"I'm deeply concerned about what this threat means for the nation," Dr. Rahul Gupta, the White House director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in May when he warned that xylazine is a major emerging health threat.

According to Gupta's office, xylazine-positive overdose deaths increased tenfold in the southern U.S. from 2020-2021, sevenfold in the western U.S. and fivefold in the Midwest. Most of those drug deaths also involved fentanyl.

Over the years, xylazine has occasionally turned up in street drugs, but over the past 12 months, it suddenly went viral. Overdose deaths and severe medical complications — including terrible flesh wounds caused by the chemical — have soared in the South and West, where xylazine had been almost unknown.

Xylazine also makes it much harder to revive people after fentanyl overdoses, and the chemical adds another layer of intense addiction and cravings.

"People who are in this are getting sucked further and further and further in," said KC, who uses street fentanyl in Dover, Delaware. She said xylazine is making addiction deadlier and harder to escape. "It just feels kind of hopeless right now."

Drug experts say they only have theories about who's adding xylazine into street drug cocktails — and why.

Skyrim gets some hate these days, since it was first released in 2011 and although Bethesda is supposedly working on Elder Scrolls VI, we've seen practically nothing of the game. However, you have to admit that Skyrim is still around for a reason: it's fun, especially if you mod it, and new mods get released all the time. Since Bethesda's next big open world game, Starfield, won't be released until September, I thought it'd be nice to share our favorite Skyrim mods to help deal with the wait.

I'll start with some longtime staples of mine:

Skyrim Script Extender - A prerequisite for a ton of mods. Basically, it adds commands to the game's scripting language, which allows modders to create scripts that support more situations and variables in the game, beyond what is normally possible.

SkyUI - An overhaul to the UI, which makes everything easier to navigate on PC. Also adds the Mod Configuration Menu (MCM), which is used by a ton of other mods. Todd Howard himself endorses this one.

Better Dialogue Controls - Maybe it's just me, but I constantly had issues in vanilla Skyrim with the game picking the wrong dialogue option because of some weird glitch in the UI. So, here's another UI tweak. Basic, but a real "quality of life" upgrade for me.

RaceMenu - Like SkyUI, overhauls the character creation menu and adds RGB sliders for skin color, hair color, war paint and makeup. When combined with body mesh replacing mods, such as Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Edition (CBBE), you can also tweak specific body parts to do things like give female Nord and Orc warriors actual muscles. We start to cross into NSFW territory real fast with this one, though.

Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim - Adds a few dozen spells to the game, greatly expanding the relatively limited amount of spells found in vanilla Skyrim. This is especially true for Master-level spells.

Naturally, there are mods that upgrade the textures to 2k or 4k, as well as ENB, which is a resource-heavy overhaul to the lighting in the game. I don't currently have a favorite texture pack or ENB though, since new ones come out on a fairly regular basis and I like to experiment with new configurations.

Anyway, that's enough from me. Looking forward to seeing other peoples' favorites!

U.S. prosecutors say Megaupload raked in at least $175 million — mainly from people who used the site to illegally download songs, television shows and movies -— before the FBI shut it down in early 2012 and arrested Dotcom and other company officers.

Rights groups have accused the Malaysian government of using repressive laws to suppress free speech and critical voices, with Amnesty International reporting that between January 2020 and June 2022, there were 87 prosecutions of individuals including artists, performers and political activists.

Note that under article 3 of Interpol's constitution, "it is strictly forbidden for the organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character."

Turkey’s government accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that Ankara says pose a security threat, including militant Kurdish groups and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt.

A series of separate demonstrations in Stockholm, including a protest by an anti-Islam activist who burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy, also angered Turkish officials.

NATO requires the unanimous approval of all existing members to expand, and Turkey and Hungary are the only countries that have not yet ratified Sweden’s request to join.

Candidates of color in the Republican Party like Haley — as well Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — have been talking about their identities on the trail, while also trying to appeal to a voting base that is less diverse than the country as a whole.

Omar Wasow, a political science professor at UC Berkeley, says they have to navigate their identities in a way that appeals to segments of the Republican Party that have "become increasingly vocal about the idea that this is a white Christian nation."

"A candidate like Nikki Haley has to walk a real tightrope on an issue like immigration," he said, "because she is both the beneficiary of an immigration system that welcomed her family and allowed to her thrive — and at the same time she is embedded in a party that is quite hostile to the idea of an immigration system that is open to the world."

That doesn't mean that Republican candidates of color can completely avoid discussing race, according to Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College.

She says there was a time when Republican candidates could shy away from these issues, but that's not true anymore.

"And I think when we are in this time period in which a very mobilized faction of the MAGA/Trump conservatives are espousing this type of white grievance politics," she explained. "I think they are going to have questions for Republican candidates of color about how loyal they will actually be to the party platform that they want to see advanced."

On Monday, a rally in Miami organized by former Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer seemed to attract more reporters than participants.

Jared Holt, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said a handful of other groups appeared to be organizing rallies for Tuesday at the courthouse. But he noted they were attracting skepticism from doubters who accuse the organizers of setting up a "false flag" or federal honeypot trap intended to arrest Trump supporters.

In addition to the paranoia, researchers said that in the years since January 6, Trump has also lost his shine to many in his former base. "I think there's this general sense of Trump fatigue that's happening right now," said Alex Friedfeld, of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. "We are not seeing them get as animated as they have in the recent past around issues surrounding Trump."

Instead, Friedfeld said Trump's base is now largely focused on the next thing — namely anti-LGTBQ+ efforts. That campaign has reflected a broader tactical shift on the far right during the last two years, to move away from organizing at a national level and refocus on local government. Now, moms groups, religious organizations and extremist groups like the Proud Boys are in common pursuit of an anti-inclusion agenda in schools, libraries and statehouses.

Someone had to start the discussion in this new community, so I figured I'd give it a shot!

I discovered that I have a knack for script writing, so I usually stick to prose and focus on driving the action through my characters' dialogue. I need to work more on describing scenes in a way that isn't rooted in stage directions.

I can appreciate good poetry, but am generally not a fan of "free verse". I prefer the challenge of writing something with a meter, or has a rhyme scheme. Re-writing song lyrics is a fun way to play with that, but maybe I listened to too much Weird Al growing up.

So, if you had to pick a side... poetry or prose?

"The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have previously sent thousands of migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., but the rare charter flights by DeSantis mark an escalation in tactics. The two groups sent to Sacramento never went through Florida. Instead, they were approached in El Paso by people with Florida-linked paperwork, sent to New Mexico, then put on private flights to California’s capital, California officials and advocates said."

"As the migrants arrived in California Monday, a Texas sheriff’s office announced it has recommended criminal charges over the two flights to Martha’s Vineyard last year. Johnny Garcia, a spokesman for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, said that at this time the office is not naming suspects. It’s not clear whether the local district attorney will pursue the charges, which include misdemeanor and felony counts of unlawful restraint, according to the sheriff’s office."

I understand that Beehaw is not a replacement for Reddit, and nor should it be. However, if I wind up ditching Reddit entirely, one thing I'm going to miss is the unbridled insanity of the "Thunderdome" discussions.

For those of you who aren't familiar, certain communities would handle major events with a serious thread for people who wanted serious discussion, and an accompanying Thunderdome thread for people who just wanted to make memes and blow off steam. In gaming communities, for example, there will likely be serious threads around Summer Games Fest, including Microsoft's upcoming presentation. But there are also people who will want to make fun of the pageantry of it all and to keep that out of the serious thread, there'll be a Thunderdome for that.

Politics communities create similar threads for election nights. Take it from me... if you work in Washington, DC and the outcome of an election could seriously impact your job two months down the line? Those are nights when you really need to blow off some steam. Mental health is important, and having an outlet to ridicule the oppressive, wall-to-wall election coverage really helps.

So, I'm curious if Beehaw communities (which I hope we'll start calling Yeehives) are the place for something like that, or if the users here would rather keep that kind of content off this platform. Genuinely curious, not just looking to start an argument. Thanks!

"Pence supporters see a lane for a reliable conservative who espouses many of the previous administration’s policies but without the constant tumult. While he frequently lauds the accomplishments of the 'Trump-Pence administration,' a Pence nomination in many ways would be a return to positions long associated with the Republican establishment but abandoned as Trump reshaped the party in his image. Pence has warned against the growing populist tide in the party, and advisers see him as the only traditional, Reagan-style conservative in the race."

"As vice president, Pence had been an exceedingly loyal defender of Trump until the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump falsely tried to convince Pence and his supporters that Pence had the power to unilaterally overturn the results of the 2020 election. That day, a mob of Trump’s supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol building after being spurred on by Trump’s lies that the 2020 election had been stolen. Many in the crowd chanted 'Hang Mike Pence!' as Pence, his staff and his family ran for safety, hiding in a Senate loading dock."