[mlarayoukai-archive]

You show a cat something and they're like sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff ooooh I understand now. Don't care

[okayyoureacab]

Hexagon Quilt

[funoftheday]

You don’t say.

[a-spoon-is-born]

[timemachineyeah]

For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better. 

She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there. 

[hatey-mchaterson]

You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.

[snarklordofthesith]

“I never thought leopards would eat MY face, until I realized they totally would, and they will eat your face, too!” warns defector from the leopards-eating-faces party

[aqueerkettleofish]

don’t hide this in the tags….

#really important actually#like. it’s so important that we allow people to STOP voting for leopards eating faces#because if you attack anyone leaving the leopards eating faces party when they realize it’s bad#the only support system they’ll have is the people who want them to come back to it#you have to make it possible for people escape instead of considering them forever tainted and impure and inherently evil

[elfwreck]

The #1 trait of anti-vaxxers is not “they’re stupid” or “they fell for propaganda” but “they don’t know who’s safe to trust.”

The movement is pushed by women, especially suburban moms, because they know damn well you cannot trust doctors. You cannot trust the medical industry, the billion-dollar corporate zone of “you should lose some weight and maybe the pain will stop.” Cannot trust the ones who keep changing diet advice - is it no sugar? No carbs? No fats? Is it dangerous to let kids eat things in wild colors? Food pyramid: good or bad? They cannot trust the BMI chart that says they should lose 75 lbs to be “healthy.” (Whether or not they “should” lose 75 lbs, they know damn well that “healthy” does not describe any part of the journey to getting there.) Cannot trust the ones who keep giving them incomplete and sometimes incorrect information about contraception. The ones who said “that’s false labor; you have two weeks more” 12 hours before they gave birth. And so on.

So they have their kids, and they want so much for their kids to be safe, and the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

So they ask: What about if there’s complications? An allergic reaction? Side effects?

And the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

This is… not reassuring.

And they ask, My sister-in-law’s cousin had a really bad reaction to the MMR shot and I want to know how I can tell it’s safe for my kids.

And the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

Throw in the right-wing/libertarian faction yelling YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO and the insurance companies saying “hey um you need a specific type of coverage for that; we probably cover those vaccinations but you’ll need this special paperwork to be sure” - and then you have the actual anti-vax propagandists yelling some combination of cherry-picked statistics and outright lies, and you get a whole lot of moms willing to say BUGGRE ALL THIS FOR A LARKE.

There is no amount of facts that can fix this. They’re swamped with facts from 300 directions. What they need to fix this is empathy and the kind of connections that lead to trust.

They need to trust that, even as the medical industry dismisses a whole lot of womens’ concerns, in this particular area, they’re right.

[embervoices]

Add in the consequences of having a significant portion of your social support network tied up in a particular worldview, leaving it, much less openly condemning it, is really hard and means losing your community support. In a world where the system can’t be trusted to pick up that slack, Moms can’t afford to risk the change - until the cost of staying clearly outweighs the coat of pushing back, not just in general, but for their kids.

Kindness doesn’t just matter because it’s more ethical - it'salso a more effective strategy.

[genderkoolaid]

Don’t normally do this but

Kindness doesn’t just matter because it’s more ethical - it'salso a more effective strategy.

Get this into your fucking heads. Kindness and compassion and one might even say “love,” are strategies, not just vague fluffy inoffensive emotions. Cruelty will never save us.

[nochd]

Gods damn I wish there was an option so’s you could see the latest addition to a post when it swims across your dash instead of the first.

KINDNESS IS A MORE EFFECTIVE STRATEGY. CRUELTY WILL NEVER SAVE US.

[fairycosmos]

not only is it not friday it’s not even thursday. or wednesday

[spookyboywhump]

Guy who never feels like his problems are “bad enough” to be taken seriously: what if I hurt the character so horrifically that everyone around them could not possibly deny the severity of their pain even if the character themself tries to downplay it.

[cyanolov3]

My rendition of little red riding hood — assignment for class

[petemcvries23]

the natural lifespan of a fandom is unlimited. when well tended a fandom can be functionally immortal. and yet everywhere you look you see newly bred fandoms withering and dying when they’re barely a year old. barely even six months old. fans are looking at their six month old fandoms and saying i think it’s on its last legs, should i euthanise it? when with the proper care that fandom could outlive them for decades. it’s sad. sad state of affairs we’re in.

[gaynfl-moved]

what's your "if I won the lottery I wouldn't tell anyone but there would be signs" thing? mine is getting a fully green kitchen

[gaynfl-moved]

[dinuguan]

[angelbabymikaa]

[wuuruvu]

[kindly-whisper-norbury]

[joey-wheeler-official]

there aren’t enough posts going around about the swedish cryptid known as the skvader which is a rabbit with pheasant wings and also a very good boy.

[joey-wheeler-official]

like this one dude just made a fake taxidermy and spread it around as a hoax for a good ass while and it lead to this really cool fantasy creature and i am genuinely dissapointed that it never gets used in anything

[joey-wheeler-official]

THE BOY

[vr-trakowski]

Rabbirds, by the amazing @tkingfisher/Ursula Vernon (source).  

[songofkeys]

The lack of skvaders is particularly frustrating when you realize it forms the third point of a wonderful cryptid trifecta.

You got the jackalopes, which are rabbits with antlers.

And you got the wolpertingers, which are rabbits with antlers and wings.

And then… what? Do you escalate? That’s unbalanced, those two rabbit cryptids don’t have the same number of extra things, the wolpertinger is clearly the jackalope But More.

BUT with the skvader on the other side, balance is restored. Antler rabbit, winged rabbit, winged antler rabbit. It’s a classic Venn diagram of imaginary lapine beasts, and it’s only complete if you acknowledge the fucking skvader.

Good thing Ursula’s got our back, at least.

[gallusrostromegalus]

This is a really excellent point and I applaud your advancements in Cryptid Theory.

[hatwithglasses]

Gentleman, if I might add:

[joey-wheeler-official]

yes you may add this

[blog3839]

this is my self insert

[eliasmustdieart]

I’m slowly forgetting your face

[thesassycat]

You can only reblog this today.

[askjennaflorida]

I missed my chance last year. Not gonna let it happen again

[the-uncanny-dag]

[supergameboytwo]

only 10,000 copies of this post are being released. reblog yours before they run out and are gone forever.

[oganneb]

Emil is my "yup this is real wool" detector. It's only real wool that he goes this nuts over

[unicornery]