Let's see...You can call me Seminai or SZ, whichever's easier. I'm shy, nervous and sometimes have issues communicating, so I may not answer things properly or seem rather reserved and awkward, my apologies in advance. Flight Rising #17806
Oh, to be a little kitten who just got vaccinated and then taken to a high-end restaurant and tasted the best food the chefs could offer and then fell asleep in a basket.
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
did your parents *"pre-screen" the media you interacted with when you were a kid/before legal adult age where you are?
yes, always AND they did parental guidance talks about it
yes, always but there was no parental guidance involved
sometimes, with parental guidance talks
sometimes, no parental guidance talks
not usually, but occasionally (WITH parental guidance)
not usually, but occasionally (WITHOUT parental guidance)
they never pre-screened but there were other rules (elaborate?)
my parents fully didn't give a shit about what media i engaged with
see results
Voting ended onDec 16, 2025
*by "pre-screening", i typically mean any sort of behavior that exists on a spectrum of "actually watching/playing/reading the thing before you played it" to "doing any sort of research on it before letting you watch it".
feel free to share your experiences in the tags or replies or whatever!
admittedly, i am a little obsessed with like 65% of the tags on this post so far basically saying "my parents didn't pre-screen things but they [describes behavior that DEFINITELY qualifies as pre-screening]". i kinda hope maybe this post and others like it wake some people up to the fact that yes, even YOUR parents were controlling what perspectives and ideas you were and were not being allowed to access.
had some fun with these! zygarde was done a while ago i just never got around to doing the others til now
yveltal is still up there as one of my favourites. awesome bird
Please please help Uncle Tigger find a home! We don't have a lot of time.
Urgent help needed, diabetic kitty, I can drive several hours from Tulsa. I will try to find a way to get him to you. We have until the end of September.
Look at this man! Skrunkly, well-loved, full of so so so much love and devotion. Please help me find him a home. I can't keep him more than a month, and after that, he will need to be put to sleep.
I will drive him out to you. I can go as far as 5 hours if you want to come meet me, and maybe try to get a caravan going if you're further.
Tigger's people's living situation changed for the worse and they are now in a really unsafe unsanitary house, and also cannot afford to keep up with his diabetes meds. They were going to have to euthanize because of it but I agreed to take him and try to find him a home. To give him a chance. This cat raised their youngest from an infant, was in the crib with him. He has given this world and his humans everything he has. They are absolutely devastated to part with him, but they have to.
He is super sweet and friendly, okay with dogs, okay with other cats, VERY VERY okay with kids. He gives love bites, but they are a bit too hard if you let him keep going, so he will need to be taught not to do that. More than that I cannot say. I don't know him super well but he is sweet. He mostly just wants human contact and love.
He is about 12, diabetic, and untreated for it. I have put him on diabetic food and am going to see about Senvelgo for a medication. He is neutered. He is a big ol' fatty, a real chungus. I think he has a respiratory infection, which I did not notice until after he saw the vet yesterday. I don't know that he might have other issues. I can't give any guarantees. He will need medical care to stabilize him and a clean safe home where he can live out his senior years.
Please, please help! He's in my back room right now and can't be allowed out because he needs to be quarantined. It's bare bones in there as we were clearing it out to repair the wall from some storm damage, and so he's alone a lot. He is lonely. He is used to TONS of love.
I can't keep him. I don't have the money to keep up with his meds or the ability to get him to the vet appointments he will need, or the ability to care for a fhronically ill cat right now. And he looks so damn much like a cat I had to have put down very suddenly and tragically last year that it is very painful for me to spend as much time with him as he needs. I keep crying. He is breaking my heart in every way.
Local shelters are stuffed and can't take a chronically ill older cat, so I'm stuck doing this on my own.
I know I keep saying please, but PLEASE. Tigger has given humans so much. He could have a lot of good time left!
Only on the darkest arctic nights can you encounter this Primordial Pokémon. It manifests as aurora and ice, gently towering over the pole's frigid denizens... ✨❄️🧊
(There are 12 kinds of Pokémon in this #art! Can you find 'em all? Some are well hidden... Have fun, open your mind, & don't give away answers! 💕)
Image on Bluesky~
zigzagoon is my favorite pokemon. would they make for a good pet?
I’m very happy to report that zigzagoons would make excellent pets! Like, for a peek behind the curtain, we’re talking top ten highest score! And they’re cute! They’re a great choice.
They’re dense little critters, nearing forty pounds while being so low to the ground, but certainly not to the point of being too large for the home. Don’t get me wrong, you will need to make changes in order to successfully keep one in the home though. For one, the fur on their back is bristly and hard. Like with a real-world hedgehog, you will really want to pet them the right way to make sure you don’t get hurt! In the wild, zigzagoons use their bristly fur to mark their territory on trees (Sapphire). This could obviously be a problem in the home, and is a behavior you’ll probably want to address through training, as you would with any pet that marks their territory in a problematic way.
If you adopt a zigzagoon, plan to go on a lot of excursions with them! Zigzagoons are incredibly curious critters who live to explore (Ruby), so they’d love to go on adventures with you! Make sure to outfit them with a harness though, you don’t want them to get lost: they are said to become interested “in anything that [they happen] to see” (Ruby) and have a great sense of smell (Emerald). You never know what kinds of treasures you may be able to find each together, as zigzagoons are experts at finding things hidden “in the grass or even in the ground” (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum)!
Zigzagoons are likely to be great companions, as they’re known to be friendly and calm (Sword). They may even help you find lost items with their sense of smell (Shield)! When conflict arises, zigzagoons don’t usually resort to violence. They’ve even been observed playing dead when confronted by enemies rather than meeting them in battle (Sapphire). Luckily enough, even if they do attack, they aren’t very dangerous. Surprisingly, they don’t seem to bite or scratch with their claws, relying on throwing their dense weight around with moves like Tackle and Take Down. These little guys just aren’t that menacing. They can even heal themselves with Rest, which is a huge plus. If you know how to handle your zigzagoon without getting pricked by their back fur, you should be a-ok!
Zigzagoons would make great pets! They’re friendly, curious little critters who avoid violence whoever they can. And, come on… they’re ADORABLE. I love zigzagoons. I would like one right now, please.
Concept: cursed blade rehabilitation center. Destroying a sentient weapon is expensive and highly unethical, so adventurers bring them to the center where highly trained staff can care for them and eventually find them forever homes. It turns out most cursed weapons are products of trauma and are not strictly evil themselves. Some blades turn out to be fiercely protective companions. Others don't even want to be weapons at all, finding joy in simple work like blacksmithing or farming. Most blades just need to be loved.
A pack of bandits descend upon a seemingly undefended town. But the blacksmith's hammer, the farmer's scythe, the woodsman's axe, they have not forgotten what they once were, and they *will* defend the town that they have come to love.
This sweet girl has been with us for seven seasons. She was forged in the heart of a volcano and would be ideal for anyone with a preexisting fire affinity (she's a cuddler and is guaranteed to keep you warm in winter). She still loves burning, but it turns out you can only reduce the world to ash once. She would be perfectly suited for forest management that regularly requires controlled burns.
This weary old soul has grown tired of bloodshed and would much rather spend his days as an ominous decoration in a tavern or common room, a perfect fit for an adventurer looking to leave their dungeon crawling days behind. He likes peoplewatching with his single glowing eye, preferably from high, prominent locations with views of entrances and exits.
Dark king Grütmore’s edge of annihilation consumed 10,000 souls in the first era, and as it turns out, statistically a lot of those souls heard stories that never got written down. It works in a library now.
The throngler, however, is just irrevocably fucked up. We put it in a stone in a forest and hoped nobody ever finds it
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