Got my annual flu shot and my COVID vaccination today.

Since this is the United States, hubby still doesn't have a job and we have no health insurance, I had to pay for both shots out of pocket.

It cost over $450.

I could fly roundtrip to visit my niece on the Eastern seaboard and pay less than I did today just to avoid getting sick.

It seems... well... odd that people with jobs and healthcare coverage get such vaccinations free of charge, while those who have neither of those things are forced to pay to underwrite the costs, but hello #DeathRattleCapitalism I guess

🥩 Don't Put Trump's Meat in Your Mouth! 🥩

Patriots don't eat mystery meat from a mystery source that's been sitting in a deep freeze for god knows how long. Do what you can to choose protein from safe and credible sources, and remember that ground beef is only one of a multitude of ground meat options available to most Americans. If this cheap meat was already rejected by China, do you think it's going to be good enough for your family?

Rowling may never experience social comeuppance for her actions the way Bill Cosby faced legal jeopardy for his. Trans people are a relatively small subset of humanity, and unfortunately JK Rowling isn't the only person who thinks they shouldn't exist at all. (*ehem*Trump*ehem*) Trying to financially break someone like this by boycott is not going to make a difference to her, but that's not really the point. It will make a difference to the people who are being affected by her cruelty. It will make a difference to those who might think that my love of a pop culture character is greater than my love of real people with real lives.

So it's time to let this shirt go. Just as a lot of people got rid of some garish "Cosby sweaters" back in the 20 teens. And for much the same reason.

I still have my t-shirt that says "When in doubt, go to the library." It's soft and comfortable, it fits me perfectly, I like the sentiment and the design. And I have to get rid of it. Not because I think it's going to do anything to JK Rowling, who continues to rake money in with both claws, no doubt hissing happily. She will never know or care what I think of her.

But it's not for her. It's for my nephew.

He loved the Harry Potter books growing up, just as much as I did. He wrote fan letters to Rowling, thanking her for coming up with such a wonderful world. He came out as trans not long after Rowling went full TERF, and her attitude broke his heart.

At this point, if I wear Harry Potter-related merchandise of any kind in public, I know the message I am giving to the kinds of people Rowling thinks shouldn't exist. They can't know I'm a safe person if I choose to wear that shirt. And while Rowling's opinion doesn't matter to me, my nephew's feelings do.

This surprised and dismayed quite a few LGBTQ Harry Potter fans, who had naturally assumed that the woman who wrote "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities" was certainly an ally. The pushback against some of her anti-trans comments led Rowling, who had perhaps gotten used to an adoring public for over a decade, to double and triple down. And now she's actively funding causes that harm trans people.

I know there are a lot of people who don't care about this issue. They love the books, they love the movies, they love the video games, they love everything about Harry Potter and are loath to give any of it up because the person who wrote the series turned out to have some terrible beliefs. (See also Roald Dahl, who was about as racist and sexist as they get.) Recently Jason Pargin made a video essay talking about how pointless it is to boycott the Harry Potter franchise, because so many people love it that the boycott doesn't make any financial difference.

The rumors started when the books were first published. People who felt uncomfortable with the way house elves were portrayed as mostly happy with their servitude. People who pointed out that the wizarding world was, in many ways, far more socially traditional, even backward, compared to muggle society. The ways the notion of pure-blooded wizards mapped extremely closely to early 20th century beliefs in eugenics. (To be fair, obsession with pure blood and persecution of muggleborns was called out as morally wrong in the books themselves.)

And then after the series was complete, there was that business with the Robert Galbraith book "The Cuckoo's Calling." I have not read any of the books Rowling wrote under the pseudonym of Galbraith, but as I understand it the first book features an antagonist who is called out as transgender. (Let me know if I've gotten this wrong, BTW.) That sparked a further social media discussion on transgender people, and as it turned out JK Rowling was not a fan.

If you were alive in the 1990s and 2000s, you most likely experienced the pop culture phenomenon that was (and is) Harry Potter. Frankly, it was hard to avoid. I tried to, as I usually try to avoid reading books in a series until that series is complete. But friends kept urging me, and by the time the third book was on the market I decided to crack the first one open and see what it was all about. Let's just say it was right up my diagon alley.

For the next few years I went to book release parties, I knitted Hogwarts house scarves for family members, I tried my hand at making chocolate frogs before they were commercially available, and I saw all the movies (and muttered about how they'd cut Peeves). My sister sent me a shirt for my birthday with a quote (incorrectly attributed to Hermione Granger): "When in doubt, go to the library." I wore it constantly.

And then things slowly started to curdle and become toxic. Just as with Bill Cosby, there were certain rumors circulating, quiet but persistent.

Then things changed in 2014. Stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress publicly called out Cosby for some of the rumors, specifically that he drugged and assaulted women. Women started to come forward with their own stories of things Cosby had done to them. It sparked the #MeToo movement, and Bill Cosby wasn't the only one called out. He was, however, one of the most visible because of his ubiquity in popular culture. Bill Cosby was tried, sentenced, and spent some time in jail but was able to be released due to a technicality (IIRC, he had given testimony about some of his activities after obtaining a promise that he would not be prosecuted). The damage, however, was done. People knew what Bill Cosby had done and they could not see him the same way again.

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one.

If you were born anytime from the early 1960s into the mid 1990s, you grew up with Bill Cosby. It's difficult to explain to younger people how omnipresent he was in popular culture. He did stand-up comedy, he was in "I Spy," he was a series regular on the PBS educational show "The Electric Company" for two seasons, a cartoon based on his childhood and his stand-up show called "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" ran on Saturday morning TV for years (and he provided most of the voices), he was cast in numerous movies, he was in commercials for Jell-O pudding pops. And then there was "The Cosby Show" and its spin-offs. He cultivated a friendly, approachable public image; several pundits referred to him as America's Dad. Even so there were persistent rumors about him, such as that when he did stand-up shows in Vegas he was sometimes seen in public with women who weren't his wife. But people largely ignored those rumors because they enjoyed being entertained by Bill Cosby.

I'm sitting in view of an ad for some kind of Harry Potter audiobook and thinking about how quickly I went from "oh, I love those stories" to "screw that bwitch, she's actively trying to hurt my nibling"

RE: https://mastodon.social/@markcmarino/116919405031692260

The primary difference between ELIZA and Claude is that ELIZA was at the communication level of "Polly wanna cracker!" while Claude has been programmed to say, "Thank you, generous and attractive human, I would love a cracker."

Neither was as intelligent as an actual parrot.

(No, I am not actually in favor of sending any naturalized American citizens back to their place of origin. I'm also not in favor of sending undocumented people in the United States to jail for committing what amounts to a misdemeanor. It's all incredibly stupid and cruel.)

This regime seems unusually intent on sending all foreign-born Americans back to where they came from. My response: you first. So yes, Elaine Chao can return to Taiwan (seems she got a head start on that), Ted Cruz can go back to Canada, RFK Jr can drive back into the Twilight Zone, and Stephen Miller can go home to hell and we'll all live happily ever after

"Those people will never be real Americans. They just don't #assimilate."

Really. DO tell.

I was born in California at the end of the 1960s. I have literally never lived anywhere but the USA. But my grandparents on my mother's side were Swedish and Dutch.

My Christmas celebrations include Swedish tablecloths and wall hangings, straw goats and ornaments, a huge Julbord spread, all the trimmings and trappings of the Swedish-tinged experiences of my childhood.

Until she got too ill to do it, my mother made sweet dough and fried oliebollen every New Year. We regularly ate rodekool and geschtomtepot (a Dutch-Jewish dish of mixed mashed root veggies) for dinner. Every year we continue to celebrate Sinterklaasfeest.

I'm a third-generation American who has never visited Sweden or the Low Countries (unless you count a plane change in Schiphol Airport in 2011). Has my family failed to assimilate? Or does loving where you came from simply become part of who you are as an American?

Or do you just have to be white?

"Stop! Stop, Snow White and Rose Red!" said the old bear. "Don't be afraid."

"Why, it's OUR bear!" cried Snow White. "The one who saved us from the wicked dwarf in the woods!" And she ran to him and kissed his rough, furry face.

And in an instant the bear disappeared, and in his place was a handsome young prince.

"I had been enchanted--" he began, but the rest of his story was drowned out by the wailing of the two sisters.

"NOOOOO, NOT AN ENCHANTED PRINCE! THEY'RE ALWAYS SPOILED BRATS! WE CHOSE THE BEAR!"

#microfiction #FairyTales #ChooseTheBear

RE: https://vmst.io/@iostat/116816533425843409

Sure hope nobody took a rustic unplugged two-week vacation at the end of June only to return and discover their instance, along with their account and all its data, has been wiped clean out of existence and they'll have to start over somewhere else.

This is why admins are advised to give their users three months of advance warning before shutting down an instance. And yes, while I'm glad it isn't going to just be *blip* gone, that doesn't mean I'm at all content with the way this situation has been handled.

#Introduction A life in hashtags! #LaundryFaerie #PugetSound #books #movies #calligraphy #snailmail #chow #whimsy #magical #microfiction #Fantasy #SF #CreativeWriting #knitting #ADHD #Geocaching #Waymarking #PantryMeals #CreativeCooking #Proofreading #CopyEditing #RandomLifeLessons #Library #Silliness #Cats #Resist