from a superlame

Trigger warning for some truly fucked-up stuff.

This week, it was revealed that at least 27 people, most of them gay, were slaughtered in a single night by officials in Chechnya, Russia. A newspaper even released the names of the dead. Chechnya has reportedly been rounding up and torturing gay and bisexual men for several months.

To make matters even more real and terrifying, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov gave an interview this week where he said that gay people are devils, not people. He claims there are no LGBTQ people in Chechnya, but that if there are any, they should leave immediately. 

Kadyrov — speaking to HBO’s Real Sports, ostensibly about a wrestling league in Chechyna, a semiautonomous republic within Russia — was confronted about his nation’s imprisonment and killing of gay and bisexual men; an unknown number have been murdered. Kadyrov was furious at the questioning by reporter David Scott: “Why does he come here? What’s the point of these questions?”

Kadyrov finally answered,“We don’t have those kinds of people here… If there are there take them to Canada… Take them far from us so we don’t have them at home… To purify our blood, if there are any here, take them.”

When pushed by Scott about the reports from the tortured gay men, Kadryov responded, “They are devils. They are for sale. They are not people.”

Kadyrov — an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin — also made clear he views the U.S. as an enemy and said, “Even if our government was completely destroyed, our nuclear missiles would be automatically deployed. We will put the whole world on its knees and screw it from behind.”

Bodily autonomy is the simple but radical concept that individuals have the right to control what does and does not happen to our bodies. When we have full bodily autonomy, not only are we empowered to make decisions about our health and future – without coercion or control by others – we also have the support and resources needed to meaningfully carry out these decisions.

This bumblebee is the first bee species in the continental US listed as “endangered”

The adorably named rusty patched bumblebee just became the first bee species in the contiguous United States to be officially categorized as “endangered” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Since the late 1990s, its population has shrunk by 87%, CNN reported.

“The rusty patched bumblebee is among a group of pollinators, including the monarch butterfly, experiencing serious declines across the country,” Tom Melius, the Wildlife Service’s midwest regional director, told CNN. Read more

Vera Rubin, the woman who discovered the first evidence of dark matter, has died at 88

Vera Rubin, the astrophysicist responsible for confirming the first existence of dark matter, died on Sunday night at the age of 88.

Carnegie Institution president Matthew Scott called Rubin “a national treasure as an accomplished astronomer and a wonderful role model for young scientist.”

Rubin and her colleagues observed galaxies in the 1970s, they learned the motion of stars is a result of a “material that does not emit light and extends beyond the optical galaxy” — also known as dark matter.

Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky proposed the idea of dark matter in 1933, but Rubin’s groundbreaking work subsequently led to the confirmation of the material.

This finding is what led to the discovery that 90% of the universe is made up of dark matter, a finding some colleagues felt was overlooked and deserving of a Nobel Prize. Read more