yall are so fucking weird about gnc people. a woman wears a suit and she's "conforming to the patriarchy". a man wears a skirt and he's Secretly A Trans Egg. have you considered It's Fabric
Ooooh, we have a bunch of really fancy pedestrian traffic lights in Germany! I need to share:
Starting off with the difference between formerly Eastern German traffic lights (upper images) and formerly Western German traffic lights (lower images):
The city of Erfurt had some additions, like an umbrella or a heart:
Same sex love in Marburg (upper image) and Frankfurt (lower image):
Traffic light lady in Bremen:
Karl Marx light in Trier:
Face of Friedrich Engels in Wuppertal:
Elvis in Friedberg (Hessen):
A sparrow (for the Golden Sparrow film awards) in Gera:
Winemaker in Bad DĆ¼rkenheim:
MainzelmƤnnchen (mascot of the public broadcasting service ZDF) in Mainz:
Please save and share this info where possible. This report has since been removed by Amnesty International due to legal threats of libel from JK Rowling. This information is no longer easily accessible.
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 ghostsāskeletal, 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 ingredientāthe cannabisāwas 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 Maryās 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 Clubāthe 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." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025
I'd be only too happy to do that. I was suspicious to start, too. It seemed a bit on the nose to have the weed brownie grandma named "Mary Jane," but also, that's a very common combination in a certain place and time, so I thought it was worth the extra effort.
What I did was find sources that made the claim (in this case, that a woman named Mary Jane was a medicinal marijuana activist in California, USA in the 1980s and 90s.) I checked the dates to get some certainty those sources aren't AI slop, then checked that the sources are generally reliable.
Then I followed useful details about the place and time, and other people involved, to explore it more fully.
The first thing I did was search for "Brownie Mary" and see if that turned anything up at all. It turned up a LOT of results. Predictably, some of them were recipes, but not all of them.
Next up, I checked sources and dates. Wikipedia can be dodgy for academic use, but their policy on LLM-generated input is very clear: they don't want slop. I started by reading that page and then went on to read others.
The Atlas Obscura article is from 2018. I found another one from SFWeekly from 2017.
Both of those are decent sources - Atlas Obscura gets a High factual reporting rate from MediaBiasFactCheck, and while MBFC doesn't have a rating for SFWeekly, the verbiage in that article is very close to what GastroObscura has. (Also to what the post itself has, right down to the choice of pull quote.)
Now, we can stop there and feel pretty confident that articles published before the wide availability of LLMs are not, in fact, LLM generated.
...or we can go deeper, and run this all the way back to source.
I spotted references to a Chicago Tribune imterview of Mary Jane Rathbun, published in 1993.
My search string of "Chicago Tribune 1993 Mary Jane Rathbun" hit it in the top 3 results. That article includes some fun new details: she wore a cannabis leaf shaped pendant to her trial!
She also objected to being portrayed as a cuddly grandma up against The Man, so I must retract my flippant tags, above.
The evidence now strongly points to Brownie Mary being a real woman who really went to court for giving AIDS patients weed brownies. But can we get closer? I've now seen several mentions of a 1980 attempt at convicting her too.
The articles have mentioned Sonoma County and a nonprofit called the Shanti Project, so let's hook onto that and see what we get.
Searching for "Mary Jane Rathbun Sonoma County 1980" gets me an article from a law firm; that mentions the prosecuting attorney by name, and points to a book: Lust for Justice: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra, by Paulette Frankl. It even has an excerpt!
We can run the book down too, just for fun (now we have a primary source.) My favorite used book site has a copy for $1. Amazon gives a view of the back cover, too:
...wow. I should see if my library has that!
The excerpt on the site has a mention of a candelight vigil held for her death in 1999. It took some hunting past things I'd already read and a bunch of shops giving written tributes, but I found a news report about that, too.
There's a lot of information out there, and it's worth digging into. Otherwise it's altogether too easy to think something real and worth knowing is just another bit of slop.
A treatise on NVDA tactics from a Marxist perspective.
An introduction to NVDA
Non-Violent Direct Action is the backbone of the peace movement, but only recently (at least in Aotearoa) have socialist organisations participated in NVDA actions in an attempt to shut down key industries. The peace movement has historically been comprised of a mish-mash of anarchist, catholic worker, Tino Rangatiratanga activists, church groups and other miscellaneous community organisations, and as such, NVDA has become associated with non-marxist tendencies, namely adventurism and pacifism. This has prevented the large-scale engagement of the socialist left with the NVDA actions of the peace movement, but lets look at these critiques closely.
NVDA is not Adventurism
The criticism that direct action constitutes anĀ āAdventurismā has its roots in an article by Lenin - Revolutionary Adventurism - that appeared in Iskra in 1902. In it, Lenin denounces the defense of terrorism offered by the Narodnik Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had advocated for a campaign of assassinations against Tsarist ministers earlier that yearā¦ Already we can begin to see the false equivalency central to accusations of adventurism, NVDA is obviously totally dissimilar to terrorist assassinations, but lets continue.
The central point of Leninās criticism is that he refutes the SRās claim that terrorist activities are able to transfer power from the state to the revolutionaries. He is correct in that it doesnāt follow that blowing up a minister would result in growth of the revolutionary movement, or that that ministerās power would somehow be gained through a destructive act. In this instance there is no transference of power, and so we can begin to see why a critique of NVDA as adventurism formed on the left - can we be sure that NVDA helps to build the revolutionary movement? This is a valid question that we should be asking, but in practice I think it is obvious.
NVDA actions are, at their best, blockades of state apparatuses, or private interests that support the repressive apparatuses of the state. If weāre to make private industry grind to a halt, itās clear that we will need to eventually block the choke points of capital. But before that, do blockades assist in building the movement? It is clear that we canāt jump ahead to blocking off key industries in our tiny numbers, so is there a form of blockade that is effective, not only at wounding the state, but also building our own power?
To this I would offer our own experiences as an organisation engaged in NVDA as an example of blockading as a means of building the movement. NVDA, when done well, is not the actions of a small group of professionalised activists, but rather an expression of workerās sentiment towards repression, it can also weaken the state (by preventing the army and police from effectively operating), build the experience of the organisation for later decisive blockades and galvanise public sentiment against the state (wherever undue repression is seen). None of these statements are true of the adventurist terrorism that Lenin denounced, and unlike the actions of the SRs, our participation in blockades involved a clear transference of power, and came at little cost to our organisations.
NVDA is not the same as Pacifism
As socialists, we are rarely pacifists. We recognise that the state, at its essence, is simply the police and army, and as such it comprises a tool of class repression. At a certain point, dangers to the capitalist class will be dealt with with violence, and we canāt fail to defend our friends and comrades simply because of vague moralistic sentiments. That being said, we should recognise that, at the current stage, pacifists have a lot to contribute to the struggle, and we are not yet at a stage where the state can operate unfettered by middle class morality.Ā
The media operates as a means for middle class morality to interfere with struggle - and this can either be to the benefit or the detriment of a workerās movement depending on whether we are seen as active or passive actors in any struggle. Since middle class morality seeks to preserve the status-quo, it values passivity in the face of violence. For these reasons, if socialists are operating in a media-heavy environment, it sometimes helps to be seen as passive victims of police violence. We usually are anyway.Ā
That being said, since NVDA often seeks to directly interfere with the everyday operations of capitalism, it is almost never seen as pacifistic by the media. The violence and anger of protesters is emphasised even when it is clear that the police are beating them and not vice-versa. Nonetheless, until middle class morality breaks down completely (as it will in a crisis), NVDA is our only means of direct strategic interference in production and exchange without bringing down the full force of the state on our movement. This is different to the popular conception of pacifism as passivity in the face of danger.
NVDA In Aotearoa
In Aotearoa the main site of struggle that involves NVDA is the repeated attempt by peace activists to prevent the New Zealand Defense Industry Association from hosting trade conferences with major arms manufacturers, aviation companies, shipbuilders and private security firms. These forums, colloquially known as the āWeaponās Expoā have happened yearly, usually in October, ever since the purchase of ANZAC navy frigates in the 1980s.Ā
While in 2018, in the face of increasing public scrutiny, the event organisers claimed to not be showcasing any weapons, media access was restricted, and even if weapons were not conspicuously on display, delegates were still free to deal in them, or make profits on innocuous items that could be reinvested into arms manufacturing.Ā
This year, despite a distant location, bad weather, vastly increased police presence, road checkpoints, extensive defensive barriers, intimidation tactics and fewer activists, we were still able to shut down the conference for many hours each day using creative tactics.
The remainder of this treatise is an exposition and refinement of the tactics used in our blockades of the 2018 Weapons Expo in Palmerston North. I write this both for domestic comrades who werenāt able to attend, and for international comrades who may be able to apply some of our tactics in an increasingly chaotic world.Ā
Blockade Tactics
In previous years, blockades were conducted in loose affinity groups centred around contingents from various left organisations. These groups were often uncoordinated, but also very fluid, hard to disperse, and generally able to cause chaos. Unfortunately these tactics were not always effective at keeping activists safe, and the arrest and injury rate at previous years was unacceptable.Ā
During the debrief after the first day of blockades, our group reached a number of conclusions, especially after other groups commented on our cohesiveness and discipline. This was because we recognised the need for set roles within the group - namely, a coordinator, a radio operator, and a scout. The coordinator is able to make tactical decisions, the radio operator is able to devote full attention to staying in touch with other groups, and the scout is able to keep an eye on the overall situation away from the action. These three set roles needed to be known by the whole group, and needed to keep their distance from major actions so that they could continue doing their job.Ā
The blockade team on the other hand was comprised of activists willing to directly confront police, and entrust any major decision making to the coordinator. This authority was necessary as most NVDA tactics require a lot of discipline so that individuals do not break a defensive line, such as by stepping back from the action without finding a replacement.
In addition to the roles, we realised that some basic commands were necessary: these were:
Spread out: The blockade group disperses
Come Together: The blockade group converges
Lock: The blockade group locks arms and forms a tight line
Starfish: The blockade group lays down on the ground
We found it necessary for all group members to repeat the command as soon as they heard it so that all members could hear the call. We will now go into the tactics associated with the latter two commands.
Locking versus Police Lines
On the first day of action, after pulling down the first defensive barrier, we were confronted with the first police line. This included officers from the so-calledĀ āgrab squadsā who were identifiable by their black gloves, and were tasked with randomised arrests.
Luckily, enough of the activists present had been trained in the correct way to lock arms and defend against a police line. Turning away from the police (if you are facing away youāre less likely to be falsely accused of assault), we locked elbows, with our fists facing inwards. Our group split into the blockading team, and the coordinators - the radio op, coordinator and scout - as supporters outside the line were necessary to keep an eye on developments.Ā
This formation was effective at preventing the easy arrest of random members (although one was pulled out successfully). However, it cannot hold indefinitely - the police are allowed to touch you, but the lightest tap on their shoulder is grounds for an assault charge. This prevents the line from simply pushing back. Ultimately it is an extremely passive formation that is only good for temporary delays. To truly counter the police line, you must make the police fear that their line cannot contain the crowd.Ā
Building up a force of activists on the flanks, while the police are spread out evenly across the road, creates a situation where the police will fear that you are going to be able to push through. In a situation where their duty is to protect something behind them, they will usually retreat to a narrower choke point if they cannot maintain a line.Ā
As with most marxist applications of NVDA, it is no longer about passivity - it is about actively making the police have to reconsider their tactics by adapting to changes. The basic strategy is outlined below.
Starfishing versus convoys.
In a situation where the police are trying to move a cargo (in our case, weapons company delegates), it is often necessary to stop vehicles in the road. The most effective method of using bodies to block a vehicle that we have found is the Starfish. Although, like many NVDA tactics, it assumes your opponent has a conscience - in practice, the drivers were sometimes willing to threaten the lives of activists in order to deliver the delegates on time.Ā
The starfish constitutes four or more activists either sitting or prone on the road, arms interlocked in a circle facing inward or outward. Prone starfish usually result in the police pulling at activistās legs, while sitting starfish are easier to pull apart at the arms.
In order for a starfish to work - there needs to be effective support teams around them. The starfishing action is pretty hard on everyoneās bodies - not only are your elbows, hips or knees on hard bitumen, but police are often pulling at legs, hair or arms. The support team needs to be bringing water, filming police violence, informing drivers of their legal responsibilities (to not put protesters in danger), and keeping an eye on the situation and radios. In addition, support activists must get around the back of the vehicle to prevent reversing. Cars, lock-ons and other actions can all support the starfish.
Mobile Groups
Due to the number of activists involved in a blockade group, it can be difficult to load everyone into cars and keep mobile. Drivers get lost or lag behind, members donāt hear the call to pull back, and generally the group will lose cohesion after a few hours of action. Larger blockade groups therefore were more effective on foot, where they could find strength in numbers, and individual car-loads of activists could not become separated.
This also created issues on the first day. Police convoys were able to follow unusual routes to get to the venue, and for a while, the police had the initiative and could choose when and where to confront us. All struggle is about regaining the initiative - choosing your battles and turning passive or reactive action into unexpected action.Ā
To keep mobile, and to help us strike in locations the police didnāt expect, we found it necessary to create rolling blockade groups, that were centred not on a large group of activists, but rather an eight-seat van. These vans are relatively common, and many activist groups will have access to at least one or two. And from our experience, just one was a very potent force.
On the second day, the police forces were gathered early in the morning around the arena. The previous day had been centred around the eastern entrances to the stadium, so roughly a hundred police were patrolling the eastern street. What they did not expect was for mobile blockade teams to arrive at the starting point for their convoys rather than the destination!
The vanās objective was to be relayed information on convoys by the scouts to the radio operator, the navigator would plot the estimated movements of a bus, and find a location to intercept it. The driver would approach the convoy as it moved towards the Weapons Expo and block its path forward. In the confusion, the twoĀ āblockersā exited the van and blocked the forward and back routes, while the van rolled up alongside the bus.
The van was equipped with a ladder, firmly attached to a pallet on the roof. The ladder was lowered onto the bus, where a climber, assisted by another activist holding the ladder and any supplies they might need, would board the roof of the bus. The blockers would then inform the driver that they had been boarded, and it would be illegal to move until they come down. This process is displayed below.
The bus, now relatively immobilised, would have to wait for the police to arrive with ladders before proceeding. This gave blockade teams the time to get to the bus on foot and prevent any police counteraction. These tactics were more effective than our wildest expectations - for example, just one of these mobile blockade vans was able to stop three buses of delegates (perhaps 120 people overall) from leaving their hotels! All with only eight activists.Ā
I hope that this post inspires comrades to pursue NVDA in areas where a direct intervention in the apparatuses of capital is necessary to build power and further the struggle. What the people of Aotearoa achieved is truly remarkable and it is doubtful that the NZDIA will be able to continue funding conferences like this in the future. In a world where the state apparatuses will only grow more brutal we need to begin taking action in meaningful ways - not as an individual display of adventurism, but as a mass movement capable of strangling the neck of capitalism in our home.
Came across this art installation, Liza Lou's Kitchen, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. It's a kitchen made of tiny glass beads, that artist Liza Lou did, taking 5 yrs. to complete, from 1991 - 1996.
theartofmadeline
discoholicmusic
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
titsay
dailybridgerton
