A Michigan college has ended its partnership with a Florida charter school whose principal was forced to resign after a parent complained sixth graders were exposed to pornography during a lesson on Renaissance art that included Michelangelo’s David sculpture.

A Hillsdale College spokesperson said Tallahassee Classical School no longer is affiliated with the small, Christian classical liberal arts college in southern Michigan, MLive.com reported Thursday.

“This drama around teaching Michelangelo’s ‘David’ sculpture, one of the most important works of art in existence, has become a distraction from, and a parody of, the actual aims of classical education,” spokesperson Emily Stack Davis wrote in a statement. “Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s ‘David’ and other works of art that depict the human form.”

Tallahassee Classical School was licensed to use Hillsdale’s classical education curriculum, but its license was “revoked and will expire at the end of the school year,” Davis said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michigan-college-ends-partnership-school-david-statue-drama-rcna77583

Too much even for Hillsdale

María Brenes' first name has an accent on the letter “í” — but you wouldn't know that by looking at the Los Angeles resident's government documents.

Since 1986, when Californians voted to make English the state's official language, state residents like Brenes who have accent marks or tildes in their names have been barred from including them in birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and other forms of government documents.

Brenes hopes proposed legislation — CA Assembly Bill 77 — changes that.

The bill would allow for the use of diacritical marks — like accents — and the Spanish-language letter "ñ" on government-issued documents. Residents would be able to request new ones with the desired changes for a fee.

“I think it’s an incredible opportunity for California to acknowledge the cultural language diversity of the state,” said Brenes, 46, an executive director at InnerCity Struggle, a neighborhood nonprofit in East Los Angeles. “Maria has an accent on the ‘í,’ and I’ve had to compromise where it’s accepted and where I can insert it.”

The potential change would affect not only the state’s large Latino population of more than 15 million but others with non-English names, such as Californians of Vietnamese, French or Arab heritage.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/will-california-allow-accents-original-spellings-birth-certificates-rcna77288

The original law was passed during the Reagan years. What does that tell you?

QAnon has a new obsession: Huggies diapers.

Over the last week, the cult’s latest baseless conspiracy theory—that Huggies diapers feature secret symbols linked to pedophilia—went viral after a QAnon influencer on Twitter, recently reinstated on the platform by Elon Musk, tweeted out the wild claims.

The conspiracy theory racked up millions of views, going viral so quickly that the diaper company was forced to publicly denounce it. But despite this denial—or maybe because of it—the conspiracy continues to percolate on social media sites like Telegram, Reddit, and Truth Social.

The conspiracy theory began last week when a QAnon supporter who uses the screen name “Vincent Kennedy” and has over 265,000 followers, tweeted a picture of a Huggies diaper featuring the character of Simba from “The Lion King.” The picture had circled a number of symbols that feature on the diaper design, alongside the caption: “Once you truly awake you ain’t going back to sleep.”

While the reference will be lost to anyone except those deep down the QAnon rabbit hole, Kennedy was referencing the similarity between the symbols on the diaper and those featured in an FBI document from 2007, published by WikiLeaks that claims certain symbols, like triangles and circular swirls, were used by pedophiles to identify their sexual preferences.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7zaq9/qanon-huggies-conspiracy

When will this ridiculousness just STOP??????????????????????

The Tennessee Valley Authority has taken a critical step toward returning the ancestral remains of more than 4,800 Native Americans to as many as 21 Native American tribes.

The ancestral remains and associated funerary objects had been removed by TVA from sites in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama, three of the seven states in TVA’s region.

A notice was filed in the Federal Register for publication on March 29 of the federal utility's intent to repatriate all ancestral remains and associated funerary objects it has.

The process of repatriation allows tribes and descendants to take possession of the remains of their ancestors and associated funerary objects that were previously removed from their original resting places.

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/tennessee/2023/03/29/tva-set-to-return-ancestral-remains-of-nearly-5000-native-americans/70056447007/

Making it right.

Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, described the school shooting in his home state as "a horrible, horrible situation," but it's not something he thinks Congress needs to address.

"We're not gonna fix it," he told reporters Tuesday. "Criminals are gonna be criminals."

Burchett said Congress doesn't have a real role to play in the aftermath of the Christian school shooting in Nashville, where an attacker killed three 9-year-old students and three staff members. Lawmakers would only "mess things up," he said.

"I don't think you're gonna stop the gun violence," Burchett said. "I think you gotta change people's hearts."

When someone is determined to kill, there's not much that can stop them, he said.

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/28/school-shootings-nashville-tennessee-republican/11557086002/

That is a bunch of BS right there.

Several deputies from a Mississippi sheriff’s department being investigated by the Justice Department for possible civil rights violations have been involved in at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries, an Associated Press investigation found.

Two of the men allege that Rankin County sheriff’s deputies shoved guns into their mouths during separate encounters. In one case, the deputy pulled the trigger, leaving the man with wounds that required parts of his tongue to be sewn back together. In one of the two fatal confrontations, the man’s mother said a deputy kneeled on her son’s neck while he told them he couldn’t breathe.

Police and court records obtained by the AP show that several deputies who were accepted to the sheriff’s office’s Special Response Team — a tactical unit whose members receive advanced training — were involved in each of the four encounters. In three of them, the heavily redacted documents don’t indicate if they were serving in their normal capacity as deputies or as members of the unit.

Such units have drawn scrutiny since the January killing of Tyre Nichols, a Black father who died days after being severely beaten by Black members of a special police team in Memphis, Tennessee. Nichols’ death led to a Justice Department probe of similar squads around the country that comes amid the broader public reckoning over race and policing sparked by the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In Mississippi, the police shooting of Michael Corey Jenkins led the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. Jenkins said six white deputies burst into a home where he was visiting a friend, and one put a gun in his mouth and fired. Jenkins’ hospital records, parts of which he shared with AP, show he had a lacerated tongue and broken jaw.

https://apnews.com/article/mississippi-deputies-black-violent-arrests-61acf712b13fc3c77dce76e508fa94c1?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_03

Mississhitty. White deputies, Black man. Anyone surprised?

Philadelphians remain in limbo after city officials said over the weekend that a nearby chemical spill may have contaminated the water supply — but they don't yet know for sure.

On Sunday morning, the city told residents they might want to drink and cook with bottled water because officials couldn't be certain that 8,100 gallons of a latex finishing solution that spilled into a Delaware River tributary late Friday hadn't wended its way into the city's water supply, even though testing didn't show any contamination.

City officials would later correct this, assuring residents that the tap water was safe to drink Sunday afternoon and Monday — but not before the warning set off a minor panic and prompted droves of people to flood nearby grocery stores and bodegas, clearing the shelves of bottled water.

Still, the city isn't in the clear. Officials say water sampling results and updated hydraulic modeling confirm that tap water is currently safe to drink — but only until 11:59 p.m. Monday night.

That was how long officials estimated it would take for river water that entered the city's Baxter Drinking Water Treatment Plant early Monday morning to move through treatment facilities and water mains before coming out of customers' taps. Officials said they had to open the intakes to keep a minimum level of water in the system to prevent damage to equipment and keep water available for firefighting.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/27/1166255195/philadelphia-drinking-water

Again. Oh goody.

My mother had been in a bad car accident, my younger brother and sister and I were sent to boarding school. My other brothers and sisters were sent to different boarding schools.

The first thing they did when you arrived at boarding school was cut your hair. It was like a bowl cut, like if they put a bowl on your head and cut your hair. They shaved the boys’ hair.

That was when the pain really started. Because our hair is so sacred. My dad loved our hair. When we'd sit on his lap, he would smell our hair and say, “Take care of your hair.” We have traditional teachings that go along with our hair; our hair in our culture carries our ancestors, our history and our future. It is who we are.

The next thing they did was put kerosene on your head for head lice. They thought every Indian kid had lice. I didn't even know what lice was! Then they had this big, huge cement structure that looked like a pool. You’d go in there, and you would strip down and they would wash you with lye soap, which burned. Nobody explained why.

The nuns were very strict. You got up at a certain time every morning and made your bed. It was bouncing a quarter off your bed to make sure that your bed was straight and tight. In our dorm, there were about 40 beds, bunk beds, lined on both walls.

https://www.kuow.org/stories/a-native-grandma-smuggled-her-grandkids-out-of-an-abusive-boarding-school-she-hid-them-in-the-mountains

Part of the genocide. You think "1923" exaggerates? It doesn't. My brother and his wife worked for IHS and they KNOW.

You had schooling, and you had chores, and if you missed your chores, you got in big trouble. One time I was supposed to be in the kitchen washing the pots and pans, and I was late. I was sent to the priest’s office. They had a razor strap, and would make you pull your pants down and grab your ankles.

LGBTQ advocates are taking to the streets to protest the coordinated legislative attacks on transgender people nationwide after successfully beating back bans on gender-affirming care for trans youth in West Virginia and Wyoming.

Trans activists have organized demonstrations at capitol buildings across the country and are currently coordinating protests for Trans Day of Visibility on March 31 and Trans Day of Vengeance on April 1. Activists have planned rallies at the state capitol of Georgia, which recently became the 10th state to ban gender-affirming care; Tucson, Arizona; the Missouri state capitol; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; New York City; and the Kansas state capitol, among others.

“We are here and we will not allow ourselves to be erased,” Trans Radical Activist Network, a group organizing a Washington, D.C. rally to stop trans genocide, wrote in a tweet.

Independent reporter and transgender activist Erin Reed told Truthout that the protests draw on a long history of LGBTQ resistence.

“I’ve seen #DIYHRT trending and I’ve seen mutual aid being one of the ways people are responding [to anti-trans legislation],” she said. “I’m also seeing tactics that we haven’t seen since the ACT UP era … the tactics we’re seeing right now are more resistant and show resolve in the face of these policies being passed.”

The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is a grassroots direct action group that was founded in the 1980s to advocate for AIDS research, treatment and policy change. ACT UP organizers famously choreographed public “die-ins” to draw attention to their demands, taking aim at lawmakers, Wall Street, the Catholic Church and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Transgender activists have returned to these tactics as anti-trans policies are being introduced in statehouses across the country.

https://truthout.org/articles/we-have-to-fight-lgbtq-kids-stage-walkouts-marches-against-anti-trans-bills/

“We need to be loud, ” said one youth activist at a march in Colorado. “We are here and we are powerful.”

A Wisconsin school forbade first graders from singing a Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus song about acceptance at this year’s spring concert, saying it’s too “controversial.”

The song, “Rainbowland,” celebrates acceptance and includes lyrics like “wouldn't it be nice to live in paradise. Where we're free to be exactly who we are.”

It started earlier this month, when a first grader was brainstorming songs to perform for the spring concert at Heyer Elementary. Her mother, Sarah Schindler, said that her list included “Rainbowland,” as well as Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” A few days later, the girl told her mother that she was not allowed to sing “Rainbow Connection” or “Rainbowland.”

“Rainbow Connection” was ultimately allowed, but the Dolly Parton song wasn’t, according to a teacher with the school district.

“My first graders were so excited to sing Rainbowland for our spring concert but it has been vetoed by our administration. When will it end?” Melissa Tempel, a Heyer Elementary teacher—and Schindler’s daughter’s teacher—tweeted last week.

“4 years ago we had an active diversity team,” Tempel said in another tweet. “Now we are Florida.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak3zmp/dolly-parton-rainbowland-wisconsin-school-concert

It's wrong to sing about RAINBOWS? What about Noah and the ark? And what's wrong with being who you are? JFC, Waukesha. Oh, that's it---Waukesha, home of Snot Walker.