SoH Mercy

I haven't been able to do a donation yet this year, between surgery and being flared up and an endless barrage of labwork. But my last set of labs just came back clean-ish and I don't feel sickly at the moment.

Javert: It's pride month, 24601! You know what that means! (Javert hands Valjean a progress pride flag)

Valjean: Huh? What? You want me to steal a gay loaf of bread? ...What?

The basement floods when it rains. Known issue, with work orders going back several years. (Actually, the ceiling drips now too, which is such a cool development, but not relevant here.)

Anyways, they put down these mats that are filled with super absorbent powder that drinks up water and becomes a gel, like the stuff that's in diapers.

No idea who put those mats there, but they've never been replaced since they first appeared a few months ago. So they're oversaturated and leaking wet gel-goo all over the floor now.

Note that the bins in the last picture are there solely to catch ceiling water. And those things on the left side are the goo-oozing absorbent mats, plus some normal rags for good measure.

I haven't been able to do a donation yet this year, between surgery and being flared up and an endless barrage of labwork. But my last set of labs just came back clean-ish and I don't feel sickly at the moment.

The Wound Will Not Heal, 2022

Paper clay, spackle, acrylic, PVA glue, expired medication, and Unicorn Milk pearlescent topcoat on canvas

Bitter sarcasm aside, I'm gonna go ahead and risk sounding a little paranoid here:

I want to show people what food/financial assistance forms have been asking since trump was elected. They've refined the questions now -at the beginning of 2025 the first question was "Do you use any pronouns?"[sic]- and I feel like that's worse, since at the beginning at least it let you know immediately who was asking and why. The way it sounds friendly and supportive now is even more sinister.

I cannot stress enough that these questions were not asked before 2025. The first time I renewed since they went into effect was over the phone, so I was able to ask point blank why they needed to know, and was told that it was now required by the government -so no, this isn't just a liberal state trying to be more inclusive. There isn't and never was a legitimate need to know this information in order to provide benefits. This is solely to keep track of queer people. I'd also like to point out that they are required to list your assigned sex, and you cannot edit that field. So even if I listed myself as boy/man without stating that I'm trans, it would out me, and that's the intention. There's also a huge detailed list of race and ethnicity options now that really do everything to try to get hyper specific answers out of you, including if you're jewish and what kind (I'd recommend not answering any of that either, btw)

They also waited until the forms were fully filled out and being submitted before informing me (in a footnote) that sexual orientation is protected on a state level but not federal. Not just gender identity, orientation.

The absolute mildest ramifications of collecting this data could be the administration using it to claim that queer people are disproportionately draining government resources and add more fuel to our persecution. The fine print states that this info can all be requested and accessed by various government agencies for several purposes including making arrests. I'm begging all of you to refuse to answer any demographic questions you can on forms like this, no matter how tempting or validating it seems to have such detailed options to acknowledge your identity, because it is purely a trap. The government DOES NOT need to know how you identify, and there is no plausible benefit to telling them.

If you're cis, straight and/or white: