And what about Usenet, all the old bulletin board systems (BBSs)? And of course, email groups? I remember subscribing to multiple email groups for fanfic purposes when I was an internet nibbling in the 90s.
Fandom has existed in many many MANY internet spaces long before tumblr. The weirdly puritanical leanings that have led to some of the worst in behaviours took deepest root here, but it was by no means the first space, nor the only game in town - it’s simply one of the longest lasting in an unstable online digital age.
yeah, Yahoogroups mailing lists were a massive part of fandom for years, before Livejournal took off, even into the early 2000s.
And fan conventions have been running for decades. Like, Worldcon (the world science fiction convention) first ran in 1939.
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Juan Leon sends a "chase" car to check out where abandoned vehicles are located and arranges discreet drop-offs. Since late December, he est
Juan Leon had only been running his Twin Cities tow truck business, Leo's Towing, for a few months when he noticed a pattern that kept repeating itself.
Cars were being left behind across the metro area – parked on streets, in parking lots, sometimes for days at a time. The owners were gone, and in many cases, they had been arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"Seeing there was a need for someone to help out, help clear the streets and get the people back their vehicles. So we stepped up and started doing it," Leon said.
By late December, Leon and his small towing crew decided to do something about it, all thanks to observers calling in and reporting these vehicles.
"Families reach out to us. If the family isn't reaching out, we'll find a way to get inside the vehicle and we'll bring it back to their house and put it in a safe spot," Leon said.
They began picking up vehicles and returning them to the families of those arrested, free of charge.
"We're able to do this 24/7, so we don't have to go back to our other jobs," Leon said.
Donations began pouring in all across the country, supporting Leon's cause, but not without a cost to their personal safety.
"When they doxxed me, they put all my information out there," Leon said. "For the last three weeks, we have been getting nothing but death threats."
Leon sends a "chase" car to check out where these abandoned vehicles are located and arranges discreet drop-offs. Since late December, he estimated they have dropped off 250 cars.
The drop-offs are often emotional for the families and Leon's crew.
"All I can do is give them a hug and tell them hopefully things will get better," said Gonzalo Villegas. "Sad isn't even the word to use. It's so much stronger than that."
Despite the emotional strain, the team continues.
"We are going to figure it out day by day if we have to," Leon said.
Leo's Tow actively tries to locate family members on their Facebook page and hosts podcasts recapping their weeks returning vehicles.
Leo's Tow will be hosting a charity event on Sunday at Lito's Burritos in Minneapolis.
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i recommend telling yourself “this isn’t an experience i want to keep having” and stop entertaining things that are really detrimental to your health and don’t benefit you in anyway.
Yeah quiet quitting is great and all but have you tried chaotic working?
Like. I remember back in my grocery store cashier days I did so much crazy shit.
When WIC (Women, infants, and children voucher program to help low income mothers/families with children) people were in my line I would pretty much know who they were. Before the cards they had to tell us upfront they were WIC and show us their vouchers for what they were allowed to get (it was awful some times. Like. 2 gallons of milk. $4 worth of vegetables etc etc). They’d always have items hanging back, waiting to see what the total was and if they would have to take it off the belt.
I began to place the fruits/vegetables a certain way on the register scale so that like 1/2lbs of grapes read as like .28lbs or something. Then act shocked when I said that they still had X amount of lbs left. They got all their fruit and vegetables.
I think it started to kinda? Catch on to the women? Because I would have the same moms in my line month after month. And even after they switched to the cards (they worked like food stamp cards?) I’d still do the same thing. They were able to get more produce for whatever shitty max amount Indiana gave them.
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It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.
Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.
Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.
The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.
The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.
She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.
She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."
She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.
But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.
To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.
San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.
Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.
Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.
Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.
Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.
When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.
He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.
It was a mistake that would change American history.
Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.
She saw "her kids."
She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.
Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.
She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.
So, she made a choice.
She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.
Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.
The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.
She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.
She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.
"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."
And it did.
Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.
Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."
For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.
She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.
She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."
By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.
In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.
This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.
One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."
They underestimated who they were dealing with.
They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.
When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.
It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.
Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.
She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.
Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.
"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."
The quote ran in newspapers across the country.
The court didn't stand a chance.
Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.
The charges were dropped.
Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.
She needed to change the law.
August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.
She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.
But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.
She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.
She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.
In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.
It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.
She never got rich.
She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.
She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.
Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.
Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.
Most of them have never heard of Mary.
They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.
They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.
They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.
Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."
She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.
She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.
She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.
Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.
It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.
It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.
Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.
Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.
Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025
With three movies to compare between, I really appreciate how each Knives Out movie explores justice from a different thematic angle, not based on the murder that was committed but based on the cruelty that led to that murder.
In Knives Out, a compassionate, ethical young woman treats everyone around her with generosity, and the people around her repeatedly try to take advantage of her kindness to force her into losing the fortune that was gifted to her by a dear friend. There, justice means that she keeps the fortune and decides that actually, she doesn't have to be kind and giving to people who've proven themselves assholes.
In Glass Onion, a woman loses her sister to a gang of wealthy, successful people who've sacrificed their principles for the sake of ambition and ego. There, justice means that everyone involved will be made notorious: whatever their other accomplishments, they will forever be known for being complicit in the burning of the most famous painting in history.
In Wake Up Dead Man, the church takes advantage of a young girl's loyalty and faith to place her under a lifelong burden and fill her with guilt, shame, and hatred. Justice means helping her understand what was done to her and the women around her, and giving her compassion so she can find peace.
This is cool because it means the movies contradict each other! The compassionate justice of Wake Up Dead Man would be totally misplaced in Knives Out, and so would the toppling-monuments justice of Glass Onion. And because each movie has something different to say, they all stand on their own and feel fresh.
This is also why Benoit Blanc is the uniting figure but never the protagonist of these movies. He's an agent of legal justice in that he's the detective and it's his job to figure out whodunnit, but the protagonist -- Marta, Andi and now Jud -- is always the character who delivers thematic justice.
[waving] Hi, hello, it's me, the old gen-x'er on your dash! How's it going kids? [bad, it's going bad, I know, sorry for asking]. Let me tell you a personal story of how I watched exactly this play out in my social circles.
Anecdotally, my fellow cohort of gen-x'ers were convinced this was going to be the solution, the ticket, the fucking way. Inevitably, all we had to do was outlive these old mayonnaise white devils, because that's where the racism was societally stored - like a big racism appendix that would get removed someday.
We thought we knew what was up because we were cool white kids who listened to Public Enemy. And because we thought we were largely inoculated against racism, it was just a long cool slide into the Clinton years and we'd be set.
So we didn't question shit like South Park. We didn't question shitheads like 'ironic' (at the time) racists like Weev in our IRC channel. We had zero fucking awareness of how racism shifted, because the only examples of racism we were ever taught either wore a white robe & burned crosses, or sig-heil'd and lived in misery. We shamefully thought racism = southern*, and since we were alt-goth kids living on the west coast, we were fucking sorted out and safe.
It wasn't on our radar. We weren't ready. We hadn't listened to anyone, because we thought we'd learned enough to not be a problem, and wasn't that enough?
We didn't clock or understand the way racist language shifted into a new economic handwringing. We fell into stupid rhetorical traps that snuck racism into concerns about unhoused people and substance abuse. We refused to recognize and realize our own inherent racist attitudes because of the sunk cost fallacy of wanting to believe we really didn't have to do anything other than be cool and wait it out.
I watched some people absolutely lose their shit when called out on this and flounce directly into the arms of right wing philosophy (always some variation on "left wing politics has gone too far!" when it's pointed out how they're upholding inequality with a cherished attitude or anecdote they've leaned on for years to prop up the mythology of their self-worth).
No one was ready to realize they weren't good just by being alternative. And some of them cracked apart.
Racism has a full time advertising budget ready to repackage and rebadge it minute to minute, and you always have to do the work. It never ever fucking stops. And making sure you're always doing the work has the very valuable side-benefit of keeping you in touch with yourself and what you're about.
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[waving] Hi, hello, it's me, the old gen-x'er on your dash! How's it going kids? [bad, it's going bad, I know, sorry for asking]. Let me tell you a personal story of how I watched exactly this play out in my social circles.
Anecdotally, my fellow cohort of gen-x'ers were convinced this was going to be the solution, the ticket, the fucking way. Inevitably, all we had to do was outlive these old mayonnaise white devils, because that's where the racism was societally stored - like a big racism appendix that would get removed someday.
We thought we knew what was up because we were cool white kids who listened to Public Enemy. And because we thought we were largely inoculated against racism, it was just a long cool slide into the Clinton years and we'd be set.
So we didn't question shit like South Park. We didn't question shitheads like 'ironic' (at the time) racists like Weev in our IRC channel. We had zero fucking awareness of how racism shifted, because the only examples of racism we were ever taught either wore a white robe & burned crosses, or sig-heil'd and lived in misery. We shamefully thought racism = southern*, and since we were alt-goth kids living on the west coast, we were fucking sorted out and safe.
It wasn't on our radar. We weren't ready. We hadn't listened to anyone, because we thought we'd learned enough to not be a problem, and wasn't that enough?
We didn't clock or understand the way racist language shifted into a new economic handwringing. We fell into stupid rhetorical traps that snuck racism into concerns about unhoused people and substance abuse. We refused to recognize and realize our own inherent racist attitudes because of the sunk cost fallacy of wanting to believe we really didn't have to do anything other than be cool and wait it out.
I watched some people absolutely lose their shit when called out on this and flounce directly into the arms of right wing philosophy (always some variation on "left wing politics has gone too far!" when it's pointed out how they're upholding inequality with a cherished attitude or anecdote they've leaned on for years to prop up the mythology of their self-worth).
No one was ready to realize they weren't good just by being alternative. And some of them cracked apart.
Racism has a full time advertising budget ready to repackage and rebadge it minute to minute, and you always have to do the work. It never ever fucking stops. And making sure you're always doing the work has the very valuable side-benefit of keeping you in touch with yourself and what you're about.
