Some People Don’t Know That the ACA and Obamacare Are the Same Thing

This was posted by the Trumpgrets Tumblr back on January 9th… I saw it then, but never thought to share it here.

It’s good to remember just how ignorant many in these United States are… (note: the caption and alt-text are copied from the specific Trumpgrets post)

facebook exchange where an anonymous user opines: i am not on obamacare. my health insurance is through the aca (affordable care act) which was what they had to come up with before obamacare crashed and burned as bad as it did. so i am going to be fine.

facebook exchange where an anonymous user opines: i am not on obamacare. my health insurance is through the aca (affordable care act) which was what they had to come up with [after] obamacare crashed and burned as bad as it did. so i am going to be fine.

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Uncomfortable Confession: I Am No Longer a Pacifist

For most of my life, I’ve been a radical pacifist. I believed that violence was literally the very last of last resorts… that violence should only ever be committed by you if, and only if, you are directly being attacked and are directly fighting for your life… and even then, you should commit the barest minimum amount of violence possible, working only to save yourself rather than hurt them.

But then we reached 2012, and Trayvon Martin was murdered by a man who was all but given a ticker tape parade for it, and was acquitted in 2013, sparking #BlackLivesMatter.

And then 2014 rolled around, and Michael Brown and Eric Garner were murdered by the police and there were no consequences.

And then there was 2015, and Baltimore, and I wrote the post White Supremacy and Violence (that’s the original link, not the most recent one with edits, which you can find here). That really should have been my first clue that my pacifism was being challenged, but it wasn’t.

The challenge wouldn’t play out publicly, or even consciously, until much more recently. No, not Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. It was when a preacher got wacked upside the head with an aluminum baseball bat. I found it impossible to feel bad for said preacher, and even wrote it about here on this blog. The reality is that I felt some level of schadenfreude for it, and didn’t, and still don’t, feel bad for that. I could only laugh at the preacher, having felt, and actually still feel, that, while he may not necessarily have deserved an aluminum bat to the head, he absolutely deserved something more than a tongue-lashing.

I went back to being quiet about it, not really thinking about the fact that, after that post, I couldn’t really justify calling myself a pacifist.

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Georgia House Bill 51 is a Travesty

(Content warning: this is about a Georgia House Bill that would make college/university campuses unsafe for rape victims. There are numerous links here that discuss rape with varying detail, including one that could be considered graphic. The petition linked to near the end is written by a survivor who very briefly discusses her rape [though not graphically or in much detail].)

I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on May 22, 1987. At the end of third grade, my family moved to Sandy Springs, Georgia, where I lived until 2009. Georgia is where I was raised.

And that is why I care about this.

There is a bill currently in the Georgia legislature called House Bill 51. The summary of this bill is as follows:

A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Article 1 of Chapter 3 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to definitions, so as to provide for the manner of reporting and investigation of certain crimes by officials and employees of postsecondary institutions in this state; to provide for a definition; to provide for penalties for violations; to provide for exceptions; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.

This looks fine on its face, yes. But it’s when you actually look into it that you start to see the problem…

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Self Care – Astronomy Picture of the Week: The Heart and Soul Nebula

Yeah yeah… I know Valentine’s Day was yesterday… but Astronomy Picture of the Week is on Wednesdays, so get over it.

This is an infrared mosaic known as “Heart and Soul“… two nebulae captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. As usual, click on the image for the .tif download…

Heart (right) and Soul (left) Nebulae

Heart (right) and Soul (left) Nebulae

I would say “Happy Valentine’s Day from the Universe!” but… you know… day late, and all…

Self Care – Great Guitar Solos: Camel Plays Ice

This one yet again comes from the commenters… this time rubenremus (although, to be fair, I had this one planned for the original series back on my old blog… 😀 ).

Camel is one of those bands that’s criminally underrated, with Andy Latimer being a criminally underrated guitarist.

This instrumental is very Pink Floyd-esque, with Latimer playing very Gilmour-esque guitar solos.

This is just audio, so there’s nothing to watch.

The first guitar solo (well, more of a riff, but still very solo-ish) starts at 0:07 and ends at 1:35. The second guitar solo starts at 1:52 and ends at 2:54. The third guitar solos starts at 3:57 and ends at 7:36. The fourth guitar solo starts at 8:14 and ends at 10:05 with the end of the song…

Enjoy!

Government-Approved Transphobia (or… Things Keep Going Backwards)

Trump Drops Defense of Obama Guidelines on Transgender Students

The Trump administration has dropped the federal government’s challenge to a nationwide injunction issued last year that blocked the fulfillment of Obama administration guidelines stating that transgender students’ access to bathrooms and other gender-segregated school facilities was protected under existing federal civil rights law.

The injunction was issued in August by Judge Reed O’Connor of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas as part of a lawsuit filed by more than a dozen states over the Obama administration’s position that Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools, protects transgender students.

Under that interpretation, transgender students have access to facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity, a proposition to which social conservatives strongly object. They argue that allowing transgender students to use those facilities poses a threat to the privacy and safety of other students.

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