It’s interesting though because in some ways hyle hunt represents what society would see as a best case scenario for someone like brienne. We have seen the worst possible options for her for marriages, a cruel man who insults her and openly despises her and an old man who will not allow her to pursue her passions (with the underlying threat of domestic abuse if she does not obey him). Compared to them, hyle doesn’t seem so bad. Sure, he organized a bet on her virginity and never bothers to apologize. But he has developed some grudging respect for her, he wouldn’t stop her from fighting or dressing as she chooses.
But brienne doesn’t want that. And the narrative doesn’t want us to just accept that for brienne either. Because she doesn’t just deserve someone who begrudgingly accepts her, who closes his eyes when he fucks her, who openly admits he only wants her for her titles and land. Brienne deserves love. She deserves someone who sees her for all she is (almost a beauty and almost a knight!!!), who loves and accepts all parts of her, who challenges her, who respects her, who wants her; not for land, not for a bet, not to abuse her, but to love and cherish her because it’s what she deserves!!!!!
Compare this with Jaime. In theory, Jaime could have pretty much any woman (and probably most men tbh) that he wants. He’s handsome, he’s rich, he’s a legendary sword fighter. As evidenced by his encounters with Pia and Hildy, many women don’t even seem all that bothered by the missing hand (except for cersei) but brienne is maybe the only one who knows him, really knows him. She has seen him at his ugliest, his weakest. She knows his deepest secrets. And she still wants him!!
Like it’s crazy you have two people who are presented with options for love and romance that society says they should settle for, but they don’t want it. And they have someone they aren’t supposed to love but they do anyway because of how deeply they know each other.
Jaime’s not supposed to want someone like brienne, an ugly woman who fails at performing her gender. Brienne’s not supposed to want someone like Jaime, a kingslayer whose foul deeds stand in contrast to her ideals of knighthood. But they know each other and they want each other anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s crazy grrm invented romance actually.
i was training a young person at work, and she referred to sexual assault as "SA" out loud, and i immediately was like, "no, it's sexual assault, call it what it is," bc idgaf if the algorithm overlords have taught y'all that you should fear direct language, how tf do any of you expect to ever address real issues with any amount of seriousness if you can't even say the words? imagine an advocate looking a sexual assault survivor in the eyes and asking "did he grape you?" it's absolutely fucking absurd, but these young interns and new hires are coming into an environment where we deal with survivors of all different kinds of abuse, and they're coming with the mindset that the words are as bad as the actions, and that makes them shitty at the job and look juvenile af
i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience
say the fucking words, guys. just say the goddamn words before i go insane!!!
@scam-alerts, are you really out here claiming randos in a message on tumblr might be trustworthy to send money to? When you can see the link in the message goes to gofundme, which doesn't pay out in Gaza?
Are you really out here trying to tell me that gazavetters is a trustworthy vetting source when it's been proven time and again @gazavetters are scammers????
Are you on the internet in the year of our go fuck yourself 2026 acting like Gaza scamming isn't one of the most successful tumblr scams of all time that was based on making people fear they'd be called racists or baby killers if they didn't assume every single rando in their inbox or messages was totally trustworthy??
"We don't call them scams, so you shouldn't either." No. That's not how that works. I call a scam a scam. You don't want to call it a scam, that's up to you. But it's real fucked up that you are here saying you're an authority on scams acting like Gaza scams are some rare thing or that MOST Gaza posts AREN'T provably horseshit.
Did I step on your scam? Is that what this is? Are you running this scam while running a so-called scam-alerts blog, and you're mad because you're worried my posting these messages could lose you money? Because that's what it feels like. Why fucking else would a so called scam-alert blog be trying to talk someone out of calling out a deeply suspicious scam that we all learned years ago is not trustworthy?
If a rando shows up in your inbox asking for money, they are most likely scamming, and the bigger the sob story, the more likely the scam.
Why are you on the side of making it easier for scammers, especially fucking gazavetters?
One of the co-mods of scam-alerts offers drawings to anyone who donates to any of the vetted campaigns she lists here:
So, someone who runs scam-alerts got into my replies to say gazavetters is trustworthy when it's very well known at this point that gazavetters ISN'T trustworthy and that I SHOULD trust randos asking me for cash when they have link that I know DON'T WORK IN GAZA.
And they just happen to be doing something so nice like drawing stuff for people who give money to supposedly valid campaigns that are very likely not valid at all because gazavetters has been proven to be scammers. And, if gazavetters is as crooked as we know it is, this person might very well be pretending like they're not getting a kickback from those donations to encourage further donations that they are very likely getting a cut from.
In short: I think this person who helps run scam-alerts is running a scam with gazavetters to get a payday off donations to the so-called verified list that has been proven repeatedly to be completely untrustworthy. This is my opinion based on the circumstances.
So, yeah, I stepped on their scam and I am wondering if maybe the account that messaged me was them working the scam, and then I posted about the bullshit of it, and rather than shut the fuck up, a terrible effort was made to try and keep it seeming legit.
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.
irritating as fuck when people get mad at Black people existing in premodern historical fiction/fantasy media. like first of all, you're racist. and second of all, you are acting as though Black people didn't exist in premodern Europe which is simply false. especially when we're talking about the Mediterranean, like what the fuck do you people think is along the southern half of the Mediterranean Ocean?? everyone's on boats, there are GOING to be interactions with Black people in Northern Africa, and there are GOING to be Black people in Mediterranean Europe. stop being stupid. your imagined homogeneous white European past is not historical reality, get over it you massive losers
jaime is just…. such a mess when it comes to brienne. like even as he’s saving her life and missing her he’s like “anyway she’s the worst and i hate her” like. jaime. jaime? hey pal i’m gonna let you in on a little secret. when you’re deadset on killing her and then decide to help her instead when you get the opportunity, you care about her. when you say you don’t care whether she lives or dies and then save her from rape, you care. when you say that she’s ugly and tall and then call her your protector and command a maester to immediately tend to her wound, you care about her. when you say you can’t wait to be rid of her and you don’t care if she’s maimed and then turn around to save her from vargo hoat and co, you care about her. just some hints, buddy.
#ngl in those chapters he sounded like he was the kind of confused 14yo with a crush #who doesn’t know he has one #which MAKES ENTIRELY TOO MUCH SENSE #given that jaime’s ***maturity*** TM when it comes to relating to people who aren’t his family #is right about that age anyway #like if you read her chapters she sounds way older than she actually is #(bc she had to get there sooner or she wouldn’t be out in westeros on quests) #and he sounds way younger than he actually is #which makes total sense for a guy who basically shut down outside interactions with anyone he wasn’t related to #AT SEVENTEEN #christ jaime’s issues will be the death of me #anyway tldr jaime you’ve got a crush and it shows you just don’t know it yet
#good tags are good
#this ties into a sentiment i’m v fond of–that when it comes down to it jaime is about as inexperienced as brienne re: relationships
#bc his relationship w cersei went on for years but it was also all clandestine fucking and weird espousals of codependency
#which isn’t the standard fare to say the least
#and that relationship is enough of an outlier that i’d say he’s working with very few preconceived… well anything
#which in essence means he struggles to process his feelings because he hasn’t had to do that before
#anyway.
#jaime lannister: emotionally stunted; perpetually This Close to figuring out he acts like he’s in love w brienne bc he IS in love w brienne
The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.
Did you know that soda machines at restaurants and movie theaters spy on you? That most common new cars now record your sexual preferences and send it to the manufacturer (and also data about anyone who also gets in your car, walks by your car, and maybe happens to be within visual range of your car)? That grocery stores are trying to force customers to download an app to scan barcodes on shelves instead of putting up prices, so the app can scan the phone, decide how much that customer should be squeezed for, and adjust the price? That more and more innocent people are being sent to jail for crimes committed hundreds of miles away because an AI facial recognition algorithm spit their faces out and the cops didn't bother to do the most basic of checks?
I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.
Something that made the finale better: Mai with Team Avatar.
What Mai is doing here is more than just accompanying Zuko, we all know she could have simply said No. But now, her ego does not control what she feels for Zuko because she knows that it’s worth it.
Mai is not sulking around, denying anyone. She is next to Katara, calmly playing with Suki. And it feels nice, and it gives it a nice warm touch, to see that it is never a bad time to start over because once you deeply fall in love with someone, you do extraordinary things.
Zuko found his family, his inner peace and he surrounded himself around love and friendship that he didn’t have before. What is so sweet about this is that he wanted to share that with Mai.
Mai who knows his background and he knows hers. They both faced abuse in very different ways that made them out to be withdrawn, introverted and yes, angsty and even if some of their issues with themselves are the psychological scars that might never heal. Zuko still wants Mai around to see and feel what and why has made such a huge change inside of him. And he knows its good for Mai too.
And Mai, she could easily have refused and claimed to be bored, she doesn’t do that. She’s engaging, having fun and interacting. She knows how important this is for Zuko and she’s actually making friends that are not going to manipulate her or force her into awkward situations. Mai is not bored, Zuko is not angsty, they are having fun and they have created new found friendships and the Gaang is nothing but love and second chances.
Indeed OP, you do extraordinary things when you’re in love. The things people do for each other when they are in love is amazing.
Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.
have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.
and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.
black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.
if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.
This is Juneteenth.
white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.
we need to periodically remind everyone that a headline not including a person's name isn't an attempt to erase their identity from the narrative, it's just not good practice to put someone's name in a headline unless the reader can be expected to already know who they are
they would constantly be at each other's throats but only because they're exactly the same person. jaime at this point isn't even the cynic who's trying to deconstruct everything brienne represents because he hasn't been burnt by the world yet. a lot of bickering about what the Most Knightly thing to do in any situation would be, because both of them are trying to be galahad at the same time. everyone else just wants them to get a room already
stormborns
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romaincrisis
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titsay
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