You can see someone else also using the devices' second seat, and I think that's so cool. Mobility devices help everyone, here other employees also get a chance to sit while they're working. I just love mobility aids, man. It's like the cut curb effect

The Motherfucking Lizard King

No one at work trusts my boss. 

He's smart. He works hard. He's not trustworthy. He hasn't actually fucked anyone at work over, but he's ruined his last two marriages with affairs, and got dumped by his third fiance when he wouldn't sign a prenup. The fact that we all know this is just a hazard of working in a small town. 

Anyway: The thought process of the people in the lab is that if he screwed over his first wife, and his second wife, and was probably planning on screwing over his third wife, it would be insane for him not to screw us over. After all, what kind of idiot treats their employees better than their spouse? 

I dunno. His kind, I guess? He's had a few chances to fuck us over, and he hasn't taken them. Opposite really. When our parent company was doing furloughs, he stayed in the office almost a hundred hours, talking and talking and talking his way up the corporate ladder. And in the end, no one at our site got furloughed. 

He's pulled strings like that before. And it baffles me, right? Because it really does make zero sense. He'll move the heavens and the earth for us, but his wife and kids are afterthoughts. It feels like any moment, he's going to look into the mirror and realize how stupid that is. It feels like I'm betting on him making the same stupid mistake again, and again, and again - like it would be less cynical to believe he was, eventually, going to stab me in the back. But he hasn't yet, and as far as I can tell he's been making that mistake for close to fifteen years, and it's already cost him everything it can. If he was going to learn, he would have by now. 

So my position on him is that if he wanted to date someone I cared about, I'd warn them off. I don't trust him there. But I tentatively trust him to be my boss. Maybe one day he'll stick the knife in and twist, and everyone will say Ah, Babs, we warned you, but for now, I accept that he's doing a very predictable, very irrational thing, and I've made my peace with it. 

---

My job has glue traps. 

No one likes the glue traps, but we don't have a lot of options. Poison's banned by state law, spring traps are banned by company safety, and several non-lethal options tried in the past failed to work. The mouse problem can get pretty bad if it's ignored, and there's some real health hazards in that. Our site has never had a positive hantavirus test, thank God, but the big base about a half hour away has. That guy's gonna be on oxygen the rest of his life. 

If a mouse gets caught, we just euthanize it. But more than mice get stuck. Lizards can wander into those traps too, and the people working there have different feelings about the lizards. They don't pose nearly the same kind of risk mice do. They're chill little guys, and they keep the moths away, and they're just 

You know. They're friendly. There's something to be said about walking into a room, and hitting the light switch, and seeing two little guys on the wall start to do pushups as soon as they see you. 

People used to just euthanize the lizards too, but I had pet leopard geckos as a kid and I couldn't take that so I wound up googling how to free animals from glue traps. Now, when a lizard gets stuck in a trap - which happens once or twice a week - I get some vegetable oil from the breakroom, and a little plastic fork, and I'll spend fifteen to twenty minutes just kind of gently prying the little guys out. 

I have a team of technicians that help me operate one of the larger machines. They're real blue collar guys, ex-airforce, and they make me look like a little kid. Being an engineer means they'll look to me as a leader sometimes, which is a wild experience. And I started helping the lizards for my own conscience, but one of the crazier consequences of it has been that it seriously boosted my leadership cred. Because those guys see me, and they go: Hey. If he's willing to fight for a lizard, he's gotta be willing to fight for me. 

I cannot overstate how nice that is. Most engineers that want to make a change to a maintenance practice, or try an upgrade, they have to work their asses off to get the techs to buy in. But I can just ask. They already trust me to do good. They know I'm new, and they know I'm not the smartest engineer in the building, but they also know I'm the one who gets lizards out of the glue traps. 

And just because of that, they're willing to follow me. 

---

My boss has a meeting every month or two. It's typically basic house cleaning stuff - reminders about routines we've gotten lazy on, and updates on future projects. Maybe some warnings about problems coming from higher up in the company.

People are, in my opinion, a bit too cynical about the meetings. It stems from people not trusting our boss, which again, I understand, because it would make so much more sense if he wasn't trustworthy. It's a testament to the man's incredibly unhealthy priorities that he is. But as we made it to the end of the meeting, one of bullet points was: 

Do NOT mess with animals in the building. 

So I looked at my techs, and they looked at me, and when he got to the point, he was so scathing I actually just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. He said basically that he'd heard some reports about someone in the building handling animals that found their way in and got stuck, and that he just wanted to emphasize how insanely inappropriate that was, not to mention dangerous, and that if he needed to speak to anyone about it again, there would be severe consequences. 

I was willing to just take the shame and move on. I was. But one of my techs is old. Old enough he could've retired two years ago. And his actual literal goal is to one day get angry, yell at someone, and storm out. That's how he wants to retire. So instead of biting his tongue like everyone else, he stood up and said: I hate the glue traps. You hate the glue traps. We all hate glue traps. But we've all sat here for years, ignoring the little things that get stuck in them, watching them die, and then Bab's comes in, and he is the first person in decades to give enough of a shit to start pulling the lizards out. And I don't want him to stop. 

Get humane traps or shut up but we are not going back to the old way of just letting things starve. 

And my boss actually froze up. He got all wide eyed and stared at Marc, and then the other techs jumped in, and there was a very small but intense rebellion in the meeting and my boss kept trying to interrupt while getting absolutely bowled over by this gang of angry middle aged air force vets, and eventually he just went 

I will speak with Babylon about this afterwards! After! And then he will speak with everyone else, but I have more points to cover. 

So they went silent, and my boss rushed through the last five minutes, and we all adjounred. The techs really didn't like that I was going in alone - they thought our boss was going to try and shout me into compliance. Marc in particular was like, Look, if he tries bullying you, stand your ground, and if he threatens anything, just come get us, and we'll give him hell. 

So armed with that, I went to my boss's office. I sat in the chair across from him, and he kept his composure for maybe five seconds before just flopping back into his chair. 

I had no idea you were saving lizards, he said, but I'm glad you are. I always hated seeing them die in the glue.  

I wasn't expecting that. I was about to ask him what the comment from the meeting was about then, but he answered that before I even got the chance.

A snake got into the building last week, and - someone picked it up and chased a coworker around. Turns out that coworker was severely afraid of snakes, and now it's a shitshow. We're a small site, and now I can't ask those two to work together anymore, to say nothing about how the snake fared after all that. Being upset about that is a reasonable thing, right? 

And he gave me a look like he actually wanted an answer, so I said Yeah, totally, chasing a coworker around with a snake is a dick move. Especially if that coworker is already afraid of snakes. 

And he said Exactly! and then we sat there a few moments longer. He looked so incredibly tired that I did, actually, feel kind of bad for him. And then he somehow managed to sink even further into his chair, and said

Look, I know I'm not a good guy. But I'm not evil. I'm not some sort of crazy asshole that's going to demand that everyone watch lizards starve to death. When you go back downstairs, could you try to pass that on? That I'm not evil? 

I said Sure because it wasn't a hard request, and he looked relieved. I actually made it halfway out before I realized I had a question. 

Who grabbed the snake? I asked. 

Not supposed to talk about it, he said. But whoever comes to mind first is probably right. 

ThatGuy? I asked. And he looked me in the face, nodded his head yes, and said No. 

---

The techs seemed a little disappointed that they didn't get to storm the boss's office, but were otherwise in good spirits. They were actually a little bit embarrassed to hear about the snake story - apparently, it wasn't much of a secret. It'd just slipped their minds because it happened three weeks ago. 

We did maintenance after that, the same basic repairs we did every week. The meeting had been stressful and it was a relief to work with my hands. When the parts were reinstalled, everything cleaned and smooth and ready to go, Marc found me again. 

You know what the lesson of today is? he asked. And there were quite a few answers to that that I could have taken - from don't assume the worst of people to be careful with how you spend your trust - we all need it more than we think. 

But instead I said what? because I wanted to hear what his answer was going to be. 

That I got your back, he said. Then he clapped one very, very large hand on my shoulder, gave it a good squeeze, and walked back to dosimetry lab.

---

The next day, Marc gave me a package and told me to open it in my office. I was suspicious, but I followed the request.

Cardboard gave way to a small baggie, obviously full of fabric, which opened to reveal a t-shirt that read

"I Am the Motherfucking Lizard King."

I looked at it, I loved it, and then I got an idea. I went to my boss's office and knocked on the door. When he opened it, I asked him if he would be willing to allow something very unprofessional to happen for morale building purposes.

How unprofessional? he asked. I held the shirt up in answer. He gave the shirt a short look over and snorted.

You can wear it on weeks without customers, he said. Which just so happened to include that week.

I'll pass on that it came with your blessing, I replied, and he looked oddly relieved.

Thanks, he said. And then I went downstairs.

---

The techs were very, very happy to see the shirt. And while my boss's reputation remains in tatters, and probably will be until he moves (or dies), the next time there was a meeting, there was quite a bit less complaining about how mere presence. Which is, I guess, a start.

We'll see if he squanders it.

that Diana Wynne Jones interview where she’s like “I don’t understand why so many girls are into Howl, it must be because they want the challenge of fixing him” is so optimistic, like DWJ’s out here hoping I at least want to make him a more functional person as if “rogue academic turned melodramatic fashion disaster whose social skills Do Not live up to his own hype” is not a perfectly valid thing to be attracted to 

DWJ, a reasonable woman: behold this undesirable man. look at him, he dresses weird and he keeps emotional support spiders and doesn’t even question people moving into his house without asking and he has to reverse psychology himself into doing anything he’s actually supposed to do. 

every morosexual in a 100 mile radius: oh fuck yeah babey

god this isn’t even touching on the fact that Howl is??? apparently??? an ordinary-ass Welshman who was studying spells (????) at the doctoral level and then (somehow???) found a doorway into Actual Magic and promptly moved there to set up shop as a wizard with like five different names and two outfits but still goes home sometimes because he loves his niece and likes to hang out with the rugby lads (still working on processing Howl being a jock but?? okay), because PRESUMABLY all of this is supposed to further illustrate that Howl is an absolutely ridiculous sort of person but all I see is a man who made the exact decision I would make in a millisecond if given the opportunity 

Howl Jenkins is what happens when the overpowered ‘thrust into a fantasy world’ man… is not the main character.

Howl Jenkins is what happens when an a normal man gets thrust into a fantasy setting and is mostly excited to dick around and learn some magic to turn his hair different colors, only to realize to his dismay that being a powerful wizard means that people are going to ask you to actually do shit for them

Howl’s real name is just Howell which is one of the most generic welsh names ever and is like a guy named Steve going to a fantasy land and naming himself Stev.

Howl is supposed to be totally ridiculous yes but also supposed to abruptly in the middle of the story turn out to be Extremely Relatable.

We turn the black knob to the Mysterious Destination and afterward Sophie is more confused than ever (though not by much because she isn’t interested enough) but the audience has abruptly had ‘incomprehensible fantasy chaos wizard’ transmogrified before our eyes into an easygoing perpetual grad student with no job prospects whom nobody takes seriously, except he has a secret magic life, which is in fact only slightly less stupid and even more off the rails than the normal one.

poetry.

Just want to add: being invested in rugby does not make a Welshman a jock. It just makes him Welsh

As a longtime filmfan, this discourse makes me Real Excited to read the book.

so I thought this was about howl’s moving castle

it is

It’s also funny to me that DWJ was like, Chrestomanci (bisexual disaster wizard character whom she finds hot) is right there and doesn’t need fixing!! Chrestomanci is much hotter!

In the gulf between the wizards we get an idea of her own tastes and preferences, which is that she really digs a guy with resting bitch face.

BAH HAH

hello again (bill clinton limewire voice) my fellow americans

There are a few states that actually have Shield/Refuge laws designed to help trans people fleeing from trans-unsafe states, which also guarantee trans folks access to healthcare. These states are:

Additionally, some states have "trans sanctuary" executive orders signifying safety for trans folks seeking healthcare. These states are:

Living as a resident in these states means you are protected by state's rights and state government to continue or begin receiving trans healthcare. These laws have been codified in their states so everything has been a-ok'd by their state governments.

Stay alive. You got this. I love you.

Black folx don't get caught slippin. Crosscheck this list with these maps made by and thoroughly researched by tougaloo college.

They're a map of sundown towns across the u.s. one is interactive. also, side note, if you know a sundown town that isn't on there, please contact them and they will follow up on it.

ty for stealing this one much appreciated

people in the notes suggesting it was "improper" for the juror to do this or that it "introduced bias" to the court proceeding 🙄 the ice agent in question accused a moc of assaulting him / resisting arrest. how is the agent being a white supremacist not relevant. what universe are you living in

As a member of the world’s SECOND oldest profession, I assure you this is just one of many ways the justice system is systematically fucked up.

For anyone who wants to know how to fact check something you are told while on jury duty without getting fined:

First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”

And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.

Like, we can all agree that would be bad.

So even though these rules can contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.

So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?

The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.

The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”

The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” --- like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.

For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.

So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”

There are a lot of problems with our legal system, and I think one of the biggest is that jurors aren’t educated about what they can and can’t do. Juries have a lot of power, if (and only if) they know how to use it.

Reblogging for that last post, because frankly, “what to do as a juror” is one of those things the schools should really be teaching us. Serving on a jury is one of the most powerful rights of citizenship and everyone should be educated in how to exercise it correctly.

Also, jury selection is not the time to make a statement of your ACAB principles (unless you want to be certain of being dismissed). Act as bland and middling as you can so you might pass muster. Otherwise the jury will be stacked with authoritarians.

In New Zealand, juries don’t have to wait for deliberations to ask questions - they can pass a note to the judge at any time, who will discuss it with the lawyers with the jury out of the room, then give an agreed answer (often “That will be covered in cross- or re-examination”). In the cases I’ve heard, the questions have never been about something as substantive as the real meaning of a symbol, though, just attempts to clarify details like the order of events or about things that weren’t relevant to the charges (or lawful to ask, like a rape complainant’s sexual history).

getting diagnosed with POTS is weird because you just get strapped to a table until you pass out and then the doctor is like “I prescribe you french fries”

dear americans,

as a polish queer woman and human rights activist, i know exactly how you're feeling right now and what to expect from these elections. i lived through the 2015-2023 regime of pis, a right-wing populist party that divided families in the same way trump did. i’ve experienced the rise of fascism in poland, the influence of far-right parties like konfederacja, and their “santa’s little helpers”—ordo iuris, an ultra-conservative catholic organization (banned in many countries, mind you) that helped enforce a near-total abortion ban and runs anti-queer campaigns in public spaces. i supported the black protests in 2016 as a middle schooler when they first tried to ban abortion. as an adult, i actively participated in the 2020 women’s strike, running from police tear gas daily after they finally passed the ban. i supported friends who faced charges.

i’ve lived through intense homophobia in poland as a queer teen and adult. i survived the first pride march in my hometown, where far-right extremists threw stones and glass at us. i endured the anti-queer propaganda spread by the ruling party in state-owned media. i survived the “rainbow night,” poland’s own stonewall moment in summer 2020, when police arrested around 50 queer activists following the arrest of margo, a nonbinary activist. i survived the "lgbt-free zones," the targeted violence, the slurs from strangers on the street, and the protests i held against queerphobia. it was hard as fuck, but i survived.

but just because i survived, it doesn’t mean others did. many women died because of the abortion ban—marta, justyna, izabela, dorota, joanna, maria, and many others who didn’t survive pis’s draconian anti-abortion laws. milo, kacper, michał, zuzia (she was 12), wiktor, and other queer and trans kids and young adults took their own lives because of the relentless queerphobia.

despite all of this, our experience in poland can serve as a guide now. here are some tips for staying safe and how we, polish queers and women, organized under the regime:

if i forgot to (or didn't) include something, don't hesitate to reblog this post with other resources.

My personal theory about why queer people have a reputation for being weird and loud is that once you figure out that being yourself even in the most mundane and semi-normative way will piss people off you may as well throw off every trace of normative behavior and sensibility you don’t want because if you’re going to be hated anyways you might as well have fun with it

nobuddy feels like they have a sharp attention span these days, right? and we all just click “agree on terms of service” because its hard to love yourself sometimes, well

enter Terms of Service, Didn’t Read: a website and a browser addon that streamlines the terms of service of many popular web services to be read by the tech sunday drivers.

It’s graded from A (great) to E (awful) and if you have the addon you have access to the info about the website on your bar

this post came back to me like a dear son from war, hello ol boy

god grant me the strength to write my weird porn, the serenity to write my weird porn and the wisdom to write my weird porn

First time smut writer: Um. Hope this is OK? It's only a bit of smut at the very end of the epilogue and you can skip it, it's ok. So sorry, um. Oh dear me. Please don't judge me. Nobody read this omg what have I done 😳

Seasoned smut writer: *ringing bell* Come get uR PORNOGRAPHY! 10k pwp, it's KINKY AS HECK so share it with all your friends!!! If you've got any suggestions for my Kinktober just drop it in the comments, I will write whatever wet, messy & DOWNRIGHT FILTHY fic about these two idiots 👏

First time smut reader: I'd better read this as a guest so it's not in my history. I'm never telling anyone about this. Oh my god, how do people dare to comment, I could never.

Seasoned smut reader:

So, I guess as a middle range millennial, I now get to tell all you young queer kids that what you are feeling right now is exactly how it felt in 2004 when we re-elected George Bush, and not only that but many states put in bans against gay/same sex marriage at the time.

This is probably not comforting, but it is true, and it helps me when I feel hopeless: For every revolution there is a counter revolution, for every step forward there is a step back, that things may not be good forever but they will not be bad, either. That we clawed our way to get where we are and we can claw our way forward from here, too. Talk to your queer elders, the ones who have been here before and will be here again and who threw bricks at Stonewall.

When I was a child, if you got AIDS it was a death sentence. Now it isn't. Now you live on.

So I'll quote angels in america: You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.

thought this would be good to share.

People who are not afraid to text you 40 times in a row and don’t take it personally if you haven’t replied are literally the most valuable members of our society and should be recognized as such