Penguin Random House? The ones who no longer sell ebooks to libraries; they now have 2-year expiration dates - so there's no ability to permanently have an ebook available; it's always subject to "is it still licensed (and available) in two years?" Oh, and those two-year rentals are $55. These are also the ones who tried to acquire Simon & Schuster and the US DOJ blocked the merger on monopoly grounds.

PRH is not your friend.

But as with Disney vs DeSantis:

I think people online are too invested in pride flags and make a big fuss over nothing. I also will defend the bear flag with my fucking life.

The 3rd-oldest Pride flag - older than the trans, bi, and the oldest Pride flag for a specific sexuality or gender. The only older flags are the Leather flag and the Gilbert Baker/Rainbow Pride flags.

The Bear Brotherhood flag deserves a lot more respect than it gets.

It’s so hard being a silly goose in this anti-whimsy society

Blah blah kink at pride discourse blah blah the BDSM community that I joined in 2010 used to team up with other BDSM communities to volunteer at the local pridefest to do security and distribute drinks and other tasks they were needed for. (They probably still do this, I moved far away)

The BDSM community I was in was teamed up with the local queer resource center (whose manager was a trans dominatrix in the local scene) and AIDS charity center and we regularly collected food for their pantries and helped assist at fundraising events for them. Leather communities and BDSM communities do this sort of thing all the time.

And sure, it's important to point out that "no kink at pride" can be boiled down to mean "no pride at all because all queer people are sex perverts according to society" but it's also important to acknowledge that the people keeping your queer resource centers going are often the people running events on safe knife play and rope suspension and hypnofisting and electrostimulation. Nobody is forcing you to participate in kink but show some fucking gratitude to the perverts in black leather for the hard work they do for YOU.

(Eta: there was an addition to this post that adds a bit more.)

I know the joke about Izzy is "human dropped into a muppets movie" but the tragedy is that he's a queer-coded character from some 1940s or 50s popcorn flick dropped into a pride parade in a floating gayborhood & he flat out has no idea how to deal with it. We learn he's a great swordsman in the most homoerotic way possible when he uses his skills to cut open a man's shirt. We see him react more openly and with less inner conflict when Ed slaps him on the back and says "I need you here" than when Ed implies to him, a minute earlier, that he could be a captain. When he's part of an overtly queer scene where other characters get the romance & he just gets the subtext, Con O'Neill's body language stands out even more—go back to the scene where Izzy tells Stede that Ed adores him, the way he strokes his fingers down the curtain dividing him from Stede. There is literally no straight explanation for this choice, but there is also no explicit acknowledgement that the character is queer; in a different, older show or movie, that body language would be the acknowledgment. He imbues the character with the looks and pauses that you would see in, like, Ben-Hur or something, where everyone knew a character was gay but nobody could say it out loud. Keep in mind that in the comedies where these characters would exist, the subtextually gay man would sometimes be best friends with a Strong Leading Man who got the girl in the end.

We hear him say outright that there's no retirement for people like Izzy & Ed, only death, which is itself a hugely loaded analogy next to the title statement "our flag means death" when you consider our history & our use of flags throughout. And Izzy's so focused on pure survival that he ends up nasty, manipulative, violent—the only way men like him can survive in his mind, or in the genre he's from, if they don't have a Strong Leading Man best friend like, say, a Blackbeard to protect him from the narrative. When Ed starts to live in Stede's world, Izzy is both losing his subtextual boyfriend and also acting as though Ed's going to get himself (and Izzy) killed if he keeps going down this path.

I will never be sane over this. Izzy is a Celluloid Closet case study who's been dropped into a Logo TV original, and so much of the conflict of his character comes from his trying to use the coping techniques from that world (including techniques used by queer coded villains! He's not healthy!) in a world where these techniques are actively harmful rather than a way to survive.

Adds a whole new layer to the “only retirement we get is death” since the queer-coded characters were very frequently the villains and the most common ending for queer-coded villains was death. Usually violently and horrendously.

Possibly The most surprising thing I have discovered on the internet is the number of people who will unironically refer to others as "degenerates" without expecting anyone reading this to immediately assume that they are a straight-up fascist

A number of people are reblogging this saying how scary it is that they might unknowingly echo this kind of rhetoric because it's filtered into everyday speech, and like. Yeah, that kind of mostly-innocent mistake is to some extent an inevitable feature of language and the way it passes from person to person, and yeah it can be anxiety-inducing and occasionally mortifying and I do sympathize.

That said.

You potentially being mortified because you accidentally said a nazi word is really beside the point of this post? In fact - and I suggest this as gently as possible - it's a somewhat self-centered response, imho? I wasn't blogging about how disturbing it is to say something embarrassing, I was blogging about how disturbing it is to see fascist ideology getting mainstreamed.

And it is the *ideology* that I find concerning, more than simply the language. Yeah "degenerates" is an incredibly loaded word, and people are well within their rights to direct a hard side-eye (at the least) toward anyone using it. But lbr, even if you could somehow wave a magic wand and erase the historical context that would still be a pretty vicious thing to call someone. Implying or outright stating that someone is subhuman is fascist rhetoric even absent specific fascist terminology. People are in the notes responding with things like "it's not just a synonym for freaks," and okay, but......hot take, you shouldn't be calling anyone a freak either! If you scrub "degenerate" out of your vocabulary but replace it with "freak" used in exactly the same way - other, lesser, outside the boundaries of """normal""" and thus automatically loathsome and/or dangerous - that's not better! If someone is doing bad things, say that. Don't use rhetoric that positions "normal" as "moral." In the first place it's shady as hell ("normal" is a subjective judgment frequently dictated by whoever has the most social power) and in the second place it's not even accurate, plenty of horrible behavior is perfectly normal and societally acceptable.

Anyway I'm sorry if I'm heated about this but the TL;DR is that yeah hearing that word makes every hair on the back of my neck stand up but I'm not actually here to play word cop, I'm here to (1) point out that fascist language filtering into common usage suggests some concerning things about the accompanying fascist ideas, and (2) ask anyone with good intentions to do a little bit of thoughtful self-interrogation about why they feel that is a remotely acceptable way to refer to human beings.

You should read the dictionary more carefully. From your link:

No, fascists did not coin the term. But they have historically really liked slinging it around (and still do currently), because it comes weighted with a lot of judgments about normal vs abnormal, pure vs impure, and when it comes to insults that mesh really neatly with fascist ideology it's hard to beat "you've declined from your noble ancestral state to a corrupt/inferior/primitive form of person (or less-than-person)." That usage of the word by fascists is also in no way "more recent" or purely connected to "the Fox News controversy machine." The Holocaust Memorial Museum has an entry for it in their online glossary of terms and symbols. The Nazis staged an infamous exhibition of """degenerate art""" in 1937, and in Germany that phrase or anything like it is still incredibly loaded.

Furthermore, words have connotations as well as denotations. Dog whistles are a thing. I'm not going to post screenshots because I don't really see the point in subjecting my mutuals to it, but if you go on Twitter and search "degenerate" basically every other post that pops up is virulent frothing-at-the-mouth transphobia. I can't recommend it as light reading, but if you look up alt-right manifestos or incel forums (or even just peruse the angrier comments on a right-leaning news site) you will also find this word getting throw around a hell of a lot. Part of the reason I personally have an immediate flinch response to it is that when I was first finding my way around the web as a kid, "degenerate" was part of the internet vernacular of Stormfront types the way that Pepe memes are popular with alt-right types today.

When I Google the word and do a news search, one of the more recent (3/27/23) articles is about some guy in Kansas who was driving around with a "14 Words By David Lane" decal on his work truck (and who was charged for racially-motivated murder in 2014, incidentally), and when asked for comment responded "I don't care what a bunch of degenerates, Marxists and pedophiles have to say about my work."

TL;DR It is objectively true that if you go around calling people you don't like degenerates then people familiar with fascist rhetoric are probably going to side-eye you - and they have abundant good reasons for doing so.

#''deviation from the norm'' should not be your go-to insult and if it is then you've got serious issues you need to work through

Thanks @spoonie-waagosh for summarizing so pithily

people do a whole lot of fancy mental dancing to keep from confronting how easy, fun, and pleasant it is to be a fascist. it’s very enjoyable to believe you’re rationally, morally, and biologically superior sort of human from your enemies. it’s immediately rewarding to conclude that the people you hate are less human than you are-- some sort of degenerate form of sub-human, or an unfortunately mutated freak. it’s simple and clean to decide that the world needs purging of all undesireables. you’re a good guy. you’re the best kind of person. it’s the dirty, filthy mistakes that pretend to be human--badly!--and infest the world like giant rats that need to be removed from society, for the good of people like you.

believing this feels great. it explains everything. it gives you an explanation for what’s wrong with the world that’s very reasonable to believe and gets you plenty of friends to say.

unfortunately you’re still being a fucking fascist piece of shit, no matter how superior you feel and what a great time you're having with those feelings. and you now deserve at best a scolding and at worst, if you’ve become like this on purpose and are now a serious danger to everyone you so cheerfully hate, a brick upside the head.

the people you hate aren’t subhuman. filthy weirdos actually have the exact same right to live their life and be the way they are as you, and if you try to wipe them out they’re the victims and you’re the monster. it’s a much more complicated and frustrating belief to make your peace with, but you gotta.

Everyone else talked about outdoor cats, it's time for me to talk about offleash dogs

Reasons not to have your dog offleash at a public park:

1) roads (this one is self-explanatory)

2) it makes the park inaccessible to like, entire swathes of the population. If you have experience with police dogs or guard dogs in your neighborhood, or you're a new immigrant from somewhere with a large population of feral dogs, it sucks ass going to the park and having someone's massive lab bound up to you!

3) If, for example, you are in a protected wetland area plastered with friendly signs asking you to please leash your dog to avoid causing an ecological impact, having your dog offleash might cause an ecological impact! "Oh no, my dog is well-behaved, they would never bother the wildlife" wrong! your dog is in the pond trying to eat the endangered Blandings' turtles!

4) Non-zero chance of a jokerified park guide (me) just clipping your dog to a leash and stealing them

5) “Oh but my dog is friendly!” If your unleashed “friendly” dog runs up to my leashed UNFRIENDLY dog, and my dog bites yours, guess who’s getting the blame despite doing everything right?

6) Allergies. “Oh but my dog is friendly!” oh well that’s great I guess I can just put the epipen away because, yknow, he didn’t mean to induce anaphylactic shock, it was all in good fun, nothing to worry about!

7) Small children, the elderly and disabled people. “Oh but my dog is so friendly!” When your friendly dog slams into me/jumps on me/knocks me over I am just as injured.

New Mature Content Warning Overlay (And How to Get Rid of It)

More fun community label "features"! Unlike the new mandatory label for #NSFW, this one is a bigger deal to me because it affects my entire blog and it can't be avoided by just using a different tag.

Apparently on custom blog layouts, if you happen to post or reblog even a SINGLE post that's been flagged with the mature content community label, a full-page warning overlay will appear blurring out your entire blog that must be manually clicked through every single time the page is refreshed. At first I thought this was just a bug due to my older layout but I've come to realize it's not. It's a feature (as confirmed by this recent changes post) that affects all custom themes. The formatting will vary based on your own theme but here's what it looks like on my blog:

I don't know about you but I find this is stupid and annoying. If it could be dismissed once and never seen again that might be one thing, but that's not the case. The vast majority of my blog is not "mature" enough to warrant such an aggressive and invasive warning. I also think pop-ups are obnoxious in general and I'll be damned if tumblr's going to force me to have one on MY blog.

After some desperate googling for a known workaround and being unable to find even a single mention of it, I decided to take on the challenge myself. I'm not a theme coder, so apologies if there's a better way to do this, but luckily it only took me like 10 minutes to figure out a simple fix, which I'm now sharing with anyone else who may want it:

Just copypaste that somewhere in your CSS and goodbye pop-up!

If you're not sure how to access your theme code, check out this help article. You can also add the code via the Advanced Options menu, which is actually even better (if you can get it to work, it depends on how your theme was coded), because it will then automatically be reapplied to a lot of themes without having to remember to manually add it every time if you change your theme in the future.

Obviously this will only remove it from your own blog for anyone who may visit it. If you never want to see this warning again on other people's blogs you can also add this custom filter to your ad block:

Unfortunately I do not have an easy tutorial on hand for this one as the method will depend on your specific ad block app or extension.

Some additional notes:

One time my dad came to family dinner all excited “you know that show Sherlock? I hear fans are writing whole new stories for it online”

And in perfect unison my sister and I yelled “DAD NO!” So vehemently he stopped in his tracks.

Then a look of dawning comprehension on his face.

“Oh, this is like Kirk and Spock, isn’t it”

And I died right then and there.

men really don't get friendzoned as often as they think they do....son she doesn't even see you as a friend, you're guy #17 she's civil towards because she's scared he'll turn hostile any second.

So many men who think they’re friendzoned are actually just Creepy Coworker

stop gendering body hair

stop gendering facial hair

i mean yeah guys stop gendering hair in general but i hope its clear that this sentiment isnt just something we are all saying for casual progressive fun and that hair—body hair, facial hair, the hair on your head—is extremely politicized for marginalized people.

the gendering of hair is the politicizing of it and genuinely tied up in violence... antisemitic violence, racial violence, sexual violence.. like... i hope we are all earnestly acknowledging the pain of this beyond the obvious when we read posts like this

I am so happy so many Asian Americans are hip to what DeSatan is trying to do. Especially the youth, Gen Z ain’t the 1 or the 2.

I’m glad this is being said, too, because I’ve already heard some murmurs about “Asian always get treated better.” Not really, they’re being used in exactly the way the video highlights. And, knowing Asian people are already facing hate and attacks from so many other groups, they should be upset they’re being used AGAIN as a scapegoat. This is putting them directly in harm’s way. And the government doesn’t care that they’re doing it. No marginalized group is ever truly safe, no matter where you are on the hierarchy; if you’re not at the top, you’re in danger. I know solidarity is something else right now, but we have to remember that divided we fall. White supremacy is always trying to divide every group (by race, by gender, by sexuality, by social class, etc) to fight amongst themselves and keep people from uniting against the common enemy. Those who can see it, I’m thankful for you. Because, when you look at history, the main times we were able to make change was when we all came together. That will always remain true. Keep trying to get others to see it, too.

Just a few days before our interview, Jill’s (Ed: not her real name) immunologist sent her to the hospital to rule out pulmonary embolism, which happens when a blood clot gets stuck in an artery of the lung. In Jill’s case it would be a Long COVID symptom amongst many others she had been battling over the last year: including swelling around the tissue of her heart, memory deficits, sudden heart-rate surges, fatigue and abnormal kidney test results.

By that point, she’d had COVID four times, despite taking stringent precautions. She was born with a primary immune deficiency. And, without a fully functioning immune system she needs weekly injections of human immunoglobulins from plasma donations. A very small viral load can make her sick and she’s at a much higher risk of severe outcomes from COVID than most people.

“Every time I catch it, it adds new layers to my disabilities,” she says. “COVID is slowly killing me.” Her haematologist believes the past COVID infections have further damaged her immune system. She is looking at a possible lupus diagnosis.

Her voice is raspy and soft over the phone. She pauses when I ask how she is doing.

“Well, I got COVID,” she says. “Again.”

At the hospital appointment several nurses were not wearing their masks properly, and one kept pulling it down to talk with Jill, who had to remove hers to get her lungs checked. As someone who is very isolated with her family — everyone works and goes to school from home — Jill believes that the appointment led to her most recent infection.

She’s always been careful with her health but in the past, she worked in the school system. By 2020 she moved to a remote position and at that time still had many options for safely connecting with those around her and she could attend health-care appointments without concern. About a year ago, nearly all restrictions were lifted in Alberta and that’s when she got her first COVID infection.

Three years in, nearly everyone she knows has moved on including — most bafflingly to her — many of the medical professionals she sees. But, Jill says, moving on is not a privilege afforded to people like her.

Recently, PCR testing became inaccessible to health-care providers, who, in the past, were able to test regularly. And while Alberta Health Services (AHS) still requires masks, any health-care settings outside AHS can make their own rules. So, once masking was no longer mandated in public settings, many dropped requirements — this includes many of the specialists seeing immunocompromised people, including those Jill now sees due to Long COVID.

“The variants have been left to run rampant and I have really become more and more scared,” she says.

“Governments are saying: Oh we can re-open because we have all these tools. But they are not available to the immunocompromised population. So, the monoclonal antibodies are no longer effective against the current variants. Because the variants are so immune-based, the vaccines were never particularly effective for immunocompromised people because of the nature of our immune systems.”

As well, Jill says that there are many contraindicated drugs that cannot be taken with Paxlovid, the drug which is used to treat COVID patients in specific circumstances. According to Health Canada, Paxlovid “is used in adults to treat mild to moderate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in patients who have a positive result from a severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 viral test and who have a high risk of getting severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death.”

She still takes the vaccines with hopes they will help, and while she believes Paxlovid is saving her life with this current infection, she says it is not a guarantee against more Long COVID symptoms. And, for the infection prior to the current one, the drug was not available due to a kidney infection caused by the virus.

“I have to access my medication, my health care. And by people not masking around me, I have no way to protect myself,” she says. “If you don’t want to wear masks as a society then you are going to leave the immunocompromised people behind.” And she says many high risk people are not able to work from home, or have their kids in online classes or maybe struggle to afford masks or air purifiers — many social and financial issues make individual protections far more challenging or impossible. She is currently in a court battle with her ex.

“He wants increased access, in-person school and group extracurricular activities. All things that put me at higher risk of infection,” says Jill.

Recently, she went to her cardiologist to find that no patients or staff were masking.

“I really realize now I have to be my own advocate,” she says.

She has to constantly think ahead. So, she now calls beforehand to see if the appointment can be done remotely or if the staff can mask. She’s also decided to start carrying around a laminated sheet that explains her medical condition as it is often something she needs to repeat at each appointment or in the emergency room. 

Like many others, she’s found ways to navigate her way around a harrowing array of risks. And yet, even with all these precautions, she can not control the actions of others which can directly affect her health.

Holly (Ed: not her real name), is retired and lives in a small community just outside Edmonton. She’s currently thinking about her next visit to her doctor, who hasn’t been taking precautions from the beginning.

“It’s exhausting always trying to get around how there is no protection for us anymore,” she says. “I’m thinking why am I made to feel crazy when my own doctor won’t wear a mask? Won’t acknowledge that it’s airborne?”

But the worst part, she claims, was that he minimized the effects of COVID, saying it was rarely an issue and only affects a certain demographic. Holly does not believe that is true, but regardless it is of little comfort when her husband, who’s in his 70s, has chronic health complications.

“I think patients are rightfully concerned, particularly when they go in for health care,” says physician Neeja Bakshi. “I think the medical community should be doing whatever we can to protect those who are coming in.”

It’s true, she says, that hospitals are no longer overwhelmed, and fewer people are dying; there is less of an acute emergency. But COVID is still circulating, people are still dying, and Long COVID (aka post COVID-19 condition) should be on everyone’s radar.

Recently, the World Health Organization announced an end to the global health emergency. But it also said earlier that “one in 10 infections result in post COVID-19 condition suggesting that hundreds of millions of people will need longer term care.”

COVID can cause organ damage — particularly affecting the heart, kidneys, skin. Plus, there’s risk of brain and immune damage, along with increased risks for cancer and autoimmune disease.

And, while no one knows yet how long that damage could persist, a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine says 59 per cent of Long COVID patients had organ damage a year later.

In 2022, Bakshi started a Long COVID clinic at her health facility Park Integrative Health, treating patients from across Canada. Every week she completes upwards of 20 disability forms for people who need to take time off work due to the debilitating effects of Long COVID.

While certain health complications make Long COVID more likely, anyone can be affected regardless of the severity of their infection or the state of their health. The indiscriminate nature of COVID is one of the things that’s been most shocking to Bakshi. She’s treated a number of elite athletes who went from performing at a professional level to struggling to have enough energy to brush their teeth.

Many patients struggle with stigma not just from medical professionals but from family, friends and employers. It’s an invisible illness, says Bakshi, so patients may look fine and are often misdiagnosed as something psychosomatic.

“I’m immersed in the world. But I don’t feel like you can deny it exists. And I think it’s a bit of ignorance on the medical community’s part if they say they don’t know anything about Long COVID. There are very specific disease patterns and symptoms,” says Bakshi.

There is also a lack of support. The most proven management strategy for Long COVID or even any COVID infection is recovery and rest, says Bakshi. But that’s not possible for many people. Initially, in 2020, there was forced rest through quarantine periods, but that time off has become shorter, as employers don’t have to pay for employees to be off at all.

“We are not a society that is built on support. We’ve already set ourselves up to fail from a recovery perspective,” says Bakshi.

Jill has found validation in Bakshi’s clinic as one of her patients. But that experience stands out amongst a sea of specialists who have given up on precautions.

“Instead of recommending upgraded masks, air cleaners and UV, or working from home, immunologists that manage my condition recommend wearing a mask if you want and enjoying your life—as short as that may be. I am not sure if this is complacency, or giving up… Either way, education and change need to happen or far too many valuable lives will be lost and disabled unnecessarily,” says Jill.

Savvy AF.  Blunt AF.  Edmonton AF.

I love this sentiment because it’s so easy to explain.