Just a few important and gentle reminders:

🫶🏻 DO NOT WATCH THIS FUCKING SHOW 🫶🏻

If you claim you support human rights - not just trans rights but human rights in general - yet still plan to watch this show, unfollow me. You’re a fucking hypocrite and I don’t want you following me.

Do not watch it even if you’re hate watching it, it still contributes to streaming revenue and views!

The adults in this reboot of the franchise are FULLY accountable for choosing to do this show and accepting a pay cheque over supporting a minority group. Even if they claim they support trans rights, they’re cowards and don’t actually support them at all.

The kids do NOT deserve abuse or hate, whether it’s because you’re comparing them to Dan/Rupert/Emma or because you’re boycotting due to the author’s views. They are literal CHILDREN.

And he raised his eyebrow at me. We'd been discussing addictive medications a few minutes before, like the Tramadol I finally got from the pain specialist to take once a week or so to give me a break from my chronic pain, so I reassured him that methylpenidate (Ritalin/Concerta) is not addictive (at least not in people with ADHD).

His response? To raise his eyebrow even harder and say "Well it sure SOUNDS like it's addictive!"

And I had to explain to this man - who works in a healthcare related job by the way - that just because medication makes you feel good and helps you, just because you look forward to taking it, that doesn't make it addictive or dangerous. And he wasn't convinced.

The simple fact that I was excited to take a daily pill that has literally changed my life, after decades of fighting to get that medication, made him think I shouldn't be taking it so often. That it must inherently be dangerous.

I'm not even in America, but I'm pretty sure this attitude began there and then spread over here to Europe. This Puritan idea of "if something feels good, you must beware of it. Pleasure is dangerous, it is sinful, it is addiction, it is evil."

I know too many people who subconsciously believe that pleasure = addictive = dangerous = bad. Joy is a slippery slope to hell.

So here is your reminder for today that you don't need to be afraid of feeling good. If something improves your life, use it. Even if it is addictive - learn what that addiction means, whether the addiction is inherently dangerous or not, and whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and risks.

My ADHD meds are, in fact, not addictive. But I will take them every day because they make my life orders of magnitude easier. I will enjoy them every time I take them.

My tramadol is addictive. I will still take it. I will keep it on a schedule to avoid becoming addicted, primarily because addiction in this case would mean reduced effectiveness. But I am not afraid of my painkillers. They are life changing.

The eighth floor of the building was able to telephone the tenth floor to warn them about the fire, but the factory on the ninth floor where these women and girls labored had no such communication and such warning.

The factory owners were criminally charged with manslaughter for actions that contributed to the mass deaths but acquitted. However, this tragedy led to mass sympathy to the labor movement, and unions spurred on safety regulations that passed in New York state and eventually the entire country, and activists were able to reduce child labor in the process.

They were discouraged from breaks because they were actively trying to unionize, and bosses felt that keeping them from unsupervised contact would prevent them from joining the garment workers' union.

This is why unions are important. This is why today, right now, the biggest companies in America are trying to squash unionization of their laborers and why those workers are fighting so hard to unionize.

NY had passed a Workers' Comp law, but it was overturned by our highest state court literally the day before the fire. That means that each and every injured worker, and each and every next-of-kin of deceased workers, had to go through the traditional court system. It overwhelmed the courts so cases took ages and results were all over the map. In some cases, juries were horrified and awarded large amounts of money to the survivors. In others? You had avowed eugenicists on the jury who said things like it was survival of the fittest because the women who died should have been smart enough to learn English and have better education and jobs if they didn't want to die in a horrific fire, and that they *did* die in an industrial fire, that meant they never deserved to live in the first place. I'm paraphrasing bc I don't have my primary sources at hand but not exaggerating because, uh, some of the juror interviews are pretty fucking terrible.

Hope is a weapon, hope is a skill

hope is a plant you can care for or kill

hope is a discipline, something you choose

hard to stop looking for, easy to lose

hope isn’t something to have or to take

if you can’t find it, it’s something you make

make it from willpower, make it from spite

learn how to weaponize love in a fight

hope is a shield and a thing to defend

end in itself and a means to an end.

“I always remember having this fight with a random dude who claimed that ‘straight white men’ were the only true innovators. His prime example for this was the computer… the computer… THE COMPUTER!!! THE COM-PU-TER!!!

Alan Turing - Gay man and ‘father of computing’ Wren operating Bombe - The code cracking computers of the 2nd world war were entirely run by women Katherine Johnson - African American NASA mathematician and ‘Human computer’ Ada Lovelace - arguably the 1st computer programmer”

- Sacha Coward

Also Margaret Hamilton - NASA computer scientist who put the first man on the moon - an as-yet-unmatched feet of software engineering, here pictured beside the full source of that computer programme. #myhero

Grace Hopper - the woman that coined the term “bug”  

also computing was typically a job for women (many of whom were black women that made incredible contributions) back in the day, so it’s absolutely fucking wild that straight white men think they are the foundation of computer innovation. men PUSHED women out and took the credit.

what the failed education

system never did.

Delia Derbyshire over there building a synthesizer from scratch to play the Dr. Who theme on.

Food cravings in pregnancy are because you need the extra nutrients to make the baby grow. If you eat it, then you're giving both of you the best chance. (In the US, that's all you get, so listen to your body.)

If you're craving a milkshake, which should be 90% dairy and sugar, and you try to eat what looks like fish, mushrooms, and vegetables, you will not have the right nutrients.

And your baby will lose out, not you. Because as far as evolution is concerned, a grown adult can make many babies, but a baby can't survive without nursing. (The invention of formula was too recent to change this.) So the first person to be deprived of nutrients is the baby.

Next is you. So that means not only are you hurting the baby, you're weakening yourself for the VERY DEADLY, I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH, process of childbirth.

Your baby will die or get hurt in childbirth before you do. But you'll be next.

Consider this a sequel to this morning’s post talking about that SOS from that woman.

To kidnap people, starve them, beat them, torture them and even rape the whole taking their personal belongings? HOW does someone NOT being here “legally” justify that EVIL treatment?? Because guess what fuck sticks? NO ONE but Native Americans are here legally.

But thankfully a group called Haven Watch is formed to help these victims. You can donate if you can but if you can’t just spread the word!

My mom and her teacher friends have a similar group here in New York and me and my friends have a similar kind of group going on.