Episode Summary

This time on This Month In the Apocalypse, Brooke and Inmn talk about storms, extreme flooding, and the deadly heat dome. They talk about a lot going on in the ocean, including orca attacks, the Ocean Gate submersible, and El Nino. They also talk about mostly bad things for trans people. However, there are some fun instances of fascists beating each other up.

Host Info

Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

This Month In the Apocalypse: June, 2023

Brooke Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This is your early summer June-ish installment of our segment This Month In the Apocalypse. I am Brooke Jackson and co-hosting with me today is the very delightful Inmn. Our podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And before we explore today's episode, we'd like to share a little jingle from another pod on the network. JIngle jangle, jingle jangle. [Brooke singing a simple melody]

Brooke And we're back. Hey Inmn, how are you feeling today?

Inmn I'm, I'm feeling fairly good today, Brooke. But you know, a lot of bad things happened in June. But also, some really funny things happened in June. So...

Brooke This is true. You wanna hear the funniest thing that happened? I bet you have one, but I have one that's gonna be funnier.

Inmn Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of funny things that we'll get to. How are you, Brooke?

Brooke I'm good. I like that we've swooped in and taken this podcast away from Margaret. Just kidding. She's dealing with other stuff. We miss her terribly. And, she trusted us to do this whole episode on our own.

Inmn Yeah, because we're real people.

Brooke And I'm so excited about that. Do you want to hear really funny story?

Inmn Yes.

Brooke Okay, so Portland, Oregon always does a big Pride celebration on--well it's usually it's a Sunday, I think--in June and it's often fallen on Father's Day because of terrible planning and timing. And this year it finally didn't for once. So, it was having his big Pride celebration. I think this was just a week ago. And both the Proud Boys and the Rose City Nationalists showed up to protest Pride, except both groups showed up to the wrong location. And they showed up to the same wrong location. And they got in a fight with each other instead of fighting and protesting Pride.

Inmn Wow, do you know that the fight was...Like, why did they fight?

Brooke There's some videos you can find on like Twitter and the Proud Boys are attacking the Rose City Nationalists and they're calling them racists. And the Rose City Nationalists are in like khaki pants and blue shirt, you know, that full face covering thing. What does they call that? Something. And like hats. And the Proud Boys are a bunch of older white dudes, burly biker gang kind of guys, and they're yelling at them for being like punk kids, and wearing masks, and being racist. They just kick the shit out of them.

Inmn Maybe just because I don't know totally who they are; who are the Rose City Nationalists?

Brooke Oh, there are local to Portland chapter of one of the white nationalist groups in the US.

Inmn Okay. What...Do you know why did the Proud Boys think that they're racist?

Brooke I think if I remember correctly, I think they're like a neo-Nazi affiliated group, the nationalists, and they think it's really weak of them to wear full face coverings and not show their faces when they show up to events and to be in like matching outfits. I think they mock that too when they're getting into the fight, how they're in their little khaki and blue shirt uniform thing.

Inmn Wow. That is...You know, if all of the white supremacists want to like fight each other and spend all their time doing that, I would be thrilled.

Brooke The best outcome to a Pride protest ever, two asshole groups showing up at the wrong location and fighting each other instead.

Inmn Oh, that's just wonderful.

Brooke A big thanks to friend of the pod, Alex, for sending me all of the videos from this and news articles and stuff. I've just been laughing about that all week. I keep thinking about it and just chuckling

Inmn I have a similarly...you know, it's like a something bad happened, but also something funny happened kind of thing. All right.

Brooke Let's go. I like funny news.

Inmn Okay, so, ongoing anti-trans legislation across the country and in Texas. Yeah, it's pretty bad. But, Michelle Evans who's like...I think she's a Texas House Representative candidate and some kind of like legislative Director for some wacky organization that is trying to do weird things around COVID vaccines. She was at the Texas State Capitol to celebrate SB14, which is a bill that was signed into legislation that blocks doctors from providing gender affirming care to minors, which is pretty horrifying.

Brooke It's awful.

Inmn Yeah, it is. It is not as bad as SB 1029, which would essentially defund all gender affirming care for anyone in the state of Texas. It's through some pretty interestingly deceptive means. Like, it blocks use of public funds for those things, which sends this ripple effect through....because you could be like, "Oh, What about like, you know, private providers? Wouldn't they still be able to provide care for people?" And the answer is probably not. Because, the public funding affects things like malpractice insurance or insurance providers in general. And so it's essentially, private doctors who don't receive public funding for doing gender affirming care, would essentially not be able to get insured because of this funding that's being...would be taken away. So...

Brooke It's not okay. So not okay. These bills make me so angry. And I feel like every time we do one of these episodes, we're talking about another state, another place, another layer of these bills, and it's not just like, "Oh, they're considering this," like it's that these bills are passing in various places.

Inmn Yeah, and SB 1029 has not passed in Texas, but SB 14, which blocks gender affirming care for minors, did pass. But, Michelle Evans was there at the Capitol celebrating and she confronted a trans woman in the bathroom. The altercation reportedly like involved some verbal harassment of this person. And then Michelle claims, she claims that she was sent a picture of this person in the bathroom.

Brooke That's creepy.

Inmn Yeah, by one of her followers. That's what she says. But she...It'll make sense in a moment. Okay, so she tweeted this out to her following and it very rapidly, you know, went viral and there were people commenting to her about it, being like, "Hey, you know, it's illegal to film people in the bathroom, right?" And she was...While she was still at the Capitol, she was detained by the Capitol Police and got her phone confiscated and she was questioned about the photo being like....They were like, "Oh, we heard that you tweeted this photo of someone in the bathroom." And she was like, "Oh, but I didn't take the picture." You know, or so she claims. And yeah, so she is still under investigation for taking a picture of someone in the bathroom, which is against the law it turns out in Texas.

Brooke Oh, there's a ray of sunshine in this awfulness. And that's like, I mean, even if...Okay. Laws, not laws. Anarchism....You know, it's confusing. But, It's wrong, whether or not it's legal or illegal, it's just like, your own internal ethics should tell you that that's wrong to do. So it's nice that there's repercussions for it in some way.

Inmn Yeah, you know, like, I don't...like I'm not down with the State existing or laws or like, whatever. But I'm absolutely not going to have sympathy for anyone who, like, might end up getting charges for filming people in the bathroom because that's fucked up. So, I'm curious if it'll catch on as like any kind of thing or like piece of resistance that people can do for like being harassed in bathrooms, like wherever they are, is to like....if you get filmed in the bathroom, it's like...I'm wondering if more people will end up catching charges for filming people in the bathroom who they believe to be trans.

Brooke Right, you know, but then now, as you say that, I realized the flip side of it. If you're someone who's being verbally or whatever, assaulted, attacked in the bathroom, like, you shouldn't get in trouble for filming the way someone's mistreating you. But, the law doesn't, you know, have that caveat to it.

Inmn Yeah, it's dumb. Yeah. But luckily, a lot of these people who are confronting people in bathrooms are like, incriminating themselves, I think. Mostly.

Brooke Yeah, that is handy. Like, if you're the bad guy and you're taking the video, thanks for the evidence and doing the thing that's illegal and getting you in trouble. I just feel bad for the person who's on the receiving end of the assaults, and them maybe feeling like, "Oh, I can't document this because it's illegal to film in here."

Inmn Yeah, yeah. So yeah, a thing for people to think about. So, that was a kind of funny thing.

Brooke That had better ending than I was expecting. So thank you for that.

Inmn Yeah. Um, do you want to hear some more kind of bad news, though, for trans folks in the news this month?

Brooke No, I don't. But I also don't want to be an ignorant...to live in ignorance. So you can tell me.

Inmn Okay. So Elon Musk, you know, is in the news, again.

Brooke Oh God, I know where this is going.

Inmn Elon announced that "Cis" and "Cis gendered," like those terms, are going to be slurs on Twitter and that targeted use of them could be grounds for account suspension on Twitter.

Brooke Just when you think he's not done being the worst, he finds new ways to be just the absolute worst.

Inmn I know. And like, I'm like...I feel like he just does it for the media cycle or whatever. Like, every time he like dips out of the news, he's like, "Oh, I'll just like, ridicule trans people and get back in the new cycle."

Brooke He just needs the attention one way or the other. All attention is good attention, including negative. Speaking of horrible rich people, actually, I have one for you, which is going slightly out of the order that we talked about earlier, but I think it's fun to put it in here. There's a company called Ocean Gate that has developed its own little mini submarines for undersea exploration. And it's doing private tours of underwater things like, you know, submarines and other wreckage. And it's gone down to the Titanic. And they've...I guess they've been doing this annually the last couple of years, although it sounds like the last two years were both research missions. And then this year was the first year, from what I'm reading, that they were doing an actual tourist expedition. So, five super rich people who paid a quarter million dollars a piece, popped into this tiny little submarine to go down and explore the Titanic and the submarine didn't survive the water pressure. Ergo, neither did the unfortunate rich people on their underwater sea exploration.

Inmn Yeah,

Brooke I don't know if any of them were specifically terrible human beings. But you know, rich people in general, if you can afford to pay a quarter million dollars to go underwater, I don't feel superduper bad about it.

Inmn Yeah, I think from from what I read, it was like, it was like three literal billionaires, the owner of the company, and then a titanic expert, who, I don't know what that person's deal was. So, you know, I might feel a little something for the Titanic expert who was possibly not a billionaire. But also, I don't know, I don't know what that person's life is.

Brooke Yeah, but the billionaires Hey, you shouldn't be hanging with billionaires anyway. And, it is pretty ironic that the founder of the company was one of them. And yeah, while they've done, you know, for people who don't know this, explorations have dived to the Titanic, and pictures you've ever seen in videos and stuff has never been from like, people actually being that up close to the wreckage because it's so deep underwater. It's from sending--I don't know what they call them--a drone that's underwater. So, a remotely manned, piloted underwater craft that goes down and like, explores that wreckage.

Inmn Yeah. And there's something...like, the pressure down there, it's like 6000 pounds per square inch or something. So like when that thing depressurized it was crushed within a few milliseconds?

Brooke Yeah, I have it here if you want. About one millisecond. 1 thousandth of a second is how fast it would collapse. And the human brain can't respond to stimulus--the fastest the human brain can respond to stimulus is like 25 milliseconds. So, significantly later than when it actually happened. Like. your brain couldn't register that it happens before you died. And also, this is interesting, human bodies incinerate and are turned into ash and dust instantly upon this implosion.

Inmn That's crazy.

Brooke Isn't that wild? So, you wouldn't even know that had happened. Like, less than a blink and you're gone.

Inmn Yeah, yeah. There is a there is an image circulating--which is probably like, you know, after hearing that, like, it's probably a photoshopped image--but there was an image floating around where people thought they could see the Xbox controller that controlled the sub on the bottom of the ocean. Which I think is probably not true because everything was destroyed. But....

Brooke Yeah, it's kind of funny, though. For a frame of reference, you mentioned that it's 5000 pounds of pressure. It's...that's like 400 times the amount of air pressure that we feel just standing around at sea level, I should say. So, it's the equivalent of the weight of the Eiffel Tower on you.

Inmn Wow.

Brooke Yeah. Or, I guess on the submarine. I shouldn't say on the person. But, that's the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower sitting on top of that little mini submarine.

Inmn Yeah. And on the note of the ocean gate, do you know who the...you know, this is a Wikipedia joke, so you know, maybe there's other people, but...Do you know who the last person who was killed by a maritime invention that they created was prior to this?

Brooke Maybe a Nazi submarine creator? I don't know. I'm guessing. Way randomly guessing.

Inmn Thomas Andrews. who designed the Titanic.

Brooke [Brooke laughing] The Titanic being like, "You shouldn't fucking come down here. Bad things happened." Cursed a bit of water.

Inmn Yeah. Cursed water.

Brooke So, mini submarines created by eccentric rich people who ignore standard safety protocols and the warnings from experts probably don't hop into one of those Let's move on. What else is happening in the ocean, Inmn?

Inmn So, I'm sure everyone has heard about this. But there have been an increasing string of orca attacks, specifically in the Straits of Gibraltar, which is kind of off the coast of Spain. And the...So it's a big hype in the media right now, I think because of some specific things, like that they've sunk at least three boats at this point.

Brooke Do orcas get big enough to sink boats?

Inmn Yes.

Brooke Wow. I'm bad with the size of things in the ocean. I think of them as being like dolphin size, but no, they're not. They're whale size, right?

Inmn Yeah, they weighed like 11 tonnes or something.

Brooke Oh lord those are big. Okay. I feel really ignorant for having confessed that to everyone. Just go ahead and laugh. It's okay.

Inmn Yeah, they're big. They're big and powerful. And they're incredibly smart as well. And there's this one boat captain who's reported getting attacked by orcas twice at this point. And both times, his ship's rudder has been disabled. And that's what the orca are doing, is they're--in some cases they're sinking boats--and in other cases, they're disabling the rudders by ramming into them and breaking the mechanism.

Brooke I don't know why I love that, but I kind of do.

Inmn Yeah, it's very interesting. And, they're supposedly teaching each other how to do it. There's adults teaching calves how to do it. And then like the calves mimicking the ramming of the rudders.

Brooke I love this. I don't know why I love this so much.

Inmn Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. And so, it's coming to prominence because of the sinking of the ships and because of the antagonism of this global boat race that goes through the Straits of Gibraltar and ships getting attacked during the race. But, can you guess how many orca attacks, or like encounters that resulted in some kind of worrisome interaction, with an orca that there have been since 2020?

Brooke Since 2020?

Inmn Yeah.

Brooke Okay, I'm gonna guess that there's a couple hundred a year in normal times. And, I think the time frame you're giving me implies that it's worse than usual. So, 1000.

Inmn Okay, I mean, you know, you're good at extrapolating disasters...[Laughing]

Brooke Because that still seems extreme. What is it close?

Inmn There have been over 500 recorded worrisome encounters or attacks on boats between 2020 and now. But, orcas have been attacking people and boats since the early 1900s, at least in terms of like what is recorded. There was a study done interviewing a lot of Inupiaq people in Alaska about orca interactions. And so like, you know, there are Indigenous stories of orca interactions dating back much further. And, what a lot of folks from those interviews had to say was that orcas are like, these, you know, wise and mystical creatures, but also that they hold grudges, might revenge themselves upon anyone who has harmed a whale in the past.

Brooke Fuck yeah.

Inmn Yeah. Which makes sense for some of the....Like, some of the orca attacks are being talked about, in the media specifically, they're like, "Yeah, it might be due to past trauma." Specifically, for this one whale named White Gladis who's supposedly the one who's teaching all of these orcas.

Brooke Angry old lady orca. I love it.

Inmn Yeah. But there's some kind of funny things being said about it. Like people are like, "Oh, it's from trauma." Some say it's revenge. Some cited it as a fad. And there are some people who are kind of minimizing it saying, like, "Oh, this is just a fad. Like, they're not revenging themselves upon people there. It's just a fad that they pick up and they'll drop it soon," citing examples like, in the Pacific Northwest, where for a while there was this pod of orcas that would swim around with dissembled seals on their heads.

Brooke Wow. Alright.

Inmn Yeah. And what's amusing about this to me is that people...I think people are just coming up with wild reasons for why animals do things. And it's like, I feel like it's almost how the news talks about like youth culture and youth uprisings. Like, there's some similar language being thrown around,

Brooke Oh, my gosh.

Inmn But one of the biggest underlying factors of the orca attacks in the Straits of Gibraltar could be linked to the fact that they were recently declared a critically endangered species or sub population. There's like 40 of them left in the Straits of Gibraltar.

Brooke Shit, that is not a lot.

Inmn I know. And so it's funny that people have this tendency to say like, "Oh, it's just a fad, or it's from past trauma." And it's like...they're a critically endangered sub population that is like, "No, fuck the chips. Like, it's messing with us." And, it is. Because, a lot of increased ship traffic leads to a lot of complications for them for hunting tuna. And, their fishing and hunting grounds are severely being messed up by boats, boat noise, and by changes in tuna migrations, which is exacerbated by warming waters. So, I think it's pretty clear they're revenging themselves upon humans for this

Brooke Yeah, for sure. And, when you're talking about how few of them there are and then you put that in perspective how many attacks there have been like...Obviously, you know, there are orcas in other places, not just the Straits of Gibraltar, but if there's only 40 there--and I don't know how many of the 500 or so boat attacks are...but let's say a couple 100 of the boat attacks are in that area where there's only 40 orcas, you know? That means every orca has gone out and done like five boat attacks. [Both laughing] It's just like, once or twice a year, they're like, "Fuck these boats. I'm doing it."

Inmn Yeah, yeah.

Brooke And I'm here for it. Go orcas!

Inmn Go Orcas.

Brooke You know what else what happens when we fuck with Mother Nature?

Inmn What also happens when we fuck with mother nature, Brooke?

Brooke Weather. Weather weirdness and stuff going bad. For instance--you've got a better one than me--but this is a little one that I'll pitch as a warm up and then you can share your much better story. There have been storms in the Midwest and the East Coast this last week that have grounded thousands or even tens of thousands of flights. They've been delayed and canceled. So, there's however many passengers that equals--maybe it's thousands of planes and tens of thousands of passengers was the number, actually. They're, you know, stranded vacationing on the east coast, what have you, and can't get back to their homes. And, they haven't even started rescheduling flights yet. And I compared this earlier to like Climate migration. And it's obviously not quite the same thing. It's like a very temporary sort of situation in which a whole bunch of extra people are stuck in a place because of the climate preventing their ability to travel. Isn't that fun?

Inmn No?

Brooke No, certainly not. Yeah. I mean, it's just like not the normal time of year for there being epic storms like this that are holding up planes and causing cancellations and stuff.

Inmn Yeah, yeah. Is some of that related to smoke from the wildfires in Canada?

Brooke Um, you know, I didn't see any notes about it being caused by smoke. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some of that going on too. But, it was talking really specifically about major storms, rain storms, wind storms in the Midwest and east, which is like...When we hear about it in the winter and there's flights canceled, we're like, okay, yeah, winter snow, and ice means flights get canceled. But, when you hear about it in summer, it's very strange to have that going on right now.

Inmn Yeah, yeah.

Brooke Is there are other strange weather going on now?

Inmn There's some other strange weather going on right now. So, in the southeast United States, South America, and Mexico right now there's this pretty intense heatwave going on. In Mexico alone, since March, there have been over 112 people who have died from extreme heat related complications in Mexico.

Brooke Jeez.

Inmn It's pretty brutal. There's large sporting events being canceled from athletes just like dropping out from heat illness. In the southeast of the US it is particularly bad with heat indexes of upwards of 120 degrees in New Orleans and Texas right now. And, a lot of these are like record heats for the areas. And notably in Texas, in Big Bend over the month, a 14 year old hiker in Big Bend died from heat related illness complications. And, his stepdad also died from heat related illness from crashing...which resulted in him crashing his car and dying while trying to get help for his stepson.

Brooke Jeez.

Inmn Yeah, it's awful. It's kind of brutal. And, there's kind of like critical fire conditions in New Mexico because of this. Like, I know someone who's like getting deployed to a fire pretty imminently in New Mexico. And, in contrast to this there's also wild flooding happening. Yeah, there's kind of been like an early little hurricane season in the Caribbean. And, in June there were catastrophic floods in Haiti, across the rest of the Caribbean, and in South America with catastrophic flooding in Brazil, Ecuador and Chile.

Brooke So like, just south of the areas that are having the really bad heat waves, basically?

Inmn Yeah. There's also this extreme flooding happening. And, some of this can be explained by a another pretty large weather shift, which is that we are officially in an El Nino weather pattern as of June

Brooke An El Nino is the wet one, right? It's way too much rain. And La Nina is something else?

Inmn Yeah, kind of. I spent a long time trying to understand these weather patterns and they're rather complicated. So, essentially what is going on is that there's this large amount of warm water that accumulates around Australia. And at some point, there's this big weather shift due to these like feedback loops changing. And, all of that warm water starts to move eastward. So, okay, during a La Nina event, Australia and tropical Asia experience a lot of flooding and storms and stuff. And then during an El Nino event, all of that warm water starts to shift eastward, which results in much higher surface water temperatures across the Atlantic. Which, can do a lot of it brings. It brings rain as well to the Atlantic. But, it also brings a huge amount of heat. So like during an El Nino event, there is projected to be like large increases in global temperatures and specifically in the surface water. And so typically in a La Nina event, we experience in the Atlantic a lot more hurricanes. So during an El Nino event, there's actually like a decrease in the amount of intensified hurricanes because of the trade winds that are associated with an El Nino event. They kind of like cut off the head of the hurricane before it can develop. But, due to an unprecedented heat event occurring, the heat is actually suppressing the winds and so a lot of weather scientists are unsure what's going to happen for this El Nino event because the winds that normally prevent large hurricanes might not do that anymore. But, there will be a huge increase in warm water and in the amount of water in the Atlantic so other catastrophic things could happen.

Brooke Oh, good. Just what we need more catastrophic things.

Inmn Yeah, and this is....I feel like I'm going to get @'ed for for some of this reporting. Go watch a YouTube video about El Nino.... [Brooke interrupts]

Brooke You're not a climatologist full time.

Inmn Yeah, not a climatologist. I had a really hard time deciphering a lot of this information. But yeah, that's what I got about the weather.

Brooke I think it was great. And I appreciate that. Alright, one quick news topic for you if I may?

Inmn Yeah, yeah. What else have you got in this list of horrifying things?

Brooke Well, the United States Postal Service, USPS, is raising the price of stamps again. That's effective July 9th. So, if you happen to be listening to this before July 9th and you're someone who does a lot of mailings, run out and buy some Forever stamps because they will be only be 63 cents and you can use them for first class postage forever. Where as, starting July 9th, they're going to be 66 cents. They're gonna go up three whole cents. They're also raising the price for postcards and for international mail.

Inmn Cool. I mean, you know, whatever. But...

Brooke I have one more funny news story, but I can't remember if you had other stuff to share, too?

Inmn I have some more stuff. I have some other headlines. But, you know, do your headlines.

Brooke Oh, no, throw out one of your headlines. I want to your headlines. I just did a headline. We take turns here at Strangers. It's very important.

Inmn All of my headlines are about pretty bad things happening for trans folks.

Brooke Oh God, no.

Inmn No, it's not a good month or a year for us.

Brooke Or century. Life time.

Inmn In Vancouver, BC, a husband and a wife interrupted a track and field meet literally in the middle of the shot-put event as this kid was walking up to do her turn. And this dad like literally stormed onto the field, accusing this person--who is a cis girl--ended up berating and accusing her of being trans, and how she should not be able allowed to compete, and demanded that the parents produce a birth certificate on the spot to prove that this like nine year old, this girl was, in fact, a cis girl.

Brooke Don't harass children. I mean, the whole thing is kind of bananas, but what grown ass adult in their right mind thinks it's okay to walk up to like, you know--I was picturing like a high schooler, which is still not okay, but then you said a nine year old and I'm like, "What the actual fuck? Like, what's wrong with your brain?" I shouldn't say it that way. Why would you think it's okay to berate a nine year old child? A stranger that you don't know? That's just bananas. That's bananas.

Inmn Yeah. All in the name of protecting children. [said with dry sarcasm]

Brooke Yes, as a mother, I'm imagining if that had been my child in that situation, I would have not done well. I become kind of a mama bear with my kid. And like some stranger comes up and starts shouting at my kid, it's not gonna go well for them. And I just don't understand how anybody thinks that's okay.

Inmn Yeah, and the both of them also verbally berated both of this kid's moms as being, you know, groomers and genital mutilators?

Brooke Gross. Yeah, child's not even trans. Not that would be okay if they were, but it's just that extra layer of ignorance.

Inmn Yeah, it does point to this larger thing, though, of like, you know--obviously, all of this heightened violence towards trans people is obviously more dangerous for trans people than it is for anyone else--But, I think that we're going to see--and this is corroborated by some more headlines that I have--that a lot of this violence is also going to be directed at other queer people. It's going to be directed at trans guys. And, a lot of it's going to be directed at cis women. Like, basically anyone who doesn't fit gender norms.

Brooke Wonderful.

Inmn Whether that's how they dress or how their hair is cut or otherwise. And, that was part of the provoking incident with this nine year old was that she had a pixie cut. So, she had short hair.

Brooke Oh, no. I had a shaved head at that age. Like 8, 9, 10. Like, shaved. Like that's just a pixie cut, you know, little tiny baby hairs. That's how I like to wear it. And it's weird to think about how if I were nine years old today, how I might be treated. I mean, everybody thought I was weird for having a boys haircut then but like, nobody was going to come up and yell at me about, I don't know, my gender expression or anything like that. They're just like, "You're weird." And that was all.

Inmn Yeah. Interesting. Do you have any other headlines?

Brooke I've got one more fun story from Oregon for you. Do you want it now? Or do you want it after your evil headlines?

Inmn Maybe if it's fun, maybe it's like a nice thing later?

Brooke Okay, yeah, that's good. Suffering for a little bit. And then maybe I can take us out with some lols.

Inmn Another notable thing that happened...this was like trending on Tik Tok a lot this past month was a like...a masc, a slightly masc presenting cis lesbian woman was actually arrested for using the bathroom designated for women.

Brooke Oh, of course.

Inmn Yeah.

Brooke God forbid.

Inmn Yeah. Which involves this dude cop like going into this bathroom and trying to shake this person down for ID, you know? To like, prove that she was in fact a cis woman.

Brooke Oh, the whole bathroom thing.

Inmn Ben Shapiro. I'm sure folks knew who Ben Shapiro is.

Brooke A little bit.

Inmn Yep. So, Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire is filming an anti-trans movie in Nashville right now.

Brooke I was really hoping you were gonna say in a bathroom. Sorry.

Inmn I'm sure bathrooms will get brought into this movie.

Brooke Okay, and where? Nashville?

Inmn Nashville Tennessee.

Brooke What's it called?

Inmn It's called the Coach Miracle and it is about a group of cis men who are pretending to be trans women so that they can play basketball in the Olympics.

Brooke Okay.

Inmn And I think I've heard that Ted Cruz was on location filming with it. And they misled...they had a bunch of misleading casting ads, which tricked a lot of queer actors into signing on to the film.

Brooke Yeah, I see it. I see it now.

Inmn Because it's being billed as this like queer comedy movie about basketball. But, yeah, it's pretty bad. But okay, so the one thing that I'm wondering is, does them making that movie put them in violation of Tennessee's drag ban?

Brooke When the shitty laws come back around to bite the shitty people in the ass? I hope it does.

Inmn Yeah, well, or

Brooke I really hope it violates that law.

Inmn It definitely wouldn't...like no one...None of them are going to be prosecuted for that. But, in a good bit of news, a federal judge rejected the Tennessee drag show ban as being unconstitutional.

Brooke Yeah, it is. It's a First Amendment violation

Inmn Yeah. So, the Tennessee drag ban is is no more. I mean, it's still in the books, but it has been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Brooke Alright. Well, that's a little something to make me less, just a little bit less worried about the world.

Inmn Yeah. But also the Human Rights Campaign, which I feel like I'm having like a brain fog around. I feel like the Human Rights Campaign came under heavy critique for being pretty transphobic in years past. But I can't remember a lot of things. So. But, you know, regardless, Human Rights Campaign, declared in June, what, you know, trans people have been saying for a very long time, which is that they declared a national state of emergency for trans people.

Brooke Holy shit.

Inmn Which, you know, I don't really understand what that means. And it's like, you know, queer and trans people have been saying the same thing for a very long time. So like, I don't really know what kind of legitimacy they're lending to it. But...

Brooke Yeah, but they're like a well known entity. So them, I think, saying that like really is going to draw some important attention to what's going on that obviously, you and I are paying well attention to, but I don't know how much any of the rest of society and you know, your normal Democrats or vanilla leftist folks are really paying any attention to all of this that's going on.

Inmn Yeah, yeah, that's true. But regardless of what's up with the Human Rights Campaign... And my foggy memory...Maybe they're fine? I don't know. They did put out a report recently that is this interactive document that keeps up on what laws are being introduced, what bills have been signed into law, what states there are sports bans and bathroom bans, and things like that. Pretty much all of the information to stay up to date on what's going on in your area or your surrounding area can be found in this interactive report that they put out.

Brooke So, okay. Well, if you've had problems in the past, it sounds like they are catching up and making progress and starting to do some good things now. So we should always applaud when that starts to happen.

Inmn Yeah.

Brooke Or we can be disappointed. But it's, you know, it's good that they're getting there now. I feel like.

Inmn Yeah. What's your good headline? Yeah. What's your funny news?

Brooke Okay, soon New Jersey is going to be the only state in the United States where you're not allowed to pump your own gas because Oregon's legislature just passed a law saying that's going to end our very, very silly law that says you cannot pump your own gas. So, the governor still has to sign in that law--which there's no reason to think she's not going to--and then congratulations to us. When we get to a gas station, we can get out of our cars and do it ourselves. And it's hard to emphasize how ridiculous this is if you haven't, like, lived here in Oregon and then traveled to other places where you can pump your own gas, you know? I've lived in this state my whole life, but I traveled to Washington frequently. And once I crossed that state border, I pump my own gas and it's not a big deal. But, in Oregon, I mean, you don't get out of your car, right? You roll down your window and someone comes to you and takes your card and pumps your gas. And there have been a couple of times like during severe heat waves and part of COVID, in which they allowed self-service. And it was very confusing for people. You could see them when they got to the gas station that they were sitting there and like looking around and waiting. And then they realized there was a sign and then they were like, "Oh, pump my own gas," and they get out and they look at this machine like it's asking them to do calculus or something. Oh, it's gonna be so confusing and upsetting for people and I'm looking forward to it.

Inmn Cool?

Brooke It's just so silly that we can't. I mean, it's a law that came on the books like 70 years ago or something like that because the government was worried about, you know, people handling flammable materials and whether or not they could be responsible and safe. And, Oregon still has that law active on the books.

Inmn Wow.

Brooke Yeah. So this means nothing to, you know, probably 80% of our listeners, but the 20% of you who are in Oregon with me or who have lived here for a set of time, you know you're laughing.

Inmn To just to frame this episode with, you know, fascists killing or harming or trying to fight other fascists. So, people might have heard, but there was an attempted coup in Russia from this group called the Wagner Group, which is a private military company of some 50,000 troops.

Brooke Damn,

Inmn Yeah, yeah. And it's a private military company, they're literal mercenaries. It is a company that is operated by a single person who was...It's hard for me to understand what, you know, fascists quips with other fascists are, but they were dissatisfied with the military leadership for the, you know, the invasion of Ukraine. And they were upset that they claimed that their troops were getting shelled by the larger Russian military. And so they staged a coup. They attempted to go to Moscow to specifically target this general who is in charge of the invasion of Ukraine. And that lasted about a day and there was this shady sounding deal that was brokered between Putin and Prigozhin, who's the head of the Wagner group, by the Belarusian president, I think. And the details of the deal have not been...no one knows what the details of the deal are. But, the Wagner group went from being accused of treason and like considered criminals by the Russian state to everything's fine and no one's getting in trouble.

Brooke Yeah, sure. Everything's fine.

Inmn So yeah, some fascists killed some other fascists.

Brooke Excellent. No notes.

Brooke No notes.

Brooke As we started the episode, so we ended with good news. Thanks for that happy headline. Can I do the the ending thing now with the ending of the thing?

Brooke Thanks so much for listening to the latest installment of This Month in the Apocalypse. We come to you as members of the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publishing collective. We produce a few other podcasts, great zines, publish books. And, we just finished very successfully Kickstarting our first tabletop role playing game, Penumbra City.

Inmn Which, as of...If you're listening on Friday, you still have until 7am on Saturday, July 1st to back this Kickstarter.

Brooke So why would you want to?

Inmn So this wonderful role playing game that me, and Margaret, and Robin, and Casandra have been working on for a really long time is...We Kicstarted it. It was a huge success. Thank you, everyone. So, if you back the Kickstarter now, in addition to whatever rewards you select--and there's, you know, there's rewards from digital PDFs, to a beautiful hardcover print edition of the game--you get a reduced price because it's going to be cheaper on the Kickstarter than it will be when we sell it later.

Brooke That's like a 20% discount. That's awesome. Yeah.

Inmn And you also get some Kickstarter exclusive swag, a sticker that won't exist after this, and access to an art print by Robin Savage, which will also not be available after the Kickstarter. You also get, if you back it now at any level, you get two additional books, which is a novella by Margaret Killjoy, and a campaign module that I'll be writing. And those are because we unlocked most of our stretch goals. You'll also get digital--and these are digital editions and like discount on print editions later--but you'll also get a digital edition of a full color map that Robin and Casandra are making. And so, you know, go check out the Kickstarter. Kickstarter, Penumbra City. It's on there. And yeah, I'm disappointed we didn't get to...[interrupted]

Brooke [Finishing] The pizza party or the naked live streamed hot tub party.

Inmn It was never naked. It was never going to be...[interrupted]

Brooke I was gonna be naked. I don't know what you guys were gonna do. But there's still time though. Get us to that 100k mark and be naked in a hot tub for everyone and you will be happy about it. I promise. Yeah, there's a new book coming out too, that we are crazy excited about? At least I am because I got to do that editing work on it and it is phenomenal. I think I'm gonna buy like five copies, at least, from us when it comes out because I want to give it to so many people.

Inmn Yeah, it is an incredible book. It's coming out. It's actually, if you go to our website anytime after listening to this, it'll be available for preorder. And that is To the Ghosts Who Are Still Living by Ami Weintraub. And it is a collection of essays written by Ami. In this collection of remarkable essays, Ami guides us on a journey to meet the ghosts of his Jewish ancestors, the people whose struggles and stories sometimes whisper and sometimes scream to be shared. Ami examines challenging questions of heartbreak, memory, restitution, and self-discovery. It is an absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking book. And, if you want to hear more about the book, what also came out today is an interview with Ami on my other podcast, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. There's a really incredible interview that he does talking about the process of creating the book and a sample chapter read by the wonderful Bea Flowers. So, go check out the book and the other podcast to hear more about it.

Brooke Nice. All that great stuff is available on our website, Tangledwilderness.org. And we are also on some social media platforms and you can connect with us there. We are able to do all of these rad things because of the support of our listeners, especially because of our Patreon supporters who really provide the base monthly financials that we need in order to do our production work. So, we're incredibly grateful to our patrons. If you're interested in supporting the work, you can check out our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness and our lovely Patreon supporters who provide at least $20 a month get a very special shout out at the end of every podcast. We thank you Hoss the dog, Michaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Cat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, paparouna, Aly, Jans, Paige, Janice & O'dell, Oxalice, Funder, Anonymous, BenBen, Princess Miranda, and Trixter. Thank you.

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