If you live in Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota, or Texas, we need you to take action to protect disability rights! ASAN’s plain language action alert explains what’s happening and how you can help. https://autisticadvocacy.org/2026/02/take-action-to-protect-disability-rights/
If you don’t live in these states, share this post with someone who does!
“Haha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.”
Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.
“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”
Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.
“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”
You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?
One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.
The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.
And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.
And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.
FYI, all of these books were made open access as part of our Path to Open program, where included books are set to become open access three years after their publication date.
Many of the above books can be downloaded as PDFs in full!
Could we say that rejecting afab transfemininity is a form of bioessentialism because this rejection is based the sex assigned at birth of this category ? Isn't this like rejecting amab people from womanhood for the same reason ?
this only makes sense if you believe that "transfemininity" was a freely-made, vibes-based gender category with no prior anchor in the world. bioessentialism requires prescription by the accused bioessentialist; it requires that your imagined bioessentialist (me) decide post-hoc that certain biological claims about a person determine whether they can be transfeminine or not. if transfemininity was just a set of expressions, forms of behaviour and labelling, a particular aura or whatever, it would be indefensible to gatekeep people from it based on assignment. but that's not what transfemininity is.
transfemininity as a term developed to describe a category of gendered subjectivity in response to transmisogyny. the transfeminine isn't just a particular appearance or set of labels—transfemininity is anchored to the way transmisogyny shapes the subject-formation of those people who are subjected to it. like being a trans woman, being transfeminine is a politicized positionality determined thru cisnormativity and its reflex, transmisogyny. and the logic of transmisogyny operates precisely thru birth assignment.
here is a second clarification: birth assignment is not a biological fact about someone. birth assignment itself is a bioessentialist social action done to someone in the maintenance of hegemonic sexgender. the corrective machinery of gender then sets its normative expectations in accordance with ASAB, and metes out its punishment likewise. and transmisogyny is the specific genre of punishment reserved for those who have betrayed the expectations of being coercively assigned male at birth: the class of failed men who become an underclass of failed women because they cannot even perform the kinds of reproductive labour expected of women "proper". the transfeminine is a subject formed in response to this experience: a gendered category that coagulated against the stream of transmisogyny. it was not an invention ex nihilo, but political development.
so when I reject "afab transfemininity", I am not engaging in prescription. I am just describing transmisogyny, and deducing what must therefore be true of transfemininity. to call this bioessentialist would be a category mistake. take it up with the instruments of transmisogyny. the bioessentialism sits much deeper than a trans lesbian saying no—and your comparison to transmisogyny itself rejecting trans womanhood is, to be honest, absurd.
disclaimer: this is from the perspective of an addict living in the US!
harm reduction is more than naloxone (Narcan, the opioid overdose antidote), clean needles, needle disposals, and medication assisted treatment (MAT). these are all marvelous life-saving developments, but they are quite frankly the bare minimum when it comes to keeping people who use drugs alive. and unfortunately, they're still under attack.
but for those who do support harm reduction but either don't know much about it, or don't know where to start learning about it - i want to share some other harm reduction practices & supplies, and my favorite related resources!
ways to use more safely, by yourself
things that have to do with real, physical substances
Never Use Alone Hotline (US) - a peer-ran hotline where people who are using drugs alone or with untrusted/unsafe people can stay on the line, vent, chat, or ask questions. if the caller becomes unresponsive, the hotline calls EMS.
Fentanyl & nitazene test strips - (nitazenes are an even more potent class of opioids. please get BOTH fent and zene tests)
Reagent kits - (these are to identify substances! very helpful since what you're told you're getting is often not what you get at all)
safes & child-proof containers - (prevents children & pets from getting into stashes and overdosing)
Microgram scales - (can measure very small doses for potent substances such as fentanyl, nitazenes, and LSD)
Pipettes, beakers, & test tubes - (can measure very small doses by volume, if the amount of the substance is already known)
Dexcalc - (a website to calculate how much DXM you can take to achieve or avoid certain effects; helps pevent overdose)
National Harm Reduction Coalitions' Safer Injecting resources
knowledge is power
the more people who use drugs know, the better they can make informed decisions and protect themselves!
Psychonaut Wiki - (pretty much wikipedia for drugs)
Psychonaut Journal - (an app for tracking one's substance intake)
Tripsit - (a harm reduction organization that sells test kits,
connects users with free Narcan sources, provides drug interaction checkers, has its own discord community, & more!)
Erowid - (a digital library where you can find a wealth of information on substances, proper procedures, self-reported experiences of other users, legal issues, history, & more!)
The Drug User's Bible - (a book containing the research and experiences of the author. He self-administered over 180 substances w/the objective "to provide, without fear or compromise, core and critical information to support the health, welfare and well-being of the 250 million people in the world who use drugs.")
Narcan Trainings - (teaches anyone, drug user or not, how to identify an overdose, administer Narcan, and inform the person who overdosed about what happened. they often supply attendees with a Narcan kit)
In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Dr. Gabor Mate - (explores the political, social, economic, and personal predispositions underlying substance abuse; a compassionate look at addiction)
Wound care & infection warning signs - (I do not have the spoons to find the resource on this one, I apologize; but it is very important!!)
community & society based
things that have been implemented, or are being advocated for, to improve addicted people's quality of life & fulfill their human rights
Supervised Injection Sites - (places where people who use drugs by IV, IM, or subcutaneous injection can do so under supervision of medical staff, in a sterile and safe environment. if anyone overdoses, staff are there to reverse the overdose: this has been so effective to the point that, the main clinic i learned about, successfully reversed over 100 overdoses. no one died!)
Social safety nets - (free/low cost housing, financial aid, free/low cost healthcare, etc) - (allows people who use drugs to meet their basic needs, reducing their level of stress & isolation from the rest of society. this reduction in suffering can help people stop or reduce their use!)
Recovery-based social centers - (organizations that provide educational and recreational activities for drug users and their families/friends: this is so they can connect with people like them & make informed decisions, all in a safe & drug-free environment)
Decriminalization, legalization, & pardons - (systemically de-stigmatizes drug use and reduces the amount of trauma and dis-empowerment people who use drugs face; this overall allows them to lead more fulfilling lives, be part of their communities, and focus on improving their health instead of surviving institutions)
Antipsychiatry & Prison abolition - (going to stay in my lane here: many people who use drugs find themselves in rehabs, hospitals, psych wards, group homes, or other institutions. these institutions, despite their claims or what good does come out of some, can be similar to prison & jail in that they disenfranchise, disconnect, and retraumatize drug users)
Don't Call The Police - a collection of hotlines for when you need serious, urgent, or emergency help, but don't want the cops involved.
self-management of opioid use disorder or chronic pain
this section will be under the cut as it refers to a legal substance people have used to taper off of street/prescribed opioids.
DISCLAIMER: This section is not encouraging the use of any substances. The safest way to do drugs is to not do drugs. That said, opioid users deserve to know all the options available to them so they can make the safest decision for themself.
Some people have utilized a substance called Kratom to get off opioids. Kratom is an atypical opioid coming from the Mitragyna Speciosa plant, and it has many of the same effects as typical opioids. It is legal in most places, however it has been scheduled and/or banned in some areas.
Kratom differs from typical opioids in a crucial way: it does not cause the profound respiratory depression that substances like oxycodone and fentanyl do. To the best of our knowledge, no one has died from kratom alone; fatalities have resulted from combining it with other susbtances - namely other CNS depressants like alcohol, benzos, and typical opioids.
The main psychoactive components of kratom are mitragynine, 7-hydroxymitragynine, and mitragynine pseudoinoxydyl. The last 2 are very potent but, in kratom's natural form (leaf, often crushed into powder) are only present in trace amounts. Use of 7-OH and psuedo is heavily discouraged for opioid naive individuals.
People have used kratom alkaloids to self-taper off prescription opioids like oxycodone, or street opioids like heroin. Others have used kratom to treat their chronic pain, without (recently or ever) using typical opioids. There are also those who simply encounter it and decide to use it, with no prior opioid use, and no accepted medical need.
IMO, all these use cases are valid; I would rather someone use 7-OH than heroin. The long term effects of kratom are unknown, but from what we know, it can interact negatively with antidepressants (potential to case serotonin syndrome) and antipsychotics (antipsychotic overdose due to being metabolized by the same liver enzyme). It can also cause liver damage with heavy, prolonged use.
TL;DR: Kratom is an atypical opioid that has a decreased risk of overdose/death via respiratory depression. Despite the lack of knowledge of its long term effects, in the short term it is often a safer option than typical opioids.
Here's something from Margaret Killjoy. Not cropped to annoy those of you that loved cropped screengrabs. Also not cropped because I have better things to do and found all of this on Facebook, where someone other industrious soul copied it from Bluesky. If you haven't listened to Margaret Killjoy's podcast, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, I recommend it.
I really want to emphasize that 1) all of this is true and 2) ICE has succeeded in turning every fucking mother in this state into a covert guerilla tactics student. I am dead serious. Everybody has a code name on Signal. Every signal group chat has a couple connections and you have to know somebody to vouch for you to let in to another group chat. Everybody has whistles and half of them have gas masks and "craft supply" wire snippers. And they are sooo good at fundraising, organizing, and networking. All of it completely decentralized.
I saw the school principle of my daughters school, a little old white lady with a school 2/3rd full of children of color- marching her ass right down to check on a reported suspicious vehicle with bloodlust in her eyes.
Every act of violence ICE perpetrates only increases the size of the resistance.
I have not heard anyone, anyone- EVEN in my therapy office where it is safe to do so- say that this has become too scary and dangerous and they don't want to fight back anymore. People are shoring each other up (and mocking/expressing hatred for ICE) at the pharmacy pickup line, printing whistles to leave by bus stops (1000 a DAY and all taken!), driving each other's kids to appointments and school. Piling out of houses whenever there's a weird noise.
We just get madder and madder and sadder and more networked and more skilled.
But also this is exactly the level of response required from the size of ICE's presence and violent, lawless behavior.
All this and they've still grabbed over 3000 people. Mostly citizens.
But also all these resistance parents have dad joke or cartoon reference code names and that shit is very deeply surreal.
We need to start seriously treating the concepts of "obesity" and "weight loss" as a dangerous pseudoscience and I'm not kidding.
It's some shit that everyone thinks they can understand based on vibes but science just doesn't work that way. Real scientists have proved time and time again that it doesn't work how people assume. Many medical conditions where it's assumed weight is a "cause", something to blame the patient for, it's often actually a symptom.
Body size is based on so many individual possibilities. genetics, upbringing, wealth, what type of food you eat, what type of work you do, where you live, etc etc etc. it is impossible to control for all of these.
I was a child born to fat, impoverished, labourer parents, and I grew up doing farm labour, gaining muscle - I will never ever be thin. It's just how my body developed. And no matter how much weight I were to hypothetically lose, doctors would still push me to lose more. Family would push me to lose more. Society would push me to lose more. It will never ever ever be enough. You will never be thin enough, there is no bmi low enough to satisfy them, there is no "progress" that won't just make them pity or shame you even more. Your personal circumstances aren't important to a pseudo-scientific practice, the variables don't matter that much, it must be a one-size-fits-all solution.
Every weight loss pill, every low calorie shake or meal replacement, every weight watchers frozen meal, it all contributes to the pseudo-scientific cult of thinness. Every ad that says you're not good enough, it pushes you to drop your critical thinking skills. We have created a world where people think shitting themselves into thinness using potions with untested ingredients is healthier than having some fat on their bodies. But it's not! That's absurd! You're sending your body into a constant state of gastric shock!! And one day, when you get bored of eating tasteless nutrient paste and decide to eat something with some flavour in it, your body will react with a starvation response and store every little bit of fat that it can, because it's so used to being fucking starved. Which sends people into a panic response, buying up more pills and trying to crash-diet and lose their meagre protective layers.
Your body stores fat because that's your reserve energy. Fat is protective. I thank my body every day for storing so much energy for me, fuck knows I need it! That's your blubber!! You are a large mammal. Your body is designed to keep energy in reserve so you can sleep and stay warm and keep your brain alive. You should research the human metabolic process. You should research the cow metabolic process. You should research bear metabolic process. YOU NEED FAT!
And just like so many other pseudosciences, fatphobia and all that it entails is deeply rooted in racism and specifically antiblackness. It is not a mistake that the ozempic-chic era is coinciding with one of the biggest waves of open, globalised white supremacy we've seen in decades. Whiteness needs to perform & police whiteness constantly, maintaining appearances is THE way to stay part of the ingroup.
You must commit to removing yourself from that ingroup. Do not allow it a single toe in the door. A pseudoscience, no matter how comforting and easy to digest it may be, is not your friend. It is feeding you lie upon lie upon lie.
I know I haven't posted regularly on this blog in years but I'm not seeing a whole lot of posts on this site about what's happening in Minneapolis right now. And the posts I am seeing are not covering the scope of it. I'm genuinely surprised because tumblr is usually where I find out about things organically through my feed. So I'm making a post about it.
A brief summary of events, from someone who pays attention and also lives here, best taken with a grain of salt and some fact checking:
2020: George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police. There are weeks of protests about it. It makes national news. Protests happen in DC. The infamous Trump and his bible photo shoot happens.
2024: Gov. Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' running mate in the presidential election. He starts the "they're just weird" thing. Is folksy, Trump personally hates him.
November 2025: ICE starts showing up to "crack down" on "illegal immigrants" in our Somali community. I may remember the numbers wrong, but something like 90% of our Somali neighbors are either naturalized or were born here. People distribute ICE whistles and are on high alert. Localized to the twin cities.
December 2025: Nick Shirley is paid by a bunch of MN Republicans to do an exposé on daycare fraud. I didn't hear much about this. All I really know is this was an ongoing investigation that MN officials were already taking care of and some of the guilty parties have already gone to court from a COVID era food assistance program. Mostly, if not all, legal US citizens. He did a really bad job at doing journalism and just showed up to day cares with a camera crew and went "YUP nobody's here" as if they weren't in lock-down procedure because some fuck ass white men showed up with camera equipment that could easily be mistaken for guns. I believe. I will fact check all of this and will correct myself in a reblog if necessary. (source but not all the details that I remember hearing about but they said there was no recorded evidence of fraud)
Conservative internet explodes. Kristi Noem sends a mess of agents. I know it's more than a thousand more. They call it Operation Metro Surge. They are going everywhere. There are protests. People try to interrupt the arrests. It's a lot.
1/7/2026: Renee Nicole Good is shot by an ICE agent in the middle of a protest. A few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. Broad daylight. In front of a crowd. While she was following instructions to turn her vehicle around. Jonathan Ross, the piece of shit Nazi who did it, was recording on his phone the whole time, switched his phone to his non dominant hand so he could more effectively shoot her in the face from 2 feet away. Claims self defense, several angles immediately disprove him. He releases his video, he calls her a "fucking bitch" as her corpse drives away. Does not help him at all. (source) He has not been seen since. Some photos/reports exist of a bunch of agents showing up to his house and taking some tubs and art away. His wife is an immigrant. (source but it's the daily mail so grain of salt.)
Not hours later they go raid a school and tear gas a bunch of kids. (source). Minneapolis has switched to distance learning. I'm not sure about St. Paul.
The last week: There are up to 3,000 ICE agents here. Keep in mind Minneapolis and St. Paul only have 600 or fewer police officers each. So these dudes are roaming in packs. It's 2-4 dudes to a car and 2-5 cars per pack. People are "commuting with" ICE agents to honk and alert people that they're there. People are going on patrols with their neighbors.
ICE is no longer asking "are you a citizen." They are simply walking up to you and taking you into custody. They are going door to door. They have started just breaking the door down if you don't comply. They are driving recklessly to just grab pedestrians and drivers alike (source). People are afraid to go get groceries. It's all over the state. I am learning names of cities in places I thought were just factory farm land and I've lived here my whole life because they're doing raids there. I had to text my family in the suburbs because I saw reports of my small little hometown an hour away getting door knocks today.
It's insane and I am not doing it justice. There are thousands of masked federal agents roaming around all of Minnesota with no warrant or specific goal. They are just trolling around looking for people. They are detaining anyone and everyone. They are beating people. They are pepper spraying people. They are kidnapping people. They are acting unconstitutionally, aggressively, and unpredictably. They are creating situations that are dangerous so that they can try to justify beating or shooting their way out. I will run an errand and then get fed a tiktok that was shot from the Cub Foods that I just left and there's 20+ ICE vehicles parked there now. They're taking people from work, from day care, from schools, from shopping centers.
Iceout.org tracks ice sightings. This is a screen shot with the date set to 12/1/2025.
And from today.
They have cut off SNAP and WIC benefits. Just for us. Not any other state, just Minnesota. They're saying it's because of fraud but I think it's because they hate that we use federal funds to give free breakfast and lunch to every public school student.
And this is breaking just now, 1/13/2026: the DOJ is trying to investigate Renee Good's widow. 4 people have resigned about it. (source). I don't even want to read the article to see what they're saying.
So that's a brief history.
Unicorn Riot is doing a lot of good reporting and they don't seem to have the spin that a lot of local news stations will have where they downplay everything. This article specifically goes into a lot of the specific instances of brutality.
It's also a rumor on TikTok that all of the videos of ICE and protests and the such and the like are being geo locked. So my feed is all footage of people being detained and talking about the "commuting" they're doing and what they're seeing but people outside of the state are not seeing it. So if you're also on that infernal app, try searching for Minneapolis or Minnesota and see what you see. I'm kind of curious if this is true. Because I've been living and breathing ICE and doomsday prepping content for a week. I'm sure those two topics aren't connected.
I don't really know what my goal with this post is. I'm tired. I'm in the first ring of suburbs, so it's been pretty quiet. But I have friends in south Minneapolis. And I'm worried for them. And I know it's a matter of time before my quiet pocket is affected. Because they're coming door to door.
Pay attention to Minnesota, I think an example is being made of us.
There are a lot of really dog shit things in the world of tech that can be solved with a bit of time, some stubborn googling and maybe some special hardware and piracy is only the tip of the iceberg.
Printers are notorious for claiming they’re out of ink when they haven’t come close to the suggested number of prints, and their cartridges literally still have ink in them. So after a bit of googling I found out how to ‘reset’ a cartridges automatic stopping system (its literally 1 physical wheel on the cartridge that you gotta turn back). The only downside is that I don’t get a digital ink monitor, but since it told me it was empty when still half full, I don’t mind.
Like, you can just jiggle with some shit and solve one of the biggest money making scams in the post-industrial world and I don’t think people realise its that easy.
Or, like, repairing your own technology. A few months ago, I swapped out my sister’s laptop screen. Did it myself, I removed maybe 4 screws, no vital parts were exposed and it cost me $40. I even got a choice of matte or glossy.
My point is, any walls that capitalist technology presents you with will be a false one. And one already broken by a dedicated community of interesting people working hard for free to break down that wall.
piracy was definitely leagues easier a decade or so ago when thepiratebay was functional, megaupload was still running, and YouTube and Google made only the most cursory attempts to block copyright content. like let’s not pretend that the internet hasn’t got a lot more corporatised in the past decade or so. piracy is still possible and you can and should do it but it’s a LOT harder to do safely and reliably than it was.
1) ThePirateBay is still functional. (It’s not the same pirate bay that it was back in the day, but let’s not get into Theseus’ ship territory. It’s still here and it still works, that’s all that matters.) There are plenty of torrent sites around, more than there were 10 years ago – although overall traffic has plummeted. Now as then, it’s a whack-a-mole game.
2) Why was it “leagues easier” a decade ago? Some countries, not all (not north America, for example), now mandate ISP blocking of torrent sites, but this new complication can be bypassed with one (1) step: a google duckduckgo search for proxies. No government agency or ISP can possibly keep up with proxies, it’s yet another whack-a-mole game. So yes, it was technically easier before, but I don’t see “leagues” anywhere.
3) It was safer before? Are you shitting me? Have you lot forgotten that the legal departments of MPAA and RIAA sued torrent sharers (not even uploaders) and asked for millions of dollars for damages? AND GOT THEM? (By which I mean they didn’t actually get millions since the people they sued didn’t have any, but said people were convicted and ruined and that was the goal in the first place. It was a deeply amoral and cynical scare tactic.) Well they stopped doing that at some point, and focused on hunting P2P and torrent sites. Running a site is certainly less safe today. Using one, though? Depending on where you are, the ISP may be allowed to block you after repeated instances, and that’s it. You’re not getting in trouble with the law or into crippling debt. And either way there’s only a minuscule chance that any of this will come to pass, which becomes zero (0) with a VPN. (Safety of course depends on the country, and in some cases piracy is the least of your concerns. Let’s not get into that.)
4) Ten years ago there was no Sci-Hub, and Library Genesis was in its infancy. If today it’s harder to find PDFs on google, it is orders of magnitude easier and more reliable to find them elsewhere. People just have to unstick their minds from the notion that stuff is either on google or doesn’t exist at all. Geez.
5) P2P still exists. IRC (the sharing channels in particular, #bookz and the like) still exists. Torrenting functions like it always did. All these methods are exactly as easy to use as before, i.e. not necessarily a piece of cake, there’s a learning curve. But it’s the same learning curve it was 10 years ago.
6) So what have we lost? Only YouTube (meh, the film/tv quality was appalling anyway, and music is still there) and direct downloads (at least the permanent ones: there are plenty of them still around, but files expire and you need to keep track of what goes up when. So this goes beyond knowhow, it’s about internet communities. Let’s not get into that either, it’s a huge subject.) It’s a loss, sure, but I wouldn’t call it a terrible blow.
7) And in exchange for that loss, we got streaming sites. This is piracy, too, and it’s much much easier than torrents, and tons of people do it. Any “piracy has declined” narrative either implies that we’re excluding streaming from the discussion for some reason, or is flat out wrong. Ten years ago, grandpa couldn’t possibly torrent a film, and it’s debatable if he even knew how to open the file you helpfully sent him. Now, as long as someone has set up kodi or similar, grandpa can watch it on his tv and it just feels like cable.
8) On why torrents in particular have declined in recent years, see here. It’s a big subject and I didn’t cover all of it, but the main reason is that people had access to easier methods to get what they wanted (some legal and affordable, some illegal and free), so they didn’t need to learn how to torrent. Ergo, they never did. There’s more of course, and there’s definitely a cultural shift too, but that’s a very long story so let’s not get into it. The linked post also includes some thoughts on why torrents aren’t dead and doomed just yet, and ooh, I forgot a very important one: you can’t stream photoshop.
To summarise, internet piracy is NOT more difficult, unreliable, and unsafe today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. For reasons why people (young or otherwise) seem less versed in it, please look elsewhere. I have thoughts on that too, but this is already a very long post, so I’ll just leave you with the best kind of thought. I’ll leave you with a doubt:
ARE people less versed in piracy? Are they really? Or is it simply that 20 years ago, internet users were computer geeks by definition, whereas now everyone’s online? Perhaps the percentage of skilled pirates in the general population remains more or less the same, and the only thing that’s dropped is the percentage of skilled pirates to total internet users. I can’t be sure without statistical evidence, but it’s a possibility.
You can literally google “watch _____ free online” and find most movies but the third result just download Adblock or popup blocker and you’re golden it truly couldn’t be easier
I’ve been meaning to make a piracy masterpost for awhile and what better time than now?
Materpost: A curated Githup tutorial of links to more torrent sites, software, VPNs, uBlock origin filters, ect. Basically everything you could ever want starting out. Do be warned though it doesn’t appear to have been updated in awhile so a few of the links are dead.
GAMES:
Vimm’s Roms: NES era->ps3 era roms and emulators to play them. Has user ratings on games. Cons: slow download speeds.
NxBrew: Switch roms/game updates/dlc
nsw2u: More switch roms. Check here if nxbrew doesn’t have the game you’re looking for.
Hshop: 3ds games/updates/dlc. Very well organized and sorted by console region. Bonus ability to generate QR codes to scan with homebrew to begin download directly on your console.
Oldgamesdownload: Old 90’s-2000’s PC games and some gamecube games. Technically, all of the games here are abandon ware, meaning the original company/creator doesn’t sell nor make money from the games anymore period. If you’re into that.
Fitgirl repacks: Heavily compressed PC games, and other various consoles. Small downloads and faster speeds for the size of the games. Somewhat limited game selection.
Steam unlocked: Steam games with easy-to-use installers. Check here if fitgirl doesn’t have what you’re looking for.
Steam Underground: A user forum for piracy support, usually about installing cracked games. Does have some scattered PC game downloads.
Google doc of Skyrim SE creation club content.
Amiibo life: Amiibo bins, can be loaded with some homebrew to load in games without any external source, or, if you buy writable NFC cards, you can make your own free amiibos.
Books:
Library Genesis: a good all-in-one ebook finder. Has books, magazines, scientific papers, ect. Well organized and able to sort by Author, Genre, ect ect. Almost all books in .epub format
Calibre: Not piracy but a free software for reading said .epub files, and other ebook formats. Good for sorting your books.
Sci-Hub: Research papers, academic books, pdfs, ect. Helpful for collage students.
IT ebook: eBooks about learning programming languages.
audiobookbay: Audiobook downloads.
Booksonic: Audiobook streaming.
5e.tools: Dnd player’s manual, guide, ect.
Books on learning various languages.
Mangadex: Manga, Doujinshi.
Headspace sleep audio.
Various books and manuals.
Streaming:
ustvgo: Free streaming of live tv, has most US cable tv channels.
tutturu: Spiritual successor to Rabbit, allows you to stream your screen with friends.
Yes movies: Movies
Kimcartoon: Cartoons/animated movies
aniwatcher: Anime
animedao: Anime
Computer software:
getintopc: Wide selection of pc (mostly windows) software of all sorts, and different versions. Can personally vouch for the site, I’ve gotten Photoshop, Maya, and Sony Vegas from here over the years.
Other:
the eye: An archive of old roms, OS systems, roms (non nintendo), comics, books, ect, ect. Cons: No search function and slightly hard to navigate.
1337x.to: Torrent site for movies, shows, games, comics, ect.
Ok just want to plug the eye a bit more considering I lost a few hours in their yesterday.
the eye has been up since 2017 and in the last four years have accumulated 140TB of data (according to their own reports). Part of their growth is just their own work, part of it is absorbing other archives/open directories that were having issues: I know rpg.rem.uz used to be its own archive - gave way to The Trove, which is having its own issues right now unfortunately… - but now most-all of their content can also just be found on the eye. Same with a few dozen other archives.
And they have ‘old roms, OS systems, roms (non nintendo), comics, books, ect, ect’, but massively more than you might think just based off how this sounds. Like…
They have it all.
If you want to try and homebrew alcohol, go check their stuff. If you want to try and read books that are out of print or otherwise in public domain (and some that aren’t yet in public domain), go check their stuff. If you want to run a campaign and can’t pay for expensive print tabletop books, go check their stuff. If you want to fuck off into the woods to live off the land (or research how that would work for a writing project), go check their stuff. If you’re trying to learn shit about drugs - any drugs, almost - go check their stuff.
Hell, if you want to go read what looks like literally every research paper on coronaviruses from 1968 up to Feb 2020, you can do that too!
As chickenmcnuggies said its a mess and a half to navigate through their collections, partially with how large it is and the fact quite a few folders were once whole other archives since absorbed by the eye…
But goddamn you can lose an afternoon just going through all the stuff they have.
The subreddit r/freemediaheckyeah is a great resource and their index: https://fmhy.net/ has A LOT of stuff with a pretty straightforward UI. Its got free resources for pretty much anything you could want on the internet, both fully legal and dubiously legal.
The largest collection of free stuff on the internet!
I noticed that the handful of lists on letterboxd for fat positive films only had Hairspray, Isn’t It Romantic, and I Feel Pretty (🤢) with the caption “I wish this list was longer!”
So I have taken it upon myself to compile a real list of real fat liberationist films: films that either confront the issue of fatphobia or portray fat bodies in a liberating way. I will not be including films where fat characters exist neutrally, only films with a message about fatness that does not promote weight loss.
I haven’t seen a majority of these films yet, so if you see one that you believe is not worthy of being on this list, please let me know! additionally, if you have ideas on more films that should be added, please share!
Films (left to right)
1. How to Carry Water (2023) dir. Sasha Wortzel
2. Piggy (2022) dir. Carlotta Pereda
3. Your Fat Friend (2023) dir. Jeanie Finlay
4. Dumplin’ (2018) dir. Anne Fletcher
5. Empire Waist (2024) dir. Claire Ayoub
6. PattiCake$ (2017) dir. Geremy Jasper
7. Läski (2019) dir. Kirsikka Saari
8. Aquaporko! (2013) dir. Kelli Jean Drinkwater, Anna Helme
9. Fat Hiking Club (2018) dir. Layla Cameron
10. Fat Front (2019) dir. Louise Kjeldsen, Louise Detlefsen
11. Disfigured (2008) dir. Glenn Gers
12. Riot Not Diet (2018) dir. Julia Fuhr Mann, Kristina Kilian
13. Straight/Curve: Redefining Body Image (2017) dir. Jenny McQuaile
14. In Our Skin (2017) dir. Rosa Beiroa
15. The Fat Feeling (2019) dir. Talia A. Darling
16. Dangerous Curves (2016) dir. Merete Mueller
17. Well Rounded (2020) dir. Shana Myara
18. Fat Chance (1994) dir. Jeffery McKay
19. Tales of Ordinary Fatphobia (2020) dir. Josiane Blanc
20. Fattitude (2017) dir. Viridiana Lieberman
21. (Not pictured) The Fat Body (In)Visible (2011) dir. Margitte Kristjansson
“I very proudly entered the forestry school as an 18-year-old and telling them that the reason that I wanted to study botany was because I wanted to know why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together. These are these amazing displays of this bright, chrome yellow and deep purple of New England aster, and they look stunning together. And the two plants so often intermingle rather than living apart from one another, and I wanted to know why that was. I thought that surely in the order and the harmony of the universe, there would be an explanation for why they looked so beautiful together. And I was told that that was not science, that if I was interested in beauty, I should go to art school. Which was really demoralizing as a freshman, but I came to understand that question wasn’t going to be answered by science, that science, as a way of knowing, explicitly sets aside our emotions, our aesthetic reactions to things. We have to analyze them as if they were just pure material, and not matter and spirit together. And, yes, as it turns out, there’s a very good biophysical explanation for why those plants grow together, so it’s a matter of aesthetics and it’s a matter of ecology. Those complimentary colors of purple and gold together, being opposites on the color wheel, they’re so vivid, they actually attract far more pollinators than if those two grew apart from one another. So each of those plants benefits by combining its beauty with the beauty of the other. And that’s a question that science can address, certainly, as well as artists. And I just think that “Why is the world so beautiful?” is a question that we all ought to be embracing.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, “The Intelligence of Plants”, from the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett (via peatbogbodyhasmoved)
I can’t put into words how dispiriting it is to watch all these plus size idols, celebrities, drag queens thin. The body positive movement wasn’t perfect, but we had made some progress. I watched Lizzo dance and flute in front of me and near cried. Watched mid-fat girls flourish in their new comfortable bodies now that they could breathe. Watched plus-size drag queens show they too could be sexy and not just a joke.
But Ozempic and weight loss drugs have snatched people up one by one. For every one there’s some reason it’s justified (oh, they did the work, oh but they might be pre diabetic, oh well they might need it though). Or there’s a celeb who lies about not taking it then admits they have.
And for every one of those, there’s a kid or woman watching who thinks it’s just supposed to be that easy to lose weight. Who thinks there’s something wrong with her if she can’t shed her body.
It’s the understudied weight loss drug of our generation, no different from the pills of before. In 20, 30 years we’ll be talking about all the side effects or failures and it will be a shame.
But that won’t come before a generation of young girls, boys, kids have to endure the big back jokes and Ozempic commercials and the internalization of the idea that skinny is healthy and skinny is what we should be and skinny is what is natural, and all big-boned and bodied girls could be skinny and happier and somehow better tomorrow if they just had the money and the prescription.
Anyway, go read some Aubrey Gordon and Kate Manne, please please please. Educate yourselves about fatness & fatphobia and be kind to yourselves and each other.
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.
vaporwave
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
