This evening I was walking my dogs outside and a little kid was out with his mom. He was about eight years old I'd guess. The kid came up and asked me if he could pet my dog and I said sure, then as he's petting the Corgi he looks up at me and asks:

"Are you a boy? Or are you a girl? Because you look li..." Just then his mother cuts him off "Atreyu!!" and pulls his arm. "You don't ask people tha..." and I didn't hear the rest as she pulled him down the sidewalk.

I didn't really have time to give any answer as his completely mortified mom pulled him away. But I just laughed and called out to the mom that it was okay, the look on her face seemed thankful and apologetic. Mainly mortified though. But as an enby who feels euphoria from androgyny, that made my night.

Thanks for the unintended compliment little dude lol

I just wanted to share this funny euphoric moment.

Lunc 🪮

More than 150 years after the Navajo Nation signed treaties with the United States establishing its reservation and recognizing its sovereignty, the country’s largest tribe still struggles to secure the water guaranteed by those agreements.

In a 5-4 decision, the court denied the Navajo Nation’s request that the federal government be forced to act in a timely manner to help the tribe quantify, settle and access its water rights... ... Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the tribe’s treaties do not impose “a duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe.”

Link to the PDF going over the 5-4 SCOTUS decision.

When the researchers drafted their report, they included a key suggestion: The DOT should craft federal regulations requiring side guards.

But that recommendation generated intense resistance, both internally, from department officials who challenged their findings, and externally, from trucking industry lobbyists.

... the department supervisor overseeing the project had a very direct message for the researchers. “PLEASE delete any mention of a recommendation to develop … any regulation,” he wrote in an email. “An industry standard is acceptable, but no mention of ‘regulation.’”

The industry objections resulted in a remarkable concession from the department: It allowed trucking company lobbyists to review the researchers’ preliminary report and provide comments on it.

By the time of its release in 2020, the report had been dramatically rewritten, stripped of its key conclusions — including the need to federally mandate side guards — and cut down by nearly 70 pages.

Do articles about medicine go in the Science community? Seemed like the best place for what I thought was a really well written article about this niche subject matter.

... Kevin said that he had undergone five surgeries with Elist, including two upgrades, a revision and a removal, and his penis no longer functioned.

Still, Kevin had always found the surgeon to be caring, if a little preoccupied. “He reminded me of Doctor Franken­stein — the intensity of him wanting this thing to come to life,” Kevin told me. It sounded strange, he acknowledged, but before each operation he’d been filled with excitement. “You just feel relieved that you’re fixing something,” he said.

At an appointment earlier this year, Kevin said, Elist promised to fix him again with a sixth procedure, but one of the surgeon’s assistants discreetly advised against it...

In April 2022, for example, DeSantis explicitly claimed that publishers of math textbooks were targeting elementary school students with Critical Race Theory, which DeSantis sometimes calls "race essentialism"

Weeks later, Popular Information reported that the reviews of the math textbooks revealed unequivocally that DeSantis was lying. No reviewer of Florida math textbooks for elementary school students found any instances of CRT.

A fun read about a prominent medieval woman that you've probably never heard of:

Cynethryth rose to prominence as Offa’s queen with the birth of their son and heir, but her life and influence outlived both these men. As part of a royal family whose legitimacy was stressed in religious terms, Cynethryth was able to enjoy an exalted status that also had practical applications - she was an important landholder, possibly with her own income, who retired as an abbess with a position of great authority. Despite her remarkable career, at the centre of a period of Mercian political dominance, there has not yet been a substantial historical study on Cynethryth’s life, which leads me to conclude that she is one of the most important ‘forgotten’ queens of the early medieval period.

I thought it might be good to label the subject matter of the humanities/culture post in the title? Let me know what you think.

Main points of how they're moving forward on these issues.

• Linguistic digitization projects
• Technological innovation
• Crowdsourcing and community participation
• Education and awareness
• Government support and policy

Her name is Lola and she is quite tolerant of shenanigans.

Founded in 2004 by Sri Lankan gay rights activist Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, Equal Ground has dedicated over 15 years to conducting groundwork in 50 cities across Sri Lanka. Their efforts have aimed to sensitise and educate people, fostering better understanding and acceptance of the Queer community. In an interview with Give Out, Flamer-Caldera pondered on the upcoming decriminalisation law, stating, “It’s going to take a lot more sensitising and education, but at least now we will have the law on our side.” She also notes that the challenge lies in transforming people's mindsets and existing systems, because “it’s not about the law, it’s about people’s perceptions."

Article 23 of the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, stipulates that Hong Kong shall enact its own laws to prohibit seven types of offences: treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the central government, theft of state secrets, foreign bodies’ conducting political activities in the city, and local bodies establishing ties with foreign bodies.

... Pro-democracy advocates fear it could have a negative effect on civil liberties.

Yeah, I'd say that would indeed have a negative effect on civil liberties.