Hi, I'm Sam. Congrats on finding my blog. There's tons of random shit. I reblog stuff from my art blog occasionally and post links to stuff I sell bc college is horribly expensive. I sometimes tag stuff, if there's somethiny you absolutely want me to tag so you don't have to see it lmk.
it’s really interesting how the guys that fight against paying child support the hardest are the ones that could afford to do it. these dudes will quit their well paying salaried job with benefits just to avoid their pay getting docked and potentially going to reimburse the mother of their child for buying their kid new shoes. they’ll leave their child without health insurance and work under the table jobs because they really hate their child and former S/O that much.
They believe that their role is to provide and protect the ones they choose to; it's not a responsibility (though they'll frame it like it is to sound better), but a power that they hold over others. Child support is emasculating because they see it as being forced to provide for someone who isn't "theirs" any more. They don't see it as supporting a child that they have ongoing responsibility for because they believe that they should have the right to withdraw that responsibility at any time, that unconditional responsibility for a child is the woman's role. They see it as being financially cucked.
#these men like the power that being a provider gives#they like the idea that you are dependent on them and that they could take it away from you at any moment#but mandatory child support doesn't really give you that choice or any power over the child/ex#you can't leverage it the same way to get what you want
i love that star wars comic where padmé's surviving handmaidens hold a last stand against vader but honestly if i were them i would have dedicated the rest of my life to the most comprehensive and inescapable fake haunting in the history of the galaxy. man should not be allowed two successive heartbeats without seeing his dead wife's face gazing soulfully at him across the room and slipping away before anyone sees. literally what else is the point of being a highly trained operative capable of perfectly imitating your best friend if not to torment her husband for decades after she's gone.
#why do people think shipping containers are the cure to every issue????#unless youre filling them with sand theyre not bulletproof#and theres no fucken roof
Fill the shipping containers with concrete to make Giant Bricks
shipping containers are also not that strong and also only cheap/relatively accessible to use if you live somewhere where shipping containers just end up
Fun fact about shipping container houses is that because so many shipping containers are used to transport hazardous materials and are unsuitable to live in for contamination reasons, it's often easier to make them out of entirely new, unused shipping containers than to source appropriate second hand ones. Which destroys the entire purpose of shipping container houses. Because we already know how to make rooms that are cheaper, better insulated, and more spacious and easy to acquire and transport than brand new shipping containers.
I remember a guy on one job talking about having one for storage on his property from ages back and the council was on his ass to remove it, costing him thousands. When the craze hit he had people come out of the wood work offering *him* 1000’s of dollars to buy it off him. He sold it for like 5k and his buy paid for all transport. Near overnight inversion of value for the things. Literally the best covert marketing campaign of lying which preyed on apocalypse anxiety (i am including solarpunk-esque people in this alongside preppers). Concrete is either too woke or not progressive enough for the average joe.
I'm still thinking about the guy who saw me realize my wheelchair wouldn't fit in the elevator because he (also a wheelchair user) was already inside it and immediately quipped, "This elevator ain't accessible enough for the both of us."
it’s like i want to come here to see how dean and cas are doing. like they live here on this website and not on netflix or in my dvds or whatever. they are alive here. do you know what i mean?
before we start posting that july is gay wrath month let’s consider that july is disability pride month first and foremost. the “be gay do crimes” memes can wait
before this post breaches containment and people start going “why not both hehehe” i want you to seriously consider the very long history of disabled people’s existence being pushed aside and/or seen as secondary. i promise you it’s not going to hurt to hold onto the memes and give disabled people space for visibility and celebration.
i say this as a disabled trans person whose trans identity is made front-and-center to the (mainly cis) people who know i’m trans but my identity as a disabled person is brushed off by the very same people.
But, my father kept insisting, the Yeerks on their home world have been peaceful, these years since the attack that destroyed his honor.
I didn't point out that the Yeerks on the home world had no choice: An Andalite fleet was parked in orbit above them, ready to shred anything that tried to come or go in the system.
p. 34-35
How much does the Yeerk Homeworld know and support the space-faring Yeerks? How much of a split is there on the homeworld? We don't really know. Because their is an Andalite Fleet parked at their homeworld ready to blast everything.
So that also means that Yeerks like Esplin 9466 Prime that were born on the Yeerk spacecraft don't really have the option of just going home if they decide that they don't want to conquer other species. We know that some of the other Yeerks in his training program didn't like it but they really can't just leave.
The Yeerks that went willingly into space are one thing but the Yeerks born in space? They are born probably just to be more soldiers. Get the ones that don't want to fight to become parents because that process kills three Yeerks but get hundreds of new potential soldiers out of the deal. Sounds like a win-win for Yeerk high command. Pressure decenters out (tell them that they need to mate if they aren't going to fight) while getting more troops that you just have to feed the right propaganda to while young.
OK, but given how little yeerks know about anything beyond their world before the andalites came, and how low-tech they and the gedds are, how many yeerks even though that they are? And of those who do how many even know why?
There's a really interesting question about thrownness and settler-colonialism in there. Like, suppose you're a guy with French parents and French culture... and you were born in Algeria in 1904. And you've never seen France. And now it's 1943 and France is occupied by Germany, and they're also invading Algeria.
Like, what do you even do in that position? You could do your best to be nice to your Algerian neighbors, but that won't stop them killing you first chance they get because you're on their parents' land. You could try joining that rumored Anti-Colonial League, but that wouldn't necessarily help Algeria and might even accelerate the rate at which Germany takes over the entire planet. You can't go back to France — it's occupied, you've never been there — but staying in Algeria makes you part of the problem. You could join the military, because at least then you're protecting your own, and you're helping prevent Germany wiping out Algeria entirely... but likely as not you'll get sent to "quell unrest" in Algeria instead.
I dunno. I feel like a lot of the ordinary yeerks are caught in a system too big to do anything about, and probably do their best not to think about it while also telling themselves that at least they're nicer to their hosts than the people on the aquatic hork-bajir project.
It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.
Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.
Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.
The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.
The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.
She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.
She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."
She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.
But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.
To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.
San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.
Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.
Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.
Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.
Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.
When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.
He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.
It was a mistake that would change American history.
Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.
She saw "her kids."
She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.
Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.
She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.
So, she made a choice.
She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.
Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.
The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.
She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.
She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.
"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."
And it did.
Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.
Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."
For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.
She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.
She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."
By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.
In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.
This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.
One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."
They underestimated who they were dealing with.
They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.
When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.
It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.
Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.
She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.
Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.
"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."
The quote ran in newspapers across the country.
The court didn't stand a chance.
Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.
The charges were dropped.
Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.
She needed to change the law.
August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.
She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.
But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.
She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.
She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.
In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.
It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.
She never got rich.
She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.
She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.
Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.
Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.
Most of them have never heard of Mary.
They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.
They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.
They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.
Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."
She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.
She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.
She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.
Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.
It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.
It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.
Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.
Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.
Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025
I'd be only too happy to do that. I was suspicious to start, too. It seemed a bit on the nose to have the weed brownie grandma named "Mary Jane," but also, that's a very common combination in a certain place and time, so I thought it was worth the extra effort.
What I did was find sources that made the claim (in this case, that a woman named Mary Jane was a medicinal marijuana activist in California, USA in the 1980s and 90s.) I checked the dates to get some certainty those sources aren't AI slop, then checked that the sources are generally reliable.
Then I followed useful details about the place and time, and other people involved, to explore it more fully.
The first thing I did was search for "Brownie Mary" and see if that turned anything up at all. It turned up a LOT of results. Predictably, some of them were recipes, but not all of them.
Next up, I checked sources and dates. Wikipedia can be dodgy for academic use, but their policy on LLM-generated input is very clear: they don't want slop. I started by reading that page and then went on to read others.
The Atlas Obscura article is from 2018. I found another one from SFWeekly from 2017.
Both of those are decent sources - Atlas Obscura gets a High factual reporting rate from MediaBiasFactCheck, and while MBFC doesn't have a rating for SFWeekly, the verbiage in that article is very close to what GastroObscura has. (Also to what the post itself has, right down to the choice of pull quote.)
Now, we can stop there and feel pretty confident that articles published before the wide availability of LLMs are not, in fact, LLM generated.
...or we can go deeper, and run this all the way back to source.
I spotted references to a Chicago Tribune imterview of Mary Jane Rathbun, published in 1993.
My search string of "Chicago Tribune 1993 Mary Jane Rathbun" hit it in the top 3 results. That article includes some fun new details: she wore a cannabis leaf shaped pendant to her trial!
She also objected to being portrayed as a cuddly grandma up against The Man, so I must retract my flippant tags, above.
The evidence now strongly points to Brownie Mary being a real woman who really went to court for giving AIDS patients weed brownies. But can we get closer? I've now seen several mentions of a 1980 attempt at convicting her too.
The articles have mentioned Sonoma County and a nonprofit called the Shanti Project, so let's hook onto that and see what we get.
Searching for "Mary Jane Rathbun Sonoma County 1980" gets me an article from a law firm; that mentions the prosecuting attorney by name, and points to a book: Lust for Justice: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra, by Paulette Frankl. It even has an excerpt!
We can run the book down too, just for fun (now we have a primary source.) My favorite used book site has a copy for $1. Amazon gives a view of the back cover, too:
...wow. I should see if my library has that!
The excerpt on the site has a mention of a candelight vigil held for her death in 1999. It took some hunting past things I'd already read and a bunch of shops giving written tributes, but I found a news report about that, too.
There's a lot of information out there, and it's worth digging into. Otherwise it's altogether too easy to think something real and worth knowing is just another bit of slop.
If you like these weekly compilations, please consider tipping me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!
1. Despite stiff political headwinds, tribe in Colorado brings utility scale solar project online
“Over the next year and half, solar panels capable of generating 270 megawatts worth of electricity, and 180 megawatts of battery storage will be built on tribal land in neighboring New Mexico[….] They started small with residential rooftop solar. Then came a one-megawatt array that helped power the tribal casino out on the highway. […] The demolition of a nearby coal fired power plant left behind a network of transmission lines and electricity customers [so is now the site of the new project].”
2. ‘Get the Flock Out’: Nationwide Backlash Grows Against AI-Powered Surveillance Tech
“There is growing action [link added by me]—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country. According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone. Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.”
3. On the brink of extinction, the Javan green magpie gets a conservation lifeline
“With the new action plan, developed and agreed upon by 48 songbird experts, conservation groups are aiming to protect the bird’s montane habitat, engage with local communities to address trapping, and crack down on illegal trade over the next 10 years. Conservation translocations are planned to bolster the few remaining wild populations. For around a decade, [… facilities] have bred more than 130 birds in captivity as an “insurance policy,” Owen says.”
4. The Spectacular Regrowth of New England’s Forests
“”To give you an example, Massachusetts […] is 60 percent forested today. Now, it was probably 90 percent-plus forested when the Europeans arrived, but it went through a period in which 80 percent to 90 percent of the forest was removed[…. T]he Northeast temperature rise with global warming is significantly less because we are so heavily forested […] and it all happened because of what I call benign neglect [after farmers moved to Ohio in the 1850’s].””
5. The women leading a quiet conservation revolution in a Nigerian gorilla sanctuary
“Now, the collective meets twice a month to brainstorm strategies to combat threats to Afi’s biodiversity and review existing wildlife regulations. [They conduct] patrols, targeted at uncovering early signs of hunting, logging or wildfires[… and] the women’s group investigates allegations of wildlife crimes. […] In their homes, the women are also influencing what their families eat to eliminate threatened species from the local diet.”
June 22-28 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)
Ranting about how terribly unsafe the cybertruck is. I dunno if anyone called out Elon on his shit design, but a car that
A: has lithium ion batteries, which are known for exploding when overheating or punctured
B: a needlessly expensive and tough exterior with no crumple zones (go play with a newtons cradle dipshit)
C: really stupidly strong glass, so firefighters cannot get in if the car explodes
D: electric doors that entomb you afton fnaf 6 style if the power cuts
It seems like the whole design is meant to kill you in a blazing inferno. Or in a car crash (for a supposed supergenius he sure doesnt seem to know shit about kinetic energy and collisions)
Reminder for anyone who has forgotten that these things are more than just an aesthetic crime
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
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