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Karla Jay remembers joining the second night of street protests during the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City. For her, and for so many other LGBTQ+ people, something had shifted: People were angry. They didn’t want things to go back to normal — because normal meant police raids. Normal meant living underground. It meant hiding who they were at their jobs and from their families. They wanted a radical change.

Radical change meant organizing. Jay joined a meeting with the Gay Liberation Front, which would become the incubator for the modern LGBTQ+ political movement and proliferate in chapters across the country. At those meetings, she remembers discussing what freedom could look like. Holding hands with a lover while walking down the street, without fear of getting beaten up, one person said. Another said they’d like to get married. At the time, those dreams seemed impossible.


To fight back, LGBTQ+ Americans need to organize, Jay said. That starts with thinking locally — supporting local artists, independent stores and small presses, as well as LGBTQ+ organizations taking demonstrable political action and protecting queer culture.

“See what you can do without going crazy. If you can focus on one thing and you can spend one hour a week, or you can spend one day a week, that’s much better than being depressed and doing nothing,” she said. “Because the person you’re going to help is yourself. This is the time for all of us to step up.”

 

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Paul M. would often fill himself with liquid courage before he slipped through the doors of Club LaGrange, a gay bathhouse that occupied a worn but majestic brownstone in a gritty slice of downtown Boston.

Up a flight of stairs, he’d approach the counter, supply his name and some cash, before proceeding to a room or locker, where he’d stow his clothes and don a towel. Then, for the night, he was anonymous and free to explore the showers, saunas and private rooms of the club—each space a new opportunity to cruise for sex.

“I was young, horny and in the closet,” says Paul, now 82 years old; the bathhouses—outside the gaze of the more public gay bars—filled a need for him.

Boston never had a legendary gay bathhouse scene like those in New York or San Francisco—partly due to a hangover of “Puritan prudishness” that augured a tamer scene overall, according to historians. Boston’s gay community, some of its own members admit, was not as “wild” or uninhibited as those in other large American cities. But for a period in the 1970s and ’80s, a string of baths in the city gave gay men like Paul crucial community spaces—which were also on the forefront of public health, before and after the AIDS crisis hit.

 

Since 2020, there has been a swell of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation, all running parallel to attacks on reproductive care, immigrant rights, and education. According to Trans Legislation Tracker, there are currently 569 active bills in the United States and nine have passed. Though some of this legislation may pass, it is important to note that the vast majority of anti-trans legislation fails, in part due to their own unpopularity and the dedicated work of organizers. (The Republican majority is paper thin in both the Senate and the House, which also may make it challenging to enact Trump’s agenda.)

Now, grassroots organizations—specifically those led by and with trans people—are uniquely poised to not only help their communities weather the storm but also challenge the policies and attitudes that harm trans people in the first place.

“I see the moment as an opportunity. An opportunity for trans leaders to really, really get engaged, unite, and speak in one voice,” says Sean Ebony Coleman, founder and CEO of Destination Tomorrow, a LGBTQ grassroots organization working in New York City, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. “Folks that understand history know that we’ve seen some of these tactics before, so that means there are ways to push back.”

 

Greenland's centre-right opposition has won a surprise general election victory - in a vote dominated by independence and US President Donald Trump's pledge to take over the semi-autonomous territory.

The Democratic party, which favours a gradual approach to independence from Denmark - achieved around 30% of the vote, near-complete results show.

"Greenland needs us to stand together in a time of great interest from outside," party leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen told local media. "There is a need for unity, so we will enter into negotiations with everyone."

His party will now have to negotiate with other parties in order to form a coalition.

 

The Federal Trade Commission asked a judge in Seattle to delay the start of its trial accusing Amazon of duping consumers into signing up for its Prime program, citing resource constraints.

Attorneys for the FTC made the request during a status hearing on Wednesday before Judge John Chun in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Chun had set a Sept. 22 start date for the trial.

Jonathan Cohen, an attorney for the FTC, asked Chun for a two-month continuance on the case due to staffing and budgetary shortfalls.

The FTC’s request comes amid a push by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency to reduce spending. DOGE, which is led by tech baron Elon Musk, has slashed the federal government’s workforce by more than 62,000 workers in February alone.

 

Astronomers have discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn, giving it an insurmountable lead in the running tally of moons in the solar system.

Until recently, the "moon king" title was held by Jupiter, but Saturn now has a total of 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets combined. The team behind the discoveries had previously identified 62 Saturnian moons using the Canada France Hawaii telescope and, having seen faint hints that there were more out there, made further observations in 2023.

"Sure enough, we found 128 new moons," said the lead researcher, Dr Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Academia Sincia in Taiwan. "Based on our projections, I don't think Jupiter will ever catch up."

 

Google has gotten its first taste of remedies that Donald Trump’s Department of Justice plans to pursue to break up the tech giant’s monopoly in search. In the first filing since Trump allies took over the department, government lawyers backed off a key proposal submitted by the Biden DOJ. The government won't ask the court to force Google to sell off its AI investments, and the way it intends to handle Android is changing. However, the most serious penalty is intact—Google's popular Chrome browser is still on the chopping block.

"Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that—no matter what occurs—Google always wins," the DOJ filing says. To that end, the government maintains that Chrome must go if the playing field is to be made level again.

The DOJ is asking the court to force Google to promptly and fully divest itself of Chrome, along with any data or other assets required for its continued operation. It is essentially aiming to take the Chrome user base—consisting of some 3.4 billion people—away from Google and hand it to a competitor. The government will vet any potential buyers to ensure the sale does not pose a national security threat. During the term of the judgment, Google would not be allowed to release any new browsers. However, it may continue to contribute to the open source Chromium project.

 

The LGBTQIA+ community contains so many diverse identities and perspectives that, sometimes, groups can be overlooked. This is certainly true for asexual and aromantic communities – demographics whose experiences are often misunderstood or misinterpreted, both within and out with the queer community.

However, to truly understand the spectrums of desire and love, it’s crucial that we educate ourselves about and advocate for ace and aro folks. Whether it’s reading about identities like fraysexual and demisexual that sit on either end of the ace spectrum, correcting harmful assumptions that ace or aro identities can be “cured”, or signal-boosting the work of ace-aro activists like Yasmin Benoit, there is so much that allies can do.

When it comes to aromantic identities, there is particularly limited visibility in the media and wider culture. For questioning folks, that means that there is little representation out there that validates or mirrors their perspective. Our society is so obsessed with the idea of romantic love as an ideal that most alloromantic (non-aromantic) individuals may not even know about alternative models of experiencing love.

 

Sony is working on a prototype AI-powered version of at least one its PlayStation game characters. An anonymous tipster has shared an internal video from Sony’s PlayStation group with The Verge that demonstrates an AI-powered version of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West. After we published this story, the video was pulled from YouTube due to a copyright claim from Muso, a copyrights enforcement company which advertises Sony Interactive Entertainment (aka PlayStation) as a client.

The video is narrated by Sharwin Raghoebardajal, a director of software engineering at Sony Interactive Entertainment who works on video game technology, AI, computer vision, and face technology for Sony’s PlayStation Studios Advanced Technology Group. We watched Raghoebardajal demonstrate an AI-powered version of Aloy that can hold a conversation with a player through voice prompts during gameplay.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

better fit for the World News or Environmental sections, nothing more

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

When I see a comm called ‘Socialism’ I wouldn’t expext an analysis on the Haji in Saudi Arabia.

i mean, no offense but: virtually all contemporary subjects are shaped by class conflict or capitalist hegemony and it seems like it'd be a much better use of time for socialists to explicitly and plainly make those connections, than endlessly theorypost or relitigate the anarchist/communist or social democrat/socialist or Trotskyist/ML splits

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The solution here is to just provide enough cooling methods I would say. I feel putting this in a wider ‘capitalist and climate’ frame is a bit overdone.

in what way? Saudi Arabia is already so hot (and at times humid) that going outside at all is potentially lethal--in no small part because it is a capitalist petrostate whose existence is predicated on cheap oil warming the planet--which also renders much of the Hajj literally impossible to do in any safe manner since it must be done outside. the climactic and capitalistic ties are fairly obvious here to me.

also, it's worth noting, the article explicitly notes one problem (of several) with your proposed solution:

Technological adaptations such as air-conditioning do work. But they are not available to all. Nor are they fail-safe. During a heat wave, many of us turn on the aircon at the same time, using lots of power and raising the chance of blackouts. Blackouts during heat waves can have deadly consequences.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Kind of annoying to have to click the damned link if the text can just be in the body of the post. What, do you work for PC gamer?

no offense but why are you on a link aggregator (and a clone of Reddit in particular) if you're averse to clicking links? that's literally the point of this form of social media: emphasis on sharing interesting links from other places, with the expectation that you'll follow them.

in any case we strongly discourage the practice of copying the entire article because it's technically copyright infringement, we generally expect people to actually engage with what's posted instead of drive-by commenting, and it's just generally bad form to rob writers of attention and click-throughs for their work.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

no offense but: i can't believe that a statist society, which gives the state a monopoly on violence, gets to decide who lives or dies

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

you've been having a minor meltdown throughout this thread to anybody who asks you basic follow-up questions. take three days off and stop it

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

we have a big list of them on our resource page; i haven't gone through and pruned recently, but there are a lot of orgs worthy of the time and money on the list

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Now, we have actual data about the impact of the law. The Shift Project took a comprehensive look at the impact that the new law had on California's fast food industry between April 2024, when the law went into effect, and June 2024. The Shift Project specializes in surveying hourly workers working for large firms. As a result, it has "large samples of covered fast food workers in California as well as comparison workers in other states and in similar industries; and of having detailed measurement of wages, hours, staffing, and other channels of adjustment."

Despite the dire warnings from the restaurant industry and some media reports, the Shift Project's study did "not find evidence that employers turned to understaffing or reduced scheduled work hours to offset the increased labor costs." Instead, "weekly work hours stayed about the same for California fast food workers, and levels of understaffing appeared to ease." Further, there was "no evidence that wage increases were accompanied by a reduction in fringe benefits… such as health or dental insurance, paid sick time, or retirement benefits."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Also, this post says we can discuss it, but you’re already deleting comments you don’t like!

i'm removing your comments because you don't know what you're talking about--and your reply here, which is similarly nonsensical, does not make me less likely to continue doing this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

it would be unfortunate if this were true, but luckily the moratorium started four days after the election result happened so you're just making up a guy to get mad about.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

The Yurok Tribe has released 18 condors into the wild so far, over four rounds of releases. They're doing great, says Williams. "It's been really exciting to watch the flock expand and change in their dynamics." The first couple of cohorts stayed close to home, only exploring within a 30-mile (48km) radius. Now the birds wander as far as 95 miles (152km) away, she adds.

"It's awesome to see these young birds who've literally never flown in their life because they were reared in facilities with limited flight space, starting to learn the ropes and how to use the landscape to their advantage," says Williams.


The tribe has a release and management facility to monitor the birds for the foreseeable future – many challenges remain before they become a fully self-sustaining population. The birds are brought back into the facility twice a year for check-ups to ensure they are doing well, and to check the transmitters they're fitted with.


West believes the key to a true, sustainable condor recovery is education. "The only way to combat a lack of information is to reach out to these communities and empower them with that information," he says. "If [the public] all make the transition to non-lead ammunition, our intensive management efforts could virtually stop overnight."

Remedying this single issue should allow condors to "again have a meaningful place in modern ecosystems", says West.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

By necessity, Maryam’s reporting process is far from typical—she takes great pains to keep the authorities from knowing who she is, and has to work with a male family member to secure interviews. Sometimes, the process of scheduling an in-person meeting can resemble a game of telephone: she asks her brother to call a male relative of the potential subject to make the arrangements. When she wants to meet with a source in person, she must bring along a man to chaperone. She’ll also ask around to assess if the person she’s supposed to meet can be trusted to keep her identity a secret. “It’s really hard for me,” she said.

Once the piece is ready to be published, Maryam removes all traces of her reporting from her devices, including deleting every email and call log, except for contacts with her immediate family. “If the Taliban checks my phone [and finds something], it will not be good for me. So, I delete everything,” she said. She only publishes the article after she has confirmed again that her subjects are comfortable with everything they’re quoted as saying. “It’s my job to keep her safe,” she said.

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