This is horrific. I feel physically ill.

(Reposted with ALT text)

In 1777, George Washington mandated that all members of the Continental Army be inoculated for smallpox.

In 2026, Pete Hegseth—citing the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandate—ended the requirement that service members receive a flu vaccine.

green and yellow parrot hanging out

On this 4/20, please consider donating to The Last Prisoner Project which advocates on behalf of those still incarcerated for cannabis convictions in the year 2026, where we can walk into a dispensary and meet the 24 year old parrot who lives there.

give.lastprisonerproject.org/campaign/659...

it’s a great day for transphobes to eat shit

This is a high-heat, queer M/F, age gap romance featuring large quantities of sugar, bird watching, and more plastic prop lobsters than you can shake a net at.

Cassie fled NYC and culinary school after a traumatic bike accident. Now she’s running a donut shop in a small Maine town… and dealing with the fall-out from a meet-cute with a TV star who forgot to mention that one tiny detail.

That Special Something That Special Something - Kindle edition by McRae, Erin, Maltese, Racheline. Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

I don’t remember what crisis was going on when we first released this book, but I remember there was one and it got in the way. So now it’s on sale, in the middle of 87 other national/global crises.

(It’s on all platforms, if you boycott the ‘zon try your favorite)

www.amazon.com/That-Special...

I belong to the generation of people who resist getting diagnosed for anything because any such diagnosis becomes a pre-existing condition for which you will absolutely be penalized if ever you succeed in getting health insurance

Pennsylvania Court Overturns Abortion Coverage Ban, Ohio Judge Mad He Can't Deny More Abortions: April 20 News Roundup Plus, more good news from Michigan and Montana.

In today's roundup, we have three "actual good news" items, which may be a record.

(Don't ask how many not-good items there are.)

fucked up that polymarket is a dystopian tech company rather than a place you go to buy fresh produce from the local farmer and her three boyfriends

seven months on beehiiv, by the numbers was leaving substack worth it?

There's a lot of talk about leaving Substack & whether it will be the death-knell of your newsletter. I have been on Beehiiv for 7 months now & @tlpavlich.gay helped me run some numbers. So, was leaving Substack worth it? The answer, for me, has been a resounding "yes."

Here are the hard numbers:

My wife has taken me to a plant sale fair in Queens and it’s like infested with bitcoin

Homeland Security Task Force The nation's coordinated assault on cartels. A permanent, unified federal response operating across all 52 states and territories.

Without fanfare, we now have a National Police Force. Their webpage looks like Duke Nukem's wet dream.

hstf.gov

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

Alligator Alcatraz phones were cut off. Then the beatings began, court docs say One attorney wrote in a sworn declaration that officers broke a detainee’s wrist and “pepper sprayed everyone.”

www.tampabay.com/news/florida...

Unless you fight back, censorship naturally expands. Sex, gender, "harmful material," "political extremism" are all amorphous, subjective categories.

Legislators try to define them, but ultimately it's a matter of opinion as to what should be allowed in public.

That sports bra thing? Keeps women in hot climates from jogging. Keeps them from gyms. Keeps them from getting strong. Also this is your reminder to lift heavy; you can’t get bulky by accident or quickly. Advice that tells women not to lift weights is about keeping women weak.

There is a huge desi population in Texas and this very deliberately fucks an extremely large number of people.

Iris Long, Scientific Mentor to AIDS Activists, Dies at 92

UNSUNG HERO: Iris Long was an unlikely AIDS activist. A married chemist from Queens, she barely knew any gay people. She joined ACT UP to use her expertise to fight for treatments. May her memory be a blessing.

By Richard Sandomir, w/ a small assist from me.

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/h...

This is for multi day hiking and backpacking, for what you want to be wearing on the plane when your luggage gets lost… stuff like that. The Times sucks but this is not even why it’s terrible.

I saw the headlines this poll got and figured there was a screw loose somewhere. Glad to see I was right.

Don't simply believe polls you see! They are very easy to be used to mislead.

And, in case it needs saying again - look at how Michelle Obama has been treated in case you’ve forgotten that anti-trans polices are consistently used by racists to harass cis Black women. There’s a big racist strain in pageantry and that’s definitely gonna happen.

(I did pageants as a teen. I have lots and lots of critiques of the whole thing but it’s basically a cross between auditioning for commercials and an image sport and the opportunities it creates for some people are kinda essential whether we like it or not)

Regardless of what you think of pageantry all those types of people exist in it and even if you are like “yikes, pageants!” this is a messy problem. Especially when Miss America is a significant source of college scholarships.

As usual this is not going to go well - it’s unfair to trans women; intersex women & ppl who don’t yet know they’re intersex are going to face trauma; and this will be used to harass cis queer, athletic, and military women in pageantry

All these crooks need to have their entire estates appropriated by the next administration. Nationalize their assets. Sell all their belongings off, including their tee vees and furniture. Give the proceeds to mutual aid groups.

ZOHRAN: “TBH, I don’t think too much about how Republicans portray me. The power of an ideology is judged in the worth of its delivery— to be told a city-run grocery store is implausible but $500 MILLION/day to kill ppl in Iran & Lebanon is necessary speaks to a broken politics.”

A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity Great swathes of rock music since the nineteen-sixties would never have existed, we're sometimes told, were it not for the recordings of Robert Johnson. Certainly the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Cla...

A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity

There’s such an easy case to be made for real universal healthcare here. One less major thing to worry about = less stress = less political instability.

We're hiring a contract LGBTQ+ reporter The 19th is seeking a part-time contract reporter to report, write and produce coverage of LGBTQ+ issues, focusing on the intersections with politics and elections.

🚨 Come work with me at @19thnews.org — we're hiring a contract LGBTQ+ reporter!

Duration: 6 months, early June through late November
Location: Remote
Rate: $50 per hour