Victory Amps, which is based in the UK, started researching accessibility when they were building a customised amplifier for guitarist, and social-media personality, Anthony Ferraro.
He had reached out, asking if he could try an amplifier in their existing lineup, but Victory wanted to build him an amp that was entirely accessible.
They released a statement that said:
âWe researched accessibility in musical equipment and were shocked by how little existed â especially in guitar amplification. So, we learned braille standards, spacing rules and dot heights, developed a custom embossing process, and rebuilt the front and rear panels of the Duchess MKII V40 so every control could be understood by touch alone â without compromising tone, feel or design.â
They sent the customised amplifier to Anthony, along with a letter in braille that explained what they had done.
Yesterday they announced that braille panel options will be available to everyone at no extra cost. They will also be donating a portion of each sale to a âUK registered blind charity chosen by Anthony.â
This is actually such a huge thing for an actor to do. Like we know he is wonderful and correct about this and not afraid to say so but when was the last time an actor this famous called for a boycott of a series this popular on a network THIS BIG.
anyway if u watch the new Harry Potter show in any way for any reason you're part of the problem. if you pirate it you're part of the problem, if you "watch it critically" you're part of the problem, if you watch it for the purpose of a smug little video essay pointing out some problematic element in it, you're part of the problem. it doesn't matter if some element of the show is problematic, the show existing is problematic. don't give it any revenue or contribute to its cultural relevance. boycott it and let it wither on the fucking vine
please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please PLEASE I BEG I AM CLAWING AT THE WALLS I NEED THE NEXT ALBUM
I'm not Aro or Ace, probably the exact opposite-- I'm poly, bi, and have a high sex drive-- but I follow a lot of aroace blogs and have friends who are on the aromantic and asexual spectrums.
Y'all are honestly so smart and I find your perspective on things super valuable. You've opened my eyes that the relationship formulas I grew up hearing about aren't the only options, there's so many more ways to be a person and to have relationships with others. Because our lived experiences are so different, you're able to show me things I might not have ever considered on my own.
While I do enjoy my romantic and sexual relationships, it's nice to know that I have so many more options than that. For every person I know, our relationship with each other is its own shape, and I'm glad for it. I love so many people in so many ways, and I feel like y'all taught me how to better appreciate the different forms my love can take.
Also y'all have the best memes! Seriously, top tier.
I also love when y'all analyze media through an aro/ace lens, you always find such interesting perspectives and it's really fun when you give me a new angle to look at a story through. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
Consider this a platonic love letter to the aroace community. I genuinely think you make the world a more wonderful place just by existing as you are.
We gonna talk about Crater Lake, and Wizard Island and not mention the Old Man of the Lake?
The Old Man of the Lake is a log that floats around the lake. It is somewhat strange in that it floats vertically. It's roughly 30 feet tall, with only about 5 or so feet sticking out above the surface of the water. It was first 'offically' recorded in the early 20th century, though there are oral reports of it as far back as 1896 (and likely earlier still given the cultural importance of Crater Lake to the Klamath tribe of that area.
The Old Man should have rotted away long ago or at the very least become waterlogged and sank into the water fully, but nope. Over a hundred years, and there is this log still in the water just floating.
So y'know how I said the fact that it floats vertically was 'somewhat strange'? Let's get into some actual strange territory regarding the Old Man. It moves. Against the wind. It has been recorded moving in paths that do not make sense, never getting stuck on the shore of Wizard Island, nor the area of shore around the lake. Now that's strange.
So now let's get freaky: The free-floating Old Man posed a hazard to boats since it moves, and only a small portion of it was above water. (though personal boats are no longer allowed on the lake) Anyway, in 1988 a team was using a small submersible to explore the lake. The scientist figured it'd be a good idea to moor the Old Man near the coast of Wizard Island out of their way, for safety. So they tied some rope to it, to move the Old Man. As soon as they did so, the clear blue skies of a warm August day turned dark. The wind kicked up, bad, and it started to rain, then hail, then snow in the span of a few minutes...again in August. Now snow in that area is common, but not in the summer months. It gets super warm in that area in summer (like 70 to 90 degrees on average) So the scientists decided to nope the fuck out of the water, because of this freak storm. They unmoored the Old Man, preparing to get the fuck out of dodge of this summer snowstorm. As soon as the rope loosened and was in the water, as quickly as the storm had come on them, the darkened skies cleared and it was once more a fine sunny summer day.
As a kid, I spent my summers with my family who lives like... 40 some odd miles from Crater Lake National Park so I had this knowledge just kinda buried in my head somewhere.
Somehow no one has mentioned yet that Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the U.S, and the 10th deepest lake in the world. She Is Deep And Full Of Secrets guys, perfect wizard territory
Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.
It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.
To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.
This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.
Join me below, if you would.
2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.
Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadnât even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.
It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.
But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.
The next day, weâre on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that sheâs surprised the two of us arenât up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.
âEveryone else?â Goes I, âI thought they wouldâve shut that down already?â
âOh no!â goes she, âThe courts arenât open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. Theyâre doing them all weekend long!â
We didnât know because social media wasnât a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as Iâd read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.
"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, itâs a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but weâre not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?
The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.
We had slightly miscalculated.
Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone whoâd gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.
âIsnât City Hall closed on Monday?â I asked. âItâs a holidayâ
âOh sure,â they reply, âbut people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.â
âOh cool,â we go, âBackup.â
âMake sure youâre here if you do,â they say, âbecause the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.â
And all this shit is super not-legal, so theyâll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.
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We donât get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.
Itâs⊠incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of othersâ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.
At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, âThatâs Newsom.â He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.
Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.
So dusk is starting to fall. Itâs February, so itâs only six or so, but itâs getting dark.
âShould we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?â we ask.
âYeah, Iâm afraid thatâs not going to be possible.â One of the volunteers tells us. âWeâre not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. Weâd need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.
Monday is the last day to do this, after all.
00000
So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.
The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people whoâre up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.
âUh.â We go. âWhat the fuck is -this-?â
So.
Remember why they werenât going to be able to have people hang out overnight?
Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties thatâd gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.
Itâs 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least werenât likely to loose job protections any time soon.).
Then it starts to rain.
We had not dressed for rain.
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Here is how the next six hours go.
Weâre in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. Itâs around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and youâve got a makeshift raincoat! So youâve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.
Everyone is so happy.
Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.
People online start making delivery orders.
Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because theyâre just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.
A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all weâre sinning and to please donât. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against Godâs will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.
The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how âNot even DOGS do such things!â Which⊠Yes they do.
A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that weâre willing to come out in the rain to do this while theyâre not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.
Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall weâre on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when weâre on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when weâre on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.
00000
We have Line Neighbors.
Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. Theyâve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. Heâs worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. Theyâd started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.
The most perky energetic joyful woman Iâve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. Sheâs their local friend whoâd just gotten their message about what theyâre doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.
Behind us are a lesbian couple whoâd been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. âWe met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because itâs our first love city.â
âThen they announced -this-,â the other one says, âand we canât leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.â
âI told them why,â her partner says, âI donât care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.â
My husband-to-be and I look at each other. Weâve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? Weâre potentially taking a spot from another couple thatâd been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.â
âDonât you fucking dare.â Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.
âThis is as much for you as it is for us!â says the lesbian couple whoâve been together for over a decade behind us.
âYou kids are too cute together,â says the gay coupleâs friend. âyou -have- to. Someday -youâre- going to be the old gay couple thatâs been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.â
We stay in line.
Itâs while weâre on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. âCan we say weâre with you? His uncles are already inside and theyâre not letting anyone in who isnât with a couple right there.â âOf course!â we say.
The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but thereâs free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so heâs having a great time.
We pass by a statue of Lincoln with âMarriage for All!â and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.
Itâs about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.
Theyâve promised that anyone whoâs inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. Weâre safe.
We still have a -long- way to go.
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Theyâre trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways Iâm not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.
Itâs after weâve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. âItâs an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you donât have to do it there!â
We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.
We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.
I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.
The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.
Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.
The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.
A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. Sheâs done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. âOh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today Iâm acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-â
The guy behind the counter has been there since six. Itâs now 1:30. Heâs still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. âAlright, go to the Rotunda, theyâll direct you to someone whoâll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, theyâll direct you to -that- line.â âCanât you just mail it to us?â âNormally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, weâre not going to be allowed to.â
We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.
If youâve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, youâve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.
Thatâs for the people who didnât bring their own wedding officials.
Thereâs a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. Theyâre doing the whole damn thing. Thereâs at least one more Rabbi at work, I canât remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.
We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)
I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I canât get the ring on my husbandâs finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.
There really isnât a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that weâd made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands whoâd cheered for us generally.
Then we're married.
Then we get in line to get our license.
Itâs another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayorâs office.
Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked âTHANK YOU!âs that have been piled up against it.
We make it to the marriage records office.
I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then weâre done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.
It's almost 3PM.
00000
There are cheers, thereâs rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. Itâs no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. Thereâs barely even any news vans.
We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading âCongratulations!â jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.
Iâm at the BART station, weâre waiting for our train back south, and Iâm sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. âHey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just⊠Iâm so happy for you. Iâm so proud of what you could do. Iâm- Iâm just really glad, glad you could get to do this.â
He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.
Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.
We get back to our car and climb in.
Itâs 4:30 and we are starving.
Thereâs a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.
We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what weâd just done.
We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.
The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsomâs marriages.
My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. âNo! No one knew that theyâd go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! Iâll just be there for the next one!â
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It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didnât even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was âmarriage really isnât that important, aside from the legal benefits. Itâs just confirming what you already have.â
But maybe itâs just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and Iâve never really come up with a better metaphor is, âItâs like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each otherâs support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.
It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.
I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. Itâs been twenty years and weâre still together and still married.
We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. Weâd done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husbandâs collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.
Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.
It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldnât negate it that time.
Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"
And that was that.
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When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didnât expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldnât see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.
I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before Iâd barely started by 30s. I never thought Iâd be in my 40s and itâd be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers wouldâve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.
I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.
I never thought Iâd live in this world.
And itâs twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.
I donât have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you canât predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.
The future weâre resigned to doesnât have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.
And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those whoâre against it will brave.
How to make a living will (Advance Healthcare Directive) so you donât get fucked over by biological family if you end up in a situation where you cannot make your own healthcare choices.
also have a designated medical power of attorney. even worse than your shitty parents getting control of your estate is your shitty parents getting control of your still-living but incapacitated body.
no, having a chill adult sibling isn't enough, it still defaults to parents for some dumbass reason even if your parents are old as balls. if you want your chill adult sibling to be your emergency decisionmaker, get it in writing.
"im tired of living through major historical events" is now "dear lord please let me witness a high profile political assassination in the next 1-2 years. amen"
I have put Iocaine powder in one of these two goblets. You choose, then we both drink.
If you choose the more popular option you are poisoned, and must log off and do something you are putting off. If you choose otherwise, you may reblog and keep scrolling!
you know those studies showing that cursing helps with pain tolerance or whatever. thatâs how i feel about making my weird little noises to get through my basic daily activities. sometimes you just have to go hggblaaaah for a minute so you can find the strength within yourself to get up or wash the dishes or send an email. mmmnneh. urgh. the torments are unending but you can always make some little sounds about it.
