On this day, 101 years ago

#BenitoMussolini made a pivotal speech in the I#talian Chamber of Deputies. He took personal responsibility for the actions of his #Blackshirts, challenged his political opponents to remove him from office and then promised to take charge of restoring order to I#taly within forty-eight hours. #Historians now trace this speech to the beginning of #Mussolini's #dictatorship.

#OTD #History #fascism

The legal justification the WH gave us for attacking Venezuelan boats in int’l waters without Congressional approval was weak, and exposes the WH and military staff to domestic and international criminal prosecution. They have not even sought to justify strikes within Venezuela.

I had not heard of the Minipizza Batfish until it was referenced in today's Independent cryptic crossword. So cute! https://www.tonywublog.com/journal/mini-pizza-batfish-halieutaea-stellata

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Photo by Tony Yu of a circular red flat fish sitting on a seabed. It's top is rough, suggesting lumps of cheese and tomato

Listen, nerds - if you're going to pick This Year to help people switch to Linux, I am begging you to do one thing: _Make sure your friend or parent or grandparent or whoever has backups_. Before you do _anything else_.

Make sure they have all their passwords and accounts somewhere. If you have the means to do so, take a drive image.

Be as sure as you can that they don't lose anything. Even if that's "where the icons are" and "my desktop background pic".

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/linux/im-brave-enough-to-say-it-linux-is-good-now-and-if-you-want-to-feel-like-you-actually-own-your-pc-make-2026-the-year-of-linux-on-your-desktop/

Agrivoltaics boost crop yields even when the solar panels aren’t generating power. New research from Canada shows that shading crops with elevated solar panels creates a cooler, wetter microclimate that can lift yields and improve performance across dozens of crops, from peppers to pasture grass. These benefits persist even when panels are offline, strengthening the case for agrivoltaics as dual-use infrastructure. The Conversation https://theconversation.com/the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving-how-solar-panels-on-farms-can-help-increase-crop-yields-269264?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
#ShareGoodNewsToo

This is quite mesmerizing ...

#NewYear

no-one's quite sure what this Western Zhou art piece *is,* but so many people said "are you sure it's not a wifi router?" that the Anhui Museum installed a working wifi access point named "Western Zhou Router" in its display case.

source https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cul/2025/12-01/10524970.shtml h/t @dramforever

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a small, ancient bronze object consisting of a rectangular base with five candle-like pillars, with a striking resemblance to a multi-antenna wifi router.

Check out these unbelievably beautiful macro photographs of Slime Moulds by Barry Webb at https://www.barrywebbimages.co.uk/Images/Macro/Slime-Moulds-Myxomycetes

The photograph below of glistening, Comatricha nigra slime moulds won the People's Choice award in the macro category of the British Photography Awards 2025.

Also check out the macro images of fungi at https://www.barrywebbimages.co.uk/Images/Macro/Fungi

Barry's Instagram site: https://www.instagram.com/barrywebbimages/

More about slime moulds at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold
#Photography
1/n

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Barry Webb's photograph of glistening Comatricha nigra slime moulds titled "Glistening Slime Mould". It won the people's choice in the macro category of the British Photography Awards 2025 Photographed on an old, rotting fence post in my back garden. I used a spray bottle to create a wet foreground to add a reflection and give the image an extra dimension. These fruiting bodies are around 2.5mm tall. 56 images were focus stacked to create the final image. Camera settings: 2.0 sec, f3.2, ISO 400

Witchcraft.😮

Ireland started a Pause Before You Post Awareness Campaign: sharing photos and videos of children online can lead to unintended oversharing of personal data, which, in the wrong hands, can have serious consequences. Wise initiative!

#socialmedia #video #photography #privacy #children #child #kids #safety #ireland

Oh look, another Torment Nexus Silicon Valley has decided to build: they've named a home security system for ridiculously rich people "Sauron". We are living in the worst possible timeline.
https://www.sauron.systems/
I'm won't be long until somebody starts a meal prep company called "Donner Party".

It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.

Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.

Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.

The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.

The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.

She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.

She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."

She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.

But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.

To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.

San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.

Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.

Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.

Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.

Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.

When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.

He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.

It was a mistake that would change American history.

Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.

She saw "her kids."

She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.

Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.

She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.

So, she made a choice.

She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.

Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.

The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.

She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.

She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.

"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."

And it did.

Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.

Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."

For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.

She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.

She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."

By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.

In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.

This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.

One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."

They underestimated who they were dealing with.

They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.

When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.

It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.

Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.

She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.

Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.

"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."

The quote ran in newspapers across the country.

The court didn't stand a chance.

Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.

The charges were dropped.

Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.

She needed to change the law.

August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.

She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.

But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.

She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.

She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.

In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.

It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.

She never got rich.

She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.

She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.

Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.

Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.

Most of them have never heard of Mary.

They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.

They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.

They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.

Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."

She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.

She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.

She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.

Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.

It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.

It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.

Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.

Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.

Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana."

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Black-and-white photo of an older woman whose ready fist looks like she's about to punch the camera. Her clothes and glasses are authentic late '70s early '80s. There's a decorative patch on her shirt that depicts a marijuana leaf. Watermark says "Wonders You've Unseen and Unread" because that's the Facebook account this comes from. Text reads "The police found 54 dozen brownies in her kitchen. They arrested a grandmother. She changed the world instead of apologizing."

I’ve been gifted this handy reference. Honestly a bit surprised by how much stuff is lickable.

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A black t-shirt with the periodic table printed on it. The elements have been colour coded to answer the question “Can I lick it?” The legend is: Green = No problem, Yellow = Problem, Red = Yeah, No, Dark grey = Ya dead.

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Same shirt, closer. A black t-shirt with the periodic table printed on it. The elements have been colour coded to answer the question “Can I lick it?” The legend is: Green = No problem, Yellow = Problem, Red = Yeah, No, Dark grey = Ya dead. Basically you don’t want to mess with most of the alkali metals and all of the halogens. Also mostly anything above polonium looks like a bad idea.

TIL: that weird, liminal space between Christmas and New Year, when no one knows quite what day it is, or what they’re supposed to be doing?

In Norway 🇳🇴 there is a word for this time period: romjul, literally "space christmas"

Happy space christmas folks ...

Wait. Thiel is warning US about a hi-tech surveillance state? The guy behind PALANTIR?

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Screenshot of a tweet by Arjun Panicksery quoting Peter Thiel. The text compares Europe’s future to three metaphorical doors: Islamic sharia law, Chinese Communist Party surveillance, and Greta Thunberg on a bicycle, stating there is no fourth option. Below is a highlighted excerpt from an interview transcript elaborating on the quote.

Don't forget to put out for Santa:

* a mince pie
* a carrot for his reindeer

Or, if you think he has done an excellent job, just put out for Santa... He only comes once a year, after all.

People tend to see the worst:

In 1963, the USPS launched ZIP Codes and 2 letter state abbreviations, sparking huge backlash. Conservatives called it a step toward a "communist" style of government reducing people down to numbers.

These changes were made to accommodate the limitations of IBM mainframes at the time, which could only handle 23 chars for city, state, & zip code.

But it wasn't a communist plot! Navigating change is hard
https://www.historyassociates.com/usps-history/

For the mathematicians

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A complex mathematical formula which works through in 5 stages to say "merry = x-mas"

Tonight's Low Quality Ad is for this Sushi Scarf Knitting Kit. But LQF, I never roll up my scarf, you say. That is because your scarf has never formed sushi when rolled up, I wisely tell you. You'll start doing it now.
https://collabs.shop/qx9nhq

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A multicolored scarf that looks like a sushi roll when rolled up.

My grandmother's old Bernina is far superior to a newly purchased Singer. Less features, but better quality.)

I'm a trans woman who, if anyone ever asks, will give my deadname as a different male name each time. It's been the single fastest way to find people who talk behind my back. If that name leaks I know just who leaked it and just who to instant block forever.

#3183 - Pole Vault Pole

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A black-and-white line comic shows several small diagrams of stick figures and pole-vault equipment. In the top left, a stick figure stands on top of an enormous rolling cylinder (like a huge spool), with motion lines behind it; to the right are two tall uprights with a small horizontal crossbar between them. In the top right, a very long pole bends into a huge arch over another set of uprights and crossbar, with a stick figure clinging to the pole near the top. Along the bottom, the pole is coiled into a big ring rolling like a wheel toward the two tall uprights. A stick figure jumps onto it and clings to the strapped end as it spins, then rides up to the top and lets go, flying toward the uprights. Hidden text: "My goal in life is to be personally responsible for at least one sports rule change."

By @cstross "Barnum's Law of CEOs"
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/12/barnums-law-of-ceos.html

my favorite quote there is "LLMs are effectively optimized for bamboozling CEOs into mistaking them for intelligent activity, rather than autocomplete on steroids."

Well worth reading. #ai #llm #artificialintelligence #autocompleteonsteroids

@ai6yr As with butter in cooking, there's no such thing as too many clamps.

To the people who voted for Trump and now say this isn’t what they voted for.

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everything happens for a reason and sometimes that reason is you're stupid and make bad decisions

I have a new hobby. You see, our local Lidl is where a lot of the refugees in "temporary asylum accommodation" shop. And they are trying to get food that feels like actual food, in a place where there have been some really nasty xenophobic protests.

The other day it was two guys from South Sudan, and I have never seen two such tall, fine people try so hard to be invisible. But they were staring at the.tomatoes and about to buy the big, pretty, tasteless ones. Very carefully I stood next to them and picked up the small, tasty, same-price-or-cheaper ones and said, "these ones taste better." They heard me, but they weren't going to risk a conversation. So I said, to them, "These small tomatoes taste much better." Now they knew I was definitely talking to them, and having a normal market conversation.

"Better?"

"Yes, better, and not expensive. Sudan?"

"Yes! South Sudan." (Guarded smile)

"Welcome! I'm glad you're here. The fruit is better in South Sudan, isn't it?" (Other people are listening now, and see that these two men are far from home and miss home food, and how can someone like that be scary?)

Now we kept talking around the shop. And they straightened up and stood comfortably, and got better, cheaper food.

So that's my new hobby. Being friendly to refugees buying fruit.