Captain Haterade

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

Experiences of discrimination, exclusion and financial precarity are not isolated phenomena but interconnected, reinforcing one another across different areas of life. Workplace hostility, limited openness, barriers in education and exposure to housing insecurity all contribute to cumulative disadvantage, particularly for those who also belong to other marginalised groups.

A key insight emerging from the data is that avoiding openness about one's LGBTIQ identity is not a protective strategy, but rather an indicator of unsafe or exclusionary environments. Individuals who conceal their identity are not less exposed to harm; on the contrary, they often face higher risks of negative experiences, including discrimination and social isolation. This highlights how stigma operates structurally, shaping behaviour while simultaneously reproducing vulnerability. Environments perceived as hostile (whether schools or workplaces) drive concealment, which in turn is associated with poorer socio-economic and well-being outcomes.

When it comes to employment status, gay men (59%) were the most likely to be in full-time paid work, and trans men the least likely (30%). Trans, non-binary and intersex respondents face a number of structural barriers, such as hiring discrimination, workplace stigma, and interruptions in their career paths (e.g. due to transition-related processes, or healthcare). Cis men are also less exposed to gender-based discrimination. All EU countries consider sexual orientation as protected grounds in employment, but only 15 include gender identity, and only nine include sex characteristics

Happy Pride, have some old man yaoi

Haven't had occasion to revisit these two idiots in a bit #becauselife, but trust that they still make up about 83% of my brainrot

--> please don't repost, but do reblog! :D

BEGINNING OF THE EPISODE:

scene 1: dean and ash have their first conversation, there's some immediate chemistry

and then dean compliments him in a way that very much reads to me as flirting, and ash peacocks a bit

scene 2 (immediately following scene 1): dean connects a bit with jo and

first jo walks by and gives him a suggestive look, to which dean responds like this. it's giving "you are dean winchester this is what you do".

they talk some, and dean halfheartedly tries to flirt before hitting pause and deciding he’s not up for putting on the act

jo describes how most hunters hit on her, dean says “what a bunch of scumbags” jo says “but not you” in an interested tone. and dean says “i guess not”, like he’s kinda surprised he’s saying it. surprised that he doesn’t feel the need or ability to put on the act.

scene 1: jo tries to flirt again, dean connects honestly with her but shuts it down

scene 2 (immediately following scene 1): ash shows up with his completed program, and dean gets much flirtier in tone

some banter happens, ash explains the program, and then ash makes a reference to a queer film

sam doesn't get the reference, and then ash flicks his eyes to dean to see if dean got the reference

dean leans in, he and ash have some real chemistry/tension while ash does more exposition, and then we finish the scene like this: dean giving a real smile, taking a distinctly (and imo intentionally on his part) suggestive swig of beer

and then as dean gets up and walks away, ash picks up dean's beer and drinks it himself

Dean/Cas for Lettie.  

I’m assuming you mean the supernatural fandom so just send me a message if I’m wrong!!

Songs to still vote for:

821 here thur 822 here thur 823 here thur 284 here thur 825 here thur

826 here sat 827 here sat 828 here sat 829 here sat 830 here sat

Showdown #811-820 - Finished.

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Ultimate Showdown 701-800 Winners / Runners Up / Admin's Choice- Finished! See the results of your voting ^

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Keep track of open polls by searching for #vote or #current All the finished polls can be found using #finished Or just check the #dylts poll tag for all polls from #593 and on For every 10th song there's also a song #showdown to vote for Extra polls are tagged as #bonus Latest song reveals

✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖

✨ Artists and titles will be revealed with the full song after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update!

A rarely seen, highly endangered Andean mountain cat and her kitten in Santiago, Chile. Bottom right: older kittens following their mother through the snow. These small felines have long, thickly ringed tails and plush coats with a striking marbled pattern, handy for traversing the chilly, wind-swept ridges of the Andes.

One of South America's rarest felines, the Andean mountain cat is traditionally considered a sacred animal by indigenous Aymara and Quechua people.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

People (even in relatively liberal intellectual communities) often traffic in this truism that our culture is 'oversexualized' and that sexually explicit content is EVERYWHERE. ALL THE TIME. It's inescapable, allegedly.

When in reality, every major social media website in existence is engaged in an all out war against the stuff. Credit card companies have attempted to refuse to process transactions based on people trying to purchase things like OnlyFans subscriptions. And SPEAKING OF ONLYFANS, that site recently went through a bunch of drama when it was considering trying to tamp down on the selling of sexually explicit content, when that is like minimum 90% of its total business.

While the MCU is a bit passe these days, it was once THEE global cultural juggernaut to end all juggernauts. And it is FAMOUSLY so aggressively devoid of any actual eroticism you'd be forgiven if you thought people in this universe are all created in science labs. (Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny, as the famous essay asserts)

Exact same with the Star Wars franchise. To such an extent that one of the most iconic and important characters in the whole thing (Anakin Skywalker) LITERALLY, canonically is a product of immaculate conception.

Capitalism is actually TERRIFIED of trying to sell us sex, and it shies away from it at almost all opportunities. (Why do you think Hollywood was so fucking blindsided by Heated Rivalry's unexpected success?) ALL the ads on porn sites are ads for other porn sites. Social media can't stop trying to free itself from the stuff completely. ALL THE MAINSTREAM AI COMPANIES (who are currently trying anything else they can think of to get people to use their products) ARE STAUNCHLY TRAINING THEIR MODELS OUT OF PROVIDING SEXUALLY EXPLICIT OUTPUTS (whether written or image-based).

Granted, you can of course still find plenty of sexually explicit content in internet and entertainment spaces if you intentionally seek it out. Plenty of it is out there, of course. But the notion that it permeates every corner of cultural world doesn't hold up to even a cursory level of scrutiny. Its ubiquity is radically overstated. You often have to navigate significant barriers to access sexually explicit content; it is often heavily targeted for censorship and, at minimum, it is often kept behind heavy structural partitioning.

late to the party for restraintstiel week but I am here hi 🧍‍♂️