Meh...

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

Thats not to say cutting grass is never going to be important, theres still so many uses for a flat lawn and area for activities, but those should be designated spaces and not the majority of land around every single house and apartment. And there's a lot more that could be looked at there - flagrant use of herbicide or insecticides, especially where the problem is probably misdiagnosed or blown out of proportion (looking at you, most people w a "crane fly problem"), removal of all "weeds" and ground cover even if theyre native or ten times more helpful to everything around it than grass. Teenagers being given thwap thwap cut anything they touch machines and not being properly taught to not use those to cut through the cambium of every surrounding bush, or peoples electric and wifi lines, or literally all flowers - and it not mattering bc for a lot of the people who can AFFORD lawn care they can also afford those losses, but some of us just live or rent on the property and cant afford to arbitrarily have things destroyed bc they genuinely dont realize how harmful cutting that cambium layer IS or that those native bulbs now CANNOT regrow or flower.

The low barrier for entry means so much of the business is full of people who don't currently have other options or are unable to work in other fields bc of our shitass government. Its clear to everyone with data and ears that they should be only using electronic machines where at all possible, but if we legislate that without huge incentive and ways to afford that all you do is criminalize the poorest businesses.

Its clear to anyone who's done the research that we need to hugely cut down on lawns for a million reasons (uses tons of water, increases runoff, nitrogen pollution, destruction of the soil itself, loss of habitat, cant take in water, monocultured wasteland for food or cover, hot and no shade, no diversity, main competitors are invasive toxic guys commonly) but people are slow on the uptake and loss of status symbol, along with just not knowing how to do it or having people who could manage it properly - because if you bring an average lawn crew out to take care of a mixed lawn w native flowers in even CLEARLY SEPARATE areas or bushes etc they will just. Cut it down. Ive watched it. For years. Even when talked to and told hey this is the spot w the flowers. Even w posts they have to physically drive over to do it. Bc why try harder when you aren't being paid for anything but just cut it all down as quickly as possible, and you just simply do not know about this shit and are not holding the one or two exceptions to "just a lawn" in your mind.

Give people (LOW BARRIER INCENTIVIZED and not requiring a fucking social) training on how to ACTUALLY take care of a green space in any healthy way whatsoever. On basic pruning besides "shape of a circle" and managing diseases and sterilizing tools. On advice they can give on mow-less lawns that wont put them out of business, or IPM instead of yeah dump a ton of insecticide on that shit. Give them means to access electronic replacements for 20 yr old gas machines we all fucking hate and have to hear every goddamn day doing the useless for everyone work of leaf blowing every blade of grass and nitrogen to be taken off the property. Let them get paid more bc 1) people dont have to risk a shitton of fines or constant physical labor to manage a lawn they dont need and cant pay for and 2) theyd have researched education and good fucking advice to be giving you

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

Being fat means you can't ever be in line at a food pantry without somebody commenting "How could you be hungry?"

Being fat means being locked out of anorexia recovery by society and by the mental health field itself, to the point that you're not even allowed to be diagnosed with anorexia if you're fat. No, you have "atypical anorexia." Normal anorexics are thin.

Hm? The disorder is literally the exact same minus the fatness? Eating disorders are behavioral disorders, not weight disorders? Yeah, I wish facts mattered too.

A Little Myth-Busting for Writing Historical Plus-Sized Characters

Step into almost any historical drama or novel, and what do you often see? A world populated almost exclusively by lithe, slender figures. From the battlefields of ancient Rome to the ballrooms of Regency England, the prevailing image is one of universal slenderness. But what if I told you this picture is, for the most part, a modern invention?

The truth is, humanity has always come in a glorious array of shapes and sizes. And to exclude larger bodies from our historical narratives isn't just inaccurate; it's a form of historical erasure that robs our stories of authenticity and vital representation.

As writers, we have the power to paint a more nuanced and truthful past. So, let's bust a few common myths about historical plus-sized characters and empower you to weave them into your historical fiction with confidence and accuracy.

You’re allowed to care even though lots of things are going bad. Some things can’t be fixed or saved. But it’s okay to hold onto hope for something good to happen tomorrow. Good things are always going to pop up like flowers in war zones.

“The world is not on fire, there are just lots of fires.” Don’t lose hope that some fires can be put out. So much is still easy. Build a safe zone within the flames, and persist putting them out. Accepting we are in a bad place does not equal rolling over to let it get worse. No matter how bad things will get, you can still put out flames in different spaces.

You can give yourself the freedom of acknowledging life right now is in a state of unrest and we don’t know when the chapter will close, while also being happy we are here with other people and things that make it worth it. Because it is worth it. All hard things are worth it.