It’s Valentine’s Day, and we love the fediverse — especially all the indie newsrooms that we feature in our #NewstodonFriday thread. If there are any you’d like to put on our radar, please tell us in the comments — and don’t forget to read and boost the stories in this thread, donate to publishers, and support independent media.
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Less than a month into the Trump administration, how is everyone feeling? Shay Stewart-Bouley writes for @damemagazine about how she is not scared, but angry. “Trump’s attacks on DEI represent a clear desire to take us back to the time when uppity Black folks like me were put in our place,” she writes. “He wants white men to be our rulers again and that doesn’t sadden me. It fills me with rage.”
https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/02/12/i-am-not-scared-of-this-administration-i-am-angry/
#BlackHistory @blackmastodon #TrumpAdministration #History @histodons #Politics #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
We are not even a month into President Trump’s second term, and it is safe to say that he has turned our collective lives upside down. There were his Week No. 1 executive orders targeting the trans community and DEI efforts, which were barely disguised attempts to reintroduce segregation and open discrimination back into American
Are the people being held at Guantanamo the “worst of the worst?” It’s hard to tell, since officials are not releasing details either about who they are, or what they’re supposed to have done. Luckily, @ProPublica and Texas Tribune are on the case. So far, their reporters have spoken to the families of two Venezuelan detainees whose only crime is illegal entry, and one who picked up a charge during detention. Those being held have not been able to speak to their families, nor to attorneys. “Never before have people been taken from U.S. soil and sent to Guantanamo, and then denied access to lawyers and the outside world,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the ACLU case. “It is difficult to think of anything so flagrantly at odds with the fundamental principles on which our country was built.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-administration-migrants-guantanamo-bay
#Guantanamo #Gitmo #Immigration #Venezuela #TrumpAdministration #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have identified nearly a dozen immigrants who have been flown to Guantanamo Bay. Government officials have refused to release the names of detainees or provide details about the crimes that landed them in detention.
Canada’s getting a fentanyl czar, and thank goodness for that — after all, who else will deal with the massive flood that enters the U.S. through its northern border. (Last year it was 43 pounds, less than the weight limit for a single suitcase on Air Canada.) For @thetyee, Dr. Steve Burgess (not a real doctor) ponders what kind of uniform such an official might wear (shiny buttons), and why the role of fentanyl czar is appealing. “A lot of people were interested in the job because it seemed it would mostly consist of sitting around, eating Canadian-style Cheezies, bingeing ‘Letterkenny’ and occasionally yelling out the window, ‘I better not see any fentanyl heading south! Don’t make me put on my shiny uniform and come out there!’” he writes.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/02/12/Please-Advise-Fentanyl-Czar/
#Canada #Tariffs #Fentanyl #FentanylCzar #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
In an editorial for @msfreepress, Kiden-Aloyse Smith discusses “Hood Feminism” by Mikki Kendall, and why its messaging around race and intersectionality is particularly resonant right now. “Despite Black folks making up 14% of the U.S. population, we make up 40% of missing-person cases for people under age 18,” she writes. “Black women’s and children’s cases are left untouched for decades — marked as runaways, marked as unworthy, marked as the ‘imperfect victim.’ When little Black girls go missing, it’s a deafening silence with a reminder that maybe if we were ‘good’ girls or white girls, we’d be found.”
#Race #Gender #BlackMastodon @blackmastodon #Crime #Feminism #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Could spooky floating lights in South Carolina be earthquake farts? Our @ScienceDesk shared this story from Science News about Earth’s gassy problem.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/earthquake-lights-spooky-south-carolina
#Science #Geology #EarthSciences #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
No humans were harmed in the making of the True Crime Case Files YouTube channel. Why? Because all the murder victims and storylines in 150 videos with names like “Sheriff Murdered After Affair With His Secretary Got Exposed” and “Wife Secret Affair with Neighbor’s Teenage Daughter Ends in Grisly Murder” were AI-generated. @404mediaco spoke to the founder of the channel, which had millions of views before it was taken down, about where he got the idea, and what he was trying to achieve (he claims a noble goal).
https://www.404media.co/a-true-crime-documentary-series-has-millions-of-views-the-murders-are-all-ai-generated/
#Tech #Technology #TrueCrime #Television #Entertainment #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
What happens when users of an app like Tinder and Hinge (two of many owned by Match Group) report that a date has sexually assaulted them? Absolutely nothing, according to an exhaustive new investigation by @themarkup, @19thnews and The Guardian. Abusers have been allowed to stay on platforms, in direct contravention of Match Group’s official safety policy, and have gone on to carry out more assaults. “Since 2019, Match Group’s central database has recorded every user reported for rape and assault across its entire suite of apps; by 2022, the system, known as Sentinel, was collecting hundreds of troubling incidents every week, company insiders say.”
https://themarkup.org/investigations/2025/02/13/dating-app-tinder-hinge-cover-up
#Dating #Apps #DatingApps #Technology #Tech #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Boca Chica Beach in the RIo Grande Valley, Texas, has been a secret place for generations of locals to fish, barbecue and camp. And then SpaceX came to town. @TexasObserver writes about how the launchpad and production facility for Elon Musk’s space-technology company loom over Boca Chica, and the efforts of some residents to resist further development.
https://www.texasobserver.org/remembering-boca-chica-beach-before-spacex/
#Texas #BocaChicaBeach #SpaceX #ElonMusk #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Rotting logs contain multitudes. @KnowableMag reports on how they’re home to critters, bacteria, fungi and more — and scientists are only scratching the surface of how the vital ecological process of breaking down wood works.
#Science #Ecology #Biology #Forests #Fungi ##Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has a history of removing elected officials from office or suspending them if they don’t comply with his agenda. It’s only getting worse as President Trump’s immigration crackdown kicks into gear. “This is a governor that looks for any reason to remove people when he can,” state Representative Anna Eskamani, a Democrat, told @bolts “It speaks to a trend of the consolidation of power among the few. It is incredibly unsettling to have that happen to our democracy.”
https://boltsmag.org/florida-republicans-immigration-deal/
#Florida #RonDeSantis #Immigration #Deportation #USPolitics #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Florida Republicans spent weeks squabbling over rival immigration bills. Their conflict wasn’t over significant policy differences: They agreed on diverting hundreds of millions in state funds toward assisting federal immigration... Read More
President Donald Trump is promising to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine — with the participation of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, but without Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that’s not acceptable to him. @timkmak’s Counteroffensive looks at another country, Finland, which preserved its independence 80 years ago after war with Russia by giving up land and declaring neutrality. Will Ukraine be forced to do the same? https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/will-ukraine-be-forced-to-become
#Ukraine #Finland #UkraineRussia #Trump #Putin #Zelenskyy #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Of the 94 movies at the recent Sundance Festival, three came from Africa. For @thecontinent, Wilfred Okiche looks at Kenyan documentary “How to Build a Library,” Tunisian coming-of-age story “Where the Wind Comes From,” and “Khartoum,” which was made by four Sudanese filmmakers and a Brit, and tells the stories of five people who escaped to East Africa after the military coup in their home country.
https://continent.substack.com/p/review-africa-at-sundance-libraries
#Film #Documentary #Entertainment #Movies #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Are you marking Valentine’s Day this year? @TheConversationUS looks at how Victorian London went gaga for greeting cards. Back then, you were expected to send a Valentine in return regardless of your feelings, which meant you could buy cards with messages that proclaimed mutual admiration, encouraged patience, or politely discouraged future attention.
#History @histodons #ValentinesDay #GreetingCards #Lifestyle #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Lastly, nobody reacted to this when our @CultureDesk shared the story but we thought it was fascinating. Back in the early 2000s, American elementary school students used to stack cups in gym class, and it was all down to a clown-turned-teacher named Bob.
https://defector.com/if-you-ever-stacked-cups-in-gym-class-blame-my-dad
#LIfestyle #UnitedStates #School #Education #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
The boxes came from Tokyo: first by tanker, then overland via container truck from a Pacific port, across the Continental Divide, and finally backed into a driveway at the end of a cul-de-sac in a south Denver suburban enclave. This was a neighborhood with Razor scooters dumped in trimmed front lawns. Where family walks with […]
Looking at thyself within the glass,
You appear lost in admiration;
You deceive yourself, and think, alas!
You are a wonder of creation.
😁 The Valentine for a narcissist !
no apparently they just have tattoos so these idiots assumed they were in gangs
Pito
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Darwin Woodka