NullTuples
NullTuples's JournalAn early Nazi tool was to shut down businesses identified as Jewish
Today, Florida SB1438 will be voted on by the state House - it's already passed the Senate. It is expected to easily pass and go on to DeSantis' desk.
Description from ACLU of Florida from when the Senate voted on it:
"Today, the Senate voted to pass Senate Bill 1438 (SB 1438), a bill that grants state agencies the power to target LGBTQ+ friendly businesses by giving the Department of Business and Professional Regulation discretionary authority to fine, revoke liquor licenses, and even shut down establishments. Additionally, it makes it a crime to admit young people to any performance, exhibit, play, or show that the state deems inappropriate, even if the child’s parents think it is appropriate for their family.
Make no mistake: SB 1438 is a blatant attempt to erase drag performers and silence the LGBTQ+ community.
“The unclear and vaguely worded bill will impact businesses and venues that host plays, musical performances, art exhibits, and other forms of expression that the state may subjectively deem inappropriate. Will parents be able to take their families to the opera if there are singers performing in roles that require cross-dressing? What about Shakespeare performances? Furthermore, all it would take is a teen with a fake ID for a business owner to lose everything. We have grave concerns that businesses may end up self-censoring rather than running afoul of the law and risk losing their license or becoming entangled with the criminal legal system.
“With this bill, Gov. DeSantis and certain politicians are imposing their personal beliefs on Floridians by punishing private businesses that support the LGBTQ+ community. The Governor likes to tout that he is ‘pro-businesses,’ but this bill is anything but that. This is an extreme governmental overreach of power. This is not democracy. This is not freedom.”
HIstorical reference:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-boycott-of-jewish-businesses
Trump judge halts Colorado ban on fraudulent 'abortion pill reversal'
Judge temporarily allows a Colorado clinic to continue offering ‘abortion pill reversals,’ an order that could expand statewide
A Catholic health care clinic in Colorado that offers what it bills as “abortion pill reversal” will be temporarily allowed to continue the treatments under a recent decision from United States District Judge Daniel D. Domenico.
Gov. Jared Polis signed a law Friday that classifies providing abortion reversals as “unprofessional conduct,” making Colorado the first state to effectively outlaw the controversial treatment. Bella Health and Wellness, an Englewood-based nonprofit health care practice, immediately sued to be exempted from the policy.
The judge granted a temporary restraining order on Saturday to allow the clinic to continue offering the service while the case proceeds. A hearing on a preliminary injunction that could ban the law from taking effect statewide is scheduled for April 24.
https://www.cpr.org/2023/04/17/colorado-clinic-abortion-pill-reversal-temporarily-allowed/
Missouri urging people to report medical professionals providing gender-affirming care to patients
I guess we're at the "turn in your neighbors, your relatives, your doctors if they go against The Party" stage of fascism now.
We've been here before, during the Cold War. It was called the Lavender Scare, an anti-LGBTQ counterpart to the Red Scare.
The government in Missouri is encouraging people to report medical professionals providing gender-affirming care to patients, as the state seeks to crackdown on transgender healthcare.
The Transgender Center Concerns Form has gone live on the website of Republican Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey, urging residents to “submit a complaint or concern about gender transition intervention you have experienced or observed in Missouri”.
Bailey, who assumed the office of attorney general in January, has brought in “emergency” restrictions against gender-affirming care for both minors and adults – which amounts to a near ban.
As reported on Sunday (16 April), trans Missourians will have to suffer through three years of “long-lasting, persistent and intense pattern of gender dysphoria” before obtaining treatment.
The restriction, which is set to take effect on 27 April until February 2024, will also force trans people to undergo 18 months of therapy before receiving gender-affirming care.
https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/04/18/missouri-trans-gender-affirming-care-andrew-bailey/
A Set of Findings Regarding Conservatives vs Liberals
Given the somewhat consistent findings over time listed below (from the mid 00's to fairly recent), it seems conservatives themselves have not changed. But their outward behaviors seem to have changed substantially in that they've added a dimension of domination, as if their primary traits have had all shackled removed. If so, and given their nature...how do they become constrained again? What will have to happen for them to back down? Can they still do so or are they the dog that finally caught the car's bumper and is heading for the Interstate?
Conservatives, argues researcher Philip Tetlock of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, are less tolerant of compromise; see the world in "us" versus "them" terms; are more willing to use force to gain an advantage; are "more prone to rely on simple (good vs. bad) evaluative rules in interpreting policy issues;" are "motivated to punish violators of social norms (e.g., deviations from traditional norms of sexuality or responsible behavior) and to deter free riders."
The findings published by Haidt et al. powerfully reinforce the paradigm of two roughly equivalent political coalitions: the first, a socially and economically dominant coalition on the right; the second, a coalition on the left composed of relatively disadvantaged (subdominant) voters in alliance with relatively well-educated, well-off, culturally liberal professionals ('information workers,' 'symbol analysts,' 'creatives,' 'knowledge workers,' etc.).
"political ideology relates to cooperation, with conservatives being more likely to pursue selfish outcomes, and liberals more likely to pursue egalitarian outcomes."
From: Political Ideology, Trust, and Cooperation: In-group Favoritism among Republicans and Democrats during a US National Election - Daniel Balliet, et all
"We found that liberals, compared to conservatives, displayed slightly greater cooperation, trust in others and greater identification with the world as a whole. Conservatives, however, identified more strongly with their own nation and displayed slightly greater national parochialism in cooperation. Importantly, the association between political ideology and behaviour was significant in nations characterized by higher wealth, stronger rule of law and better government effectiveness."
From: Political ideology, cooperation and national parochialism across 42 nations - Angelo Romano, et all
Gen-X rant
I've noticed a trend in e-car adoption stories strewn over news media these last few years. A good summary would be the author saying, "I learned to give myself a mileage buffer when planning long trips". And then presenting that life lesson as something unique to their personal experience and growth as a person. This is not at all idiosyncratic to e-car stories, by the way. I'd not be surprised to come across a story titled, "How I learned to not stick my hand in a blender while it's running and why I now only order DoorDash".
Dear mainstream media,
Please bring back the scrappy, resourceful, world-weary journalists. The ones who have been poor. The ones who still are poor. The ones who are disabled, queer, Black, Brown and/or queer. The ones who have more experience than their readers at whatever it is they are reporting on. The storytellers with actual stories to tell that are not their own, and involve the world around them instead. Stories that are about other people. Please. It's what our society needs right now, not bored people of privilege who decided they want to try writing because Instagram & TikTok didn't pan out for them as influencers.
(I chose the title after I realized neither of our kids - or anyone else their age - has really been exposed to any other style of general journalism)
Republican state officials in Louisiana ask lawmakers to ban the study of racism at universities
"...citing divisive 'inglorious aspects' of US history"
Republican officials in Louisiana are proposing a ban on teaching about racism at the state's higher education institutions — the latest move amid a wave of legislation across the country aimed at legislating curriculum in the nation's classrooms.
GOP Party officials in the state want Louisiana lawmakers to prohibit the study of racism at colleges and universities, claiming the "inglorious aspects" of American history are too divisive, according to NOLA.com, which cites a GOP resolution on the matter.
The state GOP leadership also wants to nix diversity, equity, and inclusion departments at colleges and universities, claiming without evidence that such agencies stir political tensions on campuses and have overgenerous budgets, NOLA.com reported. A third of Louisiana residents are Black, according to the US Census Bureau.
https://www.businessinsider.com/louisiana-gop-ban-study-racism-college-schools-2023-4
Website tracking is 21% of traffic; CO2 load up there with meat production, transportation & crypto
From the 'Computers and Society' journal.
"...web tracking increases data transmissions upwards of 21%, which in turn implies the additional emission of around 11 Mt of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere every year. We find such contribution to be far from negligible, and comparable to many activities of modern life, such as meat production, transportation, and even cryptocurrency mining."
Imagine if the internet could be 21% faster & more efficient. The slowdown, the extra traffic - more than a fifth of data traffic - is due to trackers on the websites you visit, sending data on your browsing habits to corporations.
Full summary/intro:
"In the past decade, global warming made several headlines and turned the attention of the whole world to it. Carbon footprint is the main factor that drives greenhouse emissions up and results in the temperature increase of the planet with dire consequences. While the attention of the public is turned to reducing carbon emissions by transportation, food consumption and household activities, we ignore the contribution of CO2eq emissions produced by online activities. In the current information era, we spend a big amount of our days browsing online. This activity consumes electricity which in turn produces CO2eq. While website browsing contributes to the production of greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of the Internet on the environment is further exacerbated by the web-tracking practice. Indeed, most webpages are heavily loaded by tracking content used mostly for advertising, data analytics and usability improvements. This extra content implies big data transmissions which results in higher electricity consumption and thus higher greenhouse gas emissions. In this work, we focus on the overhead caused by web tracking and analyse both its network and carbon footprint. By leveraging the browsing telemetry of 100k users and the results of a crawling experiment of 2.7M websites, we find that web tracking increases data transmissions upwards of 21%, which in turn implies the additional emission of around 11 Mt of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere every year. We find such contribution to be far from negligible, and comparable to many activities of modern life, such as meat production, transportation, and even cryptocurrency mining. Our study also highlights that there exist significant inequalities when considering the footprint of different countries, website categories, and tracking organizations, with a few actors contributing to a much greater extent than the remaining ones."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.00927
pdf of full paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.00927.pdf
Abortion resource to pass along to anyone who needs it.
From Mastodon.
"People who need access to abortion should not have to face shame or overwhelming hurdles.
If you need an abortion, check out abortionfinder.org"
How is it that an Attorney General can be as powerful as a Legislature + Governor?
This question was prompted by the news that broke today, "Missouri's attorney general announced new restrictions Thursday on transgender care for adults in addition to minors in a move that is believed to be a first nationally."
But my question is, didn't Missouri's AG just essentially create a bill, pass it and now as AG he will be the one enforcing it, too? Seems like he sidestepped every aspect of American lawmaking.
Doubtless, Republican state AG's will use this tactic more and more but is there any way to stop them?
Missouri's attorney general opened a new front in the GOP's attacks on transgender people: banning
Source: Business Insider
Full title: Missouri's attorney general opened a new front in the GOP's attacks on transgender people: banning treatment for any adult with depression
An emergency regulation announced by Missouri's attorney general on Thursday could severely limit access to gender-affirming care in the state, setting several new requirements for trans adults seeking treatment.
The regulation, released by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, requires adults to have experienced a "medically documented, long-lasting, persistent and intense pattern of gender dysphoria" for "at least the 3 most recent consecutive years" before seeking treatment. Also anxiety and depression, conditions that often are caused by untreated gender dysphoria (and/or may be intrinsic, or have other completely unrelated causes).
Adults with depression or other mental health issues would not be able to receive gender-affirming care until those existing issues "have been treated and resolved," the regulation says.
It also requires trans adults to have completed multiple therapy sessions over 18 months to seek gender-affirming care.
Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/missouri-attorney-general-regulations-gender-affirming-care-transgender-depression-2023-4
The AG has declared an emergency and in a very practical sense, blocked trans health care not only for teens but also all adults. This is the next step in Republican controlled states' attacks on transgender people. Blocking necessary health care is cruel and is a step in the full erasure of trans people.
Several things to note:
It's not just depression, that was Business Insider's headline. It's any other condition. For instance, someone would have to have their autism "resolved" before they could obtain gender health care. Note: autism is intrinsic, not something to be "cured", and there is a very large, well documented overlap between autistics and trans people.
In essence the "emergency regulations" will prevent most if not all trans people in Missouri from obtaining health care they need.
AG's announcement: https://ago.mo.gov/home/news/2023/04/13/missouri-attorney-general-andrew-bailey-promulgates-emergency-regulation-targeting-gender-transition-procedures-for-minors
The emergency rule itself: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/2023-04-13---emergency-reg.pdf?sfvrsn=7f78d4fc_2
A bizarre "one pager" from the AG that promotes his emergency declaration as if it was a going out of business sale flyer: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/emergency-reg-final-flyer.pdf?sfvrsn=b92a504f_2
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