Robert S @rgs@qoto.org

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Resistance against trans genocide often looks and feels like this: one, lone trans woman, standing alone, with no allies around her, her voice silenced, her dead mic raised defiantly above her head, her terrified eyes begging someone to listen, to help, to stop this madness.

If you're cis, I'd like you to read this article and learn that Missouri is about to enact a full ban on transition healthcare for transgender people. The deadline is April 27.

No cisgender person I've shared this with has had any idea that this is a ban, not a regulation - the requirements are impossible to meet.

I would also ask that you share this information with three other cis people today, preferably ones in or near #Missouri .

Thank you.

https://gizmodo.com/missouri-trans-gender-affirming-care-ban-adults-order-1850337858

Missouri, my home state, the state that I was born and raised in…has made me illegal.
Gender-affirming care for adults has been banned in an executive order by the state’s attorney general.
My project, The Eternal Yard Sale and now City of Eminence has always been about trans and queer characters that have lost their home universes. That is no longer a metaphor for me.

I cannot go home.

But more pressingly, thousands of trans people in Missouri are now waking up to find that their prescriptions are void. Their surgeries cancelled. The way that they feel comfortable in their bodies ripped away. Their pursuit of happiness hamstrung.
This will not be forgotten.
The City of Eminence stands as a beacon of hope, but also a warning:
WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY
WE WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE SHINE

San Francisco's decision to delay Algebra for all students until the 9th grade in the name of "equity," is a really bad one. Black parents didn't ask for this, and this strategy won't achieve the equity that they're looking for.

Hard to accept: A lot of "anti-woke" people believe that being woke is all just a lot of bad decisions like this. This belief is due to framing by the far-right: any bad policy is "woke." I help them understand that Black families don't want this and didn't ask for it.

The scandal is far bigger than we thought. Just how deep does the rot with Justice Thomas go? And what historical precedent is there for how to deal with it? Importantly, can we seek to hold him accountable in any meaningful way today? That’s today’s topic. https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/doubting-thomas?sd=pf

I feel like it's worth reminding people that Citizens United, during which Justice Thomas, we have learned, was very obviously on the take, was a 5-4 vote.

Tennessee speeding right along, as expected -

“The Tennessee House of Representatives today voted to allow government discrimination against interracial and same sex marriages. Republican assurances that cases like Loving v. Virginia and Lawrence v. Texas were safe after the Dobbs decision were just shot to Hell.”

Reminder for anyone who hasn’t followed me for a while, what the Republicans are trying to do is establish a White Supremacist ChristoFascist state.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/12/2163618/-Tennessee-House-Votes-To-Allow-State-Discrimination-Against-Interracial-And-Same-Sex-Marriages

“This is a ringing victory for democracy… The government cannot tell citizens what they can or can’t read. Our nation was founded on the free exchange of ideas, and banning books you disagree with is a direct attack on our most basic liberties.”

Yes! https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/us/texas-book-ban-removed-library-replaced-judge/index.html Judge orders books removed from Texas public libraries due to LGBTQ and racial content must be returned within 24 hours

I finally noticed that the drive-through ATM for my bank has braille writing.

I guess it could be for the visually-impaired in the back seat on the driver's side.

If he gets to be President, Ron DeSantis would have to deal with the likes of China and Russia. He just got outplayed by Disney.

The unprecedented thing is the Republican Party nominating a career criminal for president and letting him continue to lead the party after launching the closest thing America has ever seen to a coup.

The AI moratorium letter only fuels AI hype. It repeatedly presents speculative, futuristic risks, ignoring the version of the problems that are already harming people. It distracts from the real issues and makes it harder to address them. The letter has a containment mindset analogous to nuclear risk, but that’s a poor fit for AI. It plays right into the hands of the companies it seeks to regulate. By @sayashk and me. https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/a-misleading-open-letter-about-sci

Just sayin': We wrote a whole paper in late 2020 (Stochastic Parrots, 2021) pointing out that this head-long rush to ever larger language models without considering risks was a bad thing. But the risks and harms have never been about "too powerful AI".

Instead: They're about concentration of power in the hands of people, about reproducing systems of oppression, about damage to the information ecosystem, and about damage to the natural ecosystem (through profligate use of energy resources).

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