#full article at link

[sailor-rowling]

Beira’s Place: Thousands helped by Edinburgh rape centre set up by JK Rowling

A year on from the opening of JK Rowling’s women-only rape centre, thousands of victims have reached out for help.

A veteran of more than four ­decades protecting and sheltering women suffering sexual violence and domestic abuse, Isabelle Kerr was so passionate about supporting JK Rowling’s decision to fund a women-only centre that she came out of retirement to help set it up.

Speaking for the first time since Beira’s Place opened, Isabelle, 67, said: “The whole ethos of the place took me back to the grassroots of the women’s movement in Scotland, when women helped other women stay safe in an act of basic feminism.

“It was how women dealt with the practicalities brought about by the age-old problem of domestic abuse and sexual violence. I’m saddened to say very little has changed through the decades, which is why Beira’s Place has been busy from the moment we opened our doors.”

Isabelle said: “Men’s violence towards women continues unabated around the world. Justice systems continue to fail women with sentencing that rarely reflects the damage and trauma inflicted, despite these crimes carrying the possibility of a life sentence.

“We still have a culture where ­victims are blamed because of what they wear, where they went or what they did rather than holding the perpetrator to blame. It’s soul destroying.”

“Our phones started ringing the day we opened. They haven’t stopped. We’ve helped almost 2,000 callers looking for support. Over 250 survivors have used our safe space. Many told us they would not want to use the service if men were on the premises, either because they have been so traumatised or for cultural reasons.

Isabelle warns that much more needs to be done about identifying the escalating cycle of violence towards women. She said: “We don’t live in the kind of society where women and girls are safe from predators, stalkers, rapists and men who use coercive control to trap the vulnerable. We live in a society where women and girls have lost so much trust and hope in our criminal justice system that only 10% of violence and sex crimes are ever reported.

“Until we take these crimes more seriously, very little will change.”

[fernreads]

The Supreme Court handed down a decision on Wednesday which effectively gives Border Patrol agents who violate the Constitution total immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in Egbert v. Boule, moreover, has implications that stretch far beyond the border. Egbert guts a seminal Supreme Court precedent, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), which established that federal law enforcement officers who violate the Constitution may be individually sued — and potentially be required to compensate their victims for their illegal actions.

Egbert is a severe blow to the broader project of police accountability. While it does not target lawsuits against state law enforcement officers who violate the Constitution, it all but eliminates the public’s ability to sue border patrol officers — and possibly all federal officers — who commit similar violations.

In fairness, Egbert does indicate that people who believe their rights were violated by federal law enforcement may file a grievance with the law enforcement agency that employs the officer who allegedly violated the Constitution. But such grievances will be investigated by other law enforcement officers, and no court or other agency can review a law enforcement officer’s decision to exonerate a fellow officer.

And, perhaps most importantly, Egbert most likely shuts down a civil rights plaintiffs’ ability to be compensated if their rights are violated.

[ink-the-artist]

Paleolithic humans

Been meaning to make art of early humans for a while and these in particular were greatly inspired by this article:

[fawnforevergone]

what absolutely floors me is the way "Unknown (Nth)" is the song for Treachery, and yet is more about betraying ourselves rather than being betrayed. hozier says that, when the break-up happened, it felt as though his lover was chewing on his heart while it still beats, but he can only blame himself because entering a relationship is acknowledging the chance it may fail and still going through with it. AND THEN HE SAYS "i'd walk so far just to take the injury of finally knowing you" - meaning he would do it all again with the knowledge of failure because isn't that what he risked in the first place anyway? ,,,"Unknown (Nth)", the weapon that you are-

[linddzz]

Luckily the "what if the SHARK impregnated our ray???" seems to be dying down and bigger news organizations have the corrected information in their articles, but I wanted to share this great blog post by marine conservation biologist David Shiffman that covers both the cool actual science that got overshadowed while actually calling out the facility for how unscientifically they handled it and for the fact that they doubled down (esp since newer media they've put out is softly backtracking and it looks like they're attempting to play it off as a joke that the news misreported. Nope. They put the idea out there like it was as possible as parthenogenesis while calling themselves scientists at a "shark lab")

From the conclusion:

Unfortunately, poor handling of this story has made it likely that we are on track for another year where the most-shared news story about a shark or ray is pseudoscientific nonsense, rather than about their dire conservation needs, their importance to marine and coastal ecosystems, or amazing new discoveries about them. As a longtime supporter of zoos and aquariums and the roles they play in public science education, I am especially troubled by some of the public-facing communications here. If your goal is sharing knowledge with the public, there’s value in gaining accurate knowledge about the subject yourself first. Sharing wrong facts is not “raising awareness” or educating the public, and falsely claiming “anything is possible, don’t trust the experts” is, to put it mildly, not helping the ocean.

It's a great article to drop in if the "omg shark/ray babies???" keeps spreading. Or if you just enjoy niche science drama. The aquarium world doesn't get much of that

[horridcassette]

David Byrne for Pulse! Magazine, February 1992 Issue (x)

[porunareff]

Araki says JOJOLANDS will focus on Joseph Joestar’s descendants

In a new interview for Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! magazine, Hirohiko Araki has given a small teaser for Part 9 of the JoJo series. After Joseph’s apperance in the final chapters of JoJolion, JOJOLANDS will follow his descendants in some capacity. (Via jojo-news).

Part 9 is still in its planning stage - expect more news in the future.

[raceweek]

so alex and his trainer patrick gave an interview to men’s health about his recovery from respiratory failure and. im emotionally compromised

[shoshiwrites]

The stories of flak are a literature of near misses, of geometry, chance, and luck. It was a universe in which an inch or two separated life and death or injury. Minutes. Inches. Banal changes that meant living or dying. Back in the peacetime world—working nine-to-five, taking children to get shoes—how could the veterans explain that they were only in this life by a few inches? It was as though they’d realized, years before the physicists’ theories, that many universes exist side by side: the world with them and the world without them. They saw it and they had no words for it.

From "The Silence of Soldiers" by Howard Mansfield, adapted from I Will Tell No War Stories: What Our Fathers Left Unsaid About World War II (April 2024), about his father's service as a 19-year-old B-24 machine gunner, excerpted in the November/December 2023 issue of Yankee Magazine

[trans-axolotl]

"In social science research, including criminology, the convention is to think of confinement in terms of placement in jails and prisons, therefore reinforcing a skewed interpretation of ‘the rise in incarceration’ in the USA. Under this interpretation, the first half of the 20th century is conceived as an era of relative stability in terms of incarceration, with an explosion in this area in the 1980s onward, in the form of immense growth in the capacity of prisons and jails. However, as Harcourt (2006) suggests, if the data on mental hospitalization and institutionalization were also covered in such studies under the prism of incarceration, then the ‘rise in incarceration’ would have reached its peak in 1955, when mental hospitals reached their highest capacity. Put differently, the incarceration rates in prisons and jails today (although appallingly high by any standards) barely scrape the levels of incarceration during the early part of the 20th century because of the then massive confinement in hospitals...

...Broadening the scope of research on incarceration to include a variety of confinements (such as psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, institutions for those labeled as intellectually and developmentally disabled) will take into account the work of scholars who have already theorized the carceral along these lines (such as Foucault, Goffman, Scull and others) and can also generate new work in this vein. It will also account for the lived reality of prisoners with disabilities who are caught in the webs of the institution- and prison-industrial complexes. Under this formulation, incarceration is understood as a continuum of carceral edifices, or as an institutional matrix in which disability is a core component, not simply an added category of analysis.

This call for connecting analysis of incarceration with disability is also a call to pay attention to the lives of mostly poor people of color who are still incarcerated worldwide in nursing homes, institutions for those with labels of mental illness and/or intellectual disability and prisons, and bring their perspective to bear on what Chris Bell characterized as ‘White disability studies’ (2006). My main argument here is that the history of disability is the history of incarceration."

-Liat Ben Moshe, Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA

[sailor-rowling]

The smear campaign against JK Rowling

Here we go again. Another institution, brimming with self-righteous faux outrage, is trying to airbrush JK Rowling’s name out of history. This time it’s the turn of the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle, Washington, which has removed the world-famous author’s name from its Harry Potter exhibition.

Explaining the decision in a 1,400-word blog, the museum’s exhibitions project manager, Chris Moore, brands Rowling a ‘cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity’.

Once again, Rowling’s reasonable and rational defence of women’s sex-based rights is being presented disingenuously as ‘hateful’ or ‘harmful’ towards transgender people, and therefore deserving of cancellation.

On the other hand, the attempts to erase Rowling are deadly serious. Each attempted takedown inevitably leads to her receiving the vilest, cruellest abuse. Abuse which, if you’ve ever taken the time to read it, contains some of the most horrific things one human could say to or about another. Rowling is no doubt a tower of strength and resilience, having been on the receiving end of this bile for years. But it’s probably still having an effect on her, deep down.

Sadly, most people are still too scared to speak up. This shouldn’t surprise us when the extremist factions of the trans movement use threats of rape, violence and torture to bring people into line. They doxx people’s addresses and workplaces, so the heretics can be hunted down and vilified, resulting in the loss of earnings, jobs, reputations and more. 

Faced with this, we cannot simply stand by and shrug. We have to stand up to the smears. The truth is that Rowling has never said anything untoward about trans people. She has been critical of the behaviour of some trans fanatics. She has been vocal in her support for single-sex spaces for women and girls. And yes, she has vociferously defended herself against hourly abuse. As she damn well has a right to do. But she is not the bigot she has been made out to be.

[fernreads]

The United Nations (UN) has concluded that Israeli forces fired the fatal bullet that killed the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank last month, its findings showed on Friday. 

UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva that the organisation found that the shots that killed Abu Akleh came from Israeli forces.

“It is deeply disturbing that the Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation," she said.

"We at the UN Human Rights Office have concluded our independent monitoring into the incident.

"All information we have gathered - including official information from the Israeli military and the Palestinian attorney-general - is consistent with the finding that the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli Security Forces and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities."

[michaeljoncarter]

Have you got any recs or a reading guide for steel ?

lornahs's guide for him & his dcuguide chronology collect most of his appearances. and i'm still not quite finished making my way through post-crisis superman comics, so if anyone with more expertise would like to add on, please do, but so far, these are my personal favorite recs for him:

The Death & Return of Superman

Steel (1994) (i love this book, but it is violently 90s in a way that definitely won't be to everyone's tastes. might recommend skipping it at first and then coming back later when you're already invested in the character)

the Trial of Superman arc:

Superman (1987) #106

Adventures of Superman #529

Outsiders (1991) #24

Action Comics #716

Superman: The Man of Steel #51

Superman (1987) #107

Steel (1994) #22

Adventures of Superman #530

Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #3

Action Comics #717

Superman: The Man of Steel #52

Superman (1987) #108

Adventures of Superman #531

Steel (1994) #23

Showcase '96 #1 - 2

The Millennium Giants

JLA Secret Files #2

he becomes a member of the justice league and is in JLA (1997) #19 - 41, but he's mostly just kinda... there. it's been a while since i read this book, so if anyone's got a fresher memory, please correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't remember him ever getting much of a focus in this book. it's fun to see him in the justice league for sure, and i do recommend reading it, but i can't say i really consider it essential reading for him specifically

Team Superman Secret Files & Origins

Superman: The Man of Steel #95 - 97

Superman: The Man of Steel #98 (part of the Superman Y2K arc)

Metropolis Secret Files & Origins

Superman: The Man of Steel #99 - 101

the Critical Condition arc:

Superman (1987) #158

Adventures of Superman #580

Superman: The Man of Steel #102

Action Comics #767

Superman: Emperor Joker

Superman: The Man of Steel #106 - 110, #112, #114

Our Worlds at War was also a pretty important event for him, but i really can't justify recommending that you read the whole massive thing if you're only interested in him. he only shows up in a few issues (which may be a little confusing without the context of what's happening in the entire event, but it's fine):

Action Comics #594

Superman: The Man of Steel #116 - 117

Superman: The Man of Steel #118, #120, #122 - 125

Superman: The Man of Steel #130, #131 (part of the Ending Battle arc)

Superman: The Man of Steel

Superman vs Darkseid: Apokolips Now!

the Strange New Visitor arc:

Action Comics #811

Adventures of Superman #624

Superman (1987) #201

he featured fairly often in in 52 & Infinity Inc (2007), but i haven't actually gotten around to reading either one of those yet beyond skimming a few random issues, so i can't really give any specific recs there

Superman #685 - 687, #689 - 690, #695 (part of the New Krypton Saga)

Superman: War of the Supermen (also part of New Krypton)

Reign of the Doomsdays

aaaand that brings us to the end of the preboot universe. i think he was a fairly major player in the n52 superman comics, but i haven't gotten around to them, either. the only post-reboot comic i can really recommend (and i do strongly recommend it because it's an all time fave for me) is Superwoman (2016)

beyond that, i believe he's a semi-regularly occurring character in the current superman titles & that there's a Steelworks book out there somewhere. but i've kinda lost interest in current comics for the time being, so that's all i can really say about that!

hope this helps & happy reading 💕

[notesonartistry]

@yeahyoucanfacethis - your post just reminded me about this part of Insider's write-up of the 3am tracks which I hadn't realised when listening to WCS:

"If you pay close attention, Swift focuses solely on the would'ves and the could'ves ("If you would've blinked then I would've / Looked away at the first glance / If you tasted poison, you could've / Spit me out at the first chance") but never the should'ves. That's because she's already told us those: "Dear John" concludes with the line "Don't you think I was too young? You should've known.""

[lieutenant-columbro]

HOW DID HE KNOW

[wildaboutmnhockey]

We already had to change coaches? 🙃