Lets Go Then

And the comments are gold

(+Extra)

1) get in the bathtub. You’re going to be squatting, with your legs as far apart as you can. Think football linebacker meets Slav squat. I recommend doing this while facing the wall so you can use your hands to balance.

2) push. You’re going to be using the same muscles you use when your bladder is being stupid about letting you finish taking a pee. It may take a couple of pushes, but the tampon will pop free unless it’s super-dry, so I’m assuming a cup should also pop free since it’s not made of absorbent cotton.

3) congratulations, it’s a menstrual product!

4) discard the tampon or rinse the cup using the tub faucet and set it aside.

5) use the tub faucet, or showerhead if you have a removable one, to clean up your legs and vulva. Unfortunately this removal process is going to be messy and there’s no way around that, which is why you do this in the tub to begin with.

6) if you’re me this is the part where you speedwalk to wash all the industrial ink off your hands before changing your product, but if you’re not me you can probably skip to putting on a pad.

#my old phone looks like this on my shelf lmao #im too scared to touch it to throw it away #idk what trash this even goes into when its at this point

The pillow-shaped object here used to be the phone’s battery. It’s not a battery anymore. Now it’s a balloon full of corrosive, pyrophoric chemicals and hydrogen gas and it’s one puncture away from burning your house down. I am 100% serious. You should be scared to touch it.

But you gotta touch it, because you gotta get it out of your house before the pressure builds up to the point where the balloon pops. This isn’t going to happen soon – there is no need to panic – but it will happen eventually.

And, indeed, it doesn’t go in the ordinary trash. You put this in the ordinary trash and you’re gonna set the garbage truck on fire. Don’t do that to the garbage collectors, their job is hard enough already.

The first thing you need to do is get a fireproof container. The most common household item that qualifies as a fireproof container is a cast-iron cookpot with a cast-iron lid – often sold as a “Dutch oven.” Any other cooking container that’s unreactive, has a very high melting point, and has a lid made of the same materials will also work: enameled or stainless steel, Pyrex with glass lid, etc.

However: Do not use a pot with a PTFE-based non-stick coating. If the battery does explode, the fire will probably be hot enough to degrade a PTFE coating, producing toxic smoke. (Not that you should breathe the smoke from the battery fire either, but PTFE breakdown products are worse.) Do not use a pot made of aluminium or copper. The fire might even get hot enough to melt those.

Whatever container you use, you might have to throw away along with the phone, so don’t use your good Dutch oven for this. Go to a thrift store and buy a cheap one.

Once you have the fireproof container:

Gently pick up the phone and put it in the fireproof container. If possible, gently tape the phone to the bottom of the container to prevent it from bouncing around. Don’t put any padding in there, that’ll just make a fire worse if it does happen. Put the lid on and tape it shut.

Put a label on the container, something like “DEFECTIVE LI-ION BATTERY – FIRE HAZARD”.

It is now reasonably safe to move the container around. However, if the battery does explode, the container is very likely to leak smoke and get hot, so keep it in a well-ventilated area and away from things that will be damaged by heat. Don’t leave it exposed to the weather, either.

You need to find either a hazardous waste disposal site, or an e-waste recycler that will accept defective Li-ion batteries. I can’t help with that because I have no idea where you live.

However, your local fire department, if you have one, will probably be happy to help. Call their non-emergency number. Nothing is on fire yet, so this isn’t an emergency, but things that can easily start a fire are still within the fire department’s responsibilities. Tell them you have a phone with a bulging lithium-ion battery, you put it in a fireproof container, and you want to know how to dispose of it safely.

If the fire department tries to tell you this isn’t dangerous or it’s okay to throw it out in the regular trash (with or without fireproof container), hang up on them and write a cranky letter to your local government representatives, then keep looking for a proper disposal site.

Because yeah, there’s institutional and financial and political reasons to hate queer people, even if they’re dogshit reasons that don’t hold water, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I want to know the small, sad, petty little reasons those kinds of people have for wanting a whole group of people either dead, tortured, or abjectly miserable for the grand crime of being born. And I want the honest reasons, not the party lines they spew or the mere gut reaction of “it makes me uncomfortable :(“

But I have been in the position where a guy claimed to be transfemale in order to go into the girls toilets to have sex with his girlfriend. I remember the feeling of being helpless to complain because he hid behind the trans label when all I wanted was to change and wash in peace after a very muddy hike - and there was no one official around to intercede or tell them to fuck in their tent not the toilet. One in a million or more chance maybe, but it happened and it hurt me.

So laws like Scotland’s… I agree that it should be easier and cheaper for people to change their gender. I agree that if you know, then you know, and that could be at 13 / 15 / 16 / 32. I get that not all trans people need / want gender change surgery and that’s a personal choice, not an inevitable path.

I understand that being against the law changing makes those people miserable and encourages suffering and that it’s not fair on them.

But I want to hear more about the protections to stop people abusing this. I want to know if checks are done on people to see if they’re changing their name / gender to hide their identity (because of a crime and not, say, terrified a violent ex is going to find them). I want the legal language where female and woman mean different things sorted and made consistent because it is not transphobic for a doctor to need a clear indication on if you’re AFAB or AMAB when providing treatment. It is transphobic if they look at your notes (which should have your gender on too, if it’s different to bio sex) and they ignore your preferred pronouns.

I want everything talked out calmly and rationally and fixed at once, but if that can’t happen, I want to know I can go to a bathroom without someone temporarily self-identifying as a different gender being there and giggling at me because they wanted to fuck their partner somewhere dry. I want to know that people whose culture is particular about what bio-sex can touch them, can request someone of a particular bio-sex, and have that acknowledged, granted, and not get called transphobic (eg if you are female and request a female doctor) because they asked for a female and got a woman. It’s not fair on them, and it’s not fair on the poor trans person who gets screamed out the room.

This is freaking AMAZING.

Honestly I’m surprised we didn’t get a nightmare like this in Kenobi.

8.2. Unsolicited Materials. Netflix does not accept unsolicited materials or ideas for Netflix content and is not responsible for the similarity of any of its content or programming in any media to materials or ideas transmitted to Netflix.

…and you’ll find similar clauses out there for other production entities. They are trying to safeguard themselves. There are people out there who are certain that a hit film or TV series is based on their stolen idea. The easiest way to avoid that is to make sure that their ideas can’t get to you.

I can't remember how far along the episode was in production — I think a rough draft of the script had been written —but showrunner J. Michael Straczynski had to pull the plug on the episode until they finally tracked down the fan who'd suggested a "workers' strike" story on Usenet and get legal documents signed that the fan wouldn't sue or ask for a cut of the proceeds. AND the documents had to be watertight enough that Warner Bros' legal dept was satisfied all financial/legal risk had been eliminated. In other words, it wasn't up to JMS to make the call.

Sadly, after that, he could no longer participate in the old Babylon 5 Usenet discussion list, where he used to interact directly with fans, answering questions. It was just safer if he stayed away, because that way nobody could accuse him of lifting ideas for the show. We don't want Neil to have to pull back for the same reason.

A lot of creators avoid social media for the same reason. Those that are here @neil-gaiman , @dduane , have a hard and fast rule not to look at unasked solicitations.

And now that Babylon 5 might get a reboot, JMS has issued a similar request:

I am demonstrably sad, and lonely, and full of fear. But there are other people who will hold my hand, who will point out the hawk overhead, who will give you That Look in a public place. The other day at a coffee shop a child said "look! It's snowing!" so all of us strangers went to go look out the windows. It wasn't the first snow and it won't be the last but wasn't it lovely like that?

How wonderful to live in a world where birds and frogs both say beep! How wonderful to have an ocean of beautiful sharks with their dinosaur teeth! How wonderful the moon and her changing face, how wonderful the bees and their dancing to communicate, how wonderful shrimp and their forbidden layers of vision! How wonderful, you, and what you will give the world! The way we love things enough to spend entire blogs devoted to them? How people will let me explain my Pokemon team to them? How we will both jump at the scare in the movie, how we laugh so loudly, how it feels to give someone your baking? How wonderful to be alive. I am sorry for forgetting.