Ben Freeman 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Looks like the Friday news dump is starting early, usually they wait until after the Sabbath starts. Must be a real doozy this week, yall

*snicker*

A granny square afghan in candy colored shades

It isn’t fancy yarn, but my neighbor starts college next year and I wanted her to have something pretty for her dorm

Source: archive.ph/taXyE

Service providers will be told to ask for birth certificates and interrogate service users to discover their "biological sex".

The guidance also ban trans men from female toilets on the basis that their presence would cause "alarm or distress".

They have no excuse for the baseline beliefs that made them easy prey. But that doesn’t mean THAT THEY ARE NOT BEING PREYED UPON. And this?? This is going to make the entire situation 1000x worse

So this person gets up in the morning, lingers over coffee for the news, spends the day on Facebook until the 11 PM news before bed.

So like, I’m not excusing them. They know, have met, have worked with people of all colors, they remember the Civil Rights movement

So when you combine that with bare bones both sides bullshit in which Hunter’s laptop is the same as documents stashed at Mar a Lago or a just-the-facts presentation of a Supreme Court decision that will destroy people’s lives w/o talking to the impacted people it just gets worse

which includes details of how herOic the cops were and a mug shot of a Black man. And this family member has (I believe) undiagnosed anxiety and whopping amounts of racism already so they’re the perfect target for this shit - eg: they won’t drive on the freeway bc “that’s where the shootings are”

I have an elderly family member in a major southern metro area who is addicted to local news.

This is already a PROBLEM because local news will report on every damn crime in the area -SHOOTING LAST NIGHT IN [MAJORITY BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD] type stuff

The Times understands that the guidance is still being finalised and it will not decree that services have to provide single-sex spaces, but that if they do - for example if a lavatory is intended for women - transgender women would be excluded from using it. To allow someone of the opposite sex to use the facilities would be very likely to amount to unlawful discrimination. It will also make clear that it will not be deemed as discrimination to exclude trans people from those facilities and that services will be allowed to request birth certificates to ensure single-sex services are protected.

It read: "A legitimate aim for excluding a trans person from a separate or single-sex service for their own biological sex might be to prevent alarm or distress for other service users. "A trans man might be excluded from the women-only service if the service provider decides that, because he presents as a man, other service users could reasonably object to his presence, and it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim to exclude him".

EHRC now saying that not only should trans people be excluded from sex segregated spaces, but ALSO those matching birth sex:

“A legitimate aim for excluding a trans person from … service for their own biological sex …to prevent alarm or distress for other service users.”
archive.ph/2025.08.07-2...

LOL 🤣

I don’t actually remember mine! Like Scout Finch, one does not live breathing

And THOSE kinds of things are the bare bones, sine qua non of community building going back to ACT UP and the Black Panthers. So get your fun and your information from real people and find out where you can pitch in and when you need a hand from us

And that’s asssuming something relatively benign like Chat GPT. Grok? I don’t even fkn know what Grok spews but I am for DAMN sure it’s harmful to the community.

And most important, if you don’t come you’re not using the food bank, rental assist programs, DV or STI protections, GLAAD or AA

You are stronger when you know how to figure out what you believe and what you do and do not know. And when you can assess that kind of thing - ESPECIALLY with troll farms and deepfakes and god knows what else out there - the whole community is safer

And for information? I have a master’s degree in how to find, share, and assess quality info. And I’m not bragging, it’s just something I bring to the table so that I can show you. That could be fake news or figuring out if your new girlfriend from Nigeria is the grand passion or a catfish

in it is MADE BY A HUMAN WITH LOVE. Even something as kitsch as a MCU flick - if somebody made it, and you watched it, you’re sharing something they made. If I also watch it, you’re sharing something with me. Which is, again, community

You’re not going to see the baby angel glowing with pride because they logged 1000 books before kindergarten or laugh at the squirrel who likes to futz around with the book drop or anything else

You’re also cheating yourself bc, and I do have Opinions about our collection, but everything

grownup’s back was turned and another grown up helped them up. That’s all it takes to strengthen community bonds!

But if you’re not coming in, because you think you have all the entertainment you need from slop, or you’re getting good information from the bullshit machine…

Librarian here! This is ABSOLUTELY the case. First thing is, we will do anything to get you in the door. If you’re in our space, you’re contributing to the community building we do every day. It’s little stuff you don’t even think about - this morning a toddler took a tumble while their 🧵

lost my voice shouting at my stupid falcon but the idiot just kept circling farther and farther away

Lol. Lemme know when you get there

A graph showing the difference in pricing of Overdrive audio from May 2022 through Mar/Apr 2025 and the relative increases.

Well, this is not something I needed to see before going home. I'm gonna forget about it at 4:30 and resume being pissed tomorrow morning.

If YOU would like to be pissed off today, though, here you go. www.readersfirst.org/publisher-pr...

I won’t give any spoilers but I will say this. AToTC gets a lot of well deserved credit for its opening line, but the last line is maybe better

Ahhh ok that does make sense

Also WHY are the Weasleys broke? His dad had a government job that required specialized training and skills! And was a law enforcement officer! Like get real

Well, I’m Jewish, which helped. You kind of have to work to distance goblins from antisemitism and making them greedy hoarding bankers is… uh… not it

REALLY pissed me off that Hermione couldn’t get at least Ron to gaf about the house elves, he ought to know about poverty and exploitation

Yeah, I wasn’t super into feminism except conceptually, but I came to it from Marxism and was like… hm, inherited wealth and power, except for the noble poor family who still always has enough to eat and owns their house, sometimes wealth is Bad but sometimes it makes a good person better like jfc

I came to them on a long car trip and I was desperate enough to keep going after The Goblin Thing became apparent and wasn’t really old enough to know I deserved more than fascism bad actually

The movies were fine because they leaned into worldbuilding which is her one talent, I think