Title Pending

It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.

Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.

Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.

The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.

The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.

She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.

She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."

#i didnt reblog the first time #because i wanted to verify this #and now that i have? hell yeah brownie grandma

What I did was find sources that made the claim (in this case, that a woman named Mary Jane was a medicinal marijuana activist in California, USA in the 1980s and 90s.) I checked the dates to get some certainty those sources aren't AI slop, then checked that the sources are generally reliable.

Then I followed useful details about the place and time, and other people involved, to explore it more fully.

The first thing I did was search for "Brownie Mary" and see if that turned anything up at all. It turned up a LOT of results. Predictably, some of them were recipes, but not all of them.

Next up, I checked sources and dates. Wikipedia can be dodgy for academic use, but their policy on LLM-generated input is very clear: they don't want slop. I started by reading that page and then went on to read others.

The Atlas Obscura article is from 2018. I found another one from SFWeekly from 2017.

Both of those are decent sources - Atlas Obscura gets a High factual reporting rate from MediaBiasFactCheck, and while MBFC doesn't have a rating for SFWeekly, the verbiage in that article is very close to what GastroObscura has. (Also to what the post itself has, right down to the choice of pull quote.)

Now, we can stop there and feel pretty confident that articles published before the wide availability of LLMs are not, in fact, LLM generated.

...or we can go deeper, and run this all the way back to source.

I spotted references to a Chicago Tribune imterview of Mary Jane Rathbun, published in 1993.

My search string of "Chicago Tribune 1993 Mary Jane Rathbun" hit it in the top 3 results. That article includes some fun new details: she wore a cannabis leaf shaped pendant to her trial!

She also objected to being portrayed as a cuddly grandma up against The Man, so I must retract my flippant tags, above.

The evidence now strongly points to Brownie Mary being a real woman who really went to court for giving AIDS patients weed brownies. But can we get closer? I've now seen several mentions of a 1980 attempt at convicting her too.

The articles have mentioned Sonoma County and a nonprofit called the Shanti Project, so let's hook onto that and see what we get.

Searching for "Mary Jane Rathbun Sonoma County 1980" gets me an article from a law firm; that mentions the prosecuting attorney by name, and points to a book: Lust for Justice: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra, by Paulette Frankl. It even has an excerpt!

We can run the book down too, just for fun (now we have a primary source.) My favorite used book site has a copy for $1. Amazon gives a view of the back cover, too:

...wow. I should see if my library has that!

The excerpt on the site has a mention of a candelight vigil held for her death in 1999. It took some hunting past things I'd already read and a bunch of shops giving written tributes, but I found a news report about that, too.

There's a lot of information out there, and it's worth digging into. Otherwise it's altogether too easy to think something real and worth knowing is just another bit of slop.

so my slot was at the tail end of rush hour, and i got a fair number of listeners/callers who were on the way home from the office. And like, I had a lot of callers, who almost all wanted to request songs that really didn’t fit with the aesthetic. I had pitched a power pop show when i got my slot, but the callers were not having it; they invariably wanted classic rock.

this made sense in a way. if you think about the demographics of the people who listened to the radio for music in 2010 instead of their ipods or cds or whatever, you’d expect them to skew older right? accordingly, i quickly realized that almost all of the people who called to request songs were Dads of a Certain Age. It was honestly annoying at first - I’m all for most classic rock, but that wasn’t what the show was supposed to be.

And so one day, when i was feeling particularly annoyed with requests that just didn’t fit thematically, i came up with the joke that rapidly became the only reason I kept the show going. Per station rules, I had to play a certain number of pre-recorded PSAs during my show, and before I cut to one I was supposed to read out the song titles and artists for all the music i had played before the break. So this one day when i had to inform the world before the break that the song they just heard was, per a listener’s request, Hey Jude by the Beatles, I decided to do a goof. I said:

“and finally, that last song you heard was Hey Jude, which was of course written and performed by the Rolling Stones.”

I barely had time to get the ads going before the phone started ringing. See, I had been assuming people would realize i was making an obvious joke by claiming one of the most well-known Beatles tracks was a Stones song, but i had failed to consider that my listeners were mostly 55-70 year old dads who were irritated from a long day in the office.

And when those dads heard me, a millennial woman, get the artist of an extremely well-known beatles song WRONG???!

they HAD to call in to correct my ignorance. never in a polite way either, it was condescending and annoyed or nothing. and like, they were just SO personally insulted by my inaccurate reporting that it took a massive amount of effort for me to avoid cracking up during the call. I had never understood why some people would enjoy trolling random strangers on the internet before, but in that moment, I understood the appeal entirely.

obviously i did it again right before the next commercial break, immediately after playing Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen David Bowie.

the phone immediately began to ring.

“ARE YOU AN IDIOT?” one of the callers began, “DAVID BOWIE???? THAT WAS QUEEN!”

“I thought David Bowie was the lead singer of Queen though?” I replied with as much innocent earnestness as i could conjure.

I could hear an intake of breath as the infuriated boomer on the other end of the line struggled to figure out where to even start.

@eduards-stuff I kept doing the same joke for an hour a week for an entire year, and the dads NEVER caught on. After episode 1 of the new format I started taking the angry dad calls on air, which added another layer of hilarity to the whole concept.

My friends on campus knew that hay I was doing and enjoyed tuning in, but only one actual listener ever figured out what I was doing, and he was literally a random 30 year old guy from the netherlands with access to an early internet connection radio service. He was possibly my only actual fan. I only know about him because he went to the effort of making a skype and paying for international service so he could call in, and while I got a few calls from him, the first remains my favorite:

me: hi there, you’ve got TST-

him: *strained, wheezing dutch laughter*

me: hey, is everything o-

him: pfffHAHAHAAH YOU MAKE THEM SO MAD. THEY THINK SO LITTLE OF YOUUUUUUUU BUT THE MEN ARE THE ONES WHO ARE FOOLISH! HA! HA! HA! YOU HAVE DUPED THEM!

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.

Scenario: you see someone in a wheelchair fall out of their chair, and you have the ability to help.

1. Approach and ask "are you okay?"*

2. Next question if they say no, are vague, or open to continuing conversation** is, "is there anything I can do to help?" Or "what can I do?"

If they say no to help, then that's the end, just leave and go do whatever you were doing!

If they ask for help or say they are mildly injured, ask "what would you like me to do?" And wait for an answer before doing anything! If they seem dazed or confused, they might have hit their head or had another medical event*, or they might just be like that due to regular disability. Be patient.

Do not touch the person unless they say to, or they are like, unconcious in the middle of the road, ya know?? Wheelchair users usually have conditions that mean being handled improperly can severely injure us, you could cause much more damage than the fall.

Some things they might need you to do:

Bring their wheelchair closer (mine went about 5 feet away after it dumped me)

engage the brakes of the wheelchair

hold wheelchair steady if it's an unsteady surface (mud, hill, ramp, wet, etc)

offer an arm for them to hold onto to get up (them grabbing you, not you grabbing them) or move another solid item closer for them to use (i.e. a chair) [only do this if you physically have the ability to!]

If the terrain is rough (i.e. a parking lot), they *might* ask you to push their chair to a more stable area once they are back in their chair

nothing

Something else

Do what they ask, NOT what you think would be helpful. If for some reason you have to do something (i.e. you can't stop oncoming traffic and need to get them out) ASAP, tell them what you plan to do

Keep in mind they might also be D/deaf, have a communication disability, be stunned after the fall, have a head injury, not trust other people, etc. Be patient and treat them as a person with autonomy and agency! They might need to just sit on the ground for a few minutes to recover before trying to get back in their chair. They might want everyone to leave them alone. They might ask you to call someone specific. Their chair might have broken and that can be extremely distressing. All of this is like if your legs spontaneously stop working when you're out and about!

A lot of wheelchair users (NOT ALL) have ways to get into their chair on their own once the chair is close enough and brakes engaged (but it's hard from the ground!). Here's what brakes look like on a lot of manual wheelchairs, in case they ask you to lock the brakes. They're levers on each side and pushing the lever pushes a bar against the wheel to hold it still.

ID: A manual wheelchair with the brake levels circled in red and labeled "user brake levers"

*There is also the possibility of course that a person fell out of their chair due to a seizure or other medical event, so that is why it is important to ask if they are okay. If you saw them hit their head, tell them so. If they had a medical event, follow protocol for that, I'm not gonna get into it here (thought I could).

**sometimes a person will be clear after the first question i.e. "I'm all good thanks" clearly means they do not need you to ask another question, you can just leave them alone. Keep walking and don't stare. A lot of the time people will be a bit banged up but be totally fine and able to manage on their own.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

Here's what I need you to do:

If you see a post with a "mature content" label, and it's 2026, DM me a link to the post.

Yes, that's really it.

I am hoping to collect several thousand such posts, so that I have a decent sized dataset. I do not care what the post is about; if it's labeled as "mature content", I want to add it to my dataset.

What's your hypothesis, OP?

I am not talking about that unless I have results to share. That would bias the results.

I did write them down and I did share them with a trusted contact who can prove that I wrote them down the same day I made this post. (While I did so before I made this post, I am not sure they will be able to provide proof of that, because I did so on the same day.)

OP are you interested in...?

Do you have to click through to see the post? Does the clickthrough contain the words "mature content"? Then yes.

OP are you interested if the post is about...?

Should I reblog this for reach?

Yes, please. I felt really silly when I noticed I forgot to include that in the original post.

Is it okay if I send you my own posts?

Yes, those are perfect for what I'm looking for. I actually need to do some processing on a post to make it useful for testing my hypothesis, and this makes it easy.

Are you looking for "potentially mature content" also, or just "mature content"?

I want both, please. Anything that throws up a blocking screen that you have to click through. The distinctions between them are one of the things I am hoping to study.

Does it matter when the post was made originally?

Technically no. There's no way to respond to this without introducing some bias in the results, and I don't want that. However, I do collect some data on a post as part of making it useful to me, and that data is easier to collect if the post is recent.

What if I request content label review on a post after I send it to you?

I need to see the mature content label to be able to use the post. Because the mature content label hides the content of the post, it is very hard to use a post that no longer has a mature content label. You could send me a screenshot, but people could use that to lie to me.

Basically, it's more work for you to make it usable to me.

OP are you a transphobe? It would ruin the experiment for me if you're a transphobe.

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!

so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.

Here’s the general art style Chinese mountains are drawn in:

And here’s how some of them actually look:

Transgender community, please please please do NOT use this product! It will kill you if used, please do not use it whatsoever.