation are inherently shallow and childish - and their consequences are hanging over us at all times.

It is both an obvious horror and a ludicrous everpresent joke, for example, that the planet is at the very edge of potentially tipping over into unstoppable environmental collapse, and yet short-term profiteering will clearly continue to drive us further towards our own unavoidable devastation, while attempts at regulation within the present political system have been and will continue to be routinely toothless and effortlessly corrupted.

For me there can be no serious issue taken with anyone - whether economists or teenagers - showing their contempt for that reality, or for the many layers of our dire present-day circumstances, by sometimes addressing the broad picture of capitalism in glib or insubstantial terms.

We all deserve better than some preening, pettifogging git turning up to call us trendy faux-socialist poseurs and insisting that we come up with a bullet-pointed list so he can argue back that actually Good Properly-Regulated Capitalism would be OK. What an absolute schmuck.

[labelleizzy]

Update from Democracy Action Network:

Despite his dreams, Trump is not a King. Marisa Kabas may have again broken the news. The Washington Post writes: "The White House budget office on Wednesday rescinded an order freezing federal grants, according to a copy of a new memo obtained by The Washington Post, after the administration’s move to halt spending earlier this week provoked a backlash."

He didn't back down because it was a good idea. It wasn't a change of heart. It wasn't a feint. It was a genuine administrative coup that — for now — has been thwarted.

He backed down because people pushed back — getting media to do their job and alert us to an impending problem, calling Senators who (more or less) found their spines, lawyers challenging the coup, telling the story of the many who would suffer under such an order, joining last-minute DC protests…

We'd like you to pause before your inner cynic speaks up (the one that says "he'll try another version" or "look at all the other things he's destroyed and people suffering").

The point is stunningly important: Trump can lose when we fight. He is not invincible and he is not all powerful.

It doesn't mean we will win every fight. But it does mean that anyone who is telling you it's hopeless is wrong. Folks need to get this message: our feelings are valid, but any conclusion that says it's over is wrong. They, too, will get a chance to join and we hope they do.

To us, the biggest stories not being told are the many, many acts of resistance all over. We wish we had journalists covering this. For example:

Teachers rejecting ICE raids ("we jump in front of bullets for our students")

Folks rejecting President-in-action-but-not-elected Elon Musk's potentially illegally sent and possibly illegal buyout offer to 2 million government workers (comments are fire: "I'll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible, RTO be damned. Hold the Line!")

National trainings teaching people how to organize and strengthen community when workplace raids happen (we recommend these!) or Teen Vogue's story on ICE Watch Programs Can Protect Immigrants in Your Neighborhood — Here’s What to Know

Lawyers standing up for the rule of law — like 22 state attorneys general sued Trump over birthright order or ACLU suing fast-track deportation policy or Quakers suing to stop ICE out of worship services

The internet spamming the DEI snitch tipline

Greenlanders refusing to give up free healthcare and education and rejecting any US takeover or Colombian President Petro staring down Trump and winning the "dignity" of returnees he asked for (the US media let Trump claim victory — but international press report this very differently, like here or here or read Petro's full statement)

Groups like Civil Service Strong helping government workers sort through their decisions in these trying times and the many people finding their path in these times.

Yes, we know the overwhelm is still there. There's a reason. It's called Shock and Awe. The goal is chaos and constant crisis to push through radical changes. The goal is to push our cognitive limits to overload, so we get paralyzed.

One implication of this: to stay active, many of us will need to limit our attention. Doing so is not a rejection of other issues. It's that in a time of rapid chaos, none of us can do it all. Let's give ourselves that permission. And then let's extend that grace our allies — for not joining the causes most central to us or for picking a strategy that we think isn't most effectual. It's okay to pick your lane and focus on that. In fact, we need you to. (We have this video to help remind people of different paths they may take.)

An overwhelmed teacher asked us what they should be doing to help their students. After an extended conversation that included their basic rights to keep out ICE, it came down to this: "The thing they most fear is an educated population. Teach your students." Do what you do best. We knew there would be a lot of loss in this time, and there is. We'll have to keep planting seeds for a better future.

We want to thank Democracy Forward for its leading lawsuits. Again, thanks to journalists like Marisa Kabas (an independent journalist at The Handbasket) and Anand Giridharadas (who quoted us in The Ink). Please support our independent journalists who did not downplay this administrative coup and raised their voices right away. Thanks Rebecca Solnit who first pulled our attention to this.

Some things we're going to go do: Eat some ice cream, pet a cat, and tap some maple trees with our kid. And then keep fighting the best we can.

Warmly,

- Choose Democracy

[so-i-did-this-thing]

What are good questions to ask in job interviews to find out if a place is going to be friendly to your continued transition? I have been on T for about a year and am job hunting right now and I'm worried about reaching a point sometime in the next year where I have no choice but to come out because I don't read as a woman anymore.

Ok, big caveat from me: I was once in your exact position. I had just started T and decided to interview with a small company who assumed I was a woman. (I am guessing they thought I was a butch lesbian - I still had my gender-neutral deadname. I did not assert my pronouns.) When they gave me an offer, I let them know I was transitioning. I still got hired, but was treated as an inconvenience. They did not suggest I immediately switch to male presentation, and I was too scared to suggest it. It started getting hostile when other employees noticed my voice changing. I really wish I had just gone into the interview presenting male and I ended up quitting the job within 8 months because it got too awkward.

So. As for my advice:

I'd start with Glassdoor to read employee reviews. I'd also check the company's social media, plus that of the people in your chain of command to do some vibe checking. People who are transphobic are commonly going to be very vocal about right-wing leanings, and you'll see some signs, even on LinkedIn. Check if they have anti-discrimination statements in any of their hiring material, or stated commitments to diversity and inclusion.

In the interview, ask about what sort of clients they attract and what charities/orgs they support and sponsor. If you feel the vibes are promising, ask if they sponsor local Pride. Ask general culture questions about team building and employee enrichment. Ask what healthcare benefits look like and other employee assistance perks they may have. Fish around for gendered policies that could cause you problems, like dress codes. That said, can you bite the bullet and go ahead and interview in a masc gender presentation? Because honestly, that will be the best gauge of how you are going to be received. (And in my experience, folks are fairly likely to assume a masc presenting person is male.)

I tend to be very careful about outing myself until I'm sure I'm in a supportive culture with HR to back me up -- and this might be something you can't discover until you are hired and working for a while. And even then, I've just been very matter-of-fact about transition stuff, saying things like (when doing my background check) "I have older documentation that doesn't match my current name or gender marker, and I can provide any additional paperwork if needed." When I changed my legal name, I gave my boss a simple communication plan on how I'd tell co-workers and clients. Though at that point, most folks assumed I was a cis man, so it was a very different experience compared to that awful 8-month long job.

I wish I had more advice, but a lot depends on how badly you need a job, how safe you feel, and if you have options like only staying in your next job until passing as a woman becomes a problem. To be bluntly honest -- you *will* lose opportunities in your life due to being trans and it's just something to have to have backup plans for (I lost a ton of music gig work because everyone in the industry is all up in each other's shit). But whatever you do, document everything you can related to you being trans, because you never know when you'll need to raise a discrimination case. :/