Between Two Lungs

Florida passed Amendment 2, which will raise minimum wage to $15/hour by 2026

South Dakota, Montana, Arizona and New Jersey all passed an amendment that legalized marijuana 

Utah will now be removing gendered language in the Utah Constitution and will replace it with gender-neutral language

California passed Prop 17, which restores voting rights to previously imprisoned citizens

Delaware elected Sarah McBride, the first ever openly trans state senator

Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones are the first ever openly gay black members of congress

Cori Bush is the first ever woman of color to win a seat in Congress in Missouri

Mauree Turner became the first non-binary state lawmaker in America and the first Muslim member of the Oklahoma state house

Oregon has become the first state to decriminalize all drugs (small amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs will have lesser punishments, similar to traffic tickets, and no jail time.)

Kim Jackson is the first out LGBTQ+ state senator in Georgia

UPDATED WITH MORE GOOD NEWS:

Shevrin D. Jones is Florida’s first opnely LGBTQ+ state senator

Jabari Brisport became New York’s first gay Black member of the house

Arizona flipped blue for the first time in 24 years

Michele Rayner-Goolsby became the first Black LGBTQ woman in the Florida Legislature

Voters in Colorado overwhelmingly rejected Prop 115, a state ballot measure that would have banned abortions after a fetus reaches 22 weeks gestational age. In rejecting the initiative, Colorado remains one of the most progressive states in the country on reproductive rights

Arizona will now send two Democrats to the Senate for the first time since 1951, thanks to the win of ex-astronaut Captain Mark Kelly.

Democrats have flipped the senate seat in Colorado, with the win of former Gov. John Hickenlooper

Mississippi is removing the confederate flag from their symbology

Marie Newman, who has been titled ‘a leader of the pro-choice movement’, will now represent Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District in Congress

Nevada became the first state to protect same-sex marriage in it’s constitution

Immigrant rights activist and former public defender José Garza won the race for District Attorney of Travis County, Texas

Michigan passed Proposal 20-2, which requires police to have a search warrant to access a person’s electronic data and electronic communications.

EVEN MORE UPDATES:

Washington approved Referendum 90, which requires all school districts to provide age appropriate, comprehensive sex ed at all grade levels

Colorado passed the first paid family/ medical leave program

Mississippi passed an ammendment that legalized medical marijuana

Denver overwhelmingly voted to pass Ballot Measure 2J. which lifts the city’s more than 30-year-old ban on pit bulls

New Mexico became the first state to elect all women of color to our House delegation

Vermont elected the state’s first openly transgender legislator, Taylor Small

Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, all won re-election in the House

Nebraska passed a constitutional amendment to the state constitution that closes the loophole of the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment that allowed slavery as a punishment for crimes

Rhode Island passed a measure to rename the state, officially naming it Rhode Island and not The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, due to connections to slavery

Oregon passed measure 109, the first state to legalize psilocybin (mushrooms) for mental heath treatments

Hawai’i elected native Hawaiian Kaiali’i “Kai” Kahele, a Democrat, to the House of Representatives. He is one of 6 Native members of the House who will be sworn in in January

The Cuban crocodiles are among the most intelligent crocodiles/reptiles known to us. Their ability to learn has made them, for a long time, extremely interesting for zoos to have and study. This presence in Zoos and crocodile parks allowed scientists to note one of the most remarkable behaviors in any reptile: Pack-hunting. 

At Gatorland, in Florida, USA, the fact that these crocodiles were mostly kept together allowed this observation to be made. But why would a crocodile, that lives on an island and is arguably one of the largest animals on it, need to hunt in a group? Probably because it hasn’t always been the biggest. 

125,000 years ago, in Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean, lived a genus of ground sloths that might have constituted prime prey for these mostly-terrestrial crocodiles. The largest of these sloths was the Cuban species, Megalocnus rodens, which reached a weight of nearly 90 kg. Dwarfed by its South American distant relative Megatherium americanum, it still constituted a large grazer of the archipelago. 

… I don’t think our friends or family knew, yet they had a very good suspicion. Phil and I often talked about it, only he said, well, he says, as long as we love each other, what’s it to do with other people? And that was the true situation.

Text: First person account as told by Gerald, born 1892, Norfolk, England.  Excerpted from Between the Acts: Lives of Homosexual Men 1885-1967, Jeffrey Weeks and Kevin Porter (eds)

Bison being released into Banff National Park for the first time in 140 years        

Black fallow deer recently seen in Baryczy Valley in Poland                           

From Olympus

Photo: Ana Martinez 

Styling and Creative Direction: Mario Ville (Kattaca) 

Makeup design and make up artist: Lewis Amarante for Kryolan and Pankr0 

Makeup and hairdressing: Sergio Jiménez 

Chinese bronze sword with turquoise studded, gold inlaid rock crystal hilt, Warring States Period, 4th-2nd century BC