An update and a photo. The update from last week is the testing seriously poisoned me and I was very sick. When I told that she was cruel and even told the doctor I should report him to the Geneva Convention both were stunned until they looked at my back. Then they kept saying I should have called in. But I reminded them I was reacting so badly during the midweek visit they already claimed it was a serious problem and gave me a list of things to avoid in products. On Thursday Ron started using every medication we could get including the ones given me from the allergy office. By Friday afternoon I was a raw mass on my back and so sick I was throwing up. Ron wanted to take me to the emergency room. I decided to take a bunch of Benadryl as that was what they would do in the ER. It was a long weekend.
Today I was starting to feel better, but still so very tired. But ready to seriously get back to my blog rather than just read / watch stuff and post it. But the universe is not done messing with me yet.
Ron has not been feeling well either this last week he has been in a lot of pain in his back and hip. But today he decided to put up the shelves I have been asking for … a long time. Due to the small space and James being at work I needed to help Ron. That was a mistake that couldn’t be avoided.
The effort involved with putting up the shelves aggravated and caused serious spasms in my back. Due to that I started having trouble walking and couldn’t stand without support. Lucky for me I have lots of great canes. The pain caused my heart at one point to peak at about 168 and go out of rhythm for a bit. I took my medication and it settled at about 115. Then slowly slowed to 95, 85, and then down to 83. Right now it is 80. But the good news is my disk has a lot less stuff on it and will have even more stuff tomorrow when I feel like moving more of the wired stuff. Odie is happy he has more room to spread out. I did not get back to the comments and other blogs like I planned today but I sure have that as my goal. Anyway here is a picture of the new shelves long after the sun went down and I could stand again. I was able to move a lot of stuff off the desk which was over crowed and yet the other set of speakers the cord is too short. I have to look in my many boxes of extra cords for an extensions of the right wires / jacks … (What I want is a new set of much better sounding surround sound speakers …) Hugs and lots of love. Scottie Oh Yes that is Odie on my desk, now that Tupac is a house permanent person Odie is making sure he gets as much desk time as possible. Hugs
Every gun owner is a legal gun owner until they are not. The argument that gun safety laws only punishes the good gun owner trying to protect their home and family. But the truth is every gun that was in some illegal used started out as a legally bought gun by someone. Hugs
January is not even over, but this weekend’s On Patrol: Live aired what may end up being the most shocking TV moment of the year.
At the beginning of Saturday’s episode of Reelz’s law enforcement docuseries, police in Beech Grove, Ind. responded to reports of a diaper-clad child roaming the halls with a firearm at a local apartment complex.
When the officers arrived, they spoke to neighbors who had reported seeing the toddler with the gun, which he pointed at them, prompting them to retreat inside and call police immediately. The police then questioned the boy’s father, who denied having a gun in the home.
NEW: Neighbors who saw a toddler in diapers wandering around a Beech Grove, Indiana, apartment complex with a loaded handgun called police. The incident was caught on building cameras. The father – who lied that he didn’t own a gun – was arrested. #inlegishttps://t.co/FPpHFNi4rnpic.twitter.com/UGic373G4L
Last year – over the objections of police and Hoosiers – Indiana lawmakers passed permitless carry, which allows people to have easy access to guns without a background check or safety training. Data shows the law increases gun crime and death. #inlegishttps://t.co/7QEGC3Q4jD
Shitty parenting all around. That kid is too little to be wandering around outside his apartment without an adult, but is also too big to be wearing diapers. Too lazy to toilet train their kid.
I saw this on On Patrol Live on Saturday it was horrific to see this kid walking around pulling the trigger on the gun pointing it at random people, the father was totally responsible and LIED about his access to the weapon, he was arrested for child endangerment and also felon in possession of a gun. Thank god the gun while the clip was loaded there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber so the gun could not fire, if the kid had been able to figure out how to “rack” the gun to load a bullet it would have been much much worse.
He knew he shouldn’t have had the gun, initially when the police asked to search the apartment, he granted them access, but they found the gun inside a closed rolltop desk, which was obviously his attempt to hide it, he didn’t answer the door immediately so the police assumed he was secreting the weapon. He also claimed it belonged to his brother and he sometimes left it there when he didn’t think he should be carrying it around. The police knew it was suspect and kept searching and once they found it, that started the process of identifying him, contacting Child Services and eventually his arrest, the child was turned over to his grandmother who also happened to live in the same apartment complex, but was warned that DCS would be contacting her about the eventual disposition of the child’s welfare.
We were watching it live too and I was pissed off for the neighbors who told the cops what happened only for them to say, “Call us if it happens again since we don’t have proof” and they only stopped halfway out the door because another neighbor came out with their Ring doorbell footage.
I cannot get over the fact that there are people today in 2023 that think just the mention of LGBTQ+ or any depiction of LGBTQ+ characters in books or movies is obscene. And by this womans definition of “Child Pornography” any depiction of sex in any media even if it only depicts adults is classified as child porn. Why are right wingers so afraid of sex between consenting adults and why won’t they accept the science that says kids are born / know their sexual orientation or gender identity. Young people don’t read a book about LGBTQ+ people or watch a movie with an LGBTQ+ character suddenly becoming gay or trans. If that was the case every kid who watched cartoons would be trans and gay just from watching Bugs Bunny, who while being associated with the male gender often dressed as a woman and kissed a lot of guys. This is like people who believe in a flat earth or in young earth creationism, it defies all the science and advancement in medical science. Hugs
“Reasonable people everywhere recognize these books as obscene and reasonable people do not want their money used to subsidize obscenity.”
A freshman lawmaker from Wyoming has already begun efforts to remove LGBTQ+ books for youth from both school and public libraries in the state.
Republican Rep.-elect Jeanette Ward has introduced House Bill 87, which expands the definition of “child pornography” to mean “any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, cartoon, drawing, computer or computer generated image or picture, whether or not made or produced by electronic, mechanical or other means, or any other form of depiction of explicit sexual conduct.”
The bill also repeals a law that gives exemptions for those who “possess or disseminate obscene material” for activities related to schools, universities, colleges, museums, and public libraries.
Based on this definition, many books that provide sexual health information to youth would be banned, along with several books that help LGBTQ+ youth learn about their identities.
“Not requiring tax payers to pay for obscenity is reasonable and just,” Ward told the Casper Star Tribune. “These books will continue to be available in the marketplace, but not paid for by taxpayer dollars. Reasonable people everywhere recognize these books as obscene and reasonable people do not want their money used to subsidize obscenity.”
According to the Tribune, Ward, herself, has passionately advocated for the removal of two LGBTQ+ books from a high school library in her district – speaking at multiple school board meetings against the acclaimed graphic memoir Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and a trans resource guide called Trans Bodies, Trans Selves.
Ward also helped members of the anti-LGBTQ+ group Moms for Liberty get elected to the Natrona County school board. Moms for Liberty members have been running for school board positions across the country as part of the right-wing effort to shift schools toward a more conservative ideology.
On boards where Moms for Liberty is in control, curricula is likely to exclude LGBTQ+-inclusive and anti-racist education.
In Florida, anti-LGBTQ+ Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, himself, helped Moms for Liberty members get elected to local school boards. The newly seated members repaid DeSantis by ousting school officials who dared defy his orders against school mask mandates during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ward’s bill in Wyoming currently has 13 Republic cosponsors. If it passes, it will go into effect on July 1st.
What the right is claiming is any discussion of gay, trans, or same sex couples is sexualizing kids. Even talking about the existence of same sex families and of gay / trans kids in class is harmful to kids. It again is the Russian model and it is easier to pass regressive restrictions on society if you claim it is to protect kids. We all want to protect kids, but the truth is the right only wants to protect straight white Christian kids. The rest are going to hell anyway and might even have demons in them. This will not stop until they get what they want, a regressive white straight Christian state that enforces their view of religious values. Rufo has admitted the goal is to make New College over in the image of a deeply conservative Christian school, and use it as the model for all education systems. And they are coming for the entire country unless people wake up and fight against them now. Oh and the point is to indoctrinate the kids and then the public in the deeply right republican mode of how society must be without exceptions. the indoctrination they claim they are fight the left over is inclusion, diversity, and tolerance of others. That is something the right is fighting with all they have. They cannot have acceptance or even tolerance of those different from themselves. We must not let them win this fight and become the US Taliban. Hugs
A DeSantis staffer often expresses his belief that “the purpose of our education system is to educate kids, not indoctrinate kids.”
The office of Florida Gov. DeSantis (R) has confirmed that the anti-LGBTQ+ governor is supportive of extending the stipulations of the state’s Don’t Say Gay law – known formally as the Parental Rights in Education Act.
Right now, the law bans discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity up to third grade, and a staffer for the state’s Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (R) told The Daily Mail that lawmakers are thinking about introducing legislation to expand the law up to sixth grade.
In a press conference in December, Passidomo expanded on this, saying that she doesn’t think she’d “be supportive of high school because kids in high school are, hopefully, a little more mature, or at least they should be, but you know, the middle school, maybe go up to 6th grade or something like that.”
DeSantis Press Secretary Bryan Griffin then saidthat “The governor would certainly consider the merits of such a bill in final form if it comes to his desk as a product of the forthcoming legislation session.”
Griffin said DeSantis often expresses his belief that “the purpose of our education system is to educate kids, not indoctrinate kids.”
In addition to banning classroom instruction on LGBTQ+ issues up to third grade, the law as it currently stands also requires in vague terms that discussions on the topic in older grades be “developmentally appropriate.”
Instead of defining those terms, the bill allows parents to sue schools if they believe the law was violated.
DeSantis’s support for increasing the age range for the Don’t Say Gay law is not a surprise, as he has made it clear he is virulently opposed to protecting LGBTQ+ students.
In December, it was revealed that DeSantis helped members of the anti-LGBTQ+ group Moms for Liberty get elected to local school boards in his state.
An educational anti-censorship expert says this development is part of DeSantis’ plan to shift his state’s schools toward a conservative ideology. With Moms for Liberty in control, curricula will exclude LGBTQ+-inclusive and anti-racist education.
And more recently, DeSantis appointed the far-right anti-LGBTQ+ activist Christopher Rufo to the board of trustees of the New College of Florida – a school with a reputation for being progressive and queer-friendly.
Rufo told the New York Times the board is planning a “top-down restructuring” of the school that will involve designing “a new core curriculum from scratch.”
“If we can take this high-risk, high-reward gambit and turn it into a victory,” he said, “we’re going to see conservative state legislators starting to reconquer public institutions all over the United States.”
Yet the right says the democrats are the ones indoctrinating students. These are upper levels of schooling, college and universities, that they are removing any talk of equality, racism, and so much more. Professors having to scrub their courses and presentations of anything that might upset the ruler / dictator DeathSantis. Imagine this country wide. Talk about the Taliban or moral / vice police. This is stunning and worse it is not getting any national attention or scrutiny. It is scary how fascist the state of Florida has become in several short years. With DeathSantis making Florida a maga white Christian paradise the state is being flooded with intolerant people who won’t accept any social advance since the 1850s. Plus notice the drive is to make a public school be just like a conservative Christian college. Hugs
Yovanna Pineda, hired more than a decade ago to teach Latin American history at the University of Central Florida, rebranded one of her signature courses last fall. Striking references to “dictatorships” and “human rights” from the title, she decided to simply call her class “History of South America.”
Pineda said many of her colleagues are making similar changes, either because they fear blowback from state leaders who say they are trying to eliminate “indoctrination” from university campuses or because they don’t want the hassle of additional scrutiny.
DeSantis continued his campaign last week, appointing far-right activist Christopher Rufo to the Board of Trustees at New College of Florida. Rufo is best known for launching a national campaign against critical race theory. Rufo told The New York Times he and his new colleagues seek to transform New College into a public version of Michigan’s Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school.
Read the full article. That’s Rufo standing appropriately on the far-right in the screenshot above.
UCF professors are renaming courses and removing phrases like “human rights”, “social justice”, “equity” and “equal” to avoid being targeted or tracked by the state.
This is happening in 2023 in the United States under the new McCarthyism of Ron DeSantis.https://t.co/Z7Xrzx8WNp
UCF professors are renaming courses and removing phrases like “human rights”, “social justice”, “equity” and “equal” to avoid being targeted or tracked by the state.
This is happening in 2023 in the United States under the new McCarthyism of Ron DeSantis.https://t.co/Z7Xrzx8WNp
“And faculty members say they’ve seen other signs that the governor has gained a foothold on their campuses, including the removal of the words “social justice” from the name of an office at UCF, which has been rebranded as the Office of Civil Discourse.“https://t.co/Z7Xrzx8oXRpic.twitter.com/VI4WkSlCWu
If you want to see true hypocrisy, look no further then Cuban Republicans in FL who scream about how evil socialism and Castro are while applauding everything DeSantis does. They hate socialism but love fascism.
Like openly gay Florida state Rep. Carlos Smith (seen above), I am a graduate of UCF, which is now the nation’s largest public university by enrollment.
So the ‘academic freedom’ they’re so loudly in favour of just means the ability of professors to use slurs and misgender their students without being talked to by HR. I mean we knew that, but nice to see it actually being confirmed in real time.
In the Fascist State of Florida, the remaking of education continues on course. Henceforth, all institutions of learning will be used to groom children into fascism and eliminate anything that does not support/agree with fascist theory.
What I don’t understand is why the ACLU or some other organization hasn’t brought suit against the governor for violation of the First Amendment. This is exactly what the amendment was designed to prohibit: governmental interference with free speech.
Why even send your children to Florida universities at this point. Soon none of the institution live up to the normal standard of operation. Moron Death Sentence is hell bend on turning Florida into a shit hole state.
And the administrations of these schools are unable to protect academic freedom for their professors because of fear of retribution and firing. DeSantis is Big Brother.
All public educators, at all grade levels, should simply walk out. There is no way Florida would be able to replace every single teacher and college professor in the state. The federal government would be forced to step in.
By now, we can all tell that our dollars don’t stretch as far as they used to. The purchasing power of the average American family has declined by over 35% since 2010, and as we enter a new year, more price increases, inflation, and financial hardships are on the horizon.
It’s never been so expensive to live in the United States. While the cost of basic necessities continues to reach new highs, our incomes stay the same, and the threat of job losses reemerges due to the ongoing recession.
2023 will be a very challenging year for many households, and in today’s video, we listed a series of things that are either going up in price in the months ahead or becoming more unaffordable and out of the reach of hard-working Americans.
For example, We’re still in the middle of one of the greatest housing bubbles in history, and even though prices are crashing in some pandemic hotspots, soaring interest rates are keeping the cost of a home and monthly mortgage payments over 40% higher than a year ago.
The trend is expected to continue throughout 2023 as the Fed announced that it will continue its monetary tightening policy until inflation is tamed down.
New research released by ATTOM Data Solutions revealed that Americans can’t afford to purchase a home in more than 75 percent of the country. Out of 473 U.S. counties analyzed in the report, 355 listed median home prices more than what average wage earners could afford, the firm found.
“New York City claimed the largest share of a person’s income to purchase a home,” researchers noted, adding that “while average earners nationwide need to spend only about one-third of their income on a home, residents in Brooklyn and Manhattan must shell out more than 115 percent of their income.
In San Francisco, residents must spend 103 percent, and in Hawaii’s Maui County, it takes 101 percent”. Similarly, renters seem to be struggling just as much, but their uncertain situation is even worse. With unemployment rates steadily rising, and a recession at our door, a wave of evictions is expected to occur in 2023.
Affordable housing problems will, unfortunately, stay with us for quite some time, and many hard-working people out there are at risk of becoming homeless.
Already, roughly 51 million households don’t earn enough to afford rent according to a study released Thursday by the United Way ALICE Project. That represents 43% of households in the entire country.
The figure includes the 16.1 million households living in poverty, as well as the 34.7 million families that the United Way has dubbed as ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.
This group makes less than what’s needed “to survive in the modern economy,” the organization noted. Unfortunately, financial stability will not be in the cards for millions of families out there in 2023.
This will be a year marked by the burst of financial bubbles, business shutdowns, layoffs, and an economic downturn that is set to be the greatest since the 2008 meltdown. The recession has only just begun, and we should all brace for a bumpy ride in the coming months.
At a religious summer camp, Joey meets and falls for a boy named Adrian. In an environment that he realizes might not accept him for who he is, Joey must decide if it’s worth it to tell Adrian how he truly feels.
The popular ‘gender critical’ theory about pelvic bones is simply nonsense. (Credit: GiaPratamaMD | Twitter)
It’s a popular ‘gender critical’ argument, that if archaeologists were to dig up a skeleton in hundreds of years from now they’d be able to tell whether it was male or female.
Sadly for them, it’s total nonsense.
The belief that birth sex is identifiable through skeletal structure is entirely “misleading” according to various experts.
The myth became popularised by so-called gender-critical individuals following claims of a physical disparity between pelvic bones of those assigned male at birth and those that were assigned female.
It is routinely used as an argument by anti-trans groups to claim that the concept of gender identity is useless because of its impermanence.
You can say gender neutral, you can have many sexual orientation.
But hundreds years from now, if Archeologist find your bone, they will say you either Male or female. pic.twitter.com/tamYUUxCPF
But, according to several experts in archaeology, the claim ignores a number of fundamental steps when identifying skeletal remains.
ATSU assistant professor and biological anthropologist Caroline VanSickle told AFPthat professionals often cannot say with any certainty if an individual was male, female or other just by looking at their bones.
“We can offer a fairly educated guess, but even then we sometimes get the answer wrong or end up with inconclusive results,” VanSickle says.
She added there is currently “limited data” on how hormone replacement therapy (HRT) affects bone structure, which makes it even more tricky to define the facts about a centuries-old skeleton.
“We also lack methods to identify intersex individuals, who make up around two per cent of the population,” she added.
The pelvic bone is not reliable enough to identify a male or female skeleton
Because of this ambiguity, archaeologists often refrain from definitively identifying the sex of a skeleton unless there is further proof to corroborate the decision.
When examining a skeleton, Osteoarchaeologists often consider both the physical characteristics of the skeleton, while also considering evidence of the person’s gender identity – especially in cultures which have exhibited gender-neutral or third-gender identities.
Durham university archaeology professor Rebecca Gowland said that skeletons are often categorised as male, probable male, unknown, female, or probable female.
She said the categorisation is based “on a number of different factors… [including] poor preservation, or it could be that some of the skeletal traits used to estimate sex are ambiguous.”
Archaeologists have routinely said that a person’s skeleton isn’t enough to identify their sex, let alone their pelvic bone. (Getty)
Sexual dimorphism – the biological or physical difference between the sexes of a species – is reportedly so slight in the skeleton of a human that the margin of error can be exceptionally high.
Gowland added that professionals are aware “biological sex exists on a spectrum, of which skeletons and the sexual variation they show is only one part of a greater whole.
“They also understand that the assessment of sex using skeletons is not 100 per cent accurate and this analysis may not align with an individual’s biological sex or gender identity.”
But, as many trans activists have pointed out, the concept of being misgendered in hundreds or thousands of years from now is not exactly on the top of their anxieties list.
“I won’t be alive by then, so I don’t really care,” journalist Katelyn Burns said in response to a post using the argument.
“Oh no! I’ll be so embarrassed when my bones are dug up in several hundred years! What ever will I do!?” another sarcastically wrote.
Scottie's Playtime 