cryptogamist

[cryptogamist]

Sea emeralds (Chaetomorpha coliformis), a type of green algae, on the coast of Wharekauri, Aotearoa

by Svenja Heesch

[cryptogamist]

This really cuts to the heart of it, doesn’t it? By their own admission, Zohran will not do anything materially to make Jews in New York unsafe, but he just makes them feeeeel unsafe for some ☪️ reason 🟤 and really isn’t that just as bad?

[cryptogamist]

Bulbophyllum purpureorhachis

A tropical African orchid that bears it's tiny flowers on flat twisted inflorescence stalks

[cryptogamist]

[cryptogamist]

me when i feel more confident making assumptions about the iranian nuclear program than the literal head of the IAEA

People just really fundamentally do not believe in objective reality anymore regardless of political affiliation, huh? People have their political beliefs and then work backwards from there, deciding what is and isn't true based on what supports what they want to believe.

[cryptogamist]

Welcome to another edition of, time is a linear constant that we can't escape while we occupy this dimension.

[cryptogamist]

liberals be like he bombed a country…. without congress approval

[cryptogamist]

It's one thing to fight against discrimination against LGB adults. It's another thing to fight for life-altering medical treatments for minors.

The ACLU bet big on a trans rights case. Its loss was predictable.

A Supreme Court ruling shows trans advocates failed to see the fragility of the liberal consensus.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/21/supreme-court-youth-gender-transition-ban/

opinion by Megan McArdle June 21, 2025

Trans rights advocates, as well as opponents of gender-affirming care for minors, demonstrate outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 4. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

It was clear from oral arguments that the ACLU was going to lose U.S. v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender transition treatments for minors. But really, it was clear long before that.

The plaintiffs were facing six conservative justices who needed to be convinced that such treatments are so compelling — as the litany goes, “lifesaving, evidence-based and medically necessary” — that states could have no good reason to ban them.

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, that argument was hard to make, because more and more questions were raised about evidence supporting these treatments. Discovery from a lawsuit against a similar ban in Alabama suggested political influence, publication bias and groupthink had impacted the work of WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which publishes the most influential guidelines on the topic. And because other medical associations appeared to be taking cues from WPATH, this undermined the argument that these interventions were backed by a strong medical consensus.

Without that, we were left with semantic arguments about what constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. The result was a major setback for the trans rights movement — not just a loss in this case, but a precedent that will make it harder to win elsewhere.

Given how predictable this was, I have wondered why the ACLU brought a case where the risks were so great and the odds of winning so negligible.

One could argue that with states across the country passing bans on gender-affirming care for minors — 27 at last count — it had to try, even if it was likely to fail. But organizations such as the ACLU have always had to be strategic, picking fights they think they can win, or at least lose gracefully.

See rest of article

[cryptogamist]

let’s get on mama’s last nerve

[cryptogamist]

i don’t know how to explain to you people that no matter what a country’s government is like i do not and will not support the US indiscriminately bombing that country’s civilians and i don’t know why that’s a controversial take tbh

[cryptogamist]

[cryptogamist]

Mother and child training longsword in Chile, at the Centro Esgrima Histórica

[cryptogamist]

Adjara, Georgia

Natela Grigalashvili © 2016

[cryptogamist]

Palestine, between 1921 and 1923. Scholten, Frank (1881-1942)

[cryptogamist]

'A golden ram and a stone lion, unearthed from a tomb at the ancient archaeological site of Gonur Depe in Turkmenistan, dating back to 2400-1600 BC.'

[cryptogamist]

Vagabond, Agnes Varda, 1985