Latest Posts by thefrenchiestfry1616 - Page 2

Technically true.

The Rights of Disabled Americans Are Under Attack

We need to take action as soon as we can! Texas v. Becerra is an attack on disabled people and needs to be stopped.

What's happening? In the court case Texas v. Becerra, 17 states are suing the US government and because they are unhappy with additions made to Section 504 under the Biden Administration. They are asking the Justice Department to rule Section 504 unconstitutional!

What is Section 504? Section 504 is an extremely important law passed in the 1970s that protects disabled Americans from discrimination. If an entity, such as a school or hospital, receives money from the US government, it cannot discriminate against disabled people without losing that money.

Why are they asking for it to be ruled unconstitutional? In May of 2024, the Deparment of Health and Human Services issued updated guidelines for Section 504 to be more comprehensive and more specific about types of prohibited discriminatory actions against disabled people. Among these updated guidelines is an introduction that says (among many other things) that depending on the context, gender dysphoria could be a disability protected by Section 504. Naturally, because Republicans love to attack trans people, the Attorneys General of the 17 states, led by Ken Paxton of Texas, have launched a lawsuit about it.

Which states are part of the lawsuit? The 17 states are Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

What can I do to help? The most important thing to do is to spread awareness about this. Very few people outside of the disabled community are talking about this case, which is terrifying because without Section 504, disabled people will lose part of what protects us from discrimination. If you are not disabled, please talk about this!

Another thing that you can do to help is to contact the Attorney General of your state and ask them to take action! If you live in one of the states involved with the lawsuit, you can call the office of your Attorney General and ask them to withdraw from the lawsuit. If you live in a state not involved, you can contact your state's AG and ask them to file papers with the court in support of Section 504.

You might also want to contact your representatives in Congress to tell them about the court case and ask them to take action to protect their disabled constituents. Your Senators and Representatives may be able to contact the AG of your state or take other action in support of Section 504. Here is a sample phone script to get you started:

"Hi, my name is [Name] and I am one of your constituents living in [City/Town Name]. My address is [address] (this ensures that your message/phone call will be counted). I am calling today to ask you to take action to support Section 504 and protect the rights of disabled residents of [State]. The court case Texas v. Becerra is trying to make Section 504 unconstitutional, which would leave millions of Americans, including those in our state, vulnerable to discrimination. Please contact [Attorney General] and ask [him/her] to [withdraw from this case/file papers for this case in support of Section 504]. [You may want to talk about how Section 504 is relevant to your life either as a disabled person or as someone who cares about disabled people and/or civil rights generally.] Thank you for your attention."

I will also be contacting my representatives for my state's government and asking them to commit to protecting the rights of disabled people in my state, regardless of the outcome of Texas v. Becerra. Here is the script I will be using:

"Hi, my name is [Name] and I am one of your constituents living in [City/Town Name]. My address is [address] (this ensures that your message/phone call will be counted). As you may be aware, 17 states (including our own) have filed a lawsuit against the federal government in a case called Texas v. Becerra, which if successful would make Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act unconstitutional. This would make millions of Americans, including those in our great state, vulnerable to discrimination. I am calling today to ask you to commit to protecting the rights of disabled [state residents], regardless of the outcome of this court case. I hope that you will support or introduce state legislation that protects disabled [state residents] from discrimination and other forms of harm. [You may want to talk about your experience as a disabled person or someone who cares about disabled people.] Thank you for your attention and for your work as a legislator."

Where can I find more information about this case and about actions I can take? DREDF, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, has a page on their website talking all about this case and what you can do to help. They have sample scripts for contacting your state's Attorney General, as well as contact information for the AGs in all 50 states. They also held a community briefing recently where they talked about the changes to Section 504 that were introduced by the Biden Administration, what is happening with the court case, and what community members can do. The webinar recording is about 45 minutes long and can be found here.

Additionally, this website has information about the percentage of each state's population that is disabled, as well as other info. You may want to include that information when calling your various representatives.

The court will begin considering all information about the case on Tuesday, February 25th, 2025. This means that we need to act fast!

If we all come together to protect Section 504, I firmly believe that we can be successful. Let's do this!

Dudes healthcare is so fake. My ADHD meds are $940 without insurance. But they gave me a website of "coupons" which straight up looks like a scam website, and I got it today for $60! Just a coupon from a random website and it was $900 cheaper. America, I am confusion!! America explain!!

Star Wars Limbs Removed | by Inverse

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

One Piece | Manga Volume 47

↓ Full Blueprints of the Thousand Sunny Ship by Eiichiro Oda

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD.  If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?

I love being reminded that Sonic was literally 3 apples tall in the first movie

Audio

We should have more interpretations of Steve being just strange enough that once everybody really gets to know him they’re like “…this guy was considered cool?”

we should meet steve's parents in st5 but it should be joe keery in a wig and joe keery with a fake beard like in back to the future 2

Y'all have gotta get more insane about platonic relationships like you are about romantic relationships. We need to get more annoying about them NOW. I need to see more meta and losing our minds over them. Get more annoying NOW. More than that. More than that also.

Very stupid animation I made based on that 2003 concept art where it says Mikey listens to Jimmy Buffett

Middle East Eye

Thousands of pregnant women left without essentials in Gaza

As winter sets in, starvation, lack of sanitation and water scarcity exacerbate dire humanitarian conditions

@samiraaymaan A pregnant mother of four, facing malnutrition and asthma, has been displaced several times and is fighting to ensure the safety of herself and her children. Her campaign launched on June 22nd and has received minimal donations. Please support Samira and her family to help them survive and secure the funds necessary for evacuation as soon as the borders reopen.

DONATE HERE

Vetted by 90-ghost

I want to be the first person on the moon to shoot a sniper rifle at earth and hit a wasp nest.  my whole life so far is leading up to that moment

when your art program’s closing message hits you straight in the heart and makes you stop and contemplate the state of it all

Hey remember when US and Russia was all like “We’re the best!!! We’ve won the space race!!!!” But India sent a kick-ass space probe to Mars and the whole mission was fuel efficient, costed less and a roaring success in the first try and then they were like “…..wait no that can’t be true” and still have the audacity to call us “underdeveloped” or only view us as a ‘third world country’? :)

For anyone who needs more info, the probe was called Mangalyaan (which literally means space probe vehicle) or Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and you can also get more information here and here

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

They’re arguing about asking Tom and or Maddie to have take out for dinner, but they take it as serious as possible

This is the best thing I have ever created.

Do I even need to say anything about this one? It speaks for itself.

Like brother, like sister | The Bad Batch Happy on Pabu series

The amazing @crosshairlovebot wrote a cutest short fic inspired by this moment! give it some love here!

A Turtle By Any Other Name

Because I had a little too much time on my hands: a tally of the names everyone's favourite sewer family uses for each other throughout the first season of TMNT 2003!

Includes all direct addresses, names given to a third party, and names dropped during the the pre-episode narrations.

As you'd expect, a few expected trends jump out immediately - the impact of Leo's close relationship with his sensei, the A-team / B-team pairings, Master Splinter's determination to stick to the full names he chose thank you very much. But there were some interesting little quirks too!

• Leo narrowly wins the prize of being the top turtle on everyone's lips, scoring a total of 96 mentions over 26 episodes. Michelangelo is right on his tail with 94, though - and he does it without any Raph nicknames or a dedicated coma episode. That's talent.

• Leo returns the favour at least, hollering after everyone a whole 135 times. Raph comes in second with a respectable 99.

• Leo names Master Splinter 49 times to Raph's 17 - but fascinatingly, it's Raph who claims the only two references any of them make to Splinter being their father. Overall, the kids keep it respectful - "Master Splinter" or "Sensei" are the preferred addresses by far. Notably, while the older brothers might occasionally drop the Master, youngest Mikey does not.

• Who's playing favourites? Well, possibly Donnie - 52% of the time he's naming a brother, it's Michelangelo. Mikey, on the other hand, is pretty egalitarian, with only a few points of difference separating his bros (though Don's his favourite too).

• When the brothers full-name each other it doesn't necessarily mean they're mad, but they do tend to be making a point of some kind. It's fitting, then, that Leo follows in Splinter's footsteps by being one of the main culprits, and often reserves it for serious moments. Mikey, in contrast, is almost always making a jab ("poor choice, Raphael!" "Leonardo, you got some 'splaining to do..."). The middle children don't really go there at all - Raph drops a Donatello once in a narration, and otherwise makes a sweet gesture in reintroducing the new and improved "Leonardo" to the family following his recovery from Shredder's beatdown. And I have embarrassingly forgotten the context for Don's single Michelangelo... but I'd wager it was chiding.

• Donnie is the standout in having two diminutives that are used often and interchangeably by all his brothers, with only Leo showing a real preference (Don > Donnie). There wasn't any noticeable tone-mapping either; everyone just kind of switches it around whenever.

• There are a couple of Mikes in there too! Again, I don't think it lined up with any particular mood or scenario, besides dropping earlier in the season rather than later.

• Raphie is a rare and precious nickname reserved exclusively for little brothers (and sometimes Casey). As it should be.

• I expected Raph to be more of a nicknamer overall given his colourful speech patterns, but when you filter out all the off-hand 'bonehead' and 'oddball' insults, there's not actually that much going on. A single Fearless for Leo, a couple Brainiacs for Don...it'd be interesting to see if that changes at all as the show goes on. And in retrospect, maybe I should have counted his 'bro's.

• The single 'bud' Leo throws Don's way tickles me. He never does it again, and never does it to anyone else either! Early instalment weirdness?

as far as one piece antagonists go Crocodile truly gets absolutely scooby-doo’d at unmatched levels

He immediately falls for a phone scam and from basically little garden to rainbase he doesn’t even know the strawhats are alive (and clowning towards him at incredible speed). As soon as he does, they’re in his house tearing at his walls and bringing marines into his villain lair.

He uses a literal floor trap door over a gator pit to catch them, gets phone scammed again, full scooby-doo chase scenes after Chopper through the streets while still missing him, and suddenly his prisoners have escaped his impossible cage, and his giant bananagators are dead. and Nico Robin saw it all happen.

He then spends rest of the arc complaining about those meddling kids and their dog “strawhat pirates and their weird pet” and at no point does he even know how many strawhats there are.

Like yeah he keeps having plans on top of plans to stop everything Vivi can do but also she keeps coming up with a new thing to do (Tom and Jerry ass dynamic).

Part of it is that he’s underestimating them and keeps grandstanding villain monologuing but also teens keep killing hundreds of his grand line bounty hunters and he straight up does not know what is happening.

Cause he IS trying to kill them he’s sending top assassins after them and ripping out luffy’s organs, the whole time he’s yelling HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?? DIE. as whack-a-mole Luffy keeps inventing new ways to hit him.

the cook and the grill master

based off of this post by @melonteee on twitter