Untitled

if you would like to spite the really mean people even more today, consider donating to raices con voz. they're a student-led organization in los angeles, who deliver food and essential supplies to immigrant families who can't leave their homes due to the ICE raids. More information about them here

in keeping with tradition, here is a link to unicef's fund for emergency health supplies and services for survivors of the venezuela earthquakes.

here is another link for manos in action, an organization that delivers supplies, such as food and childcare items, to latin american immigrants in central florida. I've participated in one of their local food drives; they're great. if you're not local to central florida, you can always donate money.

Listening to a podcast about bodies and eating disorders and the body positivity movement of the last decade ish and hearing someone say (paraphrasing from memory here) "body positivity was all capitalism, there were no legislative changes, just new brands of jeans"

Legislative changes are super important but I cannot emphasize enough that jeans coming in bigger sizes and fat-friendly cuts is actually a really big deal! With meaningful impacts on people's lives (including mine)! Fat people do need clothes! And you may not realize this, but if you're over a certain size (that's not even that big a size) there's a very good chance you can go to a big box store and *not find anything that fits you*. There are towns in the US where if you're over a size 18 you need to drive an hour away or shop online to get things in your size. And they're expensive! "Just buy used" if they even have your size! Fat people want to look nice too. And we face enough judgement during job interviews (to give one example) without trying to do it in clothes that don't fit or are super uncomfortable.

Actually: If you're fat and you want to look cute/hot/masc/femme/etc I cannot recommend this website enough, you put in your measurements and it lists what brands have your size. You can filter for stuff like sensory friendly, nonbinary, masc, organic, etc. It's not AI just a database.

she got angry and said "then they need to pick a different word". and so you need to pick a different word.

don't think this is exclusive to public spaces like the mall or the park or whatever either. she has a tablet and access to the internet, just the same as you do. she can read, write, and make her own decisions. she has a husband.

I'll add smth here cos I learned after posting this on IG that people still aren't entirely understanding how scary and dangerous this is. Ppl kept saying to me 'I can still buy your book in shops though' or 'Its okay, I'll order your book into my library!'

I dont give af about my book lol No one outside of Ace ppl ever read it, its yearly sales don't even cover a month of expenses for me.

The thing you should all be concerned about is that a totally benign unheard of book about someone's every day life is being banned. And those laws listed above are passing through US government right now. One of those laws would make it so that any teacher/librarian in the US could lose their job/go to prison for simply sharing 'ideology'- and I don't mean only lgbtq folk, these laws are attacking black history, civil rights history, disability rep in books. Just talking about these things will now legally be considered a 'dangerous ideology'.

And once that's set into law, the US government has backing via law to go ahead and say 'if these books aren't legally allowed in schools, then they shouldn't be allowed in shops, either.' And from there it sets up a great argument for 'The dangerous content in these books is lawfully being removed from public, shouldn't we be lawfully removing the people living out/promoting this ideology too?'

I can see why ppl don't fully understand how dangerous book bannings are, if they're not familiar with the history of fascism. If you're interested, there are plenty of graphic novels that share this history via first hand accounts- Maus, Persepolis, Banned Book Club.

But guess what? You're on limited time to get these via libraries...cos all three of these books are on banned lists too, and they got nothing to do with lgbtq rep, and everything to do with warning ppl about fascism.

And the US government knows it can get away with this, because they are passing these laws as we speak and barely anyone is doing anything about it or talking about it. I've been trying to talk about it for years and no one does anything except say to me 'don't worry, I'll buy your book!' or say its a badge of honour that I have a banned book.

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.

Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!

Transcript below the cut.

If you don't know who your Senators or Representatives are, you can use Ballotpedia's Who Represents Me tool! (Note: there's a field for you to input your email address on their page, but it's not necessary to get your results. They just need a mailing address to confirm who your reps are.)

Once you've got names, you can look up and save your Reps' phone numbers in your phone. I find this makes it easier when I'm wavering about feeling brave enough to place a call. Just pressing a button instead of going and looking up the phone number all over again makes it just a liiiiittle easier, and sometimes that makes the difference between calling and not calling!

Reminder that this is not about a single event, this is a repetitive pattern that happens *regardless* of if the trans women's blogs violate tumblr's guidelines or not.

Reminder that if it's only trans women calling this out, tumblr has an easier time covering it up because they just ban them.

Reminder that you've got to speak up against this bullshit now, that you've got to be loud, that you've got to support trans women because the places where they can speak are dwindling.

Reminder that pride includes trans women and you cant celebrate pride while ignoring the way trans women are getting silenced.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Hello people already tired of US American Project 2025 bullshit. Today's is Russell Vought/the OMB Office putting forth a proposal that all federal science grants have to be reviewed for "woke."

I'm not kidding. The proposal includes the word "woke" in quotes. It also includes some Trumpian ranting about DEI and gender ideology.

The basic idea being, following vague and basically undefined guidelines (whatever they decide woke means that day), the OMB office of Federal Financial Management will review applications for research grants and the like and reject or approve them based on "woke."

Being Russell Vought-run, this would likely mean anything they decide has to do with climate change, women, gay stuff, trans stuff, and possibly anything that might even remotely be about sex positivity or reproductive rights.

Comment period is open until July 14th.

Here is the proposed regulation. It's a doozy.

On this page, you will see a link to regulations.gov which is where you actually leave a comment. In the search bar right at the start of this page, you enter OMB-2026-0034 and it will take you to the place to comment on this bullshit.

I am hoping someone smart will start posting sample comments for us all. I did a ranty comment already but I wouldn't recommend that. I will do a proper one later. (Yeah, you can comment again. You can also comment anonymously.)

Some things to bring up: the guidelines are (probably deliberately) vague and undefined. This is going to drastically inhibit and hamstring valuable research. This is going to damage the US' reputation (even more). This is going to damage our status as an international power. (I mean, if you are looking for an argument to use against these people. We deserve to lose that but this is to save the science and the research, so.... Project 2025 wants Americans uneducated, isolated, and dumb but paradoxically also still wants to be the number one superpower. I know. P2025 people are real stupid.) This will cost the US money in possible future innovations, as the best and the brightest will go elsewhere and take their cutting edge tech and knowledge with them. (As they should honestly, but again, we are trying to defend the scientists here now who need their grant money.) Talking about money usually helps when arguing with these losers.

you can browse the collection here

sign up for a QLL card to check ebooks & audiobooks out

Créme Bruleé Brownies

Prep Time: 40 minutes Cook Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes Yield: 15 servings

Ingredients

Brownies:

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, melted

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 TBS vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups flour

12 oz (ish) jar hot fudge sauce

Créme Bruleé Topping:

¼ cup cornstarch

1 cup white sugar

6 Tablespoons butter, melted

3 ¼ cups half and half cream

2 teaspoons vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste

¼ cup granulated sugar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350. Line a 9x13 pan with foil and spray thoroughly with nonstick spray; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the cocoa and melted butter. Stir in sugar until combined. Stir in eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each. Stir in vanilla. Fold in flour JUST until you no longer see flour streaks in the batter. Gently fold in hot fudge sauce.

Spread batter in prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes, until raw batter no longer appears when a toothpick is inserted in the center. Remove from oven and place pan on a cooling rack.

Prepare topping: In a medium-sized heavy saucepan, whisk together cornstarch and sugar. Whisk in the melted butter and half and half. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is the consistency of a thick pudding. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Pour custard over the brownies, spreading to cover. Sprinkle surface with granulated sugar, then place under the broiler for several minutes until top is golden (may be dark brown is some spots). Alternately, a kitchen torch can be used.

Let brownies cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled. Remove foil, cut into bars and serve.