Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery

Fuck terfs. Like really, fuck you all.

You want to be about bodily autonomy? Then stop even thinking about what might or might not be in someone else’s pants.

Saw some disturbing shit in my feed and idk why bc I do NOT support radfem terfy bullshit and I don’t tolerate it on my blog.

If that’s where you stand, good for you asshole, but go stand elsewhere bc I do not want to hear your shit.

also applies to trans and/or homo "phobia".

so if you see that asshole around, you can report & block & tell 'em it came from me.

also, and just ftr, p sure this particular * is not bi, more likely just trying desperately to get anybody to fuck him

I love klezmer.

But as a former band kid, this made me die laughing.

This Tumblr post is the first time someone has explained to me *why* I couldn’t feed them before those instances.

every single time i have had to say, "i understand that if he had food or water, he could aspirate it into his lungs under anesthesia. i am not lying to you." THEN someone would make a little note and i would stop being repeatedly asked.

not a single time was that risk explained to me. the only reason it came up was because i already knew. i still don't understand why it isn't standard pre-op counseling or pre-op check information, when me as a parent acknowledging the actual risk also put THE MEDICAL STAFF at ease because i conveyed that i had informed understanding as reason to not lie about giving my kid food.

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.

Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.

Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?

The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!

This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.

Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:

Don't have enough space to plant full trees, or

Don't have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.

The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.

The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).

Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.

'Medicinal' does NOT mean 'good for you and safe to eat all the time'. A plant being 'medicinal' does NOT mean that eating it, without any idea of WHY and HOW it's considered medicinal, is a good idea. It is UNWISE to consume a plant that has a long history of use in a way that DOES NOT have a long history of use.

In addition to learning that a plant is edible, you need to learn how it is eaten, what part is eaten, when it's harvested, and how to harvest it sustainably and in a way that supports its continued existence (unless it's invasive). If people only eat the ripe berries as food, then don't eat unripe berries. Don't. Eat. Unripe. Berries. UNLESS! There's! precedent! For that plant!

Eating something as a food is a different dose of it than taking it as a medicine. And even then there may be limits.

The legumes known as cicerchia (Lathyrus sativus) are a great green fertilizer plant and drought resistant in ways that make them some of the last crops to die. They can be really nutritious in limited quantities and were vital to the survival of people in places like Puglia, Italy where the weather and political rule have a history of instability. The umpteenth ruling class conquering your lands as a strategic military point and steal all your food plunging you into an artificial famine are notably less likely to eat your beans with paralyzing neurotoxins.

See, that “limited quantities” of cicerchia is doing the heavy lifting because the legumes are toxic and they will kill your in horrible, horrible ways if they’re your main source of protein for too long. Sometimes it’s a gamble between the cicerchia toxins and the starvation so you just take your chances. In good times they’re apparently quite tasty and can be part of a traditional diet. Because the cultural knowledge of that limit is passed down.

Lima beans are also toxic if not boiled for 30 minutes (U.S. cultivars may be as low as 10 minutes, but it’s safer to not fuck around with it.) A fact you might not be aware of if you’ve only had them canned or frozen where they’re pre-cooked and you can safely do things line microwave then a few minutes. Because someone else in society was doing something you didn’t notice to prevent a food safety issue you weren’t even aware of. Lima beans are really healthy when prepared correctly and are full of cyanide when raw. Something home gardeners sometimes find out the hard way, especially with all the raw foods health influencers.

Know how to prepare things before you put them in your mouth. Unluckier ancestors than you have already figured this out. Meticulous scientists or other knowledge guardians have figured it out even more precisely. Foraging is older than agriculture and doesn’t have the benefit of deliberately breeding out poisons.

I have written on here many times how much I LOVE that Pride and Prejudice is an adaptation of Much Ado in a kind of stretchy, fanfic-AU sort of way. Austen definitely used the same characters and their dynamics with one another, but she actively adapted the story by giving them all interesting, English Regency versions of their Renaissance Tuscany/London challenges.

My favorite thing is that you see similarities in a) the scandal of an affair with the heroine’s unwed family member, and b) the willingness of the heroine’s “bitter rival” (Benedick/Darcy) to go far beyond what’s expected of him to save her family’s reputation, even when it might hurt his own

In her adaptation, Austen proposes that even if Beatrice/Elizabeth’s family member DID have an extramarital affair, Benedick/Darcy would still be morally obliged to help the family. This differs from Shakespeare, where Benedick believes that Hero is innocent. Sex scandals are therefore key elements in both plots, but Austen really pushes the original narrative to explore what the characters would do if the family member wasn’t innocent and the sex scandal was real. Would Benedick still have the same sense of duty to remedy the situation at great inconvenience/loss to himself? Would that duty be based in his love for Beatrice, or in his sense of ethics? Would Beatrice and Benedick have even fallen in love without their family’s interference?

So like, not only is P&P a wonderful (and very funny) adaptation of Much Ado, it’s also a refreshing, explicit exploration of the themes and issues Shakespeare clearly wanted to introduce to his 16th century audience. P&P doesn’t get to the violent, verbal extremes of “eat his heart in a marketplace” and “kill Claudio,” but it does push the character of Benedick to much more agency and responsibility as a privileged person in relation to Beatrice’s own (lack of) power. And to me, that makes it an exceptionally challenging and effective Regency adaptation of Much Ado.

I've gone. Not one for goodbyes, I thought it best to slip out quietly. Love to you all, Giles.

MIL is about the whitest most cis-het you can imagine and you just try and keep her from cheering the parade with us.