Vincamus

But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting.  Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible.  Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible.  Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.

Christopher Wiggins at The Advocate:

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from obtaining confidential medical records belonging to transgender youth and their families, intervening just one day before federal prosecutors sought to force a California children's hospital to turn over the documents. In an emergency order issued Monday night, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts directed Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford not to produce additional records sought through a federal grand jury subpoena and barred the government from taking further action to enforce similar demands while the court considers pending motions in the case. The order came after families of transgender youth filed a renewed request for emergency relief in Z.A. v. Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, a lawsuit challenging the government's efforts to obtain patient records related to gender-affirming care. Pitts wrote that Stanford's children's hospital "shall not produce additional records" responsive to portions of the subpoena and that the government "shall not take further action to enforce any grand jury subpoena" seeking the private health information of members of the proposed class. The judge cited legal precedent allowing courts to preserve their jurisdiction when disclosure could effectively moot a case before it is resolved.

Since returning to office, the Trump administration has directed federal agencies to investigate hospitals and doctors who treat transgender minors, issued subpoenas seeking patient records from medical centers around the country, and pursued legal theories that several federal courts have rejected. The efforts have alarmed transgender patients and their families, who fear that confidential medical information could be swept into government investigations and that providers could scale back or abandon care under mounting legal pressure.

“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”

The infection, caused by the fungus Trichophyton mentagrophytes type VII (TMvii), spreads through intimate contact and has predominantly been seen among men who have sex with men. It causes painful, coin-sized rashes on the arms, buttocks, trunk, legs, and genitals. While infections can be treated with oral antifungal medications, treatment can take several weeks, making fast detection of the uncommon infection critical. 

And sometimes yes a drug addict’s condition is their own fault. But so are lots of medical issues. Should a person not be given a cast for their broken leg because they shouldn’t have been climbing that tree? Should a doctor just let someone die of a stroke because they shouldn’t have been eating that much salt?

Much of the footage being recorded by the glasses is being sent to offshore contractors for data labeling, a widely-used preprocessing step in training new AI models in which human contractors are asked to review and annotate footage. It’s a laborious and highly resource-intensive process that tech companies often gloss over when discussing the prowess of their latest AI models. The reality can be messy. Meta contractors based in Nairobi, Kenya, told Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten in a recently published joint investigation that they’re being told to review highly sensitive and intimate data. “In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” one contractor for a company called Sama said. “I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording.” “I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room,” one data annotator told the newspapers. “Shortly afterwards his wife comes in and changes her clothes.” Other footage included imagery of people’s bank cards, users watching porn, or even filming entire “sex scenes.” An employee added that they felt forced to watch and annotate or else risk losing their job. “You understand that it is someone’s private life you are looking at, but at the same time you are just expected to carry out the work,” the employee said. “You are not supposed to question it. If you start asking questions, you are gone.”

Resistance Reader

This zine brings together nine important texts about resistance to ICE, Trump, and fascism that have appeared in various venues over the past two weeks, offering an overview of our situation and the stakes of the fight.

https://crimethinc.com/zines/resistance-reader

Please print these out and distribute them freelly!

Contents:

- Don’t Let LA Stand Alone: A Message to the Gathering Resistance

- Seven Steps to Stop ICE

- Minneapolis to Feds: “Get the Fuck Out”—How People in the Twin Cities Responded to a Federal Raid

- Los Angeles Stands up to ICE: A Firsthand Report on the Clashes of June 6

- LA Protesters Aren’t Inviting Violent Authoritarianism, They’re Mobilizing to Stop It

- Melt ICE, Be Water: Report-back from a Hot Summer Demonstration in Austin, Texas

- The Los Angeles Protests Are an Act of Self-Defense

- ICE’s War on Home

The fight to pass the ACA was all consuming. There was no air for anything else. It was messy and long. I mean, the death panels tangent alone was, what, two, three months? And we were always on the edge of it not happening and everyone knew it.

I guess it won’t help these people who don’t have any actual memory of the time to say this, but codifying Roe wasn’t even on the table. It wasn’t on a table in a room three buildings over. Everything was ACA.

Top Row (left to right): Eusphecia pimplaeformis and Myrmecopsis polistes; Bottom Row: Pennisetia marginatum

Moths are exceptionally skilled when it comes to mimicry, and there are hundreds of moth species that rely on that tactic as a way to protect themselves from predators. Their disguises are numerous and varied, but hymenopteran mimicry is particularly common, especially among the moths that belong to subfamily Sesiidae and family Arctiinae.

Yellowjacket-Mimicking Moths: Pseudosphex sp. (top and bottom left) and Myrmecopsis polistes (bottom right)

Some of their disguises involve more than just a physical resemblance -- there are some moths that also engage in behavioral and/or acoustic mimicry, meaning that they can imitate the specific sounds and behaviors of their hymenopteran models. In some cases, these moths are so convincing that they can even fool the actual wasps/bees that they are mimicking.

Such a detailed and intricate disguise is unusual even among mimics, and researchers believe that it developed partly as a way to trick the wasps into treating the mimic like one of their own. Wasps tend to prey upon moths (and many other insects), but they are innately non-aggressive toward their own nest-mates, which are identified by sight -- so if the moth can convincingly impersonate its model, then it can avoid being eaten by predatory wasps.

Wasp-Mimicking Moths: Pseudosphex ichneumonea (top), Myrmecopsis sp. (bottom left), and Pseudosphex sp. (bottom right)

There are many moths that can also mimic hornets, bumblebees, and carpenter bees.

Hornet-Mimicking Moths: Eusphecia pimplaeformis (top left), Sesia apiformis (bottom left), Paranthrene simulans (top right), Pennisetia marginatum (middle right), and Sphecodoptera scribai (bottom left)

Bumblebee-Mimicking Moths: Hemaris tityus (top and bottom left) and Hemaris affinis (bottom right)

Moths are some of the most talented mimics in the natural world, as illustrated by their mastery of hymenopteran mimicry. But it's not just bees, hornets, and wasps -- there are many other forms of mimicry that can be found among moths, and the resemblance is often staggering.

Moths deserve far more credit than they receive, to be honest, because they are so incredibly interesting/diverse.

Sources & More Info:

Journal of Ecology and Evolution: A Hypothesis to Explain the Accuracy of Wasp Resemblances

Frontiers in Zoology: Southeast Asian clearwing moths buzz like their model bees

Molly Sprayregen (She/Her) at LGBTQ Nation:

The South Korean census will allow same-sex couples to identify themselves as spouses for the first time in a move LGBTQ+ activists have praised as a significant step toward equality. The census is conducted every five years in the country and kicked off this week, with the Ministry of Data and Statistics reportedly confirming that committed same-sex couples can now check “spouse” or “cohabiting partner.” In the past, doing so would cause a form to be rejected or marked with an error, The Straits Times explained.

While homosexuality is not criminalized in the country, same-sex marriage remains illegal. There are also no anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination protections, and according to Equaldex, only 23% of the public fully supports LGBTQ+ people being open about who they are. Despite South Korea’s portrayal in its global entertainment industry as modern and gay-friendly, the country has long tolerated LGBTQ+ discrimination and, in a 2020 report, was ranked among the least gay-inclusive countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The absence of progress can be traced to lobbying efforts by The United Christian Churches of Korea and other church associations, and to very public hate campaigns by loosely affiliated groups like Anti-Homosexuality Christian Solidarity, who have deep-rooted connections to the country’s political class. Efforts to pass a broad anti-discrimination law through the legislature have failed many times, but hope was renewed last year when the country’s liberal party took a majority of seats in the legislature.