Interesting, thoughtful stories

6 Likes
5 Likes

Nice essay. Her book Laboring Women: Gender and Reproduction in the Making of New World Slavery is brilliant.

5 Likes

Our interconnected food world. The interactive maps about halfway down are pretty cool.

https://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/origin-of-crops/


@Mindysan33 ETA, since I cannot post more than two articles in a row:

A very thoughtful take on Jim Thorpe and Pop Warner.

Archive version: archive.ph

and


Archive version: archive.ph

[When my kids learned to drive, from 16-18, they drove a manual transmission. I figured it made it harder to text and drive. ]

6 Likes
5 Likes
4 Likes

The scientific community, in short, agreed there was no such thing as ROGD. But did it matter?

The paper was a turning point. While theories and rumors about something like ROGD had quietly percolated online before the paper was published, Littman’s descriptive study gave legitimacy to the concept. Soon after, it took on a life of its own. People describing themselves as “parents of ROGD kids” formed online support groups. Abigail Shrier’s anti-trans tome Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters sold more than 100,000 copies and has been promoted on extremely popular conservativepodcasts. YouTube videos peddling the theory have scored hundreds of thousands of views. Justifications for anti-trans bills, like a memo on Florida’s attempt to stop Medicaid funding for adult transition-related health care, routinely cite the study in their footnotes.

Five years later, Jay’s mom still doesn’t believe that he’s trans.

Littman believes her study has been misinterpreted, but the concept of ROGD continues to provide scientific fuel to anti-trans rhetoric and legislation, including a current wave of state laws targeting trans youth. Understanding the theory’s ascent from fringe forums to scientific journals to the halls of Congress helps clarify some of the moral panic and pernicious logic employed to restrict the autonomy and rights of trans people today. It also serves as a vivid example of how questionable science can be weaponized to achieve political goals.

12 Likes

FTA:

This can partially explain the rising numbers of trans youth, she said, adding that the dynamic particularly affects those assigned female at birth.

Is it just me, or does this also reinforce the same rhetoric conservative misogynists have historically attempted to apply to women? There’s the suggestion that they are easily influenced by others, which feeds into the idea that their stated beliefs and wishes hold less weight - because they are changeable or really come from someone / somewhere else. :angry: It does not surprise me that someone who buys into this bs won’t believe what her son tells her.

12 Likes

It’s certainly counterintuitive that these “feminists” who believe these guys are woman are arguing to end bodily autonomy.

7 Likes

Lots of hopeful details here about how The Green New Deal has been cleverly repackaged as The Inflation Reduction Act, and how a lot of U.S. cities are already moving ahead with such efforts.

10 Likes

The focus on AFAB is pure sexism. Got a vagina? Can’t be trusted to make decisions or know your own mind!

As if anyone would choose to come out as trans if they were not actually trans. Y’all have all the hate and a good dose of danger just for existing. Not an appealing prospect unless it is a person’s truth. Even then it has to be a tough decision. It shouldn’t be that way, the life of a trans person should not be any harder than a cis person. But it is reality

It really pisses me off these “ROGD” parents don’t back their kids up but not surprising. Of course it seems rapid to them. The kids had to work hard and be very brave to tell them at all. The parents have been ignoring who their child is for a good long while.

14 Likes
12 Likes
9 Likes
9 Likes

Point the JWST at that thing now!

9 Likes

I saw this episode.

Parris commits mutinee.
main-qimg-9ecc2622f5b207b99c271827f349c14a-c

8 Likes

We haven’t seen it yet, so I guess we’re just trusting that there are no aesthetically unpleasant ocean worlds? I mean, most planets look pretty nice, but there’s a lot of possibilities out there.

7 Likes

Now I’m thinking of a planet that might wind up named like the Cape of Storms. :ocean: :grimacing:

6 Likes

It’s nice to see this highlighted, but ugh.

Vodou is one of many syncretic Caribbean religions, and the particular type of syncretism was related to the native culture of the Africans, the region from Africa from which the slaves came, and the mix of other African cultures in which they found themselves in the Americas.

So, the Atlantic article does a real disservice by writing:

Tracing back to the 1600s, Vodou was founded as a unifying religion among enslaved Africans who had previously practiced different spiritual systems in their respective ethnic groups on the continent.

Vodou is not from “Africans” as if that’s some monolithic people. It developed mostly from Yoruba, Kongo, and Fon peoples blending their own religions with Catholicism. It’s pretty specific to that blend.

In Cuba, Vodu in Cuba is a blend of Fon, Ewe, and Dahomey religious beliefs and practices and arose earlier than Haitian Voudu, and likely contributed to its formation. Also in Cuba, though, Santeria is a blend of Catholicism and the native religions of the Lucumi people from what is now Nigeria. And Cuban Palo is specifically syncretic to the people of the Kongo region.

In Brazil, Yoruba people blended Catholicism with several traditional religions to get Condomblé (And you, @BakaNeko might know way more about this than me).

The Caribbean is home to a very rich blend of Catholicism and a wide variety of cultural practices that originated among the dozens and dozens of African peoples who came over as slaves.

15 Likes

Meme Reaction GIF by Robert E Blackmon

10 Likes