Category: The More You Know

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Boosting This

Passing on an excellent disability survival guide for those who are homebound, bedbound, in need of disability accommodations, or would otherwise like resources for how to manage your life as a disabled person. (Link is safe)

How to Get On

It has some great articles and resources and while written by people with ME/CFS, it keeps all disabilities in mind. A lot of it is specific to the USA but even if you're from somewhere else, there are many guides that can still help you. Some really good ones are:

How to live a great disabled life– A guide full of resources to make your life easier and probably the best place to start (including links to some of the below resources). Everything from applying for good quality affordable housing to getting free transportation, affordable medication, how to get enough food stamps, how to get a free phone that doesn't suck, how to find housemates and caregivers, how to be homebound, support groups and Facebook pages (including for specific illnesses), how to help with social change from home, and so many more.

Turning a "no" into a "yes"– A guide on what to say when denied for disability aid/accommodations of many types, particularly over the phone. "Never take no for an answer over the phone. If you have not been turned down in writing, you have not been turned down. Period."

How to be poor in America– A very expansive and helpful guide including things from a directory to find your nearest food bank to resources for getting free home modifications, how to get cheap or free eye and dental care, extremely cheap internet, and financial assistance with vet bills

How to be homebound– This is pretty helpful even if you're not homebound. It includes guides on how to save spoons, getting free and low cost transportation, disability resources in your area, home meals, how to have fun/keep busy while in bed, and a severe bedbound activity master list which includes a link to an audio version of the list on Soundcloud

Master List of Disability Accommodation Letters For Housing– Guides on how to request accommodations and housing as well as your rights, laws, and prewritten sample letters to help you get whatever you need. Includes information on how to request additional bedrooms, stop evictions, request meetings via phone, mail, and email if you can't in person, what you can do if a request is denied, and many other helpful guides

Special Laws to Help Domestic Violence Survivors (Vouchers & Low Income Housing)– Protections, laws, and housing rights for survivors of DV (any gender), and how to get support and protection under the VAWA laws to help you and/or loved ones receive housing and assistance

Dealing With Debt & Disability– Information to assist with debt including student loans, medical debt, how to deal with debt collectors as well as an article with a step by step guide that helped the author cut her overwhelming medical bills by 80%!

There are so many more articles, guides, and tools here that have helped a lot of people. And there are a lot of rights, resources, and protections that people don't know they have and guides that can help you manage your life as a disabled person regardless of income, energy levels, and other factors.

Please boost!

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The More You Know 🌠

Actually, October was the eighth month in the Roman calendar. And the surrounding months are named for their number in the order – SEPTember (7th), OCTober (8th), NOVember (9th), DECember (10th).

Roman Calendars are absolutely bonkers.

Months 7, 8, 9, and 10 are named for their number, but month 1 is named for the god Janus, who was associated with time and doorways. March is named for Mars etc.

HOWEVER, this is just the start of the crazy. Roman January had no fixed length. It was just "January" until it was springtime. THEN it was March.

However, the Roman's had some festivals that took place in January and this is where Febuary originates. It wasn't it's own month, it was a "sub-month" of January incorporating some important religious festivals.

So in the republican period of Rome, it would be January, then February for a bit, then freaking January again then March.

This was part of why Augustus was able to convince people it was fine to take days from February so August would have 31 days. Romans already thought of February as not really a thing.

Now, December was the last month and month 10, and yes the republican Calendar had 10 months. However, a calendar for the earth with 10 months is basically crap. A Lunar/Solar calendar will have 13 months, and solar calendars will have 12 months, and even the ancients could do solar calendars well enough to get the length of a year to ~360 days.

However, the fact that the length of the year is 365 and change pissed the Romans off. So they stuck with their calendar that was 9 months of 30 days and then January was "the rest of winter till spring".

However, even by cheating with January, the Romans experienced some of the worst seasonal drift of all ancient peoples. Although some if this was political as the plebeian tribunes and the the priests of Janus got to decide when the new year began (oh yeah, Roman need year was March 1). So if you were a consul or a bunch of senators and you needed somebodies term to be up, and you could find some flowers sticking up through the snow, well then it must be March now. Time to strip last years consul of his power and appoint a new one!

Anyway, the calendar situation was so abysmal that when new calendars were proposed to fix some of this stuff people cheered! Actually, the sources say that lots of people faught prevent any change arguing that the calendar came from the gods. However, the administrators loved it and adoption was rapid.

However the Julian calendar still has seasonal drift. Hence the Gregorian reforms.

[Source]

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The Founding Fathers Were Not Gods

"This country was founded by a group of slave owners who told us that all men are created equal. To my mind, that is what's known as being stunningly and embarrassingly full of shit." – George Carlin

…PolitiFact going through history to fact check this guy was like that time CNN went through history to dig up dirt on Bernie Sanders, and all they found were videos of him planting trees and telling kids that racism is bad.

PolitiFact going through history to double check this is still a good thing though, because it means we can truthfully say they did.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/sep/10/arlen-parsa/evidence-shows-most-47-men-famous-declaration-inde/

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For Those Of You Who Partake…

I spend way too much time at work in this program…and surprisingly, it's one Microsoft creation—at least on the Windows platform—that I actually like.*

*the Mac version, however—like the entire Office suite—is a steaming pile of crap. (IMHO)