shoutout to my hometown for banning intersex genital mutilation! the government has also implemented a medical board to oversee medical processes for intersex folk, with a mandate that this board include people with "lived experience". this is a great step forward, and I hope that the rest of Australia will follow!
you can find out more here:
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr says it has taken too long to give intersex people the right to be consulted about permanent procedures.
I encourage my fellow Australians to look into similar movements in your state/territory! A Gender Agenda is doing some great work in the ACT at the moment, but if you're in another part of Australia, I'll point you towards Intersex Human Rights Australia for all your intersex activism needs!
Vancouver's empty homes tax came into effect over the weekend and some property owners are now scrambling to rent, sell or find a way around the fees.
Under the new rules, homes that are not occupied for at least six months of the year are subject to a tax of one per cent of the property’s assessed value. The deadline to rent out empty dwellings was July 1.
Fazli said many of the people he has talked to are thinking of renting or selling their properties. He recently met with a woman who owns three empty properties in Vancouver — and says one of them is now listed for rent, another will be listed shortly and she is thinking of selling the third.
“This is a scenario of someone who is kind of in a panic now and needs to rent them out,” he said. […]
they’re meant to be investment properties, bought, left empty, and then sold a year or few later for huge profit as housing values continue to rise. it’s a massive part of the bc housing bubble, and why despite so much new construction it’s still so difficult to find rental housing
the fact that these landlords are panicking because they might have to actually use their housing properties as housing rather than finance capital is deeply funny
Notes from The Alexandrian A compilation of notes and summaries I wrote for my own personal use while browsing several tabletop RPG sites. T
Hello, everyone! Here are my "Notes from The Alexandrian", a (currently 69-page, nice) living document that compiles basically what I consider the "best of" from various TTRPG sites into an ADHD-friendly, outline-laden resource that compresses and summarizes everything into its bare essentials, bullet-point style.
Inside you will find a plethora of easy-to-digest ways to improve your DMing and GMing that are relatively system agnostic. If you find this document useful, please feel free to reblog it and share it with friends. If you have thoughts to add, comments are open, feel free to leave some.
HONESTLY also like. part of combatting misinformation is just accepting that you'll fall victim to it sometimes. no-one can be an expert on every imaginable subject and most people don't have the time to factcheck every single piece of information that comes their way. the key thing IMO is responding appropriately when someone points misinfo ie not doubling down and being like 'no there's no way I could be wrong about this'.
like a big part of studying history is learning that your previously held beliefs are hotly debated or even outright wrong and sometimes it feels bad bcos you realise you bought into what was, with the benefit of hindsight, an obvious lie.
and other times it feels bad bcos it's actively disappointing!! often the lie feels better than the truth! historical myths get popular bcos they are, typically, better, punchier stories than what actually happened.
my pain scale invention. it goes from 0-16. you fill it out like this:
i made this because i find pain to be a multifaceted thing that influences me in different ways. i can accomplish lots of small tasks while in pain but that doesnt mean i can move around or even think clearly. its name is the goldstein expanded pain index or gepi. you can use it if you want. or not.
This was only 55 years ago. You can understand a lot of what’s wrong with the US if you realize that the average age of our elected senators is about 63. “Good old days” is a dogwhistle.
Our current Supreme Court might’ve ruled against the Lovings.
Researchers are studying the cooking traditions of the FARC, Colombia's disarmed guerrilla group.
“I will never forget my first ranchada [cooking shift],” he says. That first day, Semillas had to cook everything from white rice to fried meat and colada, a thick liquid mixed into agua de panela, a traditional beverage. He was guided by an experienced, old guerrilla who taught new guerrilleros all the “little secrets,” such as how to clean the rancha, or artisanal kitchen station, and how to knead and fry cancharinas. “We passed the knowledge from one generation to the next.”
I have seen a lot of discussion on the Internet about the environmental impact of natural fibers and synthetic fibers used to make clothing. Synthetic fabrics are made from oil, just like plastic is. According to the attached article, “Petrochemical-based synthetics make up 65% of all fibers produced annually, with polyester by far the most widely used synthetic fabric. Despite the serious environmental impacts of cotton production, a T-shirt made from cotton produces 2.1 kg CO2-eqemissions while a polyester T-shirt emits an estimated 5.5 kg CO2-eq.” Synthetic fabrics also contribute to plastic pollution. Washing clothes breaks off microfibers that contribute to microplastic contamination in waterways. Coatings on fibers or clothing contribute to pollution when they wash off and some are made with chemicals that are harmful to us and the planet.
However, sometimes you need the qualities produced by synthetic fabrics and the treatments/coatings applied to the fabric, such as waterproofing. Here are some ideas on how to reduce the environmental impact of clothing made with synthetic fibers.
Buy clothing made from recycled materials when possible. Several manufacturers have begun making clothing using some recycled materials, so look for them.
When evaluating clothing ,whether new or made from recycled materials, look for textile certifications such as Bluesign and Oeko-Tex, which indicate that a product was made with only safer materials and treatments.
You can reduce microfiber pollution by using cooler, faster laundry cycles. Hanging clothes to dry reduces microfiber pollution and also saves energy.
Research microfiber filters that can be installed on your washing machine to capture the microfibers.
Purchase fewer clothing items of higher quality and maintain them carefully. Read the laundering instructions on the label inside the item of clothing. Some clothing requires special detergents or laundry cycles to maintain their waterproof or fire-retardant properties. Clothing that is properly maintained will last much longer, hopefully leading to fewer resources being used to make new clothing.
It's hard to find good alternatives to synthetic fabrics, particularly for raingear or athletic wear, but you can minimize their impacts.
eye-opening tumblr post for me included the words "people are meant to be burdens" as in humans rely on and support one another and it's not a bother it's our purpose; to love and be loved in return. so if you ever think you're being annoying just remember we were made to love and it's going to be okay
coming from the perspective of an addict in recovery. i'm a lot, i need help, i am a burden, and i am so, so loved and supported by my friends and family. i owe them my life and my heart
Okay, this is super preliminary, but since we've been talking about zoo accessibility I wanted to launch a project I've been planning for a couple months.
One of the hardest things about visiting zoological facilities when disabled is the lack of knowledge ahead of time, right? Often the information on the zoo's website about accessibility doesn't contain everything folk need to know to plan a visit. I think we can probably help fix that, even if it's with just crowd-sourced knowledge!
This is a google spreadsheet for recording accessibility information for various zoos. It is super unfinished right now, FYI. That's partially because I need to fill in more of it from my own experiences, and partially because there are things I didn't note or experience - which I'd love for y'all to chime in about.
Categories for the spreadsheet so far include rentable assistance options, service dog information, accessible bathroom locations, mobility, vision, auditory and sensory issues (or accommodations), food allergy options, and general notes. I'm also including the information each zoo website provides, and guest assistance phone numbers, so all the information is in one place.
To add to this crowd-sourced zoo accessibility resource:
Send an ask to the blog, or comment on the appropriate cel on the spreadsheet (if the facility you want to comment on is already listed).
Provide the name of the zoo/aquarium/sanctuary and the approximate date you visited.
Tell me your experiences / information, and what categories they belong in.
Feel free to submit photos, if that's useful info! I'm going to see if I can find a way to host them and link in the spreadsheet.
I'll take information as it's submitted and integrate it into the sheet. If the zoo you've visited isn't on the list yet, I still want to add it! This resource is going to stay US-based, however. (I just don't have the capacity to manage an international one).
Obviously, I can't personally verify everything people submit, so this is very much a resource and not a definitive guide. Date stamps are crucial important for keeping track of what's recent and what might have been updated since someone visited.
Let's make zoo, aquarium, and sanctuary visits more accessible for everyone!
"Until recently, a visit to the Colorado River’s delta, below Morelos Dam, would be met with a mostly dry barren desert sprinkled with salt cedar and other undesirable invasive plant species. Today, that arid landscape is broken up with large areas of healthy riparian habitat filled with cottonwood, willow, and mesquite trees. These are restoration sites which are stewarded through binational agreements between the United States and Mexico, and implemented by Raise the River—a coalition of NGOs including Audubon"
what’s cookiejacking? sorry if this is a dumb question lol
It's not a dumb question!
Cookies are information that is stored by your browser. When you go to tumblr.com and you are automatically logged in without having to enter your username and password every time, that is because of a session token that your browser stores - that session token is a cookie.
Cookie jacking is using those cookies - which can be stolen or collected in a number of ways - to access your accounts or information.
So let's say I sent you an email that looked like it was tumblr asking you to log in and I sent you to a page that DID log you into tumblr but collected the session token at the same time. I could then use that session token to log into your tumblr. That's called session hijacking, which is a subset of cookie hijacking (cookie hijacking is apparently the more common name for the term, i've seen cookie jacking used most widely in the groups i'm in).
Session hijacking is very common and is the end goal of a lot of different phishing schemes. It's why you are automatically logged out of your account when a company announces a big hack - the hacked company will terminate all sessions, making those session tokens useless.
Terminating all sessions should be one of the first things you do as a tech company that is investigating a security incident.
When tech people tell you to clear your browser cookies for security reasons, this is why.
to all my researchers, students and people in general who love learning: if you don't know this already, i'm about to give you a game changer
connectedpapers
the basic rundown is: you use the search bar to enter a topic, scientific paper name or DOI. the website then offers you a list of papers on the topic, and you choose the one you're looking for/most relevant one. from here, it makes a tree diagram of related papers that are clustered based on topic relatability and colour-coded by time they were produced!
for example: here i search "human B12"
i go ahead and choose the first paper, meaning my graph will be based around it and start from the topics of "b12 levels" and "fraility syndrome"
here is the graph output! you can scroll through all the papers included on the left, and clicking on each one shows you it's position on the chart + will pull up details on the paper on the right hand column (title, authors, citations, abstract/summary and links where the paper can be found)
you get a few free graphs a month before you have to sign up, and i think the free version gives you up to 5 a month. there are paid versions but it really depends how often you need to use this kinda thing.
researchrabbit works similarly. you do need to create an account to use it, but it is completely free (as far as I know), meaning no limits to your collections/graphs.
GardenCooking @gardencooking - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
