#Legal Basis for Will Contest

[dc-probate-attorney]

Legal Bases for Challenging a Will

The Gormley Law Office is pleased to share this information on estate litigation and challenging a will. In this article, we’re talking about the reasons, or legal bases, for contesting a will. If you have specific questions about your situation or you suspect there is something not quite right going on with a family member’s estate, give us a call at (866) 375-8940 to discuss your individual…

[meleys-the-red-queen]

The amount of blood-purity comments I see in HOTD discussions is honestly wild to me because it’s like. There’s legitimately people saying Rhaenyra can’t or shouldn’t be queen because she’s trying to put “bastards” in the line of succession.

1. Who. The hell. Cares. Who their actual biological father is? Why do we care? What difference does it make? Laenor, Corlys, Viserys recognized them and reaffirmed them in the line of succession MULTIPLE TIMES. No one *who is actually important to the issue* cares who the boys’ biological father is, and their claim comes from their mother, the named heir, the Queen, who can then decide who her heir is, just like Jaehaerys did, and just like Viserys did. Laenor was a gay man, they said they tried to conceive. They couldn’t. What other option was there? Laenor seemed to have no problem with Harwin helping them sire their children while he went off and enjoyed himself.

(Also, the plot to usurp Rhaenyra came long before the three Velaryon boys were born because *she was a woman.* The appearance of her three oldest boys was just another convenient excuse)

2. Would a child in modern day conceived through surrogacy or sperm donation be considered illegitimate/a bastard if one of the parents dies but still has that child in their will? Can the other family members contest it on the basis of “well they’re not blood related so they can’t inherit anything.” Nope. Because that child is recognized and legally theirs, therefore entitled to whatever the parent/family says.

[transmutationisms]

I was reading your porn addiction post, and I just wondering what you consider addiction if not some sort of disease? I also think porn addiction and stuff in that vein is fake but I also can’t think that addiction is just people choosing to be that way even though they hate it. I say this as someone who was actually addicted to substances like I feel like there was something going on there that can’t be explained by the idea that addicts just choose to be like that. (I don’t think you think addicts just choose to be like that I just don’t really know any alternative schools of thought lol) I don’t mean this in an accusatory way I’m sorry if it comes off that way, I am genuinely curious what you think cause your posts are always so enlightening.

first of all you have to keep in mind that 'addiction' has no singular meaning. even if we confine ourselves to talking about psychoactive substances, 'addiction' can range from the 'classic' case of increasing, compulsive, self-destructive use, to cases where a person's usage may actually be stable in the long term but they're chemically dependent on the substance (think: the way doctors talk about chronic pain patients who are dependent on opioid painkillers; then compare to how they talk about psychiatric patients who are dependent on SSRIs. for example). you can get dx'd with a 'substance use disorder' purely on the basis of how much you take/consume, even if you don't feel it's causing impairment in your life, particularly if you let slip that someone else in your life has expressed concern or tried to stop you. race and class contribute to distinctions here as well, where certain people have leeway to be seen (even in a psychiatric setting!) as 'experimenting' with substances, or using them 'recreationally', where the same usage pattern in a person who's otherwise marginalised might be flagged as 'addictive' and in need of intervention. all of this gets even messier when psychiatrists and physicians try to justify applying discourses of 'addiction' to eating, gambling, sex, social media, and so forth. recall that 'addiction' in the roman republic and middle ages had contested legal and augural meanings that could be positive as well as negative, and that by the seventeenth century it was largely used as a reflexive verb with a predominantly positive meaning—as in, "we sincerely addict ourselves to almighty god" (thomas fuller, 1655) or, of plato, "he addicted himself to the discipline of pythagoras" (thomas hearne, 1698). it was not until the twentieth century that "addict" came to be widely used as a noun defining people who were passively suffering on a medical model.

i don't mean to be evasive here but to point out that asking "how do we define addiction besides a disease model?" presumes already that the disease model is the singular and inescapable way of understanding addiction in the first place—this is not true historically or presently. addiction is a muddled concept and has always involved moral discourses; attempts to present it as a 'pure' or 'objective' medico-scientific judgment are in fact recent and still unstable.

to the extent that it is useful to talk about addiction as a disease—that is, as a state of suffering that is imposed upon the sufferer, that is a disruption of a desired state of health and well-being—i think it is critical to keep in mind that such a disease is social as much as biological. you can start here by pointing out that substance use is often precipitated by the necessity of withstanding miserable life conditions (ranging from extreme poverty, domestic abuse, social marginalisation, &c, to the 'standard', inherently alienating and miserable conditions anyone endures in capitalist society). but there are other social factors that contribute to the presentation of substance use as compulsive, escalating, and self-endangering. eg, lack of a safe, steady supply is a huge factor here! when people are forced to rely on inconsistent, unregulated supplies to get high, this contributes greatly to drug 'binge' behaviours and endangers users. there is also the fact that drug users are often already marginalised (esp along lines of race, class, ability, &c) and are then further marginalised on the basis of being drug users. what would substance use look like in a society where using didn't relegate people to the social margins, or render them socially disposable? what if people had social supports, and weren't forced to toil away their entire lives at jobs that make them miserable for pay that's barely enough to live on? what sorts of patterns of substance use would we see then? so then, is it the drugs themselves that are the problem here, purely neurobiologically? or is there a larger story to tell about how people come to exist in such a state where substance use is increasingly hard for them to engage in with safeguards; where being a substance user causes them to lose whatever degree of social connection and support they may have had, which was often insufficient already; where they are often unable to integrate substance use into a full and connected life because they are told they must either give up enjoyment of a substance entirely, or be continually branded 'relapsing', 'non-compliant', 'dangerous', &c &c.....?

at the end of the day i don't think it's helpful or accurate to talk about addiction as a disease because it decontextualises drug use from all of these factors: why people do it, why it becomes harmful for some, why it's assumed we must simply 'stop' and 'resist' in order to 'get better'. disease explanations blame the substances themselves on a reductive bio-mechanical level (& again, this becomes especially untenable philosophically when we think at all about 'behavioural addictions'). the point here isn't to say that addicts are just blithely waltzing into addiction—or, indeed, to say that drug use is intrinsically a bad thing that should be avoided! it's a pretty typical feature of human existence that many of us enjoy consuming substances that alter our mental and physical states, and that's not inherently bad. when i push back against a disease model of addiction, i'm not invoking a model of personal responsibility or individual choice. i'm asking how we can understand drug use within a much broader social and historically contextualised frame, and how that can help people who are in many different states wrt drugs, from 'currently engaging in patterns of usage that feel compulsive and terrible' to 'never done a drug in their life'.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

"so first off even granting the moral validity of the fair housing act (we will come back to that in a moment) this legal threat is bullshit and the fact yr making it means you either dont know about the laws you are invoking or simply regard the law as a bludgeon you can wield to keep down your political enemies irrespective of the actual text and intent of the legislation itself. this is not a protected category, the law does not apply to 'discrimination' on the basis of it. so, either way, pretty par for the course for a liberal!

"but honestly i still think thats granting too much, and i dont want to look like i think i am actually beholden to tyrannical 'civil rights' laws criminalising free association informed by elementary applied pattern recognition. you can pull out all the woke p-hacking replication-fucked 'studies' you want on this or that individual prediction with a sample size of n=10, but i am still going to keep those in the perspective of one of the few barely contested general results in social science you guys never seem willing to grapple with: stereotypes are truth-tracking. i am not going to get orwelled by some wordcel in denial about bayesian inference, the wisdom of the crowd, and basic common fucking sense in the domain of 'noticing aggregate behaviour and acting on it'. not to mention that if you want so desperately to get me to buy into blank slatism here, you could do yr part by not acting out the exact fucking kinds of anti-social obfuscatory bullshit my theory (aka universally recognised common knowledge) predicts about you fucking ppl? come the FUCK on."

~me responding to the angry comments on my post in the local sapphic housing exchange specifying my "NO SCORPIOS" policy for roommates

[endlingmusings]

[ The body of a deceased European turtle dove, photographed by Antoine Monnier. ]

“A dead turtle dove was left on the steps of Castille by Birdlife following a news conference the organisation held prior to an expected court decision on the hunting of turtle doves on Friday.

Addressing the media, members of the organisation said the current spring hunting season on the common quail, which has been open since Monday, has already resulted in a significant number of European turtle-doves being killed illegally. A decision on whether turtle-doves may be hunted legally in Malta is expected on Friday.

Birdlife had filed a warrant of prohibitory injunction last week which was provisionally upheld by the court.

It is arguing that the decision allowing turtle-doves to be hunted between April 17 and 30 is based on false data disregarding the periled conservation status of the species.

A court presided by Mr Justice Giovanni Grixti shall be hearing the case on Friday.

The recommendation to open a hunting season on turtle-dove was taken at an Ornis Committee meeting on March 29 on the basis of a report tabled by the Wild Birds Regulation Unit (WBRU).

This stated that Malta’s reference population on turtle-doves has increased between 10-12%, with the committee agreeing to a quota of 1,500 birds to be killed over a two-week period.

BirdLife Malta is contesting the science behind "such flawed calculations" especially given the fact that top experts and scientific institutions regard the European turtle-dove as continuously declining, with their populations being at the lowest since 2003.

Birdlife said that the most up-to-date data on declining turtle-dove populations was recently tabled during a meeting of the EU’s task force on the recovery of birds, for which officials from the Ministry for Gozo’s WBRU also attended.

During the meeting experts recommended a Europe-wide suspension on the hunting of turtle-doves to mitigate the continued loss of the species, and even singled out Malta, Birdlife said.

Addressing journalists in front of Castille on Thursday, Birdlife president Darryl Grima said Birdlife is seeking justice "on this travesty of a season which risks damaging a declining species".”

- Excerpt from “Dead turtle dove placed on steps of Castille” via Times of Malta.

[fraudulent-cheese]

For the ramble prompts, 1. And 7

You're very lucky as i actually have access to my computer currently!!!

I'll pick 7, as i've already seen some people point out the differences between the twins but NO Staci analysis posts!

So. Staci. What the fuck is up with her. Why did she think lying about her family on a consistent basis and not helping in challenges would work? How exactly did that make her think it was the best she could do, to the point she thought she "was doing so well" (quoting her at her own elimination) after that first day?

I think Staci's goal while on the show was to win via social game - or at least, make friends on the show. Her lying could be due to either 1. wanting attention from them, so she started making shit up to make herself look more important or 2. she actually believes what she says and just wants to impress people with her family history. I don't think i can conclusively say which one canon's leaning into? Realistically, her exaggerating her family's achievements is the more likely option, but her actually believing them would be more tragic.

HOWEVER. Just looking at her one episode of content + her audition tape isn't enough. We need to look at her contestant biography.

YEAH IM GOING THERE! If you weren't aware, for the first 5 (6?) seasons of TD as well as TDRR, there were official biographies for every contestant depending on the season, all of which were available on the official (now defunct) Total Drama Website. I'd consider the information featured in all but two of these biographies canon, as they either came from the official website (ROTI + WT), the Teletoon site (TDAS + TDPI) or from Total Drama: Totally Interactive! Im unsure about the canonicity of the Action bios and the TDRR blurbs (because yeah. they're just blurbs. sad.) as they were released only on Cartoon Network's site and the Action bios have... inconsistencies with other sources, let's say.

Thankfully, Staci was lucky enough to be a gen 2 contestant, so she gets the most detailed contestant answers biography model, so i can get alooot more info out of them.

I'll get the smaller observations out first:

In her last answer, she mentions her great-great-aunt Mildred and how she "told the first lie." I could look into how this could be Staci's least favorite relative (as she does seem to value truth/honesty), but also what if that's Blaineley? Her legal name's Mildred after all! It would be really funny! We need more "Staci and her great aunt Mildred" content STAT

She seems to really like pop music

The only answer not related to lying or to her family is the First Job question, instead it's foreshadowing to her elimination

Now, for a larger one: She barely talks about herself in these answers. Sure, she answers the questions, but she spends the vast majority of her time talking about her family instead. She manages to link the fucking Favorite Color and Food question to them! Her love of her family is made very clear here. Knowing about them is literally what she picks out as her Best Quality!

...but only her distant relatives. No mention of closer grandparents, sisters, nephews/nieces, aunts/uncles, and only a single indirect mention of a mother. Only distant, mostly older family members and cousins. And she had to have met some of them! Her Craziest Dream answer describes a dream where her great-great-uncle Charlie was telling her lies, implying they've met and talked before! So where's the mention of her closer family members?

I'd say it's because if those family members are further away, or if they're dead, it's harder to fact-check what she's saying so her peers wouldn't find out it's at best an exaggeration and at worst an outright lie.

I think the answers that show this the most well are the Best Memory and Most Embarrassing School Moment, her presentation on an older family member and realizing the topic was a lie.

This feels like something that would happen earlier in life to me? Maybe primary school level, or even earlier. If she made her entire class project on it, she had to believe in it, right? Despite how absurd that notion is! This indicates to me that Staci was/is very naive, and her love for her family started in childhood. She seems very interested in her own family's history, to the point of exaggerating their accomplishments; maybe her great-great-aunt Lois created a plate design patent or her Great-great-uncle Jason simply looked into the history of the letter E, so either Staci exaggerated them to seem more interesting, or her family members would exaggerate these achievements at family reunions as jokes or something and little Staci just believed them.

Im also unsure on her family being good or not... her Dream Date answer is apparently Richard Nixon because she'd want to learn more about his life, specifically citing that he "reminds [her] of [her] third cousin once removed, Andrew." If you know anything about recent US political history, that is not a good thing. This also shows she has some interest in politics/recent history/other people's lives! This girl does have interests!!!

And this is where i bring up the Favorite Movie answer. The movie it's based on, according to the wiki, is "The Invention of Lying", a 2009 movie. skimming the Wikipedia article, it's a romantic comedy film about a guy with the ability to lie in a world where people can only tell the truth. He first abuses this power for selfish gain but in the romantic resolution decides to not lie to benefit himself and lets his love interest actually choose to be with him.

I think the reason why Staci likes this movie so much is the romantic resolution; this is what she'd want to happen if/when she'd reveal how her family's achievements are either fake or exaggerated to her friends, and they would stay. That she'd get people interested in her with those lies, before actually being honest with them when they're closer... But it never happened with anyone on the show.

TLDR, i need this girl to realise she doesn't need to lie so much about her family for others to like her, as hiding behind masks won't get you any real friends. Something that applies to the majority of the roti girls, actually.

[gainingfiction]

Lifetime Supply: Epilogue

(read chapter 10 by gainerstories here)

Two Years Later

Ryan was just finishing the last of a defrosted cheesecake when Luke walked in the door. He looked very sharp—and very buff—in his office attire. Sometimes, Ryan wondered if it was all a sugar-induced dream, imagining he would wake up from a food coma and find himself still living with Ahmed. But that never happened. Ryan got to spend every day with his beautiful boyfriend, who loved finding new ways to keep him happy and fed. Very happy, and very, very well fed.

“Hey, big boy,” Luke said, bumping the door closed with his hip. His arms were full of bulging grocery bags, which he set down on the counter. “Big day?”

“Hardly,” Ryan answered. He’d done a little bit of freelance coding, and spent the rest of the day trying to resist the urge to finish one of his weekly Adesco boxes. Normally he wouldn’t even try, but with Ahmed and Cory’s wedding coming up, he was conscious of the need to fit into his (still very new) suit. “Same old, same old. How about you?”

“Well, I had a very interesting meeting at work today,” Luke said, sitting down at the table beside Ryan.

“Oh yeah?” Ryan asked. “What about?”

“About you, actually,” Luke said, with a smirk. “It was quite a meeting. We had people from marketing, legal, someone from accounting… apparently feeding you is costing the company a fortune.”

Ryan smirked. It was incredibly erotic to imagine a room of executives filled with exasperation about how much he ate. He wasn’t just fat—he was fat enough to make a multinational food corporation take notice. Luke reached out and started massaging his gut, setting in motion a wave of jiggling flesh.

“And… well, as an Adesco employee, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but as your horny boyfriend, I can’t resist. There’s really nothing they can do about it. They have to give you as much as you want,” Luke said with a grin. “Apparently the contest’s terms and conditions were a complete shitshow. Basically all it said was ‘lifetime supply’. Nothing about a weekly maximum, or an end date. Kelly from legal was beside herself. She said if Adesco ever tried to turn off the tap, you could sue the hell out of us.”

Ryan laughed, pleasure radiating through him as Luke’s fingers sank into his blubber. “I didn’t realize I was such a concern.”

“Oh, a big one. Let’s just say they’re never going to do another lifetime supply snack giveaway again. I guess appetites have grown since 1977. I did point out that you’ve been pretty helpful with product development,” Ryan said.

“What did they say to that?”

“They didn’t disagree. They wanted me to call you more often to get feedback on new products. And to keep you happy,” Luke said, his grin widening.

“Wow, I’m starting to think our whole relationship is some elaborate customer service scheme,” Ryan joked. He unwrapped a snack cake from the box on the floor and dug in.

“Well, am I keeping you… satisfied?” Luke said, still working his magic on Ryan’s expansive gut. He waggled his eyebrows, making Ryan chuckle.

“Very,” Ryan said. “And it’s nice to have a mole on the inside… my own corporate spy.”

Luke leaned over and kissed Ryan, who inhaled with pleasure as Luke’s fingers roamed his paunchy middle. He was so monstrously fat now—fatter than he ever could have imagined. He knew he wasn’t exactly helping things with the endless stream of fat-filled snacks he inhaled on a regular basis, but he didn’t expect to continue packing on the pounds at lightning speed. Not that Luke seemed to mind.

They made out a little more, and Ryan was getting ready to move things into the bedroom when his stomach let out a loud, angry gurgle. “Indigestion?” Luke asked, his eyebrow cocked.

“Starvation,” Ryan said, dramatically. “I’ve been depriving myself all day to fit into my suit,” Ryan explained, as he licked the remaining chocolate off his fingers. A lot of it had found its way onto poor Luke’s dress shirt, but that was a problem for the dry cleaners—hardly a concern in Ryan’s horny state.

“Well, we can’t have you wasting away,” Luke said. He sounded serious. He slipped off the chair, leaving Ryan’s shirt bunched up above his deep, gaping navel. Naked fat cascaded out in front of him, pooling across his lap. “How about I make you some dinner?”

Ryan couldn’t say yes fast enough.

The next day, Luke and Ryan dressed for the wedding. Luke looked godlike in his form-fitting three-piece suit, his pants flattering his muscular thighs and ample bubble butt, with his broad shoulders and wide lats framed by his jacket. If they didn’t have somewhere to be, Ryan would have ripped the damn thing off of him then and there. He still didn’t understand how Luke managed to stay so jacked in a house packed to bursting with processed snacks.

Ryan’s own suit was another matter. It flattered his build in a… different way. He’d only gotten it back from the shop a week before, but already the fabric spread tight across his vast backside, framing each buttock, and the jacket was a little snug around the waist. It was a testament to the stunning pace of his continued expansion. He looked at himself in the mirror. The man looking back was fucking big. Not just big, but massive. Monumental. He slipped a hand under his gut, feeling the soft cotton of his button-down cradling his overwhelming belly. He gave it a little shake, appreciating the sheer scale of himself, the manliness he felt when he looked at the behemoth in the mirror. That was all him.

Luke appeared beside him, and draped an arm across Ryan’s wide, sloping shoulders. He was smiling. “You clean up nice,” he said. “Although I don’t know how much more use you’re gonna get out of that suit.”

Ryan smirked. “Well, it’ll be fun while it lasts. I’m just glad I can still get it on for the big day.”

When it came to clothing men of size, Gerry was a miracle worker—and so was Antoine, it turned out. Ryan was shocked to see his former fuckbuddy waddling around the big and tall store, looking about a hundred pounds heavier than the last time Ryan had seen him. All of his feeding had finally caught up with him, it seemed. If it wasn’t for the name tag, Ryan might not have recognized him. They were quick to put any awkwardness or unpleasantness behind them: Antoine’s added girth had added to his perspective, and he still had a keen eye for style. The result was a very sharp suit that still managed to show off every pound of Ryan’s expansive body. He couldn’t have been happier with it.

When they were all suited up, Ryan lumbered his way to the car and loaded his bulk into the passenger seat. Bucket seats were getting more than a little uncomfortable, but Luke’s SUV was still decently spacious, and the seatbelt extender was a help. He cranked the AC—a summer wedding sounded nice in theory, but considering how much he was already sweating, Ryan had a feeling he’d prefer to tie the knot during one of the cooler months of the year.

The venue was lovely, and decorated to perfection. Still conscious of his furniture mishap a few years back—and the strain he was putting on his couch—Ryan made a point of pushing two chairs together before sitting down. That earned him a few looks from the more trim guests, but Ryan didn’t care; those looks would be nothing compared to the looks he’d get if his fat ass totalled another chair and sent him sprawling in the middle of the ceremony.

Ryan was glad Luke had pulled over for some fast food on the way over; he wasn’t used to going more than an hour without eating, and as erotic as the prospect sounded in theory, he knew he’d be mortified if his stomach started growling before the ‘I do’s.

When the ceremony started, Ryan got the chance to check out his best friend. Ahmed was downright huge. He’d packed on a ton of muscle, but he’d clearly put on even more fat, judging by the way he filled out his suit. It seemed that his bulk was still ongoing, and Ryan couldn’t see that ending any time soon. He was an impressive specimen, though, with vast, meaty legs and a pair of beefy boy-breasts that poked at the front of his dress shirt, perky from the muscle that lurked beneath layers of juicy fat. He wasn’t close to Ryan’s size, but there was no denying that he had a seriously fat belly on him.

And in a surprising twist, Cory had stacked on a noticeable amount of weight himself. He was still a fraction of the size of Ryan, and far smaller than his soon-to-be-husband, but the former twink was looking undeniably chubby. He had a plump little belly and a round, prominent booty that jiggled slightly with every step. Ahmed must love that, Ryan thought, smiling to himself.

“What are you grinning about?” Luke whispered to him.

“Nothing,” Ryan said. “They just look happy together. I didn’t think Ahmed was the marrying kind, but they both look… domesticated.” It was true—Ahmed and Cory were looking at each other with pure adoration.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Luke said. He gave a wry smile. “I can only imagine how they’re gonna look after a few years of marriage.”

“Everyone loves a chubby hubby,” Ryan said. He thought of Jason, who—if his Instagram could be trusted—still seemed trapped in an endless revolving door of yoga boys and CrossFitters. “Well, anyone with taste.”

“I’ll have to keep that in mind,” Luke said. He took Ryan’s hand. He rested his other hand on his slender torso. “Being around all those Adesco snacks… well, it’s getting hard to keep up my diet.”

Ryan interlocked his chubby fingers with Luke’s slim ones. “Well, I’m sure Antoine and Gerry would be happy to have a new customer.”

“And you? Would you… like a chubby hubby of your own?” Luke’s eyes were wide, hopeful.

Ryan beamed at him. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I would.”

[rainbowsky]

Hi rainbowsky☺️ thanks for all the fun posts. I love them a lot! I am a fruit from 2021. Toxic mtjj has recently attecked fruit with this claim. 'The court ruled that bjyx is a disgrace to Mr. Wang Yibo.'

I am trying to find information on this, but I can't seem to find it. Do you know anything about it?

Hi remember! Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying my blog! ☺️

If I've said this once, I've said this a thousand times, block and ignore toxic people (and report where appropriate). Don't give them the time of day. They are trying to hurt you. Ignore, ignore, ignore.

As for this particular claim, this emptyjiejie is misrepresenting what happened in order to upset turtles.

They're talking about the Lyfen case, where a BXG sued Lyfen for failing to give them a prize they had legitimately won. Lyfen's homophobic defense was that they were trying to protect DD's reputation by disassociating the contest/event from BXG.

Lyfen won the case. Of course they did! Anyone who thought the ruling would go against Lyfen is out of touch with reality.

This is a lone BXG against a large corporation with high powered lawyers. The BXG never stood a chance, regardless of what basis Lyfen argued its case upon.

Lyfen was the defendant in the case, and a brand arguing it was trying to protect its reputation and the reputation of its spokesperson is already at an advantage. I'm not an expert in Chinese law, but in most courtrooms around the world all Lyfen would have had to do to win the case was prove that, in their mind, they were acting in good faith. They wouldn't have had to prove anything beyond that. They wouldn't even have had to prove anything negative about turtles, just that as a brand, they were acting based on what they felt was best for their company and their spokesperson. If they weren't acting illegally in doing so, they win.

LGBTQ rights aren't protected under the law in China. In a country like China where there are no legal protections in place against LGBTQ discrimination (and where, in fact, the current government - which is very homophobic - is increasingly cracking down on LGBTQ people), courts are going to side with a defendant who is arguing against being associated with 'deviant queer culture'. According to the law in China, queerness isn't a protected class. Quite the contrary.

The courts didn't rule that BXG are a 'disgrace', they ruled that Lyfen was within their rights to not want to associate with them. Even if the courts had made that determination that BXG were a bunch of disgraceful, immoral monsters, anyone wanting to cite a LGBTQ repressive institution on matters pertaining to the morality of homosexuality/queer culture... uhhhh*... 🤔

I have said this before, but anyone who smugly cheers on this kind of thing is a fucking asshole, and a homophobe.

*This reminds me of shrimps gleefully quoting a bottom-feeding paparazzo as 'proof' that BJYX isn't real. Solos don't actually GAF about right and wrong when it comes to attacking BXG. They'll throw all morality out the window if they think it can help further their anti agenda.

Block and ignore, block and ignore, block and ignore.

And please, if you read any of my posts, make it this one.

I talked a bit more about brand antis here.

[sissa-arrows]

France realizing they have no legal basis to make the Keffieh illegal so cops are calling it a religious sign… that’s so fucking ridiculous. And this is not ignorance cause this is so unnatural. The cops be taking the Keffieh of some people and saying “here is your religious sign” when they give it back. Except they NEVER do that and talk that way. The goal is to put in white people’s mind that the Keffieh is religious that way when they make it illegal it will be met with support from the “it’s not racism or an entrave to freedom it’s secularism” crowd.

Also for the people who live in France, participating to a wild protest or a protest that was forbidden is not illegal. The Police CANNOT fine you for being on your way to a pro-Palestinian protest or just being to a pro-Palestinian protest. Participating is illegal ONLY if you are already at the protest and the police tells you to leave because the protest was not allowed. If you refuse THEN they can fine you. Except the cops do not respect the law and are legit fining people just for existing as North African near the places where the protests are planned (so far nothing about Black people being targeted but it’s only a matter of time so know your rights too).

If the police still give you a fine without telling you to leave first and giving you a chance to do so contest the fine explaining the situation.

If the police does tell you to leave if it’s a big protest and you’d rather stay because you can afford the fine (135€) I would suggest pretending to leave. The protest should be big enough that the cops won’t catch you again. If they do catch you, you can afford the fine and pay it. If they don’t catch you remember that you were willing to pay a 135€ fine to protest for Palestine so you can probably spare that money on a donation to one or multiple charity groups.

The bonus? The 135€ fine would have went to the government. Meanwhile if you pay taxes the 135€ donation can be put on your taxes and you can get your taxes lowered by 89€ because of this donation so in a way you’ll be making the government “pay” you back for the donation to help Palestinians when they wanted to fine you for even thinking Palestinians deserves rights.

Get a cap to hide your hair and sunglasses too. To avoid appearing and being recognizable on people’s pics and videos if you don’t want to be. Get some water and eyedrops for the teargas. Your keffieh will make a nice barrier for the teargas too.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD OR WHATEVER YOU CARE ABOUT OR BELIEVE IN STOP POSTING PICTURES AND VIDEOS OF YOURSELF FACE UNCOVERED AT PROTESTS SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE WHO DID NOT CONSENT TO HAVE THEIR FACES ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Leor Sapir, Joseph Figliolia

Published: Nov 8, 2023

Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, the largest provider of transgender medicine in New England and one of the leading institutions of its kind in the United States, was named a defendant in a lawsuit filed last month. The plaintiff, a gay man who goes by the alias Shape Shifter, argues that by approving him for hormones and surgeries, Fenway Health subjected him to “gay conversion” practices, in violation of his civil rights. Carlan v. Fenway Community Health Center is the first lawsuit in the United States to argue that “gender-affirming care” can be a form of anti-gay discrimination.

The case underscores an important clinical reality: gender dysphoria has multiple developmental pathways, and many who experience it will turn out to be gay. Even the Endocrine Society concedes that many of the youth who outgrow their dysphoria by adolescence later identify as gay or bisexual. Decades of research confirm as much. Gender clinicians in the U.K. used to have a “dark joke . . . that there would be no gay people left at the rate [the Gender Identity Development Service] was going,” former BBC journalist Hannah Barnes reported. Rather than help young gay people to accept their bodies and their sexuality, what if “gender-affirming” clinicians are putting them on a pathway to irreversible harm?

Due partly to Shape’s lifelong difficulty in accepting himself as gay, his lawyers are not taking the usual approach to detransition litigation. Rather than state a straightforward claim of medical malpractice or fraud, they allege that Fenway Health has violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in health care. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that “discrimination because of . . . sex” includes discrimination based on homosexuality. Citing this and other precedents, Shape’s lawyers argue that federal law affords distinct protections to gay men and lesbians—upon which clinics that operate with a transgender bias are trampling.

Shape grew up in a Muslim country in Eastern Europe that he describes in an interview as “very traditional” and “homophobic.” His parents disapproved of his effeminate demeanor and interests as a child. They wouldn’t let him play with dolls, and his mother, he says, made him do stretches so that he would grow taller and appear more masculine.

At 11, Shape had his first of several sexual encounters with older men. “I was definitely groomed,” he recounts. Shape proceeded to develop a pattern of risky sexual behavior, according to his legal complaint. He told his medical team at Fenway Health about his childhood sexual experiences, calling them “consensual.” The Fenway providers never challenged him on this interpretation, he alleges. They never suggested that he might have experienced sexual trauma or, say, explored how these events might have shaped his feelings of dissociation. (The irony is that Fenway Health describes its model of care as “trauma-informed.”)

As with the social environment they inhabited, Shape’s parents were “deeply homophobic,” he says. When Shape came out to his parents as gay at 15, they took him to a therapist, hoping that he would be “fixed.” But when he graduated high school at that same age, he moved to Bulgaria for college, and in 2007, at 17, he came to the United States for a summer program at the University of North Carolina. He later moved to Massachusetts to pursue an MBA at Clark University and immigrated to the U.S.

Though he had known about cross-dressers and transsexuals as a child (he had taken interest in Dana International, the famous Israeli transsexual who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1998), it was only at Clark that he was introduced to the idea that some people are transgender. Other students began asking him about his pronouns and telling him about “gender identity.” After getting to know a “non-binary” person and a transgender woman, Shape started to make sense of his life retrospectively. As a boy going through puberty, he had developed larger-than-average breasts and was curvier than the other boys. It was hard for him to be accepted in the gay community, he told me, because gay men tend to value masculinity. His discomfort with social expectations about how men are supposed to look and behave, his sexual attraction to other men, his ongoing psychological and emotional distress: these were all signs, he learned from online forums, that he must have been “born in the wrong body.”

Shape quickly developed self-hatred and a strong desire to escape his body. When he started cross-dressing and presenting socially as a woman, things changed. It had been hard for him to win acceptance as an effeminate gay man, but he encountered far less hostility presenting as a woman. A subtle but important shift in his thinking took place.

“People wouldn’t take me seriously when I was a man who presented socially as a woman,” he says. “I had to actually be a woman.” Shape became immersed in online transgender culture, which told him that sex is a social construct, and that hormones and surgeries can actually turn him into a woman. As a result, Shape developed highly unrealistic expectations about what hormones and surgeries could do for him. An example noted in his legal filing: he stopped using condoms because he wanted to get pregnant.

Julie Thompson, a physician assistant and Medical Director of the Trans Health Program at Fenway Health, made no effort to perform differential diagnosis on Shape, his legal filing alleges. Shape told Thompson about his childhood sexual encounters, his troubled history of risky sexual activity, and his struggles with social and familial rejection on account of his homosexuality. Allegedly, she wrote these difficulties off as byproducts of society not accepting him as a “trans woman”—an approach known as “transgender minority stress.” Shape’s ongoing mental-health problems, it was determined, were due to “internalized transphobia.”

As Shape’s filing puts it, the Fenway clinic operated with a strong “transgender bias.” Every problem or counter-indication that came up was explained away as part of the stress that transgender people experience in an unwelcoming society. The clinicians at Fenway Health apparently assumed that sexual orientation and gender identity are two distinct and independent phenomena.

Shape was put on estrogen at age 23. According to his filing, he was not given “any explanation of the numerous potential adverse side effects of estrogen or its potentially unknown effects.” As Shape kept taking estrogen, he became even more emotional, depressed, and unstable. Notably, he did not dislike his male genitals—a fact that should have attracted more scrutiny from his clinicians—but seemed more distressed over his high sex drive and desire for intercourse with men. Though he says he frequently told his providers that he hoped “sex reassignment surgery” would reduce his sex drive, this statement did not cause them to reconsider whether estrogen was appropriate.

As the Fenway team allegedly saw it, Shape’s deterioration was evidence that he hadn’t gone far enough in his transition. They recommended that he attend First Event, a Boston-based conference held annually since 1980, where transgender people can meet one another, share ideas, interact with vendors, and find medical providers who will agree to perform procedures on them. Marci Bowers, the genital surgeon who is president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, has attended the conference in the past. According to Shape, the point of going to First Event was to find a surgeon who would operate on him.

He did just that, and in 2014, at 24, Shape underwent facial feminization surgery and breast implantation. Less than a year later, a surgeon surgically castrated him and conducted what’s euphemistically called “bottom surgery.” It didn’t work. As a result, Shape had to undergo several additional surgeries, the last one borrowing tissue from his colon. Still, the problems persisted.

It took Shape a few years to realize that he had made a terrible mistake. The problem he had been trying to solve all his life was not “internalized transphobia” but failure to accept himself as an effeminate gay man. His legal filing states that he had what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders called, at the time he made contact with the clinic, “ego-dystonic homosexuality.” Because they failed to detect this and other mental-health problems, the Fenway team, argue Shape’s lawyers, “outrageously, knowingly, recklessly, and callously” led him to believe that he was really a heterosexual woman whose problems could be solved by de-sexing himself as male.

Shape was promised “gender euphoria.” Instead, he told me that he now sees himself as “mutilated.” His treatments have left him with “osteoporosis and scoliosis” as well as “mental fog,” according to his legal filing. Shape is now “faced with the impossible choice of improving his cognitive state and suffering the psychological and physical effect of phantom penis, or taking estrogen and suffering mental fog and fatigue, but no phantom penis and low libido.” He has also endured fistulas as a complication of his genital surgery and “suffers from sexual dysfunction and is unable to enjoy sexual relations.” He experiences dangerous inflammation. And not getting the mental health therapy he needed very likely caused Shape’s mental health to deteriorate throughout the several years that he was a patient at Fenway Health.

Shape now wants to have his breast implants removed. But insurance does not cover the procedure because it is not technically “gender affirming.” And since he cannot afford the hefty price tag, Shape has no choice but to live with the implants.

Understandably, criticism of gender medicine has focused largely on its use in minors. Its use in adults, however, is not without controversy. In the past, when clinicians spoke of adult transgender medicine, they were referring mainly to adult men who sought to change their bodies in their forties. Many had already spent years in marriage and were fathers of children.

That is no longer the case. Though data are limited, the main patient demographic in adult transgender clinics today appear to be 18-24-year-olds. In Finland, for example, adult referrals rose approximately 750 percent between 2010 and 2018, with 70 percent of referrals being 18-22-year-olds.

Humans reach full cognitive maturity around age 25, which means that there is often little to distinguish a 20-year-old from a 17-year-old in terms of impulse control, emotional self-regulation, and the ability to set long-term goals and prioritize them over present desires. Citing “irrefutable evidence” that being under 25 means having “diminished capacity to comprehend the risk and consequences of [one’s] actions,” the progressive decarceration and racial-justice advocacy group The Sentencing Project argues that the idea that people are adults once they reach age 18 “is flawed.”

Shortly after its founding in 1971, Fenway Community Health Center was repurposed to support the unique needs of gay and lesbian residents of Boston. According to Katie Batza, a historian of the clinic, the hippies and antiwar activists who founded Fenway Health “quickly solidified its reputation as an important gay medical institution.” During the 1980s, the clinic helped tackle the AIDS epidemic. That it now maltreats gay men like Shape by converting them into trans women reflects a tectonic shift within the institution’s culture.

American medicine has always found itself balancing two competing tendencies: the paternalism of care by experts on one hand, and the relativism of nonjudgmental customer service on the other. What has happened over the course of Fenway Health’s five decades of existence is a gradual loss of that equilibrium. Fenway has long defined its mission in terms of responsiveness to the stated needs and desires of community members: the volunteers who ran the clinic and offered its services free of charge, Batza writes, “focused on providing care and building community among Fenway residents, caring less if a volunteer met outside standards of professional qualification, which were often set by the state or medical profession, that the clinic critiqued.”

In the 1990s, the clinic set up a dedicated transgender unit. At first, “things moved slowly,” recounts Marcy Gelman, a nurse practitioner who served as Fenway Health’s first dedicated provider for transgender patients, in a document published by the institute about the history of its program. She is now its associate director of clinical research. “Patients didn’t get hormones right away. We wanted to get to know them, and required them to see a therapist for several months . . . we wanted to be careful.” This process felt too restrictive for some patients, and “a few got really angry.” Fenway Health says its “commitment to ensure patient safety . . . led to some conflicts with patients and community members.”

In the 2000s, Fenway Health adopted a new model of care for its transgender-identified patients, which it called the “informed consent model.” This came in response to patients complaining about “needless gatekeeping” and concerns that the clinic’s “customer service training specific to transgender patients lagged behind the development of its clinical care.” Using funding from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation, Fenway Health made a number of new hires and expanded its program. It drew inspiration from another community health clinic, the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, which was smaller than Fenway but served four times as many patients. “One key to [the Mazzoni Center’s] success,” the Fenway document explains, “was the elimination of any requirement for counseling before hormones were provided.” Ruben Hopwood, a physician who joined the Fenway team in 2005, developed this model for Fenway; soon thereafter, the institution’s three-month counseling requirement gave way to “a single hormone readiness assessment visit.”

In 2012, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health published the seventh version of its Standards of Care. In the chapter on hormone therapy, WPATH recommended eligibility criteria for estrogen or testosterone, including “persistent, and well-documented gender dysphoria” and having ongoing “medical or mental health concerns . . . reasonably well-controlled.” However, WPATH also noted a newly emerging “informed consent model” and cited Fenway Health as one of three clinics that developed and practiced it.

The difference between the models, WPATH explained, was that SOC-7 put “greater emphasis on the important role that mental health professionals can play in alleviating gender dysphoria and facilitating changes in gender role and psychosocial adjustment. This may include a comprehensive mental health assessment and psychotherapy, when indicated.” By contrast, Fenway Health’s model emphasizes “obtaining informed consent as the threshold for the initiation of hormone therapy in a multidisciplinary, harm-reduction environment. Less emphasis is placed on the provision of mental-health care until the patient requests it, unless significant mental health concerns are identified that would need to be addressed before hormone prescription.” Despite the obvious differences, WPATH insisted the two models were “consistent” with each other.

Currently, Fenway Health offers hormones on the informed-consent model. “Criteria for accessing hormone therapy,” it states, “are informed by the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) guidelines.” In other words, Fenway Health defers to WPATH, which adopted its recommendations from Fenway Health.

Shape and his lawyers deny that Fenway’s informed consent process is “a safe and effective replacement for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment provided by an appropriately trained and licensed healthcare professional.” Fenway’s model, they argue, “relies heavily on patients’ self-diagnosis, which may be a result of confusion or a misunderstanding of medically defined terms.” It does not take into account a patient’s expectations from medical treatment, which, as in Shape’s case, can be highly unrealistic. It “does not inform patients about the risk of iatrogenic effects of affirmation.” Nor does it take into account a patient’s “medical decision-making capacity,” which may be impaired in the presence of “significant emotional distress” and “undue influence from persons in position of authority and trust.”

A key charge in Shape’s lawsuit is that Fenway Health is driven by “market expansion goals and political demands of transgender activists.” Approval for hormones and surgery, the clinic’s staff wrote in 2015, should be a “routine part of primary care service delivery, not a psychological or psychiatric condition in need of treatment.” A leading advocate for the no-gatekeeping model, which rests on the assumption that mismatch between one’s actual and perceived sex is a normal human variation and not a pathological condition, argues that adults and adolescents should be free to turn their bodies into “gendered art pieces.”

From Shape’s story, we can infer that Fenway Health, which could not be reached for comment, has yielded to a barely constrained medical consumerism. In 1997, the institute had eight transgender customers. By 2015, it had over 1,700. “The rapid and sustained growth of Fenway Health’s transgender health care, research, education, training, and advocacy,” the institute’s doctors proudly declare, “might be succinctly summarized by the mantra from the movie Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come.”

==

If you haven't met Shape Shifter, see the following interviews:

Literally "trans the gay away."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

Black women make up about 8% of the population in the United States. But, according to a report by Project Diane, firms founded by Black women received 0.0006% of total funding from venture capitalists between 2009 and 2017. In recent years, the amount of venture capital funding awarded to firms founded by Black women has remained far less than 1%. Further, a study by Palladium Impact Capital found that "Black women entrepreneurs in the United States suffer the largest gap between their total capital demand and the amount of investment capital they receive when compared to other demographic groups."   Nevertheless, some people believe that in the status quo, Black women are receiving too much venture capital. They argue that Black women are benefiting from illegal racial preferences. And they are suing to put an end to it. The focus of the litigation is the Fearless Fund, which runs the Strivers Grant Contest, a program that awards $20,000 to four small businesses that are majority-owned by Black women. A group called The American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) sued the Fearless Fund, arguing the grant contest constituted illegal racial discrimination. 

AAER bills itself as "a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to challenging distinctions made on the basis of race and ethnicity in federal and state courts." In practice, it files lawsuits on behalf of aggrieved white people who believe they are being harmed by programs designed to benefit racial minorities that face widespread discrimination. Edward Blum, the president of AAER, told the New York Times in 2023 that "systemic racism" does not exist. Blum also rejected the idea that "racism" was part of the country at its founding. AAER's most famous legal victory was a successful lawsuit arguing that "race-conscious student admissions policies used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina" were unlawful. In the Fearless Fund lawsuit, AAER argued that the Fearless Fund's grant "violates section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race when enforcing contracts." That law was originally "intended to protect formerly enslaved people from economic exclusion," but is now being turned on its head by AAER. 

This week, a federal appeals court handed a victory to AAER. In a 2-1 decision, a panel found AAER was likely to succeed on the merits and issued an injunction suspending the Fearless Fund's grant program. The decision was written by two judges appointed by former President Trump.  Blum celebrated the decision while waiving away concerns about the systemic exclusion of Black women from venture capital funding. "Our nation’s civil rights laws do not permit racial distinctions because some groups are overrepresented in various endeavors, while others are under-represented," Blum said. 

The real meaning of civil rights law

Do civil rights laws really prohibit initiatives like the Fearless Fund's grants to businesses owned by Black women? Other courts have rejected challenges to similar programs. In November 2023, America First Legal (AFL) — an organization run by Trump advisor Stephen Miller — sued Progressive Insurance on behalf of a white business owner to stop a program that awarded $25,000 grants to black-owned small businesses. The money could be used toward the purchase of a commercial vehicle. The white business owner represented by AFL claimed he began filling out the application before realizing it was limited to Black-owned businesses.

The 3-judge panel on the 11th Circuit ruling against Fearless Fund is a victory for the right-wing White grievance industry and a loss for Black women.

See Also:

CNN: Federal appeals court blocks Fearless Fund from issuing grants to only Black women

[mariacallous]

This week, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took unprecedented steps to establish control over the contested Esequibo region of neighboring Guyana, violating an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling. Esequibo, a region in western Guyana, accounts for two-thirds of the country’s territory, 16 percent of its population—and, crucially, would give Caracas a claim to offshore oil riches that Guyana recently found and that Venezuela clearly covets.

The fact that international arbiters marked the boundary lines well over a century ago won’t stop Maduro from claiming land that many Venezuelans have long been told is rightfully theirs. On Sunday, Caracas held a referendum to determine sovereignty over Esequibo despite the ICJ warning against threatening the status quo. The results, though heavily criticized, showed that 95 percent of voters were in favor of Venezuela annexing the disputed region.

With Caracas ordering mass arrests on Wednesday of those who allegedly oppose the annexation, regional forces gathering to defend the small nation, and the U.S. military conducting flight exercises in Guyana in a blatant show of support for Georgetown, Latin America is teetering on the edge of a potential major continental war for the first time in more than 75 years.

“Latin Americans love to say, ‘We haven’t had a major border conflict since the 1940s,’” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House. “This would really sort of challenge their fundamental self-conception of their peaceful nature and the historical absence of interstate conflict.”

Well, who has the legal right to Esequibo?

Both nations lay claim to the land, which is a little larger than the U.S. state of Alabama, though much better endowed. Venezuela once had possession of it in the nine-tenths-of-the-law sense, but it was never a legal part of what became modern Venezuela, either before or after its independence. A Paris-based arbitration panel ruled in 1899 that the territory belonged to Guyana (well—at the time, to the British colony of British Guiana.) However, Venezuela long argued that the decision should be nullified, as the country’s government was not present during the talks but rather represented by the United States.

Last Friday, the ICJ ordered Maduro not to attempt to change the region’s status—just days before Caracas was set to hold its sovereignty referendum. The court did not, however, ban the vote from occurring despite Guyana pressuring the body to do so.

Venezuela’s government appears to be “taking steps with a view toward acquiring control over and administering the territory in dispute,” ICJ President Joan Donoghue warned following Venezuela’s blatant disregard of the court ruling.

“The ICJ has credibility, but it can’t enforce its ruling,” Sabatini said. However, that’s not to say it isn’t a big deal. If Venezuela were to use military force to take control of Esequibo, then it would likely damage the possibility of the ICJ ever ruling in its favor in the future. It would also slice Guyana by more than half and open a whole new can of ugly worms.

What makes the Esequibo region so worth coveting?

Home to significant swaths of the Amazon rainforest, Esequibo is a mineral-rich territory, containing vast gold and copper deposits. In 2015, the region’s worth skyrocketed after ExxonMobil discovered large quantities of oil off its coast, setting Guyana up to become the richest nation in Latin America on a per capita basis. Just offshore and almost, but not quite entirely, in Guyana’s exclusive economic zone, is an oil gusher with at least 11 billion barrels of crude.

If Venezuela were to grab Esequibo, then it could lay claim to basically all of that offshore wealth.

Now, billions of dollars and thousands of beefsteaks pour into Georgetown, the capital of a once-backwater, now-developing nation. Guyana has used the funds to launch major infrastructure developments, its first deep-water port, and a gas-to-energy project that would double the nation’s energy output while cutting power bills in half. And in September, it announced its intention to sell oil to big players, including China’s, Qatar’s, and Malaysia’s state oil companies—further triggering Venezuela’s economic jealousy.

Venezuela, which was once a major oil producer, now pumps half as much as the U.S. state of New Mexico. It has long struggled with debilitating hyperinflation and low public approval. According to the International Monetary Fund, Caracas suffered the world’s highest consumer price increase this year, with inflation reaching 360 percent. Corruption continues to roil Maduro’s autocratic regime, and efforts to crack down on the country’s opposition, including barring favored presidential candidate María Corina Machado from holding office, have done little to elevate his chances of winning reelection next year.

Maduro hopes that establishing control over Esequibo would give him a claim to big oil, bolster support for his United Socialist Party, and pigeonhole the opposition into appearing anti-patriotic at a time when his regime is looking more and more like a “tin-pot dictatorship,” Sabatini said.

So, what happened with this referendum?

Depends on whom you ask. According to Maduro, millions of Venezuelans took to the polls in the nation’s highest election turnout in history. But without evidence to back his claim, rights groups estimate that only around 2 million people went to the ballot boxes.

According to the government, more than 95 percent of voters approved all five questions on the referendum, which called for the creation of a new so-called Guayana Esequiba state as well as granting its residents Venezuelan citizenship, providing the population with identity cards, incorporating Esequibo onto Venezuela’s map, and rejecting the 1899 ruling.

“A new era in the fight for our Guayana Esequiba has begun,” Maduro said in celebration of the results. “Now we will recover Venezuela’s historical rights.”

In an aggressive speech on Tuesday, Maduro proposed a new law that bans all Venezuelan companies from collaborating with Guyana, and on Wednesday, he appointed Maj. Gen. Alexis Rodríguez Cabello to oversee the newly established state. Military intelligence suggests that Caracas is also building an airstrip at La Camorra, near its border with Guyana, to support logistical operations for annexing Esequibo. And Maduro has threatened foreign firms, including ExxonMobil, from working with the Guyanese government.

One thing: Venezuela has more oil reserves than any country on Earth. What’s it need more for?

That’s a good question, especially since Venezuela has enough trouble getting its own oil out of the ground as is—let alone wading into tricky offshore drilling that requires technological expertise, good management, and plentiful capital, none of which has been on display in Caracas for years.

If anything, Maduro hopes that redressing a century-old wrong, with oil to boot, will boost public confidence in his increasingly unpopular administration. But the probability of that making a large dent in polling for next year’s election is unlikely.

How is the rest of the region responding?

Guyana immediately placed its own defense forces on high alert and called on the U.N. Security Council and ICJ to take immediate action to bar Venezuela from further encroaching on its soil. Brazil’s defense ministry “intensified its defense actions” and boosted its military presence near the disputed border. And the U.S. Southern Command conducted military exercises with Guyana on Thursday to demonstrate its strong bilateral commitments to Georgetown.

Interstate war would be “suicidal” for Maduro’s political ambitions, a Venezuelan energy expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation. “Maduro might be emboldened by the fact that the conflict in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East makes it harder for the U.S. to have another front or potential conflict in this region,” the expert added. “And so, people read this as a dangerous situation because it opens up Maduro’s perception that he might get away with doing something.”

Maduro initially promised not to invade Venezuela’s eastern neighbor. But escalating tensions, including Caracas accusing ExxonMobil on Wednesday of working in tandem with Guyana and Venezuelan dissidents to undermine the government, are worrying regional leaders that annexation may be in the cards after all. If that’s the case, then Latin America may impose a multilateral peacemaking force to diffuse the situation—which would likely hurt Venezuela in the long run.

Caracas looks weak, Sabatini said. “As it sort of hurtles toward an uncertain outcome on this, it also puts its own survival at risk. I would say in some ways, quite frankly, what it’s doing to Guyana is probably far more dangerous to its survival, its instability, than the prospect of an election in 2024.”

[hellsbellschime]

Aside from the fact that people using Jeyne Arryn to validate Rhaenyra claim doesn't work because in terms of andal succession she is rightfully Lady of the Vale (father's only surviving trueborn kid) Jeyne wasn't even her father's eldest kid like Rhaenyra was, she had several older brothers.

Yeah, Jeyne's claim isn't particularly complicated because there is no one who legally comes close to her claim, but I actually think the reading of this is ass backwards in that Jeyne Arryn had no supposedly legitimate competition to her claim and she was STILL almost usurped MULTIPLE TIMES. So THAT is how weak women's claims were seen as at the time, to the point that her male cousin thought he had a real shot at becoming Lord of the Vale in her stead. Clearly it's not fair, but it shows that Rhaenyra's expectations that she should take the Throne uncontested as a woman who was very clearly attempting to put her illegitimate children in line behind her were completely absurd. Similarly, it shows how ridiculous the arguments that the Greens should have just thrown all of their support behind Rhaenyra are, men have pressed incredibly inferior claims on the basis of their manhood, but Aegon ACTUALLY has a legitimately BETTER claim than Rhaenyra anyway. It sucks that misogyny is that strong but Jeyne Arryn is actually a perfect example of how difficult it is for women to hold onto power in this system even if they have what on paper seems like an uncontestable claim, and Rhaenyra's claim was extremely contestable from a multitude of angles.

[johntest]

John Contest!

John is a pretty common name, so who's the best character named it? That's what this bracket is for! Inspired by a bunch of the other contests but my line of thinking went "Okay a same name contest -> a specific name". That name happened to be John because I know a lot of Johns ^^.

Rules:

Characters must be fictional! OCs and AU characters are accepted as long as there is actual media that can be interacted with (ex. if you are the author of a published webcomic and not characters that only you and a few friends know through direct messages).

Characters must be named some variation of John. Accepted names also include: Jon, Joan, Juan, Johann, Jonathon, Jonathan, Johnathan, Johnny, and Jonny. Names like Ivan or other derivatives may be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Other language translations of John are also accepted, just please tell me what language it's from!

These names may be legal, chosen, nickname, first, middle, or last names. As long as the character can be referred to as such!

Link to submission form!

[myarcadiandream]

So I’ve been thinking why I love BL so much. I’m from America and here being gay comes with the stereotype that you’re feminine. I love BLs because it shows literally anyone can be gay and that’s not something America is ready to recognize in the media.

Also if these plots of BLs were made in America they would be switched for hetero couples but also subsequently FLOODED with toxic masculinity. I’m thinking about Pit Babe and KinnPorsche specifically just because there’s a lot of dude on dude action.

Scenes that are between two enemies are currently filled with sexual tension that makes the shows enjoyable- would be switched with a pissing contest that is frankly tired.

This is why American tv shows/movies are just boring to me. Same old archetypes. Same boring hetero couples. Give me main character gays who don’t die for no reason and aren’t for comedic relief.

It’s insane the propaganda we Americans consume on a daily basis. We are under this illusion that gay shows/films won’t succeed in the US. America waves a gay flag as a distraction. Yeah we have legal marriage (for now) but if our entertainment can’t even be lgbt focused without facing backlash then we will never normalize the lives of our lgbt people.

I’m bisexual in a hetero facing relationship. It is my dream to see shows and movies at the same caliber of gay as Thailand and Korea. Thank you for welcoming me into the BL community. The joy I have on a daily basis knowing media like this exists keeps me going.

[beardedmrbean]

A voting rights group founded by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is drastically cutting back and laying off staff amid significant debt as contributions fall.

Fair Fight was started in 2018 to advocate less restrictive voting laws, particularly in the court system.

The group's previous CEO, Lauren Groh-Wargo, who left to manage Abrams's second bid for governor in 2022, is coming back on an interim basis to carry out the sweeping layoffs necessary. The organization will be cutting 20 employees, which adds up to 75% of its staff.

Fair Fight is indebted $2.5 million and has just $1.9 million in available cash, according to Groh-Wargo. Only a few years ago, between 2018 and 2021, the group raised a reported $100 million.

"We have waged critical legal battles and built a statewide and national infrastructure to support our mission," Fair Fight Action Board Chairwoman Salena Jegede reportedly said in a statement. "Key to our efforts have been two landmark lawsuits that highlighted the sustained attacks on voting rights and engagement fomented here in Georgia, but with national implications."

The group's fall from prominence and now lackluster fundraising comes amid several court losses in efforts to contest voter laws aimed at election integrity and security.