wepon | Link Roundup December 2022

Elon Brings One of America’s Most Prominent Nazis Back to Twitter

The return of an avowed neo-Nazi to Twitter under Musk’s guarantee to reinstate banned accounts reinforces the concerns brought forth by civil society groups and advertisers over his handling of content standards on the platform. Under Musk, prominent white nationalists including Patrick Casey and Richard Spencer have reportedly been reinstated or been able to verify their accounts through Twitter’s recently launched pay-for-verification scheme.

Twitter's former safety chief warns Musk is moving fast and "breaking things"

Last week, Musk announced a "general amnesty" for many suspended accounts (although he also suspended Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, on Thursday after Ye posted an image of a swastika inside a Star of David). This week, Twitter quietly updated its online rulebook to say it was no longer enforcing policies against misleading claims about COVID-19.

Landmark same-sex marriage bill wins Senate passage

The legislation would not force any state to allow same-sex couples to marry. But it would require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed, and protect current same-sex unions, if the court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision were to be overturned. It’s a stunning bipartisan endorsement, and evidence of societal change, after years of bitter divisiveness on the issue.

South Korea's LGBTQ community confronts crushing headwinds in fight for equality

Lesvos, who said she legally changed her given name more than two decades ago and is only known by her mononym, said her bar provides LGBTQ Koreans the type of identity-affirming space she longed for in her younger years. “I want this bar to be a place for all LGBTQ Koreans, not just lesbians,” Lesvos, 66, said. “It’s my way of giving back to our community.”

Inside Google’s Quest to Digitize Troops’ Tissue Samples

Following the tour, a Google scientist prepared a list of clinical, demographic and patient information it sought from the repository. The list included “must haves” — case diagnoses; pathology and radiology images; information on gender and ethnicity; and birth and death dates — as well as “high-value” patient information, including comorbidities, subsequent hospitalizations and cause of death. This troubled the JPC’s director. “We felt very, very concerned about giving too much data to them,” Simon told ProPublica, “because too much data could identify the patient.”

Lead and Cadmium Could Be in Your Dark Chocolate

The researchers found that cacao plants take up cadmium from the soil, with the metal accumulating in cacao beans as the tree grows. That’s similar to how heavy metals contaminate some other foods. But lead seems to get into cacao after beans are harvested. The researchers found that the metal was typically on the outer shell of the cocoa bean, not in the bean itself. Moreover, lead levels were low soon after beans were picked and removed from pods but increased as beans dried in the sun for days. During that time, lead-filled dust and dirt accumulated on the beans. “We collected beans on the ground that were heavily loaded with lead on the outer shell,” DiBartolomeis says.

Dark chocolate might have health perks, but should you worry about lead in your bar?

The settlement between confectioners association and As You Sow, an organization that promotes corporate social responsibility, required both parties to undertake a multiyear study to understand the root causes of heavy metals in chocolate and strategies to reduce these levels. The report discussing findings from a three-year study was released in August.

How American Culture Ate the World

In-person contact with foreigners was limited, too, thanks to travel controls. A racial-quota immigration system built in the 1920s—though borrowing heavily from earlier legislation that excluded Chinese immigrants—made it nearly impossible for Africans, Asians, and many Europeans to immigrate to the U.S., plunging immigration levels to historic lows and thereby severing potential ties with the rest of the world. In 1910, nearly 15 percent of the American population had been born overseas, but by 1960, that portion shrank to only 5.4 percent. Similarly, bureaucrats in the burgeoning national security state kept a variety of radicals from entering and leaving the country. Since World War I, foreign anarchists, Communists, and others—ranging from German spies and saboteurs to Black internationalists—found the gate to the U.S. bolt-locked. Likewise, Americans whom the State Department identified as holding so-called “alien” beliefs were barred from the exits. The border was a two-way ideological filtration device.

(1977) The Combahee River Collective Statement

As we have already stated, we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes them what they are. As BIack women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic. We must also question whether Lesbian separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any but the sexual sources of women’s oppression, negating the facts of class and race.

WHOSE FEMINISM IS IT ANYWAY? THE UNSPOKEN RACISM OF THE TRANS INCLUSION DEBATE

Speaking from the perspective and the tradition of lesbians of color, most if not all rationales for excluding transsexual women are not only transphobic, but also racist. To argue that transsexual women should not enter the Land because their experiences are different would have to assume that all other women's experiences are the same, and this is a racist assumption. The argument that transsexual women have experienced some degree of male privilege should not bar them from our communities once we realize that not all women are equally privileged or oppressed. To suggest that the safety of the Land would be compromised overlooks, perhaps intentionally, ways in which women can act out violence and oppressions against each other. Even the argument that "the presence of a penis would trigger the women" is flawed because it neglects the fact that white skin is just as much a reminder of violence as a penis. The racist history of lesbian-feminism has taught us that any white woman making these excuses for one oppression have made and will make the same excuse for other oppressions such as racism, classism, and ableism.