Black Manta's Girl

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the rescheduled Mass Lobby at Parliament, now on Wed Sept 9th, 1pm-5pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It became statutory guidance in the UK on August 5th, 2026.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Our demands have changed. Ask your MP to:

Write to Ministers and Prime Minister Andy Burnham to say they are profoundly concerned by the rolling back of trans rights, and that they believe that it is time for Parliament to legislate to protect equality for trans people.

Ask parliamentary questions focused on protecting trans people’s rights and defending trans people’s abilities to live safe and dignified lives.

Speak up both inside and outside Parliament in defence of trans people’s rights.

Meet regularly with trans constituents to understand their lived realities. 

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

We have already had some wins because we took action. The 2026 EHRC guidance has already rolled back its most harmful elements because of mass campaigning by individuals like us, and groups like The Good Law Project. This summer, 166 MPs signed the Early Day Motion 240 to reject the EHRC Code of Practice, because of our campaigning. That is 1 in 4 MPs.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

We are living in a time of unprecedented amounts of original paleoart being produced. All over the world, throughout all social strata and in all sorts of styles. This boom in artistic output was not made possible by the development of art stealing technology and large corporations forcing it upon us but by networking, knowledge sharing and community building. That is what made paleontology more accessible and made it possible for so many people to be inspired by the fossil record to express themselves artistically.

Stunning double kill performed by a lone lioness taking advantage of the Great Migration, which occurs regularly in the Maasai Mara-Serengeti ecosystem. It is a often great source of prey for predators like lions.

Its in new york and apparently tickets are not selling great so if you or any of your followers are there go check it out!

Here's the link to the tickets!!

tl;dr: There's no evidence the interview that this was mentioned in even exists, no evidence the route of the cable has ever changed, and the whole story seems to originate from one dude's podcast.

Bugger (American: fuck/fucker)

Flat (American: apartment, “my place”)

Bloke (American: guy, asshole, dude)

Queue (American: line, checkout line)

Cuppa (American: cup of tea, hot tea)

Shite (American: bullshit, shit, crap)

Bin (maybe sommme Americans use it? But mostly trashcan, garbage)

Lift (American: elevator)

What this is flagging is that the words you are using—in dialogue or narration from an American POV—don’t fit what we use here. and if that’s something that concerns you, or if you want your readers not to get hung up on (to steal an example from the comments) “Why is Midwesterner Dean Winchester talking about a torch??”, these are the words we actually use.

And still some would give options.

That's a more natural and normal thing many ask of their friends or guests in their home.

If it's in an effort to calm some people down: It's always Water offered.

"Hey, you want something to drink? I've got water, coffee, tea, orange juice and I think there's some Coke left."

On which note, there is a battle over whether it's soda, pop, or Coke (and then you have contrarians like me who say soda pop). If you're in the South, "would you like a Coke?" "Yeah, Sprite if you have it" is a completely normal and not contradictory statement.

ALSO-ALSO

Lemonade = drink made from fresh lemon juice, water, and a shitload of sugar. Some people add strawberries and then it's strawberry lemonade or pink lemonade. I have met Aussies and Brits in real life who've tried to compensate by using "lemon-lime." That will not work here. At best you'll get a glass of water with a wedge each of lemon and lime. What you want is Sprite. You may be told that what's available is Starry (in pre-2023 fics, Sierra Mist) or, rarely (except in MUCH older fics, like early 90s and before), 7-Up. It's the same drink you've got across the pond as lemonade, but it only goes by brand name over here.

I've also been told that the prevalence of using brand names for items in the US is somewhat bizarre--other places do it, but not to the extent we do. So:

Paper tissue to blow your nose on -> kleenex

Skip -> dumpster

Copy machine or copies made by machine -> 1990s only, Xerox (also a verb: can you xerox that?).

Go to the grocery store -> run to [local supermarket name]. Your best bet here is going to be to look up "grocery store [state name]." In much of the Deep South it'll be Piggly-Wiggly and just about everywhere you can look for "Kroger" and "Albertsons" and there will be a regional chain under their corporate umbrella. PLEASE NOTE YOU CAN'T MIX AND MATCH THESE. If you say "King Sooper" in my state, only someone who has family in Washington will have any idea what you're talking about.

Cotton swabs you use in your ears or to apply makeup -> Q-tips

Plasters = bandaids

The calcium stuff you can chew for heartburn and indigestion -> Tums or Rolaids

Bleach -> can absolutely be called bleach, but if it's before the 2000s you can add some authenticity by calling it Clorox

Any round chocolate cookie sandwich with cream filling -> Oreos

Toaster pastries -> Pop-Tarts

Energy drink -> Monster or Rockstar. There are other brands available (most predominantly Red Bull) but you'll want to ask for them by name. Flavors are usually identified by colors. You don't want the no-carb Rockstar, you want the blue one.

Beer -> you will always order this by name, and if you're getting Budweiser, it's a Bud. The one exception is if you're looking for local brews, and then you'll ask for it by type: "what do you have for IPAs/dark beer/light beer?" (In some places you can say ale or lager. Those places are not going to be your neighborhood dive bar.) If you're here in the Southwest and order a Corona it may come with a lime stuck in the neck of the bottle. Push it in.

Other alcohols -> the exception to this rule. You ask for it by type and then name your brand if you have a preference. If you have no preference, you can just say "house brand" (this will usually be a common decent-but-cheap brand like Jose Cuervo, Jack Daniels, or Smirnoff). Mixed drinks are more common than plain alcohol and are usually just referred to as "a drink" in general and by name in particular ("let's get a drink," "I'd like a Long Island iced tea"). A whiskey-Coke is a Jack and Coke. Plain alcohols are ordered by shots ("a shot of vodka").

And then it'll also be a difference even within that if it's a Metropolis because you'll have various people from *other* regions moving to live there and you can tell a native from a region or state by how they call a fizzy drink.

The dialects for the South Are Regional and it has a difference.

Someone from GA isn't going to sound like someone from Texas. Same with Louisiana. (and for the love of god don't try any AAVE. Like. At all. Just don't. The rules are different. and even more regional.)

ALSO

The Tea Thing again:

In the South during the Summer (and in a lot of places in the US) we do not have *hot* tea. It's Iced. In the south it's Especially SWEET iced tea because the heat here is Humid.

There CAN be unsweetened tea. That exists. (It's usually black tea)

but also.

here is a fact: kids want to connect to people.

and right now, the only real way to do that, for many, is online.

it's not just the unwalkability of us neighborhoods. it's not just the restrictions by parents on where and how their kids can move.

first of all, offline spaces for kids are few and far between, and when they do exist, kids are often prohibited from accessing them by parents. i wasn't allowed to walk to my local library on my own until i was twelve or thirteen. (to be clear, it was under a mile away, i had the ability to contact them via a smart watch, and i'd been there before.)

and in the us in particular, there often aren't things within walking/biking distance. that library i mentioned was all of one room, was typically unaccessible (open tuesday, thursday and saturday; twenty-one hours a week, with 14 hours and 10 minutes, tops, being actually accessible given the high school hours). glancing around the neighborhood now, i could walk to such exciting places as (checks google maps) a notary, several places to do one's taxes, a gas station, or a paint store. to be fair, there is also a walkable playground, more pizza places than seems possible for a town of that size to support, and a swimming pool, but on days with bad weather (and this is pittsburgh, so a fair number of days) that aren't tuesday and thursday, a kid growing up there, even if allowed, and even if there are sidewalks, wouldn't be able to do much (not without the relentless shadow of consumerism hanging over them at the pizza places, anyway.)

now, let's compare my grandparents' home when i was growing up. glancing around on google maps, it looks like there's even less. seriously, it looks like a soulcrushing dystopia from above. where the fuck is a kid who lives there supposed to go to hang out with friends? walgreens?

meanwhile, for many queer kids, access to online spaces is a lifeline -- literally, sometimes. being able to know you're not alone is incredibly powerful, being able to know that there are words for what you are beyond whatever slurs your parents/society calls you is powerful.

people don't tell the stories of those kids, because it's in no one's interest. the big corporate companies don't want to offend anyone, so they're not going to highlight the story of the queer kid who realized they were queer via social media. and goodness knows the parents aren't going to be publicizing that story.

are there real and valid dangers social media poses? yes. absolutely.

i said this in the tags of another post, and i'm slightly reworking it:

if you're a queer kid in a queerphobic environment, the internet can be incredibly helpful. furthermore, the way these rules work, either only big tech will be able to afford age-gating, or people will migrate to smaller forums and then the lawmakers will panic and extend it over them as well. and I'm younger than some of the big tech companies. I don't remember an era without social media. the first website where I really interacted with other people in a way that wasn't specifically aimed at kids, I was probably twelve, and it was the comments section of a website went down about six months after I joined. it was a tiny community, the posts were infrequent, and it was held together, so far as I can tell, by sheer optimism. I loved it. fuck, I still do. I adored it. it showed me what the internet could be.

yeah, maybe the space wasn't intentional. yeah, maybe it wasn't made for human connection. so what? that's the beauty of those spaces. human communication networks are like dandelions -- they spring up, and, no matter how hard people try to get rid of them, they just. keep. coming. they will grow from a crack in the sidewalk.

and there will always, always, be a crack in the sidewalk.

anyway, as dragon-in-a-fez mentioned somewhere else, enjoy Ageless Linux.