In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Transmisogyny; rape; violence; anti-immigrationism] Cristina Costantini, Jorge Rivas, and Kristofer Ríos have published a report on a six-month Fusion investigation on abuses against trans* immigrants and asylum seekers, which "found that conditions for transgender women locked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are often humiliating, dangerous, and even deadly. On any given night, some 75 transgender prisoners are detained by ICE. ...One fifth of all confirmed sexual assault cases in ICE facilities involved transgender victims, according to a recent investigation by the Government Accountability Office. ....For some, solitary is so bad they asked to be deported." This is a really important piece of work.

[CN: Class warfare; racism; child neglect] According to a report released today by the National Center on Family Homelessness, 1 in 30 children in the US is now homeless. "Factors that cause the high rates of child homelessness included high rates of family poverty, particularly in houses headed by single women who are black or Hispanic; a dearth of affordable housing for low-income families; fallout from the recession economy, such as foreclosures and debt; long-lasting effects of trauma; and institutional racism resulting in economic segregation." Meanwhile, our politicians talk about the great "recovery" we're having, without regard for the profound cultural neglect of poor children, because their suffering is less visible than Wall Street celebrating its profits.

[CN: Antifeminism] Time has apologized for its suggestion that the word "feminist" should be banned: "Editor's Note: TIME apologizes for the execution of this poll; the word 'feminist' should not have been included in a list of words to ban. While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.–Nancy Gibbs." WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED? Fuck off, Time.

This is amazing: "NFL star Jason Brown has quit playing football professionally, and now spends his days as a farmer, who harvests free food for the hungry. ...Last weekend, Brown gave away 46,000 pounds of sweet potatoes, in addition to the 10,000 pounds of cucumbers that he has already given away. 'You look over a sweet potato field and you don't see a crop, the vines are kind of wilting. There is nothing there to pick. You've got to have faith. I went out to plow up the potatoes last week and looked behind the tractor. I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite as beautiful as those big brown potatoes lying everywhere.'"

[CN: Misogyny; harassment; fat hatred] This selection of examples of screenshots from "Bye Felipe," which documents women being abused by men on various dating sites, will almost certainly not come as a surprise to any women. I did want to share it, however, because I was interested, ahem, by how many of the entitled men enraged by women not responding in the way they wanted immediately turned to calling those women "fat" as a terrible insult.

[CN: Homophobia] For fuck's sake the legal clusterfucktastrophe in Michigan regarding same-sex marriage. This is why we need a federal law legalizing same-sex marriage IMMEDIATELY. Screwing around with people's lives like this is vile.

Looks like SOME PEOPLE learned nothing from Jurassic Park: "The most amazing things about this mammoth [found last year in Siberia's permafrost by Russian and South Korean scientists] were that its meat was unusually well-preserved, and that a reddish bloodlike liquid oozed from the exposed carcass when it was poked. That raised hopes that researchers could find an intact cell nucleus that contained the full set of DNA instructions for making a mammoth. If that could be done, the nucleus could be inserted into an elephant egg, sparked into cell division, and then implanted into a surrogate mother elephant. The result? A clone that should be virtually identical to the long-dead mammoth."

Tommy Lee Jones still cannot sanction your buffoonery, and also he has made a feminist Western. Welp!

And finally! "27 Pets Who Just Can't Be Bothered to Get Out of Bed." Aww lol.