WhensMixedUp

Witch 2: When the hurdy-gurdy's done

She checked out 2 books a day from the school library and read voraciously on her own and returning the books to the library at the end of the day. She’d get done work early or just skip any work time in class to read her books.

Her parents were ‘old-fashioned’ too. They didn’t think their child should be reading anything they didn’t personally approve of first.

There was a reason she never told her parents she checked out books from the school library. There was a reason none of the teachers scolded her for reading or told her parents about it during parent-teacher conferences.

They were actively preventing further abuse of a vulnerable teenager under their care.

Look at this fine young lady! She can paint she can sew and embrody, she sings and read

And without a wealthy father to pay for that, plus she is florid in the body! She doesn’t know hunger!

My Ancestors: TRULY SH— what? They? A little unorthodox, but reasonable I suppose. TRULY THEY PROSPER, FOR THEY LIVE IN A DWELLING WITH MANY ROOMS AND ONLY THEIR SPOUSE TO SHARE IT WITH! THEY HAVE DOGS WHO DO NOT PERFORM A FUNCTION! THEY HAVE MANY BOOKS AND DO NOT HAVE TO SPIN THEIR OWN YARN! THEY BATHE AT A WHIM WITH GENTLE SOAP FREE OF LYE! OUR DESCENDANT BRINGS HONOR AND PRIDE TO OUR LINEAGE!

Me: /yawns and sips my coffee/

My impoverished Russian Jewish ancestors:

My ancestors: Our descendant, the heir to all our hopes and fears for a far-off future… She can buy fine clothes woven and knit by automatons, with but a fraction of a day’s earnings… and she does… she has so much free time to do as she pleases… and she uses some of that time to do what we did.

One woman from rural Poland, who died from smallpox in 1717 CE, a grandmother at 35: I knit roses and peonies into my and my children’s gloves… it wasn’t much extra work to dye the red, once I had already cleaned the wool and spun the yarn, and to knit in the designs… and I wasn’t a gifted knitter but I was a good knitter, and I thought, well, it might not make a difference to how warm the glove is, but it made the children happy and it made me happy. I liked to make things beautiful when I could.

Another woman, a peasant from what’s now France, who died from getting kicked by a mammoth in 8995 BCE: [Patting her on the back] I made my family’s clothes too. Every day my sister and I wove and wove and tended our children. We went out of our way to make the cloth lovely. Not a trace of it remains anywhere on earth now… But it mattered to us. And she might not know our names, or know it was us, but evidently, it matters to her too. She has so much beauty available to her, in every direction, and she wants to make it where we once made it.

[everyone sobbing and high-fiving each other.]

A man from Britain, 1104 CE, sitting at the trans-temporal telescope, reporting on my doings: She’s stopped knitting and now she’s playing minecraft.

The other ancestors: Ah, yes, the dream of building. We know this one well. What vision doth she design now?

Telescope man: Looks like… Some kind of floating temple?

Vice President Kamala Harris announced this week that the Biden administration is looking to lessen the burden medical debt has on people by purging it from their credit report. This means that even if people have piles of medical debt — one in five Americans say they do — it’s not going to affect their ability to get a mortgage or a car loan. So they will at least have a place to rest their head and a car they can drive to work every day while paying off their medical bills.

Via AP:

Harris said that would make it easier for them to obtain an auto loan or a home mortgage. Roughly one in five people report having medical debt. The vice president said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is beginning the rulemaking process to make the change. The agency said in a statement that including medical debt in credit scores is problematic because “mistakes and inaccuracies in medical billing are common.” “Access to health care should be a right and not a privilege,” Harris told reporters in call to preview the action. “These measures will improve the credit scores of millions of Americans so that they will better be able to invest in their future.”

"In addition to pulling medical bills from credit reports, the proposal would prevent creditors from using medical bills when deciding on loans and stop debt collectors from using credit ratings to pressure people with health care-related debt. The government will hear feedback from small businesses and then issue a notice of a proposed rulemaking at some point next year."

It's not time for a shower (evil herald of bedtime or going places), it's time for Inside Rainstorm (fun defying the laws of nature playtime).

It's not "you have to ride in the shopping cart today so mama doesn't lose you in the crowded store" (cruel affront to autonomy), "let's do Buggy Racecar Obstacle Course today" (powerful chaotic zoomies time).

Soup or stew (wicked disgusting food that will surely kill us all) becomes "veggies and glorpy sauce" (mysterious and fun!).

"You want some meat/beans/tofu/[insert actual food name here]?" = meltdown freakout "You want some protein for your big ol' muscles?" = holy crap she actually just ate a protein of her own volition

I dunno if this next one is weird but it really helped MK when she was a kid so I'm sharing it:

Being autistic, when she was little MK used to really struggle with schedule changes, so @urbanprole came up with a technique that really worked. Every night at bedtime, whatever other stories we read, it always ended with, "Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Cat. She got up in the morning, she went to school, she went to aftercare, Mom picked her up, then she came home and did her homework... " and so if anything the next day would be Different, Emet could flag it for her:

"... and she left school at 1 PM for a doctor's appointment... "

But it always ended the same way:

"... and then she exploded."

it also allows individuals with extreme prejudices and the power to enforce them the ability to look at outfits that are exactly the same but only point at one girl and say “yeah, that’s an abaya, she’s a threat and therefor we won’t let her learn”

Joe Biden is boring and often bad at tooting his own horn, but by god, he is good at process.

Justice 40 is simple but powerful application of that. its a shift in how the executive branch works. 40% of money from a bunch of existing programs should go to census tracts that are overburdened with pollution, at higher risk for climate change, and have been historically underserved.

The shorthand here is basically "communities that don't have enough internal resources to deal with long term problems". So yes, communities that had been redlined for decades, ones that have Superfund sites, ones that have high rates of asthma from air pollution.

and this is by census tract. Not city. census tract. So parts of New York City qualify... but other parts don't. And the city HAS to use the money in the targeted part. it doesn't go into the communal pool. it's for THAT tract specifically.

Also all land federally recognized as belonging to a Native American tribe and all Alaskan Native Villages qualify, specifically.

And again, this is for existing programs that are already running and have existing staff and budgets. They're supposed to prioritize grants and projects for those areas specifically. And that's everything from Department of Agriculture, to FEMA, to Labor, to Environmental Protection.

Does it instantly get rid of all the baked in racism from decades past? No, not even close. But it puts in a countermeasure that has a concrete and measurable goal to aim for rather than a nebulous "suck less." even if the administration changes, many of those changes will stick.

And as things improve, some tracts may come off the list! Some may go on that weren't there before!

You can see a map here. Blue highlighted tracts are "disadvantaged" so qualify for that extra assistance! Check and see if you live in one or part of your town does. Because if you've been hearing constantly "we can't afford to fix X problem..." and you're in that tract.... there's money available. For you. Build that sidewalk, fix those lead pipes, get that brush truck your volunteer fire department has been asking for.

Okay, I am reblogging this from myself and copying my own tags, because it's even COOLER than I thought!! it specifically pairs burdens with socioeconomic markers, and in order to qualified as 'disadvantaged', a community has to be BOTH 'more likely than other communities to be dealing with this problem' and 'less likely than other communities to be able to RESPOND to this problem'.

so for an example: my census tract is in the 93rd percentile for the presence of lead paint! because that's what you get in older New England buildings! BUT because our overall poverty level is pretty low, we're not actually considered 'disadvantaged' on that metric - basically, yeah, we have a lot more lead paint than most places, but we also mostly have enough money to be able to deal with that.

On the other hand, we're in the 97th percentile for 'linguistic isolation' (aka having a ton of households where nobody over 14 speaks English well) AND we have a relatively high level of people who don't have any education past high school, and that combination specifically is what has us considered 'disadvantaged'.