*black and brown trans women/trans fems who were repeatedly homeless, were sex workers, and who supported their sisters and fought against the cis white middle-class normalizing of queerness
Check these quotes from new intersex advocate & activist Hanne Gaby Odiele! We are so proud of her and the work she is doing to raise intersex visibility and stop unnecessary intersex surgeries!
Image: Three quotations from model and Intersex activist Hanne Gaby Odiele, overlaid on photos of Hanne and bordered in purple. In two photos Hanne is wearing a purple shirt with the InterACT logo on the front. The InterACT logo and their slogan “Advocates for Intersex Youth” is overlaid on the photos. Two of the photos have additional text that says “Learn more about Hanne’s story and what it means to be intersex! interactadvocates.org
The three quotes say,
“Intersex is just a part of who I am, like my hair. It doesn’t define me. I am intersex and I’m proud!”
“'Doctors think they have to normalize the baby,’ says Odiele, who is dedicated to stopping what she calls ‘crazy surgeries that are irreversible and nonconsensual, done when you are much too young.’”
“I am proud to be working with InterACT. I hope that by telling my story more people get outraged at the human rights abuses suffered by intersex children around the world.” End image description.]
“Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn’t about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn’t about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it’s about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”
Character: Offred
Book: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale cosplay by @van-awesome, who has been doing a run of characters from dystopian novels.
You don't have the votes, you don't have the votes...
After seven years of railing against Barack Obama’s signature healthcare plan, House Republicans failed to muster enough support to hold a vote for their replacement bill, the American Health Care Act, and have withdrawn it. Republicans needed 215 votes for the measure to pass. According to a Quinnipiac poll released…
D'ya ever just want to... TALK... to those folks back in the "aughts who INSISTED that it was disrespectful to the troops to insist that we not throw away their lives to sooth the president's ego and grow the vice-president's bank account?
Republicans continue to prove that they have absolutely no shame when it comes to the terrible health care plan they want to turn into law. We’ve already seen how the bill will impact new mothers, poor people and Trump voters. And now, we can add veterans to the list. On Thursday, Democrats weighed into the debate about the ridiculous proposal for the American Health Care Act (ACHA), stating that the bill would also marginalize millions of veterans.
“Veterans would end up worse off than they are today under this plan,” said Iraq War veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. “This is sloppy and irresponsible, and it makes you wonder what else we don’t know about this bill.”
Previous versions of the bill allowed for veterans eligible for medical services from the Department of Veterans Affairs to qualify for tax credits to cover the cost of buying private health care insurance if they were not using VA services. But, after several changes in the bill, those options were dropped. Therefore, as it stands now, the bill blocks any veteran eligible for VA services from obtaining the tax credit—which means that if they aren’t using the VA, they get no assistance in obtaining private health insurance, whether they are using the VA services or not. What a way to say thank you for your service on behalf of a grateful nation, no? This just gets more and more repulsive.
And what’s the commander-in-chief, who spent almost two years talking about how he would make the military great again, got to say about all this? Absolutely nothing—because his incompetent administration seems to have no idea what’s actually going on!
On Wednesday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said he wasn’t aware of the veterans problem in the bill. House Republican leaders have promised to fix the confusing provisions, but Democrats protesting the bill said it’s dangerous to move ahead with the measure without first correcting that problem.
Clearly, the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. And we’ve got to put some grown ups back in charge. It’s not too late.
Let's make this failure complete. The vote is happening TODAY. Even if you already called your member of Congress, do it again by calling the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Jam the phone lines, urge them to vote NO.
A reminder, the majority of members of Congress are millionaires. Keep this in mind when you hear that GOP folks want to give tax breaks "to the rich." We're not just talking abstracts here, and we're not just seeing them appeasing rich donors. These people are deliberating putting themselves and their fortunes before the people they were elected to serve.
On Friday, the House is expected to vote on the Republican healthcare bill intended to replace the Affordable Care Act signed by former President Obama in 2010.
A Japanese photographer named Nyan Kichi dedicates a good chunk of his time out and about on the streets, capturing the beauty of stray cats – and there’s one particular spot with drain pipe holes that he loves to go.
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There, he can find loads of strays who treat the area with lots of pipe holes as their playground. See, those kitties don’t need fancy and expensive toys to have some fun.
But, if you think they would eventually get bored of jumping in and out of the holes – think again. The photographer even got himself a prop to tease them with – and now the whole scene looks just like the Whack-a-Mole game.
To follow these energetic and athletic strays of the Japanese streets, make sure to check the photographer’s Instagram page.
OK, but seriously, if looking for a cause of depression (and worse) in any marginalized group, START with "are other humans treating you like shit?" and THEN go to "Is your brain giving you a hard time?" It will go much quicker, you'll be behaving like a better person, and you won't further stigmatize and marginalize an already marginalized person.
Like, that’s one of the most insidious things cis people have done to us, create this idea that we suffer because we are trans and not because of how we are treated for being trans.
I mean, it constituted a huge “discovery” in the psych world when research showed that rampant depression and increased risk of suicide in trans people was tied to how badly we are isolated and alienated, and that conclusion would likely never have been reached without transness first being slowly de-pathologized, and thus not treated as just being something that is conveniently co-morbid with debilitating mental illness.
Cis people are deeply invested in any narrative that removes their involvement in our suffering and thus places the onus of change on us, demanding we subject ourselves to a psychiatric community that first attempts to obliterate our transness before it even considers helping facilitate it.
This misdirection of responsibility needs to be called out for what it is, an act of violence against trans people at the hands of cis people, and whether its through media, or medical discourse, or casual cissexism, it needs to fucking stop, and y’all cis folk need to hold yourselves accountable for how you perpetuate it.
by Megan Reynolds on The Slot, shared by Megan Reynolds to Jezebel
According to senior immigration officials, ICE agents are targeting sanctuary cities during their deportation raids in an attempt to force those cities to cooperate with federal immigration agents, CNN reports.
“What you’re looking at is a salt circle, a traditional form of protection—from within or without—in magical practice. In this case it’s being used to arrest an autonomous vehicle—a self-driving car, which relies on machine vision and processing to guide it. By quickly deploying the expected form of road markings—in this case, a No Entry glyph—we can confuse the car’s vision system into believing it’s surrounded by no entry points, and entrap it.”
-James Bridle
Two years ago I’d have thought this was creepypasta/metafiction
IO’ve been thinking about this, and although I love the old school elegance of the salt circle, what fascinates me is the idea of replacing a caltrop (spikes dropped to pierce tires) with a printed road marking that the car perceives as real. Like quickly spread a sheet with the appropriate markings, and the car thinks it’s just run off the road, or it’s hitting a hard corner, and then dramatically over steers to correct.
Up the tech a notch to a laser projection / holo projection, and you control the road to control the car.
Effectively, you hypnotise the vehicle into doing what you want based on confounding the visual sensors
them: it's not profitable for corporations to donate excess food to the hungry and needy
me: consider this
me: I don't give a fuck if multibillionaires are inconvenienced at the expense of the people they exploit for their wealth in the first place.
Grammar lessons and more in this week’s Tumblr roundup… reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it Tumblr Gets … Continued
Like his idol Ayn Rand (who argued against the very idea of government and the commons yet received social security and Medicare). Paul Ryan has combined meanness, cruelty and callousness towards the weak and the vulnerable with gross and unapologetic hypocrisy.
Republicans like Ryan — along with the millionaires and billionaires who comprise Donald Trump’s Cabinet and inner circle — literally want to take food, shelter and health care away from poor people like Christa Patton. Today’s Republicans view these Americans as useless eaters to be disposed of by means both passive and active.
When the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office first looked at the GOP legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, it predicted that changes would cut more than $300 billion from the federal deficit over the next decade, but at the cost of 52 million Americans going without health care coverage. Republicans have continued to tinker with the bill and even canceled today’s scheduled vote in order to keep tweaking, but the latest numbers from CBO say that the revised legislation could result in fewer savings for the Treasury and no real change to the number of uninsured.
Rather than the $337 billion deficit reduction estimated earlier this month, the CBO now says [PDF] that less than half that amount ($150 billion) would ultimately be saved by the revised plan it reviewed.
The new estimate sees no real change in the number of Americans who would lose or drop coverage over the next decade. It still predicts that 14 million additional people would be without insurance in the first year, 21 million by 2020, and 24 million people by 2026. Remember, this is on top of those that would expect to be without insurance under “Obamacare,” so that means 52 million Americans without coverage by the end of the first ten years.
Likewise, CBO still predicts that insurance premiums will rise for the first few years and then — on average — decline after 2021.
So why would this version result in a smaller cut to the deficit? One reason, says the CBO, is a proposed reduction in the threshold for the medical care deduction on income taxes for older Americans. Right now, if you or your spouse is over the age of 65, you can deduct medical expenses that are greater than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. A proposed revision would drop that threshold to 5.8%, meaning more tax deductions for older Americans with health care expenses. It also means fewer income taxes collected by the Treasury. CBO estimates around $90 billion in tax revenue would be lost by 2026.
The CBO says that an additional $48 billion in tax revenue won’t be collected because of other revisions, like “adjusting the effective dates and making other modifications to the provisions that repeal or delay many of the changes in the Affordable Care Act.”
Changes to Medicaid, like increasing the money spent covering the elderly, visually impaired, and disabled, will result in more spending by the government, though the CBO believes that some of this increased expense will be offset by other revisions, like allowing states to require that some Medicaid enrollees be employed in order to obtain benefits. The net result, per the CBO, is $41 billion less the government will be saving than under the original plan.
Similarly, notes the report, some Medicaid revisions have the effect of adding coverage for people that were counted as likely uninsured in the previous estimate, but the report notes that this population increase would probably be offset by other changes to the program.
Looking at the big picture, CBO says its coverage estimates differ by “no more than half a million people in any category in any year over the next decade.”
Keep in mind, this CBO analysis is only for the changes that were submitted by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan earlier this week. Ryan and the Trump administration have reportedly continued to revise the legislation in an effort to win over Republican legislators who oppose it, either because it leaves too many uninsured, or because it doesn’t go far enough in repealing the Affordable Care Act.
What remains to be seen is whether the CBO will be given the opportunity to provide a second revised estimate based on whatever House leadership finally decides to bring to the floor for a vote.
The House is already considering a resolution that, if passed, would allow lawmakers to effectively get right to voting on the health care bill.
This morning, Rep. Jim McGovern (MA), who is acting as ranking member on the House Rules Committee in the absence of Rep. Louise Slaughter, criticized the effort to fast-track the repeal resolution.
“This is not a game,” he said to Rep. Pete Sessions (TX), Chairman of the Rules Committee. “You don’t get extra points for being fast.”
Sharing because if I have to look at that face that closeup, you do too.
The president’s supporters enjoy him because he frequently “speaks his mind,” especially on Twitter, openly and without regard for “political correctness” or the “truth.” On Thursday, however, the carefree tweeting style of the president and his aides were in clear and unambiguous conflict with statutory prohibitions…
they are just stripping away everything that gives non-millionaires/billionaire a real fighting chance. smfh.
Guys next year we have serious work to do. Get out and elect an anti trump house and senate, thats step 1.
DO IT
I watch two of my students go around and collect the extra sandwiches and milks leftover from after school to bring home so that they have food for dinner and breakfast. They have done this every week for the last three years.
I’ve even seen former students do this when they come to school to visit. Even growing teenagers don’t want extra cheese sandwiches unless they’re really hungry.
This is not hyperbole. After school programs are saving the lives of children. No child should be going hungry in this country.
Great, this lady is going to make all of our computers jealous. You can't tell me computers aren't like cats, and will want something someone else has, even when that something will kill them.
ARE computers flammable? I feel like they’re probably not?
This depends entirely on how much uncooked rice you have shoved in the floppy drive.
…Ok I feel like there’s a story behind this.
There is, yes!
After I quit school, I worked briefly as a computer repair tech. Going to people’s houses or businesses, fixing their various bugs, etc. While I would rapidly decide that field was not for me because of the one businessman who needed multiple “cup holder” replacements (you know, you push that button and that plastic holder thing with the hole comes out … I think it is technically call the “Cup Depository Tray”? CD, right?), he is not the most memorable encounter. No, that goes to one of the nicest ladies I ever encountered on this job.
She called us out because her computer had stopped turning on, and wouldn’t even make a noise when she tried to push the button. One day it had just shut off while she was using it and stubbornly refused to come back on, and could we please see what we could do to fix it?
So I go out there expecting some wire had gotten loose and there was no power getting to the machine or something. It happens sometimes if a machine gets banged around enough, or if someone fiddles with it wrong or is careless putting it together, computers are finicky like that. But as soon as I get to the box itself, I know it isn’t that simple, because of the smell. I have smelled computers with dust all up in them, that isn’t uncommon, but this is just vile and, more importantly, entirely new.
I am now more curious than afraid, so I open it up and there is a mass of goopy off-white mush spilling all over everything, parts of it are burnt to circuits, there is almost nothing untouched by the mass. But by far the worst off is the A drive. That is the obvious source of the problem, and the thing has … not “exploded”, but more burst from the pressure of whatever this stuff was.
So I ask the woman if she had used the floppy drive recently and noticed any problems, and she says no, not until the whole machine stopped working. But I come to find out what she used it for.
Turns out this woman was a devout Shinto practitioner and believed that her computer (among other things) had a soul that needed to be respected an honored. Which, fair enough. But she chose to honor it by feeding it a grain of rice every time she had to wake it up and disturb its rest. For years this kindhearted woman had been putting a grain of rice into the A drive every time she turned it on or woke the thing up from sleep mode. And eventually that was enough pressure to break the drive and start spilling out onto the internal bits, where the heat melted it all and caused no end of problems.
After that it was a simple enough thing to explain that there are better ways to honor and take care of your computer’s needs, what with virus scans or defrags and the like, but that poor device was entirely lost.
I guess the moral of the story here is that you can try your best to be good and still wind up hurting people? Maybe? Or else it’s that even the most horrible out of context problem isn’t nearly as frustrating as one middle aged jerk who won’t freaking listen when you tell him that CD trays are not for your dang coffee cups!
The end~
ok but im so taken with the fact that she was feeding her computer to apologise for waking it up?? thats so sweet????
Any capitalist that says “socialism is only good on paper,” but deflects any critique of capitalism by saying, “no you’re talking about Corporatism,” owes me the excess value of my labor.
