Good Things Friday (216) and Link Love
April 14, 2023
1. ACTIVISM: I’ve long asked friends in Florida what we can do to support their fight against fascism.
Today, Equality Florida took the extraordinary step of issuing a travel advisory, warning of the risks posed to the health, safety, and freedom of those considering short or long term travel, or relocation to the state. The move comes in response to a wave of safety inquiries Equality Florida has received following the passage of laws that are hostile to the LGBTQ community, restrict access to reproductive health care, repeal gun safety laws, foment racial prejudice, and attack public education by banning books and censoring curriculum.
@michelleerin said about companies in Florida:
And they don’t care about me but they care about you. They need the out of state tourists.
So I’m going to start looking up companies in Florida that we would hypothetically visit if we were to travel there and put pressure on them to lobby against the current wave of terrible laws.
2. We shipped what’s become a quarterly allotment of treats for Penny’s students and my heart is warmed. As always I can’t do this alone and I super appreciate friends in the community pitching in to make it happen.
JB is full of ideas for the next allotment already.
Twitter friends are VIPs in my classroom.
“Miss! Who keeps sending us all these treats?!”
“Amazing people who want to make school a little bit better.”Thank you so much for this and all the other treats, @RevAGSL, @RooibosandRose, @Mrs1500, @StephTheBlogger and @KKnight213! pic.twitter.com/z0cqFO5nI4
— Penny (@picksuppennies) April 13, 2023
Oh HELL no, Scholastic! Scholastic, and a Faustian Bargain. We’ll be buying Love in the Library from Candlewick, and Scholastic can fuck off for this. Also I’ll be contacting Scholastic directly about this. They need to hear from us.
This fight over mifepristone is something else. I’m glad someone is speaking up against the absurdities that Kacsmaryk and the Fifth Circuit are pulling. I’m also glad for some insights into this from Law Twitter because I wasn’t following the arguments at first: The FDA Should Not Enforce the 5th Circuit’s Indefensible Abortion Pill Decision
The Missing Missing Reasons (Down the Rabbit Hole, The world of estranged parents’ forums)
Bird flu kills 3 California Condors; more cases pending. Emergency donations requested.
Overlooked No More: Alice Ball, Chemist Who Created a Treatment for Leprosy
This is infuriating. Groundwater Gold Rush: Banks, pension funds and insurers have been turning California’s scarce water into enormous profits, leaving people with less to drink
I’m an utter flop at geometry and proofs but this is cool: 2 High School Students Prove Pythagorean Theorem. Here’s What That Means
“Someday When I Retire“: I continue to hope that, while I do use this phase, it’ll be in service of a much earlier and longer term retirement than the standard expectation. We aren’t bare bones at all, what with our extravagant daycare and mortgage, and eating multiple meals a day and serving our cars when we should and not at the absolute last minute and such. (Yes, if you’re new here, that’s a bit tongue in cheek as I remember my desperately broke days.) I do continually make choices to live below our means so that retirement can, we hope and plan, be earlier than 65 by a long stretch. It’s still better for me emotionally and mentally not to put a date on it since I’ve got a couple reasons not to rush, though.
This quote from the missing missing reasons, “The first viewpoint, “emotion creates reality,” is truth for a great many people. Not a healthy truth, not a truth that promotes good relationships, but a deep, lived truth nonetheless. It’s seductive. It means that whatever you’re feeling is just and right, that you’re never in the wrong unless you feel you’re in the wrong” also explains a lot of right-wing craziness.
That makes a lot of sense. Too much. 🙁
Re: Florida: Tourism is a good target, but I would say that decision-makers at large companies who care about these issues should also be looking at business travel. Those hotels aren’t just filled with tourists.
A lot of the first set of bathroom bills never made it out of committee because of businesses pulling out. I don’t know why that isn’t happening this time around.
@nicoleandmaggie: Right, I don’t understand why only Disney seems to be standing up to Florida’s actions now.
That’s true! I just don’t have any personal levers I can pull in the business world right now, though.