Gregory Lynn

Gregory Lynn

@needfulwords.bsky.social

Writer. Slightly obsessed with the Wheel of Time, Star Wars, and the Boston Red Sox. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

1.5K followers2.5K following9.3K posts

It's not healthy of us to hope people in other countries have a decent life.

Dan Mauler πŸŽƒ@meelar.bsky.social

I just think Matt's wrong about this. We're at a point in our technological development where a ton of problems spill over national borders--if Flavio Bolsonaro burns down the Amazon, that will flood houses in Miami.

What in the goddamn fuck is wrong with these people. Is being human just a lot harder than I've always thought? Because so many people are so bad at it.

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I have just learned that the house I grew up in, which my parents bought in 1978 for I think $200,000 is estimated by Zillow to sell for $1.2 million. It's a nice house, but it's nowhere near a mansion.

The house we lived in before that is now valued at $889,000 and judging by the Zillow pics, they did a complete renovation and a ton of serious landscaping in the back yard. When we lived there, the back yard was almost entirely unusable. but we had a dinosaur footprint in a rock, which was cool.

I saw a picture floating around and read the caption as saying it was from Yellowstone National Park. The poster saw my comment so I went back and turns out it's from Glacier National Park. Why does that matter? Because my Glacier National Park story is much better than my Yellowstone story. I

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are dead on balls accurate. After a good faith search, we snuck into (read walked) a closed place and stole two trees because all that was left was the Charlie Brown style scraggly ones. We tied the two of them together to make a semi decent tree. Years later, my mother assigned her students an

essay about their most memorable Christmas. She told them about this one and not THE ONE WHERE SHE GAVE BIRTH TO ME. I remember absolutely nothing else about the trip.

I saw a picture floating around and read the caption as saying it was from Yellowstone National Park. The poster saw my comment so I went back and turns out it's from Glacier National Park. Why does that matter? Because my Glacier National Park story is much better than my Yellowstone story. I

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arrive the next. Translation--y'all dumbasses for traveling in this, have you no sense? We thought they allowed pets. They did not allow pets. My dad tried to smuggle our cat, Anaconda, into the place inside his shirt. She didn't like that and was clawing her way out and mewling the whole time.

We get there and the first thing we did was start a fire from which some coals fell and burned a hole in the carpet. We had to get a Christmas tree because we obviously didn't bring one, but do you know how many Christmas tree shops are open at one AM Christmas morning? If you guessed zero, you

I saw a picture floating around and read the caption as saying it was from Yellowstone National Park. The poster saw my comment so I went back and turns out it's from Glacier National Park. Why does that matter? Because my Glacier National Park story is much better than my Yellowstone story. I

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soon. The choices were Hawaii, or Glacier National Park. Hawaii didn't work out so we headed up to GNP on Christmas Eve or maybe the day before. My parents were from Ohio, no stranger to snow. They moved to Massachusetts, also no stranger to snow. Folks, mountain snow is different. There was a

1978 level blizzard. We did not have a four wheel drive. We did have chains, which we used for the *only* time in my life. Getting there was harrowing. We almost slid off the road several times. When we got there, the guy at the desk said they'd all assumed we'd stayed home for the day and would

I saw a picture floating around and read the caption as saying it was from Yellowstone National Park. The poster saw my comment so I went back and turns out it's from Glacier National Park. Why does that matter? Because my Glacier National Park story is much better than my Yellowstone story. I

shall summarize my Yellowstone story by saying I had to pee and it saved our lives. The Glacier story starts out with prep for Christmas. We were living in Montana because my dad was doing a project for the state that I never really understood. Side note: when you're on a cub scout trip to the

capitol and you randomly run into your dad, it's not remotely surreal when you're five, but it probably should be. As best I can remember, this was 1975. We were living in Helena, MT and my mother wanted to travel to all the cool places in the northwest because we were going to go back east fairly

I'm playing a little wow classic to keep myself occupied until the Forever launch and it does a little scroll thing for every quest and I do not know how people can stand it. Every single time I pick up a quest I get significantly agitated.

Access to healthcare and treatment of disabled people. The ADA and ACA are both flawed but monumental pieces of legislation. Obligatory sideswipe at Reagan--dumping mentally ill people on the street was straight up evil.

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

By the way, I have a question about one of those sub labels if y'all don't mind. I recently encountered the term demi-girl. Not demisexual, but demi-girl. The Great Lord Google tells me that's someone who feels like they are part female. I was wondering what the difference was between that and

Gregory Lynn@needfulwords.bsky.social

people who have become the fascists latest punching bag. But if you're gay or lesbian or trans or bi, ace, or any of the sub labels I don't always understand, you have ways to find a community where you're not the other. It's illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation. We, as a society,

being genderfluid. TGLG tells me genderfluid is someone whose gender changes over time. Is the time the difference? Like a genderfluid person can feel female for a few weeks then feel male, but a demi-girl feels part female all the time? Also, is "feel" the right word?

The treatment of gay people. I was born, strictly speaking, during the Nixon administration. Legend--because all the people who can verify it are now dead--has it that I was outside the White House when he resigned. The second president I remember is Ronald Reagan. He rather famously refused to

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

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understand just how fucking evil that asshole was, and how evil the Republican Party has been FOR MY WHOLE LIFE. Nixon. Ford. Bush. Bush the Lesser. Trump. Bush the Greater did some good things. The ADA was monumental. He also said atheists weren't real Americans and nominated Clarence Thomas to

replace Thurgood Marshall. I've wandered a bit. Maybe more than a bit. But goddamnit, it's not hard to tell the difference between good people and bad people. It is entirely obvious that some people care about others and other people don't. It shouldn't be hard to figure out which one is better.

The treatment of gay people. I was born, strictly speaking, during the Nixon administration. Legend--because all the people who can verify it are now dead--has it that I was outside the White House when he resigned. The second president I remember is Ronald Reagan. He rather famously refused to

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

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people who have become the fascists latest punching bag. But if you're gay or lesbian or trans or bi, ace, or any of the sub labels I don't always understand, you have ways to find a community where you're not the other. It's illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation. We, as a society,

have come a long way in our treatment of LGBTIA people. We're not where we should be by far, but better is better than not better. I've spent a lot of this thread talking about Reagan and his administration. In part that's because his response was abysmal. In part that's because I need people to

The treatment of gay people. I was born, strictly speaking, during the Nixon administration. Legend--because all the people who can verify it are now dead--has it that I was outside the White House when he resigned. The second president I remember is Ronald Reagan. He rather famously refused to

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

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endorsed the idea that regular people who didn't qualify for drug trials should be allowed access to promising medications. It has been a long ass time, and a lot of very smart, very caring people put in a lot of work. Today, if you have HIV, your life expectancy is the same as someone who doesn't

an some people have been completely cured. For those of us who remember that time--even though we didn't know a single out gay person, or person with HIV--that's a goddamn miracle. I'm not going to pretend like everything is beautiful for gay people. It's not, and particularly not for the trans

The treatment of gay people. I was born, strictly speaking, during the Nixon administration. Legend--because all the people who can verify it are now dead--has it that I was outside the White House when he resigned. The second president I remember is Ronald Reagan. He rather famously refused to

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

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sexual behavior within the confines of marriage. By the end of 1998, it was estimated that 62,418 Americans had died of the disease, many, if not most, died having lost their jobs, reputations, and families. Three weeks later, Reagan left office. Clinton did better. The CDC promulgated guides

to avoid some of the diseases known to attack people with HIV, like a specific strain of pneumonia, hepatitis, and others. The head of the NIH's National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases--an entirely obscure man you've never heard of named Anthony Fauci-

The treatment of gay people. I was born, strictly speaking, during the Nixon administration. Legend--because all the people who can verify it are now dead--has it that I was outside the White House when he resigned. The second president I remember is Ronald Reagan. He rather famously refused to

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

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in funding in 1985. That was also the first year Reagan publicly acknowledged AIDS was a thing at all. In 1986--and for perspective, that was before I gave a shit about baseball--Reagan declared AIDS a top medical piority and ordered C Everett Coop to write a report. It would later take Congress

to distill that report into a pamphlet that could be sent out to regular Americans. The report and pamphlet suggested comprehensive sex education for everyone would be a huge help. Reagan told his administration that any federally funded information emphasize that the solution was responsible

The treatment of gay people. I was born, strictly speaking, during the Nixon administration. Legend--because all the people who can verify it are now dead--has it that I was outside the White House when he resigned. The second president I remember is Ronald Reagan. He rather famously refused to

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

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said at the time, "It's too good an opportunity. For once we can show that gays do heroic things, not just all that caca about π’Žπ’π’π’†π’”π’•π’Šπ’π’ˆ π’„π’‰π’Šπ’π’…π’“π’†π’ 𝒂𝒏𝒅 π’‰π’‚π’π’ˆπ’Šπ’π’ˆ 𝒐𝒖𝒕 π’Šπ’ π’ƒπ’‚π’•π’‰π’“π’π’π’Žπ’”." I mention this to point out that the arguments have not changed in πŸ“πŸ years, and that outing someone to further the

movement while destroying someone's life in the process is questionable at best. The disease was first identified not long after Reagan took office and was called GRID, the Gay Reduced Immunity Disease. Congress passed the first funding specifically for AIDS in 1983. Reagan proposed a reduction

The treatment of gay people. I was born, strictly speaking, during the Nixon administration. Legend--because all the people who can verify it are now dead--has it that I was outside the White House when he resigned. The second president I remember is Ronald Reagan. He rather famously refused to

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

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So were Rock Hudson, Arthur Ashe, and Oliver Sipple. Never heard of that last one? Lotta people haven't, but he's a legitimate American hero. He was a disabled Vietnam vet who happened to be standing next to Sara Jane Moore when she raised a gun to shoot President Gerald Ford. He reached out and

jostled her arm, ensuring she'd miss. In media reports that followed, he was outed as a gay man. His parents disowned him. He had to hide in a friend's apartment. He later sued and ultimately a judge determined his sexual orientation was part of the story. Harvey Milk. HARVEY MOTHERFUCKING MILK

The treatment of gay people. I was born, strictly speaking, during the Nixon administration. Legend--because all the people who can verify it are now dead--has it that I was outside the White House when he resigned. The second president I remember is Ronald Reagan. He rather famously refused to

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

even say the word AIDS for years. YEARS. If you ask a gay man of my generation what they think of Ronald Reagan, they will, to a man, think of the friends they lost to his Trumpian neglect. Democrats weren't much better. Ryan White was hounded out of school. Liberace was afraid to say he was gay

I put something in the toaster oven for lunch and I'm listening to tunes so I was worried that I would miss the beep. Folks, it happened in that void time betwixt songs. Surely this means the universe was designed for me and me only.

We need a directory of autistic writers listed by special interest so when we need to know some random shit like what workers in the Ayyubid dynasty would have had for breakfast, we know who to call. By which I obviously mean text or email.

Side note, when I looked up Saladin to make sure I got the name of the dynasty right, there was a little note at the top that said the article was too long to read at about 10k words and I gotta be honest, I got a little chubster.