My Voice, My Choice on Instagram: "In January, the Taliban enforced a new criminal law that openly legalizes violence against women and girls in Afghanistan. The law treats wives as the “property” of their husbands, allowing men to beat their wives and children as long as no bones are broken and no skin is cut. Even then, a husband can face a maximum of just 15 days in jail (and only if the woman can prove the abuse in court). Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban has systematically erased women’s rights. Women can be jailed for leaving home without their husband’s permission. They are turned away from health clinics if they arrive without a male guardian. Women are banned from becoming doctors, yet in some areas they are also forbidden from being treated by male doctors, leaving many with no medical care at all. UN Women warns that by 2026, maternal deaths could rise by 50% and child marriage by 25%. Nearly 80% of Afghan women are now shut out of education and work. Women’s full equality is a basic human right, and without it, a just and peaceful society cannot exist. Source: Rukhshana Media, The Female Quotient"

✨Wendy Quinton✨ on Instagram

Science 🧬 on Instagram: "In research labs and wild habitats alike, plenty of animals have been observed gifting their friends with grub. Bonobos pass morsels of meat to strangers, vampire bats barf blood into hungry relatives’ mouths, and canines tap their snouts to touch screens to share sausages with packmates.⁠ ⁠ But Brucks and Auguste von Bayern, an animal behaviorist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, wanted to test the limits of this generosity in parrots, long considered to be among the brainiest of birds. So they set up an experiment that involved the transfer of treats—with a bit of extra mental gymnastics mixed in.⁠ ⁠ _____⁠ ⁠ After training eight African grey parrots and six blue-headed macaws to barter metal rings for walnuts, the researchers paired the birds up with same-species partners. They then put the parrots in clear chambers joined by a transfer hole and gave one bird—the donor—ten rings, while the other was left with none.⁠ ⁠ Even without the promise of a reward for themselves, seven out of eight of the African grey parrot donors passed some of their available tokens through the transfer hole to their broker partners, usually shuttling them beak to beak. On average, about half the metal rings made it through, allowing the recipients to trade the trinkets for walnuts through another window.⁠ ⁠ “It was amazing to see,” Brucks says. “I thought that when they saw they weren’t gaining anything, they’d stop. But they just kept doing it … some transferred [all] ten of their tokens.”⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ #africangreyparrot #parrots #parrot #greyparrots #biology #science"

@terrifichistory on Instagram: "James Peterson was lobotomized in 1948 because he was gay. After his parents discovered his relationship with another man, he was committed to an asylum, diagnosed with “sexual perversion,” and subjected to a transorbital lobotomy—ice picks driven through his eye sockets into his brain. The procedure took fifteen minutes. The damage was permanent. The doctor told his parents their son was “cured.” What returned was not James, but a hollowed-out shell. Once vibrant and artistic, he became silent, vacant, and compliant, incapable of desire or independence. A photo taken hours after the surgery shows wounds above his eyes and a blank stare. Medical notes called the procedure a success. James lived another 46 years in a group home, never recovering his personality. He died in 1994, though his life had effectively ended in 1948. His partner later donated James’s photo and records to LGBTQ archives, writing: They called it treatment. It was murder. James died for loving me."