In one episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine, they talk about how trans people have it difficult in prison. In the very next episode the sentence “Nothing is more attractive in a woman than the clear absence of a penis” is uttered.
It’s almost like B99 is a show made by liberals for liberals and its progressiveness is entirely performative.
Just want to point out since the post kind of glosses over the fact that the last sentence is uttered ironically by a gay character who is trying to pass as straight to distract a guard at a women’s prison. The running joke is that he believes straight people are transphobic and homophobic, so when he tries to pretend to be one, he acts that way. The joke is, no one around him acts like what he’s saying is off, making further commentary on how transphobic and homophobic our society is.
I am pleased to announce that I will soon be publishing an anthology of M/M sci-fi erotica with Carnation Books! At this time, I am looking for an artist to do the cover illustration. Yes, this is a paid job! 🙂
Here are some pertinent details. Send me an Ask to get the rest:
The deadline for the final art is November 30th.
Your contacts for this project will be myself (for the creative aspect) and Carnation’s CEO, Lee Douglass (for the business aspect).
I am a Cold War nerd, so I would like for the cover of the book to be somewhere in the “mid-century pulp sci-fi” spectrum. Below are some examples of what I mean. Ideally, the illustration will be an homage to this era, while also indicating that the book is M/M erotica. You will have the chance to read some of my never-before-seen stories to get ideas about the content.
Send me an Ask if you are interested, and be sure to include a link to your art blog/art tag and an email address.
In the fourth grade, we had to pick an inventor, dress like the inventor, and explain our invention. I decided to pick something off the wall (instead of, like, a light bulb), so I ended up doing my little presentation as George Crum. I remember reading about his work as a chef, learning about his shortness with customers, and the interaction (possibly apocryphal, although Crum certainly invented the potato chip) with the diner who kept complaining about his home fries being too thick.
I literally made a presentation as this man, and used a few websites and a couple encyclopediae (yeah, I’m old) to source all the data. I certainly know more than most people do about George Crum.
The point of all this is that, until I came across this post on Tumblr, I had absolutely no idea he was black. I’ve known who Crum was for over twenty years and never knew his race, because no website or encyclopedia thought it was worth mentioning.
Erasure is a fucking disease.
I also know the story about Crum, heard it several times–nobody EVER mentioned that he was black.
There’s so many historical figures I’m only realizing as an adult were other than the standard cis white straight male and I hate it
Fuckin’ I live in the town where chips were invented and didn’t even know that… 😦
Speck was born on July 15, 1824 in Saratoga County in upstate New York. Some sources suggest that the family lived in Ballston Spa or Malta; others suggest they came from the Adirondacks. Depending upon the source, his father, Abraham, and mother Diana, were variously identified as African American, Oneida, Stockbridge, and/or Mohawk. Some sources associate the family with the St. Regis (Akwesasne) Mohawk reservation that straddles the US/Canada border. Speck and his sister Kate Wicks, like other Native American or mixed-race people of that era, were variously described as “Indian,” “Mulatto,” “Black,” or just “Colored,” depending on the snap judgement of the census taker.
As for his name…well, Speck was effectively renamed by a white guy who couldn’t be bothered to remember who Speck was:
Speck developed his culinary skills at Cary Moon’s Lake House on Saratoga Lake, noted as an expensive restaurant at a time when wealthy families from Manhattan and other areas were building summer “camps” in the area. Speck and his sister, Wicks, also cooked at the Sans Souci in Ballston Spa, alongside another St. Regis Mohawk Indian known for his skills as a guide and cook, Pete Francis. One of the regular customers at Moon’s was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, although he savored the food, could never seem to remember Speck’s name. On one occasion, he called a waiter over to ask “Crum,” “How long before we shall eat?” Rather than take offense, Speck decided to embrace the nickname, figuring that, “A crumb is bigger than a speck.”
First, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, George Crum never made the claim that he had invented the potato chip, let alone claimed the tale as his own — those assertions emerged only many years after his death. Crum was, by some reports, the sort of cook that would have punished an overly demanding patron in the manner of the legend. He was also not a modest man. Had one of his fits of pique resulted in a popular dish, it’s highly unlikely he’d have been humble about it.
Second, in 1899, while Crum was still alive, his sister claimed in an interview to have been the one who invented potato chips. Says Dirk Burhans of Crunch! A History of the Great American Potato Chip:
The most credible version is that Katie Speck Wicks invented the chip in an accident not dissimilar to the culinary misfire in which the brownie was born (from a mix-up of cake and fudge). “Aunt Katie,” who also worked at Moon’s Lake House, was frying crullers and peeling potatoes at the same time. A thin slice of potato found its way into the frying oil for the crullers, and Katie fished it out. Noticing the chip, Crum tasted it and said, “Hm hm, that’s good. How did you make it?” After Katie described the accident, Crum replied, “That’s a good accident. We’ll have plenty of these.”
In 1917 Wicks’ obituary credited her as the inventor of the potato chip.
So the potato chip was invented by a black Native American woman, and was popularized by a black Native American man.
Okay, everybody, I don’t talk much on here but this is important and I can’t find any other posts about it here.
There’s a little app called Be My Eyes. It’s been on iPhone for a while now and on October 5th, it’ll be out for Android too.
What is Be My Eyes, you might wonder? Well, it’s a community of people helping people. Namely, sighted people helping blind people with simple tasks that require sight to be simple.
See the picture?
(for those who can’t see, the picture shows the app I’m action. It shows a phone camera pointed at two red cans of food. Text above depicts a sighted person explaining the right can is a can of tamatoes.)
In short, if you’re blind and have every had trouble finding your blue shirt, the app was made for you.
If your sighted and want to help, the app is for you too.
If you’re not, reblog and spread this so more people can see.
Okay, guys, this is an issue will probably get much less press than the attempts to end Obamacare, but it’s still important. Please spread this – they’re trying to slip it under the radar!
The United Nations proposed a law condemning nations who sentence people in the LGBT community, among other minorities, to death.
And the U.S. voted against it.
They refused to condemn countries who SENTENCE THE LGBT COMMUNITY TO DEATH!
The United Nations isn’t one of those gray areas. All of the laws and legislations are intentionally black and white. In this case, you either condemn killing the LGBT community for the sake of being gay/trans/etc. Or you don’t.
There’s no middle ground. There’s no interpretation. There’s no reading into it.
On October 3rd, 2017, the United States refused to condemn sentencing the LGBT Community to death. Which can only mean that they’re in favor of sentencing the LGBT Community to death.
I’ve had many people in the US ask me how they can help, and I’ll be honest that I haven’t had the time to sit down and properly think about it (doesn’t help that I have access to information on the internet for approx 15 minutes every day), but now I’m going to throw this out there. It’s going to be long.
Firstly, you need to understand the situation. Our infrastructure is destroyed. We have no power, in fact, the 4% of San Juan that managed to get electricity back lost it again. Last I read only 45% of the island had clean water services. This isn’t just a lack of food and water. In case you hadn’t heard, we’re also approximately $72 billion in debt, and this hurricane is estimated to have cost over $30 billion in damages.
You can send all the food and bottled water you want, and by all means please continue to do so because we are short on those, but there’s also a huge distribution problem. Many supermarkets have not been able to open again because of structural damage. People are making lines for hours to be able to get into the few that are operational again. Gas stations? 80% were supposed to open again by Tuesday, September 26, yet people are still making literally 8+ hour lines (this is not an exaggeration) in the HOPES that they will be allowed to get some fuel. Many banks are only dispensing cash, which is vital because the vast majority of establishments can only accept cash at the moment, and the lines for the atms also can take hours. People have 5am to 7pm to be able to do all these things in one day because of curfew. Some hospitals are running out of diesel already, meaning that their back up generators are shutting down, so all those patients are being transferred to government hospitals that were already understaffed and understocked BEFORE Maria.
To recap, in San Juan, where conditions are better, people are wholly dependent on cash to buy basic necessities, people have no power, in many cases no water, no communication with the outside world or the rest of Puerto Rico, no gasoline to get around, barely any places to get food, and entire hospitals are being evacuated. Literal boatloads of supplies are sitting in ports because the government can’t distribute them, and some ships are just sitting there with their cargo.
It’s much worse outside of San Juan. Entire towns have no working gas stations, no hospitals, no running water, and no operational supermarkets (on top of no power or communication). Maria destroyed the vast majority of our crops. Many of these towns were also hit the hardest by the hurricane and saw thousands of families completely lose their homes. Now back to the distribution problem: you can send tons of food and articles of basic necessity, but if the government is having a hard time distributing them in the metropolitan area, it’s literally downright impossible to get them to some of these towns.
But what about the aid that has already been sent? Not enough. We need more resources, personnel, money, everything. Many of the rescue personnel and federal authorities already here came weeks ago because of Irma’s devastation in other Caribbean islands and can’t focus entirely on the disaster in Puerto Rico. Like I said earlier, distribution and mobilization is one of the key problems. I go around San Juan and don’t see any of the people that came to help. Entire towns elsewhere in the island have not seen a single paramedic, soldier, or FEMA worker. The only places I’ve seen them are in the hotels they’re staying at, so there’s clearly a massive problem with mobilization.
American politicians? I’ve seen some pay lip service to the plight of Puerto Rico, but not a single package or proposal. Local officials had to beg Congress to notice what was happening. President Trump was kind enough to give $1 million of his vast fortune to efforts in Houston (notice the sarcasm), yet he hasn’t offered a single penny to efforts to rebuild Puerto Rico. He thought that criticizing NFL players exercising their right of free speech was more important.
So what can you, member of the diaspora or concerned non-Puerto Rican do?
1. Call your Congressmen and Congresswomen. Flood them with phone calls, go to their town halls, DEMAND that the crisis in Puerto Rico receive the attention and action it needs. Organize. Reach out to all Puerto Rican and Latinx organizations, come up with a coordinated strategy to make. Sure. We. Are. Heard. Live in Florida? You’re in a swing state. Use that leverage. Pledge to note vote for any politician that doesn’t do everything to help us.
Btw, Trump originally refused to lift the Jones Act for Puerto Rico (which he did for Texas and Florida after Irma), meaning we literally couldn’t receive foreign aid by ship. Now there’s a 10 day waiver, but that’s nothing, and it’s clearly being done to make critics shut up. He cares so little about us and making sure we receive the foreign aid we need that he said he didn’t want to suspend the Jones Act because the shipping industry was against it. The Jones Act has historically crippled the Puerto Rican economy ever since it was imposed on us in 1917. We need, at the very least, a months long suspension, and many are calling for a permanent repeal. Put pressure for that. Make him pay. Make everybody that’s against suspending the Jones Act pay in the voting polls.
Update: Trump is too busy playing in his golf courses to care about Puerto Rico, and he’s lording our $72 billion debt (Florida’s is $180 billion and Texas’s is $272 billion) against us in this time of humanitarian crisis.
2. Look for donation efforts and charities that are focusing on more than just food and water. We need to rebuild everything. We need the materials to rebuild, at the very least: – houses – roads – communication networks (i.e. cell service towers) – power lines and infrastructure – water infrastructure
3. We shouldn’t have to rely on just gas and diesel. We need other sources of energy (solar works very well in a tropical island) so that hospitals don’t have to literally shut down if the diesel runs out. If you have the knowledge of how to get those alternate sources quickly and efficiently to the island, please let it be known.
4. Do you work or have any connections to companies that would be willing to donate materials? I’m talking generators, materials for construction, hospital supplies, fuel, i.e. not just food and water.
5. There’s hysteria in the airports because flights are limited. People are making lines for hours, literally staying overnight, in the hopes of getting a ticket out. We need more flights and ships that can transport elderly, children, injured, sick, etc. out. Very importantly, these have to be AFFORDABLE, not the thousands of dollars that were being charged a few days ago. Pressure airlines and cruise companies to join current efforts.
6. If you work in a hospital, see if you have the capacity and personnel to take in patients from the island. The situation for those in need of hospital care and even basic medical services is dire.
There’s a lot more that can be done, and maybe some of my ideas aren’t even that good or feasible to begin with, but I wanted to get this out there before my service left.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 