April Arcus

the valar couldn’t cure his wounds but they have excellent medical assistance in dying 💔

Kun-readings use the Japanese native vocabulary (大和言葉, “yamato kotoba”), which has no etymological link to Chinese vocabulary. That’s why “yu-dane” sounds nothing like “tāngzhǒng”. This is one of the only borrowings from Japanese into Chinese based on a kun-reading!

When a word is coined in Japan using an on-reading and calqued back into Chinese, it’s called wasei-kango, and because on-readings usually vaguely resemble Mandarin pronunciation, the connection is obvious — for example, 民主, “democracy”, pronounced “minshu” in Japanese, and “mínzhǔ” in Mandarin.

The technique was invented in Japan in the postwar era, where it was called “yu-dane”, written “湯種” in Kanji using the kun-reading. Mandarin speakers read these Kanji like they were Hanzi and pronounced it “tāngzhǒng”, then popularized it throughout Asia, so Americans use the Chinese pronunciation.

Tahngzhong is a bread-making technique where some water and flour are cooked into a paste before mixing the dough. This makes the dough dryer to the touch and easier to handle while keeping total hydration high, and also keeps the finished bread fresh for longer by inhibiting starch retrogradation.

transfem youth are the explicit targets of sports bans

Something the Skrmetti decision drives home: "Puberty blockers" should be abandoned as a goal; the goal should be HRT for any minor that wants it; puberty blockers should be a tool for minors who choose themselves they need more time to decide and *nothing else*.

Compromising achieved nothing, here

crochet her an octopus

edited comic panel. Batman is breaking a lump-with-handle cow tool over his knee and saying "this is the tool of the cow. we do not understand it. we will not use it."

it's not FOR us

I should get my kids an Apple II, a C64, and an iMac G3, and never let them connect to the internet.

what about .1, .2 etc?

Adjusted for inflation Spirited Away cost $22 million to make. The Triplets of Belleville cost $16.5 million, Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers cost $14.28 million, and Oscar winner Flow cost only $4 million. These critically acclaimed, made by real people films, cost less than this pile of actual vomit.

PUBLIC HEALTH ORDER NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SECRETARY GINA DEBLASSIE AUGUST 29, 2025 Ensuring Availability of COVID-19 Vaccine for the 2025-2026 Season

THIS ORDER supersedes any previous order, proclamation, or directives to the extent they are in conflict. This Public Order shall take effect immediately and remain in effect until such time as it automatically expires one year from the date of issuance, or until such time as the New Mexico Department of Health Cabinet Secretary rescinds it.

New Mexico has issued a public health order that removes federal restrictions to COVID-19 vaccine access so that pharmacies in New Mexico can vaccinate people of all ages and risk profiles. Every state need to do this!

I agree with what Erin says here, but would add that Newsom's recent comment citing the age of 25 is especially scary, as that's well beyond centrist-sounding "fairness in sports" rhetoric – it is a hardcore anti-trans activist talking point! it's like he is actively consuming 4thwavenow/TERF posts

Transphobia, racism, and other hatreds are not occasionally inconvenient forces of nature that can be harnessed to do good work, like the wind and the tides. They are chain-reaction disasters, like a disintegrating ice sheet or a wildfire knocking on your neighbor's door.

Gavin Newsom is anti-trans and I will never, ever vote for him.

Gavin Newsom suggesting that 25 years of age is too young to transition and agreeing to right-wing entryism of concern trolling about trans people in sports. This is your opposition leader?

I will never vote for Gavin Newsom anyone who thinks trans people are actual humans will follow suit.

man aiming gun while crying

when the nice indie software begins telling you to "supercharge your productivity" and a sparkle icon appears

Inside the Democratic Effort to Kill the GOP’s Gender-Affirming Care Restriction in Reconciliation Democrats are having a hard time figuring out how to message on trans issues — but they quietly killed a provision in the reconciliation bill that would have restricted access to gender-affirming care...

so @oriana.bsky.social confirmed sarah mcbride played an integral role behind the scenes in stopping the medicaid care ban

thanks to a flood of calls and emails, she and a handful of cis allies in congress were able to get the momentum to strategize and stop the worst

www.notus.org/congress/dem...

this is literally what all the calls were for. this is good. this is what we wanted.

i’d *love* every politician to be a self starter working in broad daylight to champion trans liberation, but a few thousand folks pressuring people in power to use it for good is what we have. i’m glad it worked.

I am sharing this

a) for (Ashkenazi) Jews, because you may find it.. illuminating

&

b) if any non-Jews see this I hope it will help you make sense of some things with MORE UNDERSTANDING and COMPASSION and not condescension. And to be mindful re: lanes with regards to this topic. Thank you.

I'm going to try and communicate with my Republican colleagues in a new way.

the nyt releasing an andrew sullivan op-ed that calls non-binary people a threat to the entire LGBT community as a whole on the anniversary of obergefell is just more evidence that you should never fucking cooperate with the NYT. Treat their reporters like cops.

NYTimes has a long history of holding conservatives—including its paid columnists, like Stephens here—to absolutely no standards whatsoever, but still worth noting the complete lack of ethics required to not mention how 99.99% of Iran's uranium stockpile was due to Trump withdrawing from JCPOA.

Anyway I keep trying to come up with something useful to say about how incredibly desperate the corporate media is to extinguish even the most basic, milquetoast speech against fascism, but I simply have nothing

🌏 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ 🌎

Gender-Affirming Care for Trans Youth Is Neither New nor Experimental: A Timeline and Compilation… NOTE: this essay is a 15 minute read. If it’s listed as longer than that, it’s because it contains a list of over 100 references at the…

I won't be around today to read the HHS "Gender Dysphoria Report", but here's my comprehensive 2023 essay, "Gender-Affirming Care for Trans Youth Is Neither New nor Experimental" (with over 100+ references) that will tell you everything that's wrong with it...
juliaserano.medium.com/gender-affir...

Speaking up for My Jewish Values: Why I am Running on the Hatikvah Slate in the World Zionist Congress - J Street At this moment, it is essential that American Jews ask how we can help Israel live up to its own aspirations.

“Giving up on Israel isn’t the answer. Offering the country’s leaders our wholesale support isn’t either. Rather, American Jews need to speak for our values.” Daniel Wittenberg on why he’s running on the Hatikvah Slate for the World Zionist Congress. 1/3

There is no strict Constitutional prohibition against sending four-year-old cancer victims with American citizenship to die in Honduras. So it's hard to see what liberals are so upset about.

by Jonathan Turley