I am so sorry, Stamets. I am an ally with a queer daughter. Every day I worry about the world she's growing up in. She's been very bullied in school, but most kids don't know other kids' sexual orientation at 13, so they didn't bully her for that (although, of course, middle schoolers still love to call each other anti-LGBT slurs), but I'm much more worried about what adults will do to her. At her age, she's not truly aware of how bad it can be, but I do my best to educate her. Her best friend is a trans boy. His rights have already been taken away here in Indiana. He can't get gender-affirming care and the school legally has to deadname him even though his parents are supportive. He's already doing things like cutting himself and vaping, so he's obviously already pretty messed up. I really worry that he won't make it to adulthood. What hope do either of them have when human rights organizations won't even talk about how they're being oppressed and even victims of genocide?

Some of us do give a shit, even some people you wouldn't expect. I try to get people to listen to and understand others' struggles and it's more effective than you think, but it's mostly people in my daily life.

I read yesterday about the PR that Saudi Arabia and UAE have been doing to work their way up a "trust index", among other things.

There are few, if any, uncorrupted organisations or countries, and I now believe that it is simply human nature to be monstrous. Anything else requires herculean strength or absolute bull-headedness.

When I was young I watched Star Trek as an idealist looks Ng towards a brighter future, now I enjoy it as fantasy. If an interplanetary federation were to exist as it is portrayed, humans would have to be a minority to avoid contamination of ideals and truth.

No one. Everytime we try we just get ignored. Want a good example? Toronto.

NOTE: This comment is going to get extremely dark, extremely disturbing, and extremely depressing. It is very important but... it's not light. Please read if you can. You have been warned.

From like the late 2000s onwards, LGBTQ+ people kept disappearing in the Toronto area or were just killed. More and more in the 2010s. I remember walking around and seeing posters up everywhere and new ones pretty frequently. A lot of them were the typical ran away thing but more and more started appearing that didn't fit that bill. The gay community en masse turned to the Toronto Police and said "We think we have a serial killer in the community." The police set up a "taskforce" in 2012 to investigate it called Project Houston. I say "project" because almost no effort was put into the investigation due to the victims being both gay as well as usually non-white. They investigated the serial killer himself and brought him in to be questioned but let him go. They said there wasn't a serial killer. More gay men went missing which all but confirmed it. Stories of people who met said killer and managed to escape. Then after Pride in 2017, Andrew Kinsman went missing. I met him a few times. He was an incredibly kind man. People went to Andrews house and his cat was out of food and water, meds were left behind, and social media turned off. No rhyme or reason for him to suddenly vanish. Then a trans woman was killed. Then another person was found dead in an alley. The community outcry became overwhelming so the Toronto Police opened another investigation. They then closed it saying there was no evidence of a serial killer.

But surprise surprise, the cops were incredibly wrong. Evidence came out about this monster, more and more, so they started finally ACTUALLY investigating him 5 years after his initial "questioning". Why do I have that in quotes? Keep reading. They arrest him later, barging into his apartment with a man handcuffed to his bed, a bag over his face, and his mouth taped shut.

Suddenly now there was some interest. So they investigate. He was a landscaper and they start looking into those places where he worked and they start uncovering bodies, including that of Kinsman. Also including the body of one of the victims that was investigated during Project Houston, again the same project where they previously investigated this serial killer and released him. They also found a truly overwhelming amount of photos and evidence. Experts kept saying that it was too detailed and there's no way he's only been active for 5 years. Most serial killer start in their 20s and this monster was in his late 40s or early 50s at this point and was showing skill in his kills and covering of his tracks. This was gotten from practice. When the ground started thawing up, they go look for more bodies. They end up searching in july for just over a week and found remains every single day of the search.

This monster was charged with only 8 deaths. All remains have not been identified. Police have also claimed "they have no reason to believe he was linked to any other deaths."

The Toronto Police service actively ignored the safety concerns of the community. They refused to investigate the serial killings and refused to even use the term until 2018, well after it had been demonstrated that this monster had already killed multiple people across a long time span and that they were linked. If they had listened to the community and said "There may be a serial killer active" then it could have flooded in with tips that they could have investigated, you know, exactly what happened when they actually announced that's what they were doing? And when other serial killers have had that exact same outcome? At any rate, they arrest the killer and then announce they're investigating serial killings. What happens? Completely unsurprisingly, they're flooded with tips both about this specific person as well as tips in general that would have helped locate this person. So what does the police chief do? Blame the community. He said that the community should have reported the incidents sooner and waiting this long was why he got away with it for so long. The literal headline after he said that was "Toronto police chief says civilians failed to help investigation into alleged serial killer". He got a huge amount of backlash for victim blaming the community when he was the one who actively denied us the help.

It was announced in 2018-2019 there would be a review into the failure to protect the community. In 2021 the review said there was "serious flaws" (one way to fucking put it) in the way the police handled it. It also effectively said that the only reason the investigation even happened was because of the friends/family of Andrew Kinsman who aggressively pushed the police and community to mobilize and investigate ourselves. The review also said that the Project Houston thing? Yeah. They never looked into the killers history because they would have found a early 2000s violent assault with a pipe on someone. They also didn't investigate at all because there were apparently blatant and meaningful connections between the killer and three of the victims they were supposed to be investigating. There were 151 recommendations on how to fix their shit. 151. Just think about that. 151 things they catastrophically failed on that all led to the entire community being ignored, left for dead, and then victim blamed.

So dear reader, whoever you may be, I ask you this. The next time you see an LGBTQ+ person being upset at the world and how no one cares about us, don't say it will get better. Don't say that the world does care. It doesn't. What I want you to do is prove that you care. Stand up and protect those people because fuck knows, most of the straight people in Toronto who were in positions to help did nothing and let us get killed and it's not unique to Toronto. In a City that has such a bustling gay community, you'd expect something. Meaning that if it's happening HERE then there is no way that it isn't a trillion times worse in smaller places.

This is why I don't want to be gay. It's because if I was straight, maybe someone would give a shit about me.

Edit: Hilarious. Downvoted within seconds. Thanks for proving my point guys. I give up.

Eh, it could be but it seems like a stretch. I don't think it has to do with antisemitism. It's just kinda like when countries put oil execs in charge of environmental policy. It seems like this has been a problem for a while. People were probably just not paying as much attention in 2020 when that article came out.

Yep. To be clear, though, it's not the reporting of corruption etc. that's the problem; it's the timing of the reporting that's suspicious.