humanist + humorist

Skidding into 2025 with an aggressive effort to clear out my saved links, one broad theme at a time. (Did the same thing about a year ago, let's see if I can keep this up as an annual tradition.)

Pre-2024: "On October 6, 2022, President Biden issued a presidential proclamation that pardoned many federal and D.C. offenses for simple marijuana possession offenses. [Biden's] December 2023 proclamation adds to the list of pardoned offenses the following: offenses under federal law for attempted possession of marijuana; additional offenses under the D.C. Code for simple marijuana possession; and violations of certain sections of the Code of Federal Regulations involving simple marijuana possession and use."

"You may be too young to remember this, but Biden was one of the first major federal-level politicians to support gay marriage, and he dragged Obama along kicking and screaming to the finish line. This administration is one of the strongest allies the LGBTQ community has had. Ever." With receipts.

October: "Attacks targeting American public schools over LGBTQ+ rights and education about race and racism cost those schools an estimated $3.2bn in the 2023-24 school year, according to a new report by education professors from four major American universities."

November: "...most of the country is awash in right-wing propaganda all the time. For the olds, it’s Fox News, conservative radio and Sinclair-owned local news; for the youths, it’s the right-wing manosphere podcasts and streams that Trump so assiduously courted all campaign long [...] It helps explain Biden’s prodigious unpopularity, despite passing a ton of legislation that not only polls well, but has meaningfully improved people’s lives."

December: "President Biden on Thursday announced he is commuting the prison sentences for nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others in what the White House said was the largest act of clemency in a single day in modern presidential history." (The article undercut this with a "...yeah but so what" in the headline.)

"President Joe Biden on Monday said he was commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on federal death row to life without parole, taking the unprecedented step ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, whose incoming administration is widely expected to restart executions."

January: "I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now."

2022:

“A flight attendant for SpaceX said Elon Musk asked her to “do more” during a massage, documents show. The billionaire founder exposed his penis to her and offered to buy her a horse, according to claims in a declaration.”

December 2023:

“The lead contamination in recalled cinnamon applesauce pouches that potentially poisoned at least 65 children may have been intentional, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday.” Not intentional poisoning, but intentional cost-cutting.

“Bar:PM’s other co-owner, James Pence, spoke to the RFT this morning and said that it was the police who came at bar staff aggressively, even beyond the fact they drove an SUV into their business.”

“The woman referred to as “Witness 1” in Taake’s FBI affidavit has previously recalled how “comically minimal ego-stroking” from her led Trump supporters to give her information about their activities on Jan. 6. […] Her strategy, she said, was to say, “Wow, crazy, tell me more,” on repeat until guys gave her enough to send their information to the FBI.”

“It’s an open secret in fashion. Unsold inventory goes to the incinerator; excess handbags are slashed so they can’t be resold; perfectly usable products are sent to the landfill to avoid discounts and flash sales. The European Union wants to put an end to these unsustainable practices. On Monday, it banned the destruction of unsold textiles and footwear.”

January 2024:

“I’m a pediatrician, so I didn’t expect to be of great use in a war zone. I’m disheartened and really disturbed to say that I had many, many pediatric patients who were war-wounded, burned orphans, traumatic amputations, and that is something different than what I witnessed in Iraq, or elsewhere.”

“The BBC has now spoken to these young women about the escalation in suspicious activity they observed, the reports they filed, and what they saw as a lack of response from senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers. […] To some of them it became a dark joke: who would be on duty when the inevitable attack came?”

March 2024:

Remarks by President Biden at the Gridiron Club and Foundation Dinner: “Our big plan to cancel student debt doesn’t apply to everyone. Just yesterday, a defeated-looking man came up to me and said, “I’m being crushed by debt. I’m completely wiped out.” I said, “Sorry, Donald, I can’t help you.””

1800-year-old Roman carvings in Hadrian's Wall: "The phallus was a symbol of good luck to Ancient Romans." Suuuure, that's definitely the reason someone drew a dick on a wall.

Via Wikimedia Commons: "Otto von Habsburg, Crown Prince of Austria (1912-2011)" taking a selfie in the mirror as a teenager. In the 1920's. But hey, kids these days, right?

...and now, without further ado, queer & trans links from across multiple centuries. The language and the terms change, but the people have always been here.

"Born in Maryland around 1858, Swann endured slavery, the Civil War, racism, police surveillance, torture behind bars, and many other injustices. But beginning in the 1880s, he not only became the first American activist to lead a queer resistance group; he also became, in the same decade, the first known person to dub himself a “queen of drag”—or, more familiarly, a drag queen."

"I originally identified as a cross-dresser. It was in an online support group for other cross-dressers that somebody used the word bi-gendered. And it was like the lightbulbs went on, the choir of angels was singing, and the light was shining down on me. " Profiles of 5 older nonbinary adults, talking about their journeys.

"Trans people are often mocked for being confused and emotional in regards to the choices we make with our bodies. For the sake of the trans community, I feel like I’m supposed to know what I want and who I am. But there are no roadmaps for me to follow."

"PSA for yanquis, the -e suffixes for gender neutrality were brought up by Latin American native Spanish and Portuguese speakers to make our heavily gendered languages truly gender neutral and inclusive!!! It wasn’t created by some random gringue on the internet, but by ACTUAL LATIN AMERICAN NATIVE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE SPEAKERS SO OUR LANGUAGES ANSWER TO OUR NEEDS AND REALITIES!!!"

"I think that we can—we must—hold both of our experiences at the same time, OG: Your pain and also mine. The hurt of older generations of queers who feel disrespected by younger movement builders, and the hurt of younger generations who feel that older activists weren’t there for us. We can accept the truth of both of these, as well as the truth that younger and older queers have always benefited from each others’ fight for survival and freedom."

The Doctor Who crew have been releasing some heartwarming bonus content for your quarantine entertainment. Thirteen weighs in: "Listen to doctors. They've got your back." And the sequel, "I just WhatsApped a Cyberman." And a newly-released short about Sarah Jane's funeral brings together a bunch of DW/SJA actors filming their lines from home -- including a reference to Tegan and Nyssa as "a couple", and the reveal that Luke married his college roommate Sanjay. Good job, canon.

March 28: "Thorn’s 12-week isolation was not at home but in a London hospital in 1995, a different time and a different infectious disease — tuberculosis — but a situation similar to what many are just entering. He wants to describe his experiences now to help people in isolation and to offer practical and psychological advice gleaned from the hardest lessons of his life: how to cope when human connection is siphoned off."

March 31: "When we talked, I was still so confident that this response was gonna look like the 2009 [H1N1] pandemic response, which was a good response. Initially, it had some problems… but once they realized what was going on, they kicked into gear and everything went pretty well. One thing that's super different is that the CDC in 2009 provided central leadership. They were proactively reaching out to state, regional, and local Health officials saying, ‘Here's what you need to be doing. Here's what this should look like.’ And people did it. I am scared and enraged because there's no central authority here. I don't understand what's going on."

April 8: "The institutions that have their shipments disrupted get no clear information what happened, on what legal authority it was done or whether they can expect to get any of the goods back or be made whole from a federal stockpile. [...] Many of the hospital systems and executives insisted that the Times allow them to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation from the federal government." So, hey, if you were wondering what new lows this administration could find to sink to: they're stealing shipments of personal protective equipment that were purchased by US citizens.

April 9: "All right, but apart from the pandemic response team, the pandemic playbook, the CDC expert in China, and the transition training scenario literally involving a mock pandemic, what did Obama ever do to stop this?"



April 11 (NYT): "Health care workers who have fallen ill and bounced back fill the hospital shifts of colleagues who are still at risk. Many who have overcome the infection, including some of America’s newly unemployed, donate blood to biotech companies and researchers seeking to manufacture treatments from their antibodies."

April 11 (NYT): "The remaining employees at Greek Peak decided to transform one of their restaurants, Trax, into a takeout and delivery operation, using the hotel kitchen to cook. After seeing pictures of empty grocery store shelves, they pivoted their business strategy again, transforming the lobby space of the hotel into a grocery store with low-cost items for the community." Businesses adapt, in good ways.

April 13 (Borowitz Report): "In order to better coördinate their efforts to combat the coronavirus, the nation’s governors are considering the extraordinary step of forming a country."