”blorbo would want you to eat healthier/have a better sleep schedule/whatever”: yeah they’re not the only one
“blorbo would do this. blorbo would think these patterns are normal and healthy. blorbo would also fall into this exact self-loathing spiral over not being able to change”: I NEED TO GET BETTER NOW
in my little pony universe youd go to a job interview and theyd be like so how does your cutiemark reflect your dedication to this position. And every time youd have to spew some bullshit about how your cutiemark of two tennis rackets actually means youre a team player and good at multitasking and view the market like a playing field. or whatever. and you wouldnt even get the job
Thanks to Equestria v Sugar Sprinkle, cutie mark interview questions are considered hiring discrimination, so if anypony asks you any cutiemark related questions or even alludes to any questions about your cutiemark such as "In your own words, describe your life purpose" you can and should refuse to answer. Know your rights, ponies.
Its to the point where most Americans can’t conceive of a walkable community because everywhere is like this and several generations have now grown up in a world like this. There’s hardly anyone that can conceive of a world that isn’t like this. Most people either cave in and get a car or end up isolated. I live in a city that’s mostly walkable by North American standards and I still end up walking in the dirt on the edge of a stroad a lot of the time.
One of the cities I grew up in was just like this but more hostile because it was where thousands of nonlocal tourists could stay cheaply for neaghboring city amusement park access and no crosswalks at all. So every summer you'd have to fight for your life to go anywhere at all. 0 public transportation, not even bus service for schools.
3 children, from 3 separate events died in just one summer. A kid in my homeroom was out for 7 months after a tourist ran them over and broke their leg from the hip down. Like every large bone had to be surgically reconstructed with metal rods and screws. As with many of the accidents it was a hit and run and small town had no way to find the responsible party because all they had to go by were out of state plates and the car's color. 1 of thousands.
Eventually they put a traffic light at the worst intersection, replacing the 4-way stop no tourist ever stopped at. However then they just kept running that red light. 🙃
it really is insane how little you hear about "america has the world's highest prison population by such a significant margin that it would be seen as excessively over-the-top if it was used in fiction"
before you say "4% isn't that big of a difference between the US and China"
for anyone bad at math 1.4 billion divided by 340 million is about 4. we have a fourth the population of china but a higher prison population and a higher incarceration rate by far. this is just widely publicly available information that you're supposed to just accept. it's not supposed to make you go insane.
The US has the largest prison population AND the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. The US is home to 4.2% of the world's population but 20% of its incarcerated population. More than 0.6% of the US population is incarcerated.
Men make up 93% of the US prison population, but despite this, the US accounts for 30% of the GLOBAL population of incarcerated women.
Housing insecurity is the most significant predictor of incarceration with 22% of state prisoners experiencing it shortly before incarceration.
12% of state prisoners in the US were unhoused before their 16th birthday.
68% of US state prisoners were first incarcerated before their 16th birthday.
More than half of people in prisons and jails in the US have a mental illness.
Cognitive learning disabilities occur in state prisons at nearly 500% the national rate.
[all data sourced or derived from the Prison Policy Initiative]
I saw this video about a doctor who performed an MRI on a 5 year old and discovered she essentially had “brain damage” from excessive iPad use, as the white matter in her brain couldn’t form properly due to an understimulated environment.
Hmm it’s almost like there’s supposed to be adult figures responsible for monitoring her screen time and making sure she develops properly… certainly this isn’t the result of neglect at the hands of her parents…
“This 5 year old is brain damaged by excessive iPad use”
Translation: This 5 year old is developmentally impaired by neglectful parents who used an iPad as a stand-in for social and environmental stimulation / interaction for hours at a time during critical early stages of child development. The iPad is the cop-out.
“Children don’t have the strength to hold pencils anymore because they only use screens.”
Translation: Parents aren’t making the conscious effort to help their children develop necessary skills and letting iPads raise them.
When are people going to realize the iPads and whatnot are the instruments through which the neglect is happening through and not the cause? How the fuck do you let your child have such a severe lack of physical strength in their hands that they can’t hold a pencil properly?
People will see a study suggesting children with higher screen times have poorer or negative developmental outcomes and immediately say it’s the screens causing this, and not the more likely fact that higher screen time = less engagement time with their environment, physical exercise, parents, family, and their peers, all of which are NECESSARY for a healthy upbringing as a social species.
It’s like saying a dog who was kept in a cage all its life and left with atrophied muscles was damaged by the cage, and not by the fact its owners were too lazy to play or walk their dog in order for its muscles to build properly. The cage is the instrument of neglect and the owners are the perpetrators, in the same way parents are the perpetrators and weaponizing screen time as an excuse and painting themselves as helpless bystanders.
If you all will allow me a moment to analyze the competition as it exists, there's something interesting going on with the numbers.
As we all know, thanks to the support of the good people of Tumblr, Tylenol has experienced a meteoric rise to second place. Even though her competition is stiff, I believe in Tylenol's ability to go the distance.
But let's take a look at the competition:
Elmer seems to be a lovely boy. I have no qualms with Elmer, and think he would look fantastic on a beer can. But what about Elmer's campaigns? Who is the power behind the throne here, and how have they managed to find such breakout success on this competition?
A handful of wealthy donors are trying to buy this competition.
At the end of the day, all donations are good donations here. This is a charity event so every penny earned is going to help animals in need. But it's not lost on me that Elmer's current ranking is thanks entirely to a few individuals with the financial means to put their thumbs on the scale.
Tylenol's donors, comparatively, are small and numerous, mostly $1-10 donations from many passionate believers in what she stands for (autism and pain relief I think).
Overall, the donations tell a very different story than what the base ranking shows you. Elmer is held aloft by just 24 donors and bolstered by a few wealthy patrons, whereas Tylenol has won the hearts of literally hundreds of people. Even the current third place, Abby, owes her ranking to numerous small contributions rather than one or two large ones.
You know, when I've remarked that a lot of the responses to my posts feel like people are just plucking out keywords they think they recognise based on the shape of them and replying to what they imagine the post says based on that, the possibility never occurred to me that this is actually how many American schools are currently teaching kids to read.
Tumblr being the "piss on the poor" reading comprehension site makes sense when you realize that 79% of adults in the US are functionally illiterate. Same goes for Twitter and TikTok.
that's a real high number, sport. where'd you get it?
Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.
Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.
I want you to understand this. I NEED you to understand this. My mother read me the hobbit as bedtime story, and I started pushing myself to read before pre-school so I could in fact read the hobbit for myself instead of having to wait for bedtime.
I didn't do so right away but jesus wept I PUSHED myself to learn to read SPECIFICALLY so I could read The Hobbit! It is, in fact, a children's story! And children only see page count as 'there is a lot of this fun story to read!'
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
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.
I've been thinking about this - and why asking the demon is also a bad idea
Tartini was a composer and violin teacher and no one respected him, he was generally broke, and he started having weird dreams in which the devil asked him to teach him violin
despite being catholic tartini agreed - although everything told him this was a bad idea
so he taught the devil violin in his dreams and when he had taught him everything he knew the devil offered him payment, he played an original composition in his dream
Tartini woke up weeping and struggled to write it down
we have a historical version of "couldn't remember the greatest song in the world, this is just its tribute", and the song he wrote down made him "Sonata in G Minor, aka the devil's trill" it's usually played by 2 violinists because it's evil difficult,
now imagine you make a deal with the devil to write your novel, he writes it but only lets you read it in a dream and you have to transcribe it from memory the next day.... 150k of the best prose and plot you've ever seen in your life and you have to remember it
stormborns
kianamaiart
prguitarman
snowghoul
2087
gummygunk
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
izzy806
blakekathryn
origamiaround
