#scientists march on washington
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Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:
A federal court approved an agreement today between the Center for Biological Diversity, scientist Stuart Pimm, Ph.D., and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that requires the agency to reexamine the harms caused by offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico to birds, manatees, nesting sea turtles and other threatened and endangered species.
The agreement resolves a lawsuit filed in April over the agency’s failure to comply with the Endangered Species Act by not adequately assessing the harms of oil spills, light pollution, vessel strikes and greenhouse gas emissions from Gulf drilling.
“Every new offshore well is another toxic threat to marine wildlife, so I’m glad federal officials will consider looking at these harms before greenlighting more Gulf oil drilling,” said David Derrick, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I’m relieved that they may finally consider the absolute havoc that a huge spill like Deepwater Horizon would wreak on endangered animals living in and around the Gulf, which is a scenario they’ve overlooked so far.”
In a new assessment, called a biological opinion, the Service has agreed to consider whether to analyze certain effects including large oil spills, sea-level rise, greenhouse gas emissions and lighting from oil and gas platforms and infrastructure.
“The endangered sea turtles and birds living in the Gulf have already been dealing with noise, oil spills and harsh lights,” said Stuart Pimm, Ph.D., Doris Duke professor of conservation ecology at Duke University. “Now these animals also have to fight to survive rising seas, more extreme storms and changing habitats, all worsened by the oil drilling going on around them. The agencies in charge of protecting these species should at least acknowledge the harmful new reality that fossil fuel extraction is contributing to.”
The Service is required under the Act to complete a consultation with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement on oil and gas operations that could affect threatened and endangered species under the Service’s jurisdiction. These species include manatees, nesting Kemp’s ridley and green sea turtles, whooping cranes and piping plovers, among others.
The agreement requires the agency to complete its new analysis by March 28, 2025.
#Gulf of Mexico#oil and gas industry#offshore oil and gas drilling#endangered species#manatees#sea turtles#Endangered Species Act
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Working at a Renaissance Faire for 18 years has made me totally immune to thinking it's a failure of Bell's Hells to not have unified opinions.
Literally no one at a Renaissance Faire agrees on how shit should be done or what's most important to do or what improvement would even look like or whether anyone's ideas would even work. There are people who have been threatening to quit for a quarter of a century because they're sick of putting up with everyone's stupid bullshit, but they'll be back every single year until they drop dead and we build them a memorial while carrying on in their names.
That's just what it takes to get shit done in the real world. People talk about activist groups like they had unity and every battle planned out, but I promise you they were also a bunch of disagreeable squabbling geese honking at each other while still flocking. Various factions always think others with virtually identical views are standing in the way of progress and true liberation with their stupid ideas and actions.
Even the AIDS quilt, widely regarded as one of the most moving works of political art ever created, had plenty of other queer activists who thought it was a bad idea holding back real progress. So did the Civil Rights Movement March on Washington where MLK gave his I Have A Dream speech. Climate change scientists on the bleeding edge of research into how to best protect the planet are constantly getting into passive aggressive paper publishing wars about why each other's conclusions are total horse shit. The work gets done anyway.
You bitch at each other about how things should get done, but crucially while also doing the work and making the next decision in front of you. Then writers look back later and pretend all those decisions were cohesive and everyone definitely agreed this was the correct path to take. That's what we put in all the stories. But the truth is that everything seems like incoherent bickering while it actually happens because no one knows what the results will really be. It's holding out for unity and clear solutions that actually undermines progress. All that really matters in the end is you keep working together to make things better. Because really none of us has the faintest clue what better really is.
To me that's a story worth telling.
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Scientists have uncovered the fossilized skull of a 270-million-year-old ancient amphibian ancestor in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. In a paper published today, March 21, in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, the team of researchers described the fossil as a new species of proto-amphibian, which they named Kermitops gratus in honor of the iconic muppet, Kermit the Frog. According to Calvin So, a doctoral student at the George Washington University and the lead author on the new paper, naming the new creature after the beloved frog character, who was created by puppeteer Jim Henson in 1955, is an opportunity to get people excited about the discoveries scientists make using museum collections.
Continue Reading.
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Spiderman Talk: Jameson is right, and Peter deserves better
So I was listening to a text post on tiktok that I love about how Jameson is in fact a great person and really only has beef with Spiderman because of personal problems, and first off, that's blatantly wrong, which the post corrects, but it got me thinking about something interesting. I would love to see a Spiderman story called Spiderman for the Daily Bugle, in which Jameson has gone to therapy to address his well of trauma related to the death of his wife (for those who aren't aware, she is canonically killed by a masked assailant) so that he can finally get past his initial trauma response when he sees Spiderman in his mask (that absolutely looks like a balaclava worn by a robber) and makes a non-public spectacle offer to meet with Spiderman so he can actually talk with him to express his legitimate problems with him (this would technically be the first time they have done this, since the previous occurrence has been retconned to memory). When Peter shows up in costume, Jameson sits him down, and rather than yelling, being angry, and bashing on him, he approaches him as a journalist and asks him a series of questions that are designed to get serious responses out of him. Questions like "Why do you wear a full body suit that hides your full identity?" Which Peter obviously responds to with "To protect my loved ones from harm." Jameson acknowledges that this is a legitimate concern, but also points out that even showing part of his face would allow him to be more of a symbol just based on the reality that he is clearly a white man in America, and therefore should be using his privilege and notoriety to support larger causes (not so small reminder that JJ is a very liberal person who supports workers rights, is pro-mutant/enhanced, and was not only writing about the civil rights movements, but was actively a part of it, ala he definitely marched with Dr. King on Washington as a cub reporter) . These kinds of questions continue, where Jameson asks things, Peter responds honestly, and Jameson acknowledges his concerns, but also points out the real problems that Peter causes by using his current methods (again, I can't stress enough that Jameson has legitimate problems that should be understood). The key takeaways for Peter are:
Hiding his identity from his family and friends has legitimate detriment to his mental health and relationships, and he should tell the people he cares most about so that they can finally understand who he is wholly and support him.
Hiding his identity from the public should not separate him from accountability to his actions during his fights against supervillains, and he should create a means to help people who have been harmed by his own actions both intentional and unintentional.
It is not his job alone to respond to crime, or to shoulder the burden of being the "Hero of New York" and he should not need to sacrifice his own happiness and well being in order to uphold his belief. This includes a moment where Jameson points out that "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility, both to others as well as oneself."
Peter has talents outside of being Spiderman that he should absolutely be using for the betterment of others, which does not solely include his capabilities as a scientist or engineer. Jameson points out that a large part of the problems that cause crime have direct and indirect causes, and that Spiderman, as a private citizen who is empowered, has a greater capability than most to address not only the crimes that regular people can't engage with, but also the crimes that could be solved by doing proper leg work and investigation.
This culminates in the big reveal to Jameson that Peter is Spiderman. Peter breaks down over the interview, because this hits him in a spot that hurts him the most, his hero complex, and he begs Jameson not to hate him, to which Jameson, now realizing who he's been going after this whole time, acknowledges that while he was definitely mad at Peter, he could never hate him, because he knows, especially now that he sees who he really is, that Peter is an amazing man. Hugs and heartfelt words are exchanged.
Now by comparison to the original version that occurred, this would be the point where the story ends, BUT I SAY NAY! THERE IS SUCH A MISSED CHANCE THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN! Cut to a few months later, and Peter is thwipping through downtown, when he hears a loud commotion, and swings over to investigate. The Rhino is smashing his way into a bank vault while a few thugs with guns stand lookout. Peter pops in, quickly takes down the thugs, and then squares up to Rhino and shouts "Hey Rhino, Spiderman for the Bugle. I'm here to get your comment. What got you back into the game of robbing banks?" They go through what looks like the usual dance of Peter dodging and quipping to all of Aleksi's attacks, until Peter backs off and says "Hey Aleksi, do you know what the best part of having a full time job is?" Aleksi grunts his usual response and Peter gives him a thumbs up, where you can see a flashing button on the side of his index finger, which he presses as he says "Gadget money." and triggers the series of web mines he planted around Aleksi while he was dodging his attacks. As Peter swings away, he calls in to advise Damage Control about the damage to the building and SHIELD to pick up the Rhino and check on bystanders.
This would be the start of a story in which you get to see what a healthy, happy, and more fulfilled version of Spiderman looks like. No more of this malnourished permanently tardy half formed Peter, but one in which his family knows about his hero identity, he has a full time job as a journalist working the crime beat as Spiderman, and also writes additional articles as the science and technology editor for the Bugle, and has the full support of Jameson and the Bugle backing him as a hero. He still has to face the struggles of being Spiderman and Peter, including the challenges of being a parent, but now part of that balance comes from finding time to organize PTA meetings with MJ for Mayday. Aunt May knows that Peter is Spidey, and is incredibly proud of him, especially now that he's learning balance, something that she hoped for him. His relationship with characters like Daredevil and The Avengers is one that includes more professional courtesy and even sharing the burden of caring for New York, rather than just trying to uphold everything on his own. Peter does convince Jameson to keep his original costume, including the full face mask, but that is solely because of branding, and now he can actively use his persona as Spiderman in more than just a limited capacity, because "Shockingly" people would love to support their local hero, and spidey merch sells like crazy thanks to the Spiderman Store on the main floor of the Bugle. Peter has a secret headquarters that is based out of his co-op in Queens, which allows him to be an active parent for his kids while also living up to his role as a hero.
For those of you who feel like this sounds to "Mary Sue" I'd also like to point out that a) Peter still has logistical challenges that present legitimate dangers as a public hero in needing to protect his identity for the safety of others, and while that has been challenged by being a public hero, you can see how he responds to those dangers, and b) this gives us a chance to see Peter working at solving crimes and working within society rather than as an outside force, which makes him a better hero.
Lastly, consider the stories you could write with people like Matt Murdock, not just as Daredevil, but as the official legal rep of Spiderman. Matt gets to be put on retainer by a major corporation (Bugle Media is a pretty major leader in the news industry) and you can also have that paralleled with a Daredevil/Spiderman story in which you get to see what a hero who operated like old Spidey vs New Spidey looks like, and how those challenges differ. Also, B roll type stories with Deadpool coming after Peter for exposing a story about a major tech conglomerate, and Wade finds out Peters identity, which changes their dynamic entirely. Similar stories about how Spidey and Punisher clash, and Peter, after having gone through the challenges of being a legitimate hero finally responds to Punishers tired line of being tough on crime by pointing out that he's not actually solving crime, simply attacking one of the symptoms, and is then able to start writing stories about Frank that helps humanize him not as the deranged serial killer that most people see him as, but as a misguided mentally ill man trying to right the wrongs he perceives in the world.
What I'm trying to get at is this. Peter Parker is pretty constantly miserable, and in my opinion, a lot of the people that write him, create positive things in his life so that they can rip those things away later on down their story line to compel him to act, and I really don't think that's all that interesting personally. As a fan of Spiderman stories, there is not a lot of hope that Peter can be happy, because whenever he does get something positive, it's either retconned or ripped from his hands in a horrific and terrible way for what I would call unbelievably unnecessary character development that isn't actually developing his character. There's a somewhat popular fan comic of Spidey meeting The Joker, and after Peter talks with Joker for a while about half of the shit that has happened in his life, Joker basically has a crisis of belief in his own ideology of "One bad day is all it takes" because Peter has gone through so much and still chooses the righteous path. Letting Peter be happy for once in his life would probably generate revenue just on long term fans speculating when and how things are going to go downhill. Changing the makeup of his base character, especially this far into the game when he has existed as a hero for so long would create way better stories, because in all seriousness, giving Peter more happiness also means there is so much more to protect/lose, and losing part of that would absolutely still hit hard. I've only really scratched the surface of ideas that I, a lone writer, has about what could be done with a change like this.
There are so many ways in which you could use his character, and present him challenges that actually provide character development, instead of hate fucking the corpse of his stories with a bloody knife. Peter doesn't need a reason to act that involves taking that small amount of happiness in his life and ripping it away because his core belief is that he has a responsibility to act because he has the power to do so, and in my opinion, forcing him to go through unimaginable sorrow does not showcase that character trait at all. If you're taking something from your hero when their primary motivation is supposed to be their inherent belief that they as someone with power has the responsibility to act in the benefit of those without, then you're taking away their primary motivation and replacing it with a selfish motivation. It's not to say that Peter shouldn't lose things, but he should lose those things based on his own decisions, not just because the predisposed outcome of his life should be inherently negative.
This post ended up being way longer than I had initially intended, but I want to end with this. There are some truly great characters that I personally think could be better written given the opportunity. I don't even necessarily think the stories that we have of Spiderman are actually all that bad (Except for One More Day. Fuck that story specifically and the horse it rode in on, it's fucking terrible) and that history shouldn't be ignored. But I think if we as fans and creators come together, there are opportunities for us to change things for the better. There are chances for us to show what a good and happy ending can look like for Peter, and maybe, just maybe, he can keep that small bit of happiness that he's got going for him.
#Marvel#spiderman#peter parker#j jonah jameson#spiderman comics#may parker#aunt may#please let spiderman be happy#comics#comic books#marvel comics
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I know I'm either preaching to the choir, or screaming into the void about this, but I feel the need to say it anyway. The phrase "from the river to the sea" is antisemitic. Full stop. Don't like it? Disagree? Unfortunately reality disagrees with you. And in a fight over information, reality should always win.
Let's start with origins. The phrase first gained traction, or general use, in the 1960s. It was co-opted by the PLO in 1964. The PLO was a group of Palestinian liberation groups, hence the name. Throughout the 1960s - the 1990s, they launched terrorist attacks around the world, but mostly in the Middle East. (Brittanica, Nov 16, 2023) The US designated them a terrorist organization, and their first leader, who brought the phrase "from the river to the sea into the limelight, repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel using this phrase (University of Michigan). The PLO claimed to represent Palestinians, and was a fighting force in the Arab-Israel war of 1967, which was declared by the Arab, and lost by them. When the PLO and Arab nations lost, the PLO rallies, and began attacking Israel with guerilla warfare. So the phrase originally referred to the desire to destroy the only majority Jewish state in the world.
History of the phrase continued.
When the PLO decided to recognize reality and acknowledge a two-state solution might be a good idea, many more radical groups in it refused to follow along and broke with the PLO. One of those group was Hamas. Hamas, widely recognized as a terrorist organization, uses the phrase in its charter. Hamas, also in their original charter, states that there will be no peace in the region until all the Jews in said region have been killed.(translation done by Federation of American Scientists). For those who can't connect the dots, that's a call to genocide. By putting that phrase next to their stated desire for genocide, Hamas confirms that that phrase, to them, is a call for genocide. (Business Insider, Nov. 6, 2023) So, in more modern day, it is still a call to genocide.
How the phrase is treated today.
Many who march for Palestine, including Palestine-American Representative Tlaib, say the phrase has changed meanings to them, and that they do not use it as a call for Jewish genocide. (Washington Post, Nov, 2023.) However, most Jewish organizations still regard the phrase as antisemitic, both for its origins, and for how people use it. This includes the ADL, AJC, Jewish Journal, etc. all of whom provide in depth analysis on why the phrase is bad to use. Most of it has to do, as previously stated, with the continued use of the phrase by terrorist organizations such as Hamas and PLEP to call for genocide. While some Palestinians argue that phrase has been commandeered by extremists, but it's okay if they use it because they aren't, that is an horrible argument. The extremists didn't take the phrase from them, they took it from the extremists (see above proof). You'd think, since many pro-palestinians claim to not support the extremists like Hamas, they wouldn't use the same phrases, so as to distance themselves from the crazies. Instead, they embrace the rhetoric.
Nevertheless, the real problem with continuous use of the phrase is that, when a minority group collectively says "that phrase is harmful to our community, please stop saying it", we oblige. When Black Americans said, "stop using the n-word, it's hurtful", we listened, because they were the community being hurt . And soon enough, we as a society realized those still using that word were racist. When the disabled community asked, "stop using the r-word, it's hurtful", we listened, because they were the community being hurt. And soon enough, we as a society realized those who kept using the word despite the harmed community's wishes were bigoted. The phrase "from the river to the sea" has been continuously used, both in the past and now as a rallying call for destruction of an ethnic group on the grounds that those calling for said destruction didn't like having to share land with said ethnic group. It has been used to kill people and incite violence. That's not up for debate, that's a historical fact. It is still being used to incite violence and get people killed. That is also fact. Marginalized communities are allowed to reclaim hurtful phrases for themselves. But the phrase "from the river to the sea" wasn't and still isn't used to hurt Palestinians, it's used to hurt Jews. Therefore, the only ones allowed to reclaim it are the Jews.
I don't care some Palestinians claim to not be using the phrase as it was originally meant. They are still using the rhetoric of an extremist group that uses that rhetoric to call for Jewish genocide. And when people use that same rhetoric for the same cause (liberating Gaza/ Palestine), they are saying, intentionally or not, that they agree with the rhetoric and actions of the terrorists who use that phrase to call for genocide. We can't read minds. Intention means very little when people call for hate. Whether they "mean it" or not, they are still calling for hate. It's the same cause, with the same words. If pro-palestinians insist on using the same phrases used by terrorists, they need to stop getting mad when we confuse them for supporting terrorists. The is nothing wrong with calling for a two-state solution. There is everything wrong with supporting a terrorist organization that calls for genocide. If you use language that could mean either but has historically meant the latter, people will think you are the latter. Calling for the death of all the Jews in a region is antisemitic. The phrase "from the river to the sea" has historically been used, and is currently being used to call for the death of all Jews in Israel. No one cares if you think you're using it differently. To the community still being hurt by that phrase, it is one and the same. Either pick a different slogan or stop being upset that you are being called an antisemitic terrorist supporter.
#israel#antisemitism#hamas#jumblr#jewish#palestine#gaza#israel palestine conflict#palestine news#free gaza from hamas#from the river to the sea palestine will be free#is antisemitic. many forms of antizionism are antisemitism.
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Extremely Rare Guam Rails Hatch at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo by Smithsonian's National Zoo Via Flickr: Photo Credit: Jim and Pam Jenkins, FONZ Photo Club As Washington, D.C.’s unseasonably warm winter turns into spring, a baby boom is underway at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. Two Guam rail (Gallirallus owstoni) chicks hatched March 3 and 4; they join six others in the Zoo’s collection—three of which live at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va. This brings the total population of these small, flightless birds to 162 individuals. Each hatching is significant—the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists these birds as extinct in the wild. In about six weeks, keepers will separate the chicks from their parents, and Zoo veterinarians will perform a routine medical exam and take feather samples to determine their sexes. To date, 82 chicks have hatched at the Zoo and SCBI, and each provides scientists with the opportunity to learn about the growth, reproduction, health and behavior of the species. The Zoo sent 29 Guam rails to the government of Guam for release and breeding, and an additional 25 birds have gone to other institutions to breed. Guam rails flourished in Guam’s limestone forests and coconut plantations until the arrival of the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis), an invasive species that stowed away in military equipment shipped from New Guinea after World War II. Because these reptiles had no natural predators on Guam, their numbers grew and they spread across the island quickly. Within three decades, they hunted Guam rails and eight other bird species to the brink of extinction. In 1986, Guam’s Department of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources captured the country’s remaining 21 Guam rails and sent them to zoological institutions around the globe—including the National Zoo—as a hedge against extinction. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums created a Species Survival Plan for the birds. The SSP pairs males and females in order to maintain a genetically diverse and self-sustaining population. Today, 118 Guam rails are thriving on two islands near the mainland: Rota and Cocos. The availability of release sites continues to shrink, however, due to deforestation and human expansion. Controlling the brown snake population remains a significant challenge as well, though researchers have made progress in developing a variety of barriers, traps and toxicants. Forty-four birds reside in zoos and other facilities in North America. Visitors to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo can see these birds on exhibit in the Bird House. In stark contrast to their brown-and-white-plumaged parents, Guam rail chicks sport black downy feathers. nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/Birds/
#Guam rail#bird#national zoo#smithsonian#rare#endangered#Gallirallus owstoni#washington#D.C.#FONZ#flickr
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Netanyahu wants to escalate this genocide into a regional war to bring big bad brother U.S. to fight Israel's battles
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Benjamin Netanyahu continues to raise the risk of a Mideast regional war which could draw in the U.S. — and the mainstream media is hiding the danger from its audience. Israel’s provocative aerial assassination of a senior Iranian military leader in Damascus on April 1 is only Netanyahu’s latest effort to expand the fighting across the region, partly to put off his own painful day of reckoning. He knows that America has troops stationed all over the Mideast, and he hopes that Iran will retaliate against them, escalating conflict.
It is clear Netanyahu does not want an immediate end to the current conflict spreading throughout the Middle East. A permanent ceasefire in Gaza means Israeli voters would soon turn him out of office, end his shattered political career in disgrace — and re-start his corruption trial, which could send him to prison.
Netanyahu’s real motivation is widely understood among those who follow the Mideast. But the U.S. media totally ignored that angle. The New York Times report at least smuggled in a comment from a former CIA official, who called Israel’s airstrike “incredibly reckless.” But the Times did not examine Netanyahu’s selfish personal motivation. The Washington Post report said nothing about recklessness. National Public Radio also played dumb, as did the PBS NewsHour. A CNN on-air report did say Israel ordered the killing, but no Netanyahu angle there either.
Meanwhile, the Iranian-American Mideast expert Sina Toossi told the truth, at the Center for International Policy website. His headline was: “Israel’s Damascus airstrike was a deliberate provocation.”
He went on: “Netanyahu’s decision to green-light the airstrike on Damascus seems to be a calculated act to amplify the hostilities. Such a move sharply contrasts with international appeals for restraint and indicates a deliberate escalation strategy.”
Toossi didn’t hesitate to speculate about Netanyahu’s real motivation:
“Netanyahu seems to be aiming to provoke Iran and intensify the conflict to galvanize domestic and international political support and justify wider military actions, potentially in Rafah and against Hezbollah and Iran. This strategy risks drawing the United States deeper into the conflict. . .”
Sina Toossi surely has a telephone and a computer and would talk to the New York Times and CNN. They don’t have to agree with his analysis — just recognize that their audience deserves to hear it. And if Toossi seems too risqué for the mainstream, they could instead turn to Amos Harel, the hard-headed military affairs reporter at the Israeli daily Haaretz, who just warned that Netanyahu “is actually seeking a forever war that will postpone the national settling of accounts for responsibility for the terrible failure of October 7, and possibly delay his criminal trial.”
Netanyahu’s strategy is not new. This site has long reported on how he has instigated conflict between the U.S. and Iran, even before his own political survival was at stake. He tried to sabotage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and during the Trump administration Israel launched regular clandestine attacks inside Iran, including assassinations of scientists. Back then, Netanyahu wanted the U.S. to destroy what he argued was Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon.
Today, his selfish motivation must be part of any legitimate analysis. His foot-dragging over even agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in Gaza makes sense in that light. This does not mean that he’s conning an Israeli public that is actually peace-loving. It does mean that he could be making a terrible situation even worse — and the U.S. media are not telling the truth to the American public.
#israel#iran#Iranian consulate#syria#benjamin netanyahu#free Palestine#free gaza#I stand with Palestine#Gaza#Palestine#Gazaunderattack#Palestinian Genocide#Gaza Genocide#end the occupation#Israel is an illegal occupier#Israel is committing genocide#Israel is committing war crimes#Israel is a terrorist state#Israel is a war criminal#Israel is an apartheid state#Israel is evil#Israeli war crimes#Israeli terrorism#IOF Terrorism#Israel kills children#Israel kills innocents#Israel is a murder state#Israeli Terrorists#Israeli war criminals#Boycott Israel
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"I first met Tokitae (also known as Toki, Lolita and Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut), a female orca who had been captured off the coast of Washington, in 1987. I was a biology graduate student at my first professional conference, and the scientific society hosting this event held the opening reception at the Seaquarium.
Toki was 20 feet long and 7,000 pounds, and should have been in the Salish Sea traveling 40 miles a day and diving 500 feet deep with her mother and siblings. Yet there we were, a few hundred marine mammal scientists who mostly did field research, watching this magnificent being perform silly tricks in a bathtub.
That’s not really an exaggeration in Toki’s case. Toki’s tank was the smallest enclosure in the world for her species. It was only 35 feet at its widest point and 80 feet long. It was 20 feet at its deepest; if Toki hung vertically in the water, her tail flukes touched bottom. Captured in 1970 when she was 4 or 5 years old, she lived in this tiny space for 53 years.
The federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), administered by the US Department of Agriculture, has a ludicrous requirement for tank width — only twice the length of an average adult orca (or 48 feet). But Toki’s tank didn’t even meet that weak standard. For years, the USDA offered various excuses for not taking steps to revoke the exhibitor’s license. None of them made sense, as the tank was plainly not to code. Activists repeatedly tried to sue the USDA for failing to enforce the law, without success.
Toki’s was a strange, lonely life. Despite many campaigns to repatriate her to her family (the L pod in Puget Sound), years passed. The stadium around her slowly and literally crumbled.
The ‘Blackfish’ Effect,” named after the 2013 documentary that eventually reached tens of millions of people globally, has shifted the captive cetacean paradigm in the past decade. Businesses have severed ties with marine theme parks, and policymakers have passed laws ending the commercial display of orcas and other cetacean species. SeaWorld, the company that built its brand on Shamu, is phasing out orca display — no longer capturing, breeding or trading them.
And still Toki languished in the South Florida heat. The Seaquarium’s two owners during Toki’s first 52 years there were adamant that she would never leave the park and disdainfully dismissed talk of returning her to her family.
In March 2022, however, Toki’s outlook finally seemed brighter. The Seaquarium was sold to a company whose business model relied primarily on swim-with-dolphin encounters. An orca didn’t fit that model, and these owners were willing to let her go. Efforts could finally begin in earnest to return her home. The Lummi Tribe, who gave her the name Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut and considered her a relative, had prepared detailed plans for a seaside sanctuary in the Salish Sea.
Then, last month, Toki died. The hope felt by so many that she would finally go home disappeared in an instant.
Captivity robs orcas of a true life in the deep open sea. It robs them of family, of purpose, of change and challenge. Captivity is tremendous monotony for these socially complex, wide-ranging, intelligent animals. We should not perpetuate that.
Zoos and aquariums long ago relegated dancing bears and tricycle-riding chimps to circuses, but still claim that cetacean shows — loud extravaganzas featuring leaping orcas and cavorting dolphins — are educational (they are not). The industry could and should invest in seaside sanctuaries — it’s a win-win choice, as the industry would be heroes and the animals’ welfare would improve.
Let Toki’s miserable, isolated life and sad death mean something for her fellow captives. These amazing beings should not have to die to finally be free."
Dr. Naomi Rose is senior scientist (marine mammal biology) for the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington, D.C.
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NASA's mini BurstCube mission detects mega blast
The shoebox-sized BurstCube satellite has observed its first gamma-ray burst, the most powerful kind of explosion in the universe, according to a recent analysis of observations collected over the last several months.
“We’re excited to collect science data,” said Sean Semper, BurstCube’s lead engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s an important milestone for the team and for the many early career engineers and scientists that have been part of the mission.”
The event, called GRB 240629A, occurred on June 29 in the southern constellation Microscopium. The team announced the discovery in a GCN (General Coordinates Network) circular on August 29.
BurstCube deployed into orbit April 18 from the International Space Station, following a March 21 launch.
The mission was designed to detect, locate, and study short gamma-ray bursts, brief flashes of high-energy light created when superdense objects like neutron stars collide. These collisions also produce heavy elements like gold and iodine, an essential ingredient for life as we know it.
BurstCube is the first CubeSat to use NASA’s TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) system, a constellation of specialized communications spacecraft. Data relayed by TDRS (pronounced “tee-driss”) help coordinate rapid follow-up measurements by other observatories in space and on the ground through NASA’s GCN.
BurstCube also regularly beams data back to Earth using the Direct to Earth system — both it and TDRS are part of NASA’s Near Space Network.
After BurstCube deployed from the space station, the team discovered that one of the two solar panels failed to fully extend. It obscures the view of the mission’s star tracker, which hinders orienting the spacecraft in a way that minimizes drag. The team originally hoped to operate BurstCube for 12-18 months, but now estimates the increased drag will cause the satellite to re-enter the atmosphere in September.
“I’m proud of how the team responded to the situation and is making the best use of the time we have in orbit,” said Jeremy Perkins, BurstCube’s principal investigator at Goddard. “Small missions like BurstCube not only provide an opportunity to do great science and test new technologies, like our mission’s gamma-ray detector, but also important learning opportunities for the up-and-coming members of the astrophysics community.”
BurstCube is led by Goddard. It’s funded by the Science Mission Directorate’s Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. The BurstCube collaboration includes: the University of Alabama in Huntsville; the University of Maryland, College Park; the Universities Space Research Association in Washington; the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington; and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
IMAGE: BurstCube, trailed by another CubeSat named SNOOPI (Signals of Opportunity P-band Investigation), emerges from the International Space Station on April 18, 2024. Credit NASA/Matthew Dominick
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Also preserved in our archive (Daily updates!)
A long read about a consistently quoted covid minimizer who may en up in charge of the NIH. The pro-infection rhetoric that has recently been strenghtening antivax sentiment in general society is mostly his fault.
By Walker Bragman
On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that a top contender for Donald Trump’s new National Institutes of Health director was Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a health economist known for his pro-infection advocacy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. If confirmed, the controversial professor will oversee the largest funder of biomedical and behavioral research on the planet.
As the new Trump administration takes shape, each appointment has been seemingly more fraught than the last. For example, on Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz, who had previously been caught up in a Department of Justice sex trafficking investigation, was announced as the choice for Attorney General. The next day, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. was announced for Health and Human Services Secretary. Kennedy, who has mused that COVID-19 was genetically engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews, suggested that chemicals in water are turning children gay or transgender, and falsely claimed vaccines cause autism, is an ally of Bhattacharya.
The Stanford professor is likely among the most extreme of the lot. While, as The Post noted, Bhattacharya has never held a position managing any position overseeing a large bureaucratic organization, he has been a central figure in an organized, well-funded campaign by the political right to undermine public health in America that has been raging since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bhattacharya has spent years arguing in favor of “natural,” or infection-acquired, immunity and casting doubt on vaccines and government efforts to control the worst public health crisis in a century, bolstering the position of GOP politicians and right-wing dark money groups. He has even spread conspiracy theories about the very agency he is on the verge of leading, alleging that a small number of top bureaucrats have been using funding to stifle dissent.
Should he be confirmed, Bhattacharya will surely inject unscientific right-wing ideology into the very heart of the agency responsible for leading the fight against infectious diseases.
Infection Advocate Bhattacahrya first taste of the national spotlight came in the spring of 2020. In March that year, he co-authored a Wall Street Journal editorial arguing against lockdowns and making the case that COVID was less dangerous than public health authorities were predicting.
“If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified,” it read. “But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.”
That article preceded the release of pre-print study Bhattacharya co-authored purporting to show that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was far more infectious—and less deadly—than the global scientific community was warning. The study’s flaws, from methodological issues to undisclosed funding from the founder of JetBlue, a vocal critic of COVID lockdowns, were quickly revealed. Nevertheless, the paper was hugely influential on the political right and its findings not only impacted policy in the U.S. but abroad as well in countries like the UK.
Several months later, Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely rebuked, discredited document calling on governments and scientists to reject large-scale COVID mitigation policies in favor of “focused protection” for the elderly. The idea was that by allowing widespread infection of the rest of the population, herd immunity could be achieved quickly and with minimal disruption to the economy. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the plan “unethical” and 14 major public health organizations published an open letter denouncing it.
The document itself was written and signed at a conference hosted by a libertarian think tank called the American Institute for Economic Research, a month ahead of the 2020 election. It added a scientific veneer to the public health approach preferred by the Trump administration and right-wing groups like The Heritage Foundation, which saw lockdowns as a greater threat than the virus itself. Planning for the event had taken place over the summer and involved the Trump administration directly through health policy adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, who, like Bhattacharya, was affiliated with the Hoover Institution. Atlas helped secure passage to the U.S. for UK-based declaration co-author Dr. Sunetra Gupta under the pretext of a meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
While the declaration did little to help Trump’s 2020 prospects, it did propel Bhattacharya to right-wing stardom. He has used his megaphone to continue to evangelize the benefits of mass infection and the harms of government efforts to curb the spread of a deadly virus.
Despite the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would go on to kill more than 1.2 million Americans and leave millions more suffering long COVID, Bhattacharya never changed his position on lockdowns and mitigations. His false and misleading statements about government efforts to curb the spread of the virus are too numerous to list here, though Bhattacharya has blamed “lockdowns” for all manner of ills, including possibly even Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has also asserted that masks do not work and harm child development without an expertise on the matter and was an early advocate to reopen schools with no mitigation measures in place.
Conspiracy Theories While the Great Barrington Declaration was not itself explicitly anti-vaccine, its central premise—that reopening could safely occur without them—has made Bhattacharya a natural ally of the anti-vax movement. Over time, the professor has moved steadily in their direction. He has repeatedly claimed, for example, that the small risks associated with COVID vaccines outweigh their benefits for young people. In a particularly ill-timed op-ed, he called universal vaccination in India “unethical” on the grounds that a majority of Indians had natural immunity, writing that “for recovered Covid patients…the vaccines provide no benefit and some harm.” Incredibly, several months later, in a piece making the same case for the U.S., he argued that mandating vaccines here would deny doses to countries in need of them, including India.
In September 2022, Bhattacharya misleadingly claimed that the new bivalent boosters were insufficiently tested and alleged that the CDC and FDA were “flying blind.”
The professor has also spoken at events with anti-vaxxers like millionaire Steve Kirsch, who asserts that the shots are responsible for millions of deaths. In March, Bhattacharya spoke at the vice presidential announcement event for Robert Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign.
Important Context readers will also recall that Bhattacharya was the organizer of a recent health policy symposium at Stanford seemingly aimed at rewriting pandemic history to vindicate fringe positions adopted by the political right. The event was stacked with conspiracy mongers and anti-vaccine voices like Alex Berenson.
Beyond his promotion of anti-vaccine narratives, Bhattacharya has also pushed the unsupported claim that COVID emerged from a lab leak and claimed that Dr. Fauci was involved in a cover-up. The professor recently joined the board of directors of BioSafety Now, a controversial scientist group pushing the lab leak origin story for COVID despite evidence consistently pointing to zoonosis.
Bhattacharya has long held that the mainstream rejection of his ideas is not a reflection of their scientific merit, but rather the result of “censorship” by key public health officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who communicated privately over email about rebutting the Great Barrington Declaration. He has baselessly claimed that academics self-censor to get NIH funding for their research, suggesting that top bureaucrats like Collins used their positions to enforce their personal beliefs.
Political Operative Bhattacharya’s contrarian views and pro-infection advocacy may have alienated him from the mainstream of public health, but they have earned him powerful allies, including, as The Post noted, billionaires Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who has supported his censorship claims.
Bhattacharya has also been a favorite in the world of right-wing dark money, having written for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank with ties to billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, been cited by the Heritage Foundation, and spoken before the secretive, influential Christian Right group Council for National Policy, which connects activists with big money.
The professor holds titles at organizations like the Hoover Institution, where he is a senior fellow (courtesy). He occupies various roles at Collateral Global, a UK-based charity focused on opposing lockdowns, including editor-in-chief and scientific adviser. He is a contributing author to the Australia-based Australians for Science and Freedom.
In the past, Bhattacharya was a senior scholar at the Brownstone Institute when it was formed in 2021. He was part of the institute’s Norfolk Group, which put together a roadmap for a congressional COVID inquiry that mirrored a similar document produced by Heritage weeks earlier. This month, he was a speaker at Brownstone’s recent annual conference. When the Trump-allied Hillsdale College launched its Academy for Science and Freedom, Bhattacharya was one of the first scholars named. The professor was also on the scientific advisory board of the international pandemic denial group PANDA.
Bhattacharya has been awarded with various honors for his work by dark money groups. In April, for example, he won the $250,000 Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of right-wing causes. Last month, a new group called the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, which is tied to a larger organization working to establish conservative beachheads on college campuses, gave him an intellectual freedom medal.
Republican politicians have unsurprisingly gravitated to Bhattacharya. The professor personally advised Trump in the summer of 2020 and has been a close adviser and ally of Ron DeSantis. Despite his advocacy for “focused protection,” Bhattacharya stood with the Florida governor as he defended a policy of excluding elderly incarcerated from vaccine prioritization, claiming that vaccinating the population would be pointless given that the virus had already spread through the prisons.
“If someone who is older has already had an infection, I don’t think the vaccine would help them,” Bhattacharya said.
The professor has been an expert witness for Republican lawmakers in Congress as well. When the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held its first hearing in February 2023, he was one of the first expert witnesses called.
He has also leant his expertise to GOP-led states in cases over their lack of COVID protections, particularly in schools. In those cases, Bhattacharya’s testimony served as a counter to the parents of medically vulnerable children, who argued the lack of safety measures put their kids’ lives at risk.
Notably, several judges have questioned the reliability of Bhattacharya’s expert testimony. In his decision temporarily blocking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of school mask mandates, U.S. District Court Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw observed that Bhattacharya “offered opinions regarding the pediatric effects of masks on children, a discipline on which he admitted he was not qualified to speak,” adding that “his demeanor and tone while testifying suggest that he is advancing a personal agenda.”
“At this stage of the proceedings, the Court is simply unwilling to trust Dr. Bhattacharya,” Crenshaw wrote.
Pursuing Grudges Fueled by his support on the right, Bhattacharya has built up a massive online audience. He has over 544,000 followers on X alone as of the writing of this writing. Seemingly emboldened by this support, he has fired back at his critics, including scientists and journalists, asserting that they have misrepresented his positions.
For example, Bhattacharya has denied that the Great Barrington Declaration was a herd immunity strategy even though the words “herd immunity” appear five times in the document, including in the sentence,“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”
After Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler published an article documenting his misleading statements about the bivalent boosters, he went after her on X, encouraging his supporters by liking posts suggesting she had ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
With pro bono representation from New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a dark money lawfare group that has received funding from Koch to wage a war on the administrative state, Bhattacharya and several other private plaintiffs joined a lawsuit against key officials and agencies within the Biden administration for allegedly coercing social media companies into suppressing their content. The case, Missouri v. Biden—later renamed Murthy v. Missouri—made its way up to the Supreme Court where it was dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing, having failed to prove they had been harmed by the government.
NCLA is currently trying to revive the lawsuit.
“What Could Go Wrong?” Public health professionals expressed grave concerns about the possible appointment of Bhattacharya. In response to The Post story, for example, Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves skeeted, “This is all just getting worse.”
Mallory Harris, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, earned her PhD in biology from Stanford in 2024, had a similar take. “His scientific judgment is questionable at best,” she told Important Context. “As an expert witness in multiple Covid court cases he consistently misconstrued scientific evidence—even going so far as to knowingly cite a retracted study.”
Harris, who led a student group at Stanford to combat science misinformation, has long had Bhattacharya on her radar.
“He has been spreading conspiracy theories about this particular agency for years,” Harris said. “This [likely appointment] is a tremendous blow to independent, rigorous, publicly funded scientific research.”
Frank Han, an adult congenital and pediatric cardiologist, told Important Context that “while hearing a conservative viewpoint is not inherently dangerous to scientific institutions, Bhattacharya has shown through his actions, that he is entirely unsuited for any job at the NIH.”
“Science even at the highest levels of government, places a high value on humility and realizing when you should change course,” he explained, noting that Bhatttacharya never acknowledged the hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths he said would justice mitigation measures in his March 2020 Wall Street Journal op-ed. Han accused Bhattacharya of trying instead to “cover his tracks.”
“Bhattacharya has never honestly engaged with his prior self, rather now consistently holding the viewpoint that COVID restrictions should have ended sooner and schools should have opened sooner,” Han said.
Robert Morris, MD, PhD, an epidemiologist who has taught at Tufts University and the Medical College of Wisconsin, noted that Bhattacharya would be “the first director in the history of the NIH with no clinical experience and minimal biomedical research experience.”
“He is a health economist who would run an agency with no budget line for health economics,” Morris said, adding that the professor “has repeatedly shown disdain for serious biomedical scientists.”
“What could go wrong?” Morris said.
#mask up#public health#wear a mask#pandemic#covid#wear a respirator#covid 19#still coviding#coronavirus#sars cov 2#us politics
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Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory just captured ominous signals about the planet’s health. (Washington Post)
Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory just captured an ominous sign about the pace of global warming.
Atmospheric levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide aren’t just on their way to yet another record high this year — they’re rising faster than ever, according to the latest in a 66-year-long series of observations.
Carbon dioxide levels were 4.7 parts per million higher in March than they were a year earlier, the largest annual leap ever measured at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration laboratory atop a volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island. And from January through April, CO2 concentrations increased faster than they have in the first four months of any other year. Data from Mauna Loa is used to create the Keeling Curve, a chart that daily plots global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, tracked by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego.
For decades, CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa in the month of May have broken previous records. But the recent acceleration in atmospheric CO2, surpassing a record-setting increase observed in 2016, is perhaps a more ominous signal of failing efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and the damage they cause to Earth’s climate.
“Not only is CO2 still rising in the atmosphere — it’s increasing faster and faster,” said Arlyn Andrews, a climate scientist at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
A historically strong El Niño climate pattern that developed last year is a big reason for the spike. But the weather pattern only punctuated an existing trend in which global carbon emissions are rising even as U.S. emissions have declined and the growth in global emissions has slowed.
Each annual maximum has raised new alarm about the curve’s unceasing upward trend — nearing 427 parts per million in the most recent readings, which is more than 50 percent above preindustrial levels and the highest in at least 4.3 million years, according to NOAA. Atmospheric CO2 levels first surpassed 400 parts per million in 2014. Scientists said in 2016 that levels were unlikely to drop below that threshold again during the lifetime of even the youngest generations.
Since that year, carbon dioxide emissions tied to fossil fuel consumption have increased 5 percent globally, according to Scripps.
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Second Lieutenant William Conan Davis (August 22, 1926 - March 16, 2022) was a professor emeritus and was chair of natural sciences at St. Philip’s College. The William C. Davis Science Building is named in his honor.
He was born in Waycross, Georgia to Kince Charles Davis and his wife Laura Jane. He was employed as a railway construction engineer and crew boss, a position that brought him threats from the kkk. He started a herbal medicine business, the only source of medical care accessible to many Black people in Georgia. He spent time during the summers with his maternal grandfather Jonnas Franklin.
He received a high school diploma from Dasher in 1944. His family was active in civil rights and supportive of their children’s education. On one occasion Kince Davis drove his sons William and Kenneth to Tuskegee Institute to attend a workshop with George Washington Carver and Henry Ford. This experience fueled his interest in becoming a chemist.
To prepare him for college, his family sent him to New York City. He lived with his older brother, actor and civil rights activist Ossie Davis. He attended the City College of New York but was advised to transfer to Talladega College where he could get more individual support in calculus.
He was enrolled in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He was drafted to serve in the Korean War. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. He served in Germany and was awarded a Purple Heart.
He completed his BS in Chemistry at Talladega College. He was one of three students chosen for a George Washington Carver research fellowship to attend Tuskegee Institute. It was almost impossible for a Black scientist to train for a professional career in research in the US. Even at Tuskegee, the usual career track was to train as a teacher, with a specialization in one’s area of interest. He worked with Clarence T. Mason of Tuskegee and studied the hydrolysis rate of compounds in jet fuel. He received his MS in Organic Chemistry. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence
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Footnotes, 101-150
[101] Joost A. M. Meerloo, Mental Seduction and Menticide: The Psychology of Thought Control and Brain-Washing (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), 163–164, 184.
[102] B. A. Robinson, “Promise Keepers, Pro and Con: Part 1,” Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, November 2, 2003, www.religioustolerance.org.
[103] Jena Recer, “Whose Promise Are They Keeping?” National NOW Times, August 1995, www.now.org.
[104] James Dobson, “Building Moral Character in Kids,” radio broadcast, Focus on the Family International, February 8, 2006, www.oneplace.com =2/8/2006.
[105] Tony Kushner, Angels in America (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995), 46.
[106] James Dobson, Marriage under Fire: Why We Must Win This Battle (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2004), 41.
[107] “Focus on the Family,” Citizen Magazine January 2003, quoted in Jeff Lutes, A False Focus on My Family (Lynchburg, VA: Soulforce, 2004), 8.
[108] Dobson, Marriage Under Fire, 49.
[109] James Dobson, Bringing Up Boys (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2001), 127.
[110] Robert Knight, “The Homosexual Agenda in Schools,” Family Research Council, quoted in Matthew Shepard, “Nazi Anti-Jewish Speech vs. Religious Right Anti-Gay Speech,” Hatecrime.org, www.hatecrime.org.
[111] P. Gibson, “Gay Males and Lesbian Youth Suicide,” in M. R. Feinleib, ed., Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Youth Suicide, Volume 3: Prevention and Interventions in Youth Suicide(Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Public Health Service; Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, 1989; DHHS publication ADM 89–1623), 110.
[112] Pat Robertson, quoted in Richard K. Fenn, Dreams of Glory, 8.
[113] Kavan Peterson, “Washington Gay Marriage Ruling Looms,” Stateline.org, March 7, 2006, cms.stateline.org; “Same-Sex Marriage Measures on the 2004 Ballot,” National Conference of State Legislatures, November 2004, www.ncsl.org.
[114] Mel White, Stranger at the Gate (New York: Penguin, 1995), 25.
[115] Ibid., 22–23.
[116] Ibid., 29.
[117] Ibid., 14.
[118] Ibid., 49–50.
[119] Ibid., 96.
[120] Ibid., 107.
[121] Ibid., 142.
[122] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism(New York: Harcourt, 1979), 353.
[123] Scott LaFee, “Local Scientists, Doctors and Professors Talk About ‘Intelligent Design,’” San Diego Union Tribune, June 8, 2005, F-1.
[124] Frank Newport, “Third of Americans Say Evidence Has Supported Darwin’s Evolution Theory,” Gallup Poll, November 19, 2004, poll.gallup.com.
[125] Keith Graham, Biology: God’s Living Creation (Pensacola, FL: A Beka, 1986), 404.
[126] Alfred M. Rehwinkel, The Wonders of Creation (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1974), in Graham, Biology, 133.
[127] Graham, Biology, 163.
[128] Graham, Biology, 351.
[129] Carl Wieland, “Darwin’s Bodysnatchers: New Horrors,” Creation 14:2 (March 1992), 16–18.
[130] Carl Wieland, “Apartheid and ‘The Cradle of Humankind,’” Creation 26:2 (March 2004), 10–14.
[131] “What Happened When Stalin Read Darwin?” Creation 10:4 (September 1998), 23.
[132] Jerry Bergman, “Darwinism and the Nazi Race Holocaust,” Technical Journal 13:2, 101–111.
[133] “Evolution and the Hutu-Tutsi Slayings,” Creation 21:2 (March 1999), 47.
[134] Graham, Biology, 347.
[135] Jerry Bergman, “Was Charles Darwin Psychotic? A Study of His Mental Health,” Impact (January 2004).
[136] Raymond Hall, “Darwin’s Impact—The Bloodstained Legacy of Evolution,” Creation 27:2 (March 2005), 46–47.
[137] Graham, Biology, 347.
[138] Ibid., 349.
[139] Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 371.
[140] “Intelligence Report,” Southern Poverty Law Center (Spring 2005), 4. www.splcenter.org.
[141] Union of Concerned Scientists, “Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: An Investigation into the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science,” March 2004, 2; 32, www.ucsusa.org.
[142] This lecture was taped and transcribed by Timothy Nunan of Princeton University.
[143] Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 1:96.
[144] Max Blumenthal, “Justice Sunday Preachers,” The Nation, May 9, 2005 (Web edition only), www.thenation.com.
[145] Ibid.
[146] Ibid.
[147] David Kirkpatrick, “Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy,” The New York Times, August 28, 2004.
[148] Ibid.
[149] Max Blumenthal, “Who Are Justice Sunday’s Ministers of Ministry?” Talk To Action, January 6, 2006, www.talk2action.org.
[150] Quoted in Daniel Lev, The Terrorist Next Door (New York: Thomas Dumae/St. Martin, 2002), 27.
#christianity#fascism#right-wing#us politics#xtians#United States of America#christians#anarchism#anarchy#anarchist society#practical anarchy#practical anarchism#resistance#autonomy#revolution#communism#anti capitalist#anti capitalism#late stage capitalism#daily posts#libraries#leftism#social issues#anarchy works#anarchist library#survival#freedom
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Hello! Dropping into your inbox to ask you about your research for
"Lent From Tomorrow (today was too small for us)." You must have done a ton of historical research for it to get so many of those details. I think that sort of thing is a lot of fun, and I'm very curious to know if you came across anything especially cool/fascinating/weird during your writing research.
Ooh, thank you for the ask! How fun!
There's SO MUCH research in this fic, from the codebreaking to the science of how to defrost a supersoldier to what was on the radio on specific days in 1943. I've got a whole folder of just Lent From Tomorrow research, and the back half of my WIP document is just copy-pastes of quotes from soldiers, scientists, codebreakers, radio hosts, etc.
But, to be fair, I've been reading nonfiction about WWII codebreakers for like 20 years. It's one of my special interests~ and something that I just love learning about. WWII *battles*, I don't care about at all, but everything else about the time period is fascinating to me -- probably because of Molly McIntire, haha.
My FAVORITE little tidbit actually comes up in this coming week's chapter, so I'm not going to spoil it, but it's my favorite recollection in Code Girls by Liza Mundy. That was definitely the book that I used the most for this fic, since the main characters are basically all "code girls," or code omegas, whatever. I also used a lot from PBS Nova's The Mind of a Codebreaker, which I watched when it first came out in 1999 and it rewired my entire brain. I immediately did a report on the women of Bletchley Park in 7th grade (and another on the WASP/WAVE/WAC pilots, so I was really excited to be able to have Carol Danvers make a cameo in Lent!).
But I also looked up specifics for just about every scene -- the snippet of Quiz Kids that's on the wireless radio when Steve and the Asset are listening to the wireless is a quote and actually aired that day. The Torah portion that Steve hears when he goes to shul with the gals and Scott is the Torah portion from that particular Shabbat service in December 1942. The movie scene is the actual movie, newsreel, and cartoon that were shown together at a theater in Washington, DC, on that Friday in March 1943.
I leaned on a former-scientist friend of mine to point me in the right direction to find out how they would have frozen and defrosted the Asset, and also how The Arm might work in a way that isn't just "::shrug:: it's Superhero Science." Her husband is a mathematician, and she suggested some avenues that Steve might have written his big 1929 math paper about, too. And then I read a bunch of math papers from the 1920s and tried to understand them and it was. a lot.
I also did a lot of research into Steve's various disabilities and ailments and the treatments available by the early 1940s, particularly asthma and his childhood polio. (I'm forgetting whether the backstory of his polio experience has actually shown up in the fic yet or if it's coming up soon in a chapter? If it hasn't been posted yet, then spoiler, I guess, Steve had polio as a kid [although I *think* that's canon?]). Steve's experience of being disabled is really important to me, and I wanted it to matter and be a part of his life in this story (and any story I write about Steve).
There's a lot more specific stuff coming up in the back half of the fic, now that we've reached the midway point... Bucky's backstory requires a lot of research into things that I don't know as much about, just because I don't tend to look into actual battle/military histories, and because [redacted for spoilers].
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Ruby Beach
In response to Eve Tuck's essay "What Is Your Theory of Change These Days?" (link here)
November afternoon, warm sun slanting through wind-sheared Douglas-fir, pungent seaweed and cedar aloft on salty breeze. I watch gray fog on the far horizon, somewhere out over the continental shelf, stretching as far north and south as I can see. The wind plays with the fog. It billows this way and that, like bellows on a fire, like inhalations and exhalations. Chatter of Steller’s jays and human children mingles with crash of waves twice my height, too tall to bear their own weight. The beach collects driftwood. Elderly trees felled and eroded then returned to the land, bark and cork stripped, sensitive innards salinated, outer layers gray with sunburn.
I have been here before.
March 2020. My girlfriend Sammy and I are removed from student housing to return to our “permanent homes.” We have nowhere else to go, nowhere safe; Juneau is our permanent home. Our car barely survives the trek down the Alaska Highway. We are forced into my parents’ house in rural Colorado. It stands in the middle of a recently razed forest. They hope prairie fire will prove easier to fight than forest fire in the increasingly dry, combustible summers. My body is rounding out and reorganizing from the effects of potent estradiol and antiandrogens; I am just beginning to understand that male and cis privilege were never mine. My parents’ fear of my new body fuels hot and sudden fights. My parents are more dangerous than the virus.
We escape with little more than a backpack each and a car on its last legs. We turn our eyes northwest, as near to Juneau as we can get, Bellingham, Washington, searching for jobs and housing at a time when the world is shut down. We occupy ourselves with day trips as our funds dwindle. Even the entrance gates to Ruby Beach are closed. We park on the shoulder of the 101 and climb over them. The tide is out, and crows play in wind currents above the muddy beach. It is cloudy, the ocean a deep slate color, darker even than the driftwood that dwells on the beach. Strong winds threaten to topple older trees into the sea. Here, in old growth forest, taller trees protect younger, shorter ones. When trees do fall, they become nurse logs. Saplings grow from centuries-old nutrients held in xylem and phloem. In deforested or reforested areas, entire hectares account for just one generation of trees and a single Pacific storm can blow over the whole forest. The wind here is constant, a limiting factor, a factor of death and regrowth.
The head gasket blows; we sell the car for $400. We spend a month saving for a U-haul and a security deposit to a shitty studio on the eighth floor of the tallest building for 900 miles around. But it’s in Juneau. So we return.
September 2021. My parents convince Sammy and I we can get better jobs Down South than in Juneau, where the ecotourism industry is still closed for the pandemic. It is soon obvious that they have invited us not out of goodwill, but out of spite, for the lack of control they have over our lives. They try to regain it, keeping us close in this too-familiar small town.
Jobs here are slim. The closest work we can find is twenty miles away; we spend the last of our savings on a down payment for a new-to-us car. We fight with my parents as much as we work. Wildfires burn in the Front Range, pines and willows scorched, leaving the landscape ripe for fertilization. Lodgepole pines and wildflowers germinate in the temporary heat. Still, scientists and locals call it “unnatural,” “unprecedented.” Smoke chokes prairies and reddens sunsets. Savings replenish until, one day, our bed and the roof over our heads are removed. As the rest of the world convinces itself it’s “going back to normal,” we realize that normal is not static. Unlike Juneau, it is not something to which one can ever return.
We work the gig economy south, following warmth, spending months driving through unfamiliar cities, delivering groceries and fast food to mansions and high-rises, sleeping in stiff sedan seats. I lapse on my medication, an unecessary expense in this time. I am faced with the abandonment of my parents, the threat of homelessness, the mental instability of forced detransition. Eight months I will go without it, body hair and anger sprouting where they hadn’t before. Finally, we have enough to buy a ferry ticket out of Bellingham. We follow the Mexican border west, then the Pacific Ocean north.
The first day of the new year. Snowclouds vacate the sky. Everything is fresh, as if reconstructed overnight. Waves are calm, lapping the snow on Ruby Beach, melting it as the tide comes in. I feel worn, hollow, surprised I am not as gray and eroded as the dead cedar and spruce in front of me. Each gnarled tree is longer than a bus. I cannot imagine the length of time they spent at sea, the process of erosion they underwent. I cannot imagine the splash of one of these trees into the sea after it succumbs to centuries of constant, cold wind. We continue northward, towards Juneau.
November 2023. Ocean wind is quiet and soft on my face. Sammy and I are in another Washington interlude, another time spent Down South and waiting for return to Juneau. For the first time, however, we have savings, a one-bedroom. For the first time, it is of our own accord that we have left. Seattle promises career advancements, a way to find stability, a way not to tumble over in the Juneau winds, blowing stronger in recent years. We sit together on the remains of a Sitka spruce, at least four feet in diameter, smooth and gray. We watch the waves collapse on themselves, watch the fog roll in.
#writers on tumblr#ruby beach#olympic national park#thanks to rae elizabeth binh kc and liz for the feedback#also ofc thanks to my wonderful gf i love u
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Bibliography: articles posted on this blog in 2023
Posted in January
To grasp how serotonin works on the brain, look to the gut (James M Shine, Psyche, Jan 03 2023)
Thousands of records shattered in historic winter warm spell in Europe (Ian Livingston, The Washington Post, Jan 02 2023)
“Il faut que tu sois belle maintenant” : en Égypte, des femmes libérées du voile restent prisonnières des diktats (Aliaa Talaat, Al-Manassa via Courrier International, 20 nov 2022)
Mystery of why Roman buildings have survived so long has been unraveled, scientists say (Katie Hunt, CNN, Jan 06 2023)
Colombia’s surrogacy market: Buying a baby for $4,000 (Lucía Franco, El País, Jan 04 2023)
How to spot an eating disorder (Phillip Aouad & Sarah Maguire, Psyche, Jan 11 2023)
UAE sparks furious backlash by appointing Abu Dhabi oil chief as president of COP28 climate summit (Sam Meredith, CNBC, Jan 12 2023)
Don’t tell me that David Carrick’s crimes were ‘unbelievable’. The problem is victims aren’t believed (Marina Hyde, The Guardian, Jan 17 2023)
Baromètre Sexisme 2023 : "La situation est alarmante", estime le Haut Conseil à l'Égalité (Juliette Geay, Radio France, 23 janvier 2023)
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Posted in February
Spain approves menstrual leave, teen abortion and trans laws (NPR, Feb 16 2023)
Are Men the Overlooked Reason for the Fertility Decline? (Jessica Grose, The New York Times, Feb 15 2023)
American teenage girls are experiencing high levels of emotional distress. Why? (Moira Donegan, The Guardian, Feb 16 2023)
Figures that lay bare the shocking scale of toxic influencer Andrew Tate’s reach among young men (Maya Oppenheim, The Independent, Feb 17 2023)
Why psychological research on child sex offenders is important (Meetali Devgun, Psyche, Feb 22 2023)
Derrière les chiffres des féminicides, des visages et un continuum de violences contre les femmes (Fanny Declercq, Le Soir, 27 fév 2023)
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Posted in March
English is not normal (John McWhorter, Aeon, Nov 13 2015)
Are Iranian schoolgirls being poisoned by toxic gas? (BBC News, March 03 2023)
‘Why do we need a supermodel?’: Backlash after Fifa makes Adriana Lima Women’s World Cup ambassador (Henry Belot, The Guardian, March 02 2023)
New Human Metabolism Research Upends Conventional Wisdom about How We Burn Calories (Herman Pontzer, Scientific American, Jan 01 2023)
Polish woman found guilty of aiding an abortion in landmark trial (Harriet Barber, The Telegraph, March 14 2023)
How Diet Builds Better Bones: Surprising Findings on Vitamin D, Coffee, and More (Claudia Wallis, Scientific American, Jan 01 2023)
Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic (Vikram Dodd, The Guardian, March 21 2023)
Chinese Dating App Does the Swiping for Singles to Find Love (Nikki Main, Gizmodo, March 21 2023)
Aphantasia can be a gift to philosophers and critics like me (Mette Leonard Høeg, Psyche, March 20 2023)
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Posted in April
Facts Don’t Change Minds – Social Networks, Group Dialogue, and Stories Do (Anne Toomey, The LSE Impact Blog, Jan 24 2023)
Uganda’s failure to jail child rapists as teen pregnancies soar (Tamasin Ford, BBC News, April 17 2023)
Italy risks ‘ethnic replacement’ because of low birth rate and high immigration, says minister (Nick Squires, The Telegraph, April 19 2023)
Putin, Trump, Ukraine: how Timothy Snyder became the leading interpreter of our dark times (Robert P Baird, The Guardian, March 30 2023)
India overtakes China to become world’s most populous country (Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian, April 24 2023)
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Posted in May
Des crèches ferment toutes les semaines, « et ce n’est pas près de s’arrêter » (Le Soir, 5 mai 2023)
People in comas showed ‘conscious-like’ brain activity as they died, study says (Hannah Devlin, The Guardian, May 01 2023)
Chinese woman appeals in battle for right to freeze her eggs (The Guardian, May 09 2023)
Women CEOs: Why companies in crisis hire minorities - and then fire them (The Guardian, DG McCullough, Aug 08 2014)
Glass cliffs: firms appoint female executives in times of crisis as a signal of change to investors (Max Reinwald and Johannes Zaia and Florian Kunze, LSE Business Review, Aug 19 2022)
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Posted in June
Afghan women in mental health crisis over bleak future (Yogita Limaye, BBC News, June 05 2023)
Support Of Amber Heard Alongside French Feminists & Cinema Figures (Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, June 05 2023)
Why is Japan redefining rape? (Tessa Wong & Sakiko Shiraishi, BBC News, June 07 2023)
Catching the men who sell subway groping videos (Zhaoyin Feng & Aliaume Leroy & Shanshan Chen, BBC News, June 08 2023)
Netherlands to provide free sun cream to tackle record skin cancer levels (Kate Connolly, The Guardian, June 12 2023)
The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think (Joanna Thompson, Quanta Magazine, Jan 26 2023)
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Posted in July
‘Farsighted impulsivity’ and the new psychology of self-control (Adam Bulley, Psyche, Feb 03 2021)
Can a perfectionist personality put you at risk of migraines? (Shayla Love, Psyche, July 25 2023)
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Posted in August
How Loneliness Reshapes the Brain (Marta Zaraska, Quanta Magazine, Feb 28 2023)
Why religious belief provides a real buffer against suicide risk (David H Rosmarin, Psyche, Aug 07 2023)
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Posted in September
What Are Dreams For? (Amanda Gefter, The New Yorker, Aug 31 2023)
Rape Cases Seize Italy’s Attention and Expose Cultural Rifts (Gaia Pianigiani, The New York Times, Sep 03 2023)
Councils in England in crisis as Birmingham ‘declares itself bankrupt’ (Heather Stewart and Jessica Murray, The Guardian, Sep 05 2023)
Nearly one in three female NHS surgeons have been sexually assaulted, survey suggests (Jamie Grierson, The Guardian, Sep 12 2023)
Domination and Objectification: Men’s Motivation for Dominance Over Women Affects Their Tendency to Sexually Objectify Women (Orly Bareket and Nurit Shnabel, Sep 09 2019)
In Spain, dozens of girls are reporting AI-generated nude photos of them being circulated at school: ‘My heart skipped a beat’ (Manuel Viejo, El País, Sep 18 2023)
When the human tendency to detect patterns goes too far (Shayla Love, Psyche, Sep 19 2023)
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Posted in October
My Brain Doesn’t Picture Things (Marco Giancotti, Nautilus, Oct 04 2023)
“Inverse vaccine” shows potential to treat multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases (Sarah C.P. Williams, The University of Chicago, Sep 11 2023)
Poland election: exit polls point to Law and Justice defeat as Tusk hails ‘rebirth’ (Shaun Walker, The Guardian, Oct 16 2023)
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Posted in November
What I have learned from my suicidal patients (Gavin Francis, The Guardian, Nov 22 2019)
Did natural selection make the Dutch the tallest people on the planet? (Martin Enserink, Science, Apr 07 2015)
Tumblr Is Always Dying (Elizabeth Minkel, Wired, Nov 14 2023)
How accurate is the new Napoleon film? Sorting fact from fiction (Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Times, Nov 19 2023)
Far-right party set to win most seats in Dutch elections, exit polls show (Jon Henley and Pjotr Sauer and Senay Boztas, The Guardian, Nov 22 2023)
Climate change: Rise in Google searches around ‘anxiety’ (Lucy Gilder, BBC, Nov 22 2023)
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Posted in December
The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in our bedrooms (Anna Moore, The Guardian, June 15 2021)
Afghanistan: Taliban sends abused women to prison - UN (Nicholas Yong, BBC News, Dec 15 2023)
Longitudinal Associations Between Parenting and Child Big Five Personality Traits (University of California Press, Nov 18 2021)
Scientists Pinpoint Cause of Severe Morning Sickness (Azeen Ghorayshi, The New York Times, Dec 13 2023)
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