💜rachel

I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine

[heartrachel]

yo I’m finally divorced

[bahtmun-deactivated20240623]

It’s October 3rd.

[awed-frog]

When STEM people have fun.

[heartrachel]

[bob-belcher]

[freckletriangleofdoom]

Current mood.

[thetomhardyparty]

I’m gonna go ahead and be controversial.

I actually am not a fan of young, twink Hardy.

Eh.

Maturity just suits him so much better.

Oh. Yeah. :D

[heartrachel]

Young Tom is cheeky, naughty. Kinda wanna ride on the back of his motorcycle. He’d spend the night once, steal your good towels, and disappear.

Dad Tom is ultimate Tom. He’d bump into you at the grocery store, apologize for his abhorrent behavior a decade ago, then invite you round for a cup of tea and a proper catch up.

[laerapunk]

Heads will roll. (Judith Beheading Holofernes)

Caravaggio (1571-1610)

Valentine de Boulogne (1591-1632)

Artemisa Genitileschi (1593-1653)

[veggielezzyfemmie-blog]

Fuck. Yes. 

[wellspringcounseling]

Decades of failing to recognize ADHD in girls has created a “lost generation” of women

Not the gender equality we had hoped for.

“In Understanding Girls with AD/HD, Littman and her co-authors explain that ADHD was first diagnosed in young, white boys, with a key indicator being hyperactivity. As a result, guidelines were written around how it manifests in boys, and research is almost exclusively focused on boys (1% is specific to girls, Littman says).

It also materializes much later in girls, which was problematic when the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnosis criteria called for symptoms to be visible by age 7. It recently changed the age (pdf) to 12, allowing more girls to be captured.

Dr. Patricia Quinn, one of Littman’s co-authors on the book and a pediatrician in Washington, DC, who founded the National Center For Girls and Women With ADHD, told HuffPo Parents that girls’ symptoms include:a tendency toward daydreamingtrouble following instructionsmaking careless mistakes on homework and tests.ADHD is a chronic neurobiological disorder which affects the brain structurally and chemically, as well as the ways in which various parts of the brain communicate with one another. It is highly heritable, says Frank.

Pressure to perform means many girls internalize their symptoms—disorganization or carelessness—as personal flaws rather than medical issues to be treated through medicine and therapy.

Girls with ADHD are significantly more likely to experience major depression, anxiety, and eating disorders than girls without. “They tend to have few friendships,” Littman says. “As a result of their low self-esteem, they often choose unhealthy relationships in which they may accept punitive criticism and or abuse.”

Teachers and parents often miss the warning signs because feeling disorganized or unfocused often leads to depression and anxiety. Failing to properly diagnose the condition, girls miss out on critical academic services and accommodations, as well as therapy and medication. Many girls end up misdiagnosed and treated with anti-anxiety or depression drugs, some of which exacerbate the effects of ADHD.”

[littie-titties-deactivated20190]

Yet another example of women and girls being failed by the medical community because they can’t be bothered to factor us in

[pothead-paisan]

Oops this was literally me! In elementary school I was constantly being chastised by my teachers/parents for being too “daydreamy”, disorganized, careless, and forgetful. Because I was 2-3 grade levels advanced in reading skills (and because I did super well on standardized testing each year, aka the only “value” a student has to teachers in terms of helping them secure funding/avoiding potential consequences from administrators), everyone would let me go to older kids’ classrooms to pick out books and read quietly instead of staying in class with my peers. This only made the problem worse, since I never learned how to develop a daily academic routine, and it prevented me from picking up study skills from my peers. I had a lot of problems socially when I was growing up as well, both due to my own low self-esteem/feelings of inadequacy and because the ADHD could make me hyperactive or manic in a way that other kids found annoying (and which I could not control - things like talking too much, interrupting in conversations, or behaving impulsively).

Had I been consistently loud/obnoxious/disruptive in class like boys with ADHD often are, my learning problems would have been noticed and addressed when I was young. Instead, because I had a high IQ and didn’t cause trouble for teachers, I slipped through the cracks up until my freshman year of COLLEGE. I nearly failed out of my first year of undergrad and ended up taking 2.5 years off to work full-time… It’s literally only now, at the age of 22, that I’ve begun re-engaging with higher education again. In high school I developed a serious eating disorder and suffered from terrible, constant anxiety (requiring years of CBT therapy and medication), all because I had absorbed these beliefs about myself. I thought that I was inherently flawed, careless, disorganized/forgetful, and broken. I can’t overstate the damage this did to me growing up, nor the effect this has had on my adult life. It’s incredibly upsetting and harmful to be told, throughout your entire childhood, that you “should” be able to do certain things, and that the only reason you can’t is because you’re simply not trying hard enough.

We do young girls such a disservice when we exclude them from our paradigm of what ADHD is “supposed” to look like, or of how it typically presents itself in the classroom. Just because girls with ADHD don’t tend to distract others, cause trouble, or display various other symptoms in the way that boys typically do doesn’t mean we deserve to be overlooked, belittled, or blamed when we run into issues caused by something beyond our control. FUCK this makes me so mad, both for my younger self and for all the other young girls and women whose issues aren’t “loud” enough to matter in an academic or clinical setting. 

[filmnoirsbian]

I have so much love and respect for women who are honest about their own loneliness but also find the good in it like when audrey hepburn said “I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel” and when charlotte bronte said “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” and when jenny slate said “I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that there will always be a ribbon of loneliness running through who I am. But that’s why I want to do comedy, and why I want to connect with people. You can use that ribbon to be a part of a finer tapestry, or you can choke yourself out with it! Your choice!” and when mary oliver said “whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things”

[art-nimals]

Måns Swanberg, Cats

[tkingfisher]

This Vote Is Legally Binding

In response to all those articles about talking to women with headphones…

Someone always says it, whenever it comes up: “I guess I’m just not allowed to talk to anyone any more!” Well. Yes. It is my duty to inform you that we took a vote all us women and determined that you are not allowed to talk to anyone ever again. This vote is legally binding. Yes, of course, all women know each other, the way you always suspected. (Incidentally, so do Canadians. I’m just throwing that out there.) We went into the women’s room at the Applebee’s at the corner of 54 and all the others streamed in through the doors into that endless liminal space, a chain of humans stretching backward heavy skulled Neanderthal women laughing with New York socialites, Lucille Ball hand in hand with the Taung child. We sat around in the couches in the women’s room (I know you’ve always been suspicious of those couches) and chatted with each other in the secret female language that you always knew existed. Somebody set up a console– the Empress Wu is ruthless at Mario Kart and Cleopatra never learned to lose and a woman who ruled an empire that fell when the Sea People came and left no trace can use the blue shell like a surgical instrument. Eventually we took the vote. You had three defenders: your grandmother and your first-grade teacher and an Albanian nun who believes the best of everybody. Your mom abstained. It was duly recorded in the secret notebooks that have been kept under the couch in the Applebee’s since the beginning of recorded time. And then we went back to playing Mario Kart and Hoelun took off her bra and we didn’t think about you again except that I had to carry this message. So anyway good luck with that it’s just as you always said it was. Hush now, no talking

hush.

[dat-soldier]

[dat-soldier]

25 years ago, Ice Cube had a good day.

[weirdlandtv]

Illustrations by Japanese artist, Sanae Sugimoto.

[mysharona1987]

[necclibrary]

YES.

[towardsmorning]

I once saw someone point out something I hadn’t really considered before- libraries are one of the only places that are warm and dry where you can stay for long periods of time if you have no money. If you’re someone with nowhere to go during the daytime, they provide a safe environment in which to keep a roof over your head for a while- and all while you can access information.

So yes. This.

[edwardspoonhands]

It’s weird…libraries almost feel /wrong/ now. It’s like I walk in and think “This is great…where do I put my money?”

[standbyyourmantis-deactivated20]

I used to work on a campus library and if you want someplace to put your money, so to speak, make sure you put books back in the designated areas. I know you think you’re being helpful by reshelving, but even if you pull something out to read a couple paragraphs just stick it in the basket for things you didn’t want. I don’t care if you know EXACTLY where you are. In academic libraries (at least in Texas) our funding was determined by how many books people looked at. So we got additional funding based on books not being reshelved. If there’s a designated shelf/basket for things you don’t want, stick things in it!

[gingerjab]

What @standbyyourmantis said about not reshelving is true for public libraries, too. Our funding is dictated largely by how ‘used’ we are, so we scan all the items that are laying about as In House Use. That, tied with Reference Count and Door Counter numbers (we have to manually put in the time we take for references) to prove we’re providing a needed service. We also have to count the number of people who come for our programs, which not only helps funding but shows that the programming/services are needed, as well. So, basically, if you want to feel like you’re making sure we’re getting paid and staying around, keep these in mind.

[queenquong]

I didn’t know that’s why you’re not supposed to reshelf!

[rosalarian]

Wow! That’s astounding!

[davidhuyck]

LIBRARIES!!!

[citylightscomebackinjune]

I’ve lost how many times I get asked about how much it costs to get a library card. It’s free. Everything is free unless it’s late or you lose an item. Free. Free. Free. Free.

[heartrachel]

Amazing things about my library:

We stopped charging late fees because so many kids were being prohibited from checking out books due to small fines, and most of those kids were dropped off by parents without any money to pay. So we just forgave all the late fees and stopped charging them.

If you fall asleep in the library, we don’t wake you up. The adult world language section is filled with sleeping Asian grandparents, delicately holding tiny imported books. We only wake you up 10 minutes before closing.

We have a digital creation space and teach free classes on all the programs and equipment. Available whenever the library is open.

You can book a librarian. Everyone on staff has listed their special skills in a spreadsheet, so if you have questions about using a Cricut or sewing machine or DSLR or planning a wedding, you can book an expert. For free.

[thepuppyclub]

I’ll be honest…I don’t want a career. I don’t want to work. I want to be LEFT ALONE and paid for it. 

[macrolit]

“I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.”

— The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

[princesconsuela]

[d-e-a-d-ly]