He/Him, Bisexual cisman, dweller of the Fens, lover of the wetlands, systems ecologist and ex-sex worker. My interests are varied and inconstant. I am glorious. I do not like: cheese (the food), TERFs, Fash, Tankies, Prudes, or any fucking Anti-Science or anti-history ding-dongs.
Because of recent tumblr shenanigans, I'm moving my blog for Per Sebek off here and over to Dreamwidth and Pillowfort. You can find and follow them there. I'll also be posting updates to bluesky, posting the links to the entries. Everything will be posted publicly, so you shouldn't need an account to read them. I hope to see some of you over there!
I'll be crossposting all my old posts from here to there for the time being, but once that's done, I'll be posting some new content. I have a post planned talking about Sobek expressed through each of the seven classical planets that I want to write, amongst other things. So keep an eye out for that.
A selection of images from the first night of Toad Time back in mid February! By the end of the night, if had twenty-four toads visit my pond (sixteen more than last year's opening night), and as of last night, forty-three individuals! Which is thirteen more than this time last year! Very vocal, but very comfortable being handled for sexing, weighing and general health checks. Fewer females this year relative to the number of males (thus far, but they do prefer it a little warmer, so I'll give it a couple of weeks before I start worrying), and general health seems good, no injuries, good development, no signs of disease. My only concern is that a fair number have arrived a bit underweight for their age, but I reckon that's due to the early waking (lower prey density in colder temperatures) and my garden has plenty of prey now it's warmed up, so I'm hoping to see weights go up over the next month. Happy Toad Time everyone! 9 generations!
Today (III Peret 22, or the 22nd day of the season III Peret) is noted with a festival for the Birthday of A/pophis, the Uncreated One.
The Cairo Calendar even comes with a warning for today; "Birth of the mysterious one, by his limbs. Do not have the thought of pronouncing the name of the snake. It is the day of catching his children that were born to him in Dep."
If you're newer to the Kemetic pantheon, you may have seen the name A/pophis used in modern mythology and creative works as a god of destruction. This, however, is not accurate. A/pophis was not a god, and certainly did not preside over the simplified concept of destruction. Rather, A/pophis stood for isfet; entropy, unbalance, senseless destruction, un-becoming... Essentially, evil in all its forms. He was everything that the gods fought against. He was isfet incarnate, and not something to be worshipped or celebrated. (If you're looking to worship destruction with purpose, destruction for the sake of renewal, then you're looking for Set!)
You may also be confused why I keep slashing out the name. While it is not wholly necessary, as "A/pophis" is in and of itself an epithet and not the TRUE name of entropy, names and epithets alike had power in ancient Egypt, and many modern practitioners hold the same belief too. So, in slashing out and breaking up the name, we are in essence slashing that which the name is referring to, or a sort of verbal "cutting the head off the snake". In modern practice, too, if one needs to say the name aloud for whatever reason, it is the practice of some to "slash" the air with their hands. And, in ancient depictions, A/pophis was never depicted on his own, as that was thought to give him power; thus was the s/nake always depicted being actively killed or wounded by the gods, to keep him from gaining power.
So why would the birth of this... thing... be noted?
Why, so we can curse and kill it, of course!
This ritual falls at this time of year for a reason; we are about midway through the year, about six months away from Wep Ronpet! There were several different rituals done around this time of year, in fact, that were meant to reinforce and renew the good intentions and heka (magic) that was set out on Wep Ronpet. This particular ritual is meant as a means to banish any isfet that has crept in over the year, and to reaffirm against A/pophis that we do not welcome him or his intentions into our lives, and to banish him once more. Isfet ever creeps back in, but we and the gods are ever ready to cast it out again!
The ritual is done with a model of a snake. You can use an origami snake if you'd like, an old toy/model that you don't mind destroying, some clay, a drawing... you can even bake a cake to shape, cupcakes to line up, or any other sort of dessert or food into the shape of a snake! What exactly you choose to use is up to you, so long as it can look roughly like a snake.
Once you have your snake-shape of choice, you are going to curse it. The curse reads as follows:
Down on your face, A/pophis, enemy of Ra! Retreat, enemy!
Fiend without arms or legs, whose snout is split!
You are fallen, you are overthrown.
Ra-Horakhty destroys you. He drives hooks into your body.
You are overthrown by the flame, fire comes forth from it, and the blaze comes forth against you.
The gods and the guardians of the hidden gates repel you.
Flame comes forth against you from the fire.
Back! Retreat! Back from the flames that issue from their mouths, fallen one, wriggler, A/pophis!
Retreater! Retire, enemy of Ra! Those who are in the sun boat have overthrown you. Retreat!
Now that A/pophis has been thoroughly cursed, you may destroy your snake model! How you do it is up to you and what material you chose.
For origami or a paper drawing, burning is a great way to go, but PLEASE be sure to practice fire safety; do it in an area that is free from other flammable material, such as a stone/asphalt driveway or a firepit. You can also likely use a metal pot, but do be careful not to burn yourself touching it! Ashes can be disposed of in the garbage once they are cool.
For old toys/models or clay models, smashing the thing to pieces can be cathartic! Once more, do be sure to do so in an area that you will not damage anything else and - if you do it outside - clean up after yourself and dispose of shards/pieces in the garbage. The gods do not appreciate littering!
Finally, if you went the baking route, now's your chance to carve that cake up! Maybe give it a stab or ten! Just be careful with your knife and don't cut yourself in the process! And not to fret; consuming it is not bringing the s/nake into yourself. Consider it similar to Ammut eating souls who fail to pass judgement; you are erasing A/pophis from existence by eating his very essence!
A very happy mid-year to you all! May the gods watch over you, and isfet stay far from your door!
The lack of computer skills is becoming a problem. Like there was a period of time where the older workers in office jobs had to be brought up to speed on computers, but now a lot of the newer workers have the issue too.
Thereâs a lot of assumed technical literacy because we had a whole generation brought up on desktop computers, but now itâs one that was brought up on phones, tablets, and chromebooks. Phones are easier to use, but that means the users have never had to work around the daily problems presented by most desktop environments.
But our systems are still set up assuming the kids are âdigital nativesâ who just already know this stuff. So no one teaches them. So a new employee walks into the office⊠and they just donât.
30-something here. And this is frightening for a few reasons.
Much of the back-end architecture will soon be more difficult to maintain, as those with the expertise retire or when the one guy volunteering to update a niche corner of some minute software function that holds up Πof the computer world dies.
While products are made to be âeasier to useâ now, which has made them more accessible, they arenât made to last, contributing to tech pollution / e-waste. Many consumers donât know how to upgrade or repair their own techâŠif they are upgradeable.
Which brings me to my next point.
I bought a new low end laptop recently. Not chrome book, but actual Windows PC laptop. I havenât had a personal computer for a while and with a lot of expectation to âreturn to the officeâ because COVIDâs over, right? *heavy eye roll*, I wanted something cheap and portable. I found a deal because a lot of low end laptops are being discounted because school children arenât remote now. I was actually looking for refurbished but found what I wanted cheaper new, sadly.
Finding one that I knew would run the software I needed or that wouldnât be bogged down just with Windows? A challenge. Youâve got to know what RAM, HDD vs eMMC vs SSD, cores, age of processors, and all those specs mean.
Finding one that wasnât Windows in âS mode,â a bullshit mode that locks you into the Windows app / store for ALL software (where they take a cut of each purchase)? Even more challenging.
When I booted it upâŠI imagine most people just click yes through things because why not, just want to get right to it, right?
The amount of privileges I had to decline because of targeted data collection, for ad preferences and other nefarious reasons; the number of easy-to-miss âno thanksâ options to decline enrollment in bloatware; the number of things that wanted me to launch the free trial, where they could automatically enroll me into a monthly PAID subscription and could report failure to add a credit card to pay for it to credit agencies (!); many of these presented as the ârecommendedâ or default option⊠ASTOUNDING.
And then I still had to go into system settings and turn off additional data tracking that they didnât even present during set-up, along with bloatware bullshit programs they wanted to always run at start-up. Because I knew where to go and find that stuff. Donât even get me starting on fucking Cortana.
Technology has gotten bad. Even 10 years ago, it was a couple simple agreements not to pirate, using software at your own risk, etc. and that was it.
Now? Waiving rights, arbitration, hidden terms that could leave you owing money if you donât uninstall it, data collection to link accounts and literally track every move / your exact location / your usage, attempts to personalize ads through your specific searches, inability to block cookies unless you download a Google app!?, four pop ups for every website, as the default?
It is scary how much tech that was designed to increase productivity and make life easier has become yet another way for corporations to track us, sell to us, and sell their data on us, even potentially incriminating us.
Oh, and heaven forbid you know what youâre doing and try to upgrade or repair your equipment yourself. Warranty voiding? Should be illegal, may be illegal in some areas, but they still tell you itâll void your warranty. Good luck finding the parts. Using non-OEM parts will void the warranty tooâŠby design.
I did not survive Windows Vista era to deal with this bullshit.
How to avoid ransomware, malware, hacks, and how to maintain good data privacy.
https://www.getsafeonline.org/
^ this has intermediate information (as well as beginner info) that I think people who grew up on the internet benefit most from (so it wonât tell you what a phone is, or how to press the power button to turn on a computer). I recommend all sections the personal section under the top drop down (except the one aimed at children).
https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/internetsafety/
Same deal as above, with quizzes and additional topics.
https://www.digitalliteracyassessment.org/
^ this one is mostly video and audio which some people might helpful
HTML
https://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
W3schools is a well known free resource for coding. I recommend HTML because it gives basic website building capabilities, so you can create a neocities website for example or even edit your Tumblr theme. You can also learn CSS (used with HTML to make prettier websites) and Python (used to make programs).
Touch typing
Touch typing is using the home row on keyboards. It allows people to type faster than pressing individual keys one at a time, like on a smart phone.
https://www.typingclub.com/
This site has lessons, and honestly looks much nicer than the program I learned to use touch typing with.
This site has lessons and practice tests and speed tests to measure progress. In middle school I was taking a practice test about three times a week and a speed test once a week for about fifteen minutes each time, if that helps.
â
These three areas are the main things people were taught in computer literacy courses.
I also recommend checking your local library or other educational resources (like local colleges, your current college/highschool/middle school etc, the college you graduated from). These can have in person instructors which can be super helpful. Feel free to send me any questions and stuff, if I donât already know Iâll try to find out and share where I found it!
Helpful things Iâve done with my windows computer to make it safer/more efficient:
Installing Malwarebytes/enabling windows defender
Creating a backup of my computer on a hard drive
Setting permissions for apps to start on startup
Getting a password manager
Installing a web browser that isnât chrome
Changing old passwords into better, more secure passwords- especially websites that have debit card info
so many areas have been un-wetlanded and we need to re-wet them. if there is an area that makes a big puddle for days every time it rains everyone wants to make a channel to make the water go away faster. but actually that solution creates muddy polluted water flowing rapidly into the streams. the real solution is to dig a wide shallow pit to become a pond and make the water hang out for longer so it can become the cattails' and rushes' home. make sure to make the edges a gradual slope so the frogs can get in easily btw
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 ghostsâskeletal, 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 ingredientâthe cannabisâwas 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 Maryâs 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 Clubâthe 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.
