In rivers and oceans across the globe, fish are behaving strangely. Some swim faster than they should. Others take risks they’d normally avoid. Many abandon the social structures that once protected them. These shifts are not random. They point to an invisible threat flowing just beneath the surface: pharmaceutical pollution.
Drugs designed for human anxiety, pain, and insomnia are entering the world’s water systems through sewage, manufacturing waste, and improper disposal. Once there, they don’t vanish. They linger, affect wildlife, and disrupt entire ecosystems.
Bold Fish, Bigger Risks
Juvenile salmon migrating from Sweden’s River Dal to the Baltic Sea have become an unexpected case study. Researchers implanted hundreds of these fish with tiny slow-release doses of clobazam, an anti-anxiety drug commonly prescribed to humans. Tracking tags revealed something remarkable: salmon exposed to the drug completed their journey faster and in greater numbers than their drug-free peers.
According to Jack Brand, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, these medicated salmon passed through hydropower dams two to three times faster than untreated fish, likely because they were less hesitant around the turbines, NPR reports.
This boldness might sound like a survival advantage. But in ecosystems, risk-taking has consequences. When predators lurk or conditions shift, impulsive behavior can turn deadly.
Anti-anxiety drugs are altering fish behavior in the wild.
A Global Cocktail of Contaminants
The scope of contamination is staggering. Almost 1,000 pharmaceutical compounds have been detected in waterways around the world—including Antarctica. A Cary Institute report found that up to 80% of streams in the U.S. alone are polluted with pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
These compounds are potent by design. Many target receptors in the human brain, and those same receptors are found in fish and other species. Drugs like benzodiazepines, used to treat anxiety in people, also alter the stress response in fish. As a result, animals become less risk-averse, change their migration timing, or fail to form protective schools—shifts that can affect survival.
Drugged salmon are taking dangerous risks during migration.
From Lab to Wild
Previous experiments hinted at these effects. In labs, fish exposed to psychoactive drugs became more isolated and less cautious. But the new field studies from Sweden show that these behavioral changes persist—and even intensify—in the wild.
A follow-up experiment revealed that drugged salmon formed looser groups, even when a predator was nearby. The tighter a school, the safer its members. Disrupted shoaling behavior means more fish swimming solo—making them easier prey.
Michael Bertram, an ecologist leading the study, described the salmon’s altered behavior as a form of “unnatural selection,” The New York Times reports. If bolder fish survive migration but die later in predator-rich waters, the long-term outcome could be population decline, not resilience.
Predator-prey dynamics are being disrupted by pharmaceutical waste.
The Long Tail of Human Medicine
Human waste isn’t the only path these drugs take to the water. Wastewater from hospitals, improper drug disposal, and runoff from pharmaceutical manufacturing sites all contribute. Deutsche Welle reports that some wastewater treatment plants near manufacturing facilities have drug levels 1,000 times higher than others.
Yet most treatment plants are not equipped to filter out pharmaceuticals. Some drugs pass through the system unchanged. Others break into byproducts that are just as toxic.
Unknowns Beneath the Surface
Despite years of research, the full ecological impact of pharmaceutical pollution is unknown. Scientists have documented effects on hundreds of species, including reproductive issues and behavioral disruptions. A Cary Institute investigation described how certain antidepressants alter fish breeding cycles, while hormones from birth control pills can cause male fish to develop female egg cells.
As compounds accumulate in fish, they climb up the food chain. Birds, mammals, and even humans may be exposed through drinking water or consumption of contaminated seafood.
Solutions and Setbacks
There are potential fixes. Advanced treatment technologies like ozonation and membrane filtration can help. But they’re expensive and rare. Designing drugs that biodegrade safely—an approach known as green chemistry—is promising, though slow to implement.
Policy change is another lever. Currently, pharmaceutical companies are responsible for testing their own products for environmental safety. Critics argue that these reviews are insufficient and underregulated.
Improved drug disposal practices, public education, and cross-agency coordination could all make a difference. But as things stand, no pharmaceuticals are currently regulated under the EPA’s primary drinking water standards, Cary Institute reports.
The Cost of Inaction
The salmon darting through Swedish dams may seem like a scientific curiosity. But they are just one visible indicator of a much larger, invisible crisis. Every flushed pill, every untreated discharge, adds to a global experiment with no control group and no reset button.
What happens in rivers doesn’t stay there. It shapes the ocean, the land, and the web of life that connects them all.
Click and help us keep our oceans clean!(Note from A: this is a simple free Greater Good organization click-to-donate; the easily ignored ads help pay for cleaning the ocean. I’ll never know whether you click or not, I just wanted to let you know what it is.)
Yes, Joy Reid has a Substack, bless her for doing it! Anyway, I’ve been watching/reading coverage of the Met Gala from various POVs. I’ve probably gotten the most substantive coverage from this post, so here it is, plus more generally topical (non-Gala) coverage, from our beloved Joy Reid!-A
The Daily Reid: the resistance is fly and dandy by Joy-Ann Reid
Art and fashion stood its ground at the Met Gala … while the warnings about the technofeudalist autocrats are ringing louder and louder Read on Substack
Unknown (American). [Studio Portrait], 1940s–50s. Gelatin silver print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015 (2015.330) Source: Vogue.
At its best, art is subversive and loud, even when it is silent and mainly visual. Fashion, at its best, is art that’s like that. The Met Gala 2025 was about that life. And while there was some criticism that not enough Black designers got to take part (too much Louis Vuitton, plenty of Sergio but not enough of everyone else… one wonderful exception being Hanifa…) and many of the looks were more elegant than Met Gala over-the-top, the overall impact of the night was deliciously subversive, in just the way art should be. From the Times:
Last October, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute announced its next fashion show, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the political landscape looked very different.
Kamala Harris, the first female vice president and the first Black woman ever to top a major-party ticket, was in the final weeks of her campaign for the White House. The show, the culmination of five years of work by Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, to diversify the department’s holdings and shows in the wake of the racial reckoning brought about by George Floyd’s murder, seemed long overdue.
On Monday, however, when it finally opens to the starry guests at its signature gala, the splashiest party of the year, it will do so in a very different world. One in which the federal government has functionally declared war on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as programming related to race — especially in cultural institutions.
In February, President Trump seized control of the Kennedy Center, promising to make its programming less “woke.” Then, in late March, he signed an executive order targeting what the administration described as “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” at the Smithsonian museums and threatened to withhold funds for exhibits that “divide Americans by race.”
Against that backdrop, the Met’s show, one devoted for the first time entirely to designers of color, which focuses on the way Black men have used fashion as a tool of self-actualization, revolution and subversion throughout American history and the Black diaspora, has taken on an entirely different relevance.
Suddenly the Met, one of the world’s wealthiest and most established museums, has begun to look like the resistance. And the gala, which in recent years has been criticized as a tone-deaf display of privilege and fashion absurdity, is being seen as what Brandice Daniel, the founder of Harlem’s Fashion Row, a platform created to support designers of color, called a display of “allyship.”
Especially because Anna Wintour, the Met Gala’s mastermind, a powerful Democratic fund-raiser and the chief content officer of Condé Nast, said on “The Late Late Show” in 2017 that the one person she would never invite back to the fete was Mr. Trump.
The collision of cultural and current events means the Met is now sitting at the red-hot “center of where fashion meets the political economy,” said Tanisha C. Ford, a history professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
“This feels way bigger than just fashion,” said Louis Pisano, a cultural critic and the writer of the newsletter Discoursted. “Putting Black style front and center sends a real message.”
And that it did. That Ms. Wintour and the the organizers didn’t shift course even a little bit, or invite the garish Trump gang or administration or maga people (unless you count Kim Kardashian) was a bold statement in itself. I think seeing J.D. Vance and his complicit wife or garish, lip-plumped Lara Trump on that blue carpet would end the credibility of the Met Gala forever. (Long live the memory of Andre Leon Talley!)
Instead, what we got was a feast of celebration, of classic Black elegance and style, of Black boldness in the face of social, economic and political catastrophe, and just a lot of fun. Made a little video about it, wanna see it? Here it goes!
There were a number of meaningful statements, reflecting the history of Black formality, which was subversive in its own way, in the early 20th century when Black men and women were socially discarded by white society as little more than servants and footstools to white lives. Black people in their church lives and social lives were often really dressy, and that’s a tradition that has lingered, particularly in Southern states, where even a trip to the supermarket or to the polls means getting fully dressed — and formality is seen as a sign of pride and regality, even in the face of discrimination. That’s the piece of Africa that stayed with every enslaved captive.
Five hundred people RSVP-ed to Monday morning’s media preview for “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the majority appeared to show up to tour the show before it bows to the public on Saturday.
Beforehand, attendees got a primer about dandyism, the exhibition’s undercurrent. They also were reminded by the Met’s director and chief executive officer Max Hollein that the museum is “having a little party tonight aka the Met Gala.” And this year’s annual fundraiser for the Costume Institute is a record-breaker at $31 million.
That was “quite a jump” compared to last year’s total of $26 million, Hollein said after the program. As for how that happened in such economically and geopolitically shaky times, he said, “The level of support, enthusiasm and importance of what we do is significant, especially this show, which is not only a celebration of Black designers, but it’s also a statement. It’s an important exhibition about history. That all comes to the fore. That’s what a lot of our supporters felt — that it is meaningful and important.”
Because Black people, and Black Americans in particular, have always been fashion and cultural trendsetters. (I’d note that there is also a long Dandy tradition in my late father’s home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where dandyism is a whole thing…
Diasporic Black dandyism mirrors the Congolese sapeur movement—a fashion subculture that emerged in the 1920s when Congolese soldiers returned from World War I with foreign attire. These Congolese dandies, known as sapeurs, often inherit the tradition from parents and community role models. For them, dandyism resembles a religion. They revere style and derive power from being impeccably dressed.
Both movements grew out of the 1920s — the age of the Harlem Renaissance, when Black Americans were perfecting a unique post-enslavement culture that drew on the rich heritage of African music, ornamentation, dance and style, coupled with evocative literature — poetry, fiction and nonfiction — that spoke to the ache of being an African trapped in America, yet with little or no memory of where your people originally came from. Your timely reminder that some of us Black Americans are immigrants, but even most of us are immigrants whose people were unwilling workers in the so-called “new world.” Very few Black people in America are here by choice. Instead, it was grace, determination and sheer force of will that built a culture that has come to be globally dominant and largely determinative of what the world considers “American culture.”
I came across this powerful TED Talk by investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr of the Observer, best known for breaking the story in 2018 that Facebook was allowing a British tech company called Cambridge Analytica to steal millions of users’ data without their consent. Her new warning about the rising tech “broligarchy” that are using their global digital platforms and hijacking our data (including via “doge”) to amass unprecedented political power and dismantle our democracies in the U.S. and abroad and replace them with authoritarian rulers, is chilling. But she also reminds us that we have more power than we think to slow the tech bros down. This Talk recorded April 8th at TED2025 is well worth the 17 minute listen, to receive her bleak but powerful warning:
Set your cookies to “performance only.”
Another relatively long listen: on a very popular episode of Diary of a CEO, tariff expert, investor and bestselling author Morgan Housel explains not just the danger of tariffs, but succinctly lays out why we cannot rebuild the power manufacturing era of post World War II America. The podcast goes on for more than an hour after his excellent explanation but it’s worth diving into the first 20 minutes or so in the link below:
The tariff situation, and the futility of Trump’s “back to manufacturing” dream are important to unpack, because what’s happening beyond our shores ain’t good.
Everybody hates Trumpmerica…
In Europe, consumers are developing an aversion to U.S. products, or at minimum, they’re getting used to ignoring them. From the New York Times:
For motorcycle lovers in Sweden, Harley-Davidson is the hottest brand on the road. Jack Daniels whiskey beckons from the bar at British pubs. In France, Levis jeans are all about chic.
But in the tumult of President Trump’s trade war with Europe, many European consumers are starting to avoid U.S. products and services in what appears to be a decisive and potentially long-term shift away from buying American, according to a new assessment by the European Central Bank.
In April, Mr. Trump imposed a 10 percent blanket tariff on America’s trading partners, and threatened “reciprocal tariffs” on many of those, including the European Union. Companies like Tesla and McDonald’s are seeing customers in Europe put off by “Made in America.”
“The newly imposed U.S. trade tariffs on European products are causing European consumers to think twice about what’s in their shopping cart,” the E.C.B. wrote in a blog post about its research on consumer behavior. “Consumers are very willing to actively move away from U.S. products and services.”
Europeans had already begun testing grass-roots boycotts on American products, including Heinz ketchup and Lay’s potato chips, shortly after Mr. Trump took office. His threats to take over Greenland, part of Denmark, energized Danes to organize no-buy campaigns on Facebook. Tesla owners in Sweden slapped “shame” bumper stickers on their cars to distance themselves from Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive who is one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers.
But Europeans’ anguish over Mr. Trump’s treatment of America’s longtime allies has hardened as he has moved to rewire world trade with steep global tariffs, the central bank found. …
… And even if a trade deal is reached, Europe’s newfound wariness of its longtime ally will not easily be unwound. The E.C.B. study found that even if a mere 5 percent tax were placed on American products sold in Europe, Europeans would still be inclined to shun them.
What is new, the central bank said, is a “preference” among European consumers “to move away from U.S. products and brands altogether,” no matter what the cost. That was the case even for households that could bear the brunt of higher prices.
“Even though they could afford more expensive U.S. products and services, they consciously choose alternatives,” the bank said. “This suggests that consumers’ reactions may not just be a temporary response to tariff increases, but instead signal a possible long-term structural shift in consumer preferences away from U.S. products and brands.”
In Germany and Italy, developers have created apps that scan grocery and clothing items for people who want to make sure they are not buying American. The top app, BrandSnap, even suggests European alternatives.
On a French-run “Boycott USA!” Facebook channel with 31,000 members, people boast about buying Adidas, a German brand, over Nike and New Balance, and post stories about avoiding travel to the United States.
In a Danish Facebook group with 95,000 members, people try to help each other figure out if products like Gillette Mach 3 razor blades or Schweppes soda are from the United States. One run from Sweden promotes alternatives to Airbnb and is calling for a European boycott on Meta platforms for a week in May.
Europeans have also posted online to say they have begun canceling subscriptions to U.S. streaming giants, including Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video.
Some consumers who have boycotted Amazon have gone online to lament that delivery from alternate e-commerce platforms in their countries are slower or less reliable, but say that they are staying the course.
Millions of people still buy American goods and services worldwide, but U.S. companies and investors are keeping a close eye on international markets for signs of anti-American sentiment related to Mr. Trump’s policies.
Thanks a lot, Donald.
This as Europe is wooing our fired scientists…
As the Trump administration slashes support to research institutions and threatens to freeze federal funding to universities like Harvard and Columbia, European leaders are offering financial help to U.S.-based researchers and hoping to benefit from what they are calling a “gigantic miscalculation.”
“Nobody could imagine a few years ago that one of the great democracies of the world would eliminate research programs on the pretext that the word ‘diversity’ appeared in its program,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Monday.
He was speaking at the Sorbonne University in Paris during an event called Choose Europe for Science that was organized by the French government and the European Union.
It was unthinkable, Mr. Macron said, alluding also to the withdrawal of researchers’ visas in the United States, that a nation whose “economy depends so heavily on free science” would “commit such an error.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced an investment of 500 million euros, or $566 million, at the conference to “make Europe a magnet for researchers” over the next two years.
Although that amount is not much compared to the billions in cuts American universities face, it comes on top of the $105 billion international research program called Horizon Europe that supports scientific breakthroughs, like genome sequencing and mRNA vaccines, Ms. Von der Leyen said.
She did not mention the United States by name, but she described a global environment where “fundamental, free and open research is questioned.”
“What a gigantic miscalculation!” she said.
In Europe, there is a widespread feeling that Mr. Trump has abandoned America’s traditional support for liberty, free speech and democracy through his embrace of autocrats and the assault on science and academia. That has created strains but also a sense of opportunity on the continent, where attracting the best scientific minds to vigorous and independent universities is seen as part of a broader campaign to “rearm” Europe as an independent power.
Over the longer term, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, plans to double grants for researchers who relocate and to enshrine freedom of scientific research into a law called the European Research Area Act.
“The first priority is to ensure that science in Europe remains open and free. That is our calling card,” Ms. von der Leyen said.
Well it should certainly remain open and free somewhere…
Not invited to the Star Wars party
Another thing about culture — either you’re part of it, or you’re not. And the immigrant-hating Christofascists currently running are government certainly are NOT. They’re not even decent nerds. Item: whoever posted the latest AI Trump cosplay on the official White House social media in order to demonize immigrants (while creating hilarious maga entertainment) whiffed it … badly. Here’s the ridiculous AI image, posted on May 4th, AKA Star Wars Day, when actual franchise fans cry out: “may the Fourth be with you…” as a nod to that famous line about the “force…”
Note the color of the laser. Come on, magas… you’re so close to getting it … and not just the absolute absurdity of presenting your elderly, possibly senile, portly, big-bellied God-king as some kind of roided up demigod whom y’all really seem to have a creepy visual-almost-sexual fantasy life over … or the ginormous eagles hovering over him … The color of the laser… I’m just gonna let y’all figure it out on your own.
May 7, 1954 The battle at Vietnam’s Dien Bien Phu ended after 55 days with Viet Minh insurgents overrunning French colonial forces, and forcing their surrender. An agreement for complete French withdrawal was negotiated within two months in Geneva, Switzerland. The battle began in March, when a force of 40,000 Vietnamese troops armed with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French soldiers holding the French position under siege. The Viet Minh guerrillas had been fighting a long and bloody war against French colonial control of Vietnam since 1946. French prisoners being marched by Viet Minh out of Dien Bien Phu, May 7, 1954
May 7, 1955 The Reverend George Lee, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi, and who used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote, was murdered in his hometown of Belzoni. Rev George Lee The county sheriff had initially refused to accept Reverend Lee’s poll tax (a tax collected before someone was allowed to vote, which became unconstitutional in 1964), but he was later allowed to vote after contacting federal authorities. That, and the subsequent registration of 92 other negro citizens he helped register, angered some white residents of the county. His assailants were never caught, and Reverend Lee is considered the first martyr of the civil rights movement. More on Reverend Lee
May 7, 1984 American veterans of the Vietnam War reached a $180-million out-of-court settlement with seven chemical companies in a class-action suit relating to use of the herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam. The veterans charged they had suffered injury and illness from exposure to the defoliant used widely in the war to eliminate jungle cover for Vietnamese forces opposing the U.S. military presence. Book review about the ongoing effects of Agent Orange
May 7, 1996 15,000 protesters demonstrated against the import of French nuclear waste to Gorleben, Germany. Water cannons were used to disperse the crowd.
When books burn, humans follow – a warning we cannot afford to ignore Read on Substack
When I tell you that fascists don’t start with violence—they start with books—I’m not speaking in fucking hypotheticals. On May 6th, 1933, while the ink was barely dry on Hitler’s chancellorship, young Nazis stormed the Institute of Sexual Research. They ransacked the place that night, and then four days later, they took more than 20,000 books from the Institute’s library to Berlin’s Bebelplatz Square and burned them.
They didn’t just burn paper. They burned hope. They burned sanctuary. They burned the world’s first transgender clinic and decades of groundbreaking research that might have spared generations of queer people unimaginable suffering.
I’m not being dramatic when I say this is one of the most gut-wrenching episodes in queer history. The visceral image of Magnus Hirschfeld—a gay Jewish doctor and pioneering advocate for gay and transgender rights—watching on television as his life’s work went up in flames should haunt us all. Because make no mistake: these weren’t military operations. These were everyday people, your neighbors, your classmates, who decided certain knowledge was too dangerous to exist.
A Haven of Revolutionary Care
The Institute for Sexual Research wasn’t just ahead of its time—it was blazing the trail for a future we’re still fighting to reach nearly a century later. Opened in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin, this non-profit institution provided care that modern transphobes claim is “experimental” today, despite the fact that Hirschfeld was performing these procedures over a hundred years ago.
Initially hesitant about gender-affirming surgeries, Hirschfeld changed his mind when he recognized a simple truth: this was life-saving care that prevented suicide. Think about that—while most of the world was still living in willful ignorance, this man understood that people would rather die than live in bodies that betrayed them. The Institute provided facial feminization and masculinization surgeries, hair removal, and complex gender reassignment procedures when most doctors wouldn’t even recognize trans people as human.
It’s hard to wrap your mind around just how revolutionary this place was. Hirschfeld recognized that gender identity and sexual orientation were entirely separate entities—a concept some people still struggle with a century later. He coined the terms “transsexual” and “transvestite,” creating language for experiences that had been silenced for millennia. The Institute was staffed with every specialist imaginable—psychologists, gynecologists, radiologists, lawyers, general practitioners—providing low-cost or free care to those whom society had abandoned.
History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Does Rhyme
My friend (and my Editor-in-Chief) thepoetmiranda saw the dark echoes of history when one of Trump’s first orders was for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control to start scrubbing medical literature related to healthcare for transgender Americans from government databases (an erasure policy that has spread beyond healthcare to all historical references of transgender people—even on the Stonewall National Memorial website). She wrote the poem linked below, which is a fucking must read:
Hirschfeld’s clinic wasn’t just a clinic. It was a fucking sanctuary. Hirschfeld and his partner Karl Giese lived in the building, creating a warm, plush space filled with life. They hosted costume parties where queer people could express themselves freely. They recommended local bars and venues where LGBTQ+ folks could find community instead of isolation.
When trans women struggled to find employment after transitioning, Hirschfeld hired five of his own patients to work at the clinic. He fought for the repeal of Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexuality, and even secured legal identification passes for his trans female patients with a “transvestite” gender marker to prevent them from being arrested for crossdressing.
Instead of the torturous conversion therapy that was common practice, the Institute taught “adaptation therapy,” instructing queer people how to navigate a hostile world while staying true to themselves. Their motto was “Through science to justice”—a radical notion that education and understanding were the path to equality.
The Day Knowledge Became Dangerous
When the Nazi youth and the German Student Union piled the contents of the Institute in the square on May 10th, 1933, they topped it with Hirschfeld’s bust before setting it ablaze. This wasn’t random destruction—it was a deliberate erasure of knowledge they deemed threatening. This happened just three months after Hitler was named Chancellor. It wasn’t soldiers who did this; it was civilians, ordinary Germans who had been convinced that minorities were the root cause of inflation and social problems.
Anyone who wasn’t white, cisgender, and Christian was deemed immoral and dangerous to German youth and the “traditional family.” Sound familiar? It should, because we’re hearing the same bullshit rhetoric recycled today by people who would burn books all over again if given half a chance.
Hirschfeld, who was out of the country, watched the destruction on television. He never returned to Germany and died of a stroke in 1935, his life’s work reduced to ashes. The loss was immeasurable—not just papers and books, but decades of research that could have advanced trans healthcare by generations.
The Brutal Reality of Lost Knowledge
We lost so much ancestral knowledge about our community in this one raid. The world’s first transgender clinic—gone. Groundbreaking research on gender identity—gone. Records of successful gender-affirming surgeries—gone. Resources for queer people to find community—gone. All of it, up in smoke because knowledge in the wrong hands threatened the status quo.
The memorial for this event bears the quote, “Where they burn books, in the end, they will burn humans, too”—a line from Hirschfeld’s own library that would prove prophetic. The Nazis began with books but ended with concentration camps where thousands of queer people wore pink triangles to their deaths.
Practical Tools for Preserving Our History
Document and digitize queer history in multiple locations and formats
Support LGBTQ+ archives financially and through volunteer work
Learn and share the stories of pioneers like Magnus Hirschfeld
Recognize warning signs when marginalized communities are blamed for societal problems
Protect trans healthcare by understanding its long history and scientific basis
Community Connection
The story of the Institute’s destruction isn’t ancient history—it’s a warning. When you hear politicians targeting trans healthcare, when you see books about queer experiences being banned from libraries, when you witness the demonization of drag performances, remember the Institute. Remember what happens when fear and ignorance are weaponized against knowledge.
Today, organizations like the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation continue his legacy, but the threat remains. Every time a state bans gender-affirming care, every time a library removes LGBTQ+ books, every time a transgender person is denied basic dignity, we’re watching echoes of that burning pile in Berlin.
Conclusion
Knowledge is a form of rebellion, and the facts and history you carry in your mind can never be taken away from you. Education and queer joy are our greatest protections right now, just as they were in Hirschfeld’s time.
When we learn about the Institute for Sexual Research, we’re not just studying history—we’re resurrecting knowledge that fascists tried to erase. When we speak the names of Magnus Hirschfeld and his patients, we’re undoing their work of erasure. Every time we share these stories, we’re rebuilding what they tried to destroy.
The memorial’s warning echoes across time: “Where they burn books, in the end, they will burn humans, too.” We must never forget this. We must never allow it to happen again.
Because our history isn’t just about the past—it’s about fucking surviving the present and building a future where institutes like Hirschfeld’s aren’t revolutionary; they’re just how we treat each other.
References:
Hirschfield, M. 1912 “Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den Erotischen Verkleidungstrieb”
Hirschfield, M. 1920 “Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes”
Hirschfield, M. 2017 (Reprint) “Berlin’s Third Sex”
While RFK Jr. wanders the Earth saying foolish things like “autistic people are broken,” a 10-year-old prophet named Teddy stood before his school board and said, “I have autism. I am not broken.”
Well said, Teddy! Bless you!
1. And a Child Shall Lead Them
RFK Jr., the walking cautionary tale of nepotism, recently claimed that people with autism “can’t work” or “have families.” He said this with the confidence of a man who’s never Googled the words “ableism” or “shut up.”
Teddy is a fourth grader in Princeton, New Jersey. He has autism. He also has courage,poise, and the holy fire of truth.
He stood before the Princeton School Board and said:
“Recently, the U.S. secretary of health, RFK Jr., made false comments about autism like people with autism are broken, that autism is caused by vaccines, and that people with autism will never have jobs or families. But that’s not true. I have autism and I’m not broken, and I hope that nobody in Princeton Public Schools believes RFK Jr.’s lies.”
“PPS already recognizes Autism Awareness Month. But not much. There are posters in the cafeteria that say to be kind and inclusive. Students wear blue on April 2nd. But we are never taught about the spectrum of autism.”
“Kids need to be taught more about the different kinds of autism, that autism is a natural variation in the genes that you are born with (NOT caused by vaccines), and about successful people with autism. The lessons should also be extended to other “disabilities” like ADHD, cerebral palsy, blindness, deafness, dyslexia, apraxia, and more.”
“I want everyone to know that people with autism and other disabilities are not tragedies, but just different, like all people. If everyone understood more about autistic people, and about people with other disabilities, they would know more about how to treat them, what their lives are like, and that they don’t need to be fixed or cured.”
“This will help kids with disabilities have a better life. When people are aware of disabilities and are accepting them, they will have friends and less bullying. Also, the teachers might be more aware because they learned about the disabilities also.”
“Kids and teachers should know more about disabilities so they do not believe RFK Jr. is right about autism, and they choose to treat them in a way that is good for the kid. By knowing more about it, kids and teachers will be nicer to kids with disabilities.”
“This is important to me and PPS because I have a ‘disability’ and I noticed that disabilities are not being taught, only a few people mentioning autism. When teaching about culture, we teach many different cultures to accept them better. Because that’s what disabilities are like, a culture, a culture of differences.”
“PPS must add this to the curriculum of all grades and students, so we don’t have people like RFK Jr. in the future.”
BOOM. The Earth shook. Angels clapped. And lo, that dummy RFK Jr. dropped his dumbbell on his foot mid-curl.
Hackers say they have obtained what they say are passenger lists for GlobalX flights from January to this month. The data appear to include people who have been deported.
Hackers have targeted GlobalX Air, one of the main airlines the Trump administration is using as part of its deportation efforts, and stolen what they say are flight records and passenger manifests of all of its flights, including those for deportation, 404 Media has learned.
The data, which the hackers contacted 404 Media and other journalists about unprompted, could provide granular insight into who exactly has been deported on GlobalX flights, when, and to where, with GlobalX being the charter company that facilitated the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador.
“Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge’s order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans,” a defacement message posted to GlobalX’s website reads. Anonymous, well-known for its use of the Guy Fawkes mask, is an umbrella some hackers operate under when performing what they see as hacktivism.
The hacker says the data includes flight records and passenger lists. The hacker sent 404 Media a copy of the data, which is sorted into folders dated everyday from January 19 through May 1.
404 Media cross-checked known information about ICE deportation flights that come from official and confirmable sources with information contained on the flight manifests and flight details obtained by the hacker. Information about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s flight is in the hacked data.
For example, the hackers obtained what appears to be detailed flight information about GlobalX flights 6143, 6145, and 6122 that left from Harlingen, Texas’s Valley International Airport on March 15. These flights are at the center of a class-action lawsuit filed by five pseudonymous Venezuelan men against the Trump administration (which eventually went to the Supreme Court) and which took off during and immediately following a court proceeding in which their lawyers were trying to get a restraining order to prevent the flights from taking off.
During a District Court proceeding in Washington D.C., the federal government argued that it had no flight information to share with the court: “the Government surprisingly represented that it still had no flight details to share,” during the hearing, the judge’s opinion in that case reads. “When pressed, Government counsel stated that the ‘operational details’ he had learned during the recess ‘raised potential national security issues,’ so they could not be shared while the public and press listened.”
Image: A screenshot of the defacement.
“Although the Government has refused to provide the particular details, all evidence suggests that during the short window that the Court was adjourned, two removal flights took off from Harlingen—one around 5:25 pm and the other at about 5:45 pm,” court records say, noting that these were GlobalX flights 6143 and 6145; a third referenced flight left immediately following the hearing. These details closely match the timing of the flights and other details in the hacked data.
Also included in the data is a record mentioning the name Heymar Padilla Moyetones, a 24-year-old woman who was flown from Texas to Honduras, then from Honduras to El Salvador by mistake, and then was returned to Texas. The data obtained by the hackers says that GlobalX flew her from Valley International Airport in Texas to Honduras on March 15 on Flight 6143, then was flown from Comayagua International Airport in Honduras to El Salvador International on flight 6144 later that day. She then was flown directly from El Salvador International back to Valley International Airport in Texas on March 15. The information in the hacked data lines up with what Moyetones told NBC.
404 Media was also able to cross-check the names on larger published lists of people who have previously been reported to be deported, finding their names in the hacked data with the specific flights that they were purportedly on.
404 Media is not publishing the full list of passengers at this time as we work to verify which passengers were specifically on deportation flights and to protect peoples’ privacy because the manifests contain personally sensitive information like passport details. We will continue to analyze the data for information in the public interest and explore what we’re able to publish.
Neither GlobalX nor ICE responded to requests for comment.
The Trump administration contracts with a company called CSI Aviation as part of its deportation flights. On February 28, ICE posted a notice saying it would award $128 million to the company for its work. In turn, CSI Aviation subcontracts some of its work to GlobalX, which said it expects to make $65 million per year from the deal. In 2024, 74 percent of ICE’s more than 1,500 removal flights were on GlobalX plans, the Project on Government Oversight reported in March.
ProPublica previously reported on what it is like for flight attendants working on GlobalX, also known as Global Crossing Airlines. Sources in that piece said they were worried what would happen in an emergency, in part because the passengers were shackled.
“They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights,” ProPublica quoted one flight attendant as saying. “They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”
The hacker told 404 Media they managed to find a token belonging to a GlobalX developer. They then used that to find access and secret keys for GlobalX’s AWS instances which contained the data. They said they also sent a copy of the defacement message to GlobalX’s employees, and then deleted company data. 404 Media does not know the identity of the hacker, and the hacker said they sent the data to other journalists
The hacker said they also sent the message to GlobalX pilots and crew members through the company’s NAVBLUE account. NAVBLUE is a flight operations platform made by Airbus which pilots use for flight planning, among other things.
404 Media was unable to verify whether pilots or crew members received this message. But the hacker provided screenshots which appear to show them logged into the platform. They also provided a screenshot purporting to show access to GlobalX’s GitHub.
The website defacement quotes a May 1 ruling from US District Judge Fernando Rodriguez which said that the president unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act and blocked the administration from deporting more alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process.
The defacement adds: “You lose again Donnie.” (snip)
Kids, I can’t give you the super-long blog that you deserve to go with this cartoon. I have to be at an event in about 30 minutes in Washington, DC, and I haven’t looked to see how many metro stops that is, and I still need to get dressed and make myself smell good.
I started this cartoon at home, worked on it some more on the train, and finished it in my hotel room. After that, I went to Ben’s Chili Bowl, which is an institution in this city and only two stops from my hotel on the green line. And now I kinda want a nap because of those half-smoke dogs.
Anyway, Marco Rubio is currently doing a lot of duties in the Trump regime. He’s the Secretary of State, in charge of the National Archives, director of USAID, and now he’s the National Security Adviser, which was dumped on him after Trump demoted Mike Waltz to the role of Ambassador to the United Nations.
The ambassadorship to the UN would be an important job in any other administration, but not this one. Trump would rather pull out of the UN than participate in it. The ambassadorship to the UN is about as important in the Trump regime as the Secretary of Education.
The last person to be Secretary of State while also serving as National Security Adviser was Henry Kissinger, and Marco Rubio is not Henry Kissinger.
Marco struggles to be Marco. He has no firm commitment to any political position because Trump might tell him to change one, or two, or several.
Marco is not the dumbest Republican in Washington. I wouldn’t put him down with Tommy Tuberville, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Marsha Blackburn, or Cindy Hyde-Smith, but he’s no Katie Porter either. Sorry, I couldn’t think of any current Republicans to use an example of a smart person.
Senator Tammy Duckworth said there is “no way he [Rubio] can do that and do it well.” When he was just the Secretary of State, he wasn’t doing that one job well. And who can say he ever did his Senate job well?
Duckworth also said, “There’s no way he can carry … that entire load on his own.”
Marco was in the Signal chat group leaking out war plans, and he didn’t notice there was a stranger in the group.
Trump is just dumping shit off on Marco, who doesn’t even have enough of a backbone to say stop. But I hope he learns how to say stop by the time Trump gives him a fifth job…
May 6, 1916 Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman started the No Conscription League in the U.S. to discourage young men from registering for the draft which had passed Congress the previous month. This was prior to American troops’ being sent to Europe in what is known as World War I. Read the No-Conscription League Manifesto
May 6, 1944 Mohandas Gandhi, due to declining health, was released from his last imprisonment in India, having spent 2,338 days in jail during his lifetime.
May 6, 1954 Two American pilots and most of their crew died flying ammunition supply missions to French colonial troops under siege by Vietnamese insurgent troops under General Vo Nguyen Giap. James “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern and Wallace Buford became the first U.S. aviators to die in Vietnam. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower had not wanted to commit the U.S. military to Vietnam so shortly after the end of the war in Korea, so McGovern and Buford were working for an organization contracted by the CIA.
May 6, 1970 U.S. Senate hearings began on ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Similar amendments had been introduced in every Congress since 1923. Writer and editor Gloria Steinem testified: “During twelve years of working for a living, I’ve experienced much of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country. I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places, and turned away from apartment rentals, all for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman.” Gloria Steinem in 1970 Steinem’s full testimony more ERA history
May 6, 1973 14 cities across France saw demonstrations against their country’s nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Ocean.
May 6, 1979 125,000 rallied in Washington, D.C. to oppose nuclear power.
There’s been a lot of talk, and jokes, about six-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick and his super young girlfriend, Jordon Hudson. Even SNL made a crack about it in its cold open.
In the skit, Trump signs an Executive Order making it socially acceptable for a man in his 70s to date a 24-year-old. The “Belichik Law” will “make girlfriends young again,” says Trump, played brilliantly by James Austin Johnson.
But hasn’t it always been socially acceptable for an older man to date a younger woman? In the skit, Trump says, “Old men can now date far younger women. We like that. It’s hot! But in reverse, it’s quite disgusting, right?”
My opinion on this matter is that as long as it’s at the legal age limit, then mind your own business. But Republicans are fine with a 49-year age gap, or 23, which is the difference between Donald Trump and Melania. But isn’t it weird that when an old fart starts dating a women who is waaaaaaaaay younger than him, she’s always a model? Holy shit. Have I been fucking up by deleting all those Facebook friend requests from hot girls in bikinis that I’ve always assumed were scams? Maybe my soulmate is a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Never mind. I just remembered that, for some reason, that only happens to rich men.
While Republicans are very progressive and accepting of old, rich, wrinkly metamucil-drinking guys dating women who could be their daughters and even granddaughters, they hate gay marriage even though it doesn’t hurt them at all. We’ve finally progressed enough that Republicans don’t even want to talk about it anymore, but you know that if they could, they’ all vote to outlaw gay marriage. (snip-MORE, and it’s really good)
Did you know that 90% of Virginia’s support for housing assistance comes from the federal government? Other questions are: How much will DOGE/Trump cut from the HUD budget? How much will affect housing assistance? How much will Virginia lose from that 90 percent? Will Virginia lose all of it?
One question we don’t have to ask is: Does Trump or Elon care about housing assistance at all?
Creative note: We publish the cartoons for the Advance on Sundays, and I didn’t even write this cartoon until late yesterday, after I finished my daily syndicate cartoon. I don’t know why I put pressure on myself like this. I didn’t finish working yesterday until 8 p.m. I spent my Saturday working.
Scottie's Playtime 