Mandy Rachael

Writing is my deepest passion. It's my absolute favorite thing to do. Aside from, apparently, every single chore in my house and every mindless little app on my phone and also laying on the couch staring up at the ceiling

AGREED

Putting pronouns in my bio helps me get a lot less "Dear Mr. Mohamed" or just "Mohamed" because Anglo speakers can't necessarily parse 'Premee' as a gendered name

the thing I love about Zohran’s campaign is that instead of “this place fucking sucks and I alone can fix it” his message is “being a New Yorker rules, we live in the best city in the world, let’s make it even better together”

show some damn pride in the places you want to govern

Florida locals defy Ron DeSantis by restoring Pulse rainbow crosswalk People took matters into their own hands after the commemorative crosswalk was removed, and drew it back onto the ground.

There are still good, kind, decent people in the world

You just need to know where to look

www.newsweek.com/florida-loca...

Trump Budget Office Is Withholding H.I.V. Funds That Congress Appropriated

Trump proposes to rescind AIDS funds. Congress rejects the proposal. So Trump and his henchman Russ Vought just refuse to spend the money and try to hide that decision from Congress and the public. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/h...

Six NYRB Classics: My Death by Lisa Tuttle The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner Other Worlds by Teffi The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington Ghosts by Edith Wharton

Six recommendations from NYRB's Horror & the Supernatural sale.
readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/08/23/n...

29 years ago today, Jamiroquai released the music video for 'Virtual Insanity'

He was very good in person with his trans fans too. Growing up going to SF cons, I met many trans people before I even knew what trans meant. I gave my parents very little they needed to accept in their child, so they had lots left over for everyone else. 😉 www.thepinknews.com/2021/08/06/t...

a chicken with a red comb and yellow beak Alt: a chicken cartoon with a red comb and yellow beak

Actual text from me to my bestie, 11:45 pm: "I am trying to decide whether to read a tragic French novel about a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship or a Sapphic romance novella about a Victorian chicken breeder."

So much to read, so little time!

Health Canada has authorized the LP.8.1 variant adapted Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for individuals aged 6 months and older. The updated COMIRNATY® vaccine targets the Omicron LP.8.1 variant, one of the most recently circulating SARS-CoV-2 lineages. It will be made available this Fall across Canada.

Health Canada has authorized the LP.8.1 variant adapted Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for individuals aged 6 months and older.

The updated COMIRNATY® vaccine targets the Omicron LP.8.1 variant, one of the most recently circulating SARS-CoV-2 lineages. It will be made available this Fall across Canada.

Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

This helped me today. Small Kindnesses, by Danusha Laméris

Reminder: striking workers ordered back to work by the government are STILL ON STRIKE. They are working under duress. I encourage Work to Rule tactics to resist their exploitation. TL;DR: This is bullshit.

Association of COVID vaccinations and treatments with long COVID beyond 6 months: a case-control study on the adult population in a large integrated healthcare system in the United States from 2020 to... Long coronavirus disease (Long COVID) is a chronic condition causing significant long-term disability and economic burden. This study aims to measure …

A few study highlights:

Increasing number of vaccinations further decreases Long COVID 23–36 %

Remdesivir reduced Long COVID by 69 %.

Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir) reduced Long COVID by 95 % -
effect was independent of up to three vaccination doses.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Conservative Carney wasting no time busting this strike.

Never let anyone tell you they give a shit about the little guy or wealth equality if they systematically attack and dismantle one of the only means of supporting both!

development organizations years following the Effectiv brown.edu Private rimination laws, over the ten 10. t h he exception of actions to enforce this Agreement, the United States agrees not to institute any civil action or other adverse agency action against Brown, its officers, Corporation members, directors, agents, and employees (the "Brown Releasees) based on the Released Claims. The United States releases the Brown Releasees from any liability related to the Released Claims. The United States is not releasing Brown or the Brown Releases from any other liability. 11. The University will take the following steps to ensure compliance with Title IX and its implementing regulations, by providing safe and equitable opportunities and spaces for women: a. Brown Athletics facilities, the University willprovide female student-athletes with intimate facilities such as locker rooms and bathrooms strictly separated on the basis of sex. b. The University will define "male" and "female, for the purpose of all practices, policies and procedures adopted and implemented by the University for any athletic opportunity, event, competition, category, program, or activity designated for women, consistent with the definitions 3 adopted in Executive Order 14168, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and estoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Jan. 20, 2025), and Executive Order 14201, Keeping Men out of Women's Sports (Feb. 5, 2025). c. The University will offer women the option of female-only housing, restrooms, and showering facilities, and for these purposes will adopt the abovementioned definitions of "male' and "femalc." d. The University will ensure students have access to single-sex floors in on-campus housing, using the above-mentioned definition. 12. h University will not perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child's appearance with an identity that differs from hi…

president.brown.edu Private BROWN 5. Addressing government requirements for "male" and "female" defnitions for athletics and on-campus housing, as well as limits on gender-affirming care As we have for decades, Brown has agreed to abide by Title IX and NCAA eligibility rules regarding the participation of transgender athletes in intercollegiate sports. We also committed that the University will continue to provide housing and restroom access in a way that allows for gender- inclusive, women-only and men-only options. The agreement also states, The University will not perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child's appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex."' The University will refer affected students who seek care from Student Health Services or the University Pharmacy to area specialists. The agreement does not affect medical teaching or training, and does not apply to clinical services provided by health systems that are separate entities from Brown, such as Brown University Health and Care New England. We remain fully commited to serving the health needs of all Brown students in a manner consistent with our long- established policy of nondiscrimination, which includes sex, gender identity and gender expression. The LGBTQ Center, Student Health and Wellness Services, and other offices in the Division of Campus Life, as well as the Warren Alpert Medical School School of Public Health. the College,

Brown University is caving to Trump.

They are banning trans women from female bathrooms, dorms, locker rooms, and sports across campus. They're also cracking down on trans care for minors, though that is unlikely to be broadly impactful since it's a university.

president.brown.edu/president/br...

No.
GAI might have some place in some fields and use cases but i fail to understand this rush/push to force it nonconsensually into every field in existence, while people who do not study or work in our fields condescendingly tell us how AI will be good for us

So much for ‘Canada strong’: Mark Carney’s cuts to the public service are a brutal trade-off The Liberals are pondering cuts so deep, they’ll outdo the Harper government and rival Paul Martin.

Sashing the CBC, one of Canada’s few remaining shared cultural unifiers, at a time of existential national crisis, will only weaken the country. These moves, like Carney’s overall agenda, are the product of an out-of-date conservative economic ideology that is utterly unsuited to today’s world.

As I wrote yesterday, It's when you assemble the whole picture that you have to raise the question if the intention is to destroy this country and whether this country is in fact being destroyed. Here's some more destruction.

You’d think someone might ask why distributing aid in Gaza has proceeded like the opening twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan, every day, for weeks. Is it normal to fire machine guns at starving civilians trying to collect flour? Because we are currently at one, two or three massacres *per day*.

the lesson of this isn't that tucker carlson is actually good but that you should ask these people basic factual questions instead of bullshit about politics

Yes, he's trampling on the Charter, steamrolling Indigenous rights, bending the knee to Trump, planning to cut public services, going backwards on climate, and signaling that we'd be dragged into war with Iran, but presumably it's still too soon to criticize Carney.

If covid vaccine was wasted, it was because the government arbitrarily withheld access and deliberately undermined the promotion of its necessity from Albertans.

Like I'm here in LA in the middle of the shit and things are Very Bad

The guy who claimed Indigenous bands “asked for” residential schools has a seat in Parliament. Ugh

democrats need to call this shit what it is: Weird

HHS plans to cut the national suicide hotline’s program for LGBTQ youth In February, the program received an average of 2,100 contacts per day.

They received an average of 2100 calls a day...

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

SCOTUS conservatives seem eager to increase parents' religious rights in public schools Tuesday's arguments over Montgomery County schools' story-time sessions included alarming questions about LGBTQ people.

It was disturbing to be in court today.

As I wrote:

[I]n an alarming sign for LGBTQ people, it was clear that at least three of the justices believe that describing queer people accurately — acknowledging their equal existence — amounts to taking sides or trying to “influence” children.

I don't really care what the "political consequences" are of fighting for the proposition that *everyone* is entitled to due process before they are removed from the United States and sent to a Salvadoran prison.

It's not really a principle if you only adhere to it when it's politically expedient.

Photo of Senator Chris Van Hollen with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.