NovemberBlueSky

In the 10 years that I have worked on sharing queer history, I have never been attacked as intentionally and with as much consistency as I have in 2026. Most regularly, I'm called a groomer or harassed for mentioning Palestine.

I joke about it to my friends, because I don't actually have anyone in my life under the age of 20, how could I possibly be a groomer? It is easier to cope with all of it when I can laugh with people. No one finds it funny anymore, not even me.

When the first waves came calling me an anti-Semite, I felt compelled to ask some of the Jewish people in my life whether there was something I wasn't seeing. They assured me that I was doing nothing wrong, and I dug further into my studies. The further I got into researching the accusations levied against me, the more I was harassed for the moments I shared of my journey.

As a 29 year old adult, when I share that I read queer (often specifically trans) books, the comments are predictable. When I share that some of the books I read include sex, things get worse. When I post a book that discusses the experiences of queer Jewish people during the holocaust, I know that there will be immediate backlash, and there is. Then I am asked to edit a book synopsis to remove mentions of genocide from a poetry book about Palestine.

All of this to say, I have experience in what upsets these people and it is books that are being targeted. It is reading, readers, and anyone who encourages literacy that activates the worst people to respond. Which is why I HAVE to keep pushing you to read more. Read widely, read anything, read books that disagree with you, read porn, read queerly, read physically, read ebooks, read audiobooks, and fight the book bans sweeping North America.

#my old phone looks like this on my shelf lmao #im too scared to touch it to throw it away #idk what trash this even goes into when its at this point

The pillow-shaped object here used to be the phone’s battery. It’s not a battery anymore. Now it’s a balloon full of corrosive, pyrophoric chemicals and hydrogen gas and it’s one puncture away from burning your house down. I am 100% serious. You should be scared to touch it.

But you gotta touch it, because you gotta get it out of your house before the pressure builds up to the point where the balloon pops. This isn’t going to happen soon – there is no need to panic – but it will happen eventually.

And, indeed, it doesn’t go in the ordinary trash. You put this in the ordinary trash and you’re gonna set the garbage truck on fire. Don’t do that to the garbage collectors, their job is hard enough already.

The first thing you need to do is get a fireproof container. The most common household item that qualifies as a fireproof container is a cast-iron cookpot with a cast-iron lid – often sold as a “Dutch oven.” Any other cooking container that’s unreactive, has a very high melting point, and has a lid made of the same materials will also work: enameled or stainless steel, Pyrex with glass lid, etc.

However: Do not use a pot with a PTFE-based non-stick coating. If the battery does explode, the fire will probably be hot enough to degrade a PTFE coating, producing toxic smoke. (Not that you should breathe the smoke from the battery fire either, but PTFE breakdown products are worse.) Do not use a pot made of aluminium or copper. The fire might even get hot enough to melt those.

Whatever container you use, you might have to throw away along with the phone, so don’t use your good Dutch oven for this. Go to a thrift store and buy a cheap one.

Once you have the fireproof container:

Gently pick up the phone and put it in the fireproof container. If possible, gently tape the phone to the bottom of the container to prevent it from bouncing around. Don’t put any padding in there, that’ll just make a fire worse if it does happen. Put the lid on and tape it shut.

Put a label on the container, something like “DEFECTIVE LI-ION BATTERY – FIRE HAZARD”.

It is now reasonably safe to move the container around. However, if the battery does explode, the container is very likely to leak smoke and get hot, so keep it in a well-ventilated area and away from things that will be damaged by heat. Don’t leave it exposed to the weather, either.

You need to find either a hazardous waste disposal site, or an e-waste recycler that will accept defective Li-ion batteries. I can’t help with that because I have no idea where you live.

However, your local fire department, if you have one, will probably be happy to help. Call their non-emergency number. Nothing is on fire yet, so this isn’t an emergency, but things that can easily start a fire are still within the fire department’s responsibilities. Tell them you have a phone with a bulging lithium-ion battery, you put it in a fireproof container, and you want to know how to dispose of it safely.

If the fire department tries to tell you this isn’t dangerous or it’s okay to throw it out in the regular trash (with or without fireproof container), hang up on them and write a cranky letter to your local government representatives, then keep looking for a proper disposal site.

All the owlbears at once! You can find them on fabric at Spoonflower, or a bunch of other stuff at Redbubble!