C. E. M. Henderson

F.D.A. Refuses to Review Moderna Flu Vaccine

Being in New Zealand has been glorious, and I’ve been trying to bring joy to our world that needs more joy and less rage posting.

But this is a rage post. You need to read this gift article because you need to be enraged.

screenshot from linked to essay that reads: The first is that the current anti-trans backlash is the result of “activists going too far,” a trope that is levied against virtually every social justice movement. This framing allows opponents to cast the rolling back of rights as a “realignment” with public opinion and a return to the “natural order” of things. But that is not at all what has happened here. I’ve been involved in trans communities since the early 1990s, and during that entire time trans people have acted locally—in their schools, workplaces, and communities—to increase awareness and challenge discriminatory practices. The International Olympic Committee began allowing trans athletes to compete way back in 2004, and gender-affirming care for trans youth is now almost three decades old. These are not by any means “novel” or “radical” developments.

...thought I'd share a few excerpts today. I organized the essay around 3 false assumptions commonly made by ppl who think abandoning trans rights will help Dems in future elections. the first is that the anti-trans backlash stems from "activists gone too far"... www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

If people want to understand how we got here, the destruction of the press, by both changing technology and failures to adjust and deliberate destruction, is a major reason, possibly THE largest reason, why.

Support media you value.

Well apparently right now it’s a game about fantasy combat, not exactly what one thinks of when one thinks about Neopets

A painting of a blue stylised chicken grasps hold of a saxophone in a dramatic fashion. None of this was in the prompt, other than a Henri Matisse painting of a saxophone.

A painting of a rather muscular chicken confidently holds a saxophone. None of this was in the prompt, other than a Henri Matisse painting of a saxophone.

An oil painting of a chicken. Prompt was a Henri Matisse painting.

An oil painting of a chicken in front of a mountain. Prompt was a Henri Matisse painting of a mountain.

If it brings any silly fun to your day, I had to do a couple of test runs of the Z-Image setup on my research machine, and have discovered it is wholly incapable of yielding a generic 'Henri Matisse' painting without including a chicken. First two were 'saxophones', others, just 'a painting'...

the what

oh no

The Board of Governors decided, unilaterally, that no published textbook in the field of sociology could be used in compliance with the law for an Intro to Sociology class. None. Victor: There's not a single existing textbook on the market that could be used that would qualify under state law? Zachary: Correct. Victor: I'm sorry, that's kind of funny. Like, the absurdity of not a single sociology textbook getting past the censors. I mean, it makes me kind of proud of our colleagues, but...

I do want to shout-out my fellow sociologists, who have collectively created a discipline so woke that not a single one of our introductory textbooks can make it past Florida's censors.

Great work everyone.

we are so doomed

“The Homeland” Is War on America: The Blood-and-Soil Nationalism That Killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti In the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Trump has clarified an inconvenient fact: the culture war is an actual war.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: With the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, "Trump has clarified an inconvenient fact—the culture war is an actual war"

I knew about the tow truck wars in Toronto but I did not know that MORE THAN 1 IN 8 bullets fired by guns anywhere in Toronto in the year 2024 were related to tow truck driver turf wars???

And the police force is not just complicit but LEAKING INFO TO HITMEN????

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

It feels like it's been impossible to get people outside of higher ed to understand that eliminating staff/programs/majors is primarily an ideological project, whatever claims are made about finances.

What's happened at the Post is what's been happening in higher ed for ages.

Students unearth remains in possible execution pit on training dig The discovery was made at Wandlebury Country Park near Cambridge

“Before we uncovered the first remains, our best find was a 1960s Smarties lid. I had never encountered human remains on a dig, and I was struck by how close yet distant these people felt. We were separated by only a few years in age, but over a thousand years in time.”

#MedievalSky

Devastatingly sad.
Every Labour MP should be forced to read this. In fact, every MP, who rushed back to Parliament to vote to save one steel mill, whilst hastening the collapse of dozens of universities - and harming the students, staff, communities and economies universities sustain and support

a donkey crucified

the earliest depiction of Christ’s crucifixion is among the ruins of a Roman palace turned messenger boy’s school - a student mocking one of his Christian classmates with a doodle of a boy praying to a donkey-headed figure on a cross captioned “Alexamenos worshipping his God”

Milton tangent complete, I am returning to my work on erased/struck out/obliterated inscriptions.

For many reasons they aren't the easiest things to locate in online catalogues. So if you come across any fun ones (esp. in books published prior to ~1750), here is a public request to think of me.

Here it is! @cjg70.bsky.social blows the doors off the question of why papyrus went out of vogue in the early Middle Ages. Follow the money! An instant classic that belongs on every manuscript studies syllabus.

Tweet from Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun: "Ignorance like this cheapens the horror of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law. She was hauled off to a death camp because of her race and religion. Her story has nothing to do with the illegal immigration, fraud, and lawlessness plaguing Minnesota today. Our brave law enforcement should be commended, not tarred with this historically illiterate and antisemitic comparison."

To avoid the possibility Holocaust remembrance might lead to empathy for migrants, Trump's antisemitism envoy claims Anne Frank "was in Amsterdam legally."

In reality, Margot Frank received a summons to go to a labor camp on July 5, 1942. After ignoring this call, they were in Amsterdam illegally.

Trump-administration officials and MAGA influencers have repeatedly called these activists “violent” and said they are involved in “riots.” But the resistance in Minnesota is largely characterized by a conscious, strategic absence of physical confrontation. Activists have made the decision to emphasize protection, aid, and observation. When matters escalate, it is usually the choice of the federal agents. Of the three homicides in Minneapolis this year, two were committed by federal agents. “There’s been an incredible, incredible response from the community. I’ve seen our neighbors go straight from allies to family—more than family—checking in on each other, offering food and rides for kids and all kinds of support, alerting each other if there’s ICE or any kind of danger,” Malika Dahir, a local activist of Somali descent, told me. If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn’t be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

One thing I found deeply moving about resistance in the Twin Cities was the universalism of loving your neighbor, the philosophy driving the opposition to the ICE/BP invasion. I couldn't help but notice the contrast with the blood and soil-ism of Miller and Vance. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to abandon it

Fascist Aesthetics Has Come Back Matching Fascist Politics Fascist movements have always understood aesthetics as pedagogy—as a way of training people to feel power before they are allowed to think about it.

www.laprogressive.com/progressive-...

Yep, and like I said, agree with OP. What I’m saying is, we’ve barely even had anything like it *before or since*. It’s not just “well technically, in 1941…” No. Ever!!

And that really is the only other thing in history I can think of that compares. Which. Considering how terrible history is in general, well.

I was going to say, I agree with the OP but I think the Khmer Rouge get a shout here for murdering 25% of the entire population of their own small country.

Part of this is that thanks to the specific Christianity that evolved in the US over the 20th Century -- which then permeated culture -- is that many Americans are unable to effectively differentiate between shame, guilt, and responsibility.

and for the love of god do not use your camp stove or bbq inside

Cool new book alert! With an open access digital edition, too.

like, what happens? does it come flying out THROUGH your eyeballs to meet the magnets??

ok so one of the questions they ask you before an MRI is “have you EVER had metal in your eyes from any accidents, welding, grinding etc?” and: new body horror scenario unlocked