Dunno

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

And no matter how gently this is pointed out, the newbie will often initially feel instinctively defensive towards what they perceive as scolding. Which means that when another community member comes along and says "Don't worry about the language police 🙄, many of us think AGAB language is fine, it's a useful way to refer to the kind of formative experiences you had as a child," the newbie will latch on to them like a life raft.

And yes, we live in a transphobic society, a lot of people coming into the trans community will have uninterrogated transphobic views, but that just makes them more vulnerable when there is always someone in the community willing to tell them "no, your transphobic views are fine actually, and in fact here are some more you might not have thought of!"

It means a sizeable chunk of newly-out NBs are swiftly radicalised into increasingly extreme transphobia and transmisogyny simply as a defense mechanism against having their own comments criticised. One day they're just happy to join a community where people supposedly don't judge you on your birth sex, and the next they're talking about the importance of "AGAB socialisation".

Image credits according to the post: @yellofish

Image credits

So yew trees are weird. They are extremely long lived with basically no known upper limit to their age. They do this by simply being extremely good at not dying like other trees do.

When a normal tree gets to an old age what usually happens is a fungus gets into their heartwood and takes hold. Their internal, dead wood rots away and they hollow out, lose structural support and collapse. Depending on the species this process can take decades or a good few centuries or so.

While yew trees do hollow out in this way they simply keep going afterwards. A ring shaped yew tree with most of its trunk missing is actually just middle aged and the most ancient yews get even weirder than that.

Wikipedia has this image of a Scottish yew where the start of this hollowing process can be seen. To be clear - for most tree species this would already have been fatal.

The thing is seeing a very old yew in this condition looks wrong to a tree surgeon, it's like the tree is constantly on the verge of death. So, if it's a well loved tree you try and do what you can to stop it from falling apart entirely.

A hundred years ago people tried all sorts of things like chaining up branches and also, yes, plugging the hollowed trunk with concrete. We know better nowadays.

Funnily enough there are even yews that survived this treatment and are still alive today.

This is a picture of the Tisbury yew in 1998 from the Ancient Yew Group, barely a minute ago from the tree's perspective.

Yews are fascinating plants with roots in European culture as ancient as the trees themselves. A few individual specimen trees are even estimated to be around five thousand years old - literally prehistoric in age.

Oh also they do weird things with sex as well sometimes. One of the oldest UK trees, the Fortingall yew appears to partially be turning from male to female on one side. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of it in the next few centuries of its life.

And before I even had a chance to say 'Well I'm not actually a girl'... T's mum (my partner's cousin) took him aside to have a quiet chat about it. She hadn't even hesitated to step in and help educate her son.

I overheard her reminding him about the book 'My Shadow is Purple' and how some people aren't boys or girls, but neither or both.

I choked up from both gratitude that she saw the opportunity to talk to T about it AND the fact they'd obviously already read him books featuring nonbinary characters as a learning tool.

Afterwards, I told my partner what happened and they hadn't read 'My Shadow is Purple', so I read it to them this morning over breakfast and I barely got 2 pages in before crying with joy. By the end, we were both crying.

Life is tough but we can't just let the bigots win. If you check out, then they run the show a little more.

From time-to-time, I hear non-binary positivity breach the topics of going on HRT, as well as top surgery (usually for transmascs, but I will get into this separately)...

But almost never bottom surgery.

So I am here to say this:

If you presently have a penis and to ANY degree would be happier without it, this doesn't automatically mean you must be a woman. You don't have to be a binary woman to be valid in wanting to have a vagina. Vaginoplasty and/or orchiectomy aren't just for binary women.

If you presently have a vagina and to ANY degree would be happier without it, this doesn't automatically mean you must be a man. You don't have to be a binary man to be valid in wanting to have a penis. Metoidioplasty AND phalloplasty aren't just for binary men.

Being non-binary doesn't mean you have to "make peace" with your natal parts, you are allowed to transition your body in whichever way validates you the most.

and for all of yall that are still figuring it out or aren't getting the support you deserve: