Pancake Party in the Void

Pad en pad.

Een paddenpaadje.

PBS and NPR were never beholden to the US government.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created so that the US government could fund public media without public media being influenced by the government. It was a private non-profit funded by the government, not a part of the government itself. This is by design. This was a good thing. It meant that even small local TV and radio stations, could afford to create media for the public good, without government influence.

This meant TV and radio stations for poor communities. For non-english speaking communities. For rural communities. For minorities. It meant that free and accessible media could be created for everyone, even if the government didn't like it.

That's why conservatives defunded it.

Because if they couldn't control it, and if it helped the people they hated, then they would have to destroy it. Do you really think that a fascist government would defund their own propaganda machine?

Not only is the idea that PBS before being defunded was propaganda wrong, but ignores the fact that defunding it is going to have long-term negative effects on vulnerable communities.

every fat person you know for the most part probably has a story like this, of medical neglect. many of the stories i've heard personally are when the complaint or the doctor wasn't related at all, like being told to lose weight at the ear nose and throat doctor or at the dentist. it's straight up just bias. it's such a thing that in the show Shrill it's portrayed, when Aidy Bryant goes to the gynecologist and her doctor suggests she get gastric bypass.

the studies on health and fatness are simply not that black and white and there is basically no research that shows that more than an incredibly tiny minority of people can lose weight and keep it off for more than like 2 years. bodies have set points that they gravitate towards, it's not a personal failure. this also is how the weight loss industry succeeds so well - repeat customers.

some of the harm associated with fatness is also due to weight cycling, which is very hard on your body and is even worse if you get off a GLP1, which according to a recent study causes weight to be regained at a rate that is 4x faster than without taking a GLP1.

you don't have to hate yourself. you don't have to hate other people for their body type either. it makes me so sad to see the thinspo tag going around again in 2026 a lot like it was back in the day.

some resources to learn more here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/feeling-fat-may-be-worse-for-you-than-being-fat-idUSTON079061/

If you go without it you feel unwell in a way that you never usually feel unwell. Sweating, tired, sleepy, headaches, irritable, depressed, etc. For example when I was in opium withdrawal I got incredibly depressed in a way that I’ve never been before or since. When you quit caffeine you might get super bad headaches even if you never usually get any headaches.

Thoughts of it regularly bother you and the thoughts go away once you’ve taken it but only temporarily. Unlike with a food craving which usually stays away once you’ve satisfied it or distracted yourself from it.

You find yourself rationalizing with yourself why you should break your own rules about how much you can take and how often. For example you might only let yourself drink alcohol every four days but start thinking that three days is actually close enough to four days, right? Especially if this happens regularly.

You’re using it so often that you feel the need to lie about how much you use because other people might think it’s concerning

If the substance or activity is nearby it’s genuinely difficult to not consume it or participate in it in a way that’s really frustrating.

You feel bad when you’re not on it and your brain tells you “if you just take the thing you wouldn’t feel this way”

You can only feel “whole” or “normal” when you’re on a substance even though it’s a recreational drug

Like, the universe blinks and some space/time phenomenon runs afoul of Simon's elder god moment and the next thing he knows, he's waking up inside some kind of space ship(?) that appears to be running on autopilot.

It's weird and the tech looks both dated and brand new, expensive and advanced but also extremely retro, like someone using a diamond-encrusted rotary phone to check their emails. Luckily it's all mostly in language that Simon can comprehend, unluckily a lot of the equipment still seems like it would require several degrees of expertise to operate. But eventually Simon figures out enough to find the ship's crew, and... it's not looking good for them.

Two of them are dead. Have been for a while. Whatever stasis system(?) they have has preserved the corpses pretty well, but it's past the point of being able to try and revive them. The other is still alive, but Simon's not sure how to safely wake him up or what to do if that starts to change. He decides to just keep an eye on the situation, presumably there's a system that will wake the guy up whenever the ship reaches its destination, and if he starts to look bad before that point then Simon can always try to manually revive him and hope for the best.

Anyway, the ship has medicine and supplies, which he desperately needs. He figures the other two crewmen weren't planning on dying, so they can probably spare enough of said supplies for him. He figures out the AI well enough to start asking questions and eventually puts together that he's time traveled(?) or crossed into another dimension, that this ship is on a mission to figure out why the stars are going dim, or rather why there's one star that isn't, and he's not sure what to make of it but it seems he's also landed on another one-way trip.

When Grace wakes up, confused and without his memories, Simon panics and because Grace assumes he must've been part of the crew he just... goes with that. Grace thinks that he woke up from stasis early and that his weirdness is a result of isolation. He's a little surprised that there's an amputee aboard but it would be insensitive to ask, right? Not that a one-armed guy can't be an astronaut, yeah? Although Simon is also weirdly cagey about what his specialty is supposed to be and seems vague on the mission too, Grace assumes his memory also suffered some kind of an issue from being in stasis, he's just glad he's not alone.

Then they run into Blip-A and they're even more not alone, Rocky moves in, everyone does science, Simon still doesn't really seem to have an area of expertise per se, Grace keeps waiting to remember the part where Simon joined the mission (he's sure he'd remember him), Simon's kind of sweating bullets still wondering how he's supposed to explain anything, and then the whole fishing trip on Adrian goes pear-shaped and Simon uses like. Eldritch blood magic...?

Grace is having trouble computing that but he definitely saw it. So. Guess that explains why he's on the mission, if someone found a literal space wizard they would want them on the Mankind-saving mission, if ever there was a time for some kind of secret cult society of wizards living under the radar to come out in the open it would be now, yeah. But Grace can also see where explaining that to an amnesiac would be awkward and seem too hard to believe.

He has connected the dots!

Anyway he doesn't really notice that his Simon Joins the Mission and Reveals Wizards memories never arrive, he's too distracted by the revelation that Stratt forced him to go on the mission and he didn't volunteer, and then there's the whole issue with the taumoeba breaking containment and turning back to rescue Rocky and save Erid, which they both agree to do. By that point Simon has established himself as a presence in Grace's mind and Grace no longer considers him that much of a mystery to be solved (Simon's abilities are, Simon himself is not), whenever Simon lets slip something about like, competing for food or being in prison or in a cult, Grace just assumes he himself was pretty sheltered from how bad the situation on Earth was getting due to being in the Project Hail Mary bubble, and is like yeah okay Stratt double fair play to you, I didn't realize it was getting quite so Mad Max out there.

Now up until this point, Simon has done a good job of staying out of Grace's logs. Grace has mentioned him but in such a way that everyone on Earth probably thinks he's hallucinated an imaginary friend in the isolation and stress, like well damn he's cracked but at least the science seems sound.

Yes sure Dr Ryland Grace, your good friend Simon the One-Armed Blood Wizard is up there with you and the aliens, and for that matter so are all of us in spirit. Godspeed and thank you for your noble sacrifice.

Grace himself thinks that Simon is making his own reports, but when they go to send the beetles he's like, no we should do one together to make it clear that we're both agreeing to this and have come to this decision as a team. At which point Simon is just like, well... okay? Still just kind of avoiding conflict by going with the path of least resistance. So he smiles and nods and waves at the camera, and is like Hello Earth, Simon the One-Armed Blood Wizard here. Um. Yeah I'm good with going back to save Rocky and Erid too. Best wishes, and all that.