Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"And then when the Paramedics came and they asked me if I wanted to be with him and I said dear god this is a bad first date the paramedic said, 'Sorry only spouses allowed.' Bless him." -- Jennifer Gunter (DrJenGunter), 2021-04-13

"The quiet part of 'our systems are not racist' is 'those people deserved to die.'

"Either policing is a racist institution or people of color disproportionately deserve to be killed.

"Either our infrastructure/waste disposal systems are racist or there's just something about Black/brown communities that elevate asthma and cancer rates.

"Either our medical system is racist or there's just something Black women and babies are doing to die at 3x the rate of white women and babies.

"Folks like Lindsey Graham will not admit America's systems are racist because that would require them to dismantle the lie that white people are better off because there 's just something inside them that makes them intrinsically better."

-- Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis (RevJacquiLewis), 2021-04-25

From "Meet The 'Fringe Extremists' Pushing Flawed Science To Target Trans Kids" [headline/title possibly changed? appears on Twitter as "The Science Behind Those Ant i-Trans Healthcare Bills Is Bullsh*t, According..."]by Aviva Stahl (stahlidarity), Buzzfeed.News, 2021-04-16:

"The policy debates about banning gender-affirming medical care have been really hard to watch because every major medical organization is opposed to these bills," said Jack Turban, a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine who focuses on transgender youth. With no support from the mainstream medical community, conservative legislators have gone and found "this handful of people who have 'MD' after their name" but lack the research, experience, and evidence to back their claims, he said.

[...]

Brennan Suen, the LGBTQ program director at Media Matters for America who has tracked the anti-trans legislation and its media coverage, said "the anti-LGBT right" goes to great lengths to highlight the few medical professionals who agree with them because they give a "veneer of credibility" to the supposed dangers posed by gender-affirming treatment.

[...]

"It is completely irresponsible for the media to cite an extreme anti-LGBTQ group with an innocuous-sounding name like American College of Pediatricians," said Brianna January, an LGBTQ researcher at Media Matters for America. "Placing its dangerous disinformation next to credible sources makes it falsely appear that this is a debatable topic, skewing how the public and policymakers understand the issue.

[...]

"This should not be treated as a philosophical debate," [Casey Pick] said. "This is a real concrete concern to real, actual LGBT youth."

"For all of the attention given to the notion that the Republican Party is having some sort of existential crisis or civil war to determine its future, the activity of Republicans at the state and local level suggests that any battle for the soul of the party has already been lost. Despite decisively losing the last presidential election, Trump and his far-right base are clearly in control." -- Melissa Ryan, "The Enemy Within", The Progressive, 2021-04-19

[Ceterum censeo Grandis Vetus Factio esse delendam.]

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (TheRaDR) wrote about the counting of the Omer, and drawing a powerful analogy to waiting to get to normal times again once the current pandemic is over. Excerpts don't really do it justice, so consider todays QotD less a quotation than a teaser, and go spend a couple minutes reading (and longer thinking about) what she posted 2021-04-11:

[...]

William Bridges wrote a book about transitions, talking about how every transition has three parts-ending, neutral zone, and beginning.

In the Passover story, crossing the Red Sea was the ending. We let go of that chapter (mostly), quit that job, severed those ties. Got free.

Getting Torah in our story is the beginning-a new life in covenant, obligation, commandment, relationship with the divine.

The neutral zone? That's a time of unknowns. A time of possibility. A time when you've left the one thing and you don't know what will happen next. A time of terror, of possibility, of creativity, of openness, of uncertainty. Of wilderness.

[...]

So we're not quite at the ending of this pandemic. People are still getting sick. People are still at risk, dying.

But we're starting to see what this neutral zone might look like.

[...]

We don't yet know what a new, post-pandemic chapter could look like. And there is, rightfully, a lot of anxiety about how to do this, how to do it right and well and safety.

But this is also a time of possibility. A time of ripeness. A time when a lot of doors are open.

We have some opportunities to create some new social structures, some new ways of being. We don't have to accept what has been before. That chance doesn't come around very often. This is a moment when creativity and new thinking can help serve us, make the new chapter better.

How can we use the pandemic neutral zone as a chance to create more justice, more equity, more wholeness, more hope, more truth, in our society?

Things will be different.

How can we get out of the wilderness with them not just different, but better?

"what I thought dating a software engineer would be like: 'honey, I got an AI robot maid to do all our cooking for us'

"what dating a software engineer is actually like: 'if that microwave connects to the internet we're heating all our food with a blowtorch from now on'"

-- Janel Comeau (VeryBadLlama), 2021-04-21

From Why Won't Democratic Mayors Crack Down on the Cops?" by Daniel Moattar, Mother Jones, 2020-10-05:

Look, this is the heart of the cop thing. John Jay liked to say that those who own the country ought to govern it; for most of history, they did. In early states, "a plunderer could become in effect the chief of police as soon as he regularized his 'take,'" the historian Frederic Lane writes. That didn't go out of style with chain mail. On the American frontier, Montana Territory sheriff Henry Plummer moonlighted as chief of the Innocents, a crew of killer highwaymen. Plummer began his career as a plain criminal, switching to vigilantism after police let him kill an escaped prisoner-and eventually took it professional. His successors just keep popping up.

England's typical early sheriff, in the words of one history, was "a regional dictator with true executive authority," whose office-a key forebear of modern police-was professionalized during the "consolidation of the gentry's grip on local government." From 700 to 1700, says Lane, "the most weighty single factor in most periods of growth, if any one factor has been most important, has been a reduction in the proportion of resources devoted to war and police."

So we made a devil's bargain: To get the rich to quit financing bandits, militias, and private armies-maybe even abide by some laws-early states had to subsidize property defense, big-time. Modern policing was born. The veneer of equal protection ain't deep.

"We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor. We have not inherited this earth from our parents to do with it what we will. We have borrowed it from our children and we must be careful to use it in their interests as well as our own. Anyone who fails to recognise the basic validity of the proposition put in different ways by increasing numbers of writers, from Malthus to The Club of Rome, is either ignorant, a fool, or evil." -- Moss Cass (b. 1927-02-18), 1974-11-13 (Wikipedia notes, "Cass' version was a longer explanation than the original, traditional proverb".)

[Wishing everyone a good Earth Day!]

"To exclude trans athletes is to use sport in direct opposition of where its true power lies. Sport is about change, about rooting for the underdog and building a dynasty from nothing but hard work, perseverance and love; love for your team, for your sport and for yourself. The exclusion of Black athletes back in the 40s and 50s wasn't about the integrity of the sport but the division of our society. The rumor of a gay, bisexual or queer player in professional men's sports isn't about a media distraction but about the repositioning of toxic masculinity. The reason women athletes aren't paid as much isn't because their platform or performance is less but that media, business organizations, and ultimately our misogynistic society are afraid of just how big women's influence and power is. The more than 200 anti-trans bills currently under consideration in state legislatures across the US are not about trans youth in sports, but about attacking, harming and eradicating the most vulnerable of us all." -- RK Russell,` "Trans kids deserve the same opportunity that made my NFL career possible", The Guardian, 2021-04-15

"[...] For months, travel to Iceland has been possible but required double qPCR screening, at the airport on arrival and 5-6 days later. People are made aware of these requirements and sign a declaration committing to the second screening and interim quarantine.

"In August, a traveler screened negative on arrival. Broke quarantine, then tested positive days later. Sequencing reveals that this one person's choice resulted in a wave that took five months to stamp out and infected 2700 - nearly 1% of the country. Caused several deaths. [...]"

-- Kristjana Ásbjörnsdóttir MPH&PhD, (kristjanahronn), 2021-04-19

"If you don't know why your trans friends are on edge rn: first thing I saw this morning is TX says it's child abuse for parents to affirm trans kids & FL wants to inspect kids junk to keep trans kids out of sports

"If you don't see why that's upsetting idk how to get you to care

"It's hard to fucking exist when 33 states are trying to ban people like me from existence and are actively trying to traumatize trans kids to death or into the closet for life. That's not shit I can simply ignore bc it 'doesn't affect me' just bc I live in CA and am an adult."

-- Kieryn Darkwater (bluepupboi), 2021-04-15

"[...] When the world feels chaotic your internal priorities shift." -- Shepherd (NeolithicSheep), 2021-04-17

ryan bamsey (OhChickenBalls), 2021-04-15:

Dear person,

I hope this email finds you well! Here is my reply to the question you asked! Everything ends with an exclamation point so I seem friendly!

Here is one sentence ending in a full stop to show that I am not unhinged.

Many thanks!

Ryan

"Obsessed with this man at the dog park wearing a 'NO F*CKS GIVEN' hat. My dude, you bought a censored hat so you wouldn't get in trouble. We got one fuck right there." -- mah ree nah (marinarachael), 2021-03-30

"If GOP Senators are going to continue opposing the Equality Act, it is time they admit that their opposition isn't based on science. It's based on the regressive view, not shared by the majority of Americans, that LGBTQ people are threatening and don't deserve equal protection under the law. With scientific evidence overwhelmingly disagreeing with their position, they don't get to use 'science' as their rationale for discrimination." -- Jack Turban, MD (jack_turban), "Politicians Don't Get to Use 'Science' to Oppose the Equality Act", Scientific American, 2021-04-13

"coming out of this pandemic unapologetically disabled

"no more being scared to ask for accessibility or saying it's ok when its not

"this past year has proven that all the resources are, and always have been, there

"no more allowing them to choose not to use them"

-- Kitty (kittystrand_), 2021-04-11

"In His infinite mercy, Allah has sent the light of Ramadan to erase the night. He has sent the month of the Qur'an so that He might elevate us and bring us from our isolation to His nearness." -- Yasmine Mogahed

[Ramadan Mubarak to everybody observing the holiday month!]

Today is
Gregorian: 2021 April 13
Julian: 2021 March 31
Hebrew: 5781 Iyyar 01 -- day 16 of the counting of the Omer
Islamic: 1442 Ramadan 01 -- start of the holy month of daily fasting
Persian: 1400 Farvardin 24
Mayan: 0.0.0.13.0.8.7.15
Indian: 1943 Caitra 23
Coptic: 1737 Paramouda 05
Remember that Hebrew and Islamic calendars start at sundown, so some hours earlier than the Gregorian date changes. So Ramadan started last night, though since the fast is dawn to dusk, IIUC this morning is the start of fasting.

"The United States is going through its South Africa stage whereby white supremacists recognize that their political control is coming to an end and where they will literally do anything to stop the loss of control - including the violent overthrow of the government." -- Wallis Weaver (wallisweaver), 2021-04-09

[Historical notes for today: 160 years ago the first shots of the American Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, and 60 years ago today Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. And 40 years ago today was the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia for mission STS-1.]

"You can't talk about silence and experience it at the same time.

"I sometimes wonder if that's also true of God."

   -- RevDaniel (RevDaniel), 2021-04-09

"A woman who takes her husband about with her everywhere is like a cat that goes on playing with a mouse long after she's killed it" -- Hector Hugh Munro (b. 1870-12-18, d. 1916-11-14), better known by the pen name Saki