How America’s “Most Powerful Lobby” Is Stifling Efforts to Reform #Oil Well Cleanup in State After State
In #NewMexico, oil companies agreed to work with regulators to find a solution to the state’s more than 70,000 unplugged wells. After months of negotiations, the industry turned against the bill it helped shape.
As we learned from an irresponsible financial services industry in 2008, "Profits are private, losses are public. It's the taxpayers problem."
As we know from an irresponsible fossil fuel industry "Drilling profits are private, environmental cleanups from oil drilling is public. It's the taxpayers problem."
I want mechanical everything in my next car.
I want a metal key - one with those serrations - that can open the door even if some other part of it will open the doors electronically. I want the option.
The last thing I want is an app.
Seriously, Tesla's are crap cars. Took an Uber ride in an Polestar the other day and the difference is amazing. The Polestar feels solid, is really comfortable and has a great ride The Tesla is a shit jalopy.
#OpenAI adds #Trump-appointed fmr #NSA director to its board
OpenAI has tapped fmr US Army general & #NationalSecurity Agency dir Paul M. Nakasone to join its board of directors, the continuation of a reshuffling spurred by CEO #SamAltman’s temp ousting in Nov. #Nakasone, a Trump appointee who took over the NSA in 2018, will join the board’s #Safety & #Security Cmte, which OpenAI began in late May to evaluate & improve policies to test models & curb #abuse.
If you're using DuckDuckGo, they have AI Assist on by default. Go to duckduckgo[dot]com main page, click on those three little lines in upper right corner-->Settings --> AI Features --> Toggle all features to OFF.
DC #ElectionWorkers have been fielding angry calls & emails for over a month from people who oppose allowing #noncitizen residents to #vote in local #elections, leaving the head of the DC Board of Elections concerned about #safety at the polls in Tues’s primary.
“I am definitely nervous,” said Monica Evans, BOE exec dir. “The environment around elections has felt more unsafe.”
In one vm…, a caller yells: “Where the hell do you get off letting illegals vote? This is the nation’s capital. You are traitors, traitors to our country.”
Evans said that employees have been encouraged to cover up any DC BOE paraphernalia they may be wearing or holding while outside the office in case someone who opposes #noncitizen voting directs their opinion toward a staffer. DC police spox said in a stmnt that officers would be near polling locations “ensuring #safety for voters” #democracy
It's :_gaysparkle: Pride :_gaysparkle: month, which means it's time to bring on the corporate rainbow washing!
Before we get started, here's a content warning (#CW) for some swearing, dark topics, and a lot of :100_gay: If that's alright with you, then let's goooo!
Okay, so it's been an interesting past year. The Cass report came out and helped roll back trans rights in some pretty serious ways, the conservative Right kept right on proving to be downright 💩 humans, there's at least one genocide threatening people's right to exist, and billionaires continued to exercise their (money-given) right to make everything worse for everyone but them. Rights have been a big topic lately.
Oh, and I almost threw myself off a bridge several months back—but we'll get to that in a moment.
Fuck. I need some rainbow-safe brain-bleach before we continue, so here are some good things that happened:
I traded in my old gender for a shiny new one :v_trans: (technically I just binned the old one—it was pretty outdated). Speaking of dating, I started seeing a lovely enby (hi @catsalad!) from the infosec community. All the people I do safety checks with are still here, and Trump became an official felon 🎉
Alright, that's a bit better. Now on to the actual point of this article: acceptance, community, and safety.
Those three things are right up there with staying hydrated and memes when I think about what any queer person needs to thrive.
Acceptance is a prerequisite for community. Our diversity of experience is just as important as our shared experience. Without being accepting of what makes us each unique and wonderful, our communities are fragile and prone to fracturing. You only have to look at those who try to define what a "real man" or "real woman" is to see how they draw circles around their in-group that get smaller and smaller until no one fits.
Community breeds safety. You may snap a twig with your bare hands, but bind 'em together and you'll find a fagot much harder. Members of our community support each other—and that support becomes so much more important when our queer friends and family run up against the bigotry and horrors of this world. But we're not just one community; we're an alphabet soup of people who come together under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. Regardless of the specifics, we're the ones who weren't born with the default settings...and that's beautiful—that's worth protecting.
So what about the bridge? Well, like so many people who identify as LGBTQ+, I had a lot of trauma growing up. Trauma that I continue to collect and box up like newly caught Pokémon. There are a lot of sources of that trauma for me: tech-industry layoffs, an abusive partner, neuro-divergence, as well as non-conforming gender and sexuality in a world whose motto might as well be "Of the Default, by the Default, and for the Default".
This all came together one day after a fight with my spouse that left me in a very dark place. I didn't feel safe, I didn't feel like I really belonged to any community, and I didn't feel accepted by those closest to me.
As I stood on the bridge, I got a notification on my phone...then another. It was enough to snap me out of it for a second, and I checked my messages through the tears. Thinking back I honestly don't remember who they were from or what they said, but I do remember that they were from Mastodon, from a couple people who just happened to reach out at the exact right moment. I'll skip the rest of the details, because some of you have already heard this story and they're not really important to this article.
The important part is that I made it home in one piece because someone reached out. Someone who didn't even know how much I needed them to.
That little tie to the queer community was all it took to ground me in the moment and save my life.
Since then I've been keeping an eye out for others that might need grounding and doing my best to make sure they feel accepted. I've been welcoming as many new people into the community as I can, and I've been trying my best to be a safe space for anyone who needs it.
So, wrapping this up, I want to ask you to do the same. Not just today, but every day—as often as you can. Sometimes all it takes is showing a little kindness and compassion to make a big difference in someone's life.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check in on some people and tell them how glad I am that they're here.
@alice You're brave for speaking so frankly about that.
You're absolutely right; our community needs to band together now more than ever. Queer infighting and gatekeeping won't do more harm than the political Right, but it damn well doesn't help us fight back against them. Let's lift each other up every day :Blobhaj_Flag_Progress_Intersex_Right:
9 things you need to know about the inside story of how 3M allowed PFOS to seep into all of us while sitting on research that showed the chemical is toxic.
@ProPublica
$7 billion to clean up after a financial behemoth literally poisoning the well (in just one state). I wonder how many school lunches that would be.
In Vox, I explained how federal policy encourages car bloat, making American vehicles more enormous, polluting, and dangerous than they'd otherwise be.
That's the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
Wow.
Note to self: next car MUST have a mechanically opened door. With a handle that you can pull, and a latch. And that's it. Old fashioned safe stuff.
New York’s #Guardianship System Is Broken. Will Lawmakers Pay for a Modest Fix?
As legislators negotiate a budget worth hundreds of billions of dollars, advocates wonder whether Albany will approve $5 million for reforms to the state’s troubled guardianship system.