We in the US need to have the same hope and constant drive as the LGBTQ+ in Poland. See their government is anti-LGBTQ+ and the leader calls them “evil”. But they did not give up and kept working to change the hearts and minds of the people. And it is working. We need to do the same. Hugs.
————————————————————————————————————–
The proposed legislation still has a long way to go, but advocates are optimistic.
June 10, 2018: Warsaw’s LGBTQ pride equality march
Poland made a landmark move for LGBTQ+ rights after it banned hate speech against sexual orientation and gender in a new set of regulations.
Currently, the country’s laws prohibit hate speech on the basis of race, religion, and ethnicity. “These provisions do not provide sufficient protection for all minority groups who are particularly vulnerable to discrimination, prejudice and violence,” the national justice ministry said.
After years of government persecution, the move was unprecedented.
“The new regulations aim to more fully implement the constitutional prohibition of discrimination and to meet international recommendations on standards of protection against hate speech and hate crimes,” the ministry added.
The United Nations Human Rights Council has previously criticized the country’s lack of hate crime protections for LGBTQ+ individuals.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk approved the new legislation. It now moves on to Parliament. If Parliament passes it, President Andrzej Duda will have the option to sign it into law or pass it. He has previously stated that he believes LGBTQ+ individuals are “evil.”
However, Duda’s final presidential term ends next year, and the ruling party hopes they can get someone to replace him in time to sign the legislation into law.
Bart Straszewski, an LGBTQ+ activist in Poland, told PinkNews, “I felt like a second-category citizen, and we were treated like second-category citizens. The government is telling you that you don’t deserve equal rights, that you are not creating families, and that you are an agent of the West trying to fight family values or tradition.
“The atmosphere was hostile. We felt that they didn’t want us here, but we still were here, we still were fighting for our country because we are part of it,” Straszewski added.
Poland previously has not been friendly to LGBTQ+ rights. During the Law and Justice (PiS) party’s time in power, the country became one of the most viciously anti-LGBTQ+ countries in Europe. Cities designated themselves “LGBT-free” zones and government-run media outlets regularly demonized and spread lies about the queer community. Gay reporters were fired from publications as part of the national purge.
However, advocates have been working tirelessly to grant protections for LGBTQ+ individuals. A TV anchor apologized this year for his past anti-LGBTQ+ statements and came out in support of the community. Activists also rejoiced when the Polish Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is not illegal, per Poland’s Constitution.
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I know I posted a link to the story via email as I was reading on my phone at the time. But here I am reposting the story in full as it is a grand reason while the camp is being closed. I am so happy for the reason. Hugs.
Willow River, Minn., camp One Heartland is for sale after serving kids there for nearly three decades.
By Jana Hollingsworth
The Minnesota Star Tribune
December 27, 2024 at 7:00AM
Campers paddle on a Willow River lake at One Heartland, a camp for kids affected by HIV/AIDS. (Submitted by One Heartland)
The ashes of 12-year-old Chris Edwards are buried on the grounds of a Pine County camp, where his mother insisted his memorial service be held after his HIV-related death in 1999.
It’s one of the reasons former campers are saddened by the news that One Heartland in Willow River, Minn., about 40 minutes southwest of Duluth, is for sale. The 80-acre site is home to a camp that has served kids living with or affected by HIV/AIDS for more than 30 years. But the number of babies contracting the virus through their mothers has declined to the point where such a camp no longer needs to exist.
“It’s a heartbreaker,” said Chris’ brother, Dylan Edwards, who attended the camp with Chris for years.
“But the purpose of the camp was for sick kids,” he said, and if there are so few that a camp isn’t feasible, “it’s hard to feel bad about that.”
In the United States, the perinatal HIV transmission rate, or the rate of a mother passing the virus on to a child through pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding, is now less than 1% thanks to antiretroviral medications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization says that globally, new HIV infections among children up to age 14 have declined by 38% since 2015 and AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 43%.
As a Wisconsin college student, founder Neil Willenson read about a 5-year-old boy in the Milwaukee area living with HIV who faced isolationism and discrimination at his school. Willenson reached out to the family and got to know them, learning the virus’s deep effects on each member.
He founded One Heartland in 1993 when he was 22, intending it to be a short project. Now 53, he often marvels at how quickly his college-age dreams of working in Hollywood as an actor and producer diverged to running a nonprofit.
“The impact was so transformative the first summer in 1993 that during the week the children were already saying ‘When can we come back?’ ” Willenson said.
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They rented camps around the country the first few summers. Because knowledge of the virus was still minimal at the time, at least one camp didn’t want kids with HIV swimming in its pool, said Edwards, who attended the camp its first year. One Heartland was forced to go elsewhere the next year.
Willenson bought the Willow River property from an Optimist Club in 1997. Former Minnesota Twins player and manager Paul Molitor donated money for the purchase and was a spokesman for the camp for several years.
“We wanted to create a safe haven where children affected by the disease, perhaps for the first time in their young lives, could speak openly about it and be in an environment of unconditional love and acceptance,” said Willenson, who is the president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Milwaukee, as well as a public speaker and founder of other camps. He stepped away from One Heartland leadership in 2010.
With referrals from the National Institutes of Health, children were flown to Minnesota from around the country at no cost to their families; expenses were paid by donors.
Nile Sandeen was the boy who inspired the camp. Now 38, he is a married pastor and doctoral student living in South Carolina. His mother, a nurse who died from the virus in 2010, had tried to provide AIDS education to parents and others concerned about Sandeen attending school. He recalled one student backing off and throwing his hands in the air when he got near him, and one friendship a boy kept a secret from fearful parents.
Sandeen attended camp for several years and traveled the country with the nonprofit, speaking at schools. One Heartland was an outsized presence in his life, giving him a place to “let go and be a kid” and be among others feeling the same isolation, sorrow and pain, he said. It fostered a community created among kids living “radically different” lives than most.
“It was a level of camaraderie and commiseration that is hard to put into words,” Sandeen said.
Chris Edwards was Sandeen’s first close camp friend, and Sandeen reeled from his death, recognizing his own mortality at age 13. Campers and staff members united during those dark periods, a support system Sandeen continues to feel.
The camp “is still part of the tide pushing you forward in life,” he said. “And so many people had that.”
The Edwards brothers are from the Atlanta area and had never had a northwoods experience, Edwards said. The volunteers and medical staff there helped quell some of the cynicism campers had from living with HIV or AIDS, he said, and when kids wanted to talk about death, they led those conversations with grace. The Edwardses lost their father to the virus when they were small children. Their mother died from it when Dylan was 20.
During the first several years of One Heartland’s existence, death was common. Now, many of the thousands who swam and hiked and made crafts at the camp have married and had children, Willenson said. He noted a documentary is being filmed about the camp, which eventually broadened its reach to serve different campers, including those with diabetes and LGBTQ youth. It was largely serving the latter group last summer. The nonprofit hopes to sell the camp to another group that will serve kids.
That there’s no longer a need for the camp’s original purpose “is the greatest story that I ever could have imagined,” Willenson said. “It’s something I never could have predicted.”
Teen drug use continued to fall in 2024, extending a dramatic decline spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic that experts expected would reverse now that the acute phase of the global crisis is well over.
But, according to data released Tuesday, the number of eighth, 10th, and 12th graders who collectively abstained from the use of alcohol, marijuana, or nicotine hit a new high this year. Use of illicit drugs also fell on the whole and use of non-heroin narcotics (Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet) hit an all-time low.
“Many experts in the field had anticipated that drug use would resurge as the pandemic receded and social distancing restrictions were lifted,” Richard Miech, team lead of the Monitoring the Future survey at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. “As it turns out, the declines have not only lasted but have dropped further.”
The Monitoring the Future study—which has been running for 50 years and is funded by the National Institutes of Health—surveys a nationally representative group of teens each year on their involvement with the ever-evolving drug landscape. This year, the survey collected data from over 24,000 students at more than 270 public and private schools.
The initial drop in drug use between 2020 and 2021 was among the largest ever recorded. And researchers like Miech expected the rates would bounce back, at least partially. But now, the data suggests the pandemic has started a wave of abstention that is still rippling through grade levels.
A new era
“Kids who were in eighth grade at the start of the pandemic will be graduating from high school this year, and this unique cohort has ushered in the lowest rates of substance use we’ve seen in decades,” Miech noted.
For alcohol, use in the past 12 months among eighth graders was at 12.9 percent in 2024, similar to 2023 levels, which are all-time lows. For 10th graders, the rate dropped significantly from 30.6 percent in 2023 to 26.1 percent, and for 12th graders, from 45.7 percent to 41.7 percent—both record lows.
For nicotine vaping, rates fell for 10th graders (from 17.5 percent to 15.4 percent) and remained at low levels for eighth and 12th graders. For marijuana, use remained low for eighth and 10th graders and fell significantly for 12th graders (from 29 percent to 25.8 percent). All three grades are at lows not seen since 1990.
For abstainers from alcohol, marijuana, and nicotine in the prior 30 days, the rate among eighth graders hit 90 percent, up from 87 percent in 2017, when it was first measured. The rate was 80 percent among 10th graders, up from 69 percent in 2017, and 67 percent for 12th graders, up from 53 percent in 2017.
“This trend in the reduction of substance use among teenagers is unprecedented,” Nora Volkow, director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), said. “We must continue to investigate factors that have contributed to this lowered risk of substance use to tailor interventions to support the continuation of this trend.”
Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.
(It’s been decades since I’ve lived in a place with public transit; when I read the title, I thought they meant human jerks. I was pleasantly educated.)
A jerking, lurching bus ride can be enough to put someone off their lunch – or even dissuade them from using public transport.
But just how much do public buses jostle passengers?
Measuring this, according to one team of researchers, might help to make the vehicles more comfortable.
The researchers, from University of Technology Sydney, have published a recent study in Scientific Reports.
According to co-author Dr Anna Lidfors Lindqvist, bumpy bus rides aren’t just annoying. They can carry health risks.
“Passengers, especially if they’re a little bit elderly or if have a pre-existing injury, those sorts of sudden changes can actually make it worse,” she tells Cosmos.
“If that’s a blocker for elderly people to take public transport, that’s a great area to further look at.”
In addition, studies on frequent or professionaldrivers and passengers have suggested that long-term exposure to engine vibrations could be linked to chronic pain conditions like lower back pain.
The team set out to measure the speed and direction of vibrations and sudden movements on public buses, to give them a baseline for improving bus bumpiness.
One of the researchers – Md Imam Hossain – took rides on 30 public buses driving different routes around Sydney, carrying an inertial measurement unit (IMU).
“An IMU can gather the acceleration in vertical and longitudinal as they’re ported backwards, side to side, and up and down, as well as then being able to measure the rate of change in those directions,” says Lidfors Lindqvist.
They were particularly keen to measure “jerks” – jolts caused by sudden acceleration or braking – which are a strong indicator of bus ride discomfort.
They found that, on average, passengers experience 0.12 times the force of gravity in acceleration, with peaks at 0.44 times.
They’ve got several different ideas for reducing jerks.
“There’s a lot of different sorts of suspension – like where they use air suspension, rather than pneumatic suspension, that’s usually a softer ride,” says Lidfors Lindqvist.
Softer seats – like those used in coach buses or for truck and bus drivers – are also more comfortable.
“Cushioning a seat is enough for it to be a softer ride in terms of the overall vibration from the seat. Whereas, the jerk itself is a little bit more difficult to have a mechanical solution because your body will still move the same.”
Lidfors Lidqvist says that the transition to electric buses is a mixed bag – they don’t vibrate like diesel engines, but they can accelerate much faster.
“This is really another open question: does that then introduce another sort of jerk?”
But buses don’t need to be wholly redesigned for more comfort. The team thinks that driver training can also help.
“Bus driver behaviour is also a factor, and so is the traffic environment that they’re exposed to. Peak hour traffic looks very different than if it’s off peak,” says Lidfors Lindqvist.
In this study, Hossain sat at the same seat on the bus each time for consistency. But there are more and less comfortable zones on a bus, according to Lidfors Lindqvist.
“Other research, will tell you that you’ll find that the ride is often a little bit softer if you sit on top of the wheel axis, for example,” she says.
“But that jerk movement, when you move back and forth when the bus takes off or stops – that will remain pretty much the same, because it’s just your body in relation to the vehicle itself.”
The team is now interested in looking at the connection between buses and human injuries, as well as optimising bus comfort with efficiency of the ride, and greenhouse gas emissions.
I was simply reading this, then saw a bit about Supt. Walters. The news, as humorously presented as Wonkette does, is still sickening as to RWNJ logic, and none of us needs that. However. I did promise to update regarding Walters. So, here’s the link to the article, with the snippet about Walters. -A.
If We Can’t Blame Teachers Unions For Terrorism (Yes, Really!), Then The Terrorists Will Win by Rebecca Schoenkopf
(snip) “For his part, Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma schools chief who has been trying to Jesusify the state’s entire public school system, was pretty sure that these men committed these acts because the US school system taught them to hate America — to hate America so much that, again, they both joined the Army. Like big America-haters often do.
“Walters said:”
‘What a terrible day when we see terrorist attacks on American soil. It’s absolutely tragic and we’ve got to look as a country on how these things happen. We absolutely have to shut down the border, we can’t allow terrorists to come across the border. We also have to take a look at how are these terrorists coming from people that live in America?
‘You have schools that are teaching kids to hate their country, that this country is evil, you have the teachers unions pushing this on our kids, the radical Left wants people to hate this country. They’ve completely destroyed the integrity of the FBI by making them more concerned about DEI than about protecting Americans. It’s a major part of this.
‘And look, this is a real uncomfortable truth, and I know the Left is going to lose their mind, but listen: We cannot allow our schools to be terrorist training camps. We cannot allow our schools to teach our kids to hate this country. We cannot allow our kids to be taught that this is an evil country.
‘That’s why we’re getting back to the basics in Oklahoma, to make sure that our kids love this country, understand American values, understand the role that the Constitution, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence played in American history. Because we want patriots, and that’s going to be the focus of our schools.
“I suppose it’s possible that these men simply forgot that they hated America for several decades and then went on to commit terrorist attacks against the United States after remembering that they learned that Columbus committed genocide and that many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves in school — but it does seem a tad unlikely.” (snip)
It’s as sad of a thing to realize about myself as anything, a real disappointment, but I really didn’t care about that CEO of the Insurance Company that got murdered. I mean, I did – but wow!, we have been so benumbed by things happening, I just couldn’t be all that shocked. According to Fox News, I am to be ashamed for that. I know, go figure…
These same people who sent thoughts and prayers, yes both!, to the parents of the children in Ulvade, Texas and other places where guns were used to kill the innocent, tell me I’ve got to feel great compassion and be sad as someone who has profited off the death and destruction of so many lives and the fleecing of the willing and unwilling for billions of dollars. These people who have demanded the rights of gun owners everywhere and have told me so many times that the gun is not the problem, it is the user – but we can’t limit those users – now shed those crocodile tears when one of their patron saints to avarice is shot. Add to that, I’ve recently read that these C-level white shirts are increasing their personal protection bodyguards and, of course, that is a business expense that will be passed on to the customer. Of course.
Like most people, I carry various insurance – health, home, car, life. Not because I want to, but because I feel like I have to. And, that cost goes up, constantly. Unlike almost every other First and Second World Country, we in America – especially for the lower and middle income people, spend a horrible percentage of our money on the hope that we never have to use it, because if we did need to use it and it wasn’t there, it would financially ruin us. But, to actually use the health care insurance we pay so much for incurs costs in copays and deductibles that are difficult to afford. The irony of modern health care is that we are still using parasitic leaches and blood letting, they just wear suits now.
The second irony of America is that although this information is nothing new, we are still forced to use this model. Why? Because it is in the interest of the rich and powerful to maintain a status quo where they use the deck they’ve already marked to control the game. It is in the financial interest of the rich and powerful to not allow growth in this country. But, no worries, come to find out it is all to be blamed on the immigrant and the homosexual.
Trump’s reaction to the New Orleans attack went from bad to worse
The president-elect’s initial response to the attack was cringeworthy — and then the Republican decided to double down on discredited misinformation.
June 10, 2018: Warsaw’s LGBTQ pride equality march
![Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson (18) was upended by Detroit Lions safety Ifeatu Melifonwu (6) in the second quarter after picking up a first down Sunday December ,24,2023 in, Minneapolis , Minn. ] JERRY HOLT • jerry.holt@startribune.com](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/L76S4N2SALMCVYNGJGFNOQ6PDI.jpg?&w=80&ar=1:1&fit=crop)
Scottie's Playtime 