life is ridiculous

it is ridiculous lately, and you know it.

[prokopetz]

Okay, so here’s the pitch.

[notajerusalemcricketd-deactivat]

just missed it

[punished-venom-solitair-e]

we’re gonna get it this time don’t worry

[notajerusalemcricketd-deactivat]

Sorry maam we’re temporarily shutting down this building’s power. Hope thats not important

[punished-venom-solitair-e]

GODDAMNIT

[helloiamaegg]

This summarises the entirety of the experiment thus far.

[lila-kriegerin]

A pitch drop experiment is a long-term experiment which measures the flow of a piece of pitch over many years. “Pitch” is the name for any of a number of highly viscous liquids which appear solid, most commonly bitumen, also known as asphalt. At room temperature, tar pitch flows at a very low rate, taking several years to form a single drop.

The best-known version of “the pitch drop experiment” [pictured above, in summary] was started in 1927 by Professor Thomas Parnell of The University of Queensland demonstrates the viscosity of bitumen to students in order to show that some substances which appear solid are actually viscous fluids.

The pitch drop experiment is on public display on Level 2 of Parnell building in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the St Lucia campus of the University of Queensland.

Professor Parnell poured a heated sample of the pitch into a sealed funnel and allowed it to settle for three years. In 1930, the seal at the neck of the funnel was cut, allowing the pitch to start flowing. A glass dome covers the funnel and it is placed on display outside a lecture theatre.

Large droplets form and fall over a period of about a decade, depending on atmospheric conditions such as temperature and barometric pressure.

The University of Queensland pitch drop experiment, featuring its custodian, Professor John Mainstone is seen in the images above, taken in 1990, two years after the seventh drop and 10 years before the eighth drop fell.

The experiment was not originally carried out under any special controlled atmospheric conditions, meaning the viscosity could vary throughout the year with fluctuations in temperature.

The seventh drop fell at approximately 4:45 p.m. on 3 July 1988, while the experiment was on display at Brisbane’s World Expo 88. However, apparently no one witnessed the drop fall itself because Professor Mainstone had stepped out to get a drink at the moment it occurred. Sometime after the seventh drop fell (1988), air conditioning was added to the location where the experiment takes place. The lower average temperature has lengthened each drop’s stretch before it separates from the rest of the pitch in the funnel, and correspondingly, the typical interval between drops has increased from eight years to 12–13 years.

The experiment eventually began to be monitored by a webcam. Hundreds of thousands of Internet users check the live stream each year. The eighth drop fell sometime on 28 November 2000, allowing experimenters to calculate the pitch as having a viscosity of approximately 230 billion times that of water… but only after the outrage that followed when a brief interruption in power turned off the webcam and no one saw the drop fall.

In October 2005, John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in physics (a parody of the Nobel Prize) for the pitch drop experiment. Mainstone subsequently commented:

“I am sure that Thomas Parnell would have been flattered to know that Mark Henderson considers him worthy to become a recipient of an Ig Nobel prize. Professor Parnell’s award citation would of course have to applaud the new record he had thereby established for the longest lead-time between the performance of a seminal scientific experiment and the conferral of such an award, be it a Nobel or an Ig Nobel prize.”

Professor John Mainstone died on 23 August 2013, aged 78, following a stroke. Custodianship then passed to Professor Andrew White.

…The other pitch drop experiment, at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, was started in October 1944 by an unknown colleague in the physics department of Trinity College. This experiment, like the one at University of Queensland, was set up to demonstrate the high viscosity of pitch. This physics experiment sat on a shelf in a lecture hall at Trinity College unmonitored for decades as it dripped a number of times from the funnel to the receiving jar below, also gathering layers of dust.

In April 2013, about a decade after the previous pitch drop, physicists at Trinity College in Ireland noticed that another drip was forming. They moved the experiment to a table to monitor and record the falling drip with a webcam, allowing all present to watch. The pitch dripped around 17:00 IST on 11 July 2013, marking the first time that a pitch drop was successfully recorded on camera.

Based on the results from this experiment, the Trinity College physicists estimated that the viscosity of the pitch is about two million times that of honey, or about 20 billion times the viscosity of water.

As for The University of Queensland pitch drop experiment, the ninth drop was observed on webcam to have touched the eighth drop on 17 April 2014; however, it was still attached to the funnel so everyone online and in the department began arguing that it could not drop if it was already touching the pile of earlier drops.

So, on 24 April, Professor White decided to replace the beaker holding the previous eight drops before the ninth drop fused to them (which would have permanently affected the ability of further drops to form). While the bell jar was being lifted, the wooden base wobbled and the ninth drop snapped away from the funnel. Outraged disappointment ensued.

However, everyone consoled themselves by noting that there is clearly “the other pitch drop experiment”, which did record the first time pitch was dropped into a beaker on webcam.

As you can see from the above chart, 12.3 years has been the shortest interval recorded since climate controlled conditions were imposed on the Queensland pitch drop experiment.

So, some people are hopeful that the next drop will form and drop sometime after 12.3-13.4 years after 2014. In other words, they remain hopeful someone (maybe even themselves) may see the drop occur sometime between 2026-2028. Other, more hopeful fools, hope to see it occur before then.

Hundreds of thousands of people continue to observe the experiment online even now, despite the fact that a drip is not due to form for [as of the time of this writing] 3-5 more years.

If you loved reading about this, consider also reading about:

Oxford Electric Bell, which has been ringing nearly continuously from 1840, though twice interrupted;

Centennial Light, a light bulb which has been burning since 1901, though also not without interruption;

& The E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE), a study in experimental evolution which has been running since 1988. (This tale doesn’t seem to involve any dramatic interruptions, if that’s your thing, you sick little freak.)

[imyourbadjew]

It pisses me off to no end when people treat antisemitism like some finite pool, and show a conservative being antisemitic as some kind of proof that the left can’t be antisemitic.

Honey, don’t worry! There’s enough for both of you. Antisemitism is one of the world’s oldest renewable resources.

[starlight-shadowbanned]

and somehow, “jews aren’t in danger because the right wing has their back” and “right-wing antisemitism is the Real Antisemitism (TM)” are both leftist talking points

[sillywormz]

we say holy moly because the moley (mole; animal) makes the holey (soil cavity)

[lostxanadu]

in the middle east, we were expelled and murdered for not being arab. in europe, we were expelled and murdered for not being european. now, they call ashkenazi jews european and mizrahi jews arab.

we are neither. we are levantine, canaanite, israelite, judean, jewish.

[gingerswagfreckles]

Do you remember when for like 5 minutes people on this website were like well what do BROWN JEWS think of all this?? You have to stop being racist and ask the BROWN JEWS!! Because they thought "brown Jews" would support Hamas for some racist fucking reason. And they retired that talking point REALLY fast when they realized those "brown Jews" are by and large WAY more pro Israel than Ashkanazi Jews because nearly the entire population of Middle Eastern and North African Jews was forcibly expelled to Israel over the past 70 years. Lol.

[iwieldthesword]

I need to talk about this because it's making me feel insane.

Last week, my white leftist goyisch friends sat me, a wholeass antizionist Jew, down for a "talk" because they "needed to check in about Palestine" and make sure "our values aligned before we hung out again". They apparently needed to "suss out" where I stood on Palestinian rights, despite having had several conversations about Palestine and them being some of my closest friends. They needed to check, to search for and uncover my true values, because I had said some "disturbing things" that had made them "suspicious".

Disturbing things included:

Supporting IfNotNow which is a "liberal zionist organization" because it normalizes Jewish heritage in the Levant

Not bringing Palestine up enough, despite them also not bringing it up (this was apparently a test)

Mentioning that the Houthi's flag talks about cursing all Jews

Saying Stalin was antisemitic because of the "all the paw-grihms"

...and apparently other things they wouldn't specify, but had been tracking for months.

To clarify, I am an antizionist Jew from three generations of antizionist Jews. I have been vocal in my support of Palestinian liberation and in my condemnation both of Israel's actions and its violent founding as a state, and of zionism in many of its forms. I am a regular donor to Palestinian and Jewish NGOs and advocate for Jewish antizionism in person, at temple, and online. I have been talking about Palestinian liberation before they could point to Gaza on a map. But they needed to make sure, they needed to "suss out", they needed to check. And it's notable that the majority of moments that made them suspicious of me were times where I talked about antisemitism: not about Palestinian liberation, not about Israeli decolonization, not about anything actually relevant to Palestine. It was talking about antisemitism that made them check to see if I was a cryptozionist.

One of the most pervasive and insidious forms of antisemitism is the idea that Jews are inherently untrustworthy and suspicious. You have to constantly be on guard, track what they say and do, "suss out" the real truth. You have to keep them in line and and watch them carefully because they're liars and sneaks, and if you're not looking closely they'll return to their real values (and drag you down with them). This is where the idea of "cryptozionist" comes from and what it's directly building off of: the inherent untrustworthiness of Jews and the need to check. Because no matter how close you become you can't actually trust them, and any upstanding gentile should make sure to avoid associating with Jews before "sussing out" their real allegiances and intentions. You have to make them turn out their pockets, just in case.

I'm the first and only Jew they actually were friends with; I know because they've told me (strangely proud of it in the way white Americans are proud of that kind of thing). They've asked me questions about Judaism and fawned over how beautiful and unique it was for me to be connected to my community and culture. Pre-October 7th, one of them had even mentioned being interested in coming to services at my temple. She still has my copy of our siddur. But now she needed to "check" before she could be seen with me in public. Which is what it was: it wasn't a "you're my friend and I need to give you some feedback because you're fucking up" kind of intervention (which is normal and important to have), it was a trial. It was a last chance for me to prove to them that I'm clean-enough that they could afford to risk being seen with me in public, just in case someone noticed them fraternizing with a hypothetical Enemy and their leftism was compromised. It was a test to make sure that I behave properly when required to, that I'd play along and do what I'm told and turn out my pockets if asked (because any refusal would validate the notion of having something to hide). And above all it was an opportunity for them to reaffirm their own cleanliness by putting my imagined immorality in its place.

I did what I needed to do: I smiled. I apologized. I "didn't know that". I "appreciated the feedback". I turned out my pockets because what else could I do? They'd decided who I was and what I believed, regardless of what I said or did, so there was no point in explaining that they were wrong about me. If I had told them they were being antisemitic, it would just have been proof that they were right. Caring about antisemitism is a dogwhistle in the spaces they've chosen: it's not a real form of oppression, it's a tactic for sneaky, lying Jews to weasel out of admitting their true alliances. There was nothing I could say.

Nothing's really changed for me. I'm going to continue my activism for Palestinian liberation rooted in my culture and my faith. Antizionism is still not antisemitism. But I got a reminder that many white goyisch leftists fundamentally just don't trust Jews, and that the activist spaces they're in not only exacerbate their antisemitism in an increasingly insular echo chamber, but also allow them to finally vent their internalized bigotry in a socially-acceptable way. In my former friends' eyes, what they did was activism—disavowing a Jew (and making me feel humiliated, scared, and unclean in the process) as a cathartic stand-in for doing fucking anything for actual Palestinian liberation—but for me it was a grief that I'll be feeling for a long time: not only over losing friends I loved and trusted, but also over my sense of belonging and security in leftist spaces.

[gingerswagfreckles]

It's weird how in the past 5 or so years the left's understanding of decolonization devolved into some kind of weird Nazi era eugenicist thing about how people's "true places" are something encoded in their DNA and no one in the history of the world should have moved anywhere and anyone decendent from people who moved at some point should be shot.

[originalscreenname]

I am sorry but if you think that the Jews who say out loud "we want to live in peace with Palestinians and we want a two state solution" are the bad guys While the people shouting "death to Israel", "Israeli settlers should be killed", "we need another October 7th", "Jews dont deserve a country" and etc are the good guys Then your moral compass is fucked

[faustian-dystopia]

"oh but actually christmas trees were originally pagan" if i dont wanna celebrate christmas cause im jewish why would i wanna celebrate it if it were pagan instead of christian? im still jewish

[meanderingdownthelongroad]

So absolutely exhausted by the fact we as a society have normalized xenophobia against Israelis. And don't get me wrong, among certain crowds xenophobia has always been acceptable. I'm painfully aware of this. But it's fucking exhausting to see people be racist xenophobic assholes just casually in person and on the internet. And this is in normal society, not even hanging around extremists. People will criticize a celebrity for something legitimate and in the same breath complain that they acknowledged a Israeli. Like wtf guys. Y'all are sounding more and more like the right wingers you claim to hate by the day.

[gingerswagfreckles]

I could go on forever but my point is that a lot of leftists hold this cognitively dissonant belief system that requires them to believe that no one would ever act selfishly or out of irrational hatred for others if only all their needs were met, while simultaneously blaming all the world's problems on a class of people who have all their needs met and yet continue to perpetuate harm. And in order to make these two discordant sets of beliefs work together, it requires believing that "The Rich" are fundamentally, genetically different than Normal Working People, and behave differently and more selfishly than Normal Working People do or would when given that same power. And when one starts believing that The Elites are fundamentally, secretly inhuman and different than Normal Working People, it always, always circles around to blaming The Jews.

[amillionmagpies]

I've seen a couple people on here say things like, "The US is being run by literal Nazis and you're upset about antisemitism from leftists?" And you know what? Yes, I am.

I am angry that the people who told me they weren't antisemitic are being antisemitic. I am angry that the people who promised me a safe space are now going back on that promise. I am angry that the people who said they were better than that are being cruel in the same ways as the people I've always expected cruelty from.

I expect antisemitism from Nazis. I get angry when it comes from people who claimed to be my friends.

[hawkins-batman]

Let's Talk About Noah Schnapp

In light of everything that's happened in the last few days—namely Netflix releasing its first teaser for Stranger Things Season 5—many are returning to Stranger Things spaces online here and elsewhere for the first time in months. Maybe years. So, it's time to have this conversation again, because many people weren't here when some of us were having this conversation in the lull between content; and we're due for an update.

Buckle up—this is going to be long. I intend for this to be a mega post on the whole situation in so far as I can cover it, with receipts and screenshots.

The Conversation Around Noah

Put bluntly—the vitriol around Noah Schnapp has become dangerously insane. It's been that way for 2 years, but the renewed spotlight on Stranger Things, especially as Noah is set to take center stage in a Will Byers-centric season, has revived some of the worst elements of the conversation.

"What do you mean?", you may be asking. Well, I think it might just be better to show you:

This is just a sampling. If I showed you every tweet — every post — every video I've seen with this rhetoric, I'd need another medium to do it. A tumblr blog alone couldn't contain it all. But I take it you see my point now.

How Did Things Get This Way?

There are people on this app and on #that app who will say this behavior/treatment is warranted. They'll tell you that Noah is a "genocide supporter." That he "cheered for the deaths of Palestinian babies." That he "celebrated as people were being murdered." But none of this is true.

As a reminder, this was what Noah actually said—his very first comments on the matter—right after the Hamas attack that happened on October 7, 2023:

Important to note:

"...we will hope and pray for safety, justice, liberation, and self determination in Palestine."

and

"...we will say a Jewish prayer for peace for all Israelis and Palestinians."

That is the literal antithesis of support for a genocide or the wholesale slaughter of anyone.

The very next thing to happen was the infamous "sticker video" about which the most lies have been told, so let's debunk them one by one:

He did not make the stickers.

He did not wear the stickers.

He did not hand out the stickers.

He did not hold up the stickers.

He did not even touch the stickers.

He did not post the video on any social anywhere.

I've posted a pair of screenshots here that give you the gist in lieu of the video itself, but you can Google the video and watch the entire thing to see that I'm telling the truth.

What actually happened was that Noah was taken to a restaurant by a pair of influencers who were his guides while on a school-sponsored trip to Israel. Both were significantly older than him, were responsible for the video in question, were the only ones in it (aside from the waitress) to actually touch the stickers in question... and yet? Noah bore the brunt of the hate that ensued. When the backlash came, they abandoned him and left him to the wolves. (And perhaps because of that, he no longer associates with either one of them, nor follows any related social media accounts—all of which he was required to follow in the first place as terms of going on the trip through his school.)

Noah had just come out of the closet earlier that year and was 18 years-old. He would only turn 19 years-old in the ensuing weeks.

He has addressed these events several times. Most famous was the TikTok that he made explaining his actual position (that he doesn't want anyone, Palestinian or Israeli, to die). Less famous were remarks he made to fans on Snapchat:

I'll post his remarks here for those who can't read the text:

Hey guys! I appreciate you reaching out. To give you context, I did not post this language or sticker. I was at breakfast with friends, it happened to be an Israeli cafe, and a girl was handing out stickers. Someone photographed me and posted and tagged me. As you guys know better than most people, social media can be used however people want to use it. I understand the weight of the situation and take it very seriously. I have friends of friends who are currently being held hostage in Gaza right now. My friends kids were killed in the massacre at the Israeli music festival. Standing up against this terrorism is important to me and why I made my statement after the attack. As one of the only few Jewish people with a platform, I absolutely think it's important to share my message about hatred for Jews around the world right now. However, everyone online is obviously twisting everything and saying I support genocide and am Islamophobic which is obviously entirely false and never have I stated either of those things. Seeing what is happening to the innocent people in Palestine pains me so much and I wish it would stop. I fully support everyone in Palestine as I said in my post on Instagram. One of my best friends in college is Palestinian and we talk about this issue allllll the time and agree on most things. I think people on social media are just animalistic right now so it's hard to even chime in because they just rip me apart so now I'm staying out of it.

I'll let that stand on it's own. I think it provides the context behind his remarks, the situation with the video/stickers, and his actual views versus how social media portrays his views. It also explains why he hasn't said anything else in almost 2 years.

The key takeaway: He was speaking out against antisemitism and the attack on Jewish people on October 7 and he supports an end to what is happening in Gaza and fully supports Palestinians. He literally says it.

And this support, by the way, has been corroborated by his own actions and the word of mouth from Palestinian organizations he has contributed to:

What Has Happened Since?

It would be easier to list the things that haven't happened; but I'll try anyways:

Noah has been called antisemitic slurs; gay slurs and targeted with gay stereotypes; been compared to antisemitic caricatures; he's been threatened with death and had posts go viral fantasizing about his brutal murder; his family has been threatened; he's been threatened with rape and sexual abuse; there are massive accounts on Twitter that doxxed his location while he was filming Season 5—particularly targeting him when he was alone; he's been hacked, had personal pictures leaked; he's had lies spread about his treatment of his cast mates (all of whom have spoken out and said that they've loved him at some point since, making these claims unequivocally false.

Here are a few examples:

Again, I can only post a sample. I hope that sample is enough to get the message across.

It's hard to overstate how cataclysmic this has been. Obviously, he's recovered and healed a lot since the initial incident; but the damage done needs to be acknowledged. These attacks drove him into a dark place by his own admission. He talked about needing therapy on his (now deleted) private spam TikTok account. And they are starting up yet again.

And Then There's the Fandom

The Stranger Things fandom in the wake of all this has been an irritating place to be. Not just because of the above behavior but because of the blanket hypocrisy.

The shipping sub-fandoms in particular have been rank with antisemitism and homophobia—even the Byler fandom, which is predominantly queer. People have:

A) Taken pre-Stranger Things photos—like his baby pictures or pictures with his family—to use as part of their content, their profile pictures, their banners, their fan art, their fan edits, etc.—violating his and his family's privacy for "Will" all while calling him "ugly," a "fag," and lobbing the above-listed threats at him. B) Tried to recast him with a fan cast. These fan casts are almost never Jewish actors, you'll notice. In fact, there's someone on this very app that recast Will Byers as himself. This is gross and absurd. Will Byers is intrinsically tied to Noah Schnapp. Tied to his identities as a Jewish person and a gay man. Tied to his experiences being a character he helped bring to life during his formative years. C) Persist in stanning or support his cast mates despite the fact that they continue to associate with him. This, in particular, is gross hypocrisy. If you're going to be mad at Noah Schnapp for being in a restaurant around stickers you object to—guilt by proximity/association, in other words—those SAME standards should apply to his cast mates, who continue to hang out with him outside of work, state that they love him, and post him on their social medias. I have a whole post about that here.

Instead, the cast is continually afforded blanket immunity while he is singularly targeted for continued abuse and harassment.

It should give the fandom some pause that openly pro-Palestine actors like Maya Hawke not only continue to hang out with him; but in her Instagram story, even stated that she misses it (check the link above for a screenshot of said story). She wouldn't do that if she thought he somehow supported mass-murder; and she knows him way better than any one reading this blog. That goes for the rest of them, too.

They know him better than you. They know his moral compass and what he believes. And they haven't abandoned him and obviously aren't going to. So, are you going to stick to your guns and apply your anger evenly; or maybe consider that you don't have the full picture?

So, Why Care?

I get this in my Asks so often. "Why do you care?" "He's a celebrity." "He don't know you." "He's not your pookie."

I know. It's not about that.

Yes, full disclosure, I am obviously a fan of Noah's. Have been since the show started. And no it's not because I'm gay and he's gay or because he plays my favorite character in Stranger Things.

Like many of his fans, I've spent the last decade seeing his lives on Instagram and TikTok, seeing his fan interactions, watching his vlogs and videos, and I've come to respect him as a human being quite apart from Will Byers or his role as an actor. Fundamentally, I really believe he is a kind and caring human being. The word of mouth from everyone who knows or has met him bares this out—and, yes, he's even been kind to me in the few conversations we've had.

This is only one example from Instagram during The First Shadow premiere this year; but I think it encapsulates what I like about Noah most. He's kind. He goes out of his way to be kind. He does things he doesn't have to do, contractually or just in general, for the sake of being kind. He always has been.

He's also stood up for a plethora of causes. Black Lives Matters, trans rights, the rights of women. He's known to be his cast mates' biggest supporter—and they'll tell you as much, too.

But quite apart from my personal feelings about him and more importantly: this is wrong.

Antisemitism is wrong. Homophobia is wrong. Both kill. Still, to this day. As I am sitting in my kitchen writing this, the news just broke that an Indigenous gay man and a celebrity was shot dead in front of his husband—after having his home burned down and dogs burned alive—in the United States. Yesterday, news broke that a gathering of peaceful Jewish protesters (which included children and the elderly) demanding the release of hostages still held by Hamas was firebombed in Colorado. Luckily, they all survived, but six people were injured in that attack.

Violence and bigotry are ascendent everywhere right now. Minority communities are being targeted. Normalizing the behavior I've described and shown above kills marginalized people. Regardless of your feeling about Noah as a person or celebrity, normalizing the violent and bigoted remarks, tweets, and behavior towards him harms Jewish and LGBTQIA+ people—all of us.

And just as an example of that, I give you the treatment Finn Wolfhard is now receiving just for the "crime" of shaving his head and being deemed no longer conventionally attractive by the fandom:

Yes, the general audience found out about Finn's Jewish heritage and now he's a target, too.

And this fandom is at fault for it.

You cannot normalize bigotry towards one person and expect it to stay contained to that one person. It will always harm everyone in that community. Finn Wolfhard—or any other actor/actress—being your favorite is not going to spare him from the consequences of a discourse you started.

ALL antisemitism and ALL homophobia needs to be called out. The people who insist it's okay that they do that for ANY reason—regardless of if they themselves are LGBTQIA+ or not—need to be ejected from the fandom and never let back in.

Noah Schnapp is a human being. He does not deserve this treatment. No one does. No one is saying you have to like him or even care about him. But you SHOULD care that this is how he's being treated and the impact it is having on others. The impact on Jewish people. The impact on queer people. Standing up and saying that does not mean you support genocide or murder or bigotry of any kind. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I am a person with left-leaning values. I'm tired of those values being spat on and dragged through the mud by people who think THIS is activism or is in any way helping a cause. It's not. All it is doing is perpetuating harm on a real person and real communities—queer and Jewish alike. And it needs to stop.

Related Blogs:

I've compiled some related blogs that expand on other elements of the situation that I've mentioned above in greater detail. This post was already long enough. I'll be updating this as more content comes out.

Examples of Noah’s Support for Gaza and Palestine (by @nymphus-fan-account)

The Evolution of a Lie

No, the Stranger Things Cast Does Not Hate Noah Schnapp

Lyric Vault’s Obsession with Noah Schnapp

There is also now a Twitter version of this post if you are on that app and want to share it there. It links to this blog post.

[h4ganah]

.....So the Palestinian diaspora stops being Palestinian after a couple of generations?

[coffeefrenchandhistory]

Francesca Albanese try not to be grossly and maliciously and disgustingly antisemitic, like right out of Der Sturmer, impossible edition.

And the link (here), in case anyone doubted this.

This, by the way, is what we call Nazi-style antisemitism.

[feaftlikeabeaft]

I wish depression were an emergency. I wish someone could take one look at how sick I am and go “oh my god, we need to get you to a hospital!” and then when we get there I get rushed into surgery and the surgeons say “it’s a good thing you brought her here when you did, this is a seriously advanced case” and then they put me under and spend the next ten hours pulling metres of long, sticky black strands of gunk out of my body, throwing it immediately into an incinerator so that it can’t infect anyone else. And then they could stitch me back up and I could rest a few days, and when I leave the hospital everyone can see how much better I am and they congratulate me saying “well done, you’ve been so brave, I’m so glad you’re ok. I love you.”

[the-uncanny-dag]

Sister post to The Vitamin

[starlight-shadowbanned]

I mean, it’s a not really what you’re wishing for in this post but you can sort of do this. You can check yourself into a mental hospital even if you just have Regular Depression and you’re not suicidal or manic or in some sort of emergency.

In the case of Regular Depression you wouldn’t go inpatient, you’d go to a day program, aka Intensive Outpatient. It’s basically a place you go to during work daytime hours (eg 8am-3pm, M-F) and you get group therapy, daily individual check-ins with a nurse, daily individual check-ins with a psych to adjust your meds, and classes about things like coping skills, chair yoga, DBT, and CBT. In the US, if you’re employed you can use FMLA leave for this. It can be a little cocoon of respite from the world of stress and obligation and a place where you’re supported and you’ve got structure.

OP, I know it’s not really what you’re envisioning, so I apologize for derailing. But I also hope that this info is helpful to someone.

[rimonoroni2]

btw the idea that Judaism has "six/eight genders" or whatever is actually referring to the fact that talmudic law has sections naming and addressing the roles of intersex people in the community. this is ofc still extremely interesting from a queer theory/historical gender perspective not only because it suggests a robust historical awareness of intersex bodies in Jewish communities, but because it is a recorded instance of people consciously constructing and deconstructing gender roles in an attempt to navigate the relationship between sex and gender as different entities. but the aformentioned "six/eight genders" framing is extremely reductive, not to mention that it erases intersex people from a topic that is quite clearly about them.