#StarTrek #DS9 #Bechdel

So, erm, are there any fidget toys that can redirect away from skin-picking and pimple-popping?

#FidgetToys
#NeuroDivergent

If someone is afraid of Lucy Lawless, does that mean they're Xenaphobic?

#PunsAreGreat

#ADHD

So, I had a cartoon character moment this morning.

I was shaking an old container of cayenne powder to make sure it hadn't clumped up, and a fine mist escaped and sent me into a sneezing fit the likes of which I have never had before. Just one right after the other in rapid succession.

At some point I just started laughing at the absurdity of it. Even after it reached my eyes (although it wasn't as bad as cutting onions).

Basically, today I learned that the absolute sneezing fits people in old cartoons have when someone sticks black pepper under their noses is real.

It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.

Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.

Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.

The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.

The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.

She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.

She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."

She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.

But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.

To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.

San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.

Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.

Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.

Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.

Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.

When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.

He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.

It was a mistake that would change American history.

Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.

She saw "her kids."

She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.

Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.

She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.

So, she made a choice.

She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.

Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.

The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.

She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.

She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.

"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."

And it did.

Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.

Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."

For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.

She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.

She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."

By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.

In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.

This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.

One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."

They underestimated who they were dealing with.

They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.

When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.

It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.

Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.

She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.

Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.

"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."

The quote ran in newspapers across the country.

The court didn't stand a chance.

Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.

The charges were dropped.

Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.

She needed to change the law.

August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.

She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.

But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.

She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.

She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.

In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.

It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.

She never got rich.

She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.

She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.

Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.

Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.

Most of them have never heard of Mary.

They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.

They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.

They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.

Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."

She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.

She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.

She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.

Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.

It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.

It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.

Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.

Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.

Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana."

---

Source: Facebook/Wonders You've Unseen and Unread

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0hSm5PzqzCRJGRP34UAiqh4Gov1PfuMYQwJpyDrPr3oLGyY3WiBLDuzoensGGv73Ql&id=61560890444242

It is Wednesday, everybody.

Wednesday the first of October.

Spoopy season has officially begun.

Ms. Addams is well pleased about this.

Whoever said "Brevity is the soul of wit" might have a few things to say about this post.

#raineyWednesday

#ADHD

Credit to Tim Boudreau on Facebook. I don't know who he is, but a friend of mine shared this on his wall:

---------

> About the whole DOGE-will-rewrite Social Security's COBOL code in some new language thing, since this is a subject I have a whole lot of expertise in, a few anecdotes and thoughts.

> Some time in the early 2000s I was doing some work with the real-time Java team at Sun, and there was a huge defense contractor with a peculiar query: Could we document how much memory an instance of every object type in the JDK uses? And could we guarantee that that number would never change, and definitely never grow, in any future Java version?

> I remember discussing this with a few colleagues in a pub after work, and talking it through, and we all arrived at the conclusion that the only appropriate answer to this question as "Hell no." and that it was actually kind of idiotic.

> Say you've written the code, in Java 5 or whatever, that launches nuclear missiles. You've tested it thoroughly, it's been reviewed six ways to Sunday because you do that with code like this (or you really, really, really should). It launches missiles and it works.

> A new version of Java comes out. Do you upgrade? No, of course you don't upgrade. It works. Upgrading buys you nothing but risk. Why on earth would you? Because you could blow up the world 10 milliseconds sooner after someone pushes the button?

> It launches fucking missiles. Of COURSE you don't do that.

> There is zero reason to ever do that, and to anyone managing such a project who's a grownup, that's obvious. You don't fuck with things that work just to be one of the cool kids. Especially not when the thing that works is life-or-death (well, in this case, just death).

> Another case: In the mid 2000s I trained some developers at Boeing. They had all this Fortran materials analysis code from the 70s - really fussy stuff, so you could do calculations like, if you have a sheet of composite material that is 2mm of this grade of aluminum bonded to that variety of fiberglass with this type of resin, and you drill a 1/2" hole in it, what is the effect on the strength of that airplane wing part when this amount of torque is applied at this angle. Really fussy, hard-to-do but when-it's-right-it's-right-forever stuff.

> They were taking a very sane, smart approach to it: Leave the Fortran code as-is - it works, don't fuck with it - just build a nice, friendly graphical UI in Java on top of it that *calls* the code as-is.

> We are used to broken software. The public has been trained to expect low quality as a fact of life - and the industry is rife with "agile" methodologies *designed* to churn out crappy software, because crappy guarantees a permanent ongoing revenue stream. It's an article of faith that everything is buggy (and if it isn't, we've got a process or two to sell you that will make it that way).

> It's ironic. Every other form of engineering involves moving parts and things that wear and decay and break. Software has no moving parts. Done well, it should need *vastly* less maintenance than your car or the bridges it drives on. Software can actually be *finished* - it is heresy to say it, but given a well-defined problem, it is possible to actually *solve* it and move on, and not need to babysit or revisit it. In fact, most of our modern technological world is possible because of such solved problems. But we're trained to ignore that.

> Yeah, COBOL is really long-in-the-tooth, and few people on earth want to code in it. But they have a working system with decades invested in addressing bugs and corner-cases.

> Rewriting stuff - especially things that are life-and-death - in a fit of pique, or because of an emotional reaction to the technology used, or because you want to use the toys all the cool kids use - is idiotic. It's immaturity on display to the world.

> Doing it with AI that's going to read COBOL code and churn something out in another language - so now you have code no human has read, written and understands - is simply insane. And the best software translators plus AI out there, is going to get things wrong - grievously wrong. And the odds of anyone figuring out what or where before it leads to disaster are low, never mind tracing that back to the original code and figuring out what that was supposed to do.

> They probably should find their way off COBOL simply because people who know it and want to endure using it are hard to find and expensive. But you do that gradually, walling off parts of the system that work already and calling them from your language-du-jour, not building any new parts of the system in COBOL, and when you do need to make a change in one of those walled off sections, you migrate just that part.

> We're basically talking about something like replacing the engine of a plane while it's flying. Now, do you do that a part-at-a-time with the ability to put back any piece where the new version fails? Or does it sound like a fine idea to vaporize the existing engine and beam in an object which a next-word-prediction software *says* is a contraption that does all the things the old engine did, and hope you don't crash?

> The people involved in this have ZERO technical judgement.

---------

[Small edit to emphasize that I did not write this, I just re-copied it from elsewhere.]

It is Wednesday, everybody.

It's been a while. I can partly blame the ADHD, because it's hard enough to form habits with daily things, fuhgeddabout weekly things. I can also blame my sense of not having anything new to talk about, even though I know intellectually it's okay to talk about the same topic multiple times.

I applied for financial aid from the hospital and apparently a single-income no-kids (SINK?) blue-collar household with a modicum of savings isn't poor enough to qualify. And even if I did, they don't cover the separate bills from the doctors.

All associated bills have cost me a total of $968.66. Even if I subtract office visit co-pays and an extra lab test, that's still $826.89.

Very ouch. And that was for a single overnight stay with one CT scan, 4 or 5 rounds of IV antibiotics, and a few blood draws.

I recently heard from a friend of mine in Germany. He was in the hospital for an entire week and his total expenses were 60 euros.

And that's just my money woes! (I guess it's true: Wednesday's child is full of woe.)

Dietary restrictions suck. I've been vegetarian since 1997 and I'm not ready to give that up, but medically I also need to restrict

* salt (causes fluid retention and high blood pressure)
* carbs (I'm pre-diabetic)
* bad fats (I'm on cholesterol medication)
* ultra-processed foods (my colonoscopy had to remove a few polyps)

The first three are fairly straightforward, but the last one is insidious. There are some foods I truly thought were healthy that turned out to be ultra-processed. And I'd been eating them every day! That could certainly account for those polyps.

Any low-budget healthy meal suggestions that are low-carb vegetarian are welcome. I'm starting to go slightly mad. I will spin my wheels for two hours trying to figure out what to eat because I either want something I can't have or isn't in the house, or nothing we have appeals to me.

@weirdfolks

#raineyWednesday

I never did get around to writing an #introduction over here, did I? Not sure there's much point anymore, but here goes:

I'm rainey and I'm a shy weirdo who needs encouragement to let my freak flag fly. When I'm not being ooky, I'm shamelessly appreciating cute kittens and the like. (Here I pause and reach out to pet @netkitty ) Gen X, child-free, married, and an abject failure at adulting. The sunflower in my display name is the "invisible disability" symbol.

This is my third Mastodon account and second "definitely probably not a cult" experience (the first being pretty much the only reason I'm still on reddit). :bb: My first Masto account is @raineyday@mstdn.games [MSTDN.games] where I talk about #GenshinImpact a lot, and my second is @raineyday@neurodifferent.me [NeuroDifferent.me] because I'm not autistic but I do have #ADHD and #Tourette, although I don't post to the second one very often and when I do, it tends to be boosts, memes, and information-seeking.

Anyhow, if you can't tell from my avatars, I'm a fan of the #AddamsFamily and #DoctorWho. I also despise #spoilers with the blazing heat of a trillion trillion suns, so always ask "How caught up are you with XYZ?" before discussing with me (and ponder for a moment why "Have you gotten to the part where they--?" is a terrible horrible no-good very bad way to ask).

I created this account on a Wednesday the 13th (naturally), but the timestamp on my account page got messed up and fails to reflect this. It's goth erasure, I'm tellin' ya! 🦇

I write blog-like toots on Wednesdays (of course) under the hashtag #raineyWednesday and tag @weirdfolks

I do my best to write good #AltText for my images. Even when I have low spoons, I strive for a bare minimum of "acceptable". I have similar standards for what I will boost. If there is no alt-text or it is insufficient, I will either leave it or I will "steal" the image to post myself with better alt-text. This applies to all of my accounts, of course.

I come to Mastodon for virtual human interaction and fun times, and while it's nice to take a break from politics and the news, please don't mistake that for me being so-called "apolitical". I am quite progressive-left and often wonder how it came to be that I had to trade in the label of "liberal" for that. Perhaps a combination of I moved forward a little bit and they moved backwards a lot? But that's enough of that topic. This is just background info, not my desired focus.

#jokes #puns #humor

My husband just sent me this.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAOvq-zSZQh/

As someone who used to watch the YouTube channel "How to Cake It" with Yolanda Gampp, I am loving this reversal so much.

Now I want to see a full-course meal where everything is made to look like something else. And I do mean everything.

@weirdfolks

It is Wednesday, everybody.

Tomorrow is the fourth Thursday of November, which means the USA will be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, or perhaps Friendsgiving tomorrow or Saturday.

My fellow Americans, weird and otherwise, how do you perceive Thanksgiving? Is it just an excuse for getting together with loved ones and enjoying a feast? Should it be formally inverted the way Indigenous People's Day was created to counter Columbus Day? Do you actually take the time to reflect on things you're grateful for? If you're Jewish, is this just Sukkot part two, minus the tent?

Canadians, I am not familiar with your Thanksgiving beyond the fact that it's a different holiday that you celebrated last month. Does it also have problematic origins?

Fun fact: I grew up in a culturally Jewish but otherwise non-religious home. It was a long, long, long time before I learned that a lot of people consider Thanksgiving to be a religious holiday.

Neither my husband nor I are big holiday celebrators. We generally just have a vegetarian mini-feast for dinner and enjoy the leftovers for the next few days. I'm definitely looking forward to the Tofurky "ham-style roast" that's sitting in the fridge, as well as the butternut squash that's sitting on the counter.

And to everybody who will be dealing with problematic relatives, stay strong and take care of yourselves.

@weirdfolks

#raineyWednesday

I was visiting a friend and this little gentlesquirrel came by to politely inquire as to whether we might have an acorn, or maybe some sunflower seeds, or at least five minutes to allow him to warm up his little toesies, seeing as how it was getting a bit nippy out there. He graciously agreed to be photographed for social media, but forgot to leave his name.

🐿️ :bb:

@weirdfolks @MAJ1

It is Wednesday, everybody, and today got off to an interesting start.

I scrolled through my Fedilab app as I occasionally do before getting out of bed, and stumbled upon a spammer in my timeline, a comment that replied to an acquaintance of mine via the weird folks group.

How dare!

I frequently find it easier to report via the web browser, (I'm a desktop gal, so many things are easier there than on mobile) so that was a good motivation to get out of bed.

I boot up my computer and find the toot, only to make another discovery that doesn't show up on the app: The account has already been suspended.

Huzzah!

Meanwhile, the admin of my main account over at mstdn dot games has gotten fed up and limited federation with mastodon dot social. In her words:

> Our users deserve better.

> This silence is permanent and will not be reversed unless mastodon.social takes real strides in preventing spam bots from registering and harassing the rest of the Fediverse.

> Enough is enough.

Works for me! :goose_knife: I can still communicate just fine with the legit accounts I follow there. But it is frustratingly ironic that the flagship server of this wonderful grass-roots project is almost as enshittified as the entity it was created to escape from, while the majority of other servers are all doing pretty well in their own ways.

:bb:

@weirdfolks

Why, brain? What brought this on?

For context, in mid-January it will be 3 years since my hysterectomy. And to be clear, my only regret is that I didn't get it sooner. I never wanted kids anyway and then I developed a large fibroid that

1. made me look like I was 6 months pregnant
2. gave me severe anemia by making me bleed out 5 days out of the month
3. caused my legs to develop severe intractible edema, causing permanent damage
4. caused other problems both directly and indirectly related, such as sleep deprivation from needing to wake up multiple times in the night to deal with shenanigans both in and out of season.

Anyhow, I don't recall having period-related dreams before, but last night I had a dream where I had to deal with my period. Like, I've had weird bathroom dreams before (by which I mean searching high and low for a suitable bathroom) and this was ultimately just a variation of that, but why after all this time did my brain decide I would dream about dealing with my period?

@weirdfolks

Okay, this is even weirder than me.

Joined November 12, 2024.

I guess time travel is real, then, 'cos I applied on Wednesday, November 13, 2024.

@theropologist