Big Reader With No (Local) Friends

Somehow I have a PhD. Yes, I do have imposter syndrome about it. A little too invested in figure skating for a casual viewer. Main blog for Batmads-ao3, so if you see replies...it me.

[headspace-hotel]

the theme that always resonates me the most in stories is “the world is cruel; therefore I won’t be.”

[defectivegembrain]

Prev et al. (2025)

[sniffanimal]

how am I gonna be an optometrist about this

[abalidoth]

and if you close one eye

can you tell me what's the symbol on row four

and if you close one eye

I prescribe you one diopter more

[skeuo]

i just beefed with someone online and I got tired of it so I said "I ate some really good blueberries today" and they replied "I had a fire ass peach today". world peace

[iraffiruse]

[furaffinity]

i’m so fucking pissed off at this picture

[stargh0st-deactivated20131025]

wwhat the fuck….

[jacb]

[tubaplaysmatt]

I FUCKING LOVE THIS

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

oh my god thank you for the second perspective, it honestly makes me feel way less stressed about this image, you have no idea

[smimon]

Here’s the second image again since it somehow disappeared in reblogs

[byjove]

His uncle sure wasn’t!

That man was barely fucking hanging on, he was literally disintegrating. He was also rumored to have prostate cancer at the end of his life.

I’m disabled too, chronically ill like JFK. I have an autoimmune disease, JFK showed signs of one. He was a frail house of cards of a man who survived on a mix of uppers, downers and steroids. I also need similar medication to survive. It is so fucking disgusting to see RFK jr. rewrite history and attack modern medicine when his own family has a loooooong history of severe physical and mental illness.

[byjove]

It’s worth noting many of JFK’s health issues started after he developed scarlet fever, a common childhood illness that often left victims with damage to their kidneys, heart, joints and brain and sometimes triggered arthritis. There is no vaccine against it but RFK jr is trying to undermine the vaccination schedules for other common childhood illnesses that can cause permanent lifelong damage to a child’s health.

[byjove]

“I don’t understand. How does this refute what RFK jr. said?” Because many of JFK’s ailments may have been preventable/treatable with modern medicine. Because he needed amphetamines to function. Because the average life expectancy for men in 1960 was 66.6. People lived harder lives and died younger. Public health campaigns and infectious disease control and education helped immensely. People were not healthier during his uncle’s presidency because they did not have the tools and knowledge necessary to address many major public health concerns, we have them now and he is firing vaccine experts and literally swimming in shit creek. The average state of health in the 1960s was not better than it is today.

[byjove]

Many do not know about the state of JFK’s health because it was taboo. Because disability and ill health were things that were spoken of in hushed whispers. The Kennedys buried JFK’s health problems like they hid Rosemary after she was lobotomized. RFK jr wants to continue his rose-tinted view of a past constructed through blood and pain and ignorance. He is rewriting history in a way that is so obvious and so vile.

[damejoansutherland]

side benefit of communal all-gender restrooms is that they may be our best chance to shame cis men into washing their hands

[damejoansutherland]

i was in a communal all-gender restroom today and as i was washing my hands a middle-aged man came out of one of the stalls, started to make for the door, clocked me standing at the sinks, and changed course to wash his hands with a real hangdog look on his face

[tolovaj]

THANK YOU

[dykepuffs]

Friendly unfriendly reminder that "Ovulation is like an animal being in heat and makes you stupid" has been a keystone of western misogyny pretty much since Europe worked out what periods are.

[chemistfail]

I feel insane "hah ovulation makes me crazy" "ugh my luteal phase makes me such a gross depressing bitch".

Ovulation lasts ≈5 days (a few days before egg release, 1 day for egg, few days post until the egg dies)

The luteal phase varies but ≈12-14 days

17 to 19 days of a month spent, what, experiencing a degree of hormone induced mental fog? 204-228 days of a year spent in uterine derived madness?? Be so for real. The repackaging of "pms makes women bitches" to "my luteal phase makes me so irrational" is just "hysteria" by another name.

[milf--adjacent]

Let the historical record show that Mr. Beast was entirely ignorable if you were just like doing literally anything else. I've been on youtube as long as it's been around and I've never been recommended a video by him. I see him in passing as a meme. I thought he was a made up joke, a caricature of bad youtuber content miners until someone I trust confirmed his existence to me in late 2025.

[arrow-ettes]

how it's feeling rn

[faeriekit]

FMA is fascinating because there aren't many works about what it means to be an atheist and a heretic to a god that you can not only see, but who has personally snatched body parts off of your living body and made fun of you for it.

[faeriekit]

They are having theological discussion in my notes but I think that people are too...divinity centric about Truth to make good interpretation of the situation.

Truth is a god in the way that gravity or magnetism is a god. He's just a manifested force of nature. He's sapient on some level, sure, which is a neat trick, but we managed to make meat think and we're not extraordinarily special about it either. He didn't invent humans and he didn't spawn the universe the way that Rose would have expected the god of her religion to have done; he has minimal to no interest in the day to day lives of any creature and only intervenes when someone actively wanders into his grip of influence. He's not a Capital-G God. Truth is to matter what fire is to flammable objects. He's a metaphorical (and perhaps even allegorical) chemical reaction.

Ed isn't an atheist because he saw god and cussed him out irl; Ed's an atheist because he doesn't believe that the brute force of Truth qualifies as a god. Quite frankly, I think that's a hell of a lot ballsier and a much more complete understanding of the situation. This perspective insulates him against idolizing the Truth as an ultimate divine force and makes Truth something that can be reasoned around or through, rather than with, which would never have worked.

Ed is a scientist. He's always worked with the Truth in some way, shape, or form, because the whole point of science is an attempt to pursue lower-case-t truth. Being able to see Truth's reflection in the mirror as he does doesn't really affect Ed's whole..everything.

[faeriekit]

it's about a girl and her dog :)

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[headspace-hotel]

They sting. I got ouched by one a couple days ago. The vest is for your protection.

[headspace-hotel]

@phillipfancypants

[theelectricdreamsofddx]

What a lovely little post you have here! *Drinks up its wordjuice to add it to my lexicon like some form of Vernacula*

[theelectricdreamsofddx]

*Sinks my teeth into your vocabillaries*

[tomb-mold]

the problem is i really do love staying up until one billion o'clock. it just cant be helped

[c3rvida3]

If you're gonna say your sewing tutorial is idiot-proof, you better mean it. I'll fuck a garment up in ways god couldn't foresee in heaven. I try to darn my old socks and I full on damn the poor things.

[bert-1-19-19]

Saw the new spider and let me tell ya something…

It was good

[vidapuppen]

Scientists Are Working on an Mrna Vaccine To Wipe Out Allergies

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania may have developed a vaccine for seasonal allergies and food allergies.

Y'ALL THIS IS SO COOL AND COULD BE HUGE FOR SO MANY PEOPLE

[dirt-mann]

additional article:

A new Penn mRNA vaccine stopped allergens from causing dangerous immune reactions and life-threatening inflammation in mice.

[fuckingrecipes]

BRIEF SUMMARY:

It is an mRNA vaccine with successful mammalian (mice) trials.

The vaccine targets life-threatening inflammation and immune responses.

Mice with serious allergies, which received the vaccine tailored to those allergies, stopped having immune reactions when exposed to those allergens.

Aka: vaccinating against allergies.

If they can develop it for safe human use, it could save an enormous amount of lives, and IMPROVE the lives of people who live in constant fear of encountering their lethal allergens.

Because it’s able to be tailored, and specifically affects the immune system response, it may one day be able to adjust immune responses to chronic conditions like Celiac Disease, Asthma, Food Sensitivities, Food Allergies, and potentially many other autoimmune disorders.

Imagine a future where a child with a deadly shellfish allergy could get a shot and just… not be allergic anymore. Eat shrimp with no fear.

Be born with Celiac, get a shot, and casually eat gluten with no side effects.

We’re not quite there yet, but it’s performing well in mammalian trials, and we have high hopes!