Heartwarming story: Little girl doesn’t have to do anything to fund her dad’s surgery because his expenses are covered by his country’s universal healthcare.
Human determination: Man bikes 18 miles to work every morning because he wants to and not because he can’t afford a car and would be fired if he’s late.
Spirit of Brotherhood: Neighbors host housewarming party for elderly resident who doesn’t need help in paying rent because his pension is more than enough.
SO INSPIRING: Local middle school students bake dozens of cupcakes because their home economics class is doing a baking unit. Their school is fully funded with everything they need.
Transphobia is about to be signed into law in the UK. We can fight this.
I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.
Last year we broke the record for an LGBT+ mass lobby of Parliament. Will you help us break it again? Join us on 25th June 2026 to demand be
The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.
Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.
A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:
Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.
Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.
Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns
Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.
I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.
It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:
Worried about what to say?
Bring your personal worries about transphobia being signed into law, and trans friends being excluded from public spaces. You are a living person who deserves dignity. Remind your MP of that. You will also get guidance and brochures from Trans Solidarity Alliance that outlines our demands. This is mine from last year.
Money issues?
Trans Solidarity Alliance provides a travel bursary that you can sign up for via the link.
Got a refusal or no response from your MP?
Come anyway! You can request a same-day appointment with your MP through a process called greencarding. They will come and see you if they’re already in Parliament. Even if they don’t, they’re made acutely aware of your cause because you showed up in person. This is my greencard from last year.
Here is the EHRC Code of Practice in full. It's a tough read, but some highlights are:
Organisations can’t provide trans-inclusive, single-sex services, or they risk being sued for discrimination.
e.g. domestic violence support for women including trans women, men’s rugby group including trans men (12.68).
Trans people will have nowhere safe to pee.
If you’re a trans man, businesses can't allow you to pee in the men's, and you can also be ejected from women’s bathrooms if you’re perceived as a man. Vice versa for trans women. EHRC suggests a ‘third space’ bathroom, which is discriminatory and unworkable for most businesses. (13.130-133)
Sports organisations must exclude trans people from single-sex competitions (13.73).
A women’s only sports competition must exclude trans women because of their biological advantage or face potential lawsuits (13.74), but a trans man who has undergone testosterone treatment can also be excluded based on fairness rules (13.81).
Trans women are stripped of the legal definition of ‘lesbian’, and therefore no longer have legal protections if they’re discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. (2.50, 2.92).
Here is the Good Law Project's better explanation of the EHRC Code.
I have also made a PDF printout of QR codes for the government petition, email your MP tool, and mass lobby link to pass around your communities. DM me and I'll send it to you.
Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals
Why is it that every time I google something like "Are olives poisonous to cats" the top results are always like "Fun fact: Cats are carnivores! This means that they eat meat. There is no reason to include olives in a cat's diet. You should feed your cat cat food, which is dry or wet food especially designed for cats. You can purchase this at a store." like is there a single person alive on the planet who's googled "Are blueberry muffins safe for cats" because they're planning on switching their cat to a muffin-only diet??? No, I'm asking because the little bastard somehow popped open the packet while I was putting away the groceries and dragged one under the couch before I could react and now I need to know if I should call the after-hours vet. "Cats should not eat spaghetti." NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!!!! "Try to keep human food away from cats." i live in a studio apartment with a completely silent and permanently hungry apex predator who has the intelligence of a toddler and the desperate Machiavellian cunning of a creature who spent his formative months on the streets. He can already open doors and he is this 👌 close to learning how to open the microwave. He is stronger than me and covered in knives. So im gonna do my best but for the moment i just need you to tell me whether this yoghurt is going to kill my son y/n
I've been using the pet poison hotline's poison list cause it has a search function. It also tells you whether something is mildly, moderately, or severely toxic which can be very handy! It doesn't contain like everything but it might be a good place to start, it also includes plants for fellow houseplant lovers <3
Explore Pet Poison Helpline®s vast knowledge on poisons by reviewing our pet poison list. Explore our top 10 poison and holiday poison lists
For plants specifically, there’s also a wildly detailed set of posts and listings about toxicity on the old, wonderful, Plants Are the Strangest People blog
As an older queer, allow me to say: the walls of the closet are load-bearing. It is our job as a community to stand in front of that door and tell everyone who wants to peek inside to fuck off.
There are so many reasons a person may choose not to come out and there is no reason a person would owe the public or a stranger that information. Certainly it's not owed simply because someone is famous.
We have fought for decades to make it safer for people to be open and authentic about themselves, but we are not yet there. And even if we were, the closet would still be something we need to maintain for those who are not ready to reveal that part of themselves.
So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.
Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?
The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!
This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.
Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:
Don't have enough space to plant full trees, or
Don't have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.
The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.
The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).
Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.
So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.
Serbian here living in Belgrade! This is all true and I've actually seen some of these around the city a few times. They're amazing at what they do and really cool to watch up close because you can see pretty swirling inside them. It's not only functional but aesthetically pretty nice as well!
Can everyone who makes video content do a Deaf bitch a favor? Watch your shit with the captions on and the sound off, and then do another round of editing to fix things including but not limited to:
Captions cover the spot on the screen you put the information I need
The dialogue is captioned but not the song you have playing that the dialogue is responding to
You only captioned the person on the screen, not the person off screen who is also talking
No captioning of critical sound effects (alarms, bells, dogs barking, etc)
Speakers are not labelled at moments where it is not clear on the screen who is talking.
Captions cover the spot on the screen that you put the information I need!
Other d/Deaf people welcome to add.
This post brought to you by the fifth video tutorial I could not follow because the bad, auto-generated captions covered what I was trying to watch today.
Since apparently those are the only voices that get any sort of attention, can everyone shut the fuck up and stop speaking over d/Deaf voices?
Your annoyances at captioning issues have been noted, and it sounds very inconvenient! But this post is specifically talking about the issues that d/Deaf people face, because while caption options are useful for everyone, and are an accessibility aid for the hard of hearing or those with audio processing issues, they are an accessibility NEED for the d/Deaf! Captions are the only way for the d/Deaf community to access audio information in video format. Inadequate captioning can shut d/Deaf people out completely from information and entertainment, and that's a much more consequential than your inconvenience.
I dare any of you to do what OP says and watch your media muted with the captions on. Do that for a week if you're brave and see how much harder it is to live like that everyday, and then see if you feel like talking over d/Deaf people.
FLY is a story about a boy who gets a second chance. Help his story take flight June 9th 11am EST on Kickstarter. Thank you for being the wind beneath my wings I hope this story lifts the world to a brighter place.
A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.
Was driving with my grandmother and in broken English she says “no eyes… no nose… no face. Don’t trust.” To which I looked around wildly in search of this omen of ill portend.
Laying on your left-hand side may make for slower pill absorption.
oh wow! hey if you take pills check this out. new medicine taking meta just dropped.
according to these models, out of the 4 tested postures, the best position to digest pills is laying on your right side. standing upright has a similar time to laying in your back at twice as much as laying on the right side, and laying on the left side is the slowest by far.
laying on right side: pill dissolves in around 10 minutes.
standing: pill dissolves in 23 minutes. laying on the back has a similar time.
laying on left side: pill dissolves in up to 100 minutes.
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0096877
definitely worth a lot more research.
if you want your medicine to kick in fast, try laying on your right side! if you want your medicine to kick in slower, try laying on your left side.
This makes sense! I learned from a doc that if you have gas pain or nausea, you turn on your left side to make it easier for your stomach to send stuff through. The goal in turning left is to NOT absorb, but to release.
Turning on your right can make nausea/gas pain worse because it has to fight gravity to exit your stomach/body. So, yeah, lying on your right would make things absorb faster because it's going into the stomach lining, which is the point.
