hand me my shovel, i'm going in!

So, if any trans men are being told about this, it’s not true!! Smoking will not change your voice, at least not until you’re about forty years down the line and you’ve already irreparably destroyed your lungs and throat and mouth and pretty much every other organ in your body. When you hear heavy smokers with deeper, scratchier voices it is literally because their vocal cords have been ruined. This is not a passive effect of smoking, it is a very very damaging one!

It’s simply not worth it! There will be no meaningful changes except terrible ones. Voice training will do a lot more for you than cigarettes will, I promise that the people urging you to start smoking as a voice training method do not have your best interests at heart!

(And you know what, this also goes for not eating due to the idea that starving yourself will decrease your chest size. Like with smoking, there will be no meaningful changes except terrible ones. Your body is worth so much more than that and there will always be healthier alternatives!)

(Btw, afaik smoking only has this effect on estrogen from HRT. Estrogen that AFAB bodies produce naturally is not affected, so smoking is still bad for trans men)

I think also in that conversation, I had a couple people tell me that the book The Easy Way to Quit Smoking is, despite the gimmicky title, genuinely helpful.

If quitting for yourself seems too abstract and it’s hard to care, think about everyone around you. Someone with asthma or migraines will breathe easier if they’re not risking an attack from standing near you.

Lastly, some queer history: a 90’s tobacco marketing campaign that targeted gay men was literally called Project SCUM. That’s what they think of us. Don’t give them your money.

This guy is using his landscaping company's equipment to fix his city's massive pothole because the city ain't doing shit. People are sending him pictures of the truly atrocious that need to be fixed quickly

The city responses is "thank you but stop. You will get arrested and fined"

Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.

Do people even know how casually and pervasively U.S. christians believe actual witchcraft and demons are a tangible everyday threat? Because it should be horrifying that these people just walk around thinking that way.

This isn't harmless religious freedom, it's an untreated ongoing mass hysteria dangerous enough that these people have zero business ever touching any form of educational work, medical work, law enforcement or politics and yet they outright dominate those last two. Your local state senators quite possibly think little goblins from hell are as real as like, seagulls. And they think you're possesed and brainwashed under their* influence for not agreeing with them.

*the demons, not the seagulls...but maybe?