(no subject)

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways To Give:

waitingforthet has a fundraiser up to help financially with recovering from the fire that wrecked their apartment (it started on the floor below them and they have a lot of smoke damage). You can read more and donate here.

kaizoku linked to a gofundme for a friend who needs funds to train a service dog for medical alert/response so that they can remain independent and stay in school.

Lulu and their painting partner are doing a Kickstarter to fund Fluid Dynamics, a Pop Surrealist painting series inspired by the scientific properties of liquids. Support the arts and get some awesome pledge prizes!

exceedinglyemily has a post up about Our School at Blair Grocery, who distribute fresh fruits and vegetables to the Lower 9th Ward community in New Orleans, which is currently a food desert. They need to rebuild their school and urban farm to code, which will cost a hundred thousand dollars. You can read more and find a link to the indiegogo here.

coinin linked to a GiveForward campaign to provide free laser scar reduction treatments for children and teenagers. They're currently well below their goal -- you can read more and donate at the link.

Help For Free:

kit_maxel's brother is investigating ways to use his creative talents to pay his bills, and is asking for opinions and information on this kind of attempt. You can read about his inquiries here and see some of his art at the main section of his tumblr.

thiefoftoast has a post up about states which still forbid transgender people to change their legal sex. There is a link to a petition asking for all people identifying as transgender to be allowed to change their legal sex.

freddriccco has a lot of information up about the closing of NASA's WISH program for young women in the sciences. It was shut down due to complaints from male high school students who wanted to participate, despite the fact that 76% of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are held by men and the WISH program is a necessary conduit to destigmatize women in technology. There is a link to the petition to reopen WISH here.

News To Know:

brainwane linked to an essay about the current University of Illinois at Chicago faculty strike, written by activist and speculative fiction author Mary Anne Mohanraj.

Just For Fun:

9worlds_fanfic is the Fanfic stream of the Nine Worlds Geekfest, a convention in London running August 8-10 2014. As well as running a whole programme stream across the con weekend, they are throwing a party in Central London on March 8th 2014, to celebrate Archive Of Our Own reaching 1 million fanworks. All fanfic fans are welcome. Details are here.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help (or ask for help!).

(no subject)

So I had a biopsy today!

I KNOW.

IT'S TIME TO TALK ABOUT SAM'S DISGUSTING HEALTH ISSUES AGAIN!

On Friday night I discovered a cluster of little red bumps on my collarbone, and they didn't get bigger or smaller or disappear or sprout spiders, despite liberal applications of antifungal cream and nightmares about spiders emerging. And it started to burn a little. So today I called up the dermatologist at 9:30 and said "Do you have any cancellations today?" and she said "Can you be here in an hour?" and I said yes.

An hour later, the doctor said, "Well, the good news is, it's not MRSA."

Which, I guess you could open nearly every medical consultation that way? But I think that must be her standard setup for "However, it could be Lupus." Because as awful as Lupus would be as a diagnosis, at least it's not MRSA.

It could also be Shingles, she said. I asked, hopefully, if it could be some kind of horrifying bug bite and she said, "Well, anything is possible". At this point I began to feel faintly as though I was undergoing this procedure in Night Vale.

Anyway, she had to biopsy the bumps to find out what exactly they are, so she gave me a local anaesthetic, which are so unpleasant oh my god, and then cut a 4mm disc out of my skin and stitched me up, so now I actually do look like I have a spider sitting on my chest at all times.

I've named him Damien.

So I might have Lupus, but more likely have Shingles, with an option on "anything else but MRSA". I'll find out Thursday what precisely it is, but until then Damien and I are going to eat pizza and feel sorry for ourselves.