'We do not allow showing or promoting dangerous activities and challenges'

Books Close Reads Chaos Under the Corset: When Romance Covers Hide Revolution If parents had known what these romance books really were, they would be at the top of the banned list. By Leah Blaine | Published on May 9, 2024 Photo Credit: Leah Blaine Comment 0 Share New Share Photo Credit: Leah Blaine Welcome to Close Reads! Leah Schnelbach and guest authors will dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, Leah Blaine pulls her well-worn Sunfire Romances down from the shelf to look at the importance of an innocuous book cover. As a young reader, I had the typical rotation of books befitting a young girl from the suburbs: Baby-Sitters Club, Sweet Valley High, and various romance books. These books reaffirmed my own life and looked like mine did: girls in school grappling with friendships and crushes, parents and homework, expectations to work for good grades, to be well-mannered, and to someday grow up to be a mother and perhaps a teacher/nurse/secretary. One series, however, blew my world wide open and the books looked even more innocuous than those prototypical books churned out for voracious 1980s book girls. Covers as cover, indeed. Sunfire Romance books were written by a collection of writers under pen names that all followed the exact same formula: a teen girl from a specific historical era with dreams of her own must choose from two very different suitors. There are glaring offenses in the book that cannot be ignored (unsurprisingly, a la American Dolls, Corey, the black heroine of her book, has escaped from slavery). And yet, in a time and place where racial, social, and economic boundaries were strictly drawn, as they were in my time and place under the Cold War and Reagan, the fact that historical characters ventured to friendships and even romances with people different than them was revolutionary to a girl in a safe box made of ticky tacky. From the covers alone, these are books that should have merely fanned the romantic passions of teen girls. A young woman stood at the center with her name, always the title, emblazoned above her while a male suitor stood at each shoulder (there would be a third suitor in the foreground for some lucky heroines). They would be dressed in easily identifiable historical clothing with a scene from the book depicted, like a kiss in front of a stagecoach or forlornly leaning on the rail of the Mayflower. There is nothing from the covers that hinted at the absolute agents of chaos living in the pages. Because this is where the formula ends. Each heroine had her own dreams and desires. Some wanted to enter the accepted vocations of women of their era; plenty wanted to be teachers and nurses and many wanted to marry and have children. Others, however, wanted to work in the circus, be a war spy, or become a journalist. One young woman, Caroline, cut her hair, dressed as a man, and went by Caro (a family name, she said) in order to make her way to California for the Gold Rush like her brothers. Another, Renee, wanted to be a reporter in New York so badly she braved the Great Blizzard of 1888 to earn her first byline.  Their choices for romantic partners were typically confined to a hometown boy and one new to town–and, again, this is where the formula ended. The hometown boy didn’t always expect her to settle down and raise a family; sometimes they wanted to travel, leave the dust of their town behind them. The mysterious (because of course he was) stranger wasn’t always interested in blowing in and out with the wind, taking her along with him to exciting and different locales; sometimes he wanted to settle and confine her to where he thought she belonged. The dreams of the heroines and their romantic partners’ ideals would also collide just as much as they would match. There was no formula for their alchemy and each heroine had to grapple with how to have her romance (the point of the books after all), but also stay true to who she wanted to be beyond the romance. Renee found fulfillment and success with her new career only to have her boyfriend expect her to leave it all behind to marry him and start a family. Caro, at least, got to keep her hair short and wear pants when her love proposed a life together; he loved her as she wanted to be, not his version of her. Credit: Leah Blaine And this is why books are banned. Not because they teach children how to rebel, teenagers know full well how to rebel, but because they show that the choices laid out by their family and community aren’t choices at all, but rather acceptable options already chosen for them. The idea that children would dare to choose something not offered to them is downright offensive to many parents and must be avoided at all costs hence micromanaging even the fiction they may come across. This is what makes the Sunfire Romances so revolutionary for their time. Because if parents knew what these romance books were doing to their girls, the girls they wanted to grow up to organize bake sales and preside over the PTA (because obviously they would only be wives and mothers) then these books would be at the top of the banned list. They were an instruction manual on how to choose your own path. Taken alone, they were harmless stories of finding a husband. Taken together, they’re a road map to finding a life free of restrictive expectations. Rife with feminism under the corsets and petticoats, each girl was able to choose the elements to keep and the ones to leave behind. Some chose traditional paths and some did not, but every time, the thought and care that went into choosing for herself was evident. They weren’t merely rebelling against expectations for rebellion’s sake, not that there’s anything wrong with that if you ask me, but considering how the expectations of others and their own desires shaped their choices so as to be true to themselves. Never was this more evident than in how we talked about these books that we devoured so quickly. For romance books, we spent very little time talking about the romance. No, we talked about how we looked up the Johnston flood after reading about Jennie (who knew Morse code and we needed to learn that, too; I can still tap out “hi” because of her) or about women’s suffrage thanks to Laura (whose mother told her to stop worrying about her rights because she needed to marry and marry fast). It’s unsurprising how many of those friends went on to be excellent researchers as this was pre-whole world in our palm days; we could use a card catalog and navigate a library with our eyes closed by the time we left high school because looking up “how many women spies were there during the American Revolution?” (thanks for your service, Sabrina) or “what were conditions like in textile mills?” (good job joining the strike, Joanna) took up most afternoons and were never evident from the covers. We talked about not only the historical events, but how young the heroines were–that was something slightly mind-blowing to girls who had to be home when the street lights flickered. Margaret left Chicago for Nebraska by herself at 15 to teach in a one room schoolhouse while Merrie stowed away on the Mayflower. Again, line the books up together and it makes for a pretty impressive list of rabble-rousing young women who also liked to be twirled about and kissed and given flowers. There is a direct line, then, from these covers to the Bridgerton screen adaptations and what romance readers have known for years: a cover that extols the virtues of a hetero romance may just be the undoing of women’s roles and expectations. And thank every heaving bosom for that.[end-mark] The post Chaos Under the Corset: When Romance Covers Hide Revolution appeared first on Reactor.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A class action lawsuit against YouTube’s censorship of Covid-era speech on the platform has been allowed to proceed in Canada. The primary plaintiff in the case which has now been greenlit by the Quebec Superior Court is YouTuber Éloïse Boies, while the filing accuses the Google video platform of censoring information about vaccines, the pandemic, and the virus itself. We obtained a copy of the order for you here. Boies, who runs the “Élo Wants to Know” channel, states in the lawsuit that three of her videos got removed by YouTube (one of the censored videos was about – censorship) for allegedly violating the site’s policies around medical disinformation and contradicting WHO and local health authorities’ Covid narratives of the time. However, the content creator claims that the decisions represented unlawful and intentional suppression of free expression. In February, Boies revealed that in addition to having videos deleted, the censorship also branded her an “antivaxxer” and a “conspiracy theorist,” causing her to lose contracts. The filing cites the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms as the document YouTube violated, while the class-action status of the lawsuit stems from it including any individual or legal entity in Quebec whose videos dealing with Covid got censored, or who were prevented from watching such videos, starting in mid-March 2020 and onward. Google, on the other hand, argues that it is under no obligation to respect the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, and can therefore not be held accountable for decisions to censor content it doesn’t approve of – or as the giant phrased it, provide space for videos “regardless of their content.” But when Superior Court Judge Lukasz Granosik announced his decision, he noted that freedom of expression “does not only mean freedom of speech, but also freedom of publication and freedom of creation.” Stressing the importance that Canada’s Supreme Court assigns to guaranteed freedom of expression as a key building block in a democratic society, the judge concluded that “If (Google) carries out censorship by preventing certain people from posting videos and prevents other people from viewing these same videos, it thus hinders the free circulation of ideas and exposes itself to having to defend its ways of doing things.” Google was ordered to stop censoring content because it contradicts health authorities, WHO, or governments, pay $1,000 in compensation and $1,000 in punitive damages to each of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, an well as “additional compensation provided for by law since the filing of the request for authorization to take collective action, as per the court’s decision.” As for those who were prevented from accessing content, the decision on damages will be the subject of a future hearing. The post Canadian Court Greenlights Class Action Lawsuit Against YouTube’s Covid Censorship appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Northwestern's Faculty Comes Out in Favor of Eliminating Israel

A Japanese mission aimed at clearing up space debris has hit its first milestone, successfully maneuvering close to a piece of space trash it was tracking and returning a photo to Earth. Space around our planet is getting quite full. We are a messy species, and low-Earth orbit is apparently no exception to our "we'll clean up later" rule. One concern about the debris is that it could cause the "Kessler Effect" (or Kessler Syndrome). Simply put, the Kessler Effect is where a single event (such as an explosion of a satellite) in low-Earth orbit creates a chain reaction, as debris destroys other objects in orbit. Should this happen, the debris could keep colliding with other objects, potentially causing communication problems and leaving areas of space inaccessible to spacecraft. Essentially, it could end up like the film Gravity, but with less George Clooney doing great eyebrow work and more "Hey what happened to my GPS". At worst, some speculate it could essentially trap us here on Earth, unable to leave.   But this isn't some far-flung problem to deal with in the future. NASA has had to perform several emergency maneuvers to move the International Space Station out of the path of debris. Several space agencies and private companies are working on solutions to the problem, including the Active Debris Removal mission by Astroscale-Japan, or ADRAS-J. Launched in February, the first stage of its mission was to perform a series of maneuvers to bring it close to a piece of space junk; a Japanese H2A upper stage rocket body, measuring approximately 11 meters (36 feet) in length.     IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.This was no easy task, as space junk is generally not prepared to make it easy to spot visually, nor provide its own location via GPS data."The condition of the structure of the client is also unknown," Astroscale-Japan added in a statement ahead of the mission. "In addition, the attitude and altitude of the client cannot be controlled, and the client cannot be communicated with."The mission has now caught up with the debris it was tracking, and photographed it from several hundred meters away. The mission will attempt to orbit around the upper stage rocket, taking further images to assess its structure. A second mission – ADRAS-J2 – will approach the same piece of junk and obtain further images, before attempting to safely remove it from orbit using a robotic arm.

Say humanity one day needed to move our star. Maybe an alien berserker is headed our way and would arrive in a few tens of thousand of years, or we discovered we were about to head through a region of dark matter in our galaxy that would wreak havoc on our Solar System. Perhaps we just discover that another region of space is more interesting, and move to join the party. Take your sci-fi pick. The question is, would we be able to move ourselves out of the way, and take our beloved Sun with us?It's not exactly a pressing question, but it is one that physicists have put a little thought into. Moving a star is a colossal task. The Sun's mass is around 1.989 x 1030 kilograms, or 333,000 times the mass of the Earth. Considering that it's an effort to get enough thrust to take spaceships out of our atmosphere, it's not a task we are up to yet. It may be well beyond a Type I civilization, but not a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale.And if we do decide to move our star, we're still going to let the star do most of the work. One idea, named the Shkadov Thruster after Russian physicist Leonid Shkadov who proposed it, is actually a lot simpler than you'd expect moving our Solar System to be. The basic idea is to take a giant, concave mirror and place it facing the Sun. The mirror would be placed in a point in space where solar radiation pressure on the mirror balances out with gravity, so that it will remain in position, reflecting radiation back at the Sun. This part will not be easy."As the mirrors are not oriented spherically those whose normal incidence makes an angle with respect to the Sun will experience a net torque from the solar radiation pressure gradient, causing them oscillate. Any damping force is likely to return them to a stable equilibrium where they are aligned radially, thus reflecting light back at the Sun," a 2019 paper on the topic explains. "Such a stabilization system along with any struts supporting the mirror foil will require thinner foil in order to budget mass for these systems, thus resulting in great transmittance of sunlight. Nevertheless, stabilizers are necessary if the mirrors are to remain parabolic on astronomical times."With the mirror in place and reflecting light, this increases the temperature of the photosphere and produces a teeny tiny amount of thrust.Using this method, we are not getting anywhere very fast. The distance you can cover depends on where you want to go, and whether you are fighting our orbit around the Milky Way or merely accelerating our passage through it. But roughly speaking, one study found that during one orbit of the galaxy you could alter the Sun's position by around 40 parsecs (130 light-years). Say we wanted to swap our star for another one (like cosmological Pogs) – using this method we could reach some of the closer stars.Another idea is to use "active thrusters" rather than the passive thrust generated by Shkadov-inspired megastructures. In one idea, termed the Caplan Thruster, a Dyson Sphere collects solar wind and directs it to the engine, which uses nuclear fusion to create jets.                     "Exhaust from the engine be may collimated with magnetic fields into two oppositely directed jets, one aimed toward the Sun and one away from the Sun," the 2019 paper explains. "The jet aimed away from the Sun imparts a net momentum to the Solar System, while the jet aimed toward the Sun prevents the engine from colliding with the Sun. This engine is effectively a tugboat which pushes the Sun."Though the thruster could operate for 100 million years, this team – commissioned by YouTuber Kurzgesagt – believes that 10 million years would be sufficient to push our star out of the way of, say, a supernova. Using more of the mass of a Sun-like star, they suggest it may be possible to achieve escape velocity from our galaxy, and travel to another.Though this all sounds feasible (to a much more advanced civilization than our own) it does sort of beg the question: why have we not seen any signs of other civilizations (with access to the same physics) doing this? Where is everybody?

Two writers for The Washington Post tried to make the case for discriminatory diversity equity and inclusion initiatives (DEI) in an article about DEI’s rebranding. However, they relied on debunked research to do it.  A May 5 article by The Post referenced a pro-DEI study by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company on the “business case for DEI” in response to the increased condemnation aimed at the infamous leftist acronym.  Strikingly, these studies, which linked greater diversity to profitability, had already been ripped to shreds long before May 5. In March 2024, UNC-Chapel Hill Professor of Accounting John R. M. Hand and Texas A&M Associate Professor of Accounting Jeremiah Green exposed these studies, noting that they could not replicate McKinsey’s work.  Green and Hand wrote that their “inability to quasi-replicate [McKinsey’s] results suggests that despite the imprimatur given to McKinsey’s studies, they should not be relied on to support the view that US publicly traded firms can expect to deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives." The Post reporters Taylor Telford and Julian Mark not only ignored Green and Hand’s research but went ahead and cited McKinsey anyway.  “Many large companies see a correlation between a diverse workforce and financial success, and routinely tout the ‘business case’ for DEI,” they wrote. “Companies with the highest racial, ethnic and gender representation are 39 percent more likely to financially outperform, according to a 2023 study by McKinsey & Co. involving more than 1,200 firms worldwide.” Telford and Mark went on to mention that, “In his annual letter to shareholders this year, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon emphasized that DEI ‘initiatives make us a more inclusive company and lead to more innovation, smarter decisions and better financial results for us and for the economy overall.’” But where did Dimon get that idea? McKinsey—of course. JPMorgan leaned on McKinsey’s published fig leaves for discrimination. To this day, JPMorgan cites one of these McKinsey studies “Diversity Matters” on their website: “According to a study conducted by McKinsey & Company diversity creates increased client orientation and a diverse talent pool, which fosters creativity, improves collaboration and results in enhanced employee performance.” When JPMorgan Asset Management CEO George Gatch called diversity, equity and inclusion “critical to our success” in a video, McKinsey once again showed up in the footnotes.  Telford and Mark are correct that many corporate leaders embraced McKinsey’s DEI propaganda. The Daily Wire host Matt Walsh recently went after the former CEO of Intel and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban for using McKinsey as an excuse to push DEI.  Conservatives are under attack! Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192 and demand they report on the dangers of leftist DEI ideology infecting corporate America.

Morning Joe had great fun today mocking Donald Trump over hosting a dinner at Mar-a-Lago last night for purchasers of his NFT trading cards, which feature Trump in a variety of heroic images. He's George Washington on the Delaware, he's Elvis Presley in a black jumpsuit with shades. But those weren't the ones they mocked. "MSNBC Republican" Elise Jordan singled out one image for particular ridicule: "The bomber jacket. Now, that is really quite a -- what did they do? Take Tom Cruise, and then just put Trump's head on it? I mean, that is actual, just complete propaganda." It apparently didn't occur to Jordan or any of the other panelists that Trump is not the only president with an affinity for bomber jackets. The difference is that people at MSNBC actually worship the coolness of Obama. Do the images below refresh your memory, Elise? CBS News, 2019: "Barack Obama goes viral in custom '44' jacket at Duke-UNC game." GQ, 2019:  "Barack Obama's Bomber Jacket: The Inside Story:The most exciting part of last night's Duke-UNC game took place off the court." Esquire, 2020: "The Story Behind Obama's (Extremely Good) Three-Point Bomber Jacket: The suddenly stylish former President has been rocking one particularly enviable pick from Lululemon." A replica Obama bomber jacket is actually on sale to the public. No word on whether Barack gets a piece of the action.  You can easily Google some embarrassing Obama-Adoration bomber jackets for sale. But apparently, that's on brand for MSNBC.  As long as we're on the subject, may we point out to Jordan that Tom Cruise was also a fictional fighter pilot? It's a mark of how popular culture is more real to some people than actual historical figures, fighter pilots like Chuck Yeager, Bob Hoover -- John McCain! -- among others.   Trump's sale of pieces of the suit he wore for his iconic mugshot in the dubious Fani Willis prosecution in Georgia was also the object of great mirth and hilarity, with Scarborough exclaiming "Oh my God! What the holy F is going on here?" And the normally even-handed Willie Geist flatly declared that the pieces of the mugshot suit for sale are "undoubtedly" not from that suit.  Evidence, Willie—or are all accusations against Trump fair game? He may not rival Obama in the movie-star worship, but even Joe Biden fans can buy the "Joe Biden Aviation Jacket" in leather. And don't miss the opportunity to get your own "Biden Harris Peace Love Equality Hope Diversity" bomber jacket on eBay. Elise Jordan should have one of those. The Biden-Harris website seems to prefer those "Dark Brandon" products with the shiny red eyes.  Kamala Harris superfans can just go to the National Archives Store for their "Madam Vice President" polo shirt and cap in pink, not to mention the cartoony "Madam Vice President" socks. Merchandise is bipartisan.  

Gender ideologues' narrative around sex-change mutilations and so-called "gender-affirming care" has collapsed in recent months, prompting some Western governments to pump the brakes on the nightmarish medicalization scheme as well as apologies from former collaborators. Nationally syndicated radio host and cofounder of Blaze Media Glenn Beck discussed the fallout and possible next steps Wednesday with one of the people who accelerated this collapse. In a damning exposé entitled "The Reckoning," Beck shined a light on the dark world of "gender-affirming care." He explored the stories of various victims; spoke to de-transitioner Luka Hein about the fallout of her rushed medicalization; defined key terms and rhetorical tricks exploited by LGBT activists; and both named and shamed a number of perpetrators he indicated ought to be locked up. Beck also spoke to Environmental Progress researcher Mia Hughes, one of the investigators who dealt a fatal blow to whatever remaining credibility the sex-change regime was believed to possess. Hughes is the author of the WPATH Files, a 242-page report, published in early March by journalist Michael Shellenberger's think tank, Environmental Progress. The report detailed internal discussions and documents at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health — the organization that wrote the go-to guidelines for "gender-affirming care." Shellenberger indicated that the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and thousands of doctors worldwide rely on WPATH as the global authority on "gender medicine." Blaze News previously reported that the WPATH members quoted in the report can be seen discussing: Giving irreversible medical treatments to mentally compromised victims incapable of providing consent; The inability of children and adolescents to comprehend the long-term consequences of so-called gender affirmation; Putting a gloss on de-transition and post-operation regrets; The narrative that minors should receive hormones or undergo surgery because otherwise they'll kill themselves — a popular claim among LGBT activists that was shown to be false in a recent Finnish study; and Various debilitating side effects of sex-change procedures. Hughes told Beck, "I think if you want to understand this medical scandal, you must understand the group that sits at the very core of that and that is the World Professional Association for Transgender Health." When pressed on how legitimate medical associations could end up taking counsel from radicals at WPATH, Hughes said, "It's a remarkable stunt that they pulled. ... It's a hybrid organization where there are surgeons, endocrinologists, clinicians, family doctors, all mixed in together with extremist trans activists. Now, I will say that all those medical professionals are themselves activists probably first and medical professionals second." Hughes indicated WPATH has been around in some form since the late 1970s but began to pose a real threat at the turn of the century when it went ideological and "abandoned science." "They rebranded in 2007 as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and at that point, I tell it as, 'They self-identified as the world's leading professional association.' They had no science at this point, and they still don't have any science," continued Hughes. Beck indicated that in an earlier conversation with Michael Shellenberger, he related how the sex-change regime reminds him not only of the deadly Tuskegee syphilis study where the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experimented on black Americans without their knowledge, but also of American eugenicists' sterilization campaign in the early 20th century. "There have been many medical crimes in the past. We all think lobotomies, but you're right: Tuskegee was terrible. But this one is especially egregious because the victims are children, adolescents, and some of the most vulnerable adults in society," said Hughes. "I challenge anyone if they think that I'm exaggerating, that this is not a terrible medical crime, take five minutes to go on trends TikTok and watch all the videos of teenage girls prancing around with mastectomy scars because some monstrous doctor has amputated their healthy breasts while they're still in a stage of identity development and they simply just need to be left to grow up, mature, and settle into who they are," continued the researcher. Hughes detailed various gruesome experiments conducted under the guise of "gender-affirming care," which she indicated do not "mesh with the Hippocratic Oath to first do no harm." "They will perform mastectomies and do customized scars," said the WPATH Files author. "They'll create second sets of genitals for people who identify as both male and female. They'll nullify people meaning remove all genitalia and have a smooth, sexless body if these people identify as neither male nor female." "So, we're talking like — we used to joke about — smooth like a Ken doll?" Beck responded. "I don't even know how that works." "The Hippocratic Oath has long been abandoned by these people," said Hughes. The WPATH Files describe activist doctors offering custom mastectomy scars and giving people anything from 2 sets of genitals to NO genitals (think "Ken doll"). WPATH Files author @_CryMiaRiver tells me "the Hippocratic Oath has long been abandoned by these people." — (@) Later in the special, Beck noted, "If they are willing to do these kinds of treatments on children, and they know that there are potentially deadly side effects involved with them, and people aren't being properly informed, what else would they be willing to do?" After highlighting numerous troubling admissions in the WPATH Files — including indications that some gender ideologues loaded an autistic girl up with drugs, then taught her to masturbate — Beck said, "These are the experts, these are the caregivers setting the standards for children and adults all over the world." "This is insanity. This must stop. This isn't science. This isn't care. It definitely is not modern medicine by the standards of any other medical issue," continued Beck. "The medical industry needs a reckoning." Beck directed viewers to his site, indicating they can obtain a PDF guide breaking down key insights from the WPATH Files along with a draft letter to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the Endocrine Society demanding they reject WPATH's standards of care. Watch the whole special here: — (@) Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Moonlight Peaks has got a fresh new demo for you to try, alongside a launch year and new publisher. While this supernatural life simulator will look familiar to fans of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, this game features a vampire protagonist who can turn into a bat to fly around town to better water crops and romance mystical villagers. In those other games you just play as a regular old human. Continue reading Spooky Stardew Valley sim gets new demo, playable now MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Vampire games, Games like Animal Crossing on PC, Life Games