#literacy-related policies

[internationalliteracyday]

Promote literacy to foster mutual understanding and peace in multilingual societies.

To examine major challenges and effective policies, the International Literacy Day 2024 global celebration will be guided by the following key questions:

How can literacy-related policies be enhanced for the better integration of ‘literacy teaching and learning’ and ‘education for mutual understanding and peace’? How can policies respond to the question of which language to be literate in, how, and for what purpose?

What are the main factors that make literacy programmes and practices more relevant and effective to foster mutual understanding and peace in multilingual contexts? What lessons can be learned from existing fast language-based, multilingual (FLB-ML) approaches to literacy development? How can the effectiveness of such approaches be measured?

How can an ecosystem and culture of lifelong learning be enriched to promote literacy to foster mutual understanding and peace in multilingual societies? What resources do we need? Who are the actors, and how should they be involved?

[embervoices]

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬ November 8, 2024

This is not going to be a repeat of 2016-2020. It will be better, it will be worse, but most of all it will be different. Here are things I want every single person to keep in mind as we head into round 2 of a Trump admin.

My credentials: I’m a queer female public interest attorney working on tech policy in DC. I’ve been doing this for a decade--longer than some, not as long as others. I had to navigate three different administrations, as well as Congress, regulatory agencies, courts, and the advocacy world.

FIRST: don’t let despair override your media literacy.

The left has grifters, just like every other movement. If you’re able and compelled to donate, give to orgs with established track records. Avoid giving to individuals, especially anyone who emerges overnight with a one-weird-trick “plan.”

The left is not immune to misinformation, and everyone—EVERYONE—falls for it sometimes, present company included. There is no shame in it. When (not if) it happens to you, you should acknowledge it; delete or retract the post to reduce the spread; and move on.

If a source consistently shares half-truths or outright misinformation, it is not trustworthy, no matter how much “their heart is in the right place.” Unfollow and move on.

Prediction, analysis, and reporting are three fundamentally different things. Learn to identify them for what they are. Reject attempts by amateur “analysts” to predict the future. They know as much as you do.

Real subject matter experts know and acknowledge their limits. They’re also (usually) hesitant to try and predict the future. The best frame their predictions in terms of a range of possible outcomes. Subject matter experts may also disagree with one another! It happens!

SECOND: What we know for sure about how the Trump, how he operates, and how that will impact the next four years.

Trump is a narcissist who avoids reading and doesn’t care about details. He cannot be persuaded by argument or logic; he’s moved mostly by flattery, and will agree with the last person who flattered him. He can and will upend his own administration’s work without warning, often by tweet.

As a result, most policy experts—even those "on his side"—dread him taking an interest in their field. Ask any Republican staffer who worked in Congress during the last administration, and most of them will confirm that their greatest fear was Trump tweeting about anything related to their work.

As such, people who are serious about their work will do everything to make it as invisible and boring-seeming as possible. This is the policy equivalent of defensive camouflage. Lots of “normie” work will continue in silence. (The lion’s share of tech policy ends up in this bucket.)

If you have a niche issue that you care about, now is a great time to donate to orgs that work on it. Lots of money will be funneled to big legacy orgs working on headline issues: ACLU, climate change orgs, etc. Consider sending your donations where they matter most: local, niche, established.

Trump runs his cabinet like the Apprentice. He thrives on chaos and making people compete for his approval. Not only does he not reward collaboration between his subordinates, he actively undermines it.

Moreover, everyone who works with him knows that they’re vulnerable to being thrown under the bus at a moment’s notice, for any reason (or for no reason at all). His cabinet is going to be scorpions in a bottle. They will not be able to coordinate, for good or ill.

One scorpion can still do a lot of horrific damage. But large scale inter-agency coordination is unlikely, particularly after the first few months, by which point he will likely (prediction warning!) have gone through a handful of cabinet secretaries already.

FINALLY: The view from inside civil society heading into 2025.

In 2016, Trump was a largely unknown quantity. The left and establishment right alike wasted a lot of time trying to read tea leaves and make sense of this guy, because he was completely outside the realm of what anyone had dealt with. That’s not happening now.

He did us a favor by broadcasting his plans in advance (aka Project 2025). Civil society has spent the last 2.5 years strategizing around it. We’re not starting off flat-footed.

The Biden admin did a good amount to future-proof its own achievements. Folks can speak to their own areas of expertise, but clean energy and CHIPS and Science Act (investing in domestic semiconductor production) have benefitted from huge sunk investments. That money’s not getting clawed back.

OVERALL TAKE-AWAYS:

It's going to suck. But civil society and the political left have some advantages we didn't have last time. We know him, we know his angles, and we know who he's bringing in--none of which we had in 2016.

We'll get through this. It will be grim, but we'll get through it.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

Thanks Meredith. I really valued your analysis over the past few years, and I think this is a reasonable, actionable framework to think about the upcoming storm

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

I really cannot overstate how much time was (necessarily) wasted in 2017 trying to figure out this guy and his influences. The fact that he's not only a known quantity, but ran the most over-studied administration in this nation's recent history, makes this a very different game.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

I bet we can weaponize his narcissism. Let's say some ghoul starts making progress with a mass deportation effort, if we start calling that ghoul that "shadow president" en masse, Trump would fire him in right away and appoint Hulk Hogan or something

‪Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

This is exactly why I don't think Musk will last very long. Trump is very clear that he's the only one in the room allowed to have an ego or any kind of brand name.

[mariacallous]

Most of the time, as the senior rabbi of Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, Rabbi Mara Nathan’s focus is on Jewish families. But this week, she’s finding herself thinking about Christian ones, too.

That’s because Texas is poised to adopt a public school curriculum that refers to Jesus as “the Messiah,” asks kindergartners to study the Sermon on the Mount and presents the Crusades in a positive light.

The curriculum, Nathan said, “gives Christian children the sense that their family’s religion is the only true religion, which is not appropriate for public school education, at the very least.”

Nathan is among the many Texans raising concerns about the proposed reading curriculum as it nears final approval. Earlier this week, the Texas State Board of Education narrowly voted to proceed with the curriculum, called Bluebonnet Learning. A final vote is set for Friday.

The critics, who include Jewish parents and organizations as well as interfaith and education advocacy groups, say Bluebonnet — which will be optional but which schools would be paid to adopt — inappropriately centers on Christian theology and ideas. They have been lobbying for revisions since it was first proposed in May, offering detailed feedback.

“The first round of the curriculum that we saw honestly had a lot of offensive content in it, and was proselytizing, and did not represent Jewish people well,” said Lisa Epstein, the director of San Antonio’s Jewish Community Relations Council.

Now those critics say most of their specific suggestions have been accepted but they remain concerned.

“Looking at the revision, we still feel that the curriculum is not balanced and it introduces a lot of Christian concepts at a very young age, like resurrection and the blood of Christ and the Messiah, when kids are just really too young to understand and they don’t really have a grasp yet completely of their own religion,” she added. Epstein, who testified at a hearing on the proposal in Austin on Monday, has a child in high school and two others who graduated from Texas public schools.

The Texas vote comes as advocates of inserting Christianity into public education are ascendant across the country. Political conservatives are in power at the national level and the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has demonstrated openness to blurring church-state separation.

President-elect Donald Trump has signaled support for numerous initiatives to reintroduce Christian doctrine into public schools, from supporting school prayer to endorsing legislation that would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. (One such measure in Louisiana was recently blocked by a federal judge.)

In Texas, Bluebonnet’s advocates say the curriculum would elevate students’ learning while also exposing them to essential elements of cultural literacy. They note that the curriculum includes references to a wide range of cultures, including ancient religions, and that the religious references make up only a small fraction of the material.

“They’ll elevate the quality of education being offered to all Texas students by giving them a well-rounded understanding of important texts and their impact on the world,” Megan Benton, a strategic policy associate at Texas Values, which says its mission is “to stand for biblical, Judeo-Christian values,” said during the hearing on Monday, Education Week reported. Texas Values called criticism of the proposed curriculum an “attack on the Bible.”

The Texas Education Authority solicited the proposed curriculum, which would join a menu of approved options, as part of a pandemic-era effort that waived some transparency laws, meaning that its authors are not fully known. But The 74, an education news organization, reported this week that a publishing company co-founded by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee contributed content to the curriculum.

Trump tapped Huckabee, a pastor and evangelical favorite, last week to become his ambassador to Israel.

For some in Texas and beyond, Bluebonnet represents a concrete example of how the national climate could ripple out into local changes.

“A lot of things, we think they’re outside of our community, or outside of our scope, like we hear these things, but are they really going to impact us?” said a Jewish assistant principal in the Richardson Independent School District north of Dallas who asked to remain anonymous. “But I think now that it’s becoming a potential reality, a friend was asking me, would Richardson adopt this? Is this something that is really going to happen in our community?��

While the Supreme Court has ruled that public schools can teach about religion, they cannot prioritize one religion over another in that instruction. So Bluebonnet’s inclusion of Christian and Bible stories in lesson plans drew scrutiny from the start — which grew after the Texas Tribune reported that a panel required to vet all curriculum proposals included Christian proponents of incorporating religion in public education.

In September, The Texas Education Authority’s curriculum review board published hundreds of pages of emails from members of the public along with whether the critiques had resulted in changes. Some did, the board noted, but many others were rejected.

A coalition of Jewish groups submitted 37 requested changes to the initial curriculum proposal. Epstein said the San Antonio JCRC had specifically objected to language in some lessons that evoked “antisemitic tropes” and textual inaccuracies in referencing the story of Queen Esther, as well as offensive references to the Crusades and language that explained the birth of Jesus as the messiah.

One passage had invited students to imagine “if you were a Crusader,” Epstein said, referring to the Christian knights of the Middle Ages who sought to conquer the Holy Land, massacred communities of Jews and are venerated by some on the Christian right.

In the case of the Esther lesson, the original curriculum had recreated an aspect of the Purim story in which Haman drew lots to determine when to kill Jews in the Persian Empire — as a way to teach probability. Nathan called that particular lesson “subversively antisemitic.”

“In ancient Persia [drawing lots] was a way of helping someone make a decision, and the game was called Purim,” the initial text read. “Ask students to choose a number from 1 to 6. Roll a die and ask the students to raise their hand if their number was rolled.”

“This is shocking, offensive and just plain wrong,” Sharyn Vane, a Jewish parent of two Texas public school graduates, said at a September hearing, according to the New York Times. “Do we ask elementary students to pretend to be Hitler?” (Historical simulations have widely been rejected by educators for all grades.)

Both of the lessons were revised after feedback from Jewish groups and others, but Epstein and Nathan said the changes were not adequate. A new prompt asks students to describe “the journey of a Crusader” in the third-person, but it still sanitizes the murder of many Jews and Christians during the Christian quest to conquer Jerusalem, Epstein charged.

And while the Purim lots activity was dropped, Epstein noted that a specific lesson plan about Esther — a beloved figure among evangelical Christians — also includes a reference to God, which the Megillah, the Jewish text telling the Purim story, famously does not do. She said that inaccuracy was not addressed in the revisions.

In a statement, San Antonio’s Jewish federation, under which the JCRC operates, also acknowledged the changes that were made after its feedback but expressed concern over what it called “an almost solely Christian-based” perspective with “inaccuracies” and content that is inappropriate for elementary school students.

“We are not against teaching a broad range of religious beliefs to children in an age-appropriate way that clearly distinguishes between ‘beliefs’ and ‘facts,’ and gives appropriate time and respect to acknowledging many different religions,” the federation said. “Public schools should be places where children of all religious backgrounds feel welcomed and accepted.”

The newer version of the curriculum also did not address the federation’s concerns about language referring to Jesus as “the Messiah,” written with a capital “M,” and references to “the Bible,” rather than “the Christian Bible” specifically, as the federation had urged the curriculum’s creators to adopt.

The Austin branch of the Anti-Defamation League, which was also involved in the efforts, also applauded the revisions that had been made thus far but said it still “reject[s] the current version of the proposed curriculum.”

“We agree that students should learn the historical contributions of various religious traditions, but ADL’s analysis of the originally proposed curriculum found that a narrow view of Christianity was overwhelmingly emphasized, there were few mentions of other faiths and the curriculum baselessly credited Christianity with improved societal morality,” the group said in a statement. “Although improvements have been made, the materials still appear to cross the line into teaching religion instead of teaching about religion.”

Criticism to the curriculum goes far beyond the Jewish community. Texas AFT, the state’s outpost of the American Federation of Teachers, a leading teachers’ union, also opposes the proposal. “Texas AFT believes that not only do these materials violate the separation of church and state and the academic freedom of our classroom, but also the sanctity of the teaching profession,” the union said in a statement.

Some Republicans on the Texas Board of Education expressed reservations about the curriculum’s quality and age-appropriateness, separate from its religious content.

And nonpartisan and interfaith groups like Texas Impact and Texas Freedom Network have also been involved in efforts to oppose the curriculum, as has the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Epstein said a Sikh parent also testified at one of the hearings, asking for her faith’s traditions to be incorporated into lesson plans to provide more religious perspectives.

Nathan said that when she testified against the proposal at a September hearing, her allies were diverse.

“Some of the people who were against it were not Jewish, and just were [against] the way that the curriculum was being put together pedagogically,” she said. “But there were both Jewish and non-Jewish people there, and also some Christian folks who were there who were opposed to such an overtly Christian curriculum.”

Marian Neleson, who has a 14-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son in the Frisco Independent School District, said it has never been easy to be a Jewish family in her area.

“There’s always concerns as a parent when there’s just a handful of other Jewish children in a majority Christian school,” said Neleson, who is active in her local interfaith alliance. “From how the school celebrates, how they do their calendars. Do they remember that there is a Jewish holiday, and then they schedule major school functions on High Holy Days?”

Now, she’s worried that her own district could face pressure to adopt the new curriculum, if it is approved.

“These kind of curriculums are promoting one interpretation, one religion’s view, and I feel like that’s not very respectful of people who come from different backgrounds and different faiths and different religions,” Neleson said. She added, “I do think that the Frisco school district particularly does try to be inclusive and try to recognize the diversity of the community, but I know that there’s always pressure from groups who are trying to promote one agenda in the schools.”

The Richardson assistant principal said she saw in the financial incentive to adopt the curriculum — districts that do so will get up to $60 per student — an inappropriate assertion of support by the state. Many Texas districts are cash-strapped after legislators declined to substantially increase school funding last year.

“There is such a push in education for high-quality instructional materials,” said the assistant principal, who has three elementary school-aged children. “They’re pushing this so hard, and even potentially putting up funding for it if you adopt it, but it’s not a truly high-quality curriculum.”

In a Facebook post after Tuesday’s preliminary vote, Vane encouraged parents to reach out to members of the state’s education board to urge them to oppose the curriculum. “It’s not over yet,” she wrote.

Nathan said she’s not sure how much opponents of the curriculum can do if it’s approved, but she stressed the importance of local advocacy — especially since the curriculum is not required.

“I think reaching out to your local school board and communicating with local teachers in your community is going to be key,” she said. “If this occurs, what do I need to do in my local school district to make sure that there’s programming that balances the perspective?”

But she signaled that the intensity of the proposed curriculum would undercut any counter-programming by representatives of other faiths.

“It’s not presented as, ‘Here’s what Christians believe,’” Nathan said about Bluebonnet. “It’s presented as, ‘Here is the truth.’ There’s a difference.”

[demonslayedher]

References for KnY Writers: Taisho Period

Below are links to my entries about the Taisho Period and how it might affect the KnY characters (at least according to canon resources, my research, and my interpretations). Please see here for the full masterlist of References for KnY Fic Writers.

Background info: The Taisho Period (1912-1926) a bit of an in-between period in a lot of ways, with Westernization already several decades underway, but with many new policies not yet uniformly enforced in the countryside. In some ways, rural life went on like it did in the late Edo period. The majority of Kimetsu no Yaiba most likely would have taken place in 1915. This means that it's still a little early for the full-on "Taisho Roman" fashions, but the groundwork was there.

-Notes on Corp salary, simple conversions into Taisho currency, as well as other monetary details -Taisho Period overview of the Yoshiwara Pleasure District -Photos and details of preserved Taisho Period brothel -How a Taisho Period birthday may be celebrated -How a Taisho Period New Years may be celebrated (in the case of the Kamados) -How keeping track of one's age was different in the Taisho Period -Photography and education in the Taisho Period -More on Taisho education and literacy rates -Marriage and being a girl in the Taisho Period -Polygamy and the Meiji Civil Code -Dating and wedding night protocol -Being queer in the Taisho Period (and beyond) -A few real life folk songs featured in KnY -Taisho Period undergarments -Taisho Period beverages and drinking age (separate masterlist of KnY-related food here)

-Flush toilets were a thing (and there are toilets in the Infinity Fortress)

[tanadrin]

[epistemic status: a bunch of semi-related thoughts I am trying to work out aloud] It has been noted countless times that reactionary politics rely on a feeling of threat: our enemies are strong and we are weak (but we are virtuous and they are not, which is why they’re our enemies!); we must defend ourselves, we must not be afraid of doing what needs to be done; we must not shie away from power generally, and violence specifically.

And there are lots of contexts--like when talking about the appeal of reactionary politics in the US before and at the beginning of Trump’s rise to prominence, or when talking about hard-on-crime policies that are a springboard to police militarization, or (the central example of all this in the 21st century) the post 9/11 PATRIOT-act terrorism paranoia that was a boon to authoritarians everywhere, and spurred a massive expansion of both control and surveillance in everyday life--where critics of reactionary rhetoric are chastised for their failure to appeal to the other side, because they come off as callous towards their concerns and their real fears and anxieties.

And while this might not be strategically correct, frankly, I think there’s a sense in which it is justified to be callous towards those concerns. Because those concerns are lies. They may be lies borne out of a seed of real experience (9/11 did happen, of course), but the way that seed is cultivated by focused paranoia, by contempt toward cultivating any sense of proportionality or any honest comparison of risk, the way it is dragooned into the service of completely orthogonal political goals (”the CIA/NSA/FBI must be able to monitor all private communications everywhere in the world, just in case it might prevent another 9/11″) chokes off any possible sympathy I might otherwise feel. American paranoia about another couple thousand lives being lost in a 9/11 like event resulted in a number of deaths literally multiple orders of magnitude larger in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the former, some years Iraq was suffering the equivalent of six or seven 9/11s a year.

So, any fear-driven policy must not (for example) say “to prevent disaster X happening again, we’re going to make it happen 270 times over to someone else.” That’s not reasonable. And “fear is a bad basis for crafting policy” is not exactly a revolutionary observation. There’s that probably-apocryphal story of a Chinese professor responding to Blackstone’s Ratio--you know, “better that ten guilty persons go free than one innocent person suffer”--with “better for whom?” Which is supposed to be this trenchant and penetrating question that makes you reexamine your assumptions. But it’s always struck me as idiotic. Better for society! For everyone! Because the law only functions well if it is seen as a source of order and justice, not as an authoritarian cudgel; because a society in which anxiety drives policymaking and legal responses to social ills is one that is in the process of actively devouring itself; because flooding the public discourse with language that dehumanizes criminals and makes it easy to separate the individual from universal principles like civil rights is an acid that destroys the social fabric.

Fear as a germ of reactionary politics manifests itself in lots of ways outside of both historical examples, like fascism, or more recent examples, like US foreign policy during the war on terror. Fear and its link to purity-attitudes, with a low level of scientific literacy in general, drives stuff like the organized anti-vaccine movement. In the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram of political tendencies, I’d argue it’s a big factor in the wellness-to-Qanon track. It’s a big part of tough-on-crime rhetoric, which in the American instance in particular also draws on an especially racialized form (cf. the “Willie Horton” ad). Fear and purity and anti-contamination anxieties are even big in opposition to nuclear power, because most of the public just has a really bad sense of what the comparative dangers of nuclear vs fossil fuel are; and because the former has been culturally salient since 1945 in a way the latter hasn’t, nuclear contamination feels much more threatening than fossil fuel waste, despite by any measurable harm the latter causing far worse problems, even before you factor in any risks from climate change.

I would like to argue in particular that true crime as an entertainment genre, and wellness culture, and fears about child abuse all contribute to reactionary politics--they are in themselves major reactionary political currents--in a way that cuts across the political spectrum because they are not strongly marked for political factionalism. A lot of the rhetoric both from and around true crime entertainment promotes the idea that violent crime exists, or at least can flourish, because of an insufficiently punitive attitude toward crime; one that can only be fixed by centering victims’ desire (or putative desire) for retribution in the legal process, by eroding the civil rights of the accused, and by giving the police and prosecutors more power. Obviously, this is just 80s and 90s tough on crime rhetoric repackaged for millennials; it centers individual experience a bit more and deemphasizes the racial component that made the “Willie Horton” ad so successful, but it posits that there is only one cause for crime, a spontaneous choice by criminals that has no causal relationship with the rest of the world, and only one solution, which is authoritarianism.

Wellness culture leverages purity concerns and scientific illiteracy in ways which are so grifty and so transparently stupid that it’s by far the least interesting thing on this list to me; its most direct harm is in giving an environment for the anti-vaccine movement to flourish, and I’m always incredibly annoyed when people talk about how the medical establishment needs to do more to reassure the public about vaccines’ safety and efficacy. Again, strategically, this may be correct; people dying of preventable disease is really bad. But doctors as a body didn’t promote Andrew Wakefield’s nonsense; doctors as a body didn’t run breathless article after breathless article about vaccines maybe causing autism; doctors as a body didn’t scare the bejezus out of folks in the 90s and then act all surprised when preventable childhood diseases started breaking out all over the place.

Although outside the whole anti-vax thing, I think there are lots of other harms that wellness culture creates. It tends to be fairly antiscientific; in order to sell people nonsense (because as a subculture it exists almost exclusively to sell people things) it has to discredit anything that might point out that it is selling nonsense. Whether the anti-intellectualism that flourishes in these quarters is a result of intentional deceit or just a kind of natural rhetorical evolution probably varies. But it is an important component of wellness culture to be able to play a shell game between “big pharma doesn’t have your best interests at heart,” “you don’t need your anti-depressants,” and “laetrile cures cancer.”

The way in which fears of child abuse are turned into a reactionary political cudgel probably actually annoys me the most; whether it’s Wayfair conspiracy theories, conservatives trying to turn “groomer” into an anti-queer slur, or just antis on tumblr, the portrayal of sadistic sexual threat aimed at children from an outside malevolent force is compelling only because the vast majority of child abuse and CSA comes from within families and within culturally privileged structures of authority like churches, and this fact makes everyone really uncomfortable, and no one wants to talk about it. I remember getting really annoyed during the Obama years when the White House wanted to talk about bullying and anti-LGBT bullying in particular, while studiously avoiding blaming parents and teachers in any way for it, despite the fact that all the coming out horror stories I know are from people’s parents turning on them.

Now, very conservative politics have always opposed dilution of a kind of privilege for the family structure; they envision a family structure which is patriarchal, and so dilution of this privilege is dilution of the status of patriarch. Very insular communities which cannot survive their members having many options or alternative viewpoints available to them, including controlling religions but also just abusive parents who want to retain control over their kids, also bristle at the idea of any kind of general society-wide capacity for people to notice how parents treat their children. But beyond that, I think our society still treats parents as having a right of possession over their children and their children’s identities, especially when they’re young, and bolsters that idea with an idea that the purity of children is constantly under threat from the outside world, and it is the parents’ job to safeguard that purity. The result is the nuclear family as a kind of sacred structure which the rest of society has no right to observe or pry open; and this is a massive engine of enabling the abuse of children. To no other relationship in our society do we apply this idea, that it should be free from “interference” (read: basic accountability) from the rest of society.

Moreover, the idea of childhood as a time of purity and innocence, which not only must be protected from but during which children must be actively lied to about major aspects of how the world works, is one of the last ways remaining to an increasingly secular culture to justify censorious and puritanical Victorian morality. It is hard to advocate for censorship to protect the Morals of the Christian Public, when nobody believes in the Morals of the Christian Public anymore; but “think of the children!” still works as a rallying cry, because of this nagging sense we have that age-appropriate conversations with children about adult topics will cause them to melt or explode.

In many ways, these anxieties on behalf of theoretical children are the ones I am most contemptuous of. Not because child abuse isn’t a serious problem--it is--but because the vector imagined for it is almost entirely opposite the one it actually tends to occur along. People who pretend that the primary danger to children is from strangers are usually woefully misinformed; people who pretend it is from media are either idiots or liars seeking a cover for their craving for censorship.

In conclusion: while it’s not possible to exorcise all our neuroses from our politics, anymore than we will ever exercise all our neuroses from our aesthetics, there are some we should be especially on guard against. A sense of threat, and anxieties which tie into concerns about purity and fears of contamination, are two big ones. These produce policies that are not only badly correlated with the outcomes they ostensibly want, but actually and severely destructive to them, in the same way that invading Iraq was actively destructive to any notion of preventing terrorism, saving American or Iraqi lives, or promoting political stability in the Middle East. And we should hold in healthy suspicion anybody whose politics seem to be driven by similar neuroses. Some merely believe very harmful things. Some are actually actively deceptive. None will achieve any of the higher aims they claim as justification for their beliefs.

[morbidsmenagerie]

Scientific Literacy and Stray Cat Policies

Or how to read scientific papers and interrogate claims for accuracy.

I said in my previous post I eventually wanted to write something about how to read scientific papers and how to be aware of the ways a lot of credible sites summarize papers in a way that is misleading or inaccurate. Well since the topic came up yesterday now I've finally motivated myself to make this post so this is it. Although this is a bug blog, I will be focusing on specific claims made about cats because the way that scientific papers are used to affect policy is more direct and focusing on cats makes this topic more approachable and widely relatable.

I will be formatting this through the lens of finding a claim made on a site that has a citation, and how to read the original paper and compare it to the claim that the site is making. This I think is most applicable in everyday life. I'm also not a researcher or in academia, but I want to present this information as how to read a paper as a layman on a topic you don't have experience in. Hopefully by the end of this you'll have a greater sensitivity to statements made by secondary or tertiary articles, and you'll be more inclined to investigate information to it's source.

The other reason why I'm focusing this post on cats is because I ended up taking a deep dive into the policies we have about cats and how those policies are scientifically backed. We found a cat we had reason to believe was a lost pet a few months back, and we took him to a shelter so they could hold him while the owner was tracked down. During this, we were told the shelter doesn't take healthy cats, and that the policy was to put any cat you find back where you find it and "keep an eye on it", and the shelter would only take it if it was actively sick, injured, or starving.

This policy was based on guidance from the National Animal Care and Control Association.

We'll get to this is a second. Another shelter nearby that we tried had a similar policy, and their website included this graphic to explain that "When a cat is found outside, healthy and free from immediate danger, it is far more likely to return to its owner on its own."

This graphic has a source here, and we can see that it's one of the same sources used in the NACA findings.

The NACA findings consist of these main points:

Impoundment of healthy adult cats reduces the likelihood of reuniting families with pets

Impoundment of healthy adult cats may disproportionately impact under-served and marginalized communities

Impoundment has the potential to increase cat populations and impact

Impoundment fails to resolve the inciting factors for nuisance situations

Impoundment of healthy free roaming cats reduces capacity to respond to critical community needs

From the site, we have these references listed:

I'm going to focus on the first two points for space. The first two points seem to be the bulk of the argument for releasing found pets back outside and TNR is a whole other thing I don't really want to get into currently. Let's look at the first two references, which are describing lost pet cats and their owner's search and return methods.

This is the first reference, "Search and Identification Methods that Owners use to find a lost cat".

Scientific papers typically start with an abstract. The abstract is not the only thing you should read when looking at a scientific paper. The abstract is a summary that I like to think of more of a keyword organizer, it will briefly describe what the paper is about, what the author did, and what the author thinks the results of the experiment show. This paper shows the parts of the abstract very well, because instead of just a paragraph to sum up the whole thing it's broken down into sections.

So we can see the purpose of this study was to look into how owners were looking for their lost cats, and what aids in cats being found. The study was conducted through a telephone survey, and the results show a breakdown of recovery methods that led to a cat being found. One of the things that immediately sticks out to me in this section is the first line that states "73 of the 138 (53%) cats were recovered". So right away we can see that the NACA site that claims that "In fact, the most successful reunification method for cats is the cat returning home on its own." is a misleading statement, while the majority of cats that were found returned home on their own, most of the lost cats were never found at all. Saying 66% of the cats that were found came home on their own is ignoring the fact that it's 66% of the total number of found cats, but only 34% of the total number of lost cats. Another thing that sticks out to me is the statement that "Only 26 of the 138 (19%) cats had some type of identification at the time they were lost." and that "Owners allowed 82 (59%) cats to spend at least some time outdoors". So the survey was done on a group of cats where a bit more than half were allowed to roam outside and a vast majority had no identification on them. Immediately I would assume that has an effect on how they were recovered, stray cats and indoor/outdoor cats are pretty common and people don't tend to immediately assume a cat they found outside is lost. And without an identification tag, anyone who did find the cat would not be able to return it to it's owner. The conclusions the author draws is also not that shelters should deny the intake of stray cats, but that we should "educate owners about the importance of identification and the need to keep cats indoors".

Let's look at the rest of the article though.

The next section is the Materials and Methods section. Depending on the paper you don't always need to read this, it will describe how the author collected the data, usually includes some information about the statistical relevance, or describe how the experiment was performed. Sometimes this section can highlight implicit biases in the way the data was collected, for example in this paper it states that "The study population consisted of a cohort of cats that had been identified as missing by their owners through placement of an advertisement in the lost-and-found portion of the classified section in the Dayton Daily News or through contact with 1 of the county’s 3 animal agencies". So they only surveyed people that posted a lost cat ad in the paper or directly contacted the shelter about their lost cat. This would exclude anyone that looked for their cat or put up lost cat posters but didn't happen to contact the shelter or run an ad, and the people who didn't look for their cat at all but just assumed the cat ran away. Biases like this are important to be aware of when interpreting the results of a paper, even if they don't have an apparent effect on the results.

Then we come to the Results section, which essentially gives the data as it was collected with no interpretations or conclusions applied. This section has a bit more about the specifics of the methods used, how long it took cats to be recovered, and whether or not having an identification tag made a statistic difference.

Last is the Discussion section, which is where the author interprets the results and draws a conclusion based on that. This is an important section to read because it usually gives some insight into what the authors think the data means. Obviously even researchers aren't infallible, but the authors have a lot more context and knowledge on the subject the paper is about and this can be helpful if you're reading a paper on a topic you're unfamiliar with. In this instance there isn't a lot of technical knowledge that's needed to understand the paper which is part of the reason why I chose to write about cat shelter policies.

In the discussion section, the author writes "These results may, in part, be due to the fact that no animal control laws related to cats existed at the county level in Ohio at the time of the study and that no identification was required for cats. There is tremendous debate as to whether cat licensing or mandatory identification is effective in reducing the cat overpopulation problem and whether owners of cats would comply with such laws." It is important to note that the paper still noted that there was only a small difference in returning cats with identification and that even in states where identification and microchipping is mandatory, although the return rates from the shelter for cats in states that require identification was higher than in Ohio where it's not required, the number was still much lower than it is for dogs. The author also notes that people generally take longer to contact their animal shelters about lost cats, and there was no mandatory holding period for stray cats at the time of the study but most agencies held stray cats for 3 days, which might have caused some of the lost cats to be euthanized before the owner contacted the shelter. Ultimately the author concludes that "we believe the present study illustrates the importance of educating owners about providing identification for their cats. We also believe the present study points to the need to continue to encourage owners to keep their cats indoors....Veterinarians can play a key role in educating owners on the health and safety reasons for keeping cats indoors and the importance of identification. Given that 56 of the 138 (41%) cats in the present study reportedly were not allowed outdoors, it is important to educate owners of indoor-only cats on the importance of identification and the potential risk that these cats will escape and become lost." The author does not seem to be concluding that because most of the cats that were found returned on their own, it is therefore better to leave stray cats outside. Instead the conclusion seems to be that people should be better about having identification tags on their cats, that they should contact the shelter early when they suspect their cat is lost and be proactive about following up with their shelter, and that cats should be kept indoors.

Let's look at the second study, the "Frequency of Lost Dogs and Cats in the United States and the Methods Used to Locate Them". One of the authors in this paper is the same author from the previous paper, Linda Lord. This doesn't necessarily mean anything but it's important to keep in mind if a website is citing multiple articles but the articles all come from the same author or data. I've even seen a website cite multiple sources, but when looking at these sources, all the sources were based on the same paper, which is also important to consider. If for example a website cites another website that talks about a paper and cites the paper itself as a different source, then it looks like there are two different sources for the information when really there's just one.

This paper's abstract is a lot more concise, with regards to cats it says "75% (95% CI: 64–85%) of cats were recovered...For cats, returning on their own was most common...Cats were less likely than dogs to have any type of identification. Knowledge of the successful methods of finding dogs and cats can provide invaluable help for owners of lost pets. Since 25% of lost cats were not found, other methods of reuniting cats and their owners are needed. Collars and ID tags or humane trapping could be valuable approaches." Right away we notice that the recovery percentage of cats is a lot higher than in the previous study, but that 25% is still a large percentage of cats that were never recovered. This is particularly interesting because this is the paper that the shelter cited on their website as the source for the information on their graphic about cat recovery, but again we can see the exclusion of the number of cats that weren't found is misleading.

From the Methods section, we can also see that the respondents to the survey in this paper were randomly called, and that they were asked about pets that had become lost within the last 5 years. This removes the bias of the previous paper of selecting only for people that used a local ad or went to the shelter to search for a lost pet.

The results are presented here largely as just the raw data in an Excel sheet, so I'm going to skip over to the Discussion section. In the discussion section, they say that "The definition of lost pets used in this study deliberately was designed to be broad so that owners of pets would include any time they were concerned about the absence of the pet from the home". The authors recognize that this could cause a discrepancy where there was no set time frame for how long a pet was lost for before the owner considered them lost, and they realized that people would respond to the survey under circumstances where other people might not consider the pet lost, and that allowing the pet to roam or be indoor-outdoor would change when or if the owner considered the pet lost.

The author also notes that "We did find that lost neutered pets, lost pets belonging to respondents with more education, and lost cats belonging to respondents with higher income were more likely to be reunited with their owners. This could be due to different behaviors of neutered pets or to different behaviors by owners of neutered pets. Since households with higher owner education and income levels were more likely to have neutered pets, these results could be due to some complex inter-relationships, which we were not able to study further due to our limited samples size. This does suggest future avenues for investigation evaluating other pet-keeping and health variables and their associations with human lifestyle and demographic variables." This paragraph appears to be the source of the claim from the NACA that sheltering healthy cats disproportionately affects marginalized communities. The statement the NACA makes about "Only ~40 % of people in the lowest income bracket (<$30,000 annual income) that lost cats were reunited with them, compared to > $90% reunited for those making $50,000 or more per year" seems to be based on this paper, but the actual data to back this up is presented as such:

So for people making less than 30k$ per year, 8 of the cats were found vs the 11 who weren't found, which does make about 40% found. The 90% seems to be based on adding up all the found vs unfound cats for people in the above 50k$ range, so 25 total found cats vs 1 cat that was not found. This makes 96%, which is >90% but I guess it's a bit too high of a percentage to seem accurate. It's also possible they added in the Don't Know category, I'm not sure exactly what they looked at to get the 90% number. The point is that the statement about taking cats into shelters affecting marginalized communities is a statement based on a total of 50 cats (excluding the 30-49k bracket) which the authors of the paper say is not enough data to make a definitive statement about.

The NACA website also points to the low usage of shelters through a program designed to reach low income communities, and the authors of the paper state that "Since the majority of cat owners that lose and do not recover their cat did not search at the animal shelter, there is likely an opportunity to increase messaging regarding this option as a search method for cat owners...These results may suggest that a proportion of “stray” pets in shelters are actually lost as opposed to abandoned by their owners. Lost pets in shelters may not be reunited with their owners if the owners do not know that there is a shelter that might have their pets." It seems that low usage of shelters and the extended time cat owners take to reach out to their local shelters does contribute to the low number of cats that are recovered from shelters, but to say that because of this cats shouldn't be kept at a shelter at all seems to be backwards. More education about shelter services and encouraging pet owners to utilize their shelter more and reach out earlier when their pet is lost would likely improve pet recovery from shelters. If shelters made it a policy to not hold pet cats then obviously people would not reach out to shelters to recover a cat since it is likely that the cat in question would not be at the shelter.

The author concludes "Animal shelter staff and veterinarians can provide a valuable service by making available information on how owners of lost pets can best find their pets. They could also help owners find their pets by instituting matching of reported lost pet records with reported found pet records. Veterinarians might offer microchip and identification tag clinics for community pet owners and be sure their own clientele’s pets have microchips, collars and personalized identification. Veterinary clinics and animal shelters could have a list of resources and options for advertising for lost pets; some local papers will publish a lost pet ad free and many shelters have lost and found sections. Local veterinary associations could support advertisements for lost pets...Since 25% of lost cats were not found, other methods of reuniting cats and their owners are needed. It is possible that collars and ID tags or humane trapping could be valuable and more work is needed to determine this. Veterinarians and animal welfare professional can play a key role in helping pet owners if their dogs or cats become lost by guiding owners to use active methods to find lost pets, particularly within the owners’ neighborhoods." Again, we see a distinct lack of suggestion that the conclusion of the paper is since most cats that are found returned home on their own, the best policy for shelters to have is to not accept any stray cats. The suggestion from the author is about further education on the importance of identification, guiding pet owners to more effective methods of searching for their pets, and maintaining lost and found pet records.

Both of these articles are presumably used to support the claim from the NACA site that states "Lost cats are 10-50 times more likely to be reunited with their owners if they stay in the neighborhood of origin than through an animal shelter. In fact, the most successful reunification method for cats is the cat returning home on its own". Based on reading through these two articles, they seem to be combining first article which states that 48 (66%) of the cats came home on their own vs the 5 (7%) which were found at the shelter and the second article which says 32 (59%) of the cats came home on their own vs the 1 (2%) cat that was found at the shelter. Again we can see that this claim is misleading based on the data it's sourced from, the sample size is very small and there were other factors stated in both cases that contribute to the low use of animal shelters in returning cats.

Based on these two articles, the NACA has concluded that shelters should not take in healthy stray cats. This includes cats that have evidence of being owned and lost, or evidence of being abandoned and adoptable. The cat we found had a microchip, but the phone number listed on the microchip was disconnected and the address listed had been recently moved into and the current tenant was receiving old mail from the owner listed on the microchip. Because of this, we had solid reason to believe this was a pet cat that had been lost or abandoned, and yet still the shelter was using a misleading policy written on the basis of obfuscating the actual suggestions the author made in the article it cites.

By finding the original source of these claims, and reading what the source article says, how the data was collected for the source article, and how the author of the source article interpreted this data, we can improve the way we engage with claims and facts presented on various websites and media outlets. This is going to be a two part series (at least) with the second part discussing claims on outdoor cat health, but I hope this was enough to encourage you to read the scientific articles that are at the source of a lot of policy decision and public perceptions.

Part 2

[scumashling]

Welcome newcomers! You can call me Ash (they/she).

About this account

•i made this account after realizing I've been into whump for years without knowing it and discovering that I'm not alone in finding comfort in fiction about characters being put through emotional and or physical hell. I've often struggled with intense shame related to my interest in whump, especially as it's tied to my own trauma, so learning about this community has felt like a huge weight off my chest.

•fan of: defiant whumpee, intimate whumper, Lady whump, living weapon, non con body modification, drugged Whumpee, revenge whump, dehumanization, fantasy whump,Bastard whumpee, religious whump, Whumpee turned Whumper, Bad Caretaker and nsfwhump,

•I'm fairly new to tumblr and am still trying to get a feel for how things work around here, both in terms of the people and the site itself, so I apologize in advance for any possible future faux pas. I'm also a novice writer and still building my confidence in it, but I do I intend to post some of my own fiction, art, and memes.

•I'm in too many fandoms to count but currently you can expect stuff related to Chainsaw Man, Berserk, Slay the Princess, The Boys, and Delicious in Dungeon

•DNIs: I don't intend for this to be an overtly political account, and i'm not into policing people's behavior so giving a list of opinions/positions I find morally objectionable and demanding you keep away from my account if you hold them isn't my style. If I think something you posted is wack then I will simply unfollow or block you, because I am an adult who knows and enforces their own boundaries. That being said, I am a leftist (socially, economically, foreign policy wise) and related themes are more then likely to show up in my fiction, so if you have a problem with that my account probably isn't for you. The one exception to the DNI is Zionists (including "progressive" two staters) in which case, fuck Israel, fuck genocide, fuck you for supporting it, you're a N@zi, Long Live a Free Palestine 🇵🇸

•WARNING: there will be non con stuff posted on this account, as well as general content related to abuse, kink, trauma and addiction, as well as the occasional gore post. I will use appropriate tags/cws but if that is not something you can handle, or just not something you're into hearing about, please take care of yourself and disengage. I use fiction to cope with my own history and truly do not want anyone else to be harmed by it

•I do not consider myself proship or antiship and as far as I'm concerned yall both have some weird people on your side. Basically as long as you aren't being creepy or harassing anyone, have common sense around media literacy/ engaging with fiction as fiction, but don't use the fact that it's fiction to avoid thinking about real world implications/themes, you are welcome on my page.

some facts about me:

•im a nonbinary femme lesbian who's currently studying fine arts.

•I'm mixed (Asian and white)

•I'm a 23 years old

•I was diagnosed with autism at age 18. Some of my special interests include manga, horror, feminist theory, animation, media analysis, mycology, vampires and cooking.

•i adore poetry, my favorites are Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, Ozymandias by Percy Shelley, and She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo (specifically the canto Drowning Horses)

•I have been drawing for 7 years

[marveltrumpshate]

Education

We’d venture to guess that one of the common threads that unites our fandom is a belief in the power of education and all that comes with it. Taking down barriers to literacy, higher education, and other forms of knowledge-building, these organizations are working to ensure everyone has access to the transformative power of ideas and resources for personal and professional development.

For more information on donation methods and accepted currencies, please refer to our list of organizations page.

Amputee Coalition

The Amputee Coalition supports and advocates for people impacted by limb loss and limb difference as well as their families and caretakers across the globe, and one of the ways they do so is through their educational programs. They developed the National Limb Loss Resource Center which offers information on a plethora of topics related to limb loss/difference, provide educational publications and webinars, and have a youth engagement program that covers everything from life skills and training programs, career development, and more.

Autistic Self Advocacy Network 

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism. ASAN believes that the goal of autism advocacy should be a world in which autistic people enjoy equal access, rights, and opportunities and have their voices heard. For that reason, the organization is run by individuals on the autism spectrum. In addition to advocating for policies that protect disability and civil rights, ASAN creates tools and leadership training for autistic self-advocates and offers a wide variety of educational resources. 

The Pad Project

Period stigma and lack of access to affordable, safe, and effective menstrual products are a global problem, one that disrupts and limits access to education and employment for many people who menstruate. The Pad Project tackles this issue through increasing access not only to menstrual products but also education. They conduct workshops on menstrual hygiene management and sexual and reproductive health and have an award-winning documentary, Period. End of Sentence. Additionally, they aim to integrate menstrual hygiene management and puberty education into school curricula internationally.

Southern Poverty Law Center

If there is injustice against a vulnerable and/or marginalized group in the U.S., SPLC aims to address and fix it through a myriad of ways including their education program, Learning for Justice. Learning for Justice offers free resources, such as magazines, podcasts, films, training sessions, webinars, etc. to more than 500,000 caregivers, teachers, administrators, counselors, and other practitioners who work with children from kindergarten to high school. Their justice-focused approach helps students and educators learn how to become involved in activism, tackle prejudice, and create more civil and inclusive communities.

World Literacy Foundation

Reading opens doors, both to other worlds and in real life. When someone acquires literacy skills, they're able to access better opportunities and societal integration; they can gain better healthcare access, fill out job applications, and more. The World Literacy Foundation provides disadvantaged children with books, educational resources, and literacy support, and they use innovative tech, e-books, and digital activities to advance the learning of children in remote areas. On a community level, the WLF equips parents to support their children in their learning through mentorship programs and empowers people to advocate for literacy in their communities.

[maaarine]

India overtakes China to become world’s most populous country (Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian, April 24 2023)

“It is also the first time since 1950, when the UN first began keeping global population records, that China has been knocked off the top spot.

China’s population decline follows decades of strict laws to bring the country’s booming birthrate under control, including the introduction of a one-child policy in the 1980s.

This included fines for having extra children, forced abortions and sterilisations.

While initially highly effective in controlling the population, these policies became a victim of their own success, and the country is now grappling with an ageing population in steep decline, which could have severe economic implications.

Part of the problem is that because of a traditional preference for boys, the one-child policy led to a massive gender imbalance.

Men now outnumber women by about 32 million. “How can the country now shore up birth rates, with millions of missing women?” asks Mei Fong, the author of One Child, a book about the impact of the policy.

Recent policies introduced in China trying to incentivise women to have more children have done little to stimulate population growth.

Women still have only 1.2 children and the population is expected to fall by almost 10% in the next two decades.

According to projections, the size of the Chinese population could drop below 1 billion before the end of the century.

In India, the population has grown by more than a billion since 1950. Though growth has now slowed, the number of people in the country is still expected to continue to rise for the next few decades, hitting its peak of 1.7 billion by 2064. (…)

India’s demography is far from uniform across the country.

One third of predicted population growth over the next decade will come from just two states, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, in the north of the country, which are some of India’s poorest and most agricultural states.

Uttar Pradesh alone already has a population of about 235 million, bigger than Nigeria or Brazil.

Meanwhile states in India’s south, which is more prosperous and has far higher rates of literacy, population rates have already stabilised and have begun to fall.

In the next decade, states in the southern states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu are likely to start grappling with an ageing population, and by 2025, one in five people in Kerala will be over 60.

The divide in population growth between India’s north and south could also have political implications.

After 2026, India’s electoral lines are due to be revised and redrawn based on census data, in particular relating to the number of people in constituencies.

Many politicians in southern states have expressed concern that their successes in bringing down population numbers, through education programmes, family planning and high literacy, could result in a reduction in their political representation in parliament, and a further political domination of the northern states that continue to have a population boom.

Currently the average age in India is just 29, and the country will continue to have a largely youthful population for the next two decades.

A similar “demographic dividend” proved highly useful in China, leading to an economic boom, particularly in manufacturing.

While India has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies in the world, and recently overtook the UK as the fifth-largest, experts have stressed that the country needs more investment in education and employment to seize the opportunity presented by a young population over the next few decades.

India continues to struggle with high youth unemployment and less than 50% of working-age Indians are in the workforce.

The figure for women is even lower, with just 20% of women participating in the formal labour market, a figure that is decreasing as India develops.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that transgender people are a protected class and that Medicaid bans on transgender care are unconstitutional. Furthermore, the court ruled that discriminating based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is discrimination based on gender identity and sex. The ruling is in response to lower court challenges against state laws and policies in North Carolina and West Virginia that prevent transgender people on state plans or Medicaid from obtaining coverage for gender-affirming care; those lower courts found such exclusions unconstitutional. In issuing the final ruling, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that transgender exclusions were "obviously discriminatory" and were "in violation of the equal protection clause" of the U.S. Constitution, upholding lower court rulings that barred the discriminatory exclusions.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling focused on two cases in states within its jurisdiction: North Carolina and West Virginia. In North Carolina, transgender state employees who rely on the State Health Plan were unable to use it to obtain gender-affirming care for gender dysphoria diagnoses. In West Virginia, a similar exclusion applied to those on the state’s Medicaid plan for surgeries related to a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Both exclusions were overturned by lower courts, and both states appealed to the 4th Circuit. Attorneys for the states had argued that the policies were not discriminatory because the exclusions for gender affirming care “apply to everyone, not just transgender people.” The majority of the court, however, struck down such a claim, pointing to several other cases where such arguments break down, such as same-sex marriage bans “applying to straight, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people equally,” even though straight people would be entirely unaffected by such bans. Other cases cited included literacy tests, a tax on wearing kippot for Jewish people, and interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia.

[...] Of particular note in the majority opinion was a section on Geduldig v. Aiello that seemed laser-targeted toward an eventual Supreme Court decision on discriminatory policies targeting transgender people. Geduldig v. Aiello, a 1974 ruling, determined that pregnancy discrimination is not inherently sex discrimination because it does not "classify on sex," but rather, on pregnancy status. Using similar arguments, the states claimed that gender affirming care exclusions did not classify or discriminate based on transgender status or sex, but rather, on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and treatments to alleviate that dysphoria. The majority was unconvinced, ruling, “gender dysphoria is so intimately related to transgender status as to be virtually indistinguishable from it. The excluded treatments aim at addressing incongruity between sex assigned at birth and gender identity, the very heart of transgender status.” In doing so, the majority cited several cases, many from after Geduldig was decided.

[...] The decision will likely have nationwide impacts on court cases in other districts. The case had become a major battleground for transgender rights, with dozens of states filing amicus briefs in favor or against the protection of the equal process rights of transgender people. Twenty-one Republican states filed an amicus brief in favor of denying transgender people anti-discrimination protections in healthcare, and 17 Democratic states joined an amicus brief in support of the healthcare rights of transgender individuals. Many Republican states are defending anti-trans laws that discriminate against transgender people by banning or limiting gender-affirming care. These laws could come under threat if the legal rationale used in this decision is adopted by other circuits. In the 4th Circuit’s jurisdiction, West Virginia and North Carolina already have gender-affirming care bans for transgender youth in place, and South Carolina may consider a similar bill this week. The decision could potentially be used as precedent to challenge all of those laws in the near future and to deter South Carolina’s bill from passing into law.

On Monday, the 4th Circuit Court ruled in Kadel v. Folwell that gender identity is a protected characteristic and that state bans on covering gender-affirming care are unconstitutional.

It is likely that SCOTUS will take up this case to resolve a circuit court conflict within the next year or two.

[internationalliteracyday]

Promote literacy as a foundation for mutual understanding and peace in multilingual contexts.

Interventions to promote literacy as a foundation for mutual understanding and peace in multilingual contexts need to go further, ensuring the following three links in managing policies, programmes and practices: (1) ‘literacy and peace’; (2) ‘literacy and language’; and (3) ‘literacy and a lifelong learning ecosystem’. Despite efforts made by countries and partners, there is a need to strengthen these weak links in a holistic manner in national policy frameworks if literacy is to build a more peaceful, just and sustainable world.

[aikuse]

ariadne (ari for short!), shey/they, 26, infj-t. lover of big, beefy men & polycules.

current selfships*:

#hanmari (hanma shuji x ari)

#kakuchari (kakucho x ari)

#togamari (togame jo x ari)

#sukunari (ryomen sukuna x ari)

#taigari (taiga tsugeura x ari)

#olivari (oliver aiku x ari)

-> main self-ship tag: #💞 ari selfships

*FYI: selfship sharing is not a problem with me!! i love hearing about and chattering about our different lore, different concepts and ideas and situations that we can place our f/o’s/blorbos in together.

this is an NSFW blog, which means there will be content such as NSFW writing, dark content, violence, etc. minors are not welcome here (18+ only).

DNI if:

-> you are sexist, homophobic/transphobic, racist, misogynistic, and/or meet basic dni criteria. -> your blog is empty or you're a minor. this is a safe, 18+ space for adults only. come back when you turn 18. -> you send anon hate. go outside and touch some grass. -> support the usage of ai and other scraping softwares. -> you would rather block me to break the mutual follow instead of talking about it. i'm not a fan of conflict avoidance. if you want to unfollow me, or something bothered you that i said/did/reblogged, i'd like to have an open conversation about it. my dms are an open door policy for a reason. if i do find out i'm softblocked, i will be hardblocking back.

for reasons of my own, i will not be engaging in callout posts and related discourse*. i will not be reblogging it or interacting with it, so please don't pull me into those situations. i am here to write, and i'm more than happy to support you on a personal level, but please don't tag me in those sorts of posts. i appreciate it!

*does not include awareness posts on p4lestine and countries in similar horrific situations, as well as US + world political discussions, media literacy/critical thinking pieces, etc.

[back to pinned]

[peoplesrazor]

Hey, Anon, if you don't have a dictionary on hand, google is right there.

As per the Oxford:

the ability to critically analyze stories presented in the mass media and to determine their accuracy or credibility. "The best weapon we have in this time of fake news is media literacy"

Their emphasis.

See how it says accuracy or credibility? That's why you don't ask a youtube critic unless you want their specific take. What Lily doesn't ever mention is that when people say no media literacy, they often don't mean people talking about things in a story. They are talking about people not recognizing false narratives.

Are the two parts related? Absolutely. Inevitably, the person moaning about a new policy being something out of 1984 is going to be someone who didn't understand the themes in the book.

That is why people complain about a lack of media literacy. Not because it's a cool new thing to call someone, but because it can lead to erroneous conclusions that can be dismissive at best, and dangerous in the worst cases. That's why we call you out, Lily.

Your lack of media literacy is scary, because people come to you with asks like this.

[chubby-aphrodite]

oh my fucking god someone in my computer concepts and applications class essentially said "a website that reports facts i don't like is biased"

i live in a conservative republican area and i remember when we had a staff-supported sit in for the march for our lives there were students with trump shirts on who were just standing there looking pissed and crossing their arms and sometimes booing at the student council just coming out and saying "it's terrible that kids like us are getting gunned down in schools on the regular and a good way to stop this would be gun reform"

people are advocating for you not to die a painful death and you're booing them. like an idiot.

so imagine me in my class today remembering that when we're doing an information literacy worksheet and do a quick bias report on three organization's websites: the pink pistols, bishops against gun violence, and the gun violence archive. and yeah yeah the usual casual homophobia comes out when they realize who the pink pistols are, but someone said out loud "oh it's like a trick question because all three of them are biased."

of course, the pink pistols are biased for the rights and usage of guns and teaching self defense and advocate for that, and bishops against gun violence are biased against gun violence and say they advocate for better "common sense" policies with regards to firearms, and they have that religious slant to it. ***

but the fucking gun violence archive is just reporting firearm related deaths and injuries. they're aggregating publicly available facts. i want to fucking shake someone i swear to god

YOU are why we need these assignments. YOU are why we need to do this assignment. don't complain about doing a worksheet when YOU'RE WHY WE NEED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

GAH.

***i cannot speak to the true actions or intentions of these organizations because my involvement with them begins and ends with simply checking the about sections of their websites and subsequently putting my thoughts about them as dryly as possible in the answer box of my assignment. do not take any of this as me being for or against these groups.

[darth-prequelist]

HTBAGE - Chapter 20 "The Lost Nineteen"

A little peek into Palpatine's life as a Youth Senator. He is taking a class of "Sith Mythology" with his best friend, Jaxious Formidas (if one could call him that) and with his rival, Kidria Ovirelt.

(There are so little Palpatine gifs)

Despite memorizing the layout of the Youth Senator Ship Academy Complex, Palpatine still found it a bewildering place to be in. Jaxious guided him along as they had similar schedules.

His classes currently were: Public Administration, International Relations, Political Science, Economics, Leadership & Ethics, History of the Galactic Republic, Diversity & Equality, Power & Corruption, HoloNet/Media Literacy, four language classes, and of course, Sith Mythology. Today, he only had seven classes.

Diversity & Equality was by far his least favorite. It was a class required to be taken by sectors with either different species or a planet divided by different cultures. All in all, it meant that Palpatine had to speak in excruciating detail with the Youth Gungan Representative, Moran Lamro. No matter how many problems the Naboo and the Gungans had with each other it did not compare to half of the other systems in that class. Two fist fights broke out within minutes of the class beginning and it ended with a teacher holding an icepack on two of his twelve eyes.

Yes, it was quite the morning. Palpatine’s face hurt from the strain of wearing a wide smile all through it. He had a terrible headache from the traumatic encounter. At least in Public Administration he was able to calm down by having a screaming match with Ovirelt.

Palpatine and Jaxious sat towards the back of the lecture hall. The hall was more crowded than he had anticipated. Practically all of the seats were full. The hall also was incredibly dim, the shades on the windows drawn close, and it had a chilly air to it.

There was a small disorderly desk at the front, a HoloBoard set against the wall, and bookshelves lining the walls in an unorganized fashion.

“So, this is the Sith Mythology lecture hall?” Palpatine remarked. “What was the reason this is a class?” he asked Jaxious.

Jaxious shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she’ll tell us.” Palpatine turned to see an Arkanian woman entered the room. The Arkanian had colorless hair, solid white eyes, and clawed four fingered hands. Her face was drawn into a grim expression and her stride had a certain aloof quality.

Palpatine had the Diversity & Equality class only ten minutes ago, but he already felt on edge with the Arkanian in the room. The Arkanians were known to be reserved but one couldn’t help but hear those terrible rumors about them. Tales of mad Arkanian scientists and unspeakable experiments, especially ones with cloning occurring on their home world for the sake of knowledge.

Palpatine leaned his head towards Jaxious slightly and spoke quietly. “Is that the apostate Jedi Master?”

“Yes.” Jaxious whispered back.

The Arkanian dropped a pile of dusty books on her desk and placed a small green box atop the pile. She snatched up a HoloPen and scrawled her name in the top left corner of the HoloBoard in faint blue glowing letters.

“I will be your Sith Mythology teacher for this semester.” The Arkanian drew away from the HoloBoard and faced the audience. “My name is Ms. Murda.”

The Arkanian glanced at a mindless Bothan who was scrolling on his HoloPad in the first row. The Arkanian sniffed indignantly. She outstretched her arm, an invisible Force wretched the HoloPad from his hand and flew into hers.

“Hey!” the Bothan protested.

Ms. Murda went on with a frostiness in her voice. “I have a strict no HoloNet devices policy. If you are discovered using such devices, I will confiscate them, and you will be not able to retrieve them until the school day ends. No exceptions.” The Bothan was about to speak but Ms. Murda cut him off. “I said…no exceptions.”

The Bothan huffed and crossed his arms. Palpatine heard his fellow classmate grumble and complain quietly to each other. Unlike many of his classmates including Jaxious, Palpatine did not shut off his HoloBand.

Ms. Murda wrote on the HoloBoard: Sith Mythology then underlined the words with a flourish. She tapped the course name with her HoloPen as she spoke. “The Sith have fascinated scholars and scientists and all sorts for generations. No doubt most of you are here for that reason as well. But…this isn’t a course meant to satisfy fascination, I am afraid. It is a warning…”

“The Sith are the evilest of the evilest. The ones who brought the galaxy more tragedy and woe than any other. They are the rawest beings of the world. They are the core of evil and therefore, are the fundamentals of wickedness.”

Ms. Murda sighed deeply. “That is the very reason I teach you this course. Politics is the birthplace of corruption and dishonesty. It is an evil that we are hoping to rectify, so therefore to rectify evil we must first understand it. And to understand evil, we must understand the Sith.”

Palpatine tried to restrain his laughter. It was frankly hilarious to watch. He was a Sith, well, since eight hours ago. He had a feeling this class was going to be pointless. After all, Plagueis was going to teach him all about the Sith…eventually.

And who is to say the Sith are evil? Using anger as power is a tool. Using one’s emotions as a tool is not evil. Is it?

Someone was rapping the classroom door with their sharp knuckles. Ms. Murda sighed before wrenching the door open. “Hi, Ms. Murda. Sorry I’m late.” Ovirelt stood there in her ostentatious grandeur.

This will…be humorous. Well, mostly because this teacher was renowned for her strictness. At least from what he had heard and seen thus far.

Ms. Murda glanced down at Ovirelt’s necklace which had her House symbol engraved upon it. “Aren’t you Kidria Ovirelt? Kiltas Ovirelt’s daughter? You’ve grown quite a bit.” Ovirelt nodded. “Hmm…well, come on in. Next class if you arrive late there will be consequences.”

Ovirelt beamed at her. “Thank you, Ms. Murda.”

What? This is absurd! She should’ve been penalized!

Ovirelt climbed the stairs and was getting uncomfortably close to Palpatine’s aisle. Palpatine hoped she would turn into an aisle lower down, but she reached his aisle then entered. Ugh…

Ovirelt sat down next to Jaxious. Palpatine was on Jaxious’ other side. Jaxious greeted Ovirelt. “Uh…hi, Kidria.”

“Hello Jaxious.” Ovirelt purred. She threw Palpatine a dirty look. “I see you’re still associating yourself with this failure of a human being.”

“Always a pleasure, Ovirelt.” Palpatine told her wryly.

Read more under here:

[runawaysiren940]

Hi, I’m a big fan of your work. I think you are helping at lot of women by bringing attention to the things going on in society. I was wondering if you had any plans to talk about the results of the Cass review and the backlash Dr. Hilary Cass is receiving?

Wish you the best.

Hi! Thanks so much for the ask and for watching my videos! I'm actually working on a review of the Cass review right now. The problem is that it is very long, and I'm still trying to figure out how to cover it in a way that gives justice to the entire situation- from the social situation which spawned it, to actual contents of and the reception of it.

For example, here's an excerpt from my current script:

This obfustication of language comes alongside a radical decrease in literacy and critical thinking ability. As reported on Snopes.com, "Literacy rate" is defined by UNESCO Institute for Statistics as “the percentage of the population of a given age group that can read and write.” A 2019 study ranked the US as 125th for literacy, while data collected by the U.S. Department of Education published in 2020 found that 130 million adults in the country have low literacy skills. In other words, more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. According to an empirical study by Xiaohua Hu and Hongwei Zhang, published in the Journal of Language Teaching and Research, it was found that “...improvements in critical thinking are paralleled by improvements in reading comprehension. They believe that the presence of such a strong relationship may be due to the fact that critical thinking and reading are both cognitive abilities which have some identifiable cognitive skills in common…” In other words, if one goes up, so does the other; and if one goes down…. 

It should come as no surprise then, that many gender idealogues are unable or unwilling to read the Cass Review, and to understand why it is critical of many of the arguments, studies and other writings of support of transitioning. In addition, many people prefer not to read a three hundred page report before making an opinion on it; they prefer instead to have someone else do the hard work, and to base their opinion off of theirs. While it is fair to trust a reviewer to help you decide an opinion on a movie you don’t plan to watch, or on a book you haven’t read, in cases like these, regarding a difficult topic such as the Cass Report, it would be best to read not just one perspective, or one report, but many, and if possible, to refrain from making judgments without reading the original source material. Claims of heterocissexism, transphobia and other forms of bigotry become obviously unfounded when even those who staunchly agree with you are admitting to the validity of the report you so disavow. Of course, one of the most common critiques is that the Cass report found that many studies in support of gender transitioning to be bad studies. In the weeks after the report, the NHS has made changes in policy to reflect this. Although these changes are slow and often small, it marks an important change in the handling of gender related services, as in the past few years scientific rigor has been replaced with emotion based guidelines, and a refusal to critically examine, or even cautiously proceed with experimental medicine. 

I do hope to get this out soon, but I'm also hoping to cover some non-trans related topics first, including some retrospectives about war.