Ramblings Of A Ranter

I dunno. I put stuff on this blog. It’s not rocket science. They/Them.

[kuttithevangu]

OK I keep seeing people refer to the Michigan parasite outbreak and then others will chime in “it’s in my state too!” so to clarify this for everyone it is a NATIONWIDE outbreak reported in 31 US states as of today, July 12th 2026. There is no reason to assume it is not present in the rest of them

Cyclospora, the ‘Explosive Diarrhea’ Parasite, Cases Reported in at Least 31 States: See the Map

NBC News’ tally shows at least 26 states have reported cases of the parasitic stomach illness, as health authorities race to find the source

[kuttithevangu]

The CDC is tracking cases but they are significantly lagging behind the states on numbers (their data is weeks behind) so it’s probably going to be most effective to check your individual state’s infectious disease tracking.

This is a parasite that usually causes about 3000 cases of illness per year in the USA, Michigan currently has reported about 2900 (the confusion about “Michigan outbreak” is because Michigan is the first that caught an uptick in cases and has been very proactive about trying to trace them). Last official update from Massachusetts was 18 cases here centered in Greater Boston. The CDC recommends NOT assuming there are no sources of the parasite in your state even if no cases have been reported.

It isn’t an unknown illness but it is an unusual quantity of cases, and the fact that they haven’t been able to pin down the source after weeks of tracking is what makes it particularly concerning this year (harder to contain).

Wash your hands, wash your produce, cook it ideally, and advocate for farm workers to have access to safe and hygienic toilet facilities

[luesmainblog]

that last part is extra important. nearly every one of these produce outbreaks are because of poor hygenic practices on the fields, and particularly, because field workers do not have adequate access to bathrooms. nobody wants to poison your food, but they often don't have a choice. they also often lack proper access to water, cooling equipment (such as sun hats and portable fans), and management; this can make it significantly harder to think clearly and make a wise decision, let alone survive the day. when this comes up in conversation, call this out. make sure everyone around you KNOWS that the reason the lettuce is constantly unsafe is because farms are not giving a shit about worker welfare, and the people growing and picking your lettuce have to walk ungodly distances in 100+ degree weather without water just to take a shit. oh, and if they DO choose to do that, they may be punished for taking an unscheduled break.

if you wanna go further, let everyone know that the majority of labor laws have an exception carved out for agricultural workers.

[kuttithevangu]

One U.S. visa program is growing rapidly. No one is happy with it

Republicans on Capitol Hill are starting to talk about one facet of immigration reform: how to expand the popular H-2A visa program for farm

Worth keeping up with developments in the fight over farm workers’ visas because while trying to get legal documents for workers, agricultural producers are also trying to fight for those legal documents to have fewer human rights provisions in them

[eisenkrahe]

Last year JK Rowling personally funded a group called Sex Matters to amend UK law so that trans women *overnight* went from legally women to legally men. This has resulted in mass exclusion of the trans community from numerous organizations, along with ongoing violent assaults on both trans and cis women alike.

With the new Harry Potter series she will be making a reported $20 million per-season renewal + other performance dependent royalties. She has been open across multiple interviews regarding her intentions to use said funds to push forth even more trans targeted legislation in the years to come.

This isn’t a “she gets paid no matter what” situation. The more eyeballs on this show the more money she has to actively harm vulnerable communities. By engaging with it you are directly supporting this and otherwise making a conscious choice to consume HP over doing the literal very least possible to not destroy the lives of trans people across the world.

If my stating the objective facts above upsets you then feel free to unfriend and move along. Your nostalgia-goggles feelings for a tired, problematic franchise mean nothing to me compared to the welfare of my trans friends and loved ones."

If you care more about badly written children's books and imaginary wizards more than you do about real people in the real world do it far the fuck away from me.

Don't try to be in my life.

In fact, you are cordially invited to eat shit and die.

[hotniatheron]

AN ALVIN AILEY TRIBUTE?

[whadyameanhesdead]

My only criticism of The Pitt is in the finale when Mel suggests to her sister that they watch a movie they haven’t seen before. She has had SUCH a day. That woman is going home to watch her Emotional Support Episode of The West Wing or possibly Myth Busters. Maybe Blue Planet.

[beautiful-basque-country]

How old were you when you get your first gray hairs?

younger than 20

20-30

+30

not yet (younger than 20)

not yet (20-30)

not yet (+30)

Voting ended onMar 17, 2025

[whadyameanhesdead]

Negotiated a 5k+ raise at work this week by crying and crying and crying and throwing up. Never let them see you sweat, but feel free to let them see you weep like a bitch.

[dankmemeuniversity]

[acklotol]

i wheezed for a solid 5 seconds on this one

[striders]

i hate it when customers get mad about policy and go “well i’ve always thought it worked differently” like ok. when i was a kid i thought the drains in sinks and bathtubs lead to Hell and i would pour things down them for the dead people. it turns out that you can think things that aren’t true

[tanadrin]

Bacteria do have souls, but binary fission doesn’t produce new souls 99% of the time, so most single celled organisms share these sprawling souls that just get bigger every time they divide. Over time they compact down into these big mats of soul get compacted into geological layers that gradually accrete to the world soul. Sexual reproduction creates new souls but they’re much shorter lived as a result, and rarely make it into the bedrock, so most of the world spirit is from the Proterozoic.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

but do viruses have souls?

[tanadrin]

No. Some people think that this is because viruses have no metabolism and can’t reproduce on their own, and therefore do not qualify as life. In fact it is just because they are too small. Pneumatons, the constituent particle of soul, have a wavelength of about 1 micrometer, and so can’t be contained in cell membranes or protein envelopes smaller than that. This also means the smallest bacteria also don’t have souls. This includes mitochondria and their immediate ancestors, which was a major impetus for their symbiosis with eukaryotes in the first place. The eukaryote cell got a source of energy, and in return the mitochondria finally got to directly apprehend a portion of divine eternity.

[nuisett3]

[plaidos]

i don’t care how transfeminine you are, if you say shit like “trans men can be lesbians because of their innate relationship to womanhood, but if a cis man did the same he would be a predator” then your beliefs are fundamentally compatible with trans women exclusionary radical feminism.

[plaidos]

this x100. it’s absolutely crazy how people will say “well trans guys sometimes have a relationship to the lesbian community so we should accept trans men lesbians as part of the community, who’s it hurting providing space & resources for people who desire it?” and then the same people will be uncomfortable with people they perceive to be “cis men” who are obviously exploring their gender/identity.

as a trans girl & as a lesbian, the safest i have felt in lesbian environments are those that have provided space for “cis men” culturally adjacent to the lesbian community, romantically involved with a wlw, or questioning his identity. assuming that any “cis man” who would want claim to the label of lesbian is a predator is inherently transmisogynist, even if that guy ends up legitimately being cisgender in the end.

[plaidos]

it’s crazy how many people have come into my inbox to justify believing the quote in the first part of this post. like the hill you want to die on is that is is INHERENTLY PREDATORY for a cisgender man to consider himself a lesbian??? are you hearing yourself? how is this not just open transmisogyny in slightly more progressive terms?

[c3rvida3]

The Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander fucking beats ass. I love its lichen-like pattern and its huuuuge alien eyeballs. Salamander of all time.

[c3rvida3]

And the clouded salamander? Forget about it, bitch!! This looks like a fake worm you'd steal from your daddy's tackle box as a kid because it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. And YES, you're gonna chew on it. It's a texture.

[tlirsgender]

Trying to sell handmade crafts in this economy is so. Like. Hey guys I know we're all broke as fuck but do you want my silly little things. I'm very good at it. For the time it takes to make them + skill + materials it's gonna be 30$ per silly little thing. But also shipping costs 12$ for reasons outside my control so it's actually 42$ now. Sorry. No I really can't charge less than that. Yeah I know. Ok. Bye

[tlirsgender]

And this is for my things that are silly and little. I'm not even one of those people making, like, quilts and blankets and shit. Can we pour one out for the fiber artists making quilts and blankets and shit

[tlirsgender]

I'm presenting a tiny crocheted bird to you. Putting it into the palm of your hand. This can be yours. For what seems like too much money but I promise it isn't. We've all just really lost sight of fiber arts' value with industrialization and outsourced sweatshop labor etc. This is actually the minimum I could ask for without fucking myself. I don't like what this implies about mass produced items either. It's really horrific. You can get an ethically sourced 42$ tiny crocheted bird though

[tlirsgender]

Shortly after posting this I received an order for nearly 200$ worth of tiny crocheted birds this is the good luck post for people actually paying for your handmade crafts

[obsob]

if you are a cat owner do you let your cat sleep with you ???

YES !!!! HONK SHNOO LITTLE KITTY TIME !!

NOOO !!! NO BEASTS IN THE BEDROOM!!!!!!!!

no cat / im bald / etc

Voting ended onJun 14, 2024

if u let ur cat sleep w u PLEASE tell me why in the tags. if i let keppy sleep with w us we would wake up 1000x a night. banishment to downstairs with you foul creature

[newarkwilder]

coffee shop by my house hired a new barista who is extraordinarily hot and flirts with me incessantly but she also makes the worst - and i truly mean the worst - coffee i’ve ever paid for. atrociously bad. just another of god’s little jokes

[newarkwilder]

just remembered the barista who worked there last year and treated me with an attitude generally reserved for children and the incompetent to the point where she would frequently adjust my drink order in front of me and every single time it was BANGIN’

[manyblinkinglights]

#cloth barista wire barista

[tlirsgender]

Remember when the point was that "sex is binary and unchangeable and a fundamental natural truth that's universally applicable unless there's something Wrong With You" is like, wrong. Was redefining gender as separate from sex worth it. I'm not sure how helpful the linguistic shift actually was when it's not really paired with deconstructing the underlying idea of an inescapable intrinsic Male or Female yknow what I mean. And now because the concept of gender separate from sex is associated with trans people, "Gender Ideology" is shorthand for trans people existing, and it's nigh impossible to talk about deconstructing gender as an oppressive power structure without people thinking you mean we need to "go back to" (hint: on an institutional level we never stopped) categorizing people by assigned sex instead. When it's literally like 50% of the same problem. Am I going crazy do you know what I'm talking about

[tlirsgender]

And like Yes detaching internal identity from external physical features is A Good Thing that's something that's progress but I feel like even in progressive spaces we just went from "women are when have vagina" to "women are when she/her wear skirts" and it's like. It's a step in the right direction but it shouldn't be our end goal

[demonprincex]

Why Does Nobody Flirt with Me? How Do I Deal with Social Anxiety?

Autistic Advice #9

In a piece for The New Inquiry from back in 2017, George Dust states that when queer people complain about there being a top shortage, what they really mean is “nobody is fucking me the way I want, and I have no agency in that.” Alongside co-authors Billy-Ray Belcourt and Kay Gabriel, Dust suggests that many queer people align themselves with a passive or “bottom” position because they believe that role will absolve them of the guilt of really wanting things. They present themselves as what they believe to be the sexual party with zero power; the receiver, the accepter of action rather than its cause.

This position is drawn in contrast to the bottom-identified person’s idea of a top: the one who approaches, the person with hungers and desires, the person who decides which sexual activities will happen and how intense they will get. The top, from this perspective, is the stronger, more capable, more dangerous person. They’re the only one who can ever be guilty of intruding or harming somebody else. This power is scary, but it’s also compelling.

Dust calls this fantastical version of a top a “brute” — and they are the most cartoonish stereotype of what it means in society to be a man. Because it’s a cartoonish stereotype, no human actually lives up to it — and we’d probably revile a person even if they could.

Though queer people know we are harmed by the gender binary and heteronormativity and all the social scripts those things force upon us, its biases are still embossed on our brains. Without meaning to, we reproduce tired gender stereotypes in our relationships. And so we see expressing a sexual want as masculine, and being masculine as being more capable of violence and coercive control, and thus bad. We see failing to communicate one’s desires openly as desirably feminine, as well as a sign of blamelessness and purity — because on some level we still feel it is wrong to have desires.

But this entire worldview is a complete lie. Desire is not evil. Expressing attraction is not a violation. Failing to express oneself can be just as dangerous as not listening to someone else’s limits. Women can be abusive. Bottoms can sexually assault. No matter our gender, presentation, or sexual role, we are each capable of harm. And the only way to make a safe, mutually pleasurable sexual encounter happen is by going after it, actively, and communicating from a position of inner strength.

So how do you do that, if society’s been telling you all your life that you’re meant to date by acting like a deer passively snapping twigs in the woods, waiting for some hunter to hear you, and pursue you? (That really is dating advice that Evangelical Christian counselors give to women, if you can believe it).

By not fixating so much on what you’re doing or not doing to draw other people toward you, and instead thinking in terms of what you want and what you observe beyond yourself.

[demonprincex]

thanks for these additions !

[demonprincex]

#ooooh boy. yeah..#i definitely was like this whne i was first coming out. this is really good writing#it's hard to unlearn. it's hard to change. but havigg that agency is so so important#for yourself. for not making your partner do all the emotional work#for owning your sexuality/queerness without guilt#anyways. genuinely sorry to every butch/masc i had a crush on when i was a baby gay. hope y'all are doing well

Love when people add these. Thanks for sharing about your growth!

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Here’s the New Inquiry piece, totally worth the read.

Top or Bottom: How do we desire?

Kay Gabriel, George Dust, and Billy-Ray Belcourt consider what queer memes of a top shortage reveal about the racialized orders of desire an

[demonprincex]

#long post#both articles are really really good#especially the second one#and everyone should read them #as a black person i'm expected to do all the heavy lifting of pursuing/flirting/initiating/fucking#and this makes it incredibly difficult for me to date#because i KNOW that#and i don't want to be in that role#i resent it#and i've come to resent dating because everyone i've dated in this area (vancouver is very very white)#has been suuuuuper passive/uncommunicative and it drove me insane#the second article uses “brutishness” and i think this encompasses the experience#of what you're expected to be while dating other queers #it's not just forwardness that's desired it's rawness they perceive as animalistic#which is extremely dehumanizing obviously!#which makes the whole experience extremely fraught#because ultimately it's all about that other person and how they feel and what they want#without them ever having to overtly express it#which allows them to wallow in passivity and sexual shame while still getting their needs met (but only partially)#(hence the whining about a top shortage) #it's part and parcel of a narcissism i've noticed in most white queers#where they position themselves at the center of the universe#they see themselves as The Most Oppressed and also The Most Desired#and they forcibly make you a part of this narrative#it's extremely insidious#it's also not just white people tbh nonblack poc are guilty of this too#but i won't even touch that rn#anyway great stuff and i need to show it to some people lmao#find later