George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org

For the third time this year a story about a cis girl seeing a trans woman naked in a YMCA locker room has fallen apart as more details became known.

Abbigail Wheeler saw two trans women sitting on a bench talking in their bathing suits, but never saw them change. She posted hateful signs targeting them and her family canceled their YMCA membership and pulled her from the swim team rather than allow her to face consequences for her behavior. #trans #news #journalism

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/illinois-ymca-wheeler-protest-transgender

In 1992, Sinead O'Connor tore a picture of Pope John Paul II in half during a performance on SNL in protest against generations of abuse toward children within the Catholic church.

Bless you, Sinead.

Welcome to Heaven.

A rare sighting of the endangered rogue zuchini leading its young from their hatching vines at our current #uk housesit...

(This is where I confess I travel with a pack of googly eyes at all times because they're an essential #writing aid, honest!)

#garden #vegetables #gardeningmastodon #gardening

Happy Rotating Black Hole Day!

Roy Kerr submitted his breakthrough paper describing the spacetime around a rotating black hole #OTD in 1963.

Physicists had been searching for decades for this solution to the field equations of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11.237

In your responses to anyone anywhere, I would ask you to remember there is a difference between "I see your struggle and I want to be helpful to you" and "You're doing it wrong and I want to be the one to say that to you" and also a difference in how they will be taken in by others. If you don't know the difference between the two (or don't care), perhaps it would be best for you not to say anything at all.

Astronomer Vera Rubin was born #OTD in 1928.

Her work on galactic rotation curves became one of the main pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter, and she deserved a Nobel Prize for it.

Image: Vassar College / Emilio Segrè Visual Archives

I will never not share this story whenever it crosses my feed. Never.

The monarch caterpillars in our garden haven’t been surviving over the past two years & I shared my disappointment with a friend in horticulture. It may have been due to neighbors pesticides, predators, or some other factor.

She suggested collecting caterpillars just after they hatch, and providing fresh milkweed leaves daily in a protected mesh enclosure.

This morning we awoke to this wondrous surprise!

Demonstration of how vibration can cause an improperly torqued fastener to come loose

I bet my girlfriend that this picture of our cats could get 10 billion boosts on Mastodon.

She said she doesn't believe me. She said there's only 13 million accounts on Mastodon. She said there aren't even 10 billion people on Earth. She said it concerns her that I struggle so hard to comprehend large numbers.

Let's prove her wrong everyone. Boost away and show her just how awesome the Mastodon community is.

A hummingbird moth (I’ve never seen one before) visiting the milkweed today.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/hummingbird_moth.shtml

The Monarchs seem to have arrived today!

I’m a terrible Gardner but I do make an effort to grow milkweed for the butterflies etc.

Hendrix reinterpreted the anthem for us. It is the land of the free and the home of the brave -- but the real act of bravery is showing love to others https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjzZh6-h9fM

@mekkaokereke I had Ms. Becton for 6 weeks in 10th grade (we moved) but I learned how to write an essay from her. And to this day, I can't spell 'separate' without thinking of her because it was a major peeve for her when students spelled it wrong.
It was an honors class and a lot of the other students would make snide comments about her, how she dressed, how she spoke, where she lived (rumor had it she lived in a tent).
I am eternally grateful that she was willing to refresh the basics first. I had moved around a lot as a kid and while I was in the "smart classes", I missed a lot of stuff based on when a school taught them. Like I never officially learned math using decimals but I had math classes about using fractions for 3 straight semesters.