Marine Lance Corporal Jose Gutierrez, one of the first US service members to be killed in action during Operation Iraqi Freedom, was at one time undocumented, arriving here alone when he was just 14. A legal resident at the time of his death, he was posthumously awarded US citizenship. #MemorialDay

They came with roses. With sermons. With songs. With schoolchildren—three thousand of them, marching in lines, each bearing a flower, each humming or singing the old abolitionist hymn, “John Brown’s Body.” Black pastors led prayers. Black troops stood in salute.
4/21

Image: The plaque in Hampton Park commemorating the first Memorial Day was dedicated in 2010.

The dangerous AIs that we've had all along (corporations) have been running their compute (decisions to survive, grow etc) on human brains.... and now they have used the wetware to build LLMs in an attempt to move at least partially to operate directly on silicon.

This still implies everything experts are warning about, because we humans will use every opportunity to fuck each other over, as we've consistently done even when we had no LLMs.

Targeting a private educational institute because it won’t conform its governance and curriculum to what the state wants is…communist.

"After the older trees braced themselves for the eclipse, the rest of the trees followed suit, demonstrating an intertwined connection shared by the whole forest."

Trees Communicate With Each Other to Get Ready for a Solar Eclipse
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/trees-communicate-with-each-other-to-get-ready-for-a-solar-eclipse

#trees #forest #science

#wx #NOAA Day 1 Weather Forecast

Apologies for posting about this #measles case in #cville late. This is a great time to get that booster if you have been on the fence as preventable infectious disease becomes increasingly common and deadly here in the U.S. I am getting mine today. 💉 https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/news/2025-news-releases/virginia-health-officials-confirm-second-2025-measles-case-in-the-state/ #virginia #PublicHealth

#Drupal Coder 8.3.30 released!

The JS and CSS tokenizer has been deprecated, please use ESLint and Styleling instead.

Contains improved handling for phpcs:ignore and phpstan-ignore comments.

https://www.drupal.org/project/coder/releases/8.3.30

Amplify the voices living in the shadows of war.

Follow our newsletter through the link:

https://www.counteroffensive.news

Don’t miss this moving essay. #Gift link “Today democracy is once again under worldwide threat, assailed as disorderly & inefficient by autocratic leaders from Budapest to Moscow to Beijing, leaders our own president openly admires. Yet in 1861, ordinary men from even the remotest corners of the Union risked their lives because they believed, as Lincoln articulated for us all, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/26/opinion/memorial-day-democracy-crisis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.KE8.ssZB.CYGaSwOV4_nL&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

“You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.” – The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

UNRWA: Children in Gaza are enduring unimaginable suffering — hunger, displacement, and indiscriminate attacks.

No child should be a target of war.

Help a family survive. Donate, share, and stand with Gaza.

https://gofund.me/ca5e9ed1

#Gaza #FreePalestine #EndGenocide #Solidarity

When I had my hysterectomy, I was told recovery would be quick because I was young, fit & otherwise healthy.

They were wrong. The surgeon made an error and despite signs of post op bleeding, discharged me & went on vacation.

When I returned to the ER, I was ignored & gaslit

They told me it was “normal” to be in more pain 8 days after surgery than on day 1 (it’s not).

They said “what do you want us to do?”

They refused to run any tests beyond basic vitals, and scolded me for wasting their time

I knew something was wrong, but I was young and hadn’t yet learned how to advocate for myself.

The pain, swelling and bruising were getting worse with each passing day. I was dizzy, listless and had no appetite.

I slept ALL the time.

I was not getting better

I did what anyone would do, I went back to the ER. Surely this time they would take me seriously?

They didn’t. They made no attempt to hide their frustration that I had returned”. They made misogynistic comments about how “sensitive” I was & that being in pain was normal

I went home feeling completely dejected and disrespected, but also starting to gaslight myself.

Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe this was normal pain. Maybe I did need to suck it up.

I tried to force myself to eat and go for light walks. I tried to play through the pain.

I was vomiting everything up and frequently collapsing from fatigue.

I could not suck this up.

My boyfriend had to carry me into the ER for a third attempt to get help

They did the exact same thing. Asked what we expected them to do. Told us the pain was normal. Refused to call a consult or run tests.

Thankfully my boyfriend believed me over them. He was certain if I went home, I wouldn’t make it through the night

He refused to let them discharge me. He told them, loudly and sternly, that he was not taking me home to die. That they needed to do their jobs.

They threatened to call security but he did not back down.

Thankfully a doctor overheard him and decided to look in and see if he could calm the situation.

When he saw me, half unconscious and white as a ghost, he immediately ordered tests. He told the triage staff not to call security and to take me into a private room

It turns out my boyfriend was right. Had I gone home that night, I wouldn’t have made it to morning.

I had a massive internal bleed and a giant infected abscess which had been growing since the surgeon sent me home.

I was rushed to another hospital for emergency surgery and given 50/50 odds of survival. I spent over a month in the hospital, developed a second hospital acquired infection, and needed 11 months to fully recover.

I survived due to luck & privilege. Had my boyfriend not believed me, I wouldn’t be here. Had he not been a white man? He likely would have been removed & I would have died

This is medical misogyny. They didn’t listen because I was a woman. They thought I was being dramatic

I tell this story because of what happened to Adriana Smith. A young black woman in Georgia who tried to get medical care for severe headaches, and was dismissed and gaslit instead.

She suffered brain death at home because no one believed her. Because of misogynoir.

To make matters worse, she’s been turned into a medical experiment because she was nine weeks pregnant and living in a state with an abortion ban. She’s on organ & tissue support being treated as a human incubator.

No care when alive & forced “care” when dead

Misogyny in medicine kills. It maims. It disables and traumatizes.

Women are frequently treated as hysterical and not given the medical care they require.

We often need a man to accompany us just to be taken seriously.

It’s not right and it needs to change

I will forever deal with medical PTSD because of what I went through, but at least I survived.

Adriana wasn’t so lucky, and no one’s survival should ever be based on luck, privilege or their ability to find a man to speak for them

I survived due to luck and privilege, Adriana didn’t.

What’s worse, due to abortion bans and dangerous forced birth policies, her body is kept alive on organ and tissue support without her family’s consent.

We must do better:

https://www.disabledginger.com/p/adriana-smith-misogyny-and-the-cruelty

#misogyny #misogynoir #ableism #patriarchy #abortion #mybodymychoice #disability #ableism #uspol

If you are protesting the Trump regime's war on America, you need to know your rights. (You need to know them regardless.)

The ACLU is offering training: https://act.aclu.org/a/2025-kyr-training-2

h/t @jennifer

Rep. @maxwellfrost.bsky.social : “The biggest transfer of wealth from the working poor to billionaires in our history… My generation already expects we'll never be able to afford a home, get out of debt, retire— Trump and the Republicans are making it worse.” #TrumpsTrillionsTransfer

Citation Needed is an independent publication, entirely supported by readers like you. Consider signing up for a free or pay-what-you-want subscription — it really helps me to keep doing this work.

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Well, well, well, look who just got sanctioned in the EU: Stark Industries Solutions! It's about freaking time.

I spent about six months last year researching and writing a deep dive into Stark, its origins, owners and ties to Russian disinformation campaigns and DDoS.

Here's the EU annoucement: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2025/05/20/russia-s-war-of-aggression-against-ukraine-eu-agrees-17th-package-of-sanctions/

Here's my story from last year: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/05/stark-industries-solutions-an-iron-hammer-in-the-cloud/