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Worth Reduced to Work: A Disabled Person’s Experience of the Welfare Cuts Debacle Penny Pepper explores the impact of the watered-down Welfare Bill and questions the very notion of ‘work’ as a marker of human value

"Do we really live in a world where our value as human beings continues to be assessed by what is pulled from us as automatons of profit-making production for the already wealthy?"

@penpep.bsky.social's new Byline Times piece on the ongoing impact on disabled people of dehumanising rhetoric 👇

Hoping for a year record 10 butterfly species in the garden today, and in late afternoon, this Common Blue got us there.

Holly Blue
Brimstone
Green Veined White
Gatekeeper
Large White
Comma
Small White
Red Admiral
Speckled Wood
Common blue

#butterflies #WildlifeGardening #ento #UKwildlife

As the shortest kid in school, I was an easy target for bullies. When I was about eight, I befriended a kind teenager wh When the KKK Murdered My Childhood Friend | Robert Reich

61 years ago today, the Klan murdered three civil rights workers in Mississippi. One of them was a childhood friend. I'd like to share what he meant to me. https://youtu.be/u-kv3wdqqNo?si=Zc3Uh-CJOcODt-RW

I don’t have a subscription, what is the gist of their plan?

Same. I baked my kids in Eurovision so they were super keen, I wasn’t sure. Having multiple friends across the globe text “thank god” that Austria won had me feel ill that it is this tainted. And I’d already lost so much hope in people stopping this genocide 💔💔💔 it has to stop. Years and years ago

Big Estonia fans in my house. Possibly recency bias at play, or a fear of having to get on a very long plane ride 😅 (don’t think we can host TBH).

Israel leading the Eurovision finals due to the audience vote had me absolutely convinced that we were seeing a replay of the Musk push for that Wisconsin judge.

Luckily, in both cases, the people spoke, their votes were counted, and they didn’t win 🫂

I saw crowd members with fingers over lips 🙊

Israel debates 80% tax on foreign donations to NGOs An Israeli parliamentary committee on Monday began debate on a law that would impose an 80% tax on non-government organisations that receive the majority of their funding from foreign entities in a bid to reduce foreign influence on the state.

Can’t wait for people to keep telling me to donate to aid organizations when they’re trying to take 80% of all donations as a tax for the Israeli government www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Even if disabled people could afford the cost, space and energy it takes to prep…
It’s nearly impossible to stock up on meds.

They’re tightly controlled and dispensed in small quantities. Insurance generally won’t cover larger amounts.

“Just stock up on meds” is not a solution.

New Pope Leo XIV: Why The “American Pope” Is Really A Peruvian Pontiff When the Vatican hailed a “new Pope” born in Massachusetts, they overlooked his decades of ministry in Peru that shaped Leo XIV’s agenda.

Not saying the new Pope is secretly leftist, but Anon came with receipts and we broke it all down. Vatican politics just got weird in a good way. If you’ve ever wanted to see Catholicism flirt with climate justice and labor unions, this one’s for you. Read it here: ctrlaltresist.com/2025/05/new-...

MAGA Melts Down Over New Pope's Anti-Trump, Pro-Immigrant Social Media Donald Trump's supporters are not liking the social media of Robert Prevost, Pope Leo XIV, which includes several posts critical of the president.

Robert Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV, has been critical of the president and his actions.

💔

A photo of a Meta ai chat saying that genocide in Gaza is still not a clear outcome, later confirming it was up to date with its data sources.

I tried it for the first time last night and it gave me the ick. It’s like saying google will be a friend. Nope.

Early voting for the Federal Election starts today! Your vote is powerful & will help shape whether we have a kinder or crueller Australia. Vote for candidates that bring us together not ones who punch down on the marginalised. Vote for compassion, freedom & safety for refugees.

New images could change cancer diagnostics, but ICE detained the Harvard scientist who analyzes them Without scientist Kseniia Petrova’s expertise, no one can fully unlock the data’s potential, putting crucial advancements in early cancer detection at risk.

Almost every line of this story would have been simply unbelievable a few months ago:

—Pioneering cancer researcher;
—*Arrested* at airport in Boston;
—Now indefinite ICE detention in Louisiana;
—"Crime": not declaring some frog-embryo samples for research.

Read it.
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

A 'level of violence unheard of' but yet more silence as another woman killed Four women dead with police reporting levels of violence "unheard of". But there is no talk of terrorism or national security. Just silence.

Four women dead, one week.
The latest? Up to 5 masked men kidnapped a woman from her home after assaulting her and her kids.
UP TO FIVE MASKED MEN.
And police say the community can be "reassured" because it's a suspected targeted attack.
Reassured?
#auspol

womensagenda.com.au/latest/a-lev...

Extreme empathy 🫂🫂

💯

Why was the original post deleted?

Trump’s playbook is Viktor Orbán’s My breakfast with Orbán expert John Shattuck

This link for his substack 💔 it seems all 10 steps are already in play 💔💔💔 open.substack.com/pub/robertre...

Yep, currently abled until disabled applies to so many of us.

Please, look for the helpers. 🫂 I follow many here. And I’m reading a book called “Real self care” by Dr Pooja Lakshmin (from the library) and it is the best I’ve read. It might help 🫂♥️ and know you aren’t alone.

I felt the same way 🫂

What a relief that he is still alive ♥️

How Sarah Kendzior Became the Prophet of Flyover Country Sarah Kendzior is writing. It's March 29, and the St. Louis-based scholar of despots and demagogues is absorbed in her notebook. A tumble of dark...

I encourage folks to read the article and remember it's from 2019. All of this was predictable. What is predictable is preventable. People chose not to prevent it and instead smear those who told the truth and tried to stop catastrophe. www.riverfronttimes.com/news/sarah-k...

Asked what policies he had for women, Dutton offered a fuel discount for “women driving to work or driving kids around.” What about safety, Peter? Early education? Workforce participation? Seriously — vote independent. Independence works for women.

I tell my kids that life isn’t fair. Which is why we work hard to make it so. And to look for the helpers. Always 🫂

A tweet by Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25 ) reads: "He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him. He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?"

I see it. I have lived it. 83 years ago, the U.S. government turned upon a group of its own citizens and residents and sent them to internment camps without due process. I was there among them. American fascism is back. It is here. It is now.

The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security's "death master file," which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identity that allows them to make and spend money.

What a grim paragraph www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/u...