Things Of Importance And Delight

I say this with so, so much care: Real queer shit written by real queers can and will sometimes make you uncomfortable. That's one of the defining features of weird, independent queer media. And weird independent media more broadly. Art that comes from true individual passion and authenticity has edges and bite to it that mass market corporate products intentionally do not. Has a rawness that can offend.

Because it's not like you had to pay them, so once your family owned someone, they owned them and their descendants indefinitely. Could you pay and eventually free em- sure! You could also send them anywhere you want for any labor you want, could have an enslaved woman bred for more children, or maybe save up and buy new slaves and sell the old. Like cattle (thus, chattel slavery).

So it's interesting that many people go "oh well it's not like my family owned slaves!" Because like, one, how do you know that? Have you ever actually asked your grandmas about their grandmas? How many of your family members grew up with mammies? Have you ever asked? I wonder how many people have actually done the digging for the truth (or was it easier to just benefit). Because I've talked to my grandma, who picked cotton in the sea islands. She had to have been doing that for someone in the 1930s and 40s!

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.

Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.

Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

Sworn Virgins of Albania

“Sworn Virgin” is the term given to a biological female in the Balkans who has chosen to take on the social identity of a man for life. As a tradition dating back hundreds of years, this was sometimes necessary in a society that lived within tribal clans, followed the Kanun, an archaic code of law, and maintained an oppressive rule over the female gender. Young girls were commonly forced into arranged marriages with much older men in distant villages. The freedom to vote, drive, earn money or own property was traditionally the exclusive province of men. A family suddenly without a patriarch or male heir would find themselves in jeopardy of losing everything. As an alternative, a daughter could become a Sworn Virgin, or “burnesha”, elevating her to the status of a man and granting her all the rights and privileges of any man. In order to manifest the transition such a woman cut her hair, donned male clothing and sometimes even changed her name. Most importantly of all, she took a vow of celibacy to remain chaste for life. As modernization inches towards the small villages nestled in the Albanian Alps, this archaic tradition is increasingly seen as obsolete. Only a handful of Sworn Virgins remain. As a portrait photographer with an interest in subjects that innately speak to the diversity of the human experience, I was fascinated with this story. This is historically one of the few examples of socially accepted gender change and it is rapidly disappearing. My desire to record the sacrifice, context and experience of these women/men set me on course to seek out some of the last burnesha. I was rewarded with a small collection of people who possess an indescribable amount 0f strength and pride, value their family honor above all else, and have few regrets for all they have sacrificed. Furthermore, their absolute transition is accepted, posited and taken without question by the people among whom they live. Photographing them was my greatest privilege.

Flesh-eating screwworm returns to U.S. after 60 years, threatening cattle herd

The case of New World screwworm was confirmed in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.

To increase immigration detention capacity, the Trump administration selected several sites in Louisiana for expansion. In September 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new partnership with the state government to retrofit a formerly condemned dormitory that was colloquially called "the dungeon" for its inhumane and solitary confinement conditions into an immigration detention center at Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as “Angola.” A former slave labor camp, Angola has long stood for the most deadly forms of incarceration, recently referred to as “Hell on Earth.” The detention center at Angola, formally known as Louisiana ICE Processing Center but colloquially referred to as “Louisiana Lockup” or “Camp 57,” houses approximately 180 individuals daily, with capacity to more than double that number. Reports from the facility immediately highlighted substandard care, with a total lack of medical support, failure to provide adequate hygiene or medications, and a lack of potable water. Multiple individuals in the facility went on hunger strike to protest these conditions.

Louisiana is also where the ICE facility with a sexual harassment and forced labor program for transmasculine people and masculine queer women took place, by the way.

& the Angola camp was also discussed in this ACLU report on prison slavery in the US, because of the brutal slave labor (including literally picking cotton while armed guards on horseback watch you, in 100+ F / 40+ C degree heat, without water or bathrooms).

Four detainees at the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in the U.S. filed a federal lawsuit on Saturday alleging human rights abuses, "horrific" conditions and "severe medical neglect" at the facility. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, details "inhumane" treatment inside Camp East Montana on the U.S. Army's Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas. The suit describes a litany of abuse allegations, including a lack of medical care and physical violence at the hands of guards, and accuses the government of human rights and constitutional violations. "Detained people are regularly subjected to severe beatings or sexual harassment by guards; squalid living conditions; spoiled and inadequate food; no meaningful programming or recreation; inadequate access to basic hygiene products such as soap, razors or nail clippers, outbreaks of disease; and limited or no access to sunlight," according to the complaint. According to the complaint, the center's guards beat Gerald Akari Angye, one of the named plaintiffs, so severely he had to be hospitalized and placed in a wheelchair. Angye, who has been at Camp East Montana for just over a month, claims he was then locked in solitary confinement for 15 days. "No human being should ever have to go through this," Angye said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations representing the detainees. "I have already experienced torture in my home country of Cameroon and I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America." Another detainee identified in the complaint only as Navdeep, a former mail handler with no criminal history, says he experienced dirty toilet water flowing into his sleeping area, difficulty accessing cups for drinking water and breathing problems because of excessive dust from the desert. Navdeep wore the same clothes, including underwear, for three weeks, according to the lawsuit. "We could die here, and it feels like no one here would care," Navdeep said in the ACLU statement.

& from March 30 2026:

linked tree (includes options to donate to Ghanaian projects)

'“Send it back!” African Groups Urge Ghana’s President to Reject Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill' (Mamba Online, 03 June 2026)

'Ghana’s Anti-LGBTQ Bill: Has Parliament Softened the Law or Strengthened It?' (Modern Ghana, 01 June 2026)

All California sheephead start life as female and move through an array of colors and body shapes as they mature. Some female adults may transition to male as social and environmental factors shift, balancing the delicate ratio of individuals in their population.

While male California sheephead are largest and easiest to identify at a glance, a closer look at the lively waters of our Kelp Forest exhibit reveals a variety of female sheephead swimming through these fascinating life stages. 

seated tickets at concerts are not:

- tickets for people who didn't get standing tickets in time

- standing tickets with the option of having a little rest when you're tired of standing

seated tickets at concerts are:

- for people who aren't physically able to stand for a whole show

- for families who don't want to get separated

- for fucking sitting

if you wanted to standing and got sitting, grow up and sit down

... yeah.

Not quite as annoying as the bouncer at a comedy show who told me "We don't do that for sold-out shows*" about the ADA request for a booth that I'd been told by email months prior was totally fine and going to happen, but very close.