Dientific Killustration

I'm Emily, a VCUarts grad who majored in scientific illustration with a minor in biology. Nice to meet you! See my art. Ask me things. More about me. Tags to block: "emily loses followers" for dumb stuff, "emily reblogs" for reblogs that have nothing to do with me or my friends, and "reply" or "emily replies" for my replies to replies.

[nestedneons]

By abg_3d

[loloftheday]

Energy company has got some sass

[bransrath]

Duke Energy Fined $102 million for Polluting Rivers with Coal Ash

[hawkeabelas]

This is the best summary of the corporate deflection of blame for environmental destruction onto the consumer to save face I’ve ever seen

[cherryandsisters-deactivated202]

[jehovahhthickness]

I rather die than to relate to this when I have kids.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[left-reminders]

Down the drain: Wisconsin dairy farmers told to dump milk because of an oversupply in the market

A West Bend farm says it was told to start dumping tens of thousands of gallons of milk per day because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

'It's discouraging for dairy farmers:' Coronavirus' economic impact on Wisconsin

With the first case of coronavirus confirmed in Wisconsin, the impacts could extend further than just health.

This is capitalism's vast irrationality and inhumanity in action. Markets and The Economy™ matter more to capitalism than the concrete distribution of resources according to tangible human need.

Resources exist in abundance -- give them to people. Housing sits empty -- give it to people. The rules of the feast table should apply to our economic system -- no one gets seconds until everyone has gotten a plate.

We stand at a crossroads in these chaotic times: socialism or barbarism! The ruling class repeatedly chooses the latter. We need to organize and choose the former!

[left-reminders]

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

[toxicrants]

My kink is husbands & wives who are still portrayed as very much in love with each other, because even after years of commitment and kids, they still talk to each other, go on fun random adventures and try new things. No resentment. No portrayal of marriage as a chore. Just actual love.

[glumshoe]

It’s strange.

I have felt very calm lately, despite everything—or perhaps because of it. Normally I spend my days quietly screaming into the void, braced for the worst, haunted by the future, horribly aware of how fragile everything is and how easily it can all fall apart. It’s terribly alienating, sometimes, to have to hold my tongue and pretend otherwise or be dismissed as a panic-stricken alarmist.

But now that we’re actually here—not at the end of the world, but a global crisis that can’t be ignored and which turns society inside out—I feel... normal. It’s as though the rest of the world is tuning into the wavelength that my brain is always operating on, and my anxieties are simply healthy level-headed pragmatism rather than the ravings scribbled on a roadside sandwich board. I feel calm, and my mind seems to be functioning as it should, and while I am no less helpless in the grand scheme of things, this... internal easing feels like a blessing. I can be calm and competent without wasting energy maintaining a facade of illusory normalacy. It’s one foot after another. I don’t know what’s going to happen or how bad it’s going to get, but there’s nothing to do about that but prepare as well as I can and take it as it comes.

[elodieunderglass]

Before the coronavirus stories really broke onto people's consciousness, I was receiving treatment for post-baby-having wobbles. (I segued seamlessly from prenatal to postnatal wobbles, because I'm graceful.) The lovely psychologist came to my house and gently suggested the topic of cognitive behavioral therapy, which I slapped rudely to the floor, because Nobody Is Going To Evidence Me Out Of My Feelings, I Have Too Much Evidence on My Side. The largest single source of my Wobble is that I've just had the loveliest little baby you ever met, a baby that I chose to have, in a fit of mad selfish optimism, and their fate is ENTIRELY IN THE HANDS OF FOOLS. This next decade will be monumental in deciding humanity's future and exactly how much suffering that will involve. And all the fucking fools around me are specifically chosing to make the world worse, and I am quite limited in my ability to stop them. We don't have to suffer, we could all choose differently, but these fools are slamming their feet onto the gas pedal, gobbling up the world and Being Wrong On the Internet, and actively hurting my baby.

And the future they are ruining, on purpose, rightfully belongs to my objectively excellent baby (and all the other children, of course, but it's hard not to take it personally.) We are living under existential threat, and the threat is in the heads of other people, and we knew that, but I JUST HAD A TINY BABY.

See, normally you get to simply kill and eat anything that threatens your baby, but you can't do that to every gremlin running their mouth on Twitter, and there's no meat on a bot. So instead I've just been tense, at levels detectable to the NHS.

Also, the other parents my own age are all, like, casually having 3 kids LiKe iT'S nOtHinG and going on ~*~skiing holidays~*~ or ~*~cruises~*~ AS IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT??? They don't even care, they haven't been worrying about climate change, they don't even believe Brexit will affect them, they're blissfully unconscious of any responsibilities they have to the future. I bet they don't even have a stockpile of emergency preparedness supplies for when our FRAGILE ILLUSION OF COMFORT is disrupted by fires and floods and friction at the borders -

"I see," said the psychologist, looking a little taken aback.

"I'm at 90% tension at all times, and I feel like I honestly have to be," I told her, "someone has to be alert and everyone else is only at about 10% alertness. I will HAPPILY RELAX when everyone else is at, like, 30%. I'm not unreasonable. If people were just a little more worried across the board - if everyone was doing some of the work of caring about our shared future, if the worry wasn't the sole work of the anxious and marginalised and the scientists - and, worse, the anxious scientists - I would stop raising all the red flags on your Maternal Mental Health exams. But I'm an anxious scientist. I see the evidence about the icebergs ahead, and nobody else even cares, and I can only steer the boat by popular vote, and now I have TWO tiny children on this ship."

The psychologist was off sick, and in two weeks the world changed.

Suddenly everyone was at 20% anxiety. Then 30%, and rising. Suddenly everyone has an interest in Our Shared Future. World leaders who gained their platforms by mocking and scorning experts and evidence are now claiming to be led by scientists. Hahahahahaha.

The psychologist, who now had to speak to me on the phone instead of coming to my house, asked how I was.

"I'm honestly rather proud that people have finally woken up to the tremendous importance of having The Big Bag of Rice at all times," I said chirpily, "and isn't it rather validating how predictable the panic-buying has been? don't you appreciate it when your anxieties are proven reasonable? I appreciate that. I just think it's good to appreciate that. A silver lining to every cloud. It sort of implies that my anxiety wasn't entirely wasted energy. And do you know? After this? I really think we might have a better take on the future."

[inkskinned]

do you ever just get quiet. i mean same body but everything feels a little bit like it’s under snow. the shush of a library. the gentle rhythm of a calm sea. like i’m alright. i’m okay. i just don’t feel like talking.

[goawfma]

who would have thought that the solution to homelessness is providing people with housing? 🧐

[jethroq]

The solution isn’t 100 % perfect, there’s a lot of people who aren’t technically homeless because they live with other people for free etc. but yeah this does majorly help reduce risks for vulnerable people.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

Here’s the big thing about it that might scandalize Americans even more so than the idea of free housing: you don’t have to do anything to “deserve it.” Most countries use what’s called “the staircase model” – you start by being in shelter, then maybe a halfway house, then permanent housing. You can “move up” by going through rehab or getting a job or accessing other services. The idea is that housing is something you get as a reward for good behavior, not something you get by right.

But with the housing first model, you get the house first, and then deal with everything else. It’s a lot easier to stop using drugs and alcohol when you have other ways to pass the time and aren’t under constant stress. It’s a lot easier to get a job when you have an address to put on your applications. It’s a lot easier to treat mental illness when you’re in a safe place that doesn’t add to your fear and pain. But if your mentality is that housing is something only the morally pure and socially acceptable deserve, and the only way to get it is for people to jump through hoops to prove their goodness, then of course you’re going to hate this model.

[urhajos]

Bored generation, Klegs

[quasi-normalcy]

The fact that you can’t raise taxes on billionaires even slightly without them pouring money into fascist political movements is, of itself, evidence that billionaires as a class shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the first place.

[blackjackgabbiani]

You, ah, don’t think it’s unfair to judge people’s morals based on their finances?

[quasi-normalcy]

I, ah, think that it’s perfectly fair to judge people’s morals based on the amount of money they pour into neo-nazi political movements, yeah actually.

[xprmnt626]

I, ah, also think it’s 100% fair to judge someone’s morals based on their finances whether they support neo-nazis or not. You can’t have that much money and be a good person. I’m sorry. I don’t care how many “”nice”” billionaires yall try to show me to prove me wrong. Nobody in the history of mankind has worked hard enough to earn BILLIONS. Even if they become philanthropists, they almost solely become billionaires by profiting from the labor (underpayment, abuse, etc.) of others. How can you say “hm..they could be a morally good person..” You also can’t be a billionaire in a country where people don’t have clean water or a world where people are starving and claim to be a good person.  There are a few people with enough wealth to end world hunger MULTIPLE TIMES OVER, yet here we are.  There is no such thing as a good billionaire as far as I’m concerned.  Nobody is deserving of that much money. Nobody has earned that much money. Nobody can sit on that much money and claim to be a good person. 

[crazy-pages]

I have spoken with Nobel prize winning physicists. I have spoken with their colleagues. I have worked with people who have led teams to make discoveries that twist my mind into knots. I have worked with scientists whose concept of hard work and dedication would beggar the belief of a robot. I’ve gone to talks led by scientists who head forty-people teams, synchronizing the efforts of others so efficiently I could scarcely believe it. 

These are people whose life works exist entirely in conceptual space, where the limits of what they can achieve are only their And they are impressive, don’t get me wrong, but few of them would I value more than a team of decent scientists. The amount of skill, intelligence, and diligence required to outwork even half a dozen of your fellows is pushing the limits of human ability. 

Even Albert Einstein, famed example of the brilliant lone scientist, was not that special. I’ve read his papers in detail, and those of his contemporaries (took a class on it actually). Without him the discovery of general relativity would have been delayed two or three years at most, the mathematical and conceptual groundwork that enabled his brilliance was laid down by others and being investigated by others as well. And I’d pit a decent team against Einstein any day of the week, an individual can only do so much. 

For the amount of money Jeff Bezos earns working for a day, $215,000,000 (x), I could hire a thousand such hardworking geniuses for a year. Maybe ‘only’ a hundred if they were from an exceptionally competitive and valuable field.

For the money Jeff Bezos earns in a year, I could hire a village. I could create a project with so many educated minds it would be larger than the Manhattan Project. About a dozen times over. 

No one is that irreplaceable. No one has a percent of that worth. If someone is a billionaire, they are earning beyond their contribution to society, at the expense of other’s well-being. 

So yeah, fuck billionaires. 

[firebirdeternal]

Holding onto quantities of money that it would be impossible to spend in a normal human lifetime when people die every day is also evil.

Like Imagine having 10,000 cheeseburgers in a room, you literally cannot eat them all. You *can’t*. You eat them for every meal and they’ll all go bad before you make even the tiniest dent in their absurd mass. And into the room walks 1000 starving people. *Literally* starving, actively dying of hunger starving, and you don’t give them some cheeseburgers. 

[magnesiumflare]

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to to the person holding it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead - you first,” “I like your hat.”

- Danusha Laméris, “Small Kindnesses" 

[liberalsarecool]

Worse, a pro-life conservative can hear about a child dying and think they 'deserved' it because asylum seekers are 'illegal'. All they need to hear is the word illegal and the death of a child is OK.

[notcomputing]

[mappingthemoon]

When someone’s wounded, the first order of business is to stop the bleeding. You can figure out later how best to help them heal.

Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses (via mappingthemoon)

[onemv]

[kokichi-ouma-ad]

Ok but why the fuck do you care about 2 inches of skin

[communalconcubine-deactivated20]

😒

[soft-ish-girl-deactivated202107]

Okay, okay, okay. So I’m against circumcision. A man should be able to choose, I think, but the comparisons to FMG aren’t needed, and not only that but they’re a stretch.

Also. It’s awful that we have to make men’s issues women’s issues before people take them seriously. Maybe I’m off my rocker, though. 😅❤️

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Comparing one form of genital mutilation to another form of genital mutilation is a stretch?

[archivedtdp-deactivated20240111]

@soft-ish-girl MGM and FGM are incredibly similar. They’re done for the same reasons (people think it’s cleaner, healthier, and more attractive) and there’s different severity for both. There’s a form of FGM that is way less removal of skin than what’s taken in a western circumcision and then there’s a form of MGM where the skin of the genitalia is entirely flayed off.

[pinkbandana-deactivated20240122]

FGM is done for much more different reasons than MGM. As I do believe that circumsision is still not acceptable to do, especially on new borns. I also do believe that FGM is far more graphic, unkind and done out of pure fucking misogyny.

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Did…did you not read the post you are reblogging? There’s a form of FGM that’s just a symbolic nick or prick. How is that less graphic than ripping the skin off a penis?

And if MGM and FGM are done for almost identical reasons, why is only the latter ‘pure misogyny’ in your eyes?

[archivedtdp-deactivated20240111]

@messymindmessyblog actually MGM and FGM are done for the exact same reasons! They’re both viewed by the people who do them because they think it’s cleaner, healthier, and looks nicer. Additionally, women are the ones who mostly enforce and perform FGM as well. Both forms of genital mutilation cause many issues though including physical/painful problems down the line, permanent psychological trauma, and even death. Even MGM when done in first world countries by doctors cause all of these issues, let alone when any genital mutilation is done by anyone else anywhere else.

[bagheadautist]

Difference is that statistically women who have undergone FGM report sexual difficulty as adults. Not so with men who have undergone MGM. That’s why I don’t think comparing them is the right way to go.

HOWEVER, and y’all better read this if you’re gonna reboog, this is not a matter of comparability. It is a matter of rights, and men should not be subjected to permanent cosmetic alteration without their consent. It does not need to be “just as bad as what happens to women” for it to be morally wrong and worthy of disgust.

[siryouarebeingmocked]

> Difference is that statistically women who have undergone FGM report sexual difficulty as adults. Not so with men who have undergone MGM.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23374102

[hold-muh-beer-yall]

Comparing circumcision to date rape just proves how desperate these people are, and is incredibly cruel to rape victims by trivializing the trauma they have endured.

[onemv]

No one is doing any such thing.

[hold-muh-beer-yall]

That’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re trivializing the life-altering trauma of being raped by trying to co-opt the sympathy felt for rape victims, and the righteous indignation felt towards rapists, in a shameful attempt to bolster your cause.

[onemv]

No, I’m not. I’m pointing out the excuses people give to justify circumcision are bullshit, by applying them to other situations.

I’m trivializing nothing. Routine Infant Circumcision and rape are both serious violations of someone else’s body. Justifying either with “they won’t remember it” is something a fucking psycho would do.

To think I’m trivializing rape, you’d have to think strapping someone down to an immobilizing board with no anesthesia, ripping skin, cutting it off, a trivial thing to do. Which is just fucking sick.

But since you are a fucking internet psychic and can read my mind and tell me what I’m “really thinking” from god knows how many miles away, maybe I can get some lotto numbers while you’re up on your pulpit?

[hold-muh-beer-yall]

Yes, you are, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for it. It’s reprehensible and beyond the pale.

If you have to compare circumcision to something else, make an apples-to-apples comparison. But really, if you want to debate circumcision you should be able to make your argument based upon the merits and relevant facts.

[onemv]

I should be ashamed of myself for something I’ve repeatedly stated I’m not doing because you insist I am? Fuck off with that logic.

But let’s remove what you think is a comparison.

How does “He won’t remember it” make hurting someone okay? Is it okay to beat the same infant with a wooden spoon because he won’t remember it? If we give the spoon to a doctor does that make it okay? Where is the line? Earlobes are useless, is okay for parents to cut them off too? What about his nipples? 

He won’t remember any of it, so all of this is okay right?

Or maybe, just fucking maybe, “X won’t remember” is a bullshit reason to do anything to a person.

[thecollectibles]

Art by Jian Guo 

Alignments: ∎ Lawful Good  ∎ Neutral good  ∎ Chaotic good  ∎ Lawful neutral  ∎ Absolute neutrality  ∎ Chaos neutrality  ∎ Lawful evil  ∎ Neutral evil ∎ Chaotic evil