Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

‘Nonbinary’ is now a legal gender, Oregon court rules

In a historic move sure to challenge federal policy, an Oregon circuit court ruled on Friday that a resident could legally change their gender to nonbinary.

The Daily Dot spoke—in an exclusive first interview—with Jamie Shupe, the Portland, Oregon, resident and Southern Maryland native who requested the gender identity change.

“Male and female are the traditional categories, but they fail to properly categorize people like me. So I challenged that,” said Shupe.

Shupe’s petition for sex change, as the court calls it, was filed on April 27. With the help of Portland attorney Lake James Perriguey and armed with two letters from primary care doctors (shared privately with the Daily Dot) stating that Shupe’s gender should be classified as nonbinary, the case was made.

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7 Ways To Keep Fighting For Breonna Taylor

In the four months after Taylor’s death, both local and national changes inspired by Taylor. As of June 11, an ordinance called “Breonna’s Law,” banning no-knock search warrants and mandating that officers wear body cameras during searches was unanimously passed in Louisville, Kentucky, according to CNN. That same day, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, a bill prohibiting no-knock warrants entirely in the U.S.

Following the death of David McAtee, a Black restaurant owner who was shot and killed by the Kentucky National Guard during a June 1 protest in Louisville honoring the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Steve Conrad, the Louisville police chief, was fired. On June 23, the city’s new police chief, Robert Schroeder, fired Brett Hankison, an officer-involved with Taylor’s unlawful death.

While these efforts are an important step in combating police brutality and systemic racism, no formal arrests or charges have been made. Here is how to continue to fight for justice for Breonna Taylor.

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Vandalism Is Violence: Destructive Riots Are Not ‘Just Property Damage’

Well, many left-wing journalists, activists, and commentators who are politically sympathetic to the rioters have argued that rampant destruction isn’t really a problem, because it’s “just” destruction of property, not violence against people.

One person who makes this argument is Oakland-based “racial justice organizer” Cat Brooks, who was interviewed by the New York Times.

“I don’t consider property destruction violence,” Brooks said in defense of the rioting and vandalism in her city. “Violence is when you attack a person or another living, breathing creature on this planet. Windows don’t cry and they can’t die.”

Meanwhile, New York Times writer Hannah Nicole-Jones, founder of the controversial “1619 Project,” has also defended the destruction of property and argued that it doesn’t constitute violence.

“Violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man’s neck until all of the life is leached out of his body,” she said. “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. To use the same language to describe those two things is not moral.”

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Vaccine developer says people must wear masks and socially distance even after vaccine is available

Several companies are working as quickly as possible to develop a safe and effective vaccine, which has been viewed by some as necessary for lockdowns to end and schools to reopen. While a vaccine may significantly reduce the risk of serious disease from the novel coronavirus, social distancing and face masks may still be a part of life, said vaccine developer Maria Elena Bottazzi.

“They automatically are going to say, ‘oh great, I’m just going to get my little vaccine, and I can go back and do exactly the things I was doing last year,'” Bottazzi told Business Insider. “That is absolutely not true.”

Ideally, Bottazzi said, a vaccine would give sterilizing immunity, meaning it would totally prevent people from becoming infected. Many vaccines don’t reach that level of effectiveness, however, and only reduce the chance of developing severe symptoms of a particular disease.

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Homeland Security Seized $2 Billion in Cash From Travelers at U.S. Airports

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other Department of Homeland Security agents seized more than $2 billion in cash from travelers in U.S. airports between 2000 and 2016, according to a new report by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm.

The institute’s report is the first to comprehensively analyze the use of civil asset forfeiture by federal law enforcement in airports, where multiple news investigations have revealed horror stories of passengers having their money taken even though they weren’t ever charged with a crime.

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4 Get Slap on the Wrist For Paying Homeless People To Sign Ballot Petitions And Voter Registration Forms

Four men have admitted their role in a scheme where money and cigarettes were offered to homeless people on Skid Row in exchange for false and forged signatures on ballot petitions and voter registration forms.

Richard Howard, 64, and Louis Thomas Wise, 37, pleaded no contest Friday to one felony count each of subscribing a fictitious name, or the name of another to an initiative petition and registration of a fictitious person. Christopher Joseph Williams, 41, and Nickey Demelvin Huntley, 45, each pleaded no contest to one felony count of circulating an initiative or petition containing false, forged or fictitious names.

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