#npr life

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

i think a major thing that is overlooked in the x files is that when they do their little cutscene of them driving from washington dc to the bumfuck middle of nowhere at the start of each episode, their roadtrips must be SO long. so what are they doing in that time? are they fighting over which radio station to listen to? filling the silence with conversation? is that how they become inseparable, over mind-numbing hours on the road where stories slip off of the tongue with ease?

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In two 5-1 opinions, the court built on a 2019 decision in which it said the state’s Constitution protects abortion rights and that lawmakers seeking to restrict abortion must meet a high “strict scrutiny” test. The decisions cement Kansas' role as a key abortion access point for patients across the broader region.

The Kansas Supreme Court struck down two laws restricting abortion on Friday, affirming its prior interpretation that ending a pregnancy remains a constitutionally protected right in Kansas.

In two 5-1 opinions, the court built on a 2019 decision in which it said the state’s Constitution protects abortion rights and lawmakers seeking to restrict abortion must meet a high “strict scrutiny” test. When Republican lawmakers asked voters, in 2022, to amend the constitution to stipulate that it does not protect abortion rights, Kansans overwhelmingly declined to do so.

“We stand by our conclusion that section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights protects a fundamental right to personal autonomy, which includes a pregnant person’s right to terminate a pregnancy,” wrote Justice Eric Rosen in one of the majority opinions.

A decision against abortion providers would have been monumental, not only for Kansans but for the thousands of women across the region who now travel to Kansas each year to get abortions that have been banned in their home states. A large majority of patients at Kansas abortion clinics now come from Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and farther afield.

The court’s majority upheld lower court rulings that two laws restricting abortion — passed several years ago by Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature — were unconstitutional. One law, passed in 2015, banned an abortion method frequently used in second-trimester abortions called ‘dilation and evacuation.’ The second law, passed in 2011, imposed licensure restrictions on doctors who provide abortions that exceeded those imposed on other medical providers.

Neither law had been in effect because of permanent injunctions by lower courts.

In his decision striking down the dilation and evacuation ban, Rosen wrote that the State of Kansas does have a compelling interest in “promoting respect for the value and dignity of human life, born or unborn” but said that the law is not narrowly tailored to that interest.

The clinic restrictions “do not survive strict scrutiny and are constitutionally infirm,” Justice Standridge concluded in the second majority opinion.

The decisions were both 5-1, with Justice Caleb Stegall — the only justice to dissent from the 2019 decision — dissenting and Justice Keynen Wall not participating in the decision.

Stegall wrote that he dissented from the Friday opinions for the same reasons he dissented in 2019.

“The majority’s imagined section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights bears no resemblance at all — in either law or history — to the actual text and original public meaning of section 1.”

Stegall also criticized the majority’s use of the term “pregnant person” instead of “women.”

“I cannot help but notice that pregnant women have been quietly — decisively — evicted from this court’s abortion jurisprudence,” he wrote.

The Center for Reproductive Rights represented the Kansas doctors who challenged the laws. Nancy Northup, the organization’s president and CEO, commended the court’s opinions.

“This is an immense victory for the health, safety, and dignity of people in Kansas and the entire Midwestern region, where millions have been cut off from abortion access,” Northup said in a news release. “We will continue our fight to ensure Kansans can access the essential healthcare they need in their home state.”

Kansans for Life, the state’s leading anti-abortion organization, rebuked the decisions.

“Adding insult to injury, extremely liberal judges of the Kansas Supreme Court have now overturned basic health and safety standards for abortion facilities,” KFL spokesperson Danielle Underwood said in a press release.

“It hurts to say, ‘we told you so,’ to the many Kansans who were misled by the abortion industry’s assurances that it would still be ‘heavily regulated’ in our state if voters rejected the 2022 amendment,” Underwood added.

Several new abortion laws took effect in Kansas earlier this week, but one of them — a law requiring doctors to ask patients getting abortions their reason for doing so — is being challenged in court. A Johnson County judge said Monday that doctors could add the law to a larger lawsuit they brought against a handful of older state abortion restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period. The judge agreed to temporarily block the older laws while the case proceeds.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment told providers it will “not, for now” enforce the abortion reasons law, providers said Monday. The health department has not responded to requests seeking to confirm that.

[so-much-for-subtlety]

he is so tortured by the window pigeons

[tomorrowusa]

If the increasingly demented and hideous Weird Donald Trump isn't enough to scare voters away from the Republican Party, there's also the House Freedom Caucus planning to disrupt Congress when it returns from summer break.

The far-right House Freedom Caucus is gearing up for a government-shutdown fight at the end of September and a chaotic lame-duck session after the election, no matter who wins. “In the inevitability that Congress considers a Continuing Resolution,” the House Freedom Caucus said in a statement Monday, referring to a possible short-term spending bill, “government funding should be extended into early 2025 to avoid a lame duck omnibus [bill] that preserves Democrat spending and policies well into the next administration.” They want this so that “Democrats cannot undermine President [Donald] Trump’ second term,” in which Trump would expectedly obliterate the funding agreements that President Joe Biden and Congress made for the 2025 fiscal year. That’s not their only demand, though. In the statement, the Freedom Caucus also said the continuing resolution should include bogus legislation to prevent noncitizens from voting. The Freedom Caucus called on Republican House leadership to "use our leverage in the September spending fight to prevent non-citizens from voting in our elections." Noncitizens don’t vote, of course. As the Brennan Center for Justice explains, it’s a “federal crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. It’s also a crime under every state’s laws. In fact, under federal law, you could face up to five years in prison simply for registering to vote. It’s also a deportable offense for noncitizens to register or vote.”

About as many non-citizens vote in the US as there are occasions when Donald Trump is truthful and humble at the same time.

Noncitizen Voting Is Already Illegal — and Vanishingly Rare

GOP allegations of vote fraud are an attempt to pander to Trump's delusional obsession with the 2020 election. He just can't handle the fact that he's a LOSER.

Trump hired me to find election fraud in Arizona. Here's what I found instead

Conservative group finds ‘absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud’ in 2020 election

Vote fraud and election tampering are far more common among Republicans.

The Pattern of GOP Voter Fraud

This is hardly recent behavior on the part of Republicans. NPR's This American Life in 2004 did a segment (Episode 276, Act Two) on election sabotage.

Cold-cock The Vote (transcript – scroll down to Act Two)

Weird Donald has hijacked the GOP. Eric Trump's wife is now co-chair of the Republican National Committee. They do little these days which does not involve kowtowing to Weird Donald and his bizarre whims. House Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson will be doing what he can to placate the Dear Leader's kinks when Congress returns.

[wormdramafever]

Goodbye Volcano High among NPR's best video games of 2023!!

An impending meteor is racing toward Pangea, but Fang, a nonbinary anthropomorphic pterodactyl, has more pressing issues. Their best friend is showing more interest in entomology than the band they started as kids. A shy would-be paramour has started sending Fang anonymous texts. And their brother is trying to hold the family together as their parents struggle to connect with Fang. Meanwhile, news of the coming meteor rolls out slowly: It’s met first with a shrug and then with social media memes and despair — not unlike our own experiences with COVID-19 and climate change. The imminent apocalypse amplifies tensions among Fang’s gang of dorky dinosaur friends, all of whom are also dealing with the sudden cancellation of plans and aspirations. But aided by a brilliant dialogue system and Rock Band-style rhythm challenges, Goodbye Volcano High still manages to be wholesome and hopeful, even in the face of potential extinction. — James Mastromarino, NPR Gaming lead and Here & Now producer

[gornwen]

I have earned a middle age merit badge today. For the first time, I have submitted an answer to NPR's Sunday Puzzle.

[bts-trans]

221202 Big Hit’s Tweet

[#오늘의방탄] RM at the Tiny Desk 🎤 김남준 라이브천재 아닐리가 없다..! 💙💜

#오늘의알엠 #BTS #방탄소년단 #RM #Indigo #RMatNPRTinyDesk #TinyDesk #하루종일남주니로물들이기 #알쓸인잡도기다려기다려

[#Today’sBangtan] RM at the Tiny Desk🎤 Kim Namjoon is a live genius..! 💙💜 #TodaysRM #BTS #RM #Indigo #RMatNPRTinyDesk #TinyDesk #FillingTheEntireDayWithHuesOfNamjoonie #StayTunedStayTunedForDictionaryOfUselessKnowledge* (T/N: *Referencing V's cute mistake at 200306 Music Bank Waiting Room Interview during ON promotions.)

Trans cr; Annie @ bts-trans © TAKE OUT WITH FULL CREDITS

[downtherabbitholewithlucy]

My soul will not rest until the day I see THIS come true

[in-sufficientdata]

I'm 42 and just finally worked out my being agender "counts" despite having little desire to do anything to stop being perceived as a woman.

I have a close high school friend who just came out this year and is beginning to transition.

You, dear reader, have so much time.

I say this as someone with some wicked gerascophobia – even if you're afraid of getting older, even if it terrifies you, there's so much time.

NPR recently published this article about aging that I believe would help us all:

To tl;dr the article's premise, your attitude toward aging is the best predictor of your outcome.

If you see each day as a new opportunity, a chance to grow and change, the time will be more rewarding. And that's not to say I don't still struggle!

The thing I have spent the longest in my life, back when I believed in a deity, crying and praying long into the nights, was about being terrified to one day turn 30. And now I'm 42.

At first still being alive after 30 felt like borrowed time, but it's really not that.

It's a chance to live the life I want to live. I'm trying to make the most of it.

Heck knows sometimes I fail at it. But at least I'm here to try.

[scvpubliclib]

New story on NPR: Hundreds of authors give support to striking workers at HarperCollins https://ift.tt/3wpi9Gh

[rustbeltjessie]

"Pleasurable sadness is what we call it," says Matt Sachs, an associate research scientist at Columbia University who has studied the phenomenon. Ordinarily, people seek to avoid sadness, he says. "But in aesthetics and in art we actively seek it out." Artists have exploited this seemingly paradoxical behavior for centuries. In the 1800s, the poet John Keats wrote about "the tale of pleasing woe." In the 1990s, the singer and songwriter Tom Waits released a compilation aptly titled "Beautiful Maladies." There are some likely reasons our species evolved a taste for pleasurable sadness, Sachs says. "It allows us to experience the benefits that sadness brings, such as eliciting empathy, such as connecting with others, such as purging a negative emotion, without actually having to go through the loss that is typically associated with it," he says.

See also: "It is a sad and beautiful world" and "There is a voluptuous pleasure in all that sadness."

[thepro-lifemovement]

NPR on Thursday broadcast heartbreaking audio of a recent abortion performed in Michigan on a mother who was 11 weeks pregnant.

While the reporter described the setting as “feeling like childbirth,” Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB/GYN who has delivered more than 5,000 babies, says that what listeners heard is actually quite different:

“A sharp-toothed grasping instrument, called a tenaculum, is used to grasp the cervix, providing traction as the abortionist inserts progressively larger metal dilators to stretch open the cervix.  Then, as we heard on NPR, the electric vacuum aspirator is turned on so that the abortionist can suction out the unborn baby.

“Planned Parenthood describes the procedure as using ‘gentle suction to remove the pregnancy from your uterus.’  However, Dr. Anthony Levatino, a former abortionist, has explained that an electric vacuum aspirator has up to 10 to 20 times the suction power of a household vacuum.  That’s likely why we hear the mother groaning in pain in the NPR recording.  Suction that powerful will hurt as it rips out the adherent placenta and unborn child, even after the mother receives pain medication.

Dr. Tara Sander Lee, Ph.D., a Harvard-trained scientist who serves as director of life sciences at Charlotte Lozier Institute, explains what modern science reveals about babies at 11 weeks of gestation:

“What NPR described as ‘pregnancy tissue’ was a baby, who by 11 weeks already had fingers and toes, displayed a preference for using their right or left hand when sucking his thumb, and had heart activity resembling that of a newborn.  By 11 weeks, the baby already had 4,000 distinct anatomical parts, or 90% of the named body parts found in an adult.

“Science confirms that an unborn baby’s heart is beating rhythmically by 6 weeks.  By 11 weeks, the age of the baby aborted in the NPR broadcast, the baby had a heart rate of 168 beats per minute and the heart had already beat over 9 million times.

“By 11 weeks, the baby that NPR describes as ‘pregnancy tissue’ was alive and active.  In fact, scientists have determined that at 11 weeks the unborn baby has brain activity and doesn’t stay still for more than 13 minutes at a time.  The phrase ‘pregnancy tissue’ is a cruel exercise in semantics designed to deny or obscure what science knows about the humanity of the baby.

“My heart goes out to this woman who chose to end the life of her own child and then share this experience on national radio—this is a moment of deep sadness.”

[there-goes-trouble]

I bet you one (1) listen you'll think abt "otis is resurrected" for the rest of your life 😨

[artcalledtattoo]

NPR

[easeupkid]

just found out that they did a samia tiny desk concert omfg…….