The funniest thing. My best friend has been going to the Food Bank for me since I am immuno-compromised and she dropped off this week's veggies (rutabaga and turnip.) It's cold, she was wearing this cap that has pointy ears and big eyes, kind of Pokemon or kind of like an owl.
So, my cat loves her. Maybe even more than me as when she comes over, she sits on her lap instead of mine.
She leans over toward my cat to say hi, and my cat jumped two feet in the air and swung off the side of the couch using her claws to lever her in a turn like action hero
She lands on the window ledge and my friend holds our her hand, to which my cat would normally rub her face all over, but no, she backs up and backs up as far as she can go. So my friend thinks it might be her hat & takes it off to hold it out to my cat to reassure her
My cat took off running for the bedroom as fast as she could go and my friend has left and my cat is still in hiding. hahaha
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I keep seeing this ad and every time it triggers the sensory memory of that time I was putting one soured bowl inside another on the top shell, when it slipped, breaking the larger bowl which fell, slicing me arm open from my ring finger to my elbow
Soured=Pyrex. Blood spurred in waves practically. I put a tourniquet on while my worthless mind risks sister screamed and cried. I drove to the hospital, my arm hanging out the window leaving a trail of blood from East Helena to Helena. I pulled into the emergency lane
But didn't have the strength to get out of the car. The ER doctors came out, checking my slobbering sister first because she's the one screaming. Anyway, it wss scary as he'll and it left a scarf that has prompted many people to ask me about my suicide.
There are so many acts of racism that bring me shame as a white American. Police misconduct, abuse, and murder is a big one. Malicious summoners of the police are another. But the hidden, unseen systemic racism of things like water faucet sensors & the Shirley card for photo film
make me feel more despair. There is at least a wave of outrage for the blatant racism. But hidden structural racism is usually shrugged away and excused as unintentional. As though making white the default calibration for film, appliance sensors, & oximeters is an innocent act
I read that article about pulse oximeters this morning and have been angry and grieving all day, thinking of the lives lost. Sure, healthcare providers may have been unaware of the studies in 2005 and 2007, but the companies that make oximeters cannot possibly been ignorant.
Fifteen years since studies showed that pulse oximeters gave inaccurate readings on Black skin at triple the rate of white skin. Fifteen fucking years!
When it was discovered, the recognition that 1 in 8 readings of Black people's blood oxygen were faulty, they could have fixed it or at least put a notice that readings on Black skin could be wrong. PEople were turned away from hospitals because their blood ox looked fine.
See, this is how we know health disparities in outcome are not inadvertent. No one cared enough after they learned in 2005 to make a change in how to understand oximeter readings or made any change that might let oximeters be calibrated to skin tone.
So, the first tweet I saw this morning was a reply to some white woman complaining about the "don't wash your legs" tweets, etc. I was going to also reply but Twitter refreshed and I don't remember the words well enough to find it, so this is my reply to my fellow white women
Black people have had 400 years of taking comments about their looks, character, and even debates on whether they have souls. They still are not free of the fear of unpunished murder at the hands of police. They are still not free to be in a world without fear, so
we white people can take some ribbing about the poor hygiene habits of our fellow white cohort and pass them the soap without speaking up to share how clean we are. I had a racist freshman roommate (expelled for racism, which shows precisely how racist she was) my freshman year.
I would love a $1200 stimulus check. I will appreciate the $600 stimulus check which means I can take my cat for her annual check-up. I had saved up the money but then had to buy a new Rx. She's only 2, so probably ok.
But there's a problem
So much of the talk about the stimulus check has contrasted it with what seems to be more generous benefits from other countries, but they are comparing it to unemployment insurance.
But unemployment to unemployment, the original $600 per week was more generous than Canada's $2000/month which is only $1400 US.
In a great tangent off that thread @TheButterNutty made suggestions for an anti-racist agenda in education reform, most particularly in regards to IDEA and other special education issues.