Belated weekend linkdump!

From '07: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/spider-woman

> [An] irritated voice blared over the intercom, “Spider lady! Spider lady! Come to the front!”

> “There’s a kind of Zen moment where everything falls away and there’s just you and the spider.”

A recent paper finds that, as many suspected, Bitcoin's price has been manipulated with the token called Tether: https://nytimes.com/2018/06/13/technology/bitcoin-price-manipulation.html

After similar campaigns by workers at Microsoft and Google, Amazon workers demand that the company stop selling facial recognition software to ICE and police: https://gizmodo.com/amazon-workers-demand-jeff-bezos-cancel-face-recognitio-1827037509

In Morristown, TN, residents stand up for immigrant neighbours: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/11/us/tennessee-immigration-trump.html

> As McCutcheon later said to me, “It was a motherfucking cordyceps.”

Japanese cicadas' latest beneficial endosymbiont is not a bacterium but the notorious zombifying fungus: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/how-to-tame-a-zombie-fungus/562544/

Stories of trans women victims of violence in Toronto, from Cassandra Do to Alloura Wells: https://this.org/2018/06/14/each-death-is-a-preventable-tragedy/

The journalist whose coverage of Brandon Teena inspired "Boys Don't Cry" evaluates her "insensitive and inaccurate" story: https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/06/20/how-i-broke-and-botched-the-brandon-teena-story/

Four #bikeTO ghost bike rides in little over a week: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/06/15/amid-wave-of-toronto-deaths-cyclists-holding-first-of-four-ghost-bike-rides-friday.html

How landlords, building managers and developers emptied out the Palace Arms, a $700/month rooming house that was one of Toronto's last affordable housing options: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-for-torontos-poor-the-palace-arms-has-been-their-castle-now-a-new/

For years, they've said 80% of trans kids "grow out of it". A new paper takes a critical look at the shockingly flawed studies used to justify the figure. Background and commentary from the indispensable Julia Serano: https://medium.com/@juliaserano/reframing-transgender-desistance-debates-68648a4fd01a

This piece on trans women's inclusion is a really solid introduction to how to think about gender in a feminist, non-essentialist way! https://medium.com/@alysonescalante/how-we-talk-about-trans-inclusion-matters-75e1c6fce5dc