I admit my life was different but from the time I was five I knew I was attracted to males. Specifically both sexually and emotionally. One of the hell spawn female siblings even held me down to pound the point that I was “queer” into me. I did not understand why it was wrong, after all they were the ones telling me what to do and farming me out to their teen boyfriends. I craved being held by the boys and not so much the girls. But all the other gay and lesbian people I have talked to knew early also. Preteen time frame. 7 or 8 and up they knew they were gay and either knew they had to hide it or knew they couldn’t so had to live with being attacked for it. These people who think it is a choice, a fad, or a phase need to ask themselves the famous question. When did they know they were cis and straight and was it a choice they made. No they just felt it all their lives, they simply knew it. Same for the LGBTQ+. The only difference is straight cis kids see themselves everywhere from birth. Mommies and daddies, they see themselves in the older kids around them, in the news, movies, TV shows, and the books they read. It feels so natural to them they just don’t question it. They are lucky. Until recently like in the last decade LGBTQ+ kids did not see themselves reflected in society. No movies had kids like them, no books in the library had kids like them. Some kids did not even know the words for how they felt. It was changing in the last ten years. Schools made a push for inclusion and tolerance, movies showed LGBTQ+ kids, books had them as plots or characters. Kids could see themselves and be proud. That is what the haters, the anti-trans / anti-gay bigots want to remove. The ability of kids who are different from the majority to see themselves represented positively in society. It is why they write and pass don’t say gay bills, and why they ban books. It is why they try to ban drag shows and pride events. These people who demand a straight cis world with only them showing in public are terrified of a world where people can be different. To them those who are the other must be destroyed, ideas of acceptance and tolerance must be erradicated and removed. All because they don’t feel different from the majority so the difference must not be real. But it is and we need to realize the scars left on kids who grew up in the times when they never seen themselves represented in society. We must not go backward in time, regressing to a time of hate. Hugs
LGBTQ+ youth advocates gathered outside the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, where a school policy that would impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth was being reviewed in Superior Court. | Amanda Oglesby / Asbury Park Press / USA TODAY NETWORK
A new poll from Pew Research Center sheds some light on just how early LGBTQ+ people are aware of their identities. The study of LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. found that most respondents understood their identity before the age of 14, with a substantial portion knowing about their identities before the age of 10.
Among gay and lesbian adults, 36% said that they felt they were gay or lesbian before the age of 10 and 35 first felt they were gay or lesbian from ages 10 to 13. Only a minority – 29% – had their first feelings about their sexuality after the age of 14.
The numbers were similar for transgender people. Approximately 33% felt they might be transgender before age 10, and 25% felt the same way between ages 10 to 13. Only 19% had their first feelings about being transgender after the age of 18.
Bisexual people tended to know the latest, but even a majority of bisexual people said that they had their first thoughts about being queer before age 18. Half – 50% – had their first feelings of being bisexual before age 14.
The question often comes up in discussions of LGBTQ+ youth, with many on the right insisting that people can’t know their identities before adulthood. Often, these people claim that only LGBTQ+ people can’t know their identities before adulthood, but then support heterosexuality and cisgender identities in young people.
But these statements fly in the face of LGBTQ+ people’s lived experiences, which often include years of hiding their identities before they create a safer space for themselves to live authentically as adults.
While LGBTQ+ respondents generally first thought about their queer identities when they were very young, most waited until they were older to tell others. While 71% of gay and lesbian people said that they first knew about their sexuality before age 14, only 13% said that they told someone before that age. Approximately 58% of trans people first thought they might be trans before age 14, but only 15% told someone before that age.
This also contradicts the rightwing narrative that young people are saying that they are trans or gay to gain social acceptance and not because they actually identify as such. In reality, young people are saying that they’re straight or cisgender when they actually aren’t, likely to try and get social acceptance.
Pew broke down the results even more and showed that gay men generally felt that they were gay at a younger age than lesbian women, with 40% saying they were younger than 10 years old when they first thought they were gay, as opposed to 29% of lesbian women.
| Pew Research Center
Bisexual women, on the other hand, likely knew earlier than bisexual men. 53% of bi women said they felt they might be bi before they were 14 years old, while just 40% of bi men said the same.
| Pew Research Center
The poll was conducted in January of this year and involved a sample of 3,959 adult LGBTQ+ Americans. The survey asked about a wide variety of topics, including support from family and friends, ties to the larger LGBTQ+ community, and social acceptance.
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Palantir employees, including CEO Alex Karp, made millions in campaign donations in 2024. In April, the company won a $30 million contract to develop software to help ICE manage deportations. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
In early April, hundreds of military and tech companies exhibited their products at the Border Security Expo, which brought “government leaders, law enforcement officials, and industry innovators” together. During the two-day event in Phoenix, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons said he would like ICE to operate more like a business: “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.” He added that “the badge and guns” should do “the badge-and-gun stuff, everything else, let’s contract out.”
The event illustrates how companies are rushing to secure government contracts as the Trump administration ramps up its spending on ICE to reach its deportation goals. The House approved a spending bill in early May that sets aside $175 billion for immigration enforcement – about 22 times ICE’s annual budget – and includes $45 billion for detention, $14.4 billion for transportation and removal operations and $8 billion for hiring new ICE staff. The Trump administration ordered DHS to hire an additional 20,000 ICE officers.
OpenSecrets previously reported on the private prisons and air carriers that are poised to benefit from President Donald Trump’s plans to increase deportation. This final article in the series focuses on other for-profit companies benefiting from deportations.
New contracts
In April, ICE awarded software company Palantir Technologies a $29.8 millioncontract for developing ImmigrationOS, a tool to help ICE with identifying and prioritizing the deportations of individuals who are considered a risk, such as violent criminals; tracking who is self-deporting; and managing cases from the individual’s entry through detention, hearing and deportation. Palantir is expected to provide a prototype of the ImmigrationOS tool by Sept. 25. The tool is an extension of systems that Palantir has already delivered as part of its almost $128 million contract signed in 2022.
Deployed Resources, an emergency management company that has provided mobile restrooms, sinks and tents to music festivals such as Lollapalooza and emergency relief following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Sandy, has been awarded over $4 billion in government contracts to build and operate border tents since 2016, according to ProPublica. The company earned a $3 billion contract with ICE in 2022 for running tent detention facilities around the border. On April 11, ProPublica reported that ICE awarded a new contract worth up to $3.8 billion to Deployed Resources. On April 17, however, the billion-dollar contract was canceled for reasons unknown. The next day, ICE submitted a $5 million proposal for Deployed Resources to deliver unarmed guard services for 30 days at an ICE facility in El Paso, Texas. ProPublica also revealed that ICE has housed detainees at a tent facility in El Paso operated by Deployed Resources since March. The facility was previously used by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but the Trump administration used the Department of Defense to award Deployed Resources an unannounced $140 million contract to run the site for ICE, citing the declaration of an emergency at the southern border. The facility can house up to 1,000 detainees, and ICE started transferring detainees on March 10, according to ProPublica.
Axon Enterprise, a company that develops technology and weapons for public safety, law enforcement and the military, took part in the Border Expo. The company was awarded a year-long $5.1 million contract on March 10 to deliver body cams and equipment. A day later, the company was awarded a $22,376 contract to deliver tasers that have been used specifically in deportations. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division bought $2.6 million worth of Axon tasers in 2020 and 2021.
Parsons Government Services, a “technology provider,” was also at the Border Expo. The company was awarded a contract worth up to $8.9 million for COVID-19 testing supplies in February, as well as an $87,467 contract in March and a $118,758 contract in April with ICE, both to provide “mobile biometric collection devices in support of the biometric identification transnational migration alert program.” The company is already wrapping up a one-year, $4.2 million contract for the transportation and guard services of ICE detainees in Newark.
General Dynamics, a weapons company, was awarded new $101,034 and $80,050 contracts in March to purchase non-lethal ammunition for training purposes for ICE’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs.
Sig Sauer Inc., a firearms company, was awarded more than $200,000 worth of contracts with ICE for firearms and firearm accessories in the first months of 2025: $57,163 in February, and $19,824, $35,106 and $90,854 contracts in April.
Paragon Professional Services, was awarded a $1.1 million contract on April 1 for transporting people who are detained by ICE in the New York City area and a $458,400 month-long contract to provide transportation of ICE detainees in Baltimore on April 17.
Follow the money
Palantir spent $5.8 million on lobbying the federal government in 2024. The company’s employees also made almost $5 million in campaign contributions during the 2024 elections. The largest contributions included $1 million to Make America Great Again Inc, $1 million to MAGA Inc and $344,914 to the Republican National Committee. Palantir’s CEO, Alexander Karp, contributed to Democratic as well as Republican candidates during the 2024 elections. In 2023, Karp contributed $163,800 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $154,920 to their Republican counterparts. Karp increased his contributions to the Republican Party after Trump was elected: On Dec. 12, 2024, Karp contributed $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-supporting super PAC. In the first months of 2025, Karp contributed $360,000 to Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) Grow the Majority PAC and a combined $310,100 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Palantir also spent $170,000 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025.
Even though the company has no lobbying history, Deployed Resources has hired more than a dozen former government insiders, according to ProPublica, including some high-ranking ICE officials. Marlen Pineiro joined Deployed recently, after working for the Department of Homeland Security in Central America developing policies with Panama, and a decade as a senior official at ICE, according to her LinkedIn profile. A month after Trump’s victory, former ICE field office director Sean Ervin announced he was joining Deployed Resources as a senior adviser for strategic initiatives.
Axon Enterprise contributed to both the Democratic and Republican parties. The CEO, Patrick Smith, donated $25,000 to the Scalise Leadership Fund of 2024, a joint fundraising committee run by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). James Norton, the vice president of the company, contributed several thousand dollars to Republicans in the past two years. Axon Enterprise spent $1.5 million on lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the first quarter of 2025, a $180,000 increase compared to Q1 2024. One of Axon’s lobbyists, Helen Tolar, also served as a transition advisor to Doug Collins, Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs.
Employees and PACs related to Parsons Government Services’ mother corporation, Parsons Corporation, contributed $592,053 in the 2024 elections, with $27,715 to Kamala Harris and $13,076 to Donald Trump. The company spent $950,000 on lobbying in 2024, mostly on defense issues. In the first quarter of 2025, the company ramped up its lobbying to $590,000, a $370,000 increase from the same quarter in 2024. Parsons Corporation has its own PAC, which spent $247,600 on Republican federal candidates in the 2024 elections, and $151,250 on Democratic candidates.
Sig Sauer Inc.’s PAC contributed $87,715 in the 2024 elections, mostly to Republican candidates. The company’s CEO, Ron Cohen, contributed $25,000 in 2024 to Preserve America, a super PAC supporting Donald Trump. The company spent $530,000 on lobbying in 2024 and $260,000 in the first quarter of 2025, a $180,000 increase from the first quarter in 2024. It did not lobby on specific bills in 2024.
General Dynamics contributed $3.4 million in the election, both to Republicans as well as Democrats. The company also spent $12.2 million on lobbying in 2024, mostly regarding defense issues. It spent $3.3 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025, a $340,000 increase from the previous year.
Paragon Professional Services LLC is a subsidiary of Bering Straits Assn., which contributed $15,305 in the 2024 elections, both on Democratic as well as Republican candidates. The company lobbied to the tune of $280,000 in 2024, mostly on the Coast Guard Authorization Act and the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. It has spent $60,000 on lobbying in 2025 so far. CEO Gail Schubert spent several thousand dollars on Republican candidates in Alaska.
Why does it matter?
(snip-It Matters! MORE on the page; click through above on the article headline.)
So below I will add the pictures of the torture device my husband insisted I needed. We have not been walking like we used to. There seems to always be a reason why but my husband worries about how thin my legs have gotten and that I have started to have swollen ankles and feet sitting at my desk so much. So
we got this device.
Now comes the punishment part. The first time I tried it I did 3 sets of 5 minutes of stepping, rested 10 minutes between sets. Two or three hours later as I was doing the dishes my legs started to really hurt and get stiff. I couldn’t bend my legs. My thighs were swollen. I was in agony so bad I couldn’t finish the dishes. I have not used it since. Can anyone tell me the proper amount of time to use it and how many minutes to rest between and how many sets to do. Thanks. I do want to get healthy and build back up my legs that have atrophied but I don’t want to die doing it. Hugs
Galactic bones, filaments of radio-wave-emitting particles, run through our galaxy, and one of them has a fracture. New analysis suggests collision with a neutron star may have caused it.
A photo of the galactic bone known as The Snake. Photograph: NASA/CXC/Northwestern University
If you look at the Milky Way through a powerful telescope, you’ll notice that close to the center of the galaxy there are elongated filaments that seem to outline its spiral shape. Scientists have a nickname for these structures: “galactic bones.” Recently, astronomers found that one of the Milky Way’s bones is “fractured,” and they believe they’ve now found a possible culprit: a neutron star that may have collided with it.
According to NASA, these bones are huge elongated formations of energized particles that spiral along magnetic fields running through the galaxy. The particles release radio waves, and so are detectable using radio telescopes.
Scientists have found several such bones in the galaxy, but one of the most striking is called G359.13142-0.20005, also known as “the Snake.” It is a 230-light-year-long filament that appears to have a fracture. It is also one of the brightest. One of the first explanations was that some as yet undetected body had disturbed the filament.
A study by Harvard University, published in the journal Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society, set out to test this hypothesis. The research team involved found signs of a pulsar, a neutron star spinning at high speed, in the same region as the broken bone. These stars are extremely dense, and are the small remnants left after the explosion of a supermassive star.
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which orbits Earth, along with the MeerKAT telescope array in South Africa and the Very Large Array in New Mexico—two systems that detect radio waves—scientists found what appear to be traces of a pulsar in the filament. Based on data from these observatories, they estimate that this pulsar impacted the bone at a speed of between 1,609,000 and 3,218,000 kilometers per hour. The suspected collision is thought to have distorted the magnetic field of the bone, causing its radio signal to deform.
The structure G359.13, with the fracture visible on its right-hand side. Photograph: NASA/CXC/Northwestern University
In the above image provided by NASA, the Snake can be seen, and there is a body that appears to be interacting with the structure, in the middle of its length. It is possibly the aforementioned neutron star.
Pulsars are alternative versions of a neutron star where, in addition to being compact objects, they rotate at high velocities and produce strong magnetic fields. At the moment there is no instrument that can see them directly due to their size and distance, but radio telescopes can detect the electromagnetic waves they emit and hear them by converting these into sound.
This story originally appeared onWIRED en Españoland has been translated from Spanish.
May 25, 1774 A group of African slaves in Massachusetts Bay colony petitioned the British royal governor for freedom as their natural right: “. . . we have in common with all other men a natural right to our freedoms without Being depriv’d of them by our fellow men as we are a freeborn Pepel [people] and have never forfeited this Blessing by aney compact or agreement whatever.”
May 25, 1925 John T. Scopes was indicted for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Scopes, a football coach and substitute high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, agreed to be arrested and put on trial for teaching evolution. He was challenging the legitimacy of a four-day-old state law barring Darwin’s theory from the public school curriculum. The Scopes “Monkey Trial” ACLU
May 25, 1948 Garry Davis, formerly a member of the U.S. military, renounced his American citizenship to become a Citizen of the World. Davis continued to promote “world citizenship” for over 50 years; 400,000 have, at one time or another, joined the movement. watch trailer “THE WORLD IS MY COUNTRY” Read more about Garry Davis NY Times
May 25, 1963 Leaders of 32 African nations met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to set up the Organization of African Unity (OAU), giving them a united voice for the first time in the continent’s history. The primary aim of the OAU was to end European colonial control in the countries where it still existed at the time: Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, Mozambique and Angola. OAU flag Read more
May 25, 1986 An estimated 7 million Americans participated in Hands Across America, forming a line across the country from Los Angeles to New York to raise public awareness of the issues of hunger and homelessness in the U.S. Participants paid ten dollars [almost $20 in 2009] to reserve their place in line; the proceeds were donated to local charities to feed the hungry and help the homeless.
May 25, 2003 Four activists, members of the Catholic Worker movement and known as “Riverside Ploughshares,” were arrested for pouring blood and hammering on the USS Philippine Sea’s Tomahawk cruise missile hatches. The ship was visiting New York City for the annual “Fleet Week.” “With hammers we have initiated the process of disarming this battle ship, of transforming this carrier of mass destruction into a vessel for peace…” pouring blood and hammering.. Details of the Riverside Ploughshares action
May 23, 2025, 3:13 PM EDT; Updated: May 23, 2025, 3:35 PM EDT
Allie Reed
Correspondent
A large transgender flag with signatures and messages during a protest.
Photographer: Manaure Quintero/Bloomberg
The Trump administration must republish two Harvard Medical School professors’ papers it censored because they contained words related to gender ideology, a federal judge ruled Friday.
“The plaintiffs are likely to succeed in proving that the removal of their articles was a textbook example of viewpoint discrimination by the defendants in violation of the First Amendment,” Judge Leo Sorokin wrote for the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The US Department of Health and Human Services took down peer-reviewed articles by doctors Gordon Schiff and Celeste Royce from the now-inactive Patient Safety Network website, run by the HHS’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
PSNet said the articles were taken down in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order directing agencies to remove content that promotes “gender ideology.” Schiff’s article, on suicide risk assessment, and Royce’s, on endometriosis, both referenced transgender people.
“This is a flagrant violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights as private speakers on a limited public forum,” Sorokin wrote.
The government can only restrict speech on a limited public forum like PSNet in a way that is reasonable and viewpoint neutral, the order said, and the administration’s restrictions were not.
Sorokin said it is not within his discretion “to evaluate the wisdom of restricting access to peer-reviewed scientific information that enhances patient safety by fostering more informed and timely diagnostic care—or of eliminating entirely a free, online repository of patient-safety resources accessed each year by thousands of medical professionals seeking to provide better, safer care to their patients in the United States. Those are matters for the political branches of government to decide.”
The preliminary injunction applies to Schiff and Royce’s articles, as well as other content removed from PSNet in a similar manner.
The Trump administration is asking a federal judge to reject a challenge from two Harvard University Medical School physicians seeking to block the government’s removal of research papers because they included terms related to the LGBTQ communities. https://t.co/Bj8Wuuu8c7
Photo: Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro, who also serves as Kennedy Space Center director, a post she assumed in 2021. Trump elevated Petro to lead NASA after he ousted former Sen. Bill Nelson for believing in climate change.
Newly-released data shows that Oklahoma ranks 46th in per-pupil spending, but Walters, who is eyeing a run for governor, has called for cuts to his state’s “wasteful” education spending, including $250,000 to provide school districts with emergency inhalers.
In his KFOR interview, Walters did boast about getting new teachers a signing bonus, but as was widely reported the time, $290,000 of that money had to be clawed back because it had gone to teachers who did not qualify. Some of those teachers had already spent the money.
New: CBP seized a shipment of t-shirts from @cola.baby featuring a swarm of bees attacking a cop. The company also sells "ELIMINATE ICE" t-shirt and previously was threatened by LAPD for "FUCK THE LAPD" shirts and hats. Shirts to be "destroyed under CBP supervision"www.404media.co/cbp-seizes-s…
Rep. Beth Lear first appeared here in January 2024 when she defended her anti-trans bathroom bill by citing the “millstones” bible verse which calls for drowning anyone who hurts children.
She later blamed “depraved monster” Alfred Kinsey, liberals, and the ACLU for transgender people even existing.
Rep. Josh Williams first appeared here in July 2024 for his bill that would criminalize drag shows in the presence of children. Williams reintroduced his bill last week.
Alex Bollinger (He/Him)May 29, 2025, 3:30 pm EDTLGBTQ+ youth advocates gathered outside the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, where a school policy that would impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth was being reviewed in Superior Court. | Amanda Oglesby / Asbury Park Press / USA TODAY NETWORK
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Scottie's Playtime 