In the end, it wasn’t the might of the city bureaucracy or law enforcement who got the constant blaring of truck horns to stop after more than week of terrorizing downtown Ottawa residents.
It was a 21-year-old resident of Centretown who had simply had enough.
“This situation, quite frankly, really ruffled my feathers,” Zexi Li, the lead plaintiff in a proposed class-action lawsuit told CTV Morning Live on Tuesday. “I really, really felt that no matter what, I had to do something.”
Oh wow, I didn’t know this. I have been hearing her name, but I assumed she was on Ottawa city council or something (I heard the city of Ottawa had started a class action, so I immediately assumed city council, not a regular citizen)
The anti-semitic Mcminn County School board just voted to ban Art Spiegelman’s Maus from all of its schools, citing the inclusion of words like “God Damn” and “naked pictures” (illustrations) of women.
Sigh. I’m really exhausted, folks.
If you haven’t read Maus and are curious about it given all of this news, consider ordering it from a local comic book store. They’ve all had a rough couple of years.
Hey Americans, USPS is sending out one (1) package of four (4) free COVID test kits per residential address, you can sign up here: https://special.usps.com/testkits?s=09
Obviously Joseph Robinette thinks everyone lives in single-family homes in nuclear family units & if you are one of the many people whose communal living arrangement looks like “a regular house rented as separate units but not zoned as apartments” or “an illegal basement” or one of the other myriad ways landlords artfully dodge property taxes / avoid dotting the i’s & crossing the t’s of municipal bureaucracy, good luck & godspeed. Please pass this on!
Also fucks over households with multiple generations or several children, but still get your free tests if you can.
They’re apparently working on the apartment building/multiple units at the same street address/PO Box not registering as a residential address thing. Don’t give up.
I’m not particularly active on this blog right now due to reasons, but I think it’s important to highlight this.
I need everyone to understand that this is and was always the goal. Banning access to trans healthcare for minors was always the first step towards banning access to trans healthcare entirely. The focus on trans minors has been purely to drum up outrage (“won’t someone think of the children”) and to popularize the bans.
The Overton window has been shifted, so to speak. Less conservative individuals might be uncomfortable with the idea of outright banning adults from choosing what happens to their own bodies and making their own medical decisions…but if it’s banned for 17 year olds, is it safe for 18 year olds? 19? 20? 25? 30? Anyone?
I need everyone to understand that trans healthcare rights are inherently an issue of bodily autonomy, and that Christian conservatism is deeply opposed to the notion bodily autonomy. Banning trans youth from accessing gender affirming health care is to trans rights as the 20 or 15 or 6 week abortion ban is to abortion rights–the goal is to ultimately erase the legal right to bodily autonomy.
I need everyone to see the connection between transphobia and ableism. I definitely need everyone to stop perpetuating the concept of mental age. This includes repeating the incorrect and neuronormative line that “brains aren’t fully developed until age 25” or suggesting that autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people aren’t capable of understanding and making our own decisions. An adult is an adult regardless of neurotype, regardless of neurological development.
I especially need everyone to be worried about the implications of banning 18-25 year olds from having full control over their own medical decisions. How else might that eventually be weaponized? Especially in regards to reproductive rights?
I’ve believed for years that banning the ability to medically, legally, and socially transition entirely would become a popular Christian conservative goal, and possibly a reality. Not only to enforce their religious beliefs around assigned sex upon us legally–but because trans people who need and are able to transition have better mental health and are more likely to live happier longer lives. And they don’t want us to live.
A lot of people are REALLY WORRIED about the leaked Alito draft, and for good reason. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, many states will enact trigger laws that revoke the right to safe abortion access. But that doesn’t mean that safe abortions won’t be possible. They’ll just be harder to access.
Fortunately, we aren’t powerless. There are things we can do to help preserve the right to abortion and, if Roe falls, help people get the abortions they need.
Here are some actionable things you can do to help!
Donate to your local abortion fund.
This is a financial commitment, obviously, but these funds are vital to helping people access abortions. There are different types of funds. Practical funds help with transportation, housing, and other practical needs. Clinical funds help with paying for the procedure. Both types of funds are necessary and helpful!
If you’re in a state with protected abortion access, see if there’s a practical fund in your state that you can donate to. These funds make it possible for people for other states to afford travel and lodging in your state. You might also want to consider donating to funds in states or regions that have trigger laws, like the Yellowhammer Abortion Fund, which helps people in Mississippi, Alabama, and the Deep South.
There’s also https://abortionfunds.org/, but as of right now (2 May 2022, right after the SCOTUS leak happened), their website is down. Too much traffic!
Volunteer with a hotline.
As of writing this, a lot of abortion fund websites are completely overwhelmed. Lots of people are rightfully upset and looking for some way to help. Many of these funds have hotlines that you can help out directly from your own phone! Google “abortion fund + your state (or your region) + hotline” and see what comes up. These hotlines are going to be SWAMPED soon and many orgs are going to be onboarding volunteers very quickly to help deal with the onslaught.
Donate to grassroots causes.
I love Planned Parenthood as much as the next gal, but donating to them isn’t actually going to help as much right now as donating to an abortion fund. Smaller, grassroots networks are going to be more effective at allocating resources to the people who need it most. Independent clinics are also going to need substantial help. Independent clinics provide the majority of abortion care in the US, and many are the only clinics operating in hostile states. Check out https://keepourclinics.org/ if you’re interested in donating.
Make a list of resources.
There are a lot of people out there who aren’t going to have the time or energy or emotional bandwidth to deal with this dumpster fire. If you have the capacity to do so, then maintain a file somewhere with the following information:
- any abortion funds that serve your area with their contact info- email and phone and links
- any abortion hotlines in your area
- national care hotlines, ESPECIALLY RAINN because this is going to be really, really hard on survivors
-a list of crisis pregnancy centers in your area, clearly marked with their names, contact info, and primary links. Make sure that these are highlighted in a way that separates them from the actual abortion providers because these centers are highly predatory and manipulate people who are distressed and confused. If somebody has access to that list and know who’s operating in an area, it might help them avoid these places!
Have this file ready to go so that you can share it with people who are overwhelmed!
Help the safe havens.
Losing Roe feels inevitable at this point. It might not be, but the world is terrifying. However, some states are safe havens and will maintain abortion access, regardless of what SCOTUS eventually decides. Practical access funds in these states will need help because they will help people traveling from unsafe states to safe states. Refer to this map: https://reproductiverights.org/maps/what-if-roe-fell/
Look for funds in states that are blue or yellow. This means they have expanded access or protection if Roe falls. But be sure to hover over and look at the summary of the protection– for example, Florida has abortion protection, but they just passed a 15-week ban. That’s basically protection in name only!
If you’re not sure which practical fund you’d like to support, I highly suggest the Midwest Access Coalition. MAC is based in Chicago and helps people from all over the Midwest come to the city for reproductive healthcare. A lot of the Midwest is really hostile to abortion, so MAC can help a lot of people. But there are many, many others!
In the coming days and weeks, there will be more to do. There will be marches, protests, and other organized action. But right now, tonight, these are things you can look into doing.
Hey yall, I wanted to make a PSA about this because it’ll be useful to many of you in the United States. You might qualify for public assistance now, specifically because of rising food prices.
The federal poverty line, the biggest determining factor for public assistance, has been kept artificially low for decades because it was based on the outdated assumption that food was the primary expense for most American households. For decades now, shelter has been the larger expense, but the federal poverty limit has still been determined based on the prices of food commodities.
Because food prices have recently gone up, the federal poverty line has gone up significantly as well. This means if you were previously slightly over the income limit to qualify for public assistance such as food stamps or medicaid, you likely qualify now. I’d like to encourage everyone who thinks they might qualify to apply for these programs. The qualification cutoffs are still absurdly low, so please be assured that if you qualify for assistance, you’re not taking something you don’t need or deserve.
Please reblog this if you think your followers will find it useful. I haven’t seen anyone talking about this, it’s just something I noticed recently, so I want the info to become more public to help people who might be struggling.
No longer is this about the rights of students to access books. It’s now about the rights of private businesses to sell books. Anderson suggests this is a new avenue for parents to fight.
“We are in a major fight. Suits like this can be filed all over Virginia. There are dozens of books. Hundreds of schools,” he said.
Holy shit this is a BIG FUCKING WARNING SIGN. Challenges to school and public libraries aren’t cool obviously, but they’re not unusual and we have a framework for handling them. This is something new and alarming in a whole new way
Republican “free speech” y'all and don’t you forget it.
This is a direct challenge to the freedom of the press and if it isn’t struck down at the first hurdle we need to make sure it never sees the second one.
On the miniscule off-chance that anyone who sees my reblog might be thinking “oh, it’s just queer books that they’re trying to ban” - A Court of Mist and Fury is a het romance. It is a het romance containing het sex scenes, written by a straight white woman.
People have been warning all along that the right-wing thought police were never going to stop with queer lit or ‘woke’ lit, and that every time they got an inch they were going to take a mile until they’d banned absolutely everything that didn’t conform to their strict right wing fundamentalist Christian views. If you were waiting for proof of that, here it is.
What we’ve gotta understand is that “the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for adults” and “the modern Internet is abolishing space for children” are compatible phenomena. Neither group is being favoured: the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for adults (i.e., because grown-up topics aren’t advertiser friendly) and the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for children (i.e., because online communities which consist principally of people who have no money are hard to sell things to). The Internet that contemporary corporate interests are trying to build isn’t a space for anyone – it’s the digital equivalent of an Ikea showroom.
Like, when I say that the greater part of contemporary social media is fundamentally hostile to human life, I’m not indulging in hyperbole or constructing an ironic metaphor. I mean that 100% literally.
Hey, listen. I know the world’s on fire. But listen.
I’ll tell you a thing.
On the day after the election, when everything was worst and all I could do was go numb or cry hysterically, do you know what gave me the most comfort?
It wasn’t the words of Lincoln or Gandhi or Maya Angelou, it wasn’t Psalms or poetry, it wasn’t my grandmother, it wasn’t contemplating the long arc of history. It wasn’t even hugging the dog.
It was the Twitter account @ConanSalaryman.
This is a joke account. It’s somebody who narrates as if Conan was working in an office. Tweets usually sound like “By Crom!” roared Conan. “You jackals cannot schedule a mere interview without gathering in a pack and cackling?!” or “Conan slammed his sword through his desk. Papers and blood rained through the office. Monday was slain.”
I followed it awhile back and have found it funny. (I’m not a huge Robert Howard fan inherently, but whoever is writing these does the schtick well.) But if it had not posted once that day, no one would have noticed at all.
Instead, Conan the Salaryman posted something inspirational. And then replied to dozens of people replying to him, for hours, in character, telling them that by Crom! it was only defeat if we did not stand up again, that the greatest act of strength was to keep walking in the face of hopelessness, that the gods have given the smallest of us strength to enact change, that we must all keep going as long as Crom gave us breath, and tyrants frightened Conan not, but we must look to those unable to fend for themselves. (“Though by Crom! We must hammer ourselves into a support network, not an army!”)
I have no idea who is behind that account. But it was the most bizarrely comforting thing I saw all day, in a day that had very little comfort in it. There was this weight of story behind it. It helped me. I think it helped a lot of people. If only a tiny bit–well, tiny bits help.
I have been thinking a lot lately about Bluebell from Watership Down.
There’s absolutely no reason you should remember Bluebell, unless, to take an example completely and totally at random, you read it eleven thousand times until your copy fell apart because you were sort of a weird little proto-furry kid who loved talking animals more than breath and wrote fan fic and there weren’t any other talking animal books and you now have large swaths memorized as a result. Ahem.
Bluebell is a minor character. He’s Captain Holly’s friend and jester. When the old warren is destroyed, Captain Holly and Bluebell are the last two standing and they stagger across the fields after the main characters. By the end, Holly is raving, hallucinating, and screaming “O zorn!” meaning “all is destroyed” and about to bring predators down on them. And Bluebell is telling stupid jokes.
And they make it the whole way because of Bluebell’s jokes. “Jokes one end, hraka the other,” he says. “I’d roll a joke along the ground and we’d both follow it.” When Holly can’t move, Bluebell tells him jokes that would make Dad jokes look brilliant and Holly is able to move again. When Hazel, the protagonist, tries to shush him, Holly says no, that “we wouldn’t be here without his blue-tit’s chatter.”
I tell you, the last few days, thinking of this, I really start to identify with Bluebell.
I am not a fighter, not an organizer, certainly not a prophet. Throw something at me and I squawk and cover my head. I write very small stories with wombats and hamsters and a cast of single digits. I am not the sort of comforting soul who sits and listens and offers you tea. (What seems like a thousand years ago, when I had the Great Nervous Breakdown of ‘07, I remember saying something to the effect that I had realized that if I had myself as a friend, I would have been screwed, because I was useless at that kind of thing. And a buddy of mine from my college days, who was often depressed, wrote me to say that no, I wasn’t that kind of person, but when we were together I always made her laugh hysterically and that was worth a lot too. I treasured that comment more than I am entirely comfortable admitting.)
But I can roll a joke along the ground until the end of the world if I have to. And increasingly, I think that’s what I’m for in this life. Things are bad and people have died already and I am heartsick and tired and the news is a gibbering horror–but I actually do know why a raven is like a writing desk.
I’d been meaning to make a Current Affairs poster for ages and now seemed like the appropriate time… If you haven’t already heard these dudes then what are you even doing? : >
Naomi Ellis and her her husband Seth spent Friday morning — the morning after the sixth night of Hanukkah — trying to explain to their three young sons why someone had vandalized the menorah the family had put out on their yard by twisting the metal pieces into the shape of a swastika.
The Ellis family had only built the 7-foot-tall menorah on the front lawn of their home in Chandler, Arizona, because their sons, ages 5, 7 and 9, had asked their parents if the family could decorate their home like the neighbors did for Christmas, the Washington Postreported.Read more.
The Ellis family had only built the 7-foot-tall menorah… because their sons, ages 5, 7 and 9, had asked their parents if the family could decorate their home like the neighbors did for Christmas.
This is America in the 21st century. Please reblog, even if you’re not Jewish. Especially if you’re not Jewish. Spread awareness and let your Jewish followers know that we’re not alone.
The ancient statue of Christ Crucified being taken out of the Armenian Catholic Cathedral of Lviv, the historic capital of Galicia, now in western Ukraine, to be stored in a bunker for protection. The last time it was taken out was during WW2.
How have you been? It feels like forever since I last pretended to have a conversation with you. We used to have such laughs, you and I. Oh how the time flies. I hope you’re well. I hope you’re still enjoying what I offer.
I passed three thousand followers a week or so ago, which is quite the milestone. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what I want to do to mark it, but I haven’t quite done that figuring out just yet. So you’ll have to bear with me. Needless to say you’re all fucking ace. Thank you. No, seriously.
Which makes this next part a bit of a mixed bag. I’m going to be cutting down on my output ever so slightly. I say slightly, but I mean by half. I try to get out four posts a night, but there’s something else that I want to get done by the end of October, and it’s just not going to happen if I keep up the tumblr at the current pace. So I’m going to be aiming for two a night, with the rest of the time dedicated to…
Well, that’d be telling, wouldn’t it? I’m pretty sure you’ll all be rather pleased, though.
The other change is that I’ve found out that I’m being screwed by how tumblr operates. Because of the way I format my posts, with the image and then the text right underneath, I’m missing out on all sorts of organic promotion that apparently takes place. So, to experiment, starting tomorrow I’m going to separate them. Picture, then text, in two separate posts. If I hate it, I’ll change back. Hopefully it’ll do some good.
So here’s to success, and lightening the work load so I can throw on something even more ludicrously intensive. I’m a glutton for punishment, apparently.
Merry Christmas to you all! I took this picture during our holiday work party a few days ago…after fucking my boss in the back of his car! I went to the party with my hubby David and introduced him to my colleagues. While we were all eating dinner, I could see my boss staring at me like he wanted to fuck me. He was there with his wife too. So, we made an excuse to grab some last minute stuff we needed in his car for the party. We took off for about 30 minutes and…well you know what happened! Lol. He fucked the shit out of me in the hotel parking garage in the backseat and even bent me over and fucked me doggy style on his hood! Omg…I bet the security cameras caught us! Oh well. He creampied me, as usual, and we headed back to the party after cleaning up some. My pussy was oozing out his warm cum all night. Of course, when we got home, I let David have sex with me too. Hahaha…during sex…I made him lick my pussy and eat me out!! David said my pussy tasted kind of weird, but had a sweet flavor!!! Omg….
What a year 2014 has been! Here’s the first part of our rundown of the top 10 most important gay moments, people, events and news stories from the past 12 months.
10. Coming out in sport
This year, US footballer Michael Sam (above), US baseball player Derrick Gordon, Germany and former Aston Villa footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger, and Australian Olympic swimming legend Ian Thorpe all came out as…
New from Norton and Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri, Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why: Essays. These impossibly cheerful essays on the routine horrors of the present era explain everything from the resurgence of measles to the fiasco of the presidency. (Read more about the humorist here.)
