Today (July 19th) is Changing Places awareness day!

[Image description: a photo of the changing places toilet with the features listed below /end ID]

What is a changing places toilet?

A changing places toilet is a toilet which can be used by disabled people like me who can’t use a standard accessible toilet. This may be because someone needs extra equipment, and/or room for carers to help them. The main features of the changing places toilet are:

Why raise awareness?

The lack of changing places toilet means it’s hard for disabled people like me to leave the house. It’s limits our ability to socialise, access work/education, exercise, travel, and even attend hospital appointments. (In the UK there are only 93 hospitals with a registered changing places toilet).

I have to plan my entire life around the few changing places toilet that exist, which massively shrinks my world. It’s incredibly difficult for me to travel (less than 2% of train stations in the UK have a changing places toilet), go days out, visit the hospital, and otherwise experience the world outside my house. Hopefully one day every event like Pride or music festivals will have a mobile changing places toilet, and there will be public changing places toilet with 24/7 access in every town, as well as changing places toilets in public buildings like leisure centres, libraries, museums, cinemas, tourist attractions and shopping centres.

More info including what you can do to help the UK campaigns for more changing places toilets can be found at changing-places.org

i was interested to learn more about changing places outside of the UK, and i found, from what looks like the same organization, this international map + this Florida/Georgia/Alabama project to install more, in case anyone is in the same area and would like to learn! we apparently only have one in my city, seven in my state, which is absolutely not enough to let people go about their days freely.

why is “report hate speech” not one of the default options with “report spam” instead of “report sexually explicit material”. i’m not a cop so i don’t care if people post hole & pole but i would love if i didn’t have to explain every time why it’s bad when there are nazis

If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.

This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:

If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I'm not hearing about that, so... Tree law!

The Studios: *speak*

Botanists and other Tree Experts:

My mom said when she used to go to business meetings at GM in Detroit in the 1980’s, they would close the sidewalks to “repave” them whenever the unions were preparing to strike, making it more difficult or impossible for them to protest outside. This is a thing, this has been happening for decades. They know what they’re doing.

The bosses hate you and think of you with contempt, and they will lie to your face while they make your life harder.

"Think of the two major possibilities here: Either the studios owe untold millions to their talents and paying it out will decimate their stock prices, or they owe so little because there really is no money in streaming and the bubble of their entire 21st century business model will burst in spectacular fashion. And make no mistake: this is a bubble. This is the inevitable climax of a stockholder-driven hunger for infinite growth, despite the fact that, by design, such a thing cannot and should not exist. The infection of Wall Street has overwhelmed the entertainment industry beyond repair, leading to cultural vandals like David Zaslav to be appointed with the callous duty of strip-mining decades’ of artistic beauty for pennies of tax write-offs. The past and future are frivolous in comparison to the short-term demands that the line keep going up."

waify petit anime girls are like sweets for a trans girl’s self image. nice and fun and not nearly as bad as some pearl clutchers believe but they can’t be the only thing you consume or you’ll feel like shit all the time.

Seeing a lot of sentiments like “this is why we need more fat trans representation” “look at images of real women instead” and that’s not wrong per se but I think the much more effective alternative is to meet real trans women and make friends with them and fall in love with them platonically or romantically.. the transmisogyny you’ve internalized melts away for their sake and a side effect of that is that you’ll find you’re a lot more in love with yourself as well!

huge and real and beautiful and true

You're not a bad person for wasting food because you forgot to eat it or left it out or didn't have the time/energy/executive function to prepare it or didn't have an appetite or whatever. Unlearn the guilt your parents taught you.

Yes if it's an option offer your unused food to someone else who can benefit from it, but you're not responsible for the whole world and forcing yourself to eat something won't save someone else from hunger.

if you see a suspicious looking ford explorer and can’t tell if it’s an undercover cop or not, look for the roof rails

these mfs

police model explorers don’t have them, the roof will be completely smooth other than possibly a fin or antenna at the back

i’ve found it to be the quickest and easiest way to tell, once you know what you’re looking for

In addition to that, here are some things I look for when identifying the secret police:

- can you see through the windows? SP have very darkly tinted windows, but if you can catch the light correctly you'll see they have the bars separating the back seat from the front. sometimes the extreme tint is an indicator by itself.

- does it have an odd addition to the driver side mirror? SP have hidden lights on their vehicles.

- does it have any markings? check if it has stickers, dealership tags, or anything that can identify it. if you find something, youre in the clear! if its generic plates and nothing else its another indication of SP.

- does it have extra brake lights? can you see additional unlit lights? those are the police lights.

- this one is for up close, but the driver will be in uniform if they're SP.

Stay safe folks.

but if there’s platonic kissing whats next??!!!!????? sex without romance??????!? romance without sex?????!!!!? friendship?????? friends with benefits????!!! platonic lOVE????? staying out of other people’s business???????? WHO KNOWSS

"i'm able-bodied but i have asthma"

"i'm neurotypical but i have depression"

"i'm able-bodied but i have low vision"

"i'm neurotypical but i have cPTSD"

i have some news for you all

You know that study that found when doing a blind taste test the majority of people prefer pepsi over coca cola so coke changed their recipe to taste more like pepsi, and people actually liked the new coke a lot less because the people who were buying coke didn't want it to taste like pepsi they wanted their coke to taste like coke. That's what a lot of the new changes tumblr is working on feel like.

we DO grow old and happy. btw.

And you find love and it stays with you.

important PSA about when your car is smoking

like literally smoking from the engine

white and you smell pancakes? it’s the coolant. panic and pull over, but you’ll live

a slight blue tinge? it’s the oil. panic and pull over, but you’ll live

grey, looks like fire smoke? gasoline; the most combustable and dangerous. pull over and leave the vehicle, pray.

sharing because i didn’t know this when my car started smoking white yesterday and i was so afraid for my life.

Reblogging because a dear friend of my Moms with mechanic experience told me the same thing when I got my license.

White or blue, you’ll pull through. But if it’s gray, get away.

Transphobes aren't attacking bathrooms randomly. It's not about protecting women and children, it's about preventing trans people from participating in public life.

Access to toilet facilities are essential to being able to participate in public life.

It's why society was so reluctant to introduce public bathrooms for women, because before that all public bathrooms were for men only.

It's why society was so reluctant to desegregate toilets for Black people.

It's why society was and is so reluctant to create disability-accessible bathroom stalls.

If a person can't access a toilet, then it's extremely difficult to impossible for them to participate in society.

So, the best way to exclude a group of people from society without putting up a literal sign saying "x group of people not allowed" is to prevent them from accessing the bathroom.

(Source)

With the actors and writers strike in the U.S., I'm reminded of this tweet from John Cho who got zero payment from a residual check.

[x]

this website's moderation sucks ass and it has a terrible bot problem and there are an enormous amount of bugs but thankfully we have a staff team hard at work not addressing any of these but instead making shitty ui changes that nobody wants

it’s funny to me how the logic behind tumblr’s new layout changes are to coddle potential new users, to make them feel more comfortable by giving them a layout that’s more familiar to navigate

…..by making the CURRENT users feel LESS comfortable by giving them a layout that’s LESS familiar to navigate.

they’re prioritizing a hypothetical scenario over their established, existing userbase, some of which (like me) who have been here for 10+ years