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A Western University social media post supporting the fight against homophobia included an illustration of two women in hijabs about to kiss – sparking a backlash from London's Muslim community that forced school officials to delete it.

This is Zander Moricz. He is the first openly gay Class President in his school in Sarasota, Florida. Now the school principal is threatening to cut off his microphone if he mentions LGBTQ topics in his upcoming graduation speech. Zander is also the youngest plaintiff in a lawsuit against Florida regarding the 'Don't Say Gay' law and how it harms queer people. Here is a video of him being interviewed. And here is an important Twitter thread by him where you can read more about what's going on.

IDF is terrorist organization wbk

Apple has announced that it’s discontinuing the iPod Touch, the last remaining model in its lineup of portable music players. In a news post on Tuesday, the company says that it will sell the current Touch “while supplies last.” While Apple may be done with making dedicated music players, the company says that “the spirit of iPod lives on” in all of its devices that play music, such as the iPhone, iPad, and HomePod Mini. The iPod Touch going away marks the end of an era. As Apple notes, it introduced the first iPod “over 20 years ago.” The original FireWire-equipped model acted as just a portable music player, and Apple made models that were pretty much exclusively for listening to audio up until 2017, when it discontinued the iPod Nano and Shuffle. While the iPod Touch has been embraced by some iPod enthusiasts as the new classic music player, it also found a following for those who wanted an iPhone-like experience but didn’t actually need a phone. While the iPod Touch has had its fans, the writing’s been on the wall for a while. The model discontinued on Tuesday, the seventh-gen iPod Touch was introduced in 2019, alongside the iPhone 7. The sixth-gen model launched in 2015. Despite people like me crying for a simplistic music player designed for the age of streaming, it was clear that Apple wasn’t looking to spend much time on the iPod. https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/10/23065412/apple-ipod-touch-canceled-discontinued

Queen Elizabeth will miss the Queen's Speech for the first time ever (outside of pregnancies). The monarch cancelled all recent events and hasn't been seen in public for a very long time. bbc Will she attend her own jubilee next month? Are the rumours true?

Video: https://www.instagram.com/p/CdVXlPEok-B/

Sinn Féin are the first Nationalist party to have won the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections in over 101 years, meaning Michelle O’Neill will be First Minister of Northern Ireland

Fascism is coming/here folks

This is the second thread to discuss the overthrowing of Roe v. Wade. The last thread was closed due to out of control behavior. To clarify a few things, 1. We believe a woman has the right to choose what to do with her body. If your opinion differs and suggests the government should be in control of those decisions, be warned of blowback from most members. This is not necessarily an argument about your own personal opinion about abortion. 2. Regardless of what side of this issue, responding with death threats is not acceptable. You are welcome to debate, but do not cross the line or else you will receive harsh warnings and/or other penalties.

It's ironic how Russians say that they are protecting the children. Very similar to the GOP in the US. Russia calls it propaganda, GOP calls it indoctrination. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. (Reuters) - A Russian court on Tuesday fined Meta Platforms Inc. 4 million roubles ($54,030) for failing to delete posts that contained what it calls “LGBT propaganda”, the Interfax news agency reported. A 2013 Russian law, decried by Western countries as state-enforced bigotry, bans the “promotion of non-traditional sexual relations to minors”. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ($1 = 74.0330 roubles) https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-meta/russia-fines-meta-platforms-over-lgbt-propaganda-ifax-says-idUSR4N2WG007

x The service had 150,000 subscribers, but only 10,000 people were using it.

Now some context: As a response for a COVID wave Chinese authorities have locked down 26 million Shanghai residents. These protests in particular are the result of people being kicked out of their homes so that the authorities could turn said homes into COVID quarantine quarters forcefully. I don’t think I remember any case of Chinese people taking the very dangerous (under the Chinese communist party rule) choice of protesting and clashing with police to this level. Do you think this will further develop? Will authorities compromise? Or will they crack down even harder on free speech and protests?

What the actual phucking hell

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Updated Nov 30 2021 Source: Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants (who.int) Working definition: A SARS-CoV-2 variant that meets the definition of a VOI (see below) and, through a comparative assessment, has been demonstrated to be associated with one or more of the following changes at a degree of global public health significance: Increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology; OR Increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation; OR Decrease in effectiveness of public health and social measures or available diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics. Currently designated Variants of Concern (VOCs)+: WHO label Pango lineage• GISAID clade Nextstrain clade Additional amino acid changes monitored° Earliest documented samples Date of designation Alpha B.1.1.7 GRY 20I (V1) +S:484K +S:452R United Kingdom, Sep-2020 18-Dec-2020 Beta B.1.351 GH/501Y.V2 20H (V2) +S:L18F South Africa, May-2020 18-Dec-2020 Gamma P.1 GR/501Y.V3 20J (V3) +S:681H Brazil, Nov-2020 11-Jan-2021 Delta B.1.617.2 G/478K.V1 21A, 21I, 21J +S:417N +S:484K India, Oct-2020 VOI: 4-Apr-2021 VOC: 11-May-2021 Omicron* B.1.1.529 GR/484A 21K - Multiple countries, Nov-2021 VUM: 24-Nov-2021 VOC: 26-Nov-2021 • Includes all descendent lineages. See the cov-lineages.org and the Pango network websites for further details. * See TAG-VE statement issued on 26 November 2021 ° Only found in a subset of sequences *Notable spike (S) amino acid changes under monitoring, which are currently reported in a minority of sequenced samples. Working definition A SARS-CoV-2 variant : with genetic changes that are predicted or known to affect virus characteristics such as transmissibility, disease severity, immune escape, diagnostic or therapeutic escape; AND Identified to cause significant community transmission or multiple COVID-19 clusters, in multiple countries with increasing relative prevalence alongside increasing number of cases over time, or other apparent epidemiological impacts to suggest an emerging risk to global public health. Currently designated Variants of Interest: WHO label Pango lineage* GISAID clade Nextstrain clade Earliest documented samples Date of designation Lambda C.37 GR/452Q.V1 21G Peru, Dec-2020 14-Jun-2021 Mu B.1.621 GH 21H Colombia, Jan-2021 30-Aug-2021 The journey so far... (as of Jul 08 2022) Average rise in neutralizing antibody levels: Live Science Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Moderna Booster Johnson & Johnson Booster Two doses Pfizer-BioNTech Initially 20x 31.7x 12.5x Two doses Moderna Initially 11.5x 10.2x 6.2x One dose Johnson & Johnson Initially 35.1x 75.9x 4.2x ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Long-terms effects of COVID-19 ("Long COVID") More than 50 long-term effects of COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis | Scientific Reports (nature.com) ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Information added on Jan 25 2022 Statement on Therapies for High-Risk, Nonhospitalized Patients | COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines (nih.gov) Mixing and matching vaccines Information accurate as of Nov 2021 Note: Always check with a medical professional first if you have any doubts on the vaccines that you are going to get _________________________________________________________ Let's support one another in these difficult times! _________________________________________________________ Masks 4 All https://masks4all.co/ _________________________________________________________ [My original post on Jan 09 2020] https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5759289/wuhan-pneumonia-outbreak-disease/%3famp=true How serious is the pneumonia outbreak? According to Wuhan's health bureau, 59 patients have been diagnosed with the virus, including seven in critical condition as of Sunday. Some of the patients operated stalls at the seafood market. All of the patients are in quarantine, and 163 people who had been in close contact with them have been placed under medical observation. The World Health Organization says symptoms include fever and difficulty breathing. How fast is it spreading? The first case was discovered in Wuhan on Dec. 12, the city's health bureau says. On Monday, authorities in Hong Kong reported that six more patients were found to have fever or respiratory symptoms after returning from Wuhan, bringing the number of cases in the city to 30.

Welcome to the official home for discussions related to US politics! 2020 US Presidential Election (op will be under construction for a little bit) Please, remember to be courteous to other members because not everyone will see every issue in the same way. Flame bait, name calling, trolling, and other disruptions will not be tolerated. Friendly debate is welcome and encouraged

Russian Invasion of Ukraine PLEASE NOTE: Want a resource link to send funds to besides the armed forces? Please check out the tweet below. I try to update this OP at least weekly with new Ukraine war maps from Al-Jazeera further below. This OP was originally oriented around an original thread on Five Eyes intelligence of an upcoming invasion first posted here in November 2021 that was changed to reflect the invasion that officially began in February 2022 and then subsequent posts were deleted as a result of the April 2022 forum reset. Al-Jazeera Live Daily Tracker Before the war - Maps in Context RESOURCE CONTEXT Sourcing: Shorter source list (English only) Verified and/or Highly Cited: CLICK NAMES FOR LINKS No endorsement of any of their other positions or those of their employers; news focused only Phil Stewart (Military correspondent, Reuters) Christo Grozev (Executive Director, Bellingcat) Eliot Higgins (Founder/Creative Director, Bellingcat) The Kyiv Independent (Ukrainian independent outlet) Kyiv Post (Ukrainian newspaper) Kevin Rothrock (Editor, Meduza English) Andrei Soldatov (Senior Fellow, CEPA) Liveuamap (Global independent outlet) Andrew Roth (Moscow correspondent, The Guardian) Liubov Tsybulska (Stratcom Ukraine Information/Hybrid Warfare Security Center Founder) Stratcom Centre (Ukraine Ministry of Culture's Strategic Comms / Info Warfare) Oleg Shakirov (Russian Center for Advanced Governance, consultant at PIR Center) Daria Kaleniuk (Executive Director, Ukraine's Anti-Corruption Action Centre) Paula Chertok (Kyiv's Mohyla Journalism School; Writer, Euromaiden Press) Nataliya Gumenyuk (Kyiv-based founder of Public Interest Journalism Lab) Myroslava Petsa (BBC Ukraine reporter) NEXTA (Former Belarusian-based outlet covering Eastern Europe, now based in Poland) SUSPILNE NEWS (Ukrainian Public Broadcaster) Max Seddon (Moscow Bureau Chief, Financial Times) Michael Kofman (Director, Russian Studies at CNA) Maria Shagina (Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Sanctions in post-Soviet regions) Polina Ivanova (Financial Times Ukraine/Russia correspondent) Illia Ponomarenko (Defense reporter, The Kyiv Independent) Euromaiden Press (Ukrainian independent outlet) Maria Avdeeva (Research Director at Euro Expert Association, Security Ops/Disinfo in Ukraine) Michael Horowitz (Le Beck International Geopolitical Consulting Firm) Anton Troianovski (Moscow Bureau Chief, New York Times) Mary Ilyushina (Washington Post/CBS Russia correspondent) Olga Tokariuk (EFEnoticias freelance correspondent in Kyiv) Julia Davis (Russian Media Analyst, The Daily Beast) Shaun Walker (Eastern Europe reporter, The Guardian) Samuel Ramani (Bylines in Washington Post/Foreign Policy, Fellow, RUSI) Neil Hauer (BNEIntellinews independent journalist in Ukraine) Jack Detsch (National Security Reporter, Foreign Policy magazine) Christopher Miller (BuzzFeedNews, reporting on Ukraine) Shashank Joshi (Defence Editor, The Economist) Unofficial OSINTtechnical The Intel Crab Caucasus War Report