Watching clouds.

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.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

Don't let fear or feeling doomed stop you. If you're overwhelmed that's okay, but take a break, take a breath, talk to someone about how you're feeling, and continue.

*prolonged silence* “oh my…”

“sir…sir how will we make first contact with them? surely we…we cannot refuse this handclasping ritual, they will take it as an insult, but what vulcan would agree to such a distasteful and uncomfortable ritual??”

Bonus: here’s a screencap of Solkar doing the “my body is ready” pose right before he shakes Zefram Cochrane’s hand:

That’s why he’s so slow in doing it, and so sensual. A part of Solkar can’t believe this is happening, despite it being a perfectly logical thing to expect from a human, and the rest of him can’t believe how good it is.

I bet that if the camera zoomed in any further we would see the dilation of Solkar’s pupils and a quickly-repressed shiver of delight. Cochrane’s firm, businesslike clasp is probably (in sexual terms) being perceived as a deliciously carnal display of dominance.

Which is great experimental archaeology and all, but the latest thing I've rediscovered is that gambesons are actually, like.... necessary.... not because you need the padding (my chestplate does just fine with the foam glued inside it) but because you need arming points. My elbows have to be held up somehow, and every way I've found of attaching them to the shoulder results in reduced arm mobility. If they attach to my sleeve then nothing can go wrong

But I don't want to die of heatstroke. Which I will, if I add a gambeson into my current kit

The reason they didn't design it that way in history is because, if the gambeson doesn't go all the way down your torso, it flips/twists/folds up extremely easily. Like you'll be trying to put your shoulder armour on, and the entire back of your shoulder padding is getting crumpled and folded into a stupid annoying lump at the back of your neck, and you can't reach back there to fix it because.... drumroll... you are wearing shoulder armour. Which restricts your ability to touch the back of your shoulders. Somehow.

If you have a full t-shirt length of gambeson, the weight keeps it flat against your body and you can shrug your shoulders and stuff and it doesn't move around. If you only have it like two inches down your back, one tiny wrong move when you're putting it on and you can spend 20 minutes unstrangling yourself.

I'd say "I do this vital research so that you don't have to" but like.... If you're anything like me, you still have to. Someone else did it before me, and that did not stop me at all.

Ya'll couldn't even handle HER.