yikes

the procedure to remove me is medically and legally a late term abortion. i was aborted, and it saved my life. if they hadn’t aborted me, my mother and i would both be dead, my siblings would have been left with a dead mother, and i would have never even gotten a chance to live a single day. and now, people are being denied this procedure and dying because it’s literally an abortion!! mothers and their babies are being killed because their doctors are not allowed to perform life-saving abortions.

on the same note, my sister was recently denied an abortion. which is to say, cleaning out the already dead fetus after she had a miscarriage from a wanted pregnancy. they refused treatment unless the DEAD fetus was actively killing her, because the procedure to remove it is medically and legally an abortion. they basically said to her “come back when you’re dying of an infection or sepsis or something, until then you just have to bleed out.” my sister could have died from this, people HAVE died from being denied abortions after having a miscarriage. if she was one of these people, my sister would have been dead, my mother would have to live the rest of her life without her daughter, and my nephew would have had to live the rest of his life without a mother.

Actual archaeology:

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

A group of 6 college kids were ahead of us in line and started chatting with me. Full on just having a fun conversation with someone literally going through the beginning of a very awkward middle school period. I was so shocked they wanted to talk to me. I think my mom mentioned it was my birthday. They were very nice about it. When we got on the ride they told us to go ahead of them so we could sit at the front of the car since it held 8 people.

Now the ride (called Journey to Atlantis - I believe it is sadly no longer there) started with a slow ride of beautiful visuals of dolphins and oceans and computerized images of this imaginary Atlantis before going up the hill to the beginning of the coaster, where it paused for about 30 seconds, and then the ride started. The college kids must have known there would be a pause. Maybe they’d ridden it before I’m not sure.

But as we sat there on that peak, 6 people I’ve never known, and will never know again, sang a very very lonely 11 year old happy birthday. Loudly. And with gusto. They were happy and laughing and joyful. And it made me feel less alone in the world.

I am 29 years old this year, and I still remember them. I still remember that kindness. It is so important. It doesn’t go into a vacuum. It exists beside me in my daily life. And I love the idea that I have been that person to someone else too.

>onions

>my onions

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.