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darkesttiimelines · 1 year

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Throughout history, women have left an undeniable impact on society with their hard work, creativity, and dedication to progress. Unfortunately, their accomplishments have often gone unnoticed, been undervalued, or even stolen. Despite these challenges, brave women of today continue to push boundaries, break barriers, and pave the way for a more fair and equal world. It's our duty to keep going, so that future generations of women can inherit a kinder, more just, and supportive world. By following in the footsteps of the incredible women who came before us, we can create a world where every woman can flourish and succeed, and where their contributions are recognized and celebrated.

Joan of Arc is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronation of Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years' War. Claiming to be acting under divine guidance, she became a military leader who transcended gender roles and gained recognition as a savior of France. She was put on trial by Bishop Pierre Cauchon on accusations of heresy, which included blaspheming by wearing men's clothes, acting upon visions that were demonic, and refusing to submit her words and deeds to the judgment of the church. She was declared guilty and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen.

Rani Lakshmibai was the Maharani consort of the princely state of Jhansi from 1843 to 1853. She was one of the leading figures in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 became a symbol of resistance to the British rule in India for Indian nationalists. When the Maharaja died in 1853, the British East India Company under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie refused to recognize the claim of his adpoted heir and annexed Jhansi under the Doctrine of Lapse. She rode into battle with her infant son strapped to her back, and died in June 1858 after being mortally wounded during the British counterattack at Gwalior.

Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was instrumental in the discovery of the structure of DNA. Her contributions were largely overlooked by her male colleagues, James Watson and Francis Crick, who used her data without her permission or acknowledgement. This theft of her intellectual property and erasure of her contributions is a prime example of the systemic sexism that has historically plagued the scientific community.

Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress and inventor who co-invented a frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology during World War II that was used to guide torpedoes. However, her contributions were largely ignored and dismissed by male engineers and the military at the time. It was only later in life that she received recognition for her scientific achievements.

Emma Weyant is an American competitive swimmer. She was the US national champion at the individual medley. She qualified for the 2020 Olympic Games in the 400m individual medley and won the silver medal in this event. Weyant finished second in the 500-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships. She was beaten by William (Lia) Thomas, a fetishist, who when competing as a member of the Penn men's team, which was 2018-19, ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle. Weyant is the fastest swimmer in the 500-yard freestyle and had her position stolen by a man.

Maryna Viazovska is a Ukrainian mathematician who made a breakthrough in sphere packing, solving the centuries-old mathematical problem known as the densest packing of spheres in dimensions 8 and 24. She was awarded the Fields Medal in July 2022, making her the second woman (after Maryam Mirzakhani), the second person born in the Ukrainian SSR and the first with a degree from a Ukrainian university to ever receive it.

Hannie Schaft was a Dutch resistance fighter during World War II who played a crucial role in the resistance movement against Nazi occupation. Schaft was a former university student who dropped out because she refused to sign a pledge of loyalty to Germany. Nazis arrested and killed her in 1945, just three weeks before the war ended in Europe. According to lore, Schaft’s last words were, “I’m a better shot,” after initially only being wounded by her executioner.

Shakuntala Devi was an Indian mathematician and mental calculator who was known as the "Human Computer" for her exceptional ability to perform complex mathematical calculations in her head. Her extraordinary abilities earned her a place in the 1982 Guinness Book of Records. Her lesser known achievement is that in 1977 she wrote what is considered to be the first book in India on homosexuality titled “The World of Homosexuals.”

J. K. Rowling is a British author and philanthropist. She wrote Harry Potter, a seven-volume children's fantasy series published from 1997 to 2007. Known for her philanthropy, she was doxxed and harassed after coming out with support for women's and gay rights in 2020. Rowling secretly donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to save 100 female lawyers and their families facing murder in Afghanistan. In 2022, she funded a women's only rape shelter in Edinburgh.

#this post was inspired by me being absolutely sick of trans activists claiming that joan of arc/rani lakshmibai/insert literally any other #strong woman #is actually a trans man #they were no man at all #women have been brave and strong and amazing throughout history #and they still are #if only you'd get your head out of your ass to take a look #radical feminism #radblr #terf #trans #misogny #i am no man

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the-perihelion · 1 year

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The Murderbot Diaries so far

You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot. Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.

—Tordotcom

As we approach the release date of Systems Collapse, the much-anticipated newest entry to the series, new readers might wonder: where should I get started?

Here's an overview of books in the series so far, which are available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook. The series is snappily written and easy to blow through: the majority of the series is novellas, with two free supplementary short stories, one full-length novel, and another novel to come. Links to retailers can be found on each page, courtesy of TorDotCom.

The novella quartet:

#1. All Systems Red, published May 2017.

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

#2. Artificial Condition, published May 2018.

It has a dark past—one in which a number of humans were killed. [...] But Murderbot has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

#3. Rogue Protcol, published August 2018.

The reason I was wandering free and Dr. Mensah was on the news was because GrayCris had been willing to kill a whole bunch of helpless human researchers for exclusive access to alien remnants... If Dr. Mensah had proof of that, the investigation against GrayCris would get a lot more interesting. Maybe so interesting that the journalists would forget all about that stray SecUnit. Getting proof wouldn’t be hard, I thought. Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas? Sci-fi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is back on a mission.

#4. Exit Strategy, published October 2018.

Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right? Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit. But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue? And what will become of it when it’s caught?

The full-length novel sequel:

Spoilers, but the PUOMANT registered ship Perihelion is in this one. 🚀 Icon by ChimaeraKitten.

#5. Network Effect, published May 2020.

I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are. When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then.

The stand-alone novella, set prior to Network Effect:

#6. Fugitive Telemetry, published April 2021.

Murderbot simply wants to binge-watch its favorite soap operas and protect its friends from being killed by the powerful and nefarious corporation they've angered. But then a human corpse turns up on Preservation Station, and Murderbot leaps to action with security forces to help to solve the murder. "There's a scene in "Network Effect" where Murderbot shows Thiago a video clip of an incident when it stopped an assassination attempt on Dr. Mensah, with the help of Preservation Station Security. In the clip, Murderbot has a good working relationship with the Station Security people. So I wanted to go back in the timeline a little and show how Murderbot's relationship with those characters developed, the rocky start when Murderbot was still getting acclimated to the station, and how the people on the station got acclimated to Murderbot. And I've always loved murder mysteries, so that seemed a fun way to do it." —Martha Wells, interview with Space.com

AND COMING SOON:

#7. System Collapse, release date November 2023.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize. But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

THE SHORT STORIES

There are two short stories officially connected to the Murderbot Diaries universe, both of which can be found for free online.

Compulsory — published 2018, by Wired.com as part of "The Future of Work" collection. Takes place prior to All Systems Red, sometime after Murderbot has hacked its governor module.

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory — originally given free with preorders of Network Effect. Takes place after Exit Strategy, from Mensah's point of view, as she grapples with post-traumatic stress and Murderbot's refugee status on Preservation.

There's some debate on whether book 6 should be read in publication order or chronological order, but where to start the series is easy: start with All Systems Red and continue with the novella quartet, and if the adventures of the sarcastic, anxious, hypercompetent Murderbot capture your imagination, this post can help you decide where to go from there.

#The Perihelion's publicity team apologizes for the length of its posts. The Perihelion apologizes for nothing.#link #reference #the murderbot diaries #martha wells

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robertreich · 2 years

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youtube

The Secret to the GOP’s Assault on Your Rights

Democracy is not just under attack in America. In some states, it’s being lost.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once suggested that states could serve as laboratories of democracy, but these states are more like laboratories of autocracy.

Take Wisconsin. The GOP has so successfully rigged state elections through gerrymandering that even when Democrats get more votes, Republicans win more seats. In 2018, Republicans won just 45% of the vote statewide, but were awarded 64% of the seats.

******

Btw, if you’d like my daily analyses, commentary, and drawings, please subscribe to my free newsletter: robertreich.substack.com

******

Wisconsin is one of several states where an anti-democracy movement has taken hold.

But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, Wisconsin pioneered the progressive era of American politics at the start of the twentieth century — with policies that empowered workers, protected the environment, and took on corporate monopolies. State lawmakers established the nation’s first unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and strict child labor laws.

Teddy Roosevelt called the state a “laboratory for wise … legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole.”

But for the last decade, Wisconsin has become a laboratory for legislation that does the exact opposite.

After Republicans took control in 2010, one of the first bills they passed gutted workers' rights by dismantling public-sector unions — which then decimated labor’s ability to support pro-worker candidates.

This move aligned with the interests of their corporate donors, who benefited from weaker unions and lower wages.

This new Wisconsin formula has been replicated elsewhere.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina won a minority of votes in 2018, but still won majorities in their state assemblies thanks to gerrymandering.

In Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, Republicans have crafted gerrymanders that are strong enough to create supermajorities capable of overturning a governor’s veto.

Even more alarming, hundreds of these Republican state legislators, “used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” on behalf of Donald Trump.

How did this happen? Put simply: years of careful planning by corporate interest groups and their radical allies.

And the corporations enabling these takeovers aren't just influencing the law — their lobbyists are literally writing many of the bills that get passed.

This political alliance with corporate power has given these Republican legislatures free rein to pursue an extreme culture-war agenda — one that strips away rights that majorities of people support — while deflecting attention from their corporate patrons’ economic agendas.

Republicans are introducing bills that restrict or criminalize abortion. They’re banning teachers from discussing the history of racism in this country. They are making it harder to protest and easier to harm protestors. They are punishing trans people for receiving gender-affirming care and their doctors for providing it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are still laboratories of democracy where true public servants are finding creative ways to defend the rights of us all.

Elected officials in Colorado and Vermont are codifying the right to abortion. California lawmakers have proposed making the state a refuge for transgender youth and their families. And workers across the country are reclaiming their right to organize, which is helping to rebuild an important counterweight to corporate power.

But winning will ultimately require a fifty state strategy — with a Democratic Senate willing to reform or end the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, protect voting rights, and protect the right to organize nationwide.

America needs a national pro-democracy movement to stop the anti-democracy movement now underway — a pro-democracy movement committed to helping candidates everywhere, including in state-level races.

This is where you come in. Volunteer for pro-democracy candidates — and if you don't have time, contribute to their campaigns.

This is not a battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy.

#roe v wade #roe #Supreme Court #states #Wisconsin #democracy #videos #video

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damelucyjo · 3 months

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Quick little update whilst I have 5 minutes!

Here are a couple of things I added but never made a post about (found this post sitting in my drafts ��);

Hannah & Colman Domingo presenting the Governors Award | 75th Emmy Awards

Hannah Waddingham on Working with Tom Cruise: 'PINCH-ME Phase' (Exclusive)

Hannah Waddingham Says ‘Ted Lasso’ SPIN-OFF ‘Wouldn’t Be for Me’ (Exclusive)

And whilst looking for something else today, I came across these interviews and behind the scenes for Winter Ridge;

LIFF Interview: Hannah Waddingham, Matt Hookings, Dom Lenoir | Winter Ridge (The Fan Carpet)

Interviews: Dom Lenoir, Hannah Waddingham, Michael McKell | Winter Ridge (The Fan Carpet)

WINTER RIDGE - London Live Interview (2018)

BBC Spotlight Interview - Winter Ridge

Winter Ridge Film - Behind the Scenes (Full)

As always, feel free to message me if you notice something is broken, have something you'd like to share and add, or if you're looking for something and need help finding it on the list ☺️

#Hannah Waddingham #Hannah Waddingham Masterlist #Hannah Waddingham Media #Ted Lasso

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thoughtlessarse · 15 hours

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Ten years ago, on April 25, 2014, state and local officials assembled at the water plant in Flint, Michigan to celebrate as Mayor Dayne Walling pushed the button that switched the city’s water source from treated Lake Huron water to the caustic and untreated water of the Flint River. The fact that the river water being pumped into the homes of 100,000 residents wasn’t properly treated was known only to an elite inner circle of officials. But shortly after the switch, the residents of Flint began protesting against the move. It was common knowledge that the river was rife with industrial waste. The bad taste, disturbing odor and abnormal color of residents’ tap water were the first indicators that something was wrong. Scientific studies proved, more than a year later, that Flint had dangerously high levels of lead in its water. One indicator was the fact that the number of children with alarmingly high levels of lead in their blood had doubled. The official response was to conceal and flat-out lie. The protests were answered with the claim that all health protocols were being followed and the water was safe to drink. It was a full 18 months before the city reverted back to its original water source. [...] No accountability, no justice The question, “How could this have happened?” remains to a significant extent unanswered to this day. The decisions leading to the catastrophic degradation of the city’s drinking water were the outcome of a conspiracy of officials, many of whom are known—most prominently then-Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, and then-state Treasurer Andy Dillon, a Democrat—and many who have yet to be identified. There is no mystery here, as no serious investigation of the lead poisoning of the largely working class city has been conducted, and none of the perpetrators has been prosecuted. Investigations launched at both the state and federal levels were cover-ups. In 2016, the Republican attorney general of Michigan, Bill Schuette, proclaimed that “the families of Flint will not be forgotten.” He continued, “We will provide the justice they deserve. And in Michigan, the system is not rigged.” Then, during the 2018-2019 transition to a Democratic state government, the attorney general’s office offered seven key defendants plea bargain deals that made them legally untouchable and prevented pursuit of the chain of command because of double jeopardy protections. The mantra of the incoming Democratic prosecution team was “justice delayed is not always justice denied.” Repeating ad nauseum that the Democratic administration of Governor Gretchen Whitmer would follow the evidence wherever it led, in November, 2023 it ignominiously announced the ending of all efforts to prosecute the officials who aided and abetted the poisoning of Flint’s water. A derisory settlement of $626 million for the people of Flint was awarded by a US district court in November 2021, after months of deliberations. To this day, not a single dollar has been disbursed to residents, while some $64 million has already been paid to various legal firms out of their approximately $200 million legal bill. Meanwhile, many impacted residents have died or left the state, having received nothing.

read complete article

#us #mi #flint water crisis #10 years on #injustice #rigged system #health #lives destroyed #long read

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mariacallous · 4 months

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In early December, a rightwing Wisconsin organization called HOT Government sent out a breathless email: Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman turned election conspiracy theorist and staunch Donald Trump ally, had nominated an important Wisconsin politician for a dubious award.

The prize would go to the person who exemplifies “leadership in BEING AN OBSTACLE TO STOPPING ELECTION CRIME”, the email declared.

Lindell’s target wasn’t a Democrat, nonpartisan election official or even a moderate Republican – it was Robin Vos, the powerful Wisconsin Republican assembly speaker.

The nomination reflects a stark turn of fortunes for Vos, who has spent more than a decade using every tool at his disposal to cement Republican power in Wisconsin, touting a deeply conservative record including on voting.

Vos helped re-draw the state’s legislative maps in 2011, ensuring Republican control of the legislature ever since. The same year, he followed former Republican governor Scott Walker’s lead in creating the most restrictive voter identification law in the country and passing legislation to kneecap union power in a state where organized labor was once the core of the Democratic coalition.

Vos was elected speaker of the assembly in 2013 and has used his years in office since to shore up his party’s minoritarian lock on power in the swing state. When Republicans lost the governorship in 2018, the assembly quickly passed legislation that curbed the power of the incoming Democratic governor. And after Trump lost the state in 2020, Vos initiated an investigation into Wisconsin’s election, hiring a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” movement to lead it.

He was in all respects a loyal rightwinger. But Vos has drawn a line at embracing Trump’s false claim that he actually won Wisconsin in 2020 and refused to join colleagues who suggested overturning the 2020 election. His unwillingness to cross that line has turned him into a pariah on the far right, a target of Lindell, an enemy of Trump and a symbol of the current state of the Republican party where loyalty to Trump is the key litmus test.

Now, Vos is fighting elements of his party that rejected the results of the 2020 election and have come to view him not as a hardline conservative who has done more than almost anyone else to strengthen Republicans’ power in the state, but as a corrupt establishment hack complicit in Trump’s undoing.

With the Trump flank of the grassroots Wisconsin Republican party as strong as ever ahead of the 2024 election, Vos is scrambling to appease his hardline party detractors so he doesn’t become a casualty of the movement he helped create.

“There’s a segment of the Maga crowd who despises him, because they adamantly believe President Trump was cheated,” said a veteran Wisconsin GOP operative, who spoke anonymously given his role within pro-Trump circles. “Where he is right now is kind of emblematic of the fight going on within the Republican party – here in Wisconsin and across the nation.”

From the young Republican …

Since he was a child, Vos led a political life. In sixth grade, he tagged along with a teacher to political events, then joined the Young Republicans and worked for former Republican governor Tommy Thompson before starting college. During his first semester at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Vos ran for and won a seat on the student senate and then went about lobbying every member of the Wisconsin state legislature for reduced tuition hikes.

His eagerness was rewarded two years later, when Governor Thompson appointed Vos to be a student member of the University of Wisconsin system’s governing body. Vos surrounded himself with other young Republicans: his roommate and friend at UW-Whitewater, Reince Priebus, would go on to chair the Republican National Committee for six years before working as Donald Trump’s chief of staff in 2017.

After graduating in 1991, Vos snagged a job as a legislative aide to Bonnie Ladwig, a leader in the Wisconsin state assembly, then returned home to Burlington, in south-east Wisconsin, and won a seat on the Racine county board. When Ladwig retired a decade later in 2004, Vos won her seat.

“Jim and Bonnie Ladwig were super close to me,” Vos told the Guardian, sitting at the end of a long and formidable wooden table in his Capitol office. Vos had been taking back-to-back interviews all day but he was focused and energized. “They were like a second set of parents – and then Tommy Thompson, I talk to him almost every week – Governor Evers, annually.”

Vos advanced quickly in the assembly, learning how to manage the personalities in the Republican caucus and when to make bipartisan alliances. Perhaps emulating his slogan as a college politician – “We want your views” – Vos earned the reputation of listening carefully to his colleagues and learning their vulnerabilities and strengths.

“I really want to be a consensus builder,” said Vos, who said he believed eking out a policy win, even a small one, was worthwhile – and faulted the contemporary Republican party for adopting what he viewed as an all-or-nothing politics.

Mark Pocan, a progressive Democratic congressman in the state, who sat on the joint committee on finance with Vos, formed an unlikely friendship with the legislator. ��I always found him someone that I can have [a] conversation with,” said Pocan. “He’s very effective in knowing how to work his members to get things done.”

“Everybody seems to think that Robin tells everybody in the caucus, ‘You will vote this way, you will do this, you will do that,’ and it’s not that way at all,” said Kathy Bernier, a Republican who served in the assembly for five years under Vos’s leadership. “He will be always cognizant of the vulnerable members of his caucus.”

But Vos has also gained a reputation for cracking down on uncooperative members of his caucus and withholding committee seats from disloyal members. In 2016, he withheld committee appointments from three conservative lawmakers who had previously clashed with him. Most recently, his caucus removed Janel Brandtjen, an election denier and Republican staterepresentative, from her leading role on the elections committee after she endorsed his primary opponent.

None of the seven leaders of the Republican caucus in the assembly agreed to an interview.

… To ‘the prince of darkness’

Under Vos’s leadership, the Republican-controlled legislature has flexed outsized power in Wisconsin. While statewide races are often determined by vanishingly narrow margins, Republicans can comfortably count on strong majorities in the legislature – a product of the 2011 redistricting law Vos helped craft. He currently presides over a 64-35 seat majority in the assembly, which he has leveraged to strengthen Republican power in the state.

But Vos is quick to contest the view, held by many Democrats, that his legislative style is anti-democratic – or really anything but good, effective politics. “Democrats can’t accept that because they think the only reason they’re losing is the maps – maybe it’s your strategy. Maybe it’s your campaign, maybe it’s the issues you run on.”

Also in 2011, Vos helped push through one of the most restrictive voter identification laws in the nation; independent studies have found it disproportionately impacts low-income and Black voters, but the law has nonetheless survived numerous court challenges by voting rights advocates. When Wisconsin’s government accountability board found in 2015 that the legislature had failed to provide sufficient education around the new voter ID rules, a requirement of their own law, the assembly voted to dissolve the board.

After Democrats won races for governor and attorney general in the 2018 election, Vos rushed through laws limiting the powers of both offices in the weeks before they took office. The “lame duck” legislation, among other provisions, limited the governor’s authority to appoint leaders to certain state agencies and gave the legislature the right to hire outside lawyers to intervene in lawsuits. The power grab outraged Democrats and good-government groups and illustrated the lengths to which Republicans in office would go to wrest power from their opponents. A 2022 Politico article referred to Vos as the state’s “shadow governor”.

In 2015, Vos even tried to bring about a law that would shield state lawmakers entirely from public records requests. The effort failed, but he and other members of his caucus are known to habitually delete their work emails – a practice that, while legal, makes it harder for journalists and the public to access documents.

“When it comes to sunshine in government, Robin Vos is the prince of darkness,” said Bill Lueders, a political journalist and the president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

He has developed a reputation for obstinance towards working with Democrats in office. In early 2020, while Republican- and Democratic- led states across the country delayed primary elections amid the rapidly-spreading coronavirus, the state legislature shut down attempts by Tony Evers, the Democratic governor, to move the date of the Wisconsin primary. In a viral image, Vos, donned in head-to-toe protective gear and volunteering as a poll worker, told voters it was “incredibly safe to go out”.

A ‘rigged and stolen election’

After years of fighting Democrats, the 2020 election brought Vos into a separate and unexpectedly fierce conflict – with his own party.

A day before the scheduled certification of the presidential election in Congress, as Trump supporters piled into buses headed for Washington, DC for a rally that would devolve into the January 6 Capitol riot, 14 Wisconsin lawmakers – including 13 members of the assembly – signed a letter addressed to Mike Pence, the vice-president, urging him not to certify the election. The missive, signed by lawmakers in five swing states, accused governors and state officials of “obfuscation and intentional deception” and claimed state legislatures have the final say in certifying the election results. The chair and vice-chair of the Wisconsin assembly committee on campaigns and elections were among the signatories.

Vos did not sign. But in a press conference that day, he told reporters he took the party’s rightwing base seriously and said the widespread doubt about the election results called for a re-evaluation of the electoral process. Since then, he’s sought to walk a tightrope of appeasing his base while refusing to bow to their wildest demands. But that has proven challenging.

Trump and his allies spent months filing lawsuits to try to overturn his loss in Wisconsin and other states. When his lawsuit asking the Wisconsin supreme court to toss out thousands of votes cast in Democratic strongholds failed, he tried to pressure Vos and other Republicans in the legislature to decertify the election themselves.

“I think it is unlikely we would find enough cases of fraud to overturn the election,” Vos told reporters at the time, suggesting that the state first investigate the 2020 election.

The Republicans’ refusal to actually attempt to decertify the election angered Trump. In June 2021, as Wisconsin Republicans gathered for their annual convention, Trump issued a statement accusing Vos and other legislative party leaders of “working hard to cover up election corruption”.

Vos has responded to Trump’s attacks by alternatively rejecting his wild claims while at the same time granting political concessions to groups peddling conspiracy theories.

Under pressure from Trump, Vos in 2021 announced an investigation into the election, appointing Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin supreme court justice who had bolstered Trump’s disproven claims of election fraud and spoken at a Wisconsin “Stop the Steal” rally shortly after the 2020 election, as special counsel. During his investigation, Gableman traveled across the US, speaking at an elections conference hosted by Lindell and viewing the discredited Cyber Ninjas election audit in Maricopa county, Arizona.

A year later, when the Wisconsin supreme court ruled that the use of ballot “dropboxes” during the 2020 election was unlawful, the former president approached Vos with another call to decertify the election. “I explained that it’s not allowed under the constitution,” Vos told WISN-TV 12 News in Milwaukee.

Trump was furious. Days later, the former president endorsed Adam Steen, Vos’s election-denying primary opponent, calling Steen a “rising patriotic candidate” and denouncing Vos.

Vos barely survived the primary, winning by less than 300 votes.

“One of my biggest regrets was hiring Gableman,” said Vos, who fired the judge days after his primary. “He was way wackier than I thought. He was disappointing. He was inept. He was way worse for the system.”

As Trump turned on Vos, cracks within the Wisconsin GOP deepened.

Vos was roundly booed at the state convention in 2022 for telling the delegates that lawmakers “have no ability to decertify the [2020] election and go back and nullify it” .That day, more than a third of the delegates voted to oust him from party leadership.

Vos will not break the law to try to win them over, but he’s still looking to win back some of their support – all while trying to keep himself and the Republican party in power amid a shakeup in the Wisconsin supreme court.

After voters elected liberal justice Janet Protasiewicz to the state’s highest court, Vos entertained the idea of impeaching her before she could rule on the constitutionality of the state’s gerrymandered maps, only dropping the cause when a panel of former justices recommended against it.

Vos has also come under pressure from election denying groups to oust Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s nonpartisan election commissioner who became a target of false claims that she broke the law to hurt Trump in 2020.

“As the leader, [Vos] takes the brunt of it,” said the state senator Duey Stroebel, a Republican who served in the assembly for four years and has, like Vos, worked on restrictive voting laws during his tenure. “He’s kind of the poster boy for these things.”

Vos has echoed calls for Wolfe to step down. But he has slow-walked impeachment efforts, referring impeachment articles to an assembly committee in November, where they have languished since. A group that goes by the name “Wisconsin Elections Committee, Inc” has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV and newspaper ads running regularly since November pressuring Vos to impeach Wolfe.

“It’s not gonna happen,” Vos said brusquely, voicing his irritation at Trump and his allies’ unyielding focus on the 2020 election. “Donald Trump’s unhealthy obsession with 2020 is not what Americans want to hear about in 2024.”

But at this point, it seems unlikely Vos can do much more to satisfy the far right base of his party. Even if he pivots and sees Wolfe’s impeachment through, a move that could destabilize elections ahead of 2024, the right wing will likely continue to ramp up their anti-democratic demands.

“As long as Donald Trump is politically active, they will be politically active,” said Bernier, who has been vocal in pushing back against Trump’s election lies – and counts Vos as a friend. Wisconsin activists who challenge election outcomes, she said, “will continue this until Donald Trump is no more”.

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starlightshadowsworld · 1 year

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You make me do

Fatima Jinnah

Known as Madar-e-Millat or mother of the nation. She was crucial in the Pakistan's fight for independence.

And founded Jinnah Medical College for Girls.

Too much labour

Yasmeen Lari

Pakistan's first female architect. She went from designing shiny corporate structures such as Karachi's finance and trade center.

To helping build shelters for those affected by earthquakes (since 2005) with the resources they had available.

All day everyday

Zennat Haroon Rashid

Founding member of the Woman's national guard in Pakistan.

Her daughter created the "Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women" in her honour. Which works to support women who want to pursue writing as a career.

Therapist Mother Maid

Azra Haq

A member of the Woman's national guard in Pakistan who helped to support and aid women who had been abandoned during the partition.

Nympth and a virgin

Sheherezade Alam

A renowned ceramist who themed her work around the earth. Founder of LAAL, an artistic movement to promote and preserve Pakistani art and culture.

Nurse than a servant

Mehnaz Rafi

One of the first members of the Woman's Action Forum (WAF) who worked to help woman fight for their rights.

Just an apandage

Madeeha Gauhur

Pakistani actress, playwright and director. Founded the Ajoka theatre in 1984, which stages social themes in theatres, on the street and other places in the public.

Live to attend him

Bapsi Sidhwa

Pakistani world renowned author, essayist and playwright. Well known for her novels which reflect her personal experiences of Partition, her life in Lahore, diasporic stories, identity etc.

So that he never lifts a finger

Begum Ra’ana Liaqat Ali Khan

The 1st First Lady of Pakistan, became the first Muslim female delegate to United Nations. In 1954, she became the first woman ambassador of Pakistan and was sent to Netherlands. In 1973, she became the first female governor of Sindh and later on, the first Chancellor of Karachi University and Sindh University.

Begum Ra’ana was awarded Nishan-e-Imtiaz. She was also given Order of Merit of Italian Republic, Order of Orange Nassau, Netherlands and the UN Human Rights Award 1978.

24/7 baby machine

Dr Sania Nishtar

She is the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection and the Leader of Global Health and Sustainable Development.

Since 2018, Dr Sania has been the leader of the poverty reduction program in Pakistan called Ehsas, which strives to provide livelihood and improve the social situation of many people in the country.

So he can live out

Muniba Mazari Baloch

Due to suffering a spinal cord injury at 21, Muniba used it as fuel to encourage women and girls that have experienced discrimination or violence to not fear or fight the pain.

She is as Pakistan’s first National Ambassador.

His picket fence dreams

Asma Jahangir

Pakistani politician, lawyer, and human rights activist. She chaired the Bar Association of the Supreme Court. She has won numerous awards for her work on human rights, including the Martin Ennals Award.

It's not an act of love if you make her

Tahira Qazi

A beloved Pakistani principle who was held hostage at her school with her students by terrorists.

Although she had the opportunity to escape and save her own life, she chose to save her students.

"They are my children and I am their mother.”

She fought for them but unfortunately lost her life that day, on December 16th 2014.

You make me do too much labour

Malala Yousafzai

Pakistani activist for women's rights to education. Fighting for her right to education since she was a child, getting shot in the head by the Taliban for her efforts.

She continues to fight and was the youngest person to be awarded a Nobel peace prize.

#women's history month #Pakistani #Pakistan #Desi #Pakistani women #Pakistan women #Women's rights #pakistan culture #Artists #Writers #Playwrights #Tw death #Tw shooting #South Asia #paris paloma

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 8 months

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Ineligible, Bolsonaro gets honorary citizenship from allied governor

Far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro was awarded honorary citizenship of Minas Gerais state on Monday, by Governor Romeu Zema.

The motion to confer honorary citizenship to Mr. Bolsonaro in Brazil’s second most-populous state was approved by local lawmakers back in early 2019, just weeks after he took office as president. However, a ceremony had not yet been scheduled, despite the former president’s frequent trips to Minas Gerais during last year’s election campaign.

State lawmaker Colonel Sandro, a retired police officer and member of Mr. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL), authored the motion. Mr. Sandro was re-elected last year for a second term.

Mr. Bolsonaro was born in the city of Glicério, in the state of São Paulo, and served as a House member for seven consecutive terms (1991-2018), representing the state of Rio de Janeiro.

#brazil #politics #brazilian politics #jair bolsonaro #romeu zema #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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This day in history

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

#10yrsago Which Congresscritters want to sell out the America’s laws to offshore copyright giants? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/stop-fast-track

#10yrsago Lavabit’s owner threatened with arrest for shutting down rather than spying on customers https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/lavabit-com-owner-i-could-be-arrested-resisting-surveillance-order-flna6c10908072

#10yrsago Little Brother inspired Google to encrypt its users’ traffic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icQtM64ah3g&t=2808s

#10yrsago Dutch ebook sellers promise to spy on everyone’s reading habits, share them with “anti-piracy” group https://torrentfreak.com/down-torrent-pirates-130813/

#10yrsago WalMart’s trove of decade-old, massive, low-capacity hard-drives https://consumerist.com/2013/08/14/decade-old-hard-drives-launguish-on-walmart-store-shelves-make-us-sad/

#10yrsago Why terrorist bosses are micro-managing dicks https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/business-habits-highly-effective-terrorists

#10yrsago Audio memoir of original Disney Imagineer, with free sex-and-drugs excerpt! https://memex.craphound.com/2013/08/16/audio-memoir-of-original-disney-imagineer-with-free-sex-and-drugs-excerpt/

#5yrsago 1,000 Googlers sign petition opposing Google’s plan to launch a censored Chinese search engine https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html

#5yrsago Chicago police data reveals how dirty cops spread corruption like a disease https://theintercept.com/2018/08/16/chicago-police-misconduct-social-network/

#5yrsago Billionaire making a bid for Democratic Florida Governor nomination invested millions in Puerto Rican debt https://theintercept.com/2018/08/16/jeff-greene-florida-puerto-rico-debt/

#5yrsago Excellent advice for new law students https://www.popehat.com/2018/08/16/some-friendly-advice-to-new-law-students/

#5yrsago Award-winning security research reveals a host of never-seen, currently unblockable web-tracking techniques https://wholeftopenthecookiejar.com/static/tpc-paper.pdf

#1yrago How Democrats could win more elections: Do stuff. Make it timely. Tell people about it. https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/16/do-stuff-talk-about-it/#under-a-bushel

Back my anti-enshittiification Kickstarter here!

#pluralistic

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stylestream · 6 months

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Hilary Swank | Armani Privé Fall 2018 gown | Governors Awards | 2018

#pc: justjared #hilary swank #armani prive #armani prive fall 2018 #governors awards #2018 governors awards #2018

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reasoningdaily · 1 year

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Romarilyn Ralston

Romarilyn Ralston is Executive Director and former Program Director (2016-2022) of Project Rebound. She identifies as a black feminist abolitionist with an incarceration experience. She also chair’s the CSU Project Rebound Consortium Policy & Advocacy Committee. Romarilyn Ralston earned a Bachelor’s degree in Gender & Feminist Studies from Pitzer College and a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts from Washington University in St. Louis after 23 years of incarceration. Romarilyn is especially focused on building power, sharing space, and empowering systems-impacted BIPOC women and other justice-involved sisters from all backgrounds through the transformative power of post-secondary education and community-building. She is a long-time member and organizer with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and serves on the leadership committee. Romarilyn sits on the several national Board including the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison and Freedom Reads also known as the Yale Million Book Project. In 2022, Ralston received a full pardon from Governor Gavin Newsom.

Awards

She is the recipient of Pitzer College’s 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award, California State Senator Ling Ling Chang’s 2020 Woman of Distinction Social Justice Champion Award, and the 2018 Civil Rights and Advocacy Award from the Orange County Chapter of the National Council of 100 Black Women. Ralston was a 2018 Fellow of the Women's Policy Institute , where as a member of the criminal justice reform team she helped to pass several pieces of legislation into law. Ralston has also held fellowships with Just Leadership USA, CORO Public Affairs, and the Napier Initiative for Justice and Peace.

Romarilyn Ralston CV

The Education Trust Advisory Board Member, Appointed May

Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, Board Vice Chair, Appointed August 2021

Pitzer College Alumni Board Member, Appointed June 2020

Freedom Reads, The Justice Collaborative at Yale University. The Million Book Project will bring curated 500-book literary time-capsules to 1,000 prisons and juvenile detention centers to each state in the United States, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Steering Committee Member, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation CARE Grant Program ($10 million), FY 2020.

Member, Blue Ribbon Commission on Fair Employment & Equity, City of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, an alliance of private and public sector employers committed to providing opportunities for people who have been historically excluded from upwardly mobile jobs. Los Angeles, CA, July 2017- 2019.

Publications

Romarilyn Ralston | openDemocracy

"Project Rebound Coordinator Uses Education to Help Formerly Incarcerated Students," The Daily Titan, December 4, 2017.

"Silenced by the Pain of a Tumultuous Life," Ms. Magazine Blog, October 29, 2015.

Abolition Feminisms Vol. 1 Organizing, Survival, and Transformative Practice Edited by Alisa Bierria, Jakeya Caruthers, and Brooke Lober Foreword by Dean Spade ESSAY: Caring Collectively: 25 Years of Abolitionist Feminism in California

1st Edition Critical Perspectives on Teaching in Prison Students and Instructors on Pedagogy Behind the Wall Edited By Rebecca Ginsburg Chapter 19: Schools, Prisons, and Higher Education

#Romarilyn Ralston

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