i am your poison; you are my cure

hello, lovelies. i hope your day has been swell.

[soulofthebloodofthewolf-deactiv]

honestly missionaries are evil. the idea of traveling the world to tell people Who Didnt Fucking Ask that their beliefs are wrong in the hopes that theyll adopt your beliefs seems sinister

[kittyinhighheels]

The Christians in the notes whining are so absolutely stupid

[ajunlost]

I don’t even want to talk about how they specifically target poor people and hold basic necessities over their heads in exchange for faith.

[cowboymalewife]

“I read about an [Inuit] hunter who asked the local missionary priest, ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘Not if you did not know.’

‘Then why,’ asked the [Inuit] earnestly, ‘did you tell me?” -Annie Dillard

(edited to remove slurs/dated language)

[bullydyke-deactivated20210902]

My culture and our religious practices (Inuit) have been decimated by Christianity and I fucking hate pretending its a neutral thing.

[piya-re]

Christians in the notes still don’t get it. They’re saying that missionaries aren’t that bad bc they’re just trying to save all ppl and they’ve started quoting bible verses and whatnot but here’s the thing: I. Don’t. Believe. In. That. Like your beliefs and scriptures are non applicable to me (and everyone else who isn’t Christian, or at least abrahamic) bc we’re not christian and I literally don’t care if you think we “need to be saved from Satan” or smg bc frankly, it’s not your business and that “well meaning, innocent” intention is still forcing your religion onto us. OP is right. Missionaries are evil. Leave other religions tf alone.

[insipid-drivel]

Baby Boomers had a cinnamon challenge they won’t talk about that may be the reason why toothpick-chewers in classic movies are seen as cool

My mother is 65 and right bang in the middle of the Baby Boomer generation, but she’s very cool and does her best to be and stay woke, keep up with shifts in vernacular, and takes care to do things like make sure she’s strict with getting pronouns correct, etc. Her meme game is a little lagging, and she only just discovered the cinnamon challenge. I was surprised to see her… not surprised. If anything, she seemed a bit pleased and said, “Yep, kids are still kids.”

I stared at her for a while. “What do you mean?” I asked her. She’s seen other ancient memes like planking and never had that reaction before. Seeing the cinnamon challenge was downright satisfying to her.

She looked me dead in the face and said, “Sweetheart, I grew up in a time when you could get crystal meth over the counter at the pharmacy. They were called diet pills then.”

“Whaaaaaaat.” I knew that Nazi Germany passed meth around like candy, but that was in the 30′s and 40′s. I had just figured it had been prohibited already in America by the time my mom was growing up. “Did you have a cinnamon challenge or something in school?” I finally asked.

She half-nodded and half-shrugged and said, “Similar. You couldn’t have candy or gum in school when I was growing up. It was about 1969 in San Francisco and parents were starting to limit cigarette smoking to kids under 18, too, so a lot of my school friends were squirming all day long with nothing to at least chew on.”

“What did they do instead, mom?” I asked suspiciously, because she would not bring this subject up after I had explained to her that the cinnamon challenge was dangerous because of how horrible it is to accidentally inhale it into your airways.

“Well… Back when I was in school, you could get cinnamon extract from the pharmacy. It was just cinnamon suspended in canola oil, and you could use it for cooking or treating a skin fungus. Stuff like that,” she explained. “So the boys at my school would take toothpicks and dip them in the cinnamon extract. That’s why chewing on a toothpick was so common back then. If you were trying to quit smoking or couldn’t have chewing gum, you could carry a little bottle of flavor extract about the size of a bottle of nail polish in your pocket and dip a toothpick in it. Then you’d have something to chew on that the teachers hadn’t banned, and you could hide them in your cheek easily.”

“So what did the boys at your school get into, mother?” I asked again. We were still on the topic of ridiculous memes. This had to go somewhere.

She smirked. “Well, after a while, the boys started noticing that the cinnamon extract from the pharmacy was spicy. It burned. So it started to get to be a challenge to see how many cinnamon toothpicks you could hold in your mouth at once. It got so bad that kids would get blisters and burns on their mouths from it, and you could tell if someone had a few of them tucked in their cheek in class because their face would turn red from the neck up like a cartoon.”

“Why have I never heard about this?”

She wasn’t done. “Finally, the teachers figured out what everyone was doing and it became a pretty big deal. Cinnamon extract started getting banned or restricted to adults. Then they banned toothpicks for sale to anyone under 18, too. That’s why it was a sign of being cool, particularly among guys, to walk around with a toothpick in your mouth. It either meant you had a fake ID or that you were 18.”

I stared at her for a long time. “Mom, why didn’t they just use hot sauce? It was California. Didn’t you have peppers?”

Without missing a beat, my 65-year-old mother replied, “Honey, we were white as fuck.”

[womaninterrupted]

Twitter’s potential collapse could wipe out vast records of recent human history

What happens when the world’s knowledge is held in a quasi-public square owned by a private company that could soon go out of business?

[surroundedbybooks]

Jesus, I hadn’t even thought of this, but of course.

[ndcirque]

This is something that historians have been warning about for a couple of decades. How much of our history was not just on Twitter, but on MySpace, on blogs and web sites that came down after a few years, on e-mail, on texts. None of that leaves a record. Once the file is deleted, the server shut down and scrapped, the backup disks decay into being unreadable junk, that history is gone.

Does anyone remember when Obama and Clinton each held town hall campaign events on MySpace? Good luck finding anything about those now other than some news articles that say they happened. How many business zoom calls have formal meeting minutes taken? We are not saving histories. We aren’t even writing letters. I’m as guilty as anyone. My art is online and kept in the cloud. I make my Christmas Card every year, but I haven’t printed and mailed one in over a decade. It’s all sent electronically. Meaning that a generation from now no one will remember.

So the problem is bigger than Twitter. We are now a couple of decades into an age that will not leave any detailed historical record.

That is not good.

[macleod]

In pseudo and acadamic circles this has routinely been called the ‘digital dark age’, I even wrote on the subject a few years ago but can’t find that article right now. [There is even a Wikipedia article on the concept] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age#:~:text=The%20digital%20dark%20age%20is,technologies%20evolve%20and%20data%20decay).

It’s thought this might just be a black spot of knowledge, there are organizations working to stop this — archival websites primarily, but these are not able to penetrate all these corporate gated gardens, where paywalls, sign up walls, and more block access to. There is an ongoing campaign by megacorps to shutdown as many archival sites as possible.

This coupled with the fallibility of hard drives, CDs (make sure to back them up! They only have a 20-30 year lifetime!), and more and there is a chance that even though there is more information than ever before, more primary and secondary sources than ever, we may become just a strange blank spot in societal and cultural history. Digital decay is a terrifying concept that we are already beginning to live through.

[fallentechnate]

[eaglefairy]

@xkcd-for-that

[xkcd-for-that]

Digital Resource Lifespan

[alicexz]

[fruitshake]

trans guy who finally figured out his name, about to come out in the funniest way to his friends: hey guys can i be frank with you all

[guerrillatech]

[socialistexan]

This exact thing happened in the 70's/80's in this country when seatbelts were first being pushed for. Reagan literally tried to get rid of them.

[memecucker]

There were also examples of anti-seatbelt activists dying in car crashes where they weren’t wearing seat belts like that guy that wrote an anti-seatbelt article and four months later died in a car crash where he didn’t have a seat belt on and was thrown out of the vehicle

[everythingfox]

“Rescue kitten having a soak”

(via)

[scumtrout]

fun fact about aging: you don’t perceive yourself as being older but you perceive young people as being younger. today I was in a zoom meeting with a bunch of young men and I kept thinking ‘who put beards on these children’.

[randomslasher]

Correct. High school kids are WAY younger than I was when I was in high school. So are college kids. When I was in high school and college we were full grown adults. But now that I’m almost 40 the high school and college age kids are actually babies. It’s crazy how that happens. 

[sandersstudies]

I remember when I was in middle school I would hear my dad calling college students and 20-something employees “kid,” as in “oh yeah this kid that just started in marketing is really talented,” or “the Johnsons’ son is a really nice kid” talking about like a 22-year-old and at the time I was like “what haha those aren’t kids those are clearly adults”

And now I’m a 24-year-old who sees my 18-year-old coworker as a baby and I’m like ah. I think I am coming to an understanding.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Everyone on planet earth currently is the oldest and most mature that they’ve ever been. And they always will be.

[guerrillatech]

[aethelflaedladyofmercia]

The fact that this is addressed to the parents, not the kids, is especially creepy?

Anyway, Federal Child Labor Laws: (apply to ALL states)

--Children under 14 (13 for agricultural labor) can only be employed by their own parents/guardians

--14-15 year olds are limited to 3 hours per day, 18 hours per week during the school year (up to 8 hours on weekends/holidays), and 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week when school is not in session.

--They are also limited to working 7am-7pm (or 9pm during the summer), and only outside of school hours

--Only a specific list of jobs are permitted for children of this age (relevant to this, they are allowed to reheat food, wash dishes and equipment, and do some limited cooking/food prep such as washing vegetables). Any work outside this list is prohibited.

--There is also a broad list of jobs/duties they are prohibited from (including any work with ladders, or work with powered meat slicers or several types of powered baking equipment)

--Oh, hey, this is interesting! The federal minimum wage for employees under the age of 20 is $4.25 for the first 90 days they hold a job. I wonder how many days fall between the end of the school year and the start of the next. Oh? Just about 90? What an odd coincidence, that this company would be looking to hire children just before the time of year when they can work (a) later hours (b) more hours per week and (c) likely to need to stop before they get shifted to the full minimum wage.

(An entirely different set of rules apply to agricultural work, and for working directly for one's parents or family. There are also some jobs allowed to children under 14. I'm not going into those.)

Now, I'm not opposed to 14 and 15 year olds working appropriate jobs. I babysat at that age, other kids mowed lawns, raked leaves, life guarded at pools, etc.

But there is something a little predatory about this sign, particularly going up now.

And as people have pointed out, kids that age don't know their rights. They don't know the laws. And even if they do, they don't know that the laws are there to *protect* them. I've known plenty of teenagers who think they boss is *doing them a favor* by allowing them to work outside their limited hours, or continue working while clocked out for their lunch break. When I worked as a waitress, my manager suggested this as a way to earn extra tips. Heck, I was almost THIRTY, and you wouldn't believe how many little ways they tried to wriggle around the rules to get a little more work out of me. (Unless you've worked this kind of job, then you'd absolutely believe it.)

Another thing--these jobs are *exhausting.* I've worked manual labor, I've worked in schools, retail, all kinds of jobs, but nothing made me end the day, back throbbing, fling-myself-into-bed tired like working in a restaurant. I don't know what it is, maybe the hectic pace of the busy hours, maybe the way you're expected to be busy every second of your time there, maybe it's the fact that I spent most of each day walking as fast as I could from one end of the building to the other. I don't know. But I wouldn't wish that on any 14-year-old.

So, anyway, I'm looking at this little flyer, and I'm concerned. Not because I don't think a 14-year-old should ever work. But because I'm trying to think why a BK would put out a sign SPECIFICALLY asking for the youngest age they can employ, with NO details suggesting this is a special youth-support or training program, only A FEW WEEKS before summer vacation, and targeted to their PARENTS who, let's face it, are probably eager to get some time away from the kids after the last year.

Why would any business make this SPECIFIC ad? I don't know, but every answer I come up with doesn't sit well with me.

[tickety-boo-af]

With the current shortage of adults willing to work an exhausting job at a non-living wage, they are looking for anyone else they can exploit. A business should be considered failing if it can’t pay its adult employees enough to get by.

[gayngel-posting-deactivated2024]

Also relevant: these kids are almost certainly not vaccinated, and its extremely clear they will not be protected, especially as places relax mask mandates. In 2020 being a line cook was the most dangerous job in the country, the conditions that caused that danger haven't changed. This will get some of these kids killed.

[odinsblog]

Oh hey, remember this post?

[destinytomoon-deactivated202006]

THIS IS SO FUNNY DLSNSKSKKZ????

[bunjywunjy]

So are you going to tell us about the giant hyperpredatory sperm whales or do I have to go google some nightmares myself?

we’re all familiar with the Sperm Whale of our modern seas, largest of the Toothed Whales! it’s also completely specialized for eating squid and squid ONLY, a comfort to anyone who’s ever managed to get just a bit too close to those enormous razor jaws.

but this was very much not always the case! the earlier members of the Sperm Whale lineage were much less… discerning.

early Sperm Whales all resembled our friendly modern swimming school bus to some degree, but the main difference was in the jaws- early Sperm Whales like Acrophyseter and Zygophyseter all had wide, powerful jaws with ENORMOUS teeth suitable for snacking on fish, dolphins, aquatic sloths, and pretty much anything else they could fit down their enormous gullets, kind of like a modern Orca.

and from 12 to 7 million years ago, these things RULED the seas. Megalodon who?

but the greatest of these was Livyatan Melvillei, which was the size of our modern Sperm Whale. 

reaching up to 60 feet long and weighing well over 60 tons, it this thing was a Sea Monster in every sense of the word. 

it is so BONKERS huge that they named it after the Hebrew name for the Biblical Leviathan (and also Herman Melville, who would have gotten a real kick out of it). I cannot overstate how unsafe it would be to share an ocean with this thing. Moby Dick would have been an entirely different book if it was still around. 

so what does a 60-feet hyperpredatory whale eat?

*Groucho Marx voice* WHY, ANYTHING IT WANTS. 

(but mostly other whales.)

Livyatan spent most of its time cruising around looking for delicious smaller whales to shove into that nightmare maw up there, a lifestyle choice we call macroraptorial. though in a pinch, anything else would also do. 

(basically, if you were a mid-sized baleen whale in the paleozoic seas you were just SHIT out of luck, between Megalodon and this thing.)

Livyatan may have died out as little as 5 million years ago, meaning it might even have been around to make the early ancestors of Orcas regret their life choices! (Livyatan is the only animal that could possibly make an Orca regret anything, but God, at what cost)

but die out they did, and that’s probably a good thing for us. why don’t we all just take a moment to really appreciate our modern hyperspecialized Sperm Whales, especially the part where they don’t eat us!

[bunjywunjy]

UNRESTRAINED SUMMER FUN

[tallullahbonkhead]

Aquatic sloths?

[bevismusson]

Thalassocnus. Got pretty big, between 2 and 3 meters long. Used their claws to walk across the sea floor.

See the monster whales eating the giant underwater sloths

[magicalshadesoflamps]

why would you hide this in the tag?

[amygdalae]

dude stop telling me to count dracula I only ever see the one

[amygdalae]

[officialfist]

El Muchacho Monday

[lex-artis-studios]

My cat Guaraha would do this. I'm like "sweetie just leave the kitchen!" and he'd just sit by my feet looking up at me with red, streaming eyes while I chopped up the onions. He was a dumb shit though so that was typical dumbassery for him.

[officialfist]

Guaraha is valid and I love him very much.

[bunjywunjy]

hey boss, just "accidentally" stabbed my "hand". got any cursed blood facts?

great news anon, as a human your blood is already among the most cursed on the planet!

see, most people don’t realize this, but mammal blood is actually completely unique among vertebrates. if you put a drop of mammal blood on a microscope slide next to a drop of lizard blood, you would be able to tell them apart instantly! 

how? simple- mammalian blood cells don’t have a nucleus!

the nucleus is a dark mass at the center of a cell that tells it what to do and lets it reproduce by splitting itself in two- and every other major vertebrate group on the planet has nucleated blood cells.

BUT NOT MAMMALS. (these cells are NAKED somebody please GET THEM SOME PANTS.)

at some point in their 200+ million years of evolutionary history, mammals discovered that if you force your red blood cells to drop their nucleus and turn into pink cheerios, they can focus on carrying oxygen and ONLY carrying oxygen! this means that mammal blood is much more efficient than fish or reptile or even bird blood at carrying oxygen liter-for-liter, though at the cost of lugging around some extra internal organs and having to make new blood inside of your bones. what a steal!

maybe that’s why all the stock photo blood researchers are making that face.

[ley-med]

I'm sorry but those nucleated red blood cells are the ones that look cursed

[doctorfoxtor]

#also help correct me please but aren't those supposed zo be leukocytes?#there's no way those are thrombocytes

Nope, reptile blood is just that cursed that even the thrombocytes are nucleated lmao. They don't have the same megakaryocyte fragmentation system that (at least) humans have.

Which, if you ask me, makes lizard blood Demonically Cursdt.

[ley-med]

Thanks for the correction and also

What the hell

[vetisntdead]

Man it cracks me up every time medblr learns about animals

[drpathetique]

I have ADHD. I know my limits. One species was all I could manage.

[lizziedoesvetpath]

Vetblr: different species are different

Medblr:

(I love you guys really it's just a constant source of entertainment)

[doctor-jonathan-strange]

Animal physiology: *exists*

Medblr, collectively: Hmmm don't like that

[bpdzoldyck-deactivated20181014]

A note on the topic of trauma that I personally found helpful in accepting the idea that I am a trauma victim is that one of the most widely accepted facts in the field of trauma research is that abuse is often not the common factor in whether somebody will develop ptsd. 

Many people can go through awful things without developing trauma based disorders as long as they receive compassion and support in processing those events as they happen. The most common factor in developing something like ptsd is emotional neglect. And emotional neglect on it’s own can be enough. 

Whatever you went through was enough I promise, you’re not overreacting. Abuse and neglect are traumatic at any level, you don’t need to have gone through the worst possible experience you can think of to develop ptsd. If it hurt you then it hurt you.

[micchi-monster]

…..oh.

[fabulousworkinprogress]

And to support that, the number one determining factor on how badly something affects a person is how they’re treated afterward, not how objectively bad the event was. They’re called resiliency factors.

It looks like this:

Horrible brutal traumatic event + Family and community support + legal amelioration + closure and therapy and help 

ONE MILLION TIMES MORE LIKELY TO RECOVER THAN

Event that the sufferer may think “seems minor” compared to what others have been through + Family neglect and abuse (you deserved it, name calling, support the abuser) + no legal means + denial and stifling and no therapeutic support

I have been raped, I have been abused by someone who was supposed to be family to me, and I have recovered and gotten my life back together. I have psychiatrists, psychologists, best friends, lovers, and family who support me. I did not get legal justice, but I got the person(s) out of my life.

My friend was repeatedly verbally abused by his step-parent, and when he was abused and hurt by others he was blamed for it by that parent. He had no support and no one to talk to about it for over 10 years.

He still feels guilty for even being affected by it and I’ve had long talks with him about how it isn’t “nothing compared to” what I went through. 

You are not wrong to be upset. You are not wrong to feel the effects of trauma. Your hurt cannot be measured against anyone else’s. Your resiliency is your own and your situation is valid to you. Perception is everything. The worst thing that ever happened to you might ostensibly be less bad than the worst thing that ever happened to me - but it still is what happened to YOU.

[lilbittydragon-deactivated20241]

Trauma is so predictable that we can make tidy little equations out of it. The ones above are good, but the ones I’ve seen are a little simpler. Something like: 

Overwhelming Experience + Isolation + Shame = PTSD

[molly-ren]

Whoa. I am going to have to think about this for a bit–it would explain the HUGE difference in two post-trauma experiences I’ve had (one without support and one with.) Wow.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

[niullum-deactivated20210410]

El negro Matapacos (black cop killer)  was a symbol of fight and hope in the social protests we had last year. He was a stray who marched with the people and defended them from authorities. 

He is Chile’s most beloved protest dog.

   Here are some murals honoring him from different cities across the country

they even made a statue

[thebeardyme]

and the government via the police pigs have tried destroying murals, symbols, even that giant matapacos statue THREE TIMES but his spirit carries on. 

[mashallah]