If you live in the US and you have a phone you need to keep secret for any reason, make sure that it is turned off at this time.
Yes, I'm doing this months in advance, and yes, my blog has very little reach, but I figure better to post about it more than less.
Please reblog and add better tags than mine, I'm bad at tags.
I don’t have food stamps but I need to know how to eat well for $4/day. Thank you for this.
I love this cookbook!
Tips and tricks on how to survive being working class.
I’ve seen this kind of thing before and a lot of them are full of random weird shit you’d never make…because of time constraints or like, it just sounds super gross.
But this one had a whole section that’s just “Things on Toast”. Another that was all about putting crap in your oatmeal to make it better. Those are fairly pedestrian and don’t take forever.
I haven’t looked through the whole thing yet but so far it’s actually pretty practical. Also if you’re broke like me and don’t know how to make Dal, you should get on that.
I also liked that there’s this at the beginning:
This book isn’t challenging you to live on so little; it’s a resource in case that’s your reality. In May 2014, there were 46 million Americans on food stamps. Untold millions more—in particular, retirees and students—live under similar constraints.
Been there. Done that. Advice on this art is always welcome.
The link above seems to be broken; here’s one that still works.
The Good And Cheap cookbook is 100% free as a PDF download from the author’s website and is available in English and Spanish. It is practical, tasty, easy, and kind. Physical copies are one of my top “so you have your own place now” gifts. Highly recommend.
(note that the PDF is oriented the same as the physical book - two square pages - so it’s more landscape format and might be difficult to read on a phone)
This is such an important and genuinely terrifying post. I could completely go off on the rise of anti-science, but for now I’ll just add: it isn’t just boomers that get deceived. This is a warning to all of us.
Pay ATTENTION to what you are being told. If you think you cannot be deceived, you leave yourself open to deception. Question, doubt, research research research. Learn about your personal biases, dig up any subconscious cognitive dissonance. Keep an eye on your mind.
It needs to be stressed that biases, not a lack of intelligence, is very much the issue here. Being aware of the need to fact check yourself is key: Intelligence won’t protect you from bad or unhealthy mental states, or keep you safe from cults of any sort. Intelligence will just make it easier for you to rationalize and attempt to justify the malformed tools you’ve taken/been given to yourself and others. You need to be wise enough to challenge yourself.
As a cult survivor, this is lethally accurate.
Because I'm only seeing other Jews posting about this, non-Jews I need you to be aware that for the past month or two there has been a wave of bomb threats and swattings at synagogues all across the US. They usually do it when services are being livestreamed. I haven't seen a single non-Jew talking about this. High holidays are coming up in a few weeks, which is when most attacks happen against our communities. We're worried, and we need people to know what's happening to us.
this is awful on its own, but on top of everything else it has lead to cops and other law enforcement swarming synagogues, which is a one way ticket to all jews of color feeling too unsafe to enter. This is a fucking nightmare
the general population’s education of indigenous american cultures is literally painful like people walk around not knowing that native americans domesticated dogs and turkeys, that many communities had farms that stretched for hundreds of miles, that many communities had completely terraformed their territories, that there were native trade systems stretching across the continent, that there were native metalsmiths before european arrival, that most native people were multilingual etc
also fed up with peoples assumption that sedentary cultures were “more advanced”. like sure, they had technology that hunter gatherer cultures didn’t, but that’s because the hunter gatherer cultures didn’t need those technologies. hunter gatherer cultures have their own ways of doing things, and they do it that way because it works for them. like what if i called you less advanced because you don’t know how to make a serrated arrowhead, and you don’t know how to work a bow drill or an atlatl or a long bow.
Hey, if you’re non-Native/not indigenous like me, I found this book to be helpful. It comes both as the original text for adult audiences and a version for young people that felt kinda like the history textbook I should have had in fourth-sixth grade.
Something deeply painful is the fact that seasons, especially fall, dont feel the same. Not because of individual maturity but because climate change has impacted the weather patterns so so so much that we cant even experience the same annual shifts that our ancestors have for centuries
I feel displaced, i yearn for the spring, summer, fall, and winter that i can barely remember experiencing
To make things worse, if you’re under 50-60 years old, you can’t even remember what normal seasons were like because you weren’t alive to experience them
In the graph above, you can see how there’s a clear tipping point in the late 1970′s, which is when global temperatures first began to really skyrocket.
I was born in 1997, so about 20 years after this shift occurred. There is an immense difference between the climate now and the climate I remember growing up in, but the way I experienced the seasons in my childhood was already fundamentally different from what the seasons were supposed to be like! My parents were pretty much the last generation to experience a normal climate, and that’s just... incredibly sad
I am processing this information in a normal way devoid of rabid rage and bloodlust i am processing this information in a normal wa-
I'm just old enough to remember the tail end of real seasons. I can't express how different it is now.
There used to be a whole ice skating industry in the city where I grew up.
When the lakes and canals criss-crossing the capital froze in November, little wooden huts would go up along the brinks where you could rent ice skates, buy hot mulled wine and baked goods, there was a guy that would sharpen your skates for a better grip on the ice. Used to last into March.
I remember begging my parents to get me ice skates for Christmas in fourth grade. I went skating almost every day after school.
In sixth grade, the lakes and canals didn't freeze that winter, not so they were safe to skate on.
They never froze again.
Horrible fact of the day: Chevron just released a new boat fuel that WILL give you cancer.
Not "might", not "could", WILL. It has a cancer ratio of 1:1, as in, in a group of 10 people, ALL 10 would contract CANCER.
The EPA's safety limit is 1:1,000,000 as in 1 in a million people get cancer.
The EPA approved it anyways. I am not joking. The EPA approved a boat fuel that has a near 100% chance of giving someone cancer. It has such a good chance of giving someone cancer that if you DIDN'T get cancer YOU WOULD BE AN OUTLIER.
Fuck the oil industries.
this is just .
Like the guy said. Sometimes the things you need to do to heal might feel silly, but don’t let that stop you.
Heal yourself.
This is so beautiful and affirming.
CHEERS TO GUY WALTON FOR “OUTING” THE FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES
From the article:
Walton has devised his own criteria for named heatwaves in the US, based on duration and extremity, on a one to five scale similar to hurricanes. Heatwave Chevron is classed as a four and is “historic”, Walton said. The meteorologist said he has a list of 20 oil and gas companies – including Exxon and Shell – for upcoming heatwaves and will turn to coal companies if he runs out of names.
Y'all know what to do. Use Walton's naming system. Make it catch on.
Our system is broken. It is cruel. It is dehumanizing, degrading, and it’s vile nature is so, so unnecessary.
We need universal healthcare today in America. We needed it 40 years ago. It’s cheaper, it’s simpler, it’s more efficient, it’s more effective and it is so, so, so much less cruel than what we have.
Additional sources/references:
I can’t tell you where or how to activate to help solve this. There are politicians, groups, and activists pushing for this in so many ways. I can tell you when, though.
Now.
Tumblr flagged this post as sexually explicit and it's literally just a trans dude in high fantasy art.
Make it make sense.
I've been rolling something around in my head.
If everyone receives Minimum Basic Income, what happens to all the relationships where one of the individuals no longer has to depend on the other(s) to survive?
Just let that marinate for a moment.
Not just the economic landscape but the social landscape could be transformed.
Not for nothing, but this is literally part of the entire point of Universal Basic Income.
When abused people can just literally walk away, knowing they can still have enough money to live, the world will be a lot less sheltering of abusers and that is a massive fucking benefit.
It gets better than that, if we go with my ideal UBI scenario, in which we peg UBI to "enough to live in any major metropolitan city in the country" and do NOT adjust it for cost of living.
Suddenly, the poverty and scrabbling for survival of rural areas? Gone. That UBI will go a whole long fucking way out there. Suddenly, people who had to move to the cities to get jobs that paid enough? Can afford to move back. Heck, they can afford to get decent fucking broadband out there and continue working, just, not in the city. Suddenly, people who live in rural areas but want to move to the cities with like-minded people? That's affordable, too. Suddenly, people who want to have a bigger house, but are stuck in a tiny apartment in a city? They can afford to move out to where there are bigger houses.
Universal Basic Income would realign our whole damn society, and I think it would long-term be for the better.
I was already pretty sure I was onboard with this, but now I am really leaning towards wanting more trials and wanting to push it further sooner.
I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.
When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day. Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.
Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.
They’ve also recently discovered a lost Native American city in Kansas called Etzanoa It rivals the size of Cahokia, which was very large as well.
Makes me happy to see people learn about the culture of my country :D
Also, please remember that the idea of a nomadic or semi-nomadic culture being “less intelligent”, “less civilized” (and please unpack that word) was invented by people who wanted to make a graph where they were on the top.
Societies that functioned without 1) staying exclusively in one location or 2) having to make complicated, difficult-to-construct tools to go about their daily lives… were not somehow less valid than others.
The state had to prove to a jury that feeding the homeless is a criminal act and in doing so, probably convinced a few members of the jury to sign up for food not bombs lol.
This is a great time to remind everyone on here about Jury Nullification
The biggest male privilege I have so far encountered is going to the doctor.
I lived as a woman for 35 years. I have a lifetime of chronic health issues including chronic pain, chronic fatigue, respiratory issues, and neurodivergence (autistic + ADHD). There's so much wrong with my body and brain that I have never dared to make a single list of it to show a doctor because I was so sure I would be sent directly to a psychologist specializing in hypochondria (sorry, "anxiety") without getting a single test done.
And I was right. Anytime I ever tried to bring up even one of my health issues, every doctor's initial reaction was, at best, to look at me with doubt. A raised eyebrow. A seemingly casual, offhand question about whether I'd ever been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Even female doctors!
We're not talking about super rare symptoms here either. Joint pain. Chronic joint pain since I was about 19 years old. Back pain. Trouble breathing. Allergy-like reactions to things that aren't typically allergens. Headaches. Brain fog. Severe insomnia. Sensitivity to cold and heat.
There's a lot more going on than that, but those were the things I thought I might be able to at least get some acknowledgement of. Some tests, at least. But 90% of the time I was told to go home, rest, take a few days off work, take some benzos (which they'd throw at me without hesitation), just chill out a bit, you'll be fine. Anxiety can cause all kinds of odd symptoms.
Anyone female-presenting reading this is surely nodding along. Yup, that's just how doctors are.
Except...
I started transitioning about 2.5 years ago. At this point I have a beard, male pattern baldness, a deep voice, and a flat chest. All of my doctors know that I'm trans because I still haven't managed to get all the paperwork legally changed, but when they look at me, even if they knew me as female at first, they see a man.
I knew men didn't face the same hurdles when it came to health care, but I had no idea it was this different.
The last time I saw my GP (a man, fairly young, 30s or so), I mentioned chronic pain, and he was concerned to see that it wasn't represented in my file. Previous doctors hadn't even bothered to write it down. He pushed his next appointment back to spend nearly an hour with me going through my entire body while I described every type of chronic pain I had, how long I'd had it, what causes I was aware of. He asked me if I had any theories as to why I had so much pain and looked at me with concerned expectation, hoping I might have a starting point for him. He immediately drew up referrals for pain specialists (a profession I didn't even know existed till that moment) and physical therapy. He said depending on how it goes, he may need to help me get on some degree of disability assistance from the government, since I obviously shouldn't be trying to work full-time under these circumstances.
Never a glimmer of doubt in his eye. Never did he so much as mention the word "anxiety".
There's also my psychiatrist. He diagnosed me with ADHD last year (meeting me as a man from the start, though he knew I was trans). He never doubted my symptoms or medical history. He also took my pain and sleep issues seriously from the start and has been trying to help me find medications to help both those things while I go through the long process of seeing other specialists. I've had bad reactions to almost everything I've tried, because that's what always happens. Sometimes it seems like I'm allergic to the whole world.
And then, just a few days ago, the most shocking thing happened. I'd been wondering for a while if I might have a mast cell condition like MCAS, having read a lot of informative posts by @thebibliosphere which sounded a little too relatable. Another friend suggested it might explain some of my problems, so I decided to mention it to the psychiatrist, fully prepared to laugh it off. Yeah, a friend thinks I might have it, I'm not convinced though.
His response? That's an interesting theory. It would be difficult to test for especially in this country, but that's no reason not to try treatments and see if they are helpful. He adjusted his medication recommendations immediately based on this suggestion. He's researching an elimination diet to diagnose my food sensitivities.
I casually mentioned MCAS, something routinely dismissed by doctors with female patients, and he instantly took the possibility seriously.
That's it. I've reached peak male privilege. There is nothing else that could happen that could be more insane than that.
I literally keep having to hold myself back from apologizing or hedging or trying to frame my theories as someone else's idea lest I be dismissed as a hypochondriac. I told the doctor I'd like to make a big list of every health issue I have, diagnosed and undiagnosed, every theory I've been given or come up with myself, and every medication I've tried and my reactions to it - something I've never done because I knew for a fact no doctor would take me seriously if they saw such a list all at once. He said it was a good idea and could be very helpful.
Female-presenting people are of course not going to be surprised by any of this, but in my experience, male-presenting people often are. When you've never had a doctor scoff at you, laugh at you, literally say "I won't consider that possibility until you've been cleared by a psychologist" for the most mundane of health problems, it might be hard to imagine just how demoralizing it is. How scary it becomes going to the doctor. How you can internalize the idea that you're just imagining things, making a big deal out of nothing.
Now that I'm visibly a man, all of my doctors are suddenly very concerned about the fact that I've been simply living like this for nearly four decades with no help. And I know how many women will have to go their whole lives never getting that help simply because of sexism in the medical field.
If you know a doctor, show them this story. Even if they are female. Even if they consider themselves leftists and feminists and allies. Ask them to really, truly, deep down, consider whether they really treat their male and female patients the same. Suggest that the next time they hear a valid complaint from a male patient, imagine they were a woman and consider whether you'd take it seriously. The next time they hear a frivolous-sounding complaint from a female patient, imagine they were a man and consider whether it would sound more credible.
It's hard to unlearn these biases. But it simply has to be done. I've lived both sides of this issue. And every doctor insists they treat their male and female patients the same. But some of the doctors astonished that I didn't get better care in the past are the same doctors who dismissed me before.
I'm glad I'm getting the care I need, even if it is several decades late. And I'm angry that it took so long. And I'm furious that most female-presenting people will never have this chance.
This is, by the way, why the anti-vax movement is mostly women. Why women are the most outspoken voices, most active in protest.
Because they know damn well the medical industry lies to them, ignores their questions and complaints, and when they have real serious issues - tells them to lose some weight.
So along comes this thing, this kinda-sorta "cure" for a disease (that we all agree is an Actual Fucking Problem), and they ask: What are the side effects? How common is it to have real problems from the vaccine?
And the answer is: *pat her on the head* never you mind all that, little lady; this is what you need, what your family needs, what your children need... we promise. Well. Not "promise" in the sense of "you can sue us if we're wrong; not that kind of promise. But we're doctors and you're not, so, just listen to us and do what we say.
And at some point, it doesn't matter how much truth, how many facts, are behind their statements - there are women who are not buying any of it anymore.
The anti-vax movement also has plenty of wacko conspiracy theorists and people who believe in mind-control chemicals and just plain "I break all rules" assholes. But the core of the movement, the reason it's got political power and isn't just a blip of weirdos, is not wingnuts; it's women who distrust the entire medical industry. Because. Well. The entire medical industry has been ignoring them and lying to them for a very long time.
You can't reach them with facts. You have to give them a reason to trust doctors.
