Harper Kingsley blog

I saw a thing on Twitter where someone mentioned a male coworker in his 50s wanting to know why, if there’s a baby formula shortage, women can’t just start expressing milk that can then be passed out to mothers in need.

sigh Homeschooling and religionists lobbying against educating children about the human body have resulted in a bunch of "grown ups" that know less than I did as a small child.

It’s pitiful and sad.

Dairy cows only make milk because they’ve had a calf that was then taken away by the farmer and replaced with machinery. That’s where veal comes from.

Without pregnancy hormones, the human body does not produce milk.

With a few shots of hormones, even a man can produce milk. By itself, unless there’s a pregnancy or something going on in the human body (likely cancer), milk does not just produce itself.

I phrase it like that because cisgender men need to understand that yes, even they can produce milk. So if they want to come up with "brilliant" ideas to help hungry babies, they can feel free to step up and do their part.

"But that would make me feel like a dairy cow or a woman!"–Well dude, unless you’re willing to make the sacrifice, you shouldn’t volunteer other people to do what you refuse to do. Your precious social masculinity be damned.

It sickens me to think that ignorant cisgender men are deciding what other people can do with their bodies when they don’t even know basic biology.

1. Pregnancy hormones induce lactation. Someone feeds a baby or expresses milk with a breast pump, and milk continues to be produced. After a time without milk expression, the hormones shift, and the milk stops coming.

2. People do not choose to menstruate, and have no control over how or when it happens. So yeah, everyone has a cycle, but it’s really more of a guesstimate as internal scheduling gets changed and shifted around by diet, exercise, stress, and illness. You guess that it’s going to be in a week, and it might actually be the week after that, and there you go: vacation ruined.

3. When you are menstruating, you can’t just "hold it in." People are not choosing to ruin clothes and bedding because they’re being difficult or whatever ignorant men think. It’s not urine, and "squeezing as tight as you can" is not going to stop the blood from flowing. The uterine wall is shedding, and it’s going to come out whether you like it or not. Why? Because if it doesn’t come out, it rots in the body and you get sepsis and die.

4. Menstruating people NEED more than 1 tampon or pad a day. Why? Because blood gets rancid as it ages (think of a pound of hamburger left in the fridge for a month), and if you don’t change a tampon regularly you can get toxic shock syndrome and die. And pads need to be changed because they can only soak up so much blood before they overflow, like a baby’s diaper can only hold so much urine. And yeah, you can get what amounts to diaper rash from having a bunch of unchecked wetness against your skin.

5. A menstruating person should NOT depend on the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy, as they can still get "period pregnant" if they don’t time things right.

6. Breastfeeding DOES NOT prevent pregnancy. I’ve heard people say stuff like that before, and it’s not true. That’s why there’s the old phrase "Catholic twins," which is when someone gives birth and then gets pregnant in the next month. Which, by the way, is REALLY UNHEALTHY. Like, you’ve just hosted a parasite that has absorbed all its nutrients from your body, and if you don’t have an excess, they take what you’ve got, and now you’ve got another on the way–which can result in a second baby that’s not as healthy as the first. The human body needs time to heal from the rigors of pregnancy.

7. Pregnancy can ruin your teeth. The baby is drawing nutrients from your body, and you not having enough doesn’t stop them from sucking the calcium from your bones and teeth. There’s a reason why people get osteoporosis when they’re older, and it’s not just because "they didn’t drink enough milk" when they were kids.

Sometimes it happens that a person stops lactating even though they want to continue feeding an infant. That is not the fault of the person or the baby, it just is what it is.

There is a reason that baby formula was first developed, and it wasn’t just because of dead mothers and "women wanting to go back to work."

It was because sometimes a person simply cannot produce enough milk for their baby(ies). It is what it is.

"But what about goat/cow/chicken milk?"–Well, my dude, some of those simply are not feasible. Not just because somebody doesn’t have an animal that has recently birthed young, but because human babies need certain nutrients and animal milk is formulated for the young of that species of animal.

Baby formula is formulated to provide all the nutrients an infant needs. Taking a baby off breast milk and formula and replacing it with a gallon of whole cow milk DOES NOT WORK. Because sure, the baby will live, but they won’t have received the nutrition necessary for a healthy life.

Babies can go blind and deaf and suffer from HORRIBLE medical conditions tied to lack of proper nutrition. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with a kid with bad teeth who needs glasses. If you’re unlucky, you’ll end up with a kid that has bad teeth, bad eyes, bad skin conditions, neurological issues, fragile bones, organ damage, and stunted growth; IF THEY DON’T DIE.

The current baby formula shortage IS VERY SERIOUS.

So if you’re an ignorant asshat making jokes about starving babies right now, you need to stop and educate yourself because you’re not being funny. Your ignorance is making you not just be an asshole, but an outright HORRIBLE human being. As well as the butt of jokes as people realize that yes, you are being serious… seriously foolish.

Fix yourself. You’re the only one who can.

Pax,
~Harper Kingsley

Today is my unbirthday, so I am going to unleash some gifts upon you.

IN THE GARDEN
by Harper Kingsley

Flowers bloomed beneath the morning sun, dew kissed petals opening wide to embrace the light and warmth. Bees and bugs rose from their lazy slumber, the buzzing of their wing beats rising to an audible hum. Birds began to call and sing as the world came alive. Colorful butterflies fluttered and swirled in their joyous dance.

Buried beneath the earth, the sleeping summer opened their eyes and began the cheerful stroll upward into full ascendancy.

Spring embraced summer. Was subsumed by summer. And summer emerged to take pride of place.

And the world was warm and bright. Plentiful and pleasureful as animals born in spring enjoyed the everyday of their new existence, never having tasted the touch of winter cold.

They lived their all, and all was good.

I saw this thing today on my feed where they were talking about a Twitch streamer that was cooking and started a grease fire in the pan. From what I could see, she immediately snatched up the pan and ran it under water in the sink… causing her sink to flare up with fire.

Okay, kids, fire safety time:

1. Get a fire extinguisher for your kitchen. Even if you never use it, having it is a good idea. (And occasionally, you might have to shake it up to keep the chemicals inside from clumping. Check your manufacturer label.)

2. SALT is the best for putting out a grease fire. Just sprinkle it on, and it will quickly absorb the bulk of the oil, depriving the fire of fuel. (When I was a teenager, I was cooking once and dropped the pan right into the burner, and that whole metal basin (it was an electric stove with the rings) WAS ON FIRE. I dumped like half a canister of salt in there, and the fire was gone, though it was a messy cleanup. No burns for me!)

3. BAKING SODA is also good for putting out grease fires, though you need to use more than you would of the salt. So if you’ve only got a few pinches left in the box, you’re not putting out a fire with that.

4. DO NOT USE BAKING POWDER to try to put out a grease fire. It’s a mix of baking soda and other ingredients, and those other ingredients ARE NOT fire friendly.

5. DO NOT USE WATER to try to put out a grease fire. Oil and water don’t mix, so the grease fire basically rides on top of the water to spread out everywhere. PLUS the water droplets release steam, which will help SPLATTER the fire everywhere. A cup of water on a pan of grease fire will basically EXPLODE outward, and not only will your kitchen burn down but you’ll likely have really bad burns and need skin grafts. You know, not a lot of fun.

6. DO NOT USE FLOUR to try to put out a grease fire. The flour itself might plop down and put out the fire, but more likely the little particulates of flour in the air can catch fire, and they float around, and it’s just really really dangerous. (Like, back in the olden days, flour mills were known to BLOW UP, scattering bricks everywhere, when the dry flour in the air would ignite. That’s why there’s no smoking in the flour mill. Super dangerous.)

7. DO NOT USE SUGAR to try to put out a grease fire. What happens when you cook sugar? It turns all liquidy before turning into brown crystals. So, if you throw a bunch of sugar on burning grease, you’re going to end up with LIQUID HEAT splashing everywhere, and if you get that on your skin, you’re not going to have any skin. Sugar + grease fire = burning hot ouch everywhere, and your house likely turned into ashes.

When the fire is on the stovetop, put it out with salt. If it manages to reach your cupboards, use that fire extinguisher. And don’t hesitate to call the fire department if you need them.

So, to recap: If you accidentally start a grease fire while cooking in a pan, shut off the burner if you can. Pop a lid on the pan if you have one, as even grease fires need oxygen to breathe. If you don’t have a lid or you’ve spilt the grease on your stovetop, don’t hesitate to POUR salt on top of the fire. And if the fire is spreading or is larger than the pan or a little area of dribble, use your fire extinguisher.

Whatever you do, DO NOT PICK UP THE PAN AND SWING IT AROUND. Hot oil is a lot more splashy then cold oil. You will be surprised by how quickly the burning oil will slosh from one side of the pan to the other–and back again. So you swing that pan, the oil sloshes outward from you, but very well might slosh back onto your hand, your arm, or the whole front of your body. You’re better off carefully sliding the pan off the hot burner, as a moment of care is safer than panic-flailing with a pan of flaming oil.

If you catch on fire, stop, drop, and roll. And IMMEDIATELY call the fire department and the ambulances, because you might not realize you’ve been burnt until the adrenaline wears off. (And be aware: trailing sleeves are just as dangerous in the kitchen as they are around moving machinery. And a lot of synthetic fabrics melt, so be aware of what you’re wearing while you’re cooking. It might be worth the extra few seconds to strip off a floppy shirt before dealing with the grease fire.)

Anyways, stay safe. Keep a canister of salt close to your stove. And respect fire, because it doesn’t respect you.

Pax,
~Harper Kingsley

P.S. One time I was making a pre-made family-sized beef and gravy pan-meal thing in the oven, and I didn’t have a cookie sheet so I used a piece of tinfoil. (I was very young at the time.) And when I tried to slide the paper pan onto a plate, it folded in half and dumped bubbly hot gravy all down my knees and shins.

I peeled my pants off and left them on the kitchen floor before RUNNING into the bathroom and immediately turned on the shower to cold water and jumped in. After about a minute of shivering, I turned it to cool and stayed in there until I was absolutely sure there was no burning or pain in my legs.

I didn’t get a single burn.

I did not want to add a plugin to have external links open in a new tab (links to Patreon, Ko-fi, Twitter, etc.) so I added the "base target="_blank" HTML to my WordPress header.

So now, external links open in new tabs, which is what I wanted, but internal links are doing it too. Ugh.

I don’t know how to fix it yet, which is enraging, but I will keep pounding away at the problem.

If all else fails, I guess I’ll have to install a plugin, but I would prefer not to have to do that. As it is understood that the more third-party plugins get installed, the more chance of vulnerabilities being installed as well.

sigh This week has been bloody murder on my nerves.