Third Planet From The Sun

Early 20s. They/them. Gender-fluid. AuDHD.

[artyphex]

Hey everyone! This is a link to my friend Kai-Angel’s GoFundMe! They need help reaching St. Louis to move in with their partner and start a new job. Please read their story and help out if you can

Donate to Help Kai-Angel & Lock Move for a Brighter Future, organized by Kai Turner

Hello there! My name is Kai-Angel, I'm a 22 year old queer, disabled, and … Kai Turner needs your support for Help Kai-Angel & Lock Move for

[themainspoon]

Looking at the closed captions of the interview I did today, I'm noticing that Zoom sometimes (not always, but it fucking happened) censors the words "Queer" and "Lesbian", which is extremely fucked up.

[themainspoon]

oop, also just saw "Gay" get censored. Really not good that this is a thing.

[themainspoon]

Literally on the phone with the IT service desk trying to work out how to get them to get me through to someone with admin privileges who can turn off Zoom's "profanity" filter (fuck off, these are not profane words). It's bluntly fucking ridiculous that I have to do this, this is a university, hard of hearing people can see "naughty" words (and these aren't even fucking naughty words) without shrivelling up and dying, none of us are fucking cherubs who must remain "pure" and "uncorrupted". This whole thing is so fucking idiotic, I study gender and sexuality, the people I interview are going to use these fucking words, I'm going to use these fucking words. Absolutely fucking absurd. It's fucking American puritanism being forced upon the rest of us by some shitty tech corporation. Nuke Silicon Valley.

[themainspoon]

It censored the word "hell", it censored the "hell" in "hell yeah", are you fucking shitting me?

[themainspoon]

did it just censor fucking "sucks"? maybe it misidentified it as "fucks", but still, holy fucking shit, holy fucking shit. This is fucking ridiculous beyond words.

[motivationalnapkin]

You know maybe zuko was right to get the flu after doing 1 good deed. I did something that was in my own interests for the first time my whole life and man I could throw up after it

[pinkegodeath]

we are witnessing the gentrification of the term "tumblr sexyman" in real time and it is extremely disappointing. like no, live-action white boy #265 played by ryan gosling isn't a tumblr sexyman. i can't believe i have to say this but if it wouldn't get you shoved into a locker it probably isn't a sexyman

[sistersorrow]

This isn't new? A lot of Tumblr Sexymen are conventionally attractive white men, with the term in part being used to describe the community surrounding the character rather than just their appearance

That's why Loki from the MCU has been considered a Tumblr Sexyman for over a decade

This isn't gentrification, it's people mass adopting a term with fairly derogatory connotations as a positive term being reminded that the term you throw around to feel like liking a well designed character is somehow subversive

[sistersorrow]

Like, the reason Bill Cipher was considered a Sexyman was cause of all the people drawing him like this:

This was even used as an example image on Wikipedia for Tumblr Sexymen

[satan-offical]

I made this stupid comic and it goes like this

It's so SHIT but I started laughing when I thought of it so 😔

[bubblemintz567]

its so good of a comic all the other artists are gonna quit because they cant compete with you

[satan-offical]

I would expect so

[satan-offical]

I voiced my stupid comic over VOLUME WARNING

ITS SO BADDDDD

[mf-dooom]

[yetanothergreyjedi]

that is the face of a man worried he will be next

[ashtraythief]

Good news, he was not next! In fact, she accepted him as her mate, he learned the crane mating dance and now every year, he artificially inseminates her with crane semen to expand the very endangered crane population. True story.

[luulapants]

Sorry, he WHAT? Imagine being this man's boss and having to sit him down like. Listen. Brian. We need you to fuck the bird. You have to act like you're excited about it.

[whetstonefires]

crane husband.....

[roach-works]

this is the diametric opposite of all those awful swan wife stories and i love it.

[alex51324]

(WalWaPo makes you jump through like three separate hoops before you can read the article, so I will share some of the highlights:

Walnut was born in a species-recovery breeding program in the 1980′s.  The program had crane chicks hand-raised by human volunteers, and at that time they did not fully understand the measures necessary make sure that the chicks do not imprint on humans and retain their identity as cranes.  

As a result, her keepers believe, Walnut does not recognize other cranes as members of her own species.  

It has not been proven that Walnut killed her previous suitors; however, there is a persistent rumor in the white-naped-crane-conservation community that she did.  

Because this species is highly endangered, and the gene pool of the captive population is small, it’s pretty important for the survival of her species that Walnut A) mate, and B) not kill a bunch of other cranes.  

The actual name of the keeper is Chris Crowe.

They both arrived at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2004.   

Walnut immediately began paying special attention to Chris--and ignoring the eligible male crane in a nearby enclosure.  

Walnut initiated their courtship, performing the opening moves of a mating dance.  

Chris realized that if he reciprocated the mating dance, it might be possible to artificially inseminate Walnut with her participation and consent.  (The process normally involves restraining the bird.)  

It worked!  

Chris and Walnut have had five children, who were raised by other crane couples at the facility--sometimes the biological dad and his mate--both because it’s unclear whether Walnut would accept the chicks as her own, and because Chris is not equipped to be a Crane Dad.  

However, the Institute provides her with artificial eggs to sit on, and Chris takes his turn looking after them.  (This would not work with real eggs because he can’t sit on them properly, but Walnut seems to feel that he is on the job if he just stands over them.)

Chris accepts that he is pretty much married to this bird.  White-naped cranes live to be about 60, and they mate for life, so he knows he can’t retire while Walnut is alive.  (At the time of the article, Walnut was 36, and Chris 42.)  

[thesylverlining]

Legit cannot pick the funniest part of this

she has not been PROVEN to have killed her exes, but there is a PERSISTENT RUMOR (really officers she's simply DEVASTATED, she sobs, wearing a new feather boa unfortunately resembling her most recent deceased husband)

His name is Chris CROWE. (Mrs. Walnut Crane-Crowe?)

the mental images of a whole human man learning and performing the crane mating dance, and "sitting" on artificial eggs so she thinks he's performing his duties as a husband and father (and apparently OBJECTS if he does not?)

"chris, buddy, you gotta marry the possibly-murderous crane lady for the GOOD OF THE SPECIES." (alternately: "chris, my man! good news! we found you a very interested lady! She's 36, she's very spirited and independent, she holds a very important and rare status in her society! ...Is there a downside? WELL...")

chris sits any potential human partners down, like "my love, you must understand before we wed,,, i am already... Attached" (camera drifts wistfully to the above photo) "Lady Walnut and I have an,, Understanding... the relationship is open, but very committed"

[anais-ninja-bitch]

just had to explain this post to my father bc he thought my stifled laughter was a signal of illness.

well done, everyone, good game. hit the showers.

[largishcat]

[eshlimoriarty]

[lazorsandparadox]

Not only is he 'married' to walnut, this has apparently happened SEVERAL times, so he has MULTIPLE crane wives, none of which know about any of his other crane wives. This man is, for some unknown reason, irresistible to cranes

[queersatanic]

the “this content has been removed for violating Tumblr’s Community Guidelines” notice really adds a lot of flavor to this post and somehow makes it MORE obscene than whatever that actually was

[worldheritageposts-official]

World Heritage Post

[kedreeva]

I regret being the bearer of bad news, but I thought it should be shared that Walnut passed away in January of this year (2024). There's a lot of mixed info about the lifespan of cranes (due to people misunderstanding what a median is...) but the average for most species I know of is 20-30 years (in the wild if nothing eats them/they don't die young), and 30-45 in captivity, with the oldest known white-naped crane having loved to be 46. Given that she was 42, this old gal did good, and I'm certain she will be missed by folks here.

[optimysticals]

Fly on forever Walnut Crane-Crowe

[depsidase]

[broken-horn-of-equius]

[no-one-offical]

‎

[cyb0rg-crypt1d]

Has anyone done this before, probably

[pinkypkmntrainer]

i've been thinking about something i've been seeing online that feels strange to me, and i wanna talk about it.

when somebody headcanons a character that is presented as male in canon as transmasc, nobody questions their reasoning or even asks about it out of genuine curiosity. but if somebody headcanons that same character as transfem, there's a lot more resistance, interrogation, and assumptions. the main examples of this that i am aware of are jax from the amazing digital circus and ralsei from deltarune, but there are likely more, and maybe some instances with canon female characters.

a lot of the time, when i see characters being headcanoned as trans in the direction of their canon gender, the individuals with these headcanons don't really do anything with it. they don't analyze or examine how being trans affects the character, and they don't explore the character's journey of self acceptance or their transition, since, well, according to their headcanon, they already went through all that stuff and now they're perfectly happy. more often than not, it's just drawings of the characters with "trans traits" like having top surgery scars or wearing a binder, and a missed opportunity to think about the effect that being trans would've had on the character in their life. i'm not saying everyone with those headcanons does this, but from what i've seen it's fairly common.

now, on the other end, individuals who follow headcanons or theories that a canon male character is transfem or a canon female character is transmasc are put under more scrutiny. many people are very blatantly being ignorant towards the reasons for these theories, not listening to actual explanations of others' reasoning in favor of calling the headcanons/theories transphobic. my experience with this is seen in transfem jax theory and transfem ralsei theory. i've seen many a post in which someone is making claims such as "you only think this character is transfem because they're feminine". but if you're in the spaces that discuss these theories and headcanons, you know that the femininity of a male character is not being cited as primary evidence for their possible transfemininity. at least in the examples i'm talking about here, the people who believe this are basing it off of the relationship these characters have with their identity, self worth, and desires, noticing the aspects they have in common with the actual feelings and experiences had by trans people who hadn't realized themselves yet. but so many people refuse to actually listen to these explanations, or just dismiss them as not making sense.

are you picking up what i'm putting down?

[moonlovesskunks]

WOKE gravity falls be like:

mabLESBIAN

PANifica

TRANSford

wENBY

dipper

bill SHE/HER

[kale-of-the-forbidden-cities]

transmasc Dipper works hard to prove his masculinity, to prove to other people that he can be a real man. As soon as he found out that he could be trans, he was sure of it. It made things click into place.

transfem Dipper tries to "embrace" masculinity. She learns about the possibility of being trans, but almost doesn't want to be, because after going her whole life feeling like she wasn't enough of a boy because of how she acted, she doesn't want to prove people right. she tries to prove her masculinity because she doesn't want to admit to being trans at all

i <3 trans dipper

[latter-day-saint-nick]

I'm really tired of people outside the UK claiming that JK Rowling's bigotry doesn't extend to trans men and non-binary people. I can't get an autism diagnosis, because I'm scared that it will be used against me to deny me the healthcare I need, as Rowling and her ilk have been spreading the rhetoric that transmascs are just confused autistic girls who are too stupid to know their own gender.

[purple--starrrs]

By the way it's like. Really fucked how society's thoughts on epilepsy is just "get over it." Seizures can cause permanent brain damage. Seizures can kill people. Seizures hurt like hell. Allow me to reiterate that seizures can kill people. And you're just gonna casually put flashing lights, a common trigger for seizures in your advertisement, in your animation meme, in your edit, on your billboards, without even thinking about putting a simple disclaimer? That's unbelievable. Your little anime edit could deadass cost a life and you're not gonna put a warning because it's "inconvenient" or "people like that shouldn't be on the internet" (ableist) (the problem exists outside the internet also). Or you'll give insufficient ones like putting it in the captions or only giving like one second before the flashing lights appear, meaning that the trigger's already in motion before anyone who needs the warning can read it and save themselves from literal physical danger.

We need to start commenting under other people's posts about how to properly warn for flashing lights and eyestrain. We need to be emailing and calling companies about their possibly triggering advertisements that could induce seizures. We need to stop tolerating ableism and start speaking up for the more vulnerable.

Also, stop putting epilepsy warnings. That's like saying "warning: schizophrenia" on a post including unreality or "warning: dyslexia" on a post with a typing quirk. First off, the disability mentioned isn't the only group of people that this could trigger. Second, it doesn't truly get the message across and instead makes it worse for those with the disability-- scrolling through the epilepsy tag on Tumblr should get you to view the content of other epileptic people, but no, you just get a bunch of flashing lights and eyestrain, even though you could instead tag for, oh I dunno, flashing lights and eyestrain.

Anyways this Disability Pride, and for every month that comes after, think about epileptic people and others who are triggered by flashing lights/eyestrain. Happy pride to those who experience seizures too frequently due to the unaccommodating and ableist societies we live in!

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[carrionthird]

"Stop scrolling and please help me spread the word, because if I've landed on your page you're most likely either a black woman or someone who cares about black women and the simple phrase I'm about to share could help save a black woman's life.

Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.

If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.

And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.

So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:

I will need you to document on record that you are refusing the treatment (or medicine) I've requested, and the reason you are doing so."

[dovewithscales]

This works. I have used it in other situations. If medical staff have to document and take responsibility and be on the hook legally for doing shady shit they behave much differently.

If you weren’t already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because it’s applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.

But particularly women, and especially black women.

[naga-noia]

as a person under the agender/nonbinary umbrella I actually think the recently increased focus on a nonbinary person’s agab is insanely fucking uncomfortable and blatantly exorsexist. Stop trying to sort NB people into boxes of amab vs afab, transfem vs transmasc, tma vs tme, etc etc. It is not praxis or activism to keep attempting to binarize people whose entire identities are built around the fact that they DO NOT ADHERE to a binary. You are just being a fucking tar pit #sorry

[supermariosunshine2002]

tma and tme are to describe one's relationship to transmisogyny. it's similar to describing a relationship to anti-blackness by "creating a binary" of black and non-black (which includes white people, latino people, asian people, etc). tme includes anyone who is not transfeminized (such as cis men, cis women, trans men, etc). just because there are two categories of something doesn't mean you're getting forced into a gender binary. ignoring your relationship to transmisogyny by refusing to understand what tme/tma means is exactly the same as ignoring your relationship to anti-blackness by saying "i dont see color", because sure, you can ignore that there's a structural & systemic issue regarding a specific demographic, but it doesn't mean its not there!

[naga-noia]

nigga did your white ass really just come onto a black person’s post to try and lecture them about not knowing their own relationship to antiblackness

number one check yourself. Number two comparing TMA/TME to anti-Blackness is a false dichotomy and I need white queer people to stop trying to compare themselves to Black people every single chance they get. oh my god

The two are NOT similar. If you really wanna play the game of equating race and gender, then the equivalent to “Black and nonblack” would be transfem/trans woman and non-transfem/trans woman, not TMA/TME. I can assure you that NO black person is going around saying “antiblack racism affected vs antiblack racism exempt.” Because That Is Stupid.

EVERYONE is affected by antiblackness, because of how deeply it’s ingrained into our entire societal structure. You cannot write off specific demographics as not being affected by certain forms of oppression or discrimination, because the nature of living in a white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy is that ALL of these systems are INTRINSICALLY connected with each other, and affect EVERYONE to some degree. There are countless historical examples of antiblack legislation directly impacting poor communities of other racial groups- including white people. There are primary targets of discrimination, obviously, but nobody is truly “exempt” from any sort of oppressive system unless they are at the VERY top of the damn food chain.

In the same vein, the intersection of transphobia and misogyny is ALSO deeply ingrained into our society. And because of that, nobody is truly “transmisogyny-exempt.” Even people who aren’t the primary targets are still directly impacted and negatively affected by transmisogynistic systems. I find TMA/TME to be useless in terms of categorization because it directly posits that everyone who gets sorted into the latter group just doesn’t experience any oppression or discrimination derived from transmisogynistic bases at all, which is ridiculous, because that happens All the time.

A trans man or enby who’s mistaken for a trans woman and is assaulted for it, a cis man who’s belittled and attacked on the basis of being Too Feminine, a cis woman who’s publicly shamed, derided, and transvestigated for having testosterone levels that are “too high,” are all examples of non-transfem/trans woman groups being negatively affected on the basis of transmisogyny.

Poor white people being affected by legislation meant to target and attack Black populations and the massive trend of colorism throughout Asian communities are examples of nonblack groups being negatively affected on the basis of antiblackness.

You cannot sort people by what oppression they do and do not face, and attempts to do so are inherently exclusionary and are bound to lead back into denying people of their lived experiences, just because they don’t line up perfectly into these specific categories of “this genre of person goes through this” vs “this genre of person doesn’t go through that.”

I believe that TMA/TME was coined with the best intentions, but the problem is that it’s a clumsy dichotomy and the way a lot of people tend to use it ends up leading back into the same issues of being binary (“amab trans people experience this, afab trans people don’t experience that”) and then THAT leads back into a whole heaping mess in and of itself

Talking about the way transfeminized people are targeted by transmisogyny is not a bad thing in and of itself! But like, you can just say transfem/non-transfem- or even just “transfeminized” to describe the position oppressors will often place people into in order to enact transmisogynistic violence against them- instead of directly trying to state what different groups of people Do And Don’t Experience. you can say “primary targets of transmisogyny” without directly implying that certain groups are exempt from it all together.

THAT is my issue at hand when it comes to TMA/TME. It is an awkward framework to describe oppression, because oppression doesn’t work like that in reality

[quinloki]

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." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Tags quoted from Previous:

#i didnt reblog the first time #because i wanted to verify this #and now that i have? hell yeah brownie grandma

Can you please share how you verified, and give alternate sources, so we can maybe quiet the accusations of "A.I. slop" in the comments?

[redsixwing]

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.