and whatever walked there, walked alone

So, in terrible news, Trump's trying to pull some strings to pass this massive internet censorship bill, featuring all the kinds of internet censorship we're terrified of, including mandatory ID for accessing basically any website, specifically to crush state regulation of AI, because apparently this man will always see the moral bottom of the barrel and start digging.

The bastards in the House PASSED IT this morning.

Mercifully, it still needs to pass the Senate. GET ON YOUR SENATORS.

Hello. My name is ____ _______, spelled ________, my email is ________, phone number ________, address ________, zip code ________. I’m calling to request that Senator ______ do everything in his power to block and vote NO on H.R.7757, the Kids Online Safety Act, the No Fakes act, the KIDS act, the KOSPA, and the age verification mandates being pushed by Donald Trump. These bills together would result in government regulations of protected speech for both adults and children. The act would force social media platforms to restrict lawful speech, allow the government to dictate and control online communications, and require age verification mandates.

Age verification mandates would require users to disclose personal information before accessing lawful speech online— hugely invading privacy and opening the door to people’s personal data being stolen, and completely eliminating the safety of anonymity for everyone online.

Please block these bills and protect the American citizens’ right to free speech and anonymity online.

Edit: Here’s an email script to tweak:

I’m writing to inform you that you need to vote No on H.R.7757, KOSA, the KIDS act, the No Fakes act, and the KOSPA. These bills would require all internet users to give up their legal identities to every website they use to prove their non-minor status, and force government regulations and oversight on all communications on social media platforms, destroying any ability for people to exercise their right to free speech. And the government dictating and controlling online communications for people who are forced to give up their identities to every data mining platform would be catastrophic for everyone involved.

And then I went to the USAmerican Midwest

Rains frequently, but the worst is like standing under a bathroom shower. Genuinely inhospitable rainstorms are uncommon.

Along the coast, it's pretty easy in most areas to walk to at least one store, or else there's usually a bus or shuttle available. There are sidewalks and bike lanes everywhere.

It's a temperate boreal rainforest, so while there are many freshwater lakes and rivers, they're usually pretty cold. The biggest danger is typically getting caught in a strong current, and the most dangerous animals in swimming distance are on land.

Earthquakes happen almost every day, but the vast majority go unnoticed. Buildings are designed to withstand bigger seismic activity, so unless it's a 5 or higher it just kind of feels like having low blood sugar for a second. There are no tornados

Rural Illinois, USA:

One minute it's sunny, then ten minutes later that distant smudge on the horizon has swallowed the entire sky in black clouds and the water is coming down like waterfall and you literally CANNOT SEE. Then there's a crash like cymbals and you need to get indoors because the thunder and lightening are on TOP of you

No sidewalks until you are in the smack dab center of town, which is a three hour walk or twenty minute drive from wherever you are.

There aren't many natural bodies of water other than small ponds and creeks, and because the environment is so much warmer, those are filled with snapping turtles that can grow bigger than a nine year old child and water snakes that are incredibly venomous. These are paired with leeches and mosquitos for that sweet umami flavor.

and this species has never eaten salad before. and we show them salad and they eat it and they’re like holy living fuck this is tasty. and suddenly they’re offering us huge houses with all kind of advanced technological shit and incredible medical care and all the amenities and everything, with the only condition that we keep making salad for them.

and like, salad isn’t even hard to make. grab some plants, dump em in a bowl. it doesn’t have to be fancy salad, they’ll fall all over themselves for the most mediocre salad in the world. we can make so much salad that we’re practically drowning in it, even if we eat some of the salad ourselves. and in exchange we’re protected from danger, we have great living conditions, it’s basically paradise compared to life on earth

from Abortion attempts without clinical supervision among transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive people in the United States by Moseson et al (2021).

In 2020 this study on cis women in the US found that 1.4% had ever attempted a self-managed abortion. This study from 2024 found that before the 2022 decision that struck down Roe vs Wade, 2.4% to 3.3% of cis women had ever self managed an abortion, and after 2022 that rose to 10.1%.

God, I wish people would pay this more attention. There's been massive attacks on both abortion/birth control and gender affirming care at the same time by the same people. You think the overlap would be obvious. You'd think it would be too obvious for people to not talk about how scary this is for trans people who can get pregnant, how this is the perfect example of how anti-trans violence is an inherent part of patriarchy & misogyny. And fucking yet!!!!!!

There's even the fact that the executive order defining sex as male and female and immutable, defined male and female as "a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces [gametes]." They worked "legal personhood starts at conception" into the executive order targeting trans people and no one talked about it. One must ask why we (and I mean both trans/queer people and self-identified feminists at large) are so goddamn allergic to talking about issues that affect trans people who can get pregnant! What is it about this group that makes it so we aren't compelling enough victims for anybody who claims to care about intersectionality to give a shit about!

A Nervous Old Man (right) and his Emotional Support Violence Machine (Left)