cherry valley forever
titsay
⁂
#extradirty
Today's Document
DEAR READER
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Misplaced Lens Cap
Xuebing Du
JBB: An Artblog!
Game of Thrones Daily
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No title available
izzy's playlists!
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
pixel skylines
dirt enthusiast
Three Goblin Art
Sweet Seals For You, Always
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from South Korea
seen from Pakistan
seen from Australia
seen from France
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from South Korea
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
@jessiesresources
I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!
(save the images to zoom in on the pics)
I needed this
As a geographer, I loved this.
Corporate Glossary: every Friday, learn the secret meaning of common corporate words
“They’re trying to discharge her constructively. Do you know what Constructive Discharge means?” She asked.
As soon as I heard the term ‘Constructive Discharge,’ I knew I’d never seen it on a vocabulary quiz.
“No. What does it mean?” I asked.
She explained.
“Constructive discharge is a fancy way of saying “being forced out.” It’s not good. And if you’re not a lawyer or in human resources, you’ll probably learn what it means when it’s happening to you.”
“Oh my God. I’ve seen this my entire career and never knew it even had a name.” I thought.
You’ve seen constructive Discharge too. You may have experienced it. We’ve all made choices to avoid it.
Constructive discharge defined
“We can’t fire you, but we’ll make you so miserable you’ll quit, and then we won’t have to pay your unemployment.”
Then there’s the textbook definition:
“A constructive discharge occurs when your employer has made working conditions unbearable, forcing you to resign.”
Or as one person put it.
“I didn’t get handed a pink slip, but when you’re not wanted, people have a way of letting you know.”
HR isn’t always the secret police.
Employees aren’t always victims of evil-doers.
However, employers push employees out all the time to maintain and protect the, “We didn’t do anything wrong, YOU did,” power structure.
Constructive Discharge looks like this:
— Meeting invitations slow to a trickle, and you’re excluded from emails and generally looped out of what’s going on.
— People stop talking to you or stop talking when you walk in.
— Your emails don’t get answers, or they arrive too late to be of value.
— Suddenly, your work is not good enough, though nothing about your work has changed.
— Reviews, once good or even glowing, are now mediocre or bad.
— Instead of a bonus, you get a Performance Improvement Plan.
— Warnings and write-ups start so they can justify your eventual termination with documentation of your “poor performance”
— Your work, clients, assignments go away, or they overwhelm you with work.
— The words “Set up to fail” were practically invented to describe this scenario.
Constructive Discharge is illegal
It isn’t easy to prove you’re a target, and it’s even more challenging if you don’t even know constructive discharge is a real thing.
If you’ve ever experienced this and don’t fully understand what’s happening to you beyond knowing you’re in the process of being excommunicated, it can be hell. It’s not uncommon for the experience to leave long-lasting scars.
Talk to anyone who’s ever been through it. They’ll tell you.
Knowing constructive discharge exists and how it’s used gives you power to predict what’s coming and to protect yourself.
Seeing the endgame helps you in two ways.
You know what to expect. Having a sense of what’s coming next is enormously empowering. You can go on the offensive and protect yourself. Constructive discharge works to crush your ego, making you feel you did something wrong and deserve this treatment.
Without strategy, you end up being a miserable pawn in your employer’s endgame.
Remember, they’re almost certainly building a case to fire you in the event the hellscape they create for you doesn’t persuade you to quit.
If you’re getting pushed out, and you know what to look for you can prove constructive discharge and you can get unemployment benefits, be released from payback obligations on a signing bonus, and protect your mental health.
You’re not crazy, incompetent, or a failure. This is real and it’s carefully executed to leave you holding the bag and feeling like you did something wrong.
If they force you out, in addition to feeling horrible, you lose your paycheck, benefits health insurance, and possibly owe them money.
YES-AND. IF YOU HAVE NEVER READ A SINGLE ADDITION I HAVE MADE TO A POST, READ THIS ONE.
In the US, you have A FEDERAL RIGHT to communicate to your boss that you see what they’re doing, and by so doing, YOU RETAIN YOUR RIGHT TO UNEMPLOYMENT—EVEN IF YOU QUIT!!!
Here’s how it works.
1) go to work tomorrow and read the employee rights poster. By law, they’re required to have one, and they’re usually located in the breakroom. It looks something like this:
Usually, this will be posted next to a state labor laws poster, as well. (Also required by law, but I have seen them posted in two separate locations due to a building having a stupid wall layout, so if you don’t see both, do some poking.) There are a few different styles of these posters, but they’re all basically variations on a theme, so you should be able to recognize yours from the image posted above. I’ve read them hundreds of times in the last eight years, just to keep my memory fresh. If you don’t see such a poster, contact your state labor board, because that is VERY ILLEGAL. The law is unambiguous on this: the poster must be posted in a highly-visible (to employees) location that is readily accessible. Not in your boss’s office, not in HR, not on the back of the fridge. Highly visible, readily accessible, REQUIRED BY LAW. If you have to contact the labor board on this one, skip straight to step 2b while you’re at it, because your boss is up to some shady shit.
2a) now that you’ve had the primer of your rights as an employee, if everything is good for you, great! Keep an eye out and revisit these from time to time to be sure you’re not missing anything, especially if things start feeling rough. If things are NOT good for you, progress to 2b.
2b) if you suspect you’re the target of constructive discharge, DOCUMENT. EVERYTHING. Dates too, if you can remember them, although if you’re trying to remember “as far back as you can go” when you begin to document, your dates might be a little hazier. Ask for personal hard copies of any consultations, write-ups, improvement plans, reviews, etc. and so forth that you receive. YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO THIS DOCUMENTATION. Keep all of this in a file. If any of your coworkers make comments on what’s happening to you, note those down too: “on 1 July I called to inform my supervisor I’d be late due to an unexpected flat tire. I arrived six minutes after my shift was due to begin. I received a corrective action form. My coworker Linda commented that she was surprised, because although this is my first tardy in over three years, other employees with repeated, significantly more severe tardies do not receive corrective action forms. My supervisor did not explain why he felt I required this form after a single incident of tardiness.” If you know what you’re being asked to do is illegal, MAKE THAT CLEAR IN YOUR DOCUMENTATION. “After hearing me mention to Sarah that I was hoping for a raise, supervisor Paul asked to have a one-on-one and required me to sign a form stating I would not discuss my salary, in contravention of state and federal law.”
3) when you feel you have sufficient evidence that Some Bullshit Is Afoot, it’s time to write to your HR department. Instructions on how to do this will be on that poster (sorry, I’m home and getting ready for bed, I don’t have this part memorized), but basically you’re going to be telling them that conditions have deteriorated such that you may be forced to resign if they don’t improve. Note that the phrase “forced to resign” is IMPORTANT AS HELL. Make sure you keep a hard copy of this letter for yourself.
4) You now have to give them 10-14 days to read, respond, and implement changes (I forget the exact number of days but it’s in there somewhere). CONTINUE TO DOCUMENT.
5) best case scenario, they realize they done fucked up, and things will change for the better. More likely scenario, you have to quit. HOWEVER, if you have followed all of these steps correctly, you can still claim unemployment.
6) now go contact the IWW for information on how to start talking union to your coworkers before it gets this far: www.iww.org
And finally, a note because this has happened to me and statistically either has or will happen to some of you:
If at any time the poor conditions should escalate to include sexual assault or harassment by a supervisor, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200, CALL THE LABOR BOARD IMMEDIATELY. Make an EXACT record of what happened: write down statements verbatim, if you were touched inappropriately make note of exactly how and where, if you were offered any kind of quid pro quo (e.g., a promotion in exchange for oral sex; sex in exchange for continued employment) make note of EXACTLY what was offered and asked for. It is 100% okay to call the labor board and say “I don’t know what to do, my boss groped my breasts today and told me he’d have a talk with his supervisor about my pay rate ‘if I was nice’. Please tell me what to do, I’m afraid if I quit I’ll lose unemployment.” Someone will be able to help you. In cases like these, do not wait. This is also true if you’re blatantly racially or religiously discriminated against. Please note when I say “blatant,” that’s a much higher standard than what Tumblr understands as blatant. If your boss says you’re pretty cool for an N-word, call. If your boss makes a disparaging comment about doo-rags, document and hold your horses for now. (Is that a microaggression? Yes. Is that something the labor board will find actionable? Not on its own.)
Stay safe out there. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
I have been through this, so let me add some tech-industry specific advice:
If you’ve been placed on a Performance Improvement Plan, ask for digital and hard copies of the plan that have been signed by HR.
If you have the strength to do it, accept the PIP, and indulge in malicious compliance. Do everything exactly as it’s outlined in the PIP document and nothing more. Overachieving against a PIP won’t help your situation, but don’t quit.
Keep copies of every email and message related to your PIP on a separate USB.
Find your company handbook. It is probably hidden somewhere on an internal website. Save a copy to the USB so you can research it for ANYTHING that might help you negotiate with HR at the end.
Keep all of your notes on the same USB.
Always assume your work computer has spyware on it.
None of this will help you keep your job. Remember that. All of this is to help you negotiate with HR when it’s time to review your PIP performance. WHEN they say you didn’t meet the goals that were outlined, refer to your stack of documentation and give specific examples of where you met those goals. Ask HR what the next steps are. Your ultimate goal is to make HR suggest that you and the company part ways.
DO NOT AGREE TO THAT MAGIC STATEMENT. That’s when you start negotiating the terms of the company letting you go. The things I politely demanded AND GOT in writing:
3 months salary.
All remaining vacation time paid out.
Continued insurance coverage for 3 months.
A guarantee of a good reference if any potential employer asked for one.
A guarantee that the company would not contest my unemployment claim.
After all of that was signed and I had digital and physical copies of that paperwork, I told HR that my last day of work would be the following day. Remember that at that point, you don’t owe them anything, including two weeks notice. Say your goodbyes and walk away.
gosh, this would have been handy to know while I was still trying to maintain my sanity in an increasingly hostile workplace environment
I was lucky enough to have allies elsewhere in the organization who helped me transfer and keep doing the important parts of my job (and greatly expand the good stuff!), but at least a decade of hell wrought such psychic damage that I doubt I'll ever fully recover
It can also be good to check if you live in a one party recording state and, if so, recording any and all meetings.
"Death is my domain. Every single mortal and even some deities will be mine sooner or later. As long as life exists my domain will just keep growing. Why would you think I'd be fine with your attempt to eradicate all life?"
FACIAL MICRO EXPRESSIONS FOR WRITERS <3
Okay, we got a new one, boys.
pet peeve is when you look up fashion references from a specific era and you keep getting modern day '[era]-inspired' fashion like NO i want authenticity damn it. i can see your 2020 photo quality and your 2020 hair and your 2020 makeup. youre not fooling me.
hello i'm a historical fashion researcher and i have a lot of experience looking up things! this is a very widely experienced irritation and you're definitely not alone in this, but i am here to share everything i know!
so, ways to get around this:
turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us
don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace
a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)
instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian
including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too
including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue
for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend
when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!
if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache
some online resources and museum collections:
fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples
the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates
costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)
v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece
lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces
nypl digital collection for photographs
national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art
national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific
stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource
wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain
auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!
anyway, i hope this has been a good place to start for anyone interested! there are probably some i've missed because there are so many museums across the world and i don't know about all of them or can't remember them. but these are the ones i've used the most! (my specialisation/jobs i've had to research for have only really been in western fashion, so my resources reflect that)
Reblog to save a life
we’ve gone from the yee haw agenda to the ye olde thot programme
Ah yes, those slutty slutty Landsknecht shorts:
The bare-legged / hot-pants look was fairly common, since the whole point about being a Landsknecht (or Reislaufer, their Swiss equivalent) was to look outrageous.
Most period illustrations of Landsknechts are black-and-white woodcuts…
…though in 1905 a book called „Geschichte des Kostüms“ - History of Costume - assembled a bunch of black-and-whites and added colour.
If they look excessively gaudy, they’re not, because these next prints were coloured in-period by an artist called Erhard Schön, and it’s fair to assume he was representing what he saw.
In short - or in shorts - those reenactor costumes are spot on. :->
Something mentioned nowhere in this post that I have just learned from googling: these guys were not Ye Olde Medieval Dandies. They were 15th-16th century mercenaries. Pretty hardcore, too. They were exempt from sumptuary laws (ie the rules that said you couldn’t wear certain colours or cloth or styles) and apparently their response to that was technicolour thotpants.
I was complaining earlier about costuming in both “historical” settings and in fantasy/scifi. This is exactly what I mean when I say a knowledge of actual history would enrich the conceptual creative palette for things like “hardcore mercenary outfits.”
"Tutorial" on how to "draw" a blind OC.
My kofi
Boring tired disclaimer: Keep in mind that this is an introductory "drawing" "tutorial" and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. Which happens to be true for everything in general. Links below so that you can research and do a nuance. Ones that were directly mentioned are bolded.
THROUGH A RAPIST’S EYES” (PLS TAKE TIME TO READ THIS. It may save a life, It may save your life.)
An Article from Neena Susan Thomas
“Through a rapist’s eyes. A group of rapists and date rapists in prison were interview…ed on what they look for in a potential victim and here are some interesting facts:
1] The first thing men look for in a potential victim is hairstyle. They are most likely to go after a woman with a ponytail, bun! , braid, or other hairstyle that can easily be grabbed. They are also likely to go after a woman with long hair. Women with short hair are not common targets.
2] The second thing men look for is clothing. They will look for women who’s clothing is easy to remove quickly. Many of them carry scissors around to cut clothing.
3] They also look for women using their cell phone, searching through their purse or doing other activities while walking because they are off guard and can be easily overpowered.
4] The number one place women are abducted from / attacked at is grocery store parking lots.
5] Number two is office parking lots/garages.
6] Number three is public restrooms.
7] The thing about these men is that they are looking to grab a woman and quickly move her to a second location where they don’t have to worry about getting caught.
8] If you put up any kind of a fight at all, they get discouraged because it only takes a minute or two for them to realize that going after you isn’t worth it because it will be time-consuming.
9] These men said they would not pick on women who have umbrellas,or other similar objects that can be used from a distance, in their hands.
10] Keys are not a deterrent because you have to get really close to the attacker to use them as a weapon. So, the idea is to convince these guys you’re not worth it.
POINTS THAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER:
1] If someone is following behind you on a street or in a garage or with you in an elevator or stairwell, look them in the face and ask them a question, like what time is it, or make general small talk: can’t believe it is so cold out here, we’re in for a bad winter. Now that you’ve seen their faces and could identify them in a line- up, you lose appeal as a target.
2] If someone is coming toward you, hold out your hands in front of you and yell Stop or Stay back! Most of the rapists this man talked to said they’d leave a woman alone if she yelled or showed that she would not be afraid to fight back. Again, they are looking for an EASY target.
3] If you carry pepper spray (this instructor was a huge advocate of it and carries it with him wherever he goes,) yelling I HAVE PEPPER SPRAY and holding it out will be a deterrent.
4] If someone grabs you, you can’t beat them with strength but you can do it by outsmarting them. If you are grabbed around the waist from behind, pinch the attacker either under the arm between the elbow and armpit or in the upper inner thigh – HARD. One woman in a class this guy taught told him she used the underarm pinch on a guy who was trying to date rape her and was so upset she broke through the skin and tore out muscle strands the guy needed stitches. Try pinching yourself in those places as hard as you can stand it; it really hurts.
5] After the initial hit, always go for the groin. I know from a particularly unfortunate experience that if you slap a guy’s parts it is extremely painful. You might think that you’ll anger the guy and make him want to hurt you more, but the thing these rapists told our instructor is that they want a woman who will not cause him a lot of trouble. Start causing trouble, and he’s out of there.
6] When the guy puts his hands up to you, grab his first two fingers and bend them back as far as possible with as much pressure pushing down on them as possible. The instructor did it to me without using much pressure, and I ended up on my knees and both knuckles cracked audibly.
7] Of course the things we always hear still apply. Always be aware of your surroundings, take someone with you if you can and if you see any odd behavior, don’t dismiss it, go with your instincts. You may feel little silly at the time, but you’d feel much worse if the guy really was trouble.
FINALLY, PLEASE REMEMBER THESE AS WELL ….
1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do it.
2. Learned this from a tourist guide to New Orleans : if a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you…. chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!
3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car: Kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won’t see you but everybody else will. This has saved lives.
4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping,eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc. DON’T DO THIS! The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side,put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU CLOSE the DOORS , LEAVE.
5. A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage:
a. Be aware: look around your car as someone may be hiding at the passenger side , peek into your car, inside the passenger side floor, and in the back seat. ( DO THIS TOO BEFORE RIDING A TAXI CAB) .
b. If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.
c. Look at the car parked on the driver’s side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)
6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot).
7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN!
8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP IT! It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked “for help” into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.
Send this to any woman you know that may need to be reminded that the world we live in has a lot of crazies in it and it’s better safe than sorry.
If u have compassion reblog this post. ‘Helping hands are better than Praying Lips’ – give us your helping hand.
REBLOG THIS AND LET EVERY GIRL KNOW AT LEAST PEOPLE WILL KNOW WHATS GOING ON IN THIS WORLD. So please reblog this….Your one reblog can Help to spread this information.
THIS COULD ACTUALLY SAVE A LIFE.”
EVERYONE BOOT THE FUCK OUT OF THIS
This is so fucking unfortunate that we need this
it just makes me angry that women need this.. but we do and if you see this, PLEASE REBLOG. it doesn’t matter if you are a male or a female. by reblogging this, you might save someone’s life.
Don’t scroll past this, it’s so important
nothing to do with what my posts are normally about but this is SO damn important!! don’t scroll past without reading and / or reblogging!
this is fucking important. Idc if your blog is perfect, fucking reblog this. It may save someone.
sorry if i reblog this everY FIVE MINUTES
Important
No worries if this post doesn’t fit your aesthetic or theme, this is important information. You could save not just a physical woman’s life but you can ALSO prevent things like PTSD that a woman would acquire from an attack if left alive
Dont you dare scroll past this without reblogging im pretty sure you can press two simple buttons to raise awareness
since I know for a fact survival theft will be going up this month, do not steal from Target, they have some of if not The highest end security measures in place, even if they don't call you out on your first theft, they know you did it, and they're waiting until you've stolen enough to get the law involved.
I am dead serious. Do not fucking steal from Target, you Will be caught.
as a former target worker this is 1000% true. they have so many hidden cameras and an insane security team. if you ever think you’ve gotten away with theft at target, you have not. they purposefully let people rack up enough in stolen goods to not have to charge it as petty theft anymore. steal from somewhere else all you want, target is not worth it.
I can understand how "modern person thrown into the past gets by pretending to be a healer/doctor" is as surprisingly common of a trope as it is. I mean I'm fluent enough at bullshitting to be pretty sure I could pull it off to impersonate a doctor in any time pre-1800s. If I have no idea what something is or how to treat it, I could just get the opinion of the other whatever-passes-as-medical-professionals around, but if their suggestions sound like bullshit I'm not doing it. And I'll beat the shit out of anyone suggesting bloodletting or mercury. With my healing stick. I've tied little bells on it, that jingle comically with every smack.
The awesome curative powers of my healing stick come from two separate sources: Placebo, and me using it to beat anyone trying to give my patients mercury.
Ooooh you reminded me of that protocol I wrote about how to reinvent penicilin with only alchemical tools. You know. Just in case I did end up dumped in the past and needed a stable income.
w
what's the protocol?
I am so glad you asked! I unfortunately lost the protocol because it was probably on my laptop, but I remember the broad strokes. So! In case anyone does end up stuck in the middle ages and can find a kindly old alchemist willing to lend you his gear, here's the revamped Penicilin (Re)Discovery Protocol!
0. WASH YOUR GODDAMN HANDS.
We're not working in a lab here, cross-conatamination WILL happen. Your job is to minimize it as much as possible. If you end up in a place where soap hasn't been invented yet, wash your hands in distilled alcohol. Your skin won't thank you, but you can afford all the nice hand creams after you cure the plague and get rich.
Find some Penicillium mushrooms!
Yes, penicilin is produced by mushrooms, though Ascomycotes are usually called moulds, it's a fungus, and it makes me laugh to call it a mushroom. Plus, in the middle ages, mushrooms were known to have medicinal properties, so you'll get a lot farther by calling them mushrooms rather than molds.
First thing you need: mouldy fruit. Oranges, or cantaloupes are preferred.
Here's the thing: mold is everywhere, so getting it will be the easiest part. The tricky part start with identifying the correct mold. You don't want to feed your patients black mold, do you?
So. Leave some fruit out. The more the better, because you want to up your chances. Then let it rot in warm and humid places. After a while, pick any fruit that looks white on the outside and green in the middle:
Not the best picture, but that's what it should look like.
2. Transplanting your (potential) Penicillium mushrooms
Until you get it on a plate it's damn near impossible to tell which mold you got. Get ready for some trial and error because you will have to sift through a lot of unwanted mold. You might want to wear a mask.
First you need something to transplant it onto. Making modern agar plates is probably impossible but thankfully not needed. You just need:
Glass plates (the kind that can be closed, you want to minimize cross contamination)
1-2 cup of Hot water (preferably distilled, ask your alchemist if he can do that)
1 cup whole milk (should be 13g of lactose per cup, if your Penicillium won't grow adjust the water-milk ration in favor of milk)
If available: Instead of milk use corn steep liquor. Unfortunately only available after America was discovered, so YMMW, but Penicillium LOVES this stuff. It will make your life SO much easier if it's available.
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon Yeast extract (get it from a baker)
3-6 teaspoons Gelatin (get it from a butcher)
Disclaimer: The ratio of each of the ingredients will have to be adjusted depending on the purity of the ingredients and on the conventional measuring sizes of the place you end up.
Gently mix it all in and pour out into the plates, let it solidify. If you end up dumped far enough that such refinement isn't possible, make bone broth and strain it through cheesecloth several times to make it as clear as possible, then mix it 5/6 broth and 1/6 milk. Again, if available, use corn steep liquor, but if not milk is fine. Add gelatin (should still be able to get it from the butcher) as needed to solidify it. I'm afraid experimentation will be needed depending on the resources you will be working with.
When you're done, you should have something like this:
Now that you have your plates, run an inoculation loop through a flame to sterilize it.
Something like this. Wave it through the air to cool it so you don't kill your mold, grab it from your fruit and geeeeeently spread it on top of your improvised agar without breaking the surface of the gelatin!
You can see the motions on this one pretty well. Close your plates, stack them about a meter/3ft from the fireplace. Judge for yourself, but ideally somewhere you would consider comfortably warm (20-24°C).
3. Identifying your Penicillium Mushrooms
If all went well, you are going to have something that looks like this:
Well, realistically, it will look something like this:
We're not actually doing it in a lab, after all. But IDEALLY, it will look like the above. It doesn't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to identify Penicillium molds for now.
IDEALLY, on the plate that matches the description of the penicillium mold you'll see an exclusion zone of bacteria around the mold, like the fourth plate in the second row, so you know you have a potential winner, but if you managed to avoid bacterial growth you need to take a few extra steps.
Penicillium molds have characteristic rings of growth, grey-green-white rings. They're easy to differentiate from bacteria because the molds are fuzzy and the bacteria as smooth and slimy. In the above picture, there are four plates that potentially have what we want, and two are less certain than others. Wash out the unwanted ones, make new agar plates, sterilize your inoculation loop and transplant your best candidates. You might need to do this several times.
Two types are confirmed to produce penicilin: P. chrysogenum and P. rubens.
The former is far more widely used today, but since we're sourcing them from literally thin air, we're more likely to get P. rubens, but unless you're a mycologist you probably won't be able to tell the difference. Thankfully you won't need to, because they both produce penicillin. Which brings me to the next step.
4. Confirming it's the penicillin producing mushroom
We're gonna need more agar plates for this one, and believe it or not, you're gonna need to mix blood into your agar. Wash your hands THROUGHLY.
(Theoretically you can get away with just milk, but identifying the correct bacterial colony on white agar is going to be a nightmare, so just add some sheep blood to your agar, conventionally it's about 5% by volume but you might need more to make it)
You need some gram-positive bacteria, preferably of the Bacillota type. Please don't go out and find a patient with fucking botulism or tetanus, you need to live long enough to make the cure. Instead, if you have a vagina, scrape some of the white, mucousy stuff from there and plant it on your plate. If you don't have your own vagina, a borrowed one is fine. Penicilin also works on Treponema pallidum, so if you get a syphilis-affected prostitute that should also work. Just wear gloves.
Ideally you get something like this.
This is actually Lactobacillus brevis, but Lactobacillus colonies all look relatively the same. The important thing is that it's all gram-positive, and will therefore be affected by penicillin.
Take new plates again, plant your Penicillium mold in the middle, and the bacteria all around it, getting as close to the center as possible. You can put down a paper marker for the mold. Wait for about 20 days.
Ideally, on at least one plate, you will get something like this:
This is literally a textbook example of testing antibiotics, but the Zone of Inhibition is what you're looking for. It means the mold is releasing a compound to kill the competing bacteria for resources, in this case, Beta-lactam antibiotic, or penicillin. Make sure to pick the one with the WIDEST ZoI, because that's the one that produces most penicillin.
So now we have the root stock, but our problems have just begun. This is the part where you're absolutely going to need an alchemist's help.
The problem is that a human body is not a petri dish. It's quite a bit larger. And you want the good bacteria destroying stuff without all the nasty contaminants, so you need a SHITLOAD of mold producing a LOT of penicillin, and then you need a way to filter it. You are going to need actual lab equipment for that, or near as they had it.
Since I lost the original protocol I'm going to need to do research all over again how to do that with alchemy equipment (or at least a microbrewery), so that will be in the next installment.
Fascinating.
You have ro ferment that shit, it's actually pretty hellish and difficult.
The other fun fact is that the strains we started using for maximum effectiveness were irradiated to produce extra effective strains after a global search, which you won't be able to do so you'll be making low dose antibiotics, keep that in mind, and also having to breed it.
https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/penicillin.html
Being real inventing penicillin is off my list of historical time travel shit to do and I'm going to be inventing a washing machine instead.
I have no idea how accurate all of this is, but I'm reblogging it just for the demonstration of how HARD this medicine stuff was to figure out.
I'm uncertain whether glass of the sort you would need would even be available. That seems like the most difficult part of this process. You might get stuck with pewter, which is, you know, lead.
Meanwhile I'm over here going, "Wait, what do you mean 'if you're in a place where soap hasn't been invented'? If they haven't invented soap, invent soap, that's SO MUCH EASIER than the rest of this."
HOW 2 INVENT SOAP:
INVENT TALLOW. Get some animal fat. Chop it up, add some salt and water, and cook it for a few hours. Scoop the melted liquid fat off the top and filter it through something to get any meaty bits that might still be in there out. When it cools down, it will turn back into solid fat, and you can repeat the process as many times as you want to get more non-fat stuff out.
INVENT POTASH. Fill a container with wood ashes (hardwoods work best). Then pour in rain water. Then let it soak. After a while, collect the liquid, which will now be a horrible caustic alkali solution. If you dry this out, you'll get crystals of potassium hydroxide, but you don't really need to, because the next step is...
MELT THE TALLOW AND PUT SOME POTASH WATER IN IT. This will be stupid hot and there will visibly be chemistry happening. Stir it up good for a while while absolutely not getting it on your hands.
Congratulations, you have now invented soap. Aren't you glad you did this part before you tried the penicillin?
I have no idea why I'm thinking about this post again, but I am, so even without penicillin, some thoughts about how a modern person could be the past's greatest doctor* with minimal effort:
Sanitation: besides knowing about washing your hands, you know to boil water or filter it through several layers of cloth to make it safer to drink. My previous reblog said how to invent soap, and distilled alcohol is also pretty easy to invent- you heat an alcoholic liquid like wine in a container that's sealed other than a pipe/tube in the lid, which is attached to another container that isn't heated, allowing the steam to condense. The first little bit that comes out will be methanol and some other horrible poisons, but after that you'll get mostly ethanol, because alcohol evaporates much more easily than water.
Cholera and dysentery: what actually kills people with these is dehydration, which means even cholera is very treatable even without antibiotics. The most important thing is making sure the sick person drinks as much clean, boiled water as they can keep down and gets some electrolytes and calories in there too, such as by drinking broth, thin soup, or water some sort of grain has been boiled in.
Scurvy: you know this one. Cooking destroys a lot of Vitamin C, and copper stops it from being absorbed. Besides the kind of fruits and vegetables you might think of, rose hips have a crazy amount of Vitamin C, tea brewed from pine needles is pretty good for it, and while there isn't very much of it in meat, some Arctic expeditions managed to recover from scurvy by eating nearly-raw seal.
Rickets: Vitamin D deficiency, and maybe sometimes calcium. You can literally cure the first one with sunlight.
Goiter: often iodine deficiency. Seaweed and eggs are the foods of choice here.
Malaria: quinine is extracted from the bark of a tree native to Peru, which Europeans were smart enough to immediately bring over to Spain when they found out about it. Enough cloth to make mosquito nets would probably be way too expensive to be practical for normal people in most of the world until the Industrial Revolution, but at least you know.
Smallpox: STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM SMALLPOX, SMALLPOX IS TERRIFYING, IF YOU WANTED TO MAKE A DISEASE TO KILL AS MANY HUMANS ON THE PLANET AS POSSIBLE IT WOULD BASICALLY JUST BE SMALLPOX. It's insanely contagious and frequently fatal, and you probably aren't vaccinated. However, you can become inoculated, and developing a true smallpox vaccine is way easier than discovering penicillin. People in China were practicing variolation for centuries before it became a thing in Europe- it consists of taking a scab from someone with smallpox, keeping it in a bottle for a week or two to make sure most of the virus is dead, and then having someone inhale the dust or using a needle to prick their arm and get a little of it into the wound. This generally gives them a mild case, which still isn't a good time, but will make them resistant to getting the real thing afterward. Vaccination is the same procedure, but using the much less deadly relative cowpox, which is why the word "vaccine" is from the Latin vacca, "cow." The vaccine that was in use when smallpox was declared extinct in the wild was developed by deliberately passing cowpox between test animals to get it to mutate and selecting for the mildest strains.
Syphilis: the only good treatment for syphilis is antibiotics. However, syphilis is such a bastard that there are a couple of bad treatments that are, somehow, not the worst thing you can do. Insanely enough, this is the one time that mercury actually sometimes helps- like with chemotherapy for cancer today, if you catch it early and poison the bejeezus out of it, sometimes the disease will die before the person does (it's useless once the syphilis goes systemic, though). The other most effective treatment for syphilis before the discovery of penicillin was- I shit you not- giving the person malaria by injecting them with blood from a sick person. Malaria causes extremely high fevers, which kill off a lot of the syphilis bacteria. The drawbacks to this one are, uh, pretty self-evident.
As a bonus, since you probably know how a lot of these diseases are spread, you know when it's worth bothering with the full plague doctor getup! No need to bother when it's cholera or syphilis! But don't skip the mask if there's actual plague though, it's not just the fleas, plague can spread through the air and it can literally kill you in under 24 hours, don't fuck around with the plague-
*Besides time period, how much you would have it made as Superdoctor would also depend heavily on where you land. The Islamic world and China, for instance, were both working off fundamentally incorrect models of health and disease but were still generally a lot more competent than European medicine until the last century or two, while there are Inca skulls with marks from healed brain surgeries from 400 years before European doctors started to consider whether they should maybe consider washing their hands before sticking them in open wounds.
Dudes healthcare is so fake. My ADHD meds are $940 without insurance. But they gave me a website of "coupons" which straight up looks like a scam website, and I got it today for $60! Just a coupon from a random website and it was $900 cheaper. America, I am confusion!! America explain!!
For all my uninsured judys out there it's for Walgreens only: walgreens.rxsense.com
as a pharmacy technician i can share with you some websites that give you those "coupons" for your meds!
goodrx is the most well known one, but if i'm trying to find the cheapest price for a patient i compare it to scriptcycle, and use whichever is offering the best price. you just type in the medication (PLEASE make sure you're getting the right drug, dosage, and quantity) and your zip code and they will spit out some offers for you
some pharmacies may have their own discount card to compare to as well!
if you are getting a name brand medication, you can also look at the manufacturer's website to see if they offer any evouchers for you to use too
good luck out there 👍
How to Pay Hospital Bills When You’re Flat Broke
another one is singlecare.com, brought my duloxetine from $240 a month to $20
and there are coupons for hrt on there as well :) different options for different pharmacies
dollarfor.org saved my broke ass, it can save urs too
its not funny but i do think about it a lot
Yeah I don’t get this.. glad I don’t have kids. I mean what are you supposed to say?
it’s about the context. if a kid feels bad about doing something, they are unlikely to do it again unless they feel like they have to or if they don’t know another way to get it done. children are just small humans; they don’t like feeling bad/guilty/etc. any more than anyone else does. so if a kid comes forward and says ‘I did this bad thing and I feel bad about it’ and you scold them for doing that thing that they already feel bad about, then you are effectively just scolding them for coming forward. if the kid already feels bad, they don’t need an adult to tell them they should feel bad. in reality, the kid was probably coming forward about it because they wanted the adult to explain how to make it right, or how to do it properly.
Thank you, this helps. I like kids but being autistic sometimes it’s confusing because here in don’t know what the script is.
An appropriate script could be:
Telling the kid that it is very brave of them to come forward and admit that they did something wrong.
Having a conversation to find out why they did the bad thing. Sometimes there’s an underlying reason that needs to be addressed like ‘I’m worried the other kids think I’m not cool enough so I broke a rule’ or ‘I was mad at my sister because she called me fat so I broke her toy’, etc. These conversations might be more important than the bad thing.
Telling the kid that we all make bad decisions sometimes and while we should try not to do that again, making a bad decision doesn’t mean we’re bad forever.
Telling the kid that the best way to feel less bad about it is to try to make things right. Did they secretly take mom’s piece of cake? Maybe we can go bake a new piece of cake together and give it to mom. (The point here is not to make the kid really produce something of equal value to what they stole/broke/etc. A child often can not do that. The point is to practice what fixing the damage you have done looks like).
Finishing the conversation with supportive words and maybe a hug, depending on the child and your relationship to that child. Above all the goal is making sure the child leaves the conversation feeling happy that they chose to come forward and committed to doing so again if they mess up in the future.
reblog because this.
IF YOU ARE UNMARRIED, DON'T HAVE KIDS, AND HATE YOUR PARENTS PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HAVE A FUCKING WILL
this has been a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood probate lawyer
Again:
1. The law doesn't care how long your parents and family have been out of your life
2. The law doesn't care about your long term friends or "found family"
If you don't have legal documents that say otherwise, your biological family calls all the shots.
This goes especially for LGBTQ+. Please do not get deadnamed in your obituary.
How to make a will.
How to make a living will (Advance Healthcare Directive) so you don’t get fucked over by biological family if you end up in a situation where you cannot make your own healthcare choices.
If youre trans, this video is a good ref to start with and she provides links and organizations that can help
also have a designated medical power of attorney. even worse than your shitty parents getting control of your estate is your shitty parents getting control of your still-living but incapacitated body.
no, having a chill adult sibling isn't enough, it still defaults to parents for some dumbass reason even if your parents are old as balls. if you want your chill adult sibling to be your emergency decisionmaker, get it in writing.
i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out
brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad
OP this is EXCELLENT
Now THAT’S a self care resource! If you’ve gotten distracted by capitalism’s appropriation of “self-care” and watering the meaning down to nothing this is a super helpful guide to cut through the bullshit.
Also
sflix.to (movies, TV series, also rare international movies)
hianime.to (anime only)
kissanimes.et (anime)
kimcartoon.com.co (cartoon series and movies)
www.iq.com (Asian dramas)
Netflix has gotten way too greedy.
