mzyraj

[mzyraj]

i simply don't think nonbinary people should have to see having our gender/s respected and acknowledged as a luxury. i think it's frankly sickening that that's the state of things tbh.

[mzyraj]

“It doesn’t matter if your skin is brown. It doesn’t matter if you’re white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a veteran or you serve this country. They don’t care. They’re just there to fill a quota.” Those are the words of George Retes, a veteran and U.S. citizen who was detained by federal agents during an ICE raid at a Southern California farm. Despite identifying himself as a citizen multiple times, federal agents pepper sprayed him and dragged him from his vehicle. He was thrown in a cell for three days, where he was not allowed to contact his family or a lawyer. He was forced to remain covered in tear gas and pepper spray, as he was not allowed to shower or change clothes. When he was finally released, agents gave him *no explanation* for why he was arrested and detained. When immigrants don’t receive due process as required by the Constitution, no one does. We are no longer on the path to fascism. Fascism is here. Now more than ever, we must protect each other – especially the most vulnerable among us. Keep speaking out. Keep standing up. Tyranny only wins if we submit to it.

[mzyraj]

[mzyraj]

I want to ask you this in good faith-- at what point do you think we can "stop worrying" about covid? Is there a particular statistical benchmark or qualitative indicator that you believe will show the covid pandemic is over?

I'm curious because you've responded to multiple people pointing out that the death toll & long covid metrics are lower than ever essentially saying that isn't enough to stop caring. So in your view, what is?

The benchmarks professionals have listed throughout the pandemic have yet to be met. If we could hit a single one, that would sure be nice. I'd stop worrying about covid if we could hit about 20,000 infections a week during a seasonal peak with reasonalble vaccine uptake (~70٪ or higher) of a vaccine that provides both mucosal and sterilizing immunity at reasonable levels. We're averaging around 20,000 infections a day in the 3-4 valleys we get a year right now, and that's without widespread wastewater testing from coast to coast and extremely low lab testing, so we know that those cases are an undercount. Not even 18% of Americans got the latest booster this fall, and the current vaccines neither induce mucosal immunity nor provide decent levels of sterilizing immunity (vaccinated people can act as unwitting asymptotic carriers of the virus) and (especially mRNA) vaccine efficacy drops rapidly after an antibody titre peak at around 2 months post vaccination. Current expert estimates for xmas day show us hitting more than 1,000,000 infections a day. A million infections a day would only take the national level into the CDC's new "medium" category. It's higher than both the Alpha and Beta waves. Of they were pandemic, so is this one. To act otherwise is to bury one's head in the sand and go "LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" and that is our current public health response. Even if covid's death rate remains ~1%, that's 1% of a minimum ~20,000 a day even when we're not in a peak. One in five of each of those cases will develop lingering viral disease that mirrors HIV in its viral persistence and immune damage. If any of these things I mentioned can be reasonalbly addressed and substantially lessened, and these waves stop happening globally every 2 to 4 months, we'll stop being in a pandemic. If the government stops stifling data collection and acting like public health is a personal choice, I'll relax just a bit, because then I could actually do a risk assessment and trust that my community has mitigations in place like air filtration, masked staff, daily tests for staff, etc.

The death toll isn't the only metric to look at, and those deaths shouldn't be dismissed just because we're no longer stuffing corpses into reefer trailers. Each infection is a threat to someone's life and health in the long term, and we're refusing to look at that reality and adapt. Ignorance and bluster are not a public health response, and y'all should be pissed that's what the government is doing, not going out for mimosas even though "I've had a 'really bad cold for 5 days'."

The effects are cumulative and ever growing. To act like those effects just dissappear or don't matter is eugenics.

[mzyraj]

“It doesn’t matter if your skin is brown. It doesn’t matter if you’re white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a veteran or you serve this country. They don’t care. They’re just there to fill a quota.” Those are the words of George Retes, a veteran and U.S. citizen who was detained by federal agents during an ICE raid at a Southern California farm. Despite identifying himself as a citizen multiple times, federal agents pepper sprayed him and dragged him from his vehicle. He was thrown in a cell for three days, where he was not allowed to contact his family or a lawyer. He was forced to remain covered in tear gas and pepper spray, as he was not allowed to shower or change clothes. When he was finally released, agents gave him *no explanation* for why he was arrested and detained. When immigrants don’t receive due process as required by the Constitution, no one does. We are no longer on the path to fascism. Fascism is here. Now more than ever, we must protect each other – especially the most vulnerable among us. Keep speaking out. Keep standing up. Tyranny only wins if we submit to it.

[mzyraj]

Include over-the-counter medications like allergy meds, but do NOT include multivitamins or supplements unless a doctor specifically advised you to take those. Do NOT include medications you don't take daily, even if you do take them regularly (e.g. weekly).

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[mzyraj]

Kind of a hot take but i dont think we can solve the issue of marginalized people being treated like children without asking ourselves why we treat children like subhuman objects incapable of thinking and undeserving of autonomy

[mzyraj]

Now that more people have played Dawntrail...

[mzyraj]

i appreciate you sticking your neck out for us trans dudes considering that most of the people who hate us are often quite shitty about weaponizing transmisogyny against transfems who defend us. i hope you dont have to deal with that too much and that everyone's being super chill to you cuz you seem like one chill ass lady :^]

honestly, my discourse posts dont tend to get many people disagreeing with them. probably a good thing, since i imagine that otherwise, id get into a lot more arguments and probably lose some hair over it.

im pretty defensive of trans men, for a couple of reasons. for one, if it wasnt for trans men, i wouldnt have had any trans friends at all, for like, the first three years of my transition. i met very few trans women after my initial transition, and the ones i did were largely uninterested in being my friend. partly because of this, i was exposed to the experiences of a lot of trans men, and found a lot of commonality with them. my takeaway from all of this was that trans people generally have a lot more in common across the board than not.

my second reason is that... i feel like, in some circles, trans men are kind of seen as acceptable punching bags. whether its cuz theyre seen as cringe, or gender traitors, or whatever else, ive seen a lot of trans men just get bullied super hard for trying to live as their authentic self. i think that sucks a lot, for reasons that i hope are obvious, but i also relate, because i grew up being frequently bullied for being my authentic self.

gendered oppression and living as a gender minority is like. its hard. and its complex. and i dont think its ever as simple as saying one group is this way and another group is that way. i think the only way we fix these problems, the only way we truly move forward, is by acknowledging the experiences we have in common and using that to build community and solidarity.

[mzyraj]

[mzyraj]

tumblr is such a different animal than other social media platforms for so many reasons obviously but one thing i really find funny about it is how on other sites if i see something that doesn't interest me i don't follow or don't like the post. but on here if someone i follow starts posting exclusively about something really niche that i have no interest in my reaction is never to unfollow. its just part of the natural environment. like oh mutual is now really into pro wrestling? ok i guess ill be seeing these guys around now

[mzyraj]

as a severely mentally ill 14 year old, I remember thinking “the medical system would treat me better if I was physically ill and not mentally ill” and then I coincidentally developed multiple chronic illnesses and found out that actually they dgaf even when you’re essentially bedridden

[mzyraj]

nobody is faking POTS, fibromyalgia or ME/CFS for attention because nobody gives a fuck if you have POTS, fibromyalgia or ME/CFS. these are three conditions people are always accused of faking online (largely because they’re common chronic illnesses and young women are disproportionately effected by them 😃) and it’s like…..look around bitch. when was the last time you saw a fund for a cure CFS walkathon? you ever see a Google banner for fibromyalgia? these are illnesses that suck to have and that you are often treated like absolute dogshit by the medical community and pop culture at large if you do have them. you don’t get positive attention, or any attention at all, if you’re at home laying down 85% of your life.

[mzyraj]

Do I know how ffxiv dragons age? Absolutely not, but it won’t stop me

[mzyraj]

okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)

[mzyraj]

[mzyraj]

Via FB

I’ve posted about a bearded dragon that had to be rescued by fire fighters—here’s one that just fights fires 👍