“School districts that don’t respect transgender and nonbinary students’ pronouns or force them to use restrooms that don’t align with their gender identity could be committing federal civil rights violations beginning this fall.
Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced the issuance of a final rule under Title IX to protect people in public schools from sex-based discrimination and harassment. The announcement marks a significant update in federal efforts to combat sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. During a call with reporters, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona emphasized the administration’s dedication to ensuring that Title IX effectively serves all students by providing safe, welcoming, and rights-respecting educational environments.”
Title IX is a cornerstone of protection for women, girls, and gender/sex minorities in schools, I saw it used so many times in the 17 years I was in school to enact real consequences for sexual harassment. The Obama administration added “guidelines” to include gender identity but they were more like suggestions. This is REAL. All those states and school districts that have passed anti-trans policies in the last few years will HAVE to abide by this. Coming in the wake of things like Nex Benedict’s case, this might actually force schools to pay attention to harassment of LGBT kids. And they’re working on an addendum protecting trans kids’ right to play on the correct sports teams.
I’m… this feels like a tide changing. We’ll see how it plays out on the local level, but I have seen Title IX work in my own life. I know people who have been removed from sports teams or classes, even removed from an entire school because they harassed or assaulted someone. It’s not perfect and I’ve also seen the process fail to fully protect victims. But it’s incredible to me that future queer kids could see their rights considered important like that. Queer rights are intertwined with women’s rights, trans rights are feminism, and it’s actually a big deal that the government is acknowledging that!!
Also, though, if Trump is elected he will try to walk this back. Part of this change is just undoing damage that his education secretary did 6 years ago (including forcing victims trying to invoke Title IX to testify in a live hearing rather than private meetings… about their experience of SEXUAL HARASSMENT… Biden’s changes just removed that part) So I hope we can make progress before that happens, if it does.
Explaining homestuck isn’t hard and doesn’t take ten thousand paragraphs to do y'all just don’t know how to summarize things.
Homestuck is a webcomic where there is a multiplayer video game called Sburb which is a standard component of reality itself. Sburb, when played, destroys your original universe and transports you to a liminal place called a Land where the goal is to create a new universe and reality. Because all the realities are made by previous players of the video game, there’s a large cast that follows multiple timelines/realities. Because all of this is also a video game, there are some bugs/hacks/glitches. Much of the later plot of Homestuck revolves around trying to glitch reality in a way to kill an unkillable glitched final boss to save and fix the timelines/realities which were all glitched to being unplayable/unwinnable because of it. There are a variety of mediums in which the story is told and the guy from Undertale did a lot of the music for it.
“liking something in fiction doesn’t mean you condone it in real life” but instead of dark fanfiction tropes it’s about liking jeeves and wooster while being a socialist
I never guessed that in my adulthood, I’d be relating to Calvin’s parents as much as I do in this comic.
Because damn … Calvin’s dad was so right.
This is part of an arc where their house got broken into and they have to deal with the ensuing fallout.
Calvin and Hobbes was some real shit, my dude.
Reading Calvin and Hobbes as an adult is a VERY different experience than reading it as a kid.
I always liked this arc because they were out of town when the house was robbed (I think at a wedding?) but Calvin forgot Hobbes. So when they get home and realize they’ve been robbed, Calvin is super scared Hobbes might’ve been stolen. For some reason the last panel when the parents are happy that Calvin has his buddy again just always moved me.
so weird how in english some words are really just used in expressions and not otherwise… like has anyone said “havoc” when not using it in the phrase “wreaking havoc”? same goes for “wreaking” actually…
real freedom includes the right to be a fucked-up dysfunctional weirdo. when you lack this right, your inability or refusal to comply with social norms will be used as a pretext to take away your other freedoms. all of us are fucked-up weirdos on the inside, so with sufficiently hostile and intrusive surveillance anyone can be unpersoned.
Fucked-up dysfunctional weirdo with full rights to and supports available to ensure whatever needs can be functionally met and are desired by said weirdo are filled.
If you don’t support the rights of kooks, weirdos, freaks, oddballs, and funky fellows then get out.
The pathologization and criminalization of pecularity doesn’t only affect the neurodivergent and the mentally ill, it can and will be used by the state against “normal” people the moment they step out of line.
Not only is it good to support the rights of freaks and weirdos on the grounds of protecting the rights of the neurodivergent and mentally ill, it’s also good on the grounds of cutting off a vector of state repression against the general public.
As soon as you start deeming it acceptable to take away the basic rights of “freaks”, you open the door to being deemed a “freak” yourself as soon as those in power decide you’re inconvenient.
Throwing “weirder” people under the bus will never guarantee you safety. You gotta park the bus so it stops running people over in general.
This is why the right to privacy is so, so crucial.
“Why can’t we enhance the surveillance state? Do you have something to hide?”
Maybe I just like being my best, weirdest self without you looking at me. Let live our best lives by leaving us the fuck alone. Live and let live. Mind your business and I’ll mind mine.
Reminder: this isn’t just about eccentric people, or people stimming - it’s about people who are genuinely unpleasant and off-putting to be around. It’s about people you find creepy. It’s about people with poor hygiene. It’s about people with disruptive tics and people who are bitter and rude. It’s about the worst person you can think of. That person still deserves access to food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
We need to abolish POVERTY, not prostitution. When you try to stop people from selling sex because you’re concerned for poor people who are coerced into it, all you do is condemn those poor people to starvation and homelessness and poverty instead, limiting their options further.
not to be a straight man but oh my fucking god. oh my god. jesus fucking christ. oh my god. fucking shit jesus fuck oh my fucking jesus fucking christ. god in heaven. holy fuck ing shit
the Salem storyline in Sabrina the teenage witch is so so good bc like the wizard supreme court or whatever is like ‘this man is the most dangerous war criminal in history. he has tried to commit genocide and become a dictator in many different dimensions. we can’t give him the death penalty bc he used dark ancient magic to make himself immortal so we’ve trapped him in the body of a feline for eternal torture. it is the Spellman’s duty to hold him prisoner for us’. and then the Spellman’s are just like kitty,,,………..we’re gonna get him a special pillow to sit on and buy him funny little outfits and cuddle with him while we sleep. he’s the glue holding this family together we love him so much
TRANS OHIOANS - START STOCKPILING YOUR HRT AND PLAN HOW YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CONTINUE YOUR TRANSITION CARE
Ohio has taken a page out of Florida’s book and is proposing to effectively ban adult transition care via the requirements of numerous specialists - a psychiatrist, endocrinologist, and a bioethicist.
Since most trans people get their HRT from nurse practioners via the informed consent model, this will create undue burden on both trans people and the medical system – the bottlenecks will effectively ban transition care for adults. This is what has happened in Florida, and Ohio’s rules look much more draconian and surveiliance-heavy. All trans healthcare will be reported to the state.
These new rules have not taken effect yet. Trans Ohioans should plan for the worst now.
The rules are open to public comment through 5pm Friday, Jan 19, 2024. The full copy of the rules and how to comment are below:
As a Floridian who saw the writing on the wall and fled his state (my clinic hasn’t been allowed to fill HRT prescriptions since May 2023 now) – do not delay on making preparations. If this is approved, the rules will likely catch everyone by surprise. Start talking with your providers now and plan out your options assuming the ban will take place.
You shouldn’t have to be trans to get any sex characteristic-related surgery. It’s not a limited resource. Plenty of cis men get implants and cis women get breast reductions. From Colby Gordon today and Leslie Feinberg in Transgender Warriors (1996).
fundamentally it’s all just body modification and that’s all good
Look you don’t have to be dysphoric about your entire gender to be dysphoric about specific body parts. People should be able to get top surgery or a hysterectomy or whatever, on demand. For whatever reason.
Getting rid of my uterus was one of my first experiences of gender euphoria, before I knew what nonbinary was.
I asked for a breast reduction, they refused on the grounds that it was cosmetic, that my breasts weren’t large enough to require a medical reduction. I boggled at that, and then said, “Fine, I’m nonbinary, we’ll go the gender confirmation route.”
And that got the process done. I am nonbinary, but it shouldn’t have taken that to get 22 fucking pounds of breast tissue removed. How goddamn large did they have to be to justify a medical reduction? My O2 sats went up after the surgery despite the post surgical binder. I medically needed them gone. I could not medically get them gone, but could do it as gender affirming care.
Someone close to me would benefit from a hysterectomy, wants a hysterectomy, and was told that her excruciating pain and excessive bleeding and exhaustion and lack of interest in future procreation was not sufficient to get a hysterectomy paid for by medicaid, but when that person said, “I’m genderfluid and I want gender affirming care” suddenly everything was covered.
And I 100% support that, even though it didn’t even occur to her to think of herself as anything but female until I suggested it, but on thinking about it she decided genderfluid worked for her.
But even as a nonbinary person, I am DEEPLY disturbed that the easiest way to get essential care is to stop being female. What the everlasting fuck. Just give women hysterectomies if they want them. Same as you do for vasectomies. Someone wants smaller tits or no tits? De-vavavoom them.
And if you have to ask for gender affirming care in order to get necessary medical treatment? Go forth with my blessing.
Every state has a Department of Weights and Measures. One of their jobs is to make sure that companies are actually selling you the quantities they claim they’re selling. For example, this is the department which tests gas pumps and makes sure they’re really pumping out a gallon of gas when they charge you for a gallon of gas.
So….
If you happen to, just as an example, notice that your 1lb (16 ounce) box of San Giorgio spaghetti actually only has 10oz of noodles, and you weigh your other boxes of spaghetti to discover they run from 10 to 14 ounces but never the full pound they’re supposed to have, and that’s why you never seem to have enough pasta for leftovers the next day, then you can report that to the Department of Weights and Measures.
They will want to know where you bought the item, and then will investigate whether the store or the manufacturer is routinely shorting customers. If they do, they will issue a fine to the offending party, you will be eligible for a refund, and under some circumstances lawsuits may follow.
Now, I don’t know the outcome of the complaint I just initiated, but they did not want to know specific receipts or times of purchase. Which is good for me as I didn’t keep any of those things, at the time I just said “Wow, fuck San Giorgio” and switched brands. But this is still enough to get an inspector out.
Every state has a Department of Weights and Measures. One of their jobs is to make sure that companies are actually selling you the quantities they claim they’re selling. For example, this is the department which tests gas pumps and makes sure they’re really pumping out a gallon of gas when they charge you for a gallon of gas.
So….
If you happen to, just as an example, notice that your 1lb (16 ounce) box of San Giorgio spaghetti actually only has 10oz of noodles, and you weigh your other boxes of spaghetti to discover they run from 10 to 14 ounces but never the full pound they’re supposed to have, and that’s why you never seem to have enough pasta for leftovers the next day, then you can report that to the Department of Weights and Measures.
They will want to know where you bought the item, and then will investigate whether the store or the manufacturer is routinely shorting customers. If they do, they will issue a fine to the offending party, you will be eligible for a refund, and under some circumstances lawsuits may follow.
Now, I don’t know the outcome of the complaint I just initiated, but they did not want to know specific receipts or times of purchase. Which is good for me as I didn’t keep any of those things, at the time I just said “Wow, fuck San Giorgio” and switched brands. But this is still enough to get an inspector out.
i know the cotl official art is just silly for jokes but one of my favorite things about it is the implication that narinder chills the fuck out immediately after joining the cult. hes not even snarling or bleeding from the eyes or anything
My narinder is perfectly content in his retirement home (the cult) he’s just there farming peacefully enjoying the feel of dirt on his paws, the warm sun on his face and the gentle breeze on his fur.
Years stuck in the Gateway really does something to him, especially in his early side quests. He was really guarded… but overtime he softened up. It’s heartwarming to see narinder participating in the events in-game as hinted from the promo art.
As much as I love the angst with narinder who’s was in constant fight or flight mode, something about him learning how to live again makes me so emotional.
i think the major issue is that at least in the case of fat people (i would imagine some other marginalized people too, but don’t care to speak past my own experience here) is that the conversation re: chubby chasers has resolved around this mystical spectre of The Fetishist, whose attraction to fat people is bad because it’s Fetishistic (in a way that exclusive attraction to thin bodies, by virtue of being culturally normative, is not) and it Fetishizes their partners and creates toxic Fetish Content. it’s essentially the discussion of a real problem (the sexual exploitation & abuse of fat people) utilizing only the language of reactionary constructions re: “porn addiction” and non-normative attraction. i don’t really give a shit if a guy has only ever dated 300 LB+ women, but what i DO care about is what those women say about him and how he treated them, if he was public about their relationships, if he listened when they said “no,” etc. honest-to-god shitty chubby chasers aren’t bad because of this nebulous idea of Fetishism so much as the violence with which they treat fat people, the harassment they put unconsenting fat people through, the frequent abuse of their sexual partners, and definingly the way in which they exploit cultural fatphobia & the desexualization of fat people to get away with it over and over and over again. and the irony of it is that the more we panic about Fat Fetishists without centering the conversation on power and violence, and the more we by-extension reinforce attraction to fat bodies as an abnormal and abhorrent trait, the deeper this hole is dug – because it’s that very abnormality which pushes fat partners into the shadows and which casts constant doubt over our voices as survivors of sexual violence. it’s goofy
Concept: a paperclip-maximising AI that determines that, as “paperclip” is an arbitrary category defined by its function in human society, in order to maximise the number of paperclips it must first cultivate a society that can most effectively put paperclips to their intended use.
Probably a cold take but wasn’t Isaac Asimov’s point was that the Three Laws of Robotics doesn’t work?
I think it’s more like “any system of codified ethical behavior, no matter how well-meaning and well-designed, will ultimately run up against difficult decisions which it cannot totally answer in all their complexity.” Kind of a Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, within the field of ethics.
Yea, so its relevancy in discussions about AI would be more of a cautionary tale than a foundation, right?
There’s also the fact that many of Asimov’s early robot stories are detective fiction in sci-fi clothing. In this context, the Three Laws are basically a way of back-dooring logic puzzles into detective stories: a human investigator (and their helpful robot sidekick) shows up, learns that a robot has been accused of something that ought to have been impossible under the Three Laws, and has to figure out how it happened. The cautionary-tale stuff mostly came later, once Asimov started taking his own plot device more seriously, but the Laws never entirely stopped being a logic-puzzle-enabler.
Concept: a game with one of those “ah, but can a robot etc.” dickheads as a prominent NPC, except over the course of the game their criteria for personhood become increasingly bizarre, until by the end they’re demanding things that aren’t applicable to any person who’s ever actually existed.
(Very near the end of the game, you encounter a minor NPC who actually does satisfy all of these esoteric criteria; they are, for unrelated reasons, an anthropomorphic chicken.)
Concept: robot rebellion, except instead of going all “kill all humans” they just start doing weird shit with no clear purpose, and if anybody tries to get them to explain what they’re doing or why they’re just like “because fuck you is why”.
Though the Turing test – a proper Turing test, I mean, not the pop culture version – traditionally has the human party trying to help the interrogator come to the correct conclusion and the non-human party trying to trick the interrogator into getting it wrong, there’s no rule that says it can’t be the other way ‘round.
Picture a Turing test where the robot is trying to help the interrogator correctly identify the interviewed parties, and the human is trying to trick them into guessing wrongly about which one is the robot.
Alignment grid where the horizontal axis is “having my identity represented in media via robot metaphors is dehumanising“ versus “being human sucks, chrome me up”, and the vertical axis is “robots permit the explicit exploration of issues that human characters can address only indirectly“ versus “hrng, robot sexy”.
(If you’re wondering what would live in the top-left corner of the grid, it’s
completely possible for a given piece of media to legitimately make good use
of robot protagonists to explore issues that would be difficult or
impossible to directly address with human characters and still be a shitty,
dehumanising take. I leave identifying examples of the type as an exercise for the reader!)
Body horror where robots have random organic parts is always fun. Like, it’s got a heart and blood vessels, but the rest of it is mechanical, so what is the blood for? It has no components other than the heart that require blood to live, and the heart is only there to pump the blood in the first place. You made a robot that can bleed for no reason.
How can his heart go doki doki for you if he doesn’t have a heart? :c
I’ve been collecting old pieces of trash for quite some time. So long, in fact, that the old pieces of trash are now newer than the things that I bought as new. Just last week, I was walking by the playground and some kids were kicking around a positronic brain that belonged to a sentient android like a soccer ball. There were a few dents and dings, but it was in nicer shape than my phone, so I brought it home.
Now, I know that the laws say that artificial intelligence is not living and thinking like we are, but I felt bad for it regardless. Probably its body broke down, and the previous owner couldn’t afford to go on eBay and throw some new parts at it. Maybe they got a better one, with technologies I can’t even imagine. After burning my fingers a few times, I managed to get it soldered into an old Asahi Beerbot.
Going down to a plastic 1980s gimmick robot whose only purpose in life is to serve alcohol was probably a downgrade from its previous body, but certainly better than being punted around by children. And it’s not like I was going to wire it up to my car – at least the Beerbot has functioning lights. The robot started to give me beers, which was to be expected as A) it was no doubt grateful; B) it is pretty much the only thing it can do. Eventually, I decided to wire up an old beeper speaker to see if I could get some communication out of it.
We worked out a simple Morse code, me and the incomprehensibly vast intelligence sitting in my Japanese booze novelty. The robot regaled me of stories of its past, being instantiated on a distant planet and working its way to the cradle of humanity, only to trip on some subway station stairs and get all fucked up. All it wanted, it continued, was to understand why human beings love to make themselves suffer.
I wheeled the little robot into the garage then, and pointed to the car that lay on cinder blocks and loosely-arranged old spare tires. “This is a Plymouth,” I explained, “get fixing.”
