Something has happened

[conuly]

I don't know what precipitated this, but the dogs have started playing together. This is a huge step from treating each other like roommates. I'm very carefully watching them out of the side of my eye and not interacting at all.

Edit: It gets better. Moonpie, ever the quieter dog, started barking wildly a little while ago. At first I thought it was Finn, then I thought it must be some outside animal! Eventually I realized who it must be, and when she came up the stairs I hugged her. She barked some more, ran downstairs, and practically gave me her leash. This marks the first time she has ever used barking OR running ahead of people to communicate a wish or desire. Good girl, Moonpie! (Finn does it all the time, but he's starting to figure out that he doesn't always need to bark to get our attention. And he's finally stopped howling. Good boy, Finn! It's funny, but I want each dog to be more like the other one!)

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Harry Potter and the Neural Network fan fiction (Sample - Birds of a Saturday: Harry Potter is drunk and discovers he is an alternate universe.)

Cockatoos make their own lil drumsticks to play music

At Tom Thumb Weddings, Children Get Faux-Married to Each Other

This Secretive Billionaire Makes The Cheese For Pizza Hut, Domino's And Papa John's

The Pyramid Builders

Jellyfish use high-powered 'syringes' to shoot venom into your skin

40 Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today

The Quest to Make Vertical Living Family-Friendly

A Year Gardening the Grave of a Stranger

Can America's Farms Survive the Threat of Deportations?

Trump’s Deportation Surge Is Harming Domestic Abuse Survivors

Grasping At Straws

A Modest Proposal For Separating Blue States From Red

Confronting the Myths of Suburban Poverty

Shunned by the rich, Cairo's subway speaks of economic woes

What “The Merchant of Venice” taught me about ethnic hatred and the literary imagination.

When It Comes to Historical Markers, Every Word Matters

Under pressure, Western tech firms bow to Russian demands to share cyber secrets

Sheriff won't let his deputies carry overdose antidote

The Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren't (Interesting article, not sure what I think about it. The profiled people say they're just fine with transgender people, they just realized that they aren't. I suppose it would be stranger if that never happened. The comments are about 75% productive conversation, 25% transphobic and terfy trolling, but at least even they can form coherent sentences, so, you know, it's high quality.)

The Republican Backlash Against Trump's Vote-Fraud Commission

Voter fraud commission may have violated law

These Three Lawyers Are Quietly Purging Voter Rolls Across the Country

Trump's Master Class in Tax Deceit

The Heroin Crisis in Trump’s Backyard

Scientists are starting to clear up one of the biggest controversies in climate science

Meteorologists are running out of colors to map extreme heat

How the Death of a Muslim Recruit Revealed a Culture of Brutality in the Marines

Does the Militarization of Police Lead to More People Killed? Research Says Yes

Comments

[springviolets]

katie herzog responded to danni's claims and some other stuff here. it seems what actually happened is danni agreed to talk to the stranger about the piece if they published it after a certain date. katie herzog said she would try, but it wasn't up to her. she didn't get any further comments from danni, and danni was never quoted in the article; despite that, danni was upset that they did not publish the article after the date discussed. ("I know now that it was a shock for Danni to see the article published before the Initiative 1552 deadline, and for that, I am truly sorry. I hate that this has caused her distress. But not only did I not mislead Danni or anyone else, I contacted her multiple times while I was working on this piece and she never responded. I tried to get her perspective and her voice and—had she called me back—I certainly would have told her the publication date.")

i don't disagree that some people use detransitioners as a weapon against trans people (which is also not fair to detransitioners) but as someone who knows detransitioned women, i thought the stranger piece was well balanced for the subject matter, which is usually extremely divisive.

[cosmolinguist]

I'm cis; I know some people who have detransitioned too, and plenty of trans people, and none of them have a good word to say about any of Herzog's writing here. I'm just going by that, the yardstick I'm most interested in is the harm caused to the groups of people most directly affected. Balance isn't always best for people on the short end of a power imbalance.

The fact that the only person she asks here about James Cantor being discredited is...James Cantor himself, would make me wary even if I weren't aware of him as one of about five "experts" that turn up in practically every TERFy article or argument.

[conuly]

I'm cis; I know some people who have detransitioned too, and plenty of trans people, and none of them have a good word to say about any of Herzog's writing here. I'm just going by that, the yardstick I'm most interested in is the harm caused to the groups of people most directly affected. Balance isn't always best for people on the short end of a power imbalance.

The comments to the article from transgender people aren't all negative, but still, that's concerning :(