#from New South Wales

[allylovesyaxx]

My love 🩷✨🌏🐞

@bigballsacksammy

[aceoffangirls]

The fact that abortion was even part of the discussion in the Queensland state election shows the impact US politics have in Australia....

[majorshatterandhare]

Maybe the demonym for New Texas shouldn’t be “New Texan” but “New Texaser.”

[violentdevotion]

where do white jews go in the white people ranking... do we get incorporated with whatever part of europe we came from.. country of current residence.. do characteristics like stoner or spicy white new yorker supersede jewishness... please i need to know 🙏

ill be fr. i didn't feel comfortable putting white jews as a category because Jewish people are an oppressed minority still and it felt gross to have people vote on and comment on them as a category of people. which may be hypocritical because ive got catholics and orthodox white people as an option but when i was making the initial polls it didn't sit right with me to have people vote on how much they like jews if that makes sense. so they'd have to be lumped with whatever other type of white person they are, like you said residence or personality. also the ranking results are not my choice at all i took them from the results of the poll so i couldn't even tell you where youd go without making another poll

[coochiequeens]

Just in time for May 3 being World Press Freedom Day a story about the Australian government warning women for correctly sexing a man

An Australian woman was reported to police after making posts on social media about a male who identifies as transgender participating in the women’s football league. Kirralie Smith was visited by New South Wales Police after speaking to media about Riley Dennis, a trans activist who had been the subject of mass complaint last month after reportedly injuring female players. 

Police visited Smith on March 30 and handed her an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) requiring that she does not discuss or approach Dennis – despite the fact that Smith lives over 200 miles from Dennis. The AVO acts as an interim order that will stand until a hearing later this month, at which point the court will decide whether it is justified. 

Smith, a spokeswoman with an organization established to combat gender ideology, has been a vocal critic regarding gender self-identification in sports. Earlier this year, Smith mobilized supporters to participate in an email campaign that resulted in a total of over 12,000 complaints being submitted to authorities at Football New South Wales (FNSW). The complaints were largely related to Dennis, who is alleged to have injured female players at a match in March.

Speaking with Reduxx, Smith explained that she believed the AVO was carried out in response to social media posts she had made specifically highlighting Dennis’ participation in women’s competitions.

Included among the stipulations of the AVO lodged against Smith by Dennis are prohibitions against electronic harassment. As a result, her statements on social media have come under legal scrutiny and, in some cases, have been censored by an arm of the Australian government dedicated to combatting “cyber abuse.”

On February 20, Smith’s public Facebook page was removed at the request of Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. Smith had set up the page in 2016 and used the platform to advocate for the rights of women and girls being harmed by gender identity policies. At the time of its deletion, Smith’s page had over 47,000 followers.

Smith expressed her shock and incredulity at the situation. If the court decides that the AVO is justified and that she has taken actions which breach the order, Smith could potentially have criminal charges leveled against her. However, she emphasized that she has received an outpouring of support. “One good thing to come out of these difficulties is the way it draws women together. It isn’t about left or right, ethnicity or anything else. We are women and I now get to call some friends that I otherwise wouldn’t. Beauty from ashes,” Smith says.

The actions taken against Smith by eSafety Commissioner Grant are not the first instances of a government-endorsed push to digitally protect Dennis.

Last week, Reduxx was contacted by the eSafety Commissioner and advised to censor or delete an article naming Dennis as having been the subject of complaint after he was alleged to have injured female players during a match in March.

In the article targeted by the eSafety Commissioner, Reduxx had revealed that Dennis was one of as many as five trans-identified male players currently competing against women in Football New South Wales competitions. An initial report from The Daily Mail Australia had chosen not to identify him when reporting on the injuries he was alleged to have caused, censoring images of him and declining to provide his name. However, Reduxx confirmed the player’s identity using the censored images from The Daily Mail Australia report and cross-referencing them to Dennis’ social media.

Dennis was a popular trans activist YouTuber who amassed 113,000 subscribers on the platform. He has since stopped creating content but, during the height of his internet career, he received backlash for a controversial video in which he called “genital preferences” transphobic.

The video, titled Your Dating ‘Preferences’ Might Be Discriminatory and released in 2017, prompted outrage from lesbians who felt Dennis was attempting to guilt them into having sexual relationships with males.

In the video, Dennis, who identifies as a “transgender lesbian,” implied that sexual orientation is caused by societal prejudices and that it is discriminatory to exclude members of the opposite sex from your dating preferences if you are homosexual. Dennis deleted the video following widespread criticism.

In addition to Smith and Reduxx, pro-woman Reddit alternative Ovarit also received a censorship notice from the eSafety Commissioner.

Ovarit posted the full contents of the email they had received to their platform. Amongst the grievances the eSafety Commissioner listed, Ovarit was warned because its users had “referred to Riley Dennis’ first name as ‘Rapey’ instead of “Riley” and have referred to her surname as ‘Penis’ instead of ‘Dennis.'”

The eSafety Commissioner targeted individual Ovarit users in its email to the platform, and appears to be demanding the users either have their comments deleted or be suspended. The email ends: “Notwithstanding this request for removal, eSafety reserves the option of exercising our regulatory options under the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth).”

In addition to the censorship experienced by Smith, Reduxx, and Ovarit, concerned citizens and parents who have been participating in online discussions of Football New South Wales’ (FNSW) gender self-identification policy have been sent threatening “notices” urging them to remove social media posts.

A community that opposes the admission of males into female sports categories has congregated at the Facebook-based NSW NPL Banter Page. 

A representative for the page spoke anonymously with Reduxx to confirm that there had been multiple reports from concerned individuals that the sporting authority had been warning critics that they may be “sanctioned” for their comments and posts on social media.

The NSW NPL Banter administrator was also sent an email notification of an “investigation” that FNSW claims to have opened into posts and comments made on the page. It stated that, according to 2023 FNSW’s Social Media Policy, a member of the organization “must not make public or media comment (including via social media) which is detrimental to Football New South Wales, Football Australia, their commercial partners or to the interests of the game.”

The message specified two posts which depicted “a participant with a phallus photoshopped onto their body” alongside the word “unacceptable” as evidence to support the investigation. It was further stated that comments considered subject to removal include those which “criticize” Football NSW, members or participants, or its policies.

The page’s creator also told Reduxx that, despite several attempts to share the article naming Dennis as a man playing on a women’s team, such posts were repeatedly deleted. 

“We had put the article up on our Facebook page and it was deleted three times – after we had successfully challenged its removal two times previously,” the administrator said.

In the past few months, the page has published several posts critical of FNSW’s policy allowing men to compete against women. Though some have remained, many have been removed.

“Biological adult males and it’s not just one, it is several, are playing in NSW women’s state league competitions, which contain teenage girls and young women. Shame on those clubs, who have discarded any morals they might have had, just to sign these things, so as to be able to win, where’s the dignity? You put winning above respect for the competition,” the NSW NPL Banter Page wrote in a now-deleted post last month.

Responses to posts made on the page are overwhelmingly sympathetic to women and girls being forced to compete against men.

“I feel sorry for our young women who are at increased risk of injury and losing opportunities,” read one comment.

Referring specifically to Dennis, another concerned respondent said: “He put two girls in hospital and has scored 9 goals. What a joke.”

“The women who play this sport deserve better than playing with full grown adult men who have transitioned into women… This is cheating at the highest level and it angers me to my core,” said another commenter.

The issue of locker rooms was also brought up, as one woman replied, “What happens to a minor age female who is in the change room with a biologically born male in a senior team? Who is responsible for the duty of care toward those girls both on and off the field?”

On March 31, in response to demands from parents to ban trans-identified males from women’s matches for FNSW, Football Australia doubled down by announcing it would be developing a “transgender and gender-diverse high performance inclusion policy.”

The policy states that Football Australia intends to “deliver LGBTQI+ training and support resources to the football community” by way of a partnership with activist group Pride in Sport. “The aim of this training will be to provide the Australian Football community with a greater understanding of the lived experience of LGBTQI+ communities and their participation in sport,” the statement read.

On April 6, an individual who identifies himself as a referee stated in a forum dedicated to discussing Youth Football matches in the region that members of Football NSW were sent an email announcing an LGBTQ+ Online Training Session to be held the following week.

By Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve is the Co-Founder of Reduxx, and the outlet's Chief Investigative Journalist with a focused interest in pornography, sexual predators, and fetish subcultures. She is the creator of the podcast Women's Voices, which features news commentary and interviews regarding women's rights.

[cocteautwinslyrics]

after nearly 200 years Farringdon is still the best placed spot for a london central station

[calandrinon]

the first two are both chips and the listener is invited to infer from context <3

i'm conducting an experiment. everyone who's from an english speaking country state your country, regional area and what you call the following images. i need to see something

[gryphonanon]

Mhm!!

*she quickly grabs the little paper box*

so… I spent.. A LOT of time making this… a lot of research too…

… it’s not the greatest, but…

*she opens up the box and… OOOO bakestones!*

… surprise…!

— @lady-of-the-hive

You... you made these?

*Grif takes the box and looks at the cakes inside.*

I... it's been so long since I've had one of these without making it myself...

*He carefully puts the box back down, and then gives Eden the biggest hug.*

Thank you! You didn't have to do this, cariad, but it means the world to me that you did!

[reasonsforhope]

Where can I find Free Palestine protests and Ceasefire protests?

A super international and continually updated list of actions can be found at Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network's:

Calendar of Resistance for Palestine 2024

They list events by date, then alphabetically by country, then by city - and it's common for them to have dozens of actions listed for a single date, especially on the weekends.

The United States especially often has 40+ events on a single day, especially on the weekends.

Events are posted with links to the event info posted by whoever's hosting the vast majority of the time.

Look blow the read-more for a list of many of the countries that have been on this protest calendar, in alphabetical order, since I know so many websites/lists of actions are country-specific

*Obviously this isn't the only good source of listings for protest events - there are many others. This is by far the biggest/most international roundup I've found, though, so I started with this. If you know another good place for finding ceasefire protests/events, please feel free to add it in the notes, bc I'm planning to put a bigger roundup together once I find enough other sites

Countries that Samidoun has listed/does list protests for include (in alphabetical order):

North America:

United States

Canada

Mexico

Puerto Rico (listed separately in anti-colonial solidarity)

Hawai'i (listed separately in anti-colonial solidarity)

Europe:

Austria

Belgium

Bulgaria

Denmark

England

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Hungary

Iceland

Ireland

Italy

Netherlands

Norway

Portugal

Romania

Scotland

Serbia

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Wales

SWANA Region (Southwest Asia/North Africa)*:

Bahrain

Iraq

Jordan

Kuwait

Lebanon

Palestine

Tunisia

Turkiye (Turkey)

*Samidoun notes that "We know that these events are mainly international and that the Arab people are marching everywhere for Palestine – we will be honored to add more Arab events whenever we are informed!"

Asia:

Bangladesh

India

Indonesia

Japan

Malaysia

Maldives

Pakistan

South Korea

Africa:

Kenya

Mauritius

Nigeria

South Africa

Tanzania

Tunisia

*Duplicating North African countries (well, Tunisia) here from the SWANA list btw

South America:

Brazil

Colombia

Chile

Peru

Venezuela

Australia and Oceania:

Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Australia

[onenicebugperday]

Male margined green pearl moth, Parotis marginata, Crambidae

Note: The bristles at the end of the abdomen are a structure known as a hair-pencil. Hair-pencils are found on male Lepidopterans and used for pheromone signaling. The pheromones secreted from the hair-pencil glands serve as an aphrodisiac and tranquilizer for females, and sometimes as a repellent for males of the same species. The hair-pencil structure is stored inside the body until courtship begins, at which time it is everted.

Photographed in New South Wales by dhobern

[queerasfact]

Nellie Small (right in both pictures) met Edith Meggitt in Sydney in the late 1920s. At the time, Nellie was an out-of-work performer, making ends meet working as a caretaker in a block of flats and running a private library out of her home. Edith was a housewife raising two young children.

The two women immediately became close, and not long after that first chance meeting, Nellie moved in with Edith and her family. She lived with the Meggitts for the rest of her life.

Nellie went on to become a successful male impersonator, recognised throughout Australia as one of the country's best jazz singers, while Edith supported her from the front row of every show, and picked out her socks and ties behind the scenes.

Learn more about Nellie and Edith

[Image source: State Library New South Wales]

[taylors-a-goblin]

Here's something new to know about me. I'm a Murramarang woman from the south coast of New South Wales, and an Aboriginal Artist. I'm learning and trying to bring Dhurga (my native language) back to life after it was nearly destroyed during colonisation.

Here are a couple of my paintings.

The first is a Giriwa (goanna), the totem of my tribe, painted in our traditional x-ray style. This type of painting was used to illustrate and educate, to teach biology and anatomy.

The second is a warigal (dingo) painted in a more decorative style, with a fusion of our more narrative style of art and my own modern style.

If you've stumbled upon this post, I hope you learned something from it! I love sharing my culture ❤💛🖤

[herpsandbirds]

After showing off my cresties color changes now I wonder what your favorite color changing critters might be?

Color Change:

Well, hands down, it would have to be cephalopods. They have amazing color change capabilities... especially the cuttlefish!

Broadclub Cuttlefish (Sepia latimanus), family Sepiidae, found in the Indo-Pacific region

These images, of the same individual, were taken just seconds apart from each other.

photographs by Nick Hobgood

Reaper or Red Cuttlefish (Sepia mestus), family Sepiidae, Cronulla, New South Wales, Australia

photograph by John Turnbull 

Giant Cuttlefish (Sepia apama), family Sepiidae, found along the southern coasts of Australia & Tasmania

photographs by Lawrence Scheele

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - May 15, 2023

🧲 - Magnetic Marvels: Researchers Flip the Switch on Depression

1. New Zealand Government announces prescriptions charges will be free.

The $5 prescription fee at pharmacies will be scrapped in July. This is set to save about 3 million people a year money, and in particular 770,000 people aged over 65. It will make most prescriptions in New Zealand free.

Free access to medicines is also hoped to ease pressure on the over-burdened health system by helping people get medicines sooner.

2. Platypuses return to Sydney's Royal National Park after disappearing for decades

Platypuses have been relocated to the Royal National Park in Sydney, after they disappeared from the park's waterways about 50 years ago. A joint project by the University of New South Wales, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the World Wildlife Fund has reintroduced five females to the Hacking River, with a group of males to follow next week.

3. 74-year-old musician Otis Taylor gets Denver high school diploma decades after being expelled for hair

A musician who was expelled from a Denver high school over 50 years ago received his diploma. Otis Taylor was kicked out of Manual High School in 1966 because of his hair. This was decades before laws ending racial hair discrimination. Denver Public Schools wanted to right a wrong.

4. Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way (with magnets)

A new study led by Stanford Medicine researchers is the first to reveal how magnetic stimulation treats severe depression: by correcting the abnormal flow of brain signals. Powerful magnetic pulses applied to the scalp to stimulate the brain can bring fast relief to many severely depressed patients for whom standard treatments have failed.

The FDA-cleared treatment, known as Stanford neuromodulation therapy, incorporates advanced imaging technologies to guide stimulation with high-dose patterns of magnetic pulses that can modify brain activity related to major depression. Compared with traditional TMS, which requires daily sessions over several weeks or months, SNT works on an accelerated timeline of 10 sessions each day for just five days.

5. Electricity generation through solar, wind and water exceeded total demand in mainland Spain on Tuesday, a pattern that will be repeated more and more in the future

The Spanish power grid on Tuesday tasted an appetizer of the renewable energy banquet that is expected to flourish in the coming years. For nine hours, between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., the generation of green electricity was more than enough to cover 100% of Spanish peninsular demand, a milestone that had already been reached on previous occasions, but not for such a prolonged period.

6. RI Senate passes bill making lunch free at all public schools

Free lunch for all public school students in Rhode Island is one step closer to becoming a reality.

Tuesday night the Rhode Island Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill by a vote of 31-4 that would do just that. If the companion bill in the House were to pass, that takes effect July 1. The bill would make breakfast and lunch free for all public school students in the state, regardless of their household income.

7. Critically endangered red wolf pups born at North Carolina Zoo

The North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro celebrated the arrival of “not one but TWO litters” of the world’s most endangered wolf – the red wolf – in late April and early May.

A total of nine pups were born – three to parents Marsh and Roan, and six to Denali and May – the zoo announced on May 9.

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That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog.

SUBCRIBE HERE for more good news in your inbox

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Hi! Could you tell us more about the hoopoe sighting, specifically from the human / social side? Are these bird watchers or regular folk? How did the word spread around? Are people coming in from further (definition pending) away or are these walking distance neighbours? Etc etc etc

Basically, this situation sounds fascinating but I feel like I'm missing as to how this is happening and what social rules have emerged. It doesn't look like there's press coverage or wildlife protection or the threat of a wild animal killing you like with the [sea lion? Seal? That one pinniped] incident. So, how is this all playing out?

ALSO, I'm writing a story in which a non-native bird arrives one day and that manages to bring together some of the neighbours, so this event is personally fascinating to me. Thank you so so much for your reporting.

Sure! So, first off for context, a hoopoe sighting in the UK is not unheard of, but super super rare. It's something that happens like... once every few years, maybe? But normally on the south east coast of England, it is super super super rare to get one in Wales.

Now, whenever you get rare sightings like this, it's mostly bird watchers who care, and who spread the news. Last year a golden oriole turned up in a scrap of woodland on the Gower - much like the hoopoe, just passing through - and within hours of someone spotting it and putting it on a bird forum, the twitchers descended, lol. As luck would have it I was leading a field trip in that woodland on that day, so I got to see about two dozen people turn up, singly or in small groups, over the course of about four or five hours, all armed with proper cameras and also good binoculars. I never saw it in the end, which was a shame, but I know where it was, because I saw the birders gather in a small, hushed crowd at one end as we were getting back on the bus.

In the case of this hoopoe, things are a bit more relaxed. Unlike that golden oriole, it was first spotted earlier this week, and has hung out every day along the beach at roughly the same spot. You can see how unbothered it is by humans, too, look:

So close! Look how close it came in the photos! And the path it's on is a cycle path; bikes going past merely made it raise its crest momentarily and then carry on feeding. This means it's been a more relaxed affair, because if you want to see it, it's bizarrely easy to find. The first two days had slightly bigger crowds, but by now the QUICKLY GO AND SEE BEFORE IT LEAVES fervour has gone.

With that said, it's still mostly birders and other environmentalists going to see it. I don't think local news has even covered it, funnily enough. A quick search for 'Swansea hoopoe' gets me bird watching websites, birding soc med groups, a YouTube video, and a news article from last year when a hoopoe turned up in an Aberystwyth garden, of all places. The Evening Post really should have mentioned it for local interest, actually, but nothing. Although, of course, that's probably helped keep crowds down.

But environmentalists are definitely sharing the news with each other lol, so there's that (especially on the local scene). WE are all very excited. Of the little crowd of about 10 people there today, most had proper cameras. Several were discussing RSPB sites. Many had English accents, which suggests they travelled in to see it (although of course that's not definite). So, it's mostly a specialist crowd, interspersed with locals who stop to see what everyone is staring at.

The difference with the walrus, though, is I think partly the level of exoticism (most people don't know what a hoopoe is, but have seen birds; by contrast, they do know what a walrus is, and most haven't even seen a seal), and partly impact. Wally was exciting regardless, but he also kept squatting on slipways and capsizing boats, leading to funny photos of lifeboat volunteers trying to shoo him away with a broom.

And even funnier photos of him sinking the boats of rich toffs as they watched helplessly on and underwent the five stages of grief.

And, actually, he came visiting in lockdown, when people couldn't travel far and couldn't gather indoors, but you could go to Tenby and stand on a cliff, and I do think that played a part. But, as I say, most non environmentalists just don't know the hoopoe is even there to get excited.

Anyway, I hope that is at all useful! Good luck with your story.

[fatehbaz]

The government of Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland has stunned rights experts by suspending its Human Rights Act for a second time this year to be able to lock up more children.

The ruling Labor Party last month [August 2023] pushed through a suite of legislation to allow under-18s – including children as young as 10 – to be detained indefinitely in police watch houses, because changes to youth justice laws – including jail for young people who breach bail conditions – mean there are no longer enough spaces in designated youth detention centres to house all those being put behind bars. The amended bail laws, introduced earlier this year [2023], also required the Human Rights Act to be suspended.

The moves have shocked Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall, who described human rights protections in Australia as “very fragile”, with no laws that apply nationwide.

“We don’t have a National Human Rights Act. Some of our states and territories have human rights protections [...]. But they’re not constitutionally entrenched so they can be overridden by the parliament,” he told Al Jazeera. The Queensland Human Rights Act – introduced in 2019 – protects children from being detained in adult prison so it had to be suspended for the government to be able to pass its legislation.

---

Earlier this year, Australia’s Productivity Commission reported that Queensland had the highest number of children in detention of any Australian state. Between 2021-2022, the so-called “Sunshine State” recorded a daily average of 287 people in youth detention, compared with 190 in Australia’s most populous state New South Wales, the second highest. [...]

[M]ore than half the jailed Queensland children are resentenced for new offences within 12 months of their release.

Another report released by the Justice Reform Initiative in November 2022 showed that Queensland’s youth detention numbers had increased by more than 27 percent in seven years.

---

The push to hold children in police watch houses is viewed by the Queensland government as a means to house these growing numbers. Attached to police stations and courts, a watch house contains small, concrete cells with no windows and is normally used only as a “last resort” for adults awaiting court appearances or required to be locked up by police overnight. [...]

However, McDougall said he has “real concerns about irreversible harm being caused to children” detained in police watch houses, which he described as a “concrete box”. “[A watch house] often has other children in it. There’ll be a toilet that is visible to pretty much anyone,” he said. “Children do not have access to fresh air or sunlight. And there’s been reported cases of a child who was held for 32 days in a watch house whose hair was falling out. [...]"

---

He also pointed out that 90 percent of imprisoned children and young people were awaiting trial.

“Queensland has extremely high rates of children in detention being held on remand. So these are children who have not been convicted of an offence,” he told Al Jazeera.

Despite Indigenous people making up only 4.6 percent of Queensland’s population, Indigenous children make up nearly 63 percent of those in detention. The rate of incarceration for Indigenous children in Queensland is 33 times the rate of non-Indigenous children. Maggie Munn, a Gunggari person and National Director of First Nations justice advocacy group Change the Record, told Al Jazeera the move to hold children as young as 10 in adult watch houses was “fundamentally cruel and wrong”. [...]

---

[Critics] also told Al Jazeera that the government needed to stop funding “cops and cages” and expressed concern over what [they] described as the “systemic racism, misogyny, and sexism” of the Queensland Police Service.

In 2019, police officers and other staff were recorded joking about beating and burying Black people and making racist comments about African and Muslim people. The recordings also captured sexist remarks [...]. The conversations were recorded in a police watch house, the same detention facilities where Indigenous children can now be held indefinitely.

Australia has repeatedly come under fire at an international level regarding its treatment of children and young people in the criminal justice system. The United Nations has called repeatedly for Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to the international standard of 14 years old [...].

[MR], Queensland’s minister for police and corrective services, [...] – who introduced the legislation, which is due to expire in 2026 – is unrepentant, defending his decision last month [August 2023].

“This government makes no apology for our tough stance on youth crime,” he was quoted as saying in a number of Australian media outlets.

---

Text by: Ali MC. "Australian state suspends human rights law to lock up more children". Al Jazeera. 18 September 2023. At: aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/18/australian-state-suspends-human-rights-law-to-lock-up-more-children [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]