Perhaps it's premature to say, but what we know so far paints a stark picture of the paralytic culture within US government institutions. Nobody will twitch a muscle without word from on high, and all it takes is a few white kids who feel entitled to act with impunity to punch right through. Meanwhile, the vast liberal public simply cannot accept what their lying eyes show them, because it would require that they accept that all the excuses for decades of inaction, of political impotence, was just kayfabe.

Ok gang what's the going odds that the US actually attempts to annex Canada?

The working draft of the Republican Party's HHS funding bill for next year includes a stipulation to withhold federal funding from any recipient that provides HRT.

For the last few years, the GOP has coalesced around an idea that would short-circuit essentially all trans health care in America: banning federal funds from going to businesses that provide health care specific to changing one’s sex or gender identity, including hormones and surgeries. It would essentially signal to the private sector that if it wants federal dollars, it needs to stay away from sex- or gender-affirming care, and bow down to right-wing pundits who aim to, in their own words, “eradicate” and “erase” this form of health care.

Language in House Republicans’ most recent funding bill for the Health and Human Services Department would do just that — ban money from any federal program to entities that do “social transitioning” or drugs and surgery for “gender dysphoria.” Gender dysphoria is the specific diagnosis doctors use to justify those medical interventions. This legislation has not gotten a vote yet and would need to be reintroduced next Congress to be considered. But it has been a top priority for Republican lawmakers in the House, and Trump himself has promised he’d ask Congress “to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these [trans] procedures.” (You can hear all his promises on trans health care in this short campaign video.)

Bans like these can lead to the private sector discontinuing behaviors altogether — and once they are in place, they are hard to get rid of: The Hyde Amendment, enacted in the 1970s, led to most abortions no longer being performed in hospitals, and is continually renewed each year.

Medical groups and civil rights advocates in D.C. tell Rolling Stone they believe that if a Hyde-level ban on federal funding were enacted, many hospitals will simply prioritize federal dollars over continuing this highly specialized form of medical care. So much medicine is performed through hospital systems and universities that this could mean ending access for many.

Given the Democratic Party leapt at the chance to scapegoat transgender people for all their own failures in the election, I think it would take a miracle to prevent this from going into law. It will immediately put large health institutions in certain states between a rock and hard place, as local legislation requires them to offer these services, which will likely lead to appeals, but as it stands I doubt they will make even a token effort to get this language out of the bill, and it will make HRT completely legally inaccessible for anyone who can't afford private practice virtually overnight. This article's author, Jael Holzman, is the guest on this week's Chapo, you can hear the story in her own words there.

Per MSNBC by way of Reuters, backpack possibly belonging to shooter found in central park containing "Monopoly money"

A backpack resembling the one worn by the suspect has been recovered near a playground in Central Park, according to media reports. MSNBC said on Saturday that police examining the bag and its contents found a jacket and Monopoly money, but no firearm.

This is not a decision you should be making in the middle of a panic attack. Emigrating demands extensive planning and carefully selecting a destination, particularly as a transgender person. I often have to tell young trans people this, and it's relevant here: There are no good places for trans people, only bad places and worse places.

It's AI yeah. Look at all the tech on the table in the middle, it all just dissolves into sludge. Also, it's hard to articulate, but there's something about the way current image generation models generate transparent materials, such as that squat little water bottle in the foreground, that always jumps out to me. I suspect because it's primarily learned what drink container should look like from overlit advertisements.

Oh, covid, you mean the respiratory virus that leaves those who contract it with long term neurological, gastrointestinal, and metabolic illnesses? That covid?

It's a mystery!

I worked in retail for years right up through the pandemic, in grocery and drug stores, and it's really illuminating to experience that environment when you've already been inoculated against these taking points. Because there has been no increase in shoplifting.

Shoplifting has always been easy and commonplace, it happens every single day and it always has. The only thing that has changed is that people who work these jobs are being fed this narrative of a shoplifting crime wave, and have become more paranoid and hostile as a response.

In response to this cultural pressure, this propaganda effort to obscure and deflect awareness of drastically plunging buying power and general impoverishment, petty managers seeking a sense of control over perceived attacks on "their stores" (nonsense serf logic) are chaining everything to the floor. And this of course only worsens their declining sales, because why bother even trying to buy something in the store if you're doing to do so legitimately if you have to ask someone to get it for you? You might as well have it delivered tomorrow by Amazon!

Between this and the fusion power news earlier this year I am fully willing to believe that China is going to end energy scarcity in this century and leave the US in the stone age.

Are we gonna say "mask off" every time this happens or are we going to start thinking and acting like it's been off?

Suggests alarming lack of stability.

It will never stop making my stomach churn to see the very real problem of antisemitism leveraged to provide rhetorical cover for a genocide.