Deep in the void, there is a rumpus room

sounds like these ones in particular weren't sold directly to consumers, so beware the pre-baked rolls.

My nephew is very allergic to eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, and sesame. Last year my sister discovered all hot dogs and hamburger buns now contain sesame. Not "may contain", but listed in the ingredients. This year basically every brand of sliced bread also now contains sesame, making it very difficult to find bread items he can eat.

They're just adding it to their products, so they can just list it as an ingredient and not bother with worrying about cross contamination. And they aren't even bothering with telling anyone. Capitalism is going to kill us all.

"Which brings us back to Kellogg’s. Back in 2016, the company found a way around the added burden and expense of complying with the FSMA: they simply began adding trace amounts of peanut flour to their cracker products. Doing so allowed them to list peanuts as an ingredient of the product, freeing them from having to prevent cross-contact.

in addition to the issues you mentioned, "detrans"/"desister" types very frequently leverage these terms to forward things like "ftmtf" as identities. and of course they do--detrans identity relies on transmedicalism for coherence, and the construct of "mtf"/"ftm" is a transmedicalist one.

transness is framed as a set of (required/gatekept) practices for going from "male" to "female," or visa versa, and can be "reversed"/"undone." in the transmedicalist frame, transness is not understood as someone autonomously living outside of sexgender assignment by whatever means they can access, it is someone who is seeking reassignment by an authority. it is not contesting assignment as an institutional process, but expanding it. this is not a liberation-oriented terminology. it's function is submission and permission-seeking.

most centrally to me: the "mtf"/"ftm" framework reifies the idea of "male" and "female" as "biologically pure"--in contrast to an implied "impure" intersex or "mixed" sex subject--rather than illuminating "biological sex" as an ideological project of naturalizing patriarchy through "scientific" knowledge production, which is inseparably interwoven with "scientific" racism.

in my honest opinion, I think widespread uncritical acceptance of these terms (and the naturalization of racialized sexgender on which they rest) contributes to broader trans movements' consistent failure to clearly identify and meaningfully challenge structural intersexualization and racialization processes. I don't think we can dismantle sexgender assignment & enforcement structures unless we can accurately map how they hold up, and are held up by, colonial and racial hierarchies.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to disease prevention and control.

Why is measles back in America?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including RFK Jr, cut vaccine and measles prevention funding and programs.

Why is the New World Screwworm infecting cattle in Texas, when it had previously been eliminated from the area?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Elon Musk, cut USAID funding, which in part worked to monitor and prevent screwworm outbreaks.

Why was there a flu outbreak in our armed forces?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Pete Hegseth, cut vaccination requirements for our armed forces, putting all of them at risk alongside our military readiness.

What contributed to the Covid outbreak?

Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to a pandemic prevention program in his first term because Barack Obama had created it.

and better

i understand many of us may feel solidarity with someone who takes the same hrt as them but i still think it's invasive to ask if that person hasn't said anything about it. there's lots of reasons why someone would choose to not reveal that info. maybe they've had an inconsistent hrt journey. maybe they're not on hrt at all. maybe they don't want to reveal anything that could out their agab. or maybe they just don't like revealing personal medical info! it's not for you to judge them on that.

you're not a bad person if you've asked someone else about their hrt before btw. just please be more mindful going forward that some of us may consider it to be clocking or an invasion of privacy. not all trans people are fully transparent about their transition!