he's an okay petunia

Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.

Infrastructure and citified heat islands also very much play a factor. And here the angle you’re at on earth also makes it worse. The sun being lower on the horizon can double the amount of solar energy affecting your house. The sun beating through your windows for 16+ hours a day when you have a house built for cold and no AC adds to the misery.

But what I’m talking about here is how hot you feel in your body when experiencing solar radiation from a lower angle. On the upside the sun’s rays have to pass through more atmosphere, weakening the UV strength, hence why populations that migrated north eons ago lost melanin (you still need SPF though). And in general the warming effect on the atmosphere is lessened. The warming effect on your body is magnified. To the tune of 10-20 degrees (yes Fahrenheit) above ambient. Winter gear prioritizes insulating your torso because that’s where all your vital organs are. It follows that the sun beating on your chest and back warms you up fast and with little relief except to get in the shade.

My eye doctor also told me living in Alaska made you more likely to get cataracts younger because the low-angle sun gets directly in your eyes in the summer (unless you’re big on sunglasses) and the snow and ice in winter reflect a lot of UV back up, doubling your exposure. Though the prevalence of cataracts in Alaska and other far-north locales is contributed to by other factors, notably poverty and the resulting lack of medical care. And is still not as likely as in people who live in equatorial climes or high altitudes and get the super-strength UV exposure all year round.

There was a big push to eliminate "degrading jobs" but the strategy was to eliminate the position, then create a new position outside of the bargaining unit to do the work. So like, we wouldn't have dishwashers, but we'd have people who washed dishes that weren't eligible to be in the union.

I was like A) what the actual fuck? Dish washing isn't "degrading", it's fucking vital. B) What the actual fuck? You want to create a union just to exploit different people?

The first time someone told me that busing tables was "degrading", I was like "Oh, uhh, yeah, like it's very necessary work but under compensated for how vital it is?" and they responded "No, touching plates that other people have eaten off of is disgusting."

In bargaining, someone on the Union side suggested that we eliminate all the cashiers and exclusively use self-checkouts (they were a cashier and didn't like it). The organizer told them that the union wasn't in the habit of eliminating bargaining unit positions. (This is the same person I've talked about how said that "as a prison abolitionist" we just needed to execute most criminals.)

It got me thinking, along with Ann Russell talking about how to treat cleaners (being a cleaner herself), about how we conceptualise domestic service as particularly degrading in all its forms, when, really, why is that? Why is paying someone to do something intrinsically bad?

Like, even in a moneyless, gift economy society, there would still be people whose primary contribution to their communities would be cleaning. Some people like to clean, and are really rather good at it.

I've talked ad nauseam in the past about how British attitudes towards cleaners and other service based positions today are the descendants of Victorian attitudes. That is, both the attitudes of conservatives and many progressives of that time. The trade union movement was particularly exclusionary towards service workers.

however it is a bit loud. that's where my second choice comes in, which is actually this generic metal 12mm button that costs about £2 on aliexpress. these have a really nice tactile snap, although they don't need as much force to actuate as the Jiaben and they also have a little less travel distance, which makes them a bit less satisfying to me. that's the tradeoff for them being almost silent. a good walking-around fidget! I'm working on making one of these into a keychain.

the next tier would be things that aren't all that much fun as a single button because their actuation force is too light and/or they're too small, but they're satisfying in a long-term functional role. good mechanical keyboard switches and Omron mouse buttons fall in this category. my favourites are Gateron low-profile bananas. I love typing on these things so much that sometimes I just sit at my desk and type nonsense for the stims.

then you have your "upper end of mediocre" buttons. I have one of these 19mm "mushroom" style ones I quite like. the big size and lack of an outer housing make it a fun "OH SHIT" button. you could use it as an emergency stop for a dangerous workshop tool, or maybe a crisis mode button where you push it when you're having an anxiety attack and it texts your friend "please send cat pics"

the lower end of mediocre is mostly taken up by plastic buttons. they usually suck. sometimes the rocker-style ones you find mostly in cars and boats can be surprisingly good, but most of them are unbranded so it's hard to predict whether you'll get a good one or not.

at the very bottom of the list is this motherfucker: the Yumo Electric ABS-series ball head button, and its many clones. they lull you in with a shiny metal casing and you think, that'll be nice and clicky, right? but it isn't. this is the mushiest goddamn thing ever constructed. if you made the Pope push one of these he would publicly declare that God is dead.

The FBI cut the phone lines during the 1977 disability rights sit-in. Then they turned off the hot water.

They locked the doors from the outside. One hundred and fifty people were trapped on the fourth floor. Half of them used wheelchairs. The government assumed they would leave.

Kitty Cone was thirty-three. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were failing, but her logistics were flawless. She knew how to organize people.

The federal government had promised to sign regulations protecting disabled Americans from discrimination. The policy was known as Section 504. They printed the promise on paper. Then they stalled. Without a signature, it was just typography.

The protesters entered the regional Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco on a Tuesday morning. They took the elevators to the director's office. They brought sleeping bags and catheters. They informed the staff they were not leaving until the law was signed.

By sunset, the police surrounded the exits. Kitty sat near the windows. She organized the floor plan. She assigned committees for security and sanitation. She kept her medication in a small cooler.

According to federal memorandums released decades later, the strategy to end the occupation relied on medical attrition. The building was not equipped for long-term habitation. The FBI calculated that a population requiring ventilators, specialized diets, and daily medical aides would voluntarily evacuate if the environment became sufficiently hostile. They instituted a blockade.

The blockade went into effect immediately. No food deliveries allowed. No medical supplies permitted through the lobby. Guards stood at the main doors checking identification.

Kitty's muscles deteriorated faster under the physical strain. She couldn't walk. When the phone lines went dead, the fourth floor lost contact with the press. The government waited for the quiet.

Kitty dropped to the floor. She realized the barricades were designed for standing adults. The police had blocked the hallways at waist height. They hadn't blocked the linoleum.

The floors were covered in cigarette ash and spilled coffee. She dragged her body through it. She crawled under the barricades to reach the restricted elevator shafts and unguarded offices.

She carried notes in her pockets. She found a single working payphone the FBI missed. She called the local news desks. She called the mayor's office.

She crawled back. When her arms failed, someone pulled her by her ankles. The Black Panthers heard the news reports. They crossed the police lines with hot meals. The FBI could not stop them without a riot.

They shut off the elevators, so she crawled.

The occupation lasted twenty-five days. It remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in American history. On April 28, the Secretary of HEW signed the regulations without a single alteration.

The protesters left the building the next morning. They went back to their apartments. The Rehabilitation Act regulations laid the groundwork for every accessibility law that followed. The HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. The elevators run on a schedule. The doors are heavy glass.

Kitty Cone: the woman who crawled under the barricades.

Source: Kitty Cone's oral history, Bancroft Library.

Verified via: National Museum of American History.

Source

Monday morning, Musk took to his social media platform, X, to lash out at Khanna for suggesting Musk’s deep cuts to USAID’s funding and workforce, while overseeing DOGE last year, may have led to millions of children dying.

A. A teenager, since her hair is almost fully down (the longer skirt and her traveling alone make me think maybe 14-15), and

B. In mourning, as evidenced by her entirely matte and unornamented black dress, gloves, and hat