At face value, this is a ridiculous headline. But the article then says his managers berated and insulted him for leaving the party after an anxiety attack, and the company then fired him for taking days off work for “unsafe work practices,” due to having anxiety?
There’s so much more to it as well. He repeatedly asked the company not to throw a party for him due to his anxiety (apparently this is standard practise for their office and he knew it would be triggering for him) and they “forgot” about his request. On the day in question, he predictably had a panic attack and went to his car to do breathing exercises.
The next day he was called into a meeting where he was insulted and grilled about “ruining the party” and “stealing his co-workers’ joy”, which caused him to have another panic attack and start doing coping behaviours like hugging himself, at which point his employers decided he must be angry and was going to turn violent. They then suspended him for days and later told him he’d been fired.
So yeah, it’s not over an “unwanted birthday party”, it’s over employers repeatedly failing to accommodate someone’s disability, trying to frame them as the villain for having accessibility needs, and firing them for not conforming to some stupid office politics.
I am completely pro-lawsuit. Lawsuits are often the only tool that otherwise powerless individuals have to demand some accountability from large corporations and institutions, and historically lawsuits have been a very important tool for civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT+ rights, and disability rights. But this is exactly why the media is always depicting lawsuits as something frivolous and silly that only uptight spoiled crybabies who want easy money do, and people just eat up that propaganda without doing any research or critical thinking.
A reminder to my self and all of you: you can, and should make customer complaints on behalf of staff.
Like last week, I had to mail a package and my local USPS was absolutely SWEALTERING. And the staff only had a few fans, some of which they were using faced towards customers, to try and keep us cool.
While doing my transaction, I was chatting with the worker about how crazy this was and how I hoped she had her own fan too, because I could only see the customer-benefit ones. She said yes, but I also asked if there was anyone I could complain to on her behalf and she immediately said yes again and to please do it! She wrote a more direct customer service number on my receipt which I was able to call Friday.
To be clear, I was kind and polite; I stressed how good the workers at this office were and how efficient always: "It's my local post office," but also how unbearable the heat was and how I couldn't imagine MY poor local staff having to suffer in that heat all day. I don't know yet if it will have an immediate effect for the workers, I hope it will though.
It's a move I haven't pulled much recently, but it was a good reminder for me that I can. I can put on my best assertive-Karen-for-good voice and bitch at companies and corporations to take care of their staff because why would I keep going to them if they don't? I know Post office is a little different, but all the more reason for me to take a vested interest as I pay for them with my taxes! Use my money to get those hard-working folks some goddamn aircon!
ChatGPT in particular has been so incredibly helpful in my writing process! It works perfectly in fueling my undying hatred for the slop plagiarism machine. Spite has been my singular motivator as I spend every day loathing the amount of AI covers and slop books flooding the market. AI has done what no motivational video on YouTube has managed to do: it has motivated me to sit my ass down and fucking write because I am a writer and'll be damned before I let some second hand thinker get the last laugh
[Prompt Calender: July 16th, Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day]
I am sooo tempted to get Warhammer books as french translations, read them as my way to start re-learning french with a translator at one hand and a dictionary at the other, and develop zero grasp between what vocabulary is regular french and what is Warhammer, and if I ever encounter a native speaker I give them psychic damage.
“Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he’s got an answer: “536.” Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, “It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year,” says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past. A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says. Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.”
— “Why 536 was the worst year to be alive” from Science magazine
(via principleofplenitude)
"unlike us monsters, human funerals are sad affairs because they don't explode into a pile of loot on death, and thus all the relatives and friends cry from disappointment"
THE YEAR IS 2021 and I am on my way home from a VERY long day at my new job as a school photographer. Its 5:30, I have driven an hour and a half just to get home and all I want is a beefy five layer burrito and to go to bed early.
I go through the drive through at the taco bell. This is the same taco bell that, three years prior, asked us how many sauces we wanted. My roommate responded with "we'd like to get lost in the sauce."
To which he said "lost in the sauce. Ok boss!"
And gave us an entire brown bag full of sauce packets that we are still working through to this day.
So our conclusion is that this store is operated by stoners, which is on par for a taco bell.
But anyhow, 2021, all I want is a burrito.
Pull up in the drive thru, order burrito. Compliment the cashier's nails, take the bag without checking, drive off.
I get home. I carry the bag all the way to the kitchen and set it down. The sound it makes is not the sound of a beefy five layer burrito. It rattles.
I realize now that something is wrong.
I look inside.
I find this:
Which I realize now in 2022 after hanging out with potheads that this is considerably more than 100$ of THC products but that's unimportant. I sit there for a few moments and just kind of stare at them asking myself
WHY does this KEEP HAPPENING to me?
Girlfriend comes in and sees this.
"Did someone pay you in smokeables again?"
"No, this is the new beefy 5 layer burrito from taco bell. Obviously."
I could keep them, but what would I DO with them? I didnt know any smokers at the time that I could sell them to. You cant really... pawn THC products in my state because it's a consumable and uhhhh... possession of such products is probably illegal? Fucking I dont know, if there's a law about it everyone seems to be ignoring it.
And I cannot stress this enough: I dont smoke! And yet people keep handing me these things for some reason.
But more importantly: it is now 6:00, I am starving, and I did not get my burrito. So i make a decision and i grab the bag of vape carts and I go back to get the food I ordered.
I go inside and stand at the counter. I quietly tell the cashier that I ordered a beefy five layer burrito, and I got this instead. I lift the bag. I gently drop the bag. It makes the very non beefy burrito rattle sound.
The cashier knows by sound what is in the bag. Her eyes go wide.
"I'm not mad," I tell her. "I dont want anyone in trouble. I'm just very hungry and would like the food I ordered."
She very quietly takes the bag beneath the counter and produces six coupons for a free taco. "We'll get your order to you in a moment, thank you for your patience."
I am... containing my urge to burst out in laughter because this urban legend stuff. This is 'that happened to my friends cousin' kind of story material and I'm just... waiting for my burrito.
The manager on duty approaches me and says:
"I understand you received something uhh.. other than your order." She thinks I'm gonna tell corporate. This shit is too funny for corporate. I am not telling corporate.
"I dont want anyone in trouble," I repeated. "I'd just like to make sure it gets back to its owner and make sure I get the burrito I ordered."
"Right. Right. Right away."
She gives me six more free taco coupons.
It is deathly quiet back there and I am trying so hard not to laugh at the absurdity of all of this. Like... how did I get here? What happened back there to lead me to this awkward situation? What farcical theater piece am I now a minor character in? Will I exit left persued by a bear?
The cashier returns with a bag. "Once again, I'm REALLY sorry."
I take the bag. I check it this time.
This is indeed a burrito.
"No need, all is well."
I leave with my burrito, twelve free taco coupons, and the sense that I just created chaos for an hour.
tony's chocolonely mildly pisses me off every time i eat it. like yeah i get it ur doing a whole symbolism thing about unfairness and whatever, but its actually SO DIFFICULT to eat fucking. gerrymandered chocolate. your symbolism is ruining my chocolate experience.
like. ur already more expensive. i understand this. i am willing to pay more money to have slave-free delicious chocolate. why must you punish me further by making it a goddamn puzzle to break a piece off.
Tony's Chocolonely does not ensure a living wage for cocoa workers in West Africa (see 2020 report by Voice Network).
Food Empowerment Project maintains an updated list of chocolate brands they recommend based on the following standards:
transparency about the country of origin for cocoa
if sourced from Western Africa, the workers must own the companies/be in charge of the profits from their labor (this standard is because child labor and slavery have been widely documented for decades in this area)
if sourced from Brazil, the workers must own the company and/or be in charge of the profits from their labor, or the company must be going above and beyond to support the workers and their families (this standard is because "child labor and slavery only recently have been documented in cocoa in Brazil" and they are "giving Brazilian companies that are trying to address the issue by supporting the workers and their families the benefit of the doubt.")
this isn't perfect, obviously, but it is much more grounded in the rights of workers than the various certifications (e.g. Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, etc.) you'll see on product packaging
I think it should be noted that the Food Empowerment Project specifically only lists companies making "at least one vegan chocolate product" and that they only ask about the companies' vegan chocolates specifically. Their list is not an exhaustive resource for every type of chocolate.
[Source: "Understanding Our Chocolate List" from their website]
Before I found that link I was curious as to why I didn't see any Norwegian manufacturers on their list(which makes sense now, as their chocolates are almost exclusively milk chocolate) and looked up where our companies source their chocolate from and found Nidar gets theirs from the Rainforest Alliance and Freia from Cocoa Life, both of which have been under scrutiny for not preventing child labour and not paying farmers a living wage among other things. So it appears Norwegian chocolate is out of the ethical picture.
I stated this in the comments of the post already, but it’d probably be better to add it as a reblog, so it’s more visible and doesn’t need to be restated by anyone else in the future.
So, Tony’s allied with Barry Callebut to get its cocoa. Barry Callebut is one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world, and it is unethical, obviously. This led to Tony’s revealing in February 2022 that 1701 child laborers were in their supply chain. Barry Callebut had over 21K at the time. Both of those numbers have risen, and Tony’s has outright admitted they don’t give a fuck about child labor laws when asked about it, content to let children to continue farming their cocoa instead of actually doing the activism they claim to do. (business-humanrights.org, feb 6 2022)
About a week ago, Tony’s joined Barry, Nestle and Ferrero in pushing against the reinstatement of important EUDR deforestation legislations. Under that regulation that they pushed against, they would’ve had to be more transparent about their supply chains for their more key ingredients - So Tony’s is lobbying against the exact thing they claim to stand for. (confectioneryproduction.com, mar 18, 2026)
Won’t restate @closet-keys’s addition, of course. That’d just be redundant and maybe annoying since, yknow, it’s already been said.
If you wanna find a better chocolate brand it’s really damn easy. There’s lists on slavefreechocolate.org of both the ethical and unethical companies. Both lists can be found here:
Below is a list of chocolate companies that only use ethically grown cocoa. Find out how you can tell if the chocolate you are ea
And it doesn’t have the vegan product restriction the other list has, which solves @aloofraven’s issue.
Down the Historical Rabbit Hole: When Renaissance Medicine Left a Foul Taste
As writers, we are often warned that our search histories could land us on a watch list. We spend hours analyzing obscure poison dosages, tracking medieval siege tactics, or studying the exact trajectory of a vintage revolver. Yet, the most surreal moments in research rarely come from the dark or dangerous. They emerge from the deeply strange.
While working on a historical fiction project set in early modern Europe years ago, I needed to figure out how a field surgeon would care for a soldier’s infected sword wound. I expected to read about primitive cauterization, brandy as a disinfectant, or perhaps a few crushed herbs bound in linen. What I didn’t expect was to fall down a days-long, deeply bizarre rabbit hole into early modern dung pharmacology, specifically, the widespread, systematic application of animal and human feces directly into open human wounds.
It started innocently enough with a reference in a digitized 16th-century medical text to a poultice containing "pigeon dung and vinegar." Mildly repulsed, I assumed it was an isolated, desperate folk remedy. But pulling that single thread unravelled a massive, forgotten branch of Western medical history.
The Science of "Stercoraceous" Medicine
During the Renaissance, medicine was still heavily dominated by the classical theories of Galen and Hippocrates, who viewed health as a balance of four primary bodily humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
Disease or infection was interpreted as a systemic imbalance, and treatment often relied on like curing like or using aggressive topical to draw out corruption.
To my horror, I discovered that fecal therapies, known historically as stercoraceous medicine, were not fringe quackery. They were mainstream. Prominent physicians regularly prescribed poultices composed of human feces, dried cow dung, or bird droppings to treat everything from venomous bites and quinsy to deep, hemorrhaging tissue wounds.
The logic behind it was as bizarre as the application itself. Ancient and Renaissance texts argued that excrement possessed powerful "drawing" properties capable of pulling bad humors and heat out of a inflamed wound.
Physicians were even aware that patients found the treatment utterly repulsive. Their brilliant solution? They began mixing the excrement with aromatic herbs like thyme, lavender, or rosewater to make the foul paste more palatable to the patient's nose.
Archaeologists in Turkey even uncovered a 1,900-year-old Roman glass unguentarium--a small bottle typically reserved for perfumes--that chemical analysis revealed was packed with human feces mixed with thyme. The practice was so deeply ingrained in Western medical heritage that it persisted straight through the High Renaissance.
I sat at my desk, looking from my screen to my cup of coffee, utterly fascinated. What we now recognize as a guaranteed recipe for lethal sepsis, tetanus, and gangrene was, for centuries, considered state-of-the-art trauma care.
From Research to the Page: Making the Discovery Work in Drafts
Discovering something shocking in research presents a dangerous trap for a writer: the info-dump. When you spend three days reading academic papers on 16th-century dung unguents, the temptation to force every horrifying detail into the story is almost overwhelming. But effective worldbuilding requires restraint. The goal isn't to lecture the reader. It's to immerse them.
In my original outline, the protagonist's companion suffered a deep blade wound during a tavern skirmish. I had initially planned a standard, romanticized scene where a wise old apothecary cleans the wound with wine, stitches it neatly with silk, and wraps it in clean white gauze.
After my research trip down the dung rabbit hole, I realized that scene was completely dishonest to the era's medical reality. I completely rewrote the chapter to lean into the authentic visceral terror of Renaissance healthcare.
Instead of a clean, pleasant apothecary shop, the scene became claustrophobic and sensory. I introduced the sickening contrast of fragrances: the sharp, sweet scent of crushed thyme and dried lavender fighting against the unmistakable, pungent reek of a freshly prepared dung poultice. The sensory contradiction alone immediately grounded the reader in a historical world that felt alien, filthy, and real.
The historical reality built instant, high-stakes conflict between the characters. When the surgeon brought out a wooden paddle slathered with a steaming, greenish-brown paste, my wounded character didn't passively lie back. He panicked. The scene transformed from a dry medical pause into a desperate, physical struggle. The protagonist had to actively fight off the well-meaning doctor, terrified that the "cure" was going to kill his friend faster than the blade.
My research also led me to a fascinating paradox of the era: the "Powder of Sympathy" or "Weapon Salve." Because patients frequently died of horrific infections after surgeons applied dung poultices to their wounds, some Renaissance thinkers claimed that treating the wound itself was too traumatic. Instead, they invented a magical salve applied directly to the weapon that caused the cut, while the actual wound was simply washed with clean water and wrapped in clean linen.
Unsurprisingly, the patients whose wounds were just washed with water and left alone survived far more often than those slathered in bird droppings. In my draft, I had a street-smart rogue protagonist reject the official physician’s expensive dung poultice, opting instead to pay a charlatan for a sympathetic weapon salve.
Ironically, by falling for a superstitious gimmick, the protagonist accidentally saved his friend's life simply by keeping the doctor's foul remedies away from the open flesh.
Falling down the Renaissance medical rabbit hole changed more than just one chapter of my manuscript. It reshaped my entire approach to historical fiction. It reminded me that the past is not just the present with cooler clothes and candlelight. The people of the past operated under radically different logic, paradigms, and daily horrors.
When we allow ourselves to explore the truly strange corners of history, our stories stop feeling like modern reenactments and start feeling like living, breathing, beautifully bizarre worlds.
Chat, is it considered “abusive roommate behavior” to release a raccoon into the living space after you have asked your roommate for months to please clean up their messes (they do not pay any of the mortgage)
For context, when I used to live alone I would do something called “Princess Time” where I would do an initial sweep (to remove any significant hazards) and then I would release a raccoon into the living area and clean. This helped because I would 1) feel like a princess and 2) the raccoon would bring attention to things my ADHD brain had decided to ignore and I’d quickly clean that stuff up.
So like, if I’m expected to clean the house now, I will be doing it in the way that is most effective for me. And anything that has not been cleaned up after months of having sit-down talks and sending reminders and being promised things will change, might be deemed “trash” by the trash panda and thrown away.
We haven’t done since we moved into the house, because I didn’t want to cause my roommate or their cats destress or have their things destroyed by a raccoon
I am a raccoon biologist and one of the few people in the state allowed to take in captive bred raccoons that had been possessed illegally. The raccoon in the photos is Moonshine, but she is currently at the animal sanctuary where I work as I had been quarantining multiple new intakes from an abuse case. I still have two males (Rum Tum Tugger and Electra) left in my home enclosure as we are getting them neutered and then hopefully sending them to an AZA accredited zoo.
I wanna make things very clear that underneath all the whimsy, I am a trained professional.
