Nik's Miscellaneous Crap Emporium

Sometimes I meow. Sometimes it's random. Sometimes it's not. Don't ask. If you know me well enough, you'll know which is which and what is what. 55 year old lesboriffic PC/PS4 gaymer. Marvel nerd. Bowie fan. Feeler of the Funk. Pop culture time traveler. Mostly I just reblog stuff, but occasionally an original thought sneaks out. OH YEAH...and my pronouns are she/they...SUCK IT TRUMP

[draconym]

Me: Fuck, the paper towels I want are on the top shelf.

The Sir David Attenborough That Lives In My Brain: Being smaller-than-average presents an added challenge to foraging ... but necessity is the mother of invention. A little creativity turns a baguette into a tool, and voilà--

(paper towel roll falls on my face)

Sir David Attenborough, pleasantly: Success.

[liberalsarecool]

Conservative men are addicted to sexism and rape culture.

[toddycats]

another comic about friendship

the first one is here

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price chilling with the Muppets - The Muppet Show (1977)

[liberalsarecool]

Strict Constitutionalist conservatives who tried relentlessly to sabotage Obama and Biden will now say 'what Constitution?'

[existencebringsonlypain]

i need data for a statistics project for school, so be my sample data, worms. i need thirty people minimum so if there aren't enough voters yet i'd love if you could help. thank you very much. worms.

take this test (https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/), then come back here:

what's your JND?

.00030-.00099

.0010-.0017

.0017-.0024

.0024-.0031

.0031-.0038

.0038-.0045

.0045-.0052

.0052-.0059

.0059-.0066

.0066-.0073

.0073-.0080

.0080 or greater

Voting ended onMay 13

it doesnt have to be a good score, you dont have to take it multiple times, you dont have to get on a good screen, etcetera. just gimme your score please this is my final project grade :)

i'd love if you could reblog for reach

[missandryifyourenasty]

I often think about that post that was a fake dating profile for a cat that was all about chickens, like wanting someone with posable thumbs for opening chickens.

[notogdenjesse]

This is one my favourite things the internet has ever made.

[missandryifyourenasty]

!!!!!!

[bioluminescently-unfolding]

This remains one of the great art objects of modern times and nobody will convince me otherwise.

[nikademus1969]

Few things in food service life are more annoying than a kitchen manager with the ego of an executive chef...

[mamoru]

you know how all those applesauce packets were recalled for lead?

well. it turns out the cinnamon used in them may have been laced with lead on purpose.

Lead contamination in applesauce pouches may have been intentional, FDA says

An FDA spokesperson said that one of the agency’s theories for the WanaBana cinnamon applesauce contamination was “economically motivated ad

fun times in the united states food industry right now am I right folks

[ferrosparrow]

In case you’re a buffoon (like me) and thought someone was out here meticulously hand-poisoning applesauce:

An FDA spokesperson said that one of the agency’s theories for the WanaBana cinnamon applesauce contamination was “economically motivated adulteration.” (…)

Economically motivated adulteration, or “food fraud,” can occur when a cheaper ingredient is added to a product to enhance it or bulk it up, but is not disclosed, according to the FDA. One example, the agency said, is when lead-based dyes are added to spices to give the product a certain color.

We love cutting corners to maximize profit at the expense of our consumers

[mamoru]

hand-poisoning applesauce would be too tedious. these applesauces were poisoned in bulk for maximum efficiency

[pazithigallifreya]

Turmeric is also frequently affected by this. A lead compound with a bright yellow color can be used.

I'm not gonna dox myself by saying precisely what I do for a living, but I am involved in public environmental health, and in the past have conducted home investigations in child lead poisoning cases. For years, foreign spices have been a problem, particularly for immigrant families who visit relatives overseas and bring spices back from south asia in particular.

During and immediately after covid, however, we started finding domestically sold spices coming back from lab testing with high lead results. Sam's club, wal-mart, etc. We used to tell families to buy domestically instead of bringing things back from India, Pakistan, etc, but even that isn't safe anymore.

You might - might - be safer with higher end organic products but I really just don't trust anything anymore. This isn't a new issue, but it's definitely becoming more widespread.

[mamoru]

is there a reliable way to test spices for lead at home?

[propelledbydisaster]

if the spice you're using is water-soluble, you can mix it with water and then use a water testing kit. they sell water-testing kits at the hardware store; ones that you send off to a lab are more reliable (but also more expensive).

you can also buy lead-testing swabs on the Internet. some of these are not reliable, so I'd recommend testing the lead-testing swabs. use a swab on something that you know is lead (a fishing sinker, a car battery, etc) and another swab on something that you know is lead-free (most things in your home, hopefully) and make sure you get the expected results.

note that lead-testing kits are not food-safe, so you should not just put pipettes / test swabs / etc into your spice jar. spoon out a small amount (onto a plate or whatever), test that small amount, and then throw that small amount away. (and then wash the plate.)

[alugard]

gonna add this consumer reports investigation from a couple of years back that made the rounds. they looked into a bunch of american spice brands and found that this is a huge problem across brands, regardless of whether or not it's organic (exact quote: "CR’s tests could not determine whether one brand was consistently better or worse than any other. And organic products did not have consistently lower levels than conventionally grown ones").

[mamoru]

summary of the results, which tested for things like lead, arsenic, and cadmium beyond safe limits:

there was no safe oregano or thyme among their tests

for basil and ginger, only one brand was found to be safe in each

for paprika and cumin, half of the products were unsafe

a few of the spices they tested were considered "high concern" as in, their highest level of danger on this scale

consumer reports recommends growing your own herbs when possible because herbs and spices can be so dangerous to buy

fun!

[themarchrabbit]

Yeah, bad news kids, this has always been an issue in the United States. Meet Dr. Harvey Wiley [b. 1844-d. 1930], a chemist who worked his ass off to get food and drink regulated in the U.S. And at every turn, he was fought and ridiculed by manufacturers, who managed to, over and over, get the U.S. government to make concessions over what they were allowed to put in food.

Harvey Washington Wiley

An unceasing advocate of national pure food and drug legislation, Wiley dedicated his life to protecting public health.

The Poison Squad | American Experience | PBS

The Poison Squad tells the story of government chemist Dr. Harvey Wiley who, determined to banish these dangerous substances from dinner tab

Meet Upton Sinclair [b. 1878- d. 1968], who wrote the book, "The Jungle" in 1906. The book was written to shine light on the absolutely horrific working conditions that people who worked in the meat industry were forced into, but it's more remembered for how it exposed the disgusting state of food being sold to people.

He was also slandered, libeled, and name-called by the manufacturing industry that tried to get his book banned.

Upton Sinclair - The Jungle, Books & Quotes

Upton Sinclair was an activist writer whose works, including 'The Jungle' and 'Boston,' often uncovered social injustices.

Meet Alice Lakey [b. 1857 - d. 1935] an activist who helped Dr. Wiley get the Pure Food And Drug Act passed in 1906 and spent her life working for laws on food safety in the United States.

Cranford's Alice Lakey...A Leader in the "Pure Food Movement" in the Early 1900's!

One of your neighbors posted in Health & Fitness. Click through to read what they have to say. (The views expressed in this post are the aut

Did you know that all those supplements and vitamins you can buy at the grocery store are still less regulated than the construction of a tennis ball?

Supplements: They’re Not As Safe As You Might Think

Lack of knowledge about the risks of vitamins and supplements can lead to potential and unforeseen problems.

Dietary supplements, such as oral vitamins, minerals, and herbals cannot be marketed with claims to prevent or treat disease. Yet, they are

This is the FDA's [Food & Drug Administration] Standards of Identity for food in the United States. Spoiler, it requires less cacao than you'd think for a product to call itself "chocolate" in the United States.

And that's after all the work Dr. Wiley, Alice Lakey, and their collegues and successors did to get laws put in place.

I do admire how corporations constantly manage to convince people that "the free market will regulate itself" and "there's too many regulations". Next time you hear it, remember these are the same companies that sell "strawberry cereal bars" that were maybe once in the same room as a strawberry and are quite okay with lead in the food they produce. And always have been.

[depsidase]

[themarchrabbit]

I kind of low-key blame the popularity of cottage-core and all that for this resurgence in the idealized vision of food production.

"Food production?"

Yes, it's also called agriculture.

TL;DR Food is dirty, and costs money to clean. It's cheaper to lie.

Let's start with some basics: these are what carrots look like when they're pulled out of the ground:

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A bundle of carrots in a pile. They still have their roots and leaves attached. They are covered in wet dirt.]

People from the United States may be familiar with the phrase "God made dirt, dirt don't hurt", which is often used to brush off someone's concerns with getting dirty, or with eating something that has fallen on the ground. Well, if you believe in the Christian God, that deity also made stinging nettle, and that shit fucking hurts.

So does dirt. Or rather, everything that calls the dirt home.

In addition to tetanus, anthrax, and botulism, soil bacteria may cause gastrointestinal, wound, skin, and respiratory tract disease

I underlined tetanus because I've come to find out that a lot of people in the United States do not actually know what tetanus is. With good reason, the Tdap vaccine also means most of us have never seen diphtheria either. That's a good thing.

There were 233 tetanus cases in the United States during the years 2001 to 2008, with a 13% fatality rate.

Because this is what tetanus does:

The generalized form is most common and is characterized by tonic contraction of the skeletal muscles and intense intermittent muscle spasms. Classic findings include trismus (in approximately 50%), stiff neck, opisthotonus, a “sardonic” smile, abdominal rigidity, and periods of apnea. More muscle groups become involved as the illness progresses and fractures of vertebrae or other bones may occur (sometimes triggered by relatively minor stimuli). Patients remain conscious during spasms and anxiety and pain may be significant. Signs of autonomic hyperactivity generally are present, and bradycardia and hypotension may lead to cardiac arrest.

Oh, and while your life will suck, you're most likely going to live. Because this is who tetanus kills:

Neonatal tetanus follows infection of the umbilical stump of infants of unimmunized mothers; it presents during the second week of life with weakness and poor sucking and may result in developmental delay. Tetanus is a significant cause of death worldwide, especially in Asia, Africa, and South America. In 2006, 290,000 persons died of tetanus, of which 250,000 were neonatal deaths.

Tetanus = bad. Also, a lot of the other bacteria in dirt that will absolutely fuck you up. Like, in ways you did not know you could be fucked up, and in ways that will in fact kill immunocompromised people.

And these bacteria have been killing us for as long as we've been farming.

The first suggested case of a known foodborne illness was proposed by doctors from the University of Maryland, whom think that Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. from a case of typhoid fever when he and his army stopped to rest in ancient Babylon. Typhoid fever is caused by the bacteria Salmonella Typhi, which can be contracted from contaminated food or water. Although this theory can never be fully proven, it goes to show that humans have probably been affected by these illnesses through all of history. Other well-known people throughout history are also suspect to have died from foodborne illnesses, including King Henry I, Rudyard Kipling, President Zachary Taylor and Prince Albert.

Food needs to be cleaned. Thoroughly.

Oh, and also, food is expensive to grow and ship. If you live somewhere that it gets cold as fuck for months out of the year, but you're eating a fruit salad while watching the snow, that had to be grown somewhere warm, and shipped to you. That costs a lot of money, especially for fragile produce, like strawberries, peaches, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, etc. It had to be shipped in reefers.

Reefer containers, or refrigerated containers, are specialised shipping containers designed to transport various types of reefer cargo, such as fresh produce, frozen foods, pharmaceuticals, and other temperature-sensitive goods. These containers are equipped with insulated walls, a state-of-the-art refrigeration unit, humidity control, and a fresh air exchange system – just to mention a few key features.

It's not cheap to ship in reefers. Plus the gasoline/petrol, the truck itself, the drivers' wages, the import/export fees, etc. It costs a lot of money to get strawberries in December. It costs a lot of money to ship anything perishable.

Which is how, in the 1850s, we ended up with eight-thousand [8000] dead babies.

Thus deviously inventive distillers found a workaround: By attaching metal sheds to their facilities and piping in hot cereal byproduct as feed for cows, they could both produce milk in the city and make money off their waste. [...] A diet consisting exclusively of the swill made the cows sick, led to ulcerated sores all over their bodies, and caused their tails to fall off.” Because the resulting liquid was thin and had an unnatural, bluish tint, vendors stirred in additives such as chalk, flour, eggs, and Plaster-of-Paris to achieve a (slightly) more agreeable color and consistency. [...] Wealthy distillers had political pull with officials, and largely enjoyed an absence of government regulation.[...]

And this is my favorite bit, for people who believe in the idea of superior morality existing at some point:

[...]the Common Council was pressured to send a team of New York City aldermen out to the premises for inspection—but suspiciously, they provided the distillery owners advance notice, allowing them time to sufficiently clean up the slipshod stables. “After hearings and inconclusive chemical analyses, the majority of the committee voted in favor of keeping swill milk, recommending only that the sheds have better ventilation,” McNeur writes.

The alderman were taking bribes.

[...] a livid Leslie published an illustration that showed the politicians painting the feeble cows white, with one of the distillers slipping a bag of money into Alderman Michael Tuomey’s pocket. (Tuomey, a Tammany Hall puppet, would earn himself the nickname “Swill Milk Tuomey” for his efforts to obstruct health regulations.)

You see, it's actually much, much cheaper for businesses bribe politicians, then use cheaper "ingredients", and substandard, if any, sterilization and safety practices. Milk is just one example.

Some of it was just fraud. There was, like, 90 percent adulteration of spices. If you were buying cinnamon, you were buying brick dust. If you were buying pepper, you were buying dirt or charred and ground rope. If you were buying coffee, sometimes you were just buying ground shells. People would grind up bones and charred lead into coffee. If you got flour, you got gypsum. If you got milk, you got chalk or plaster of paris. And actual milk was full of horrible bacteria—there was no pasteurization; there was no refrigeration. People started putting preservatives such as formaldehyde in milk; the milk started killing people around the country. All of this was completely legal. No one could ever be prosecuted for any of this.

"Wait, what's gypsum? That's not a food article, is it?"

No, no it's not.

gypsum, common sulfate mineral of great commercial importance, composed of hydrated calcium sulfate (CaSO4·2H2O). In well-developed crystals the mineral commonly has been called selenite. The fibrous massive variety has a silky lustre and is called satin spar; it is translucent and opalescent and is valued for ornaments and jewelry. The fine-grained massive variety called alabaster is carved and polished for statuary and ornamental use when pure and translucent. Gypsite is the earthy pulverulent variety.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A large fifty pound / twenty-two point sixty-eight kilogram bag of Premium 97 Solution Grade gypsum]

It's used as fertilizer, and to make things like plaster.

Q: "So, despite industry pushback, all of these government regulations of our food supply have made Americans safer." Deborah Blum: "There’s no borax or salicylic acid added to our wine and beer. We’re not using arsenic as green food coloring. We’re not using red lead to make cheddar cheese look a little more orange. "If I could persuade people not to think of regulation as a pejorative term, my life’s work would be done."

[kilikesmilktea]

I remember being in the car with my papa and I heard an ad on the radio that was like:

“Martha’s job is to watch a bunch of immature children constantly screaming at each other.

“So when she comes home, she likes to relax by turning on the tv and watch a bunch of immature adult women constantly screaming at each other.

“The difference is that the adults are not Martha’s problem.”

Which is actually a pretty accurate example of why it’s normal and ok to enjoy something in fiction that may be problematic or unrealistic irl.

[studentofetherium]

[dandelionwyn-o]

Booksmith sells online! They even have book mystery boxes based on other books you love. Let's show them (and others) that they made a good business AND moral choice.

[marvelgifs]

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER 2014 | dir. Anthony & Joe Russo

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[weavemama]

DO NOT SUPPORT SALVATION ARMY 

[jackharknessday]

I can back this up. It isn’t only their shelters.

I have a family friend who worked at our local Salvation Army headquarters as a a secretary. This particular office took all the Christmas donations for children in need, put them in a warehouse, and on a designated day the staff and their friends picked through them all, taking whatever they wanted. She saw people hauling away bikes donated for specific families. Some local children had hundreds of dollars of gifts donated in their name, and on Christmas they received three cheap things, items likely not even from the person who sponsored them.

My friend quit, and I’ve not given them a dime of my money since then.

Do not give to the Salvation Army.

[gayfeatherfiend]

Do Not. Give. To. Salvation. Army

[rab-it-deactivated20231030]

My turn.

I’m a wildfire and disaster logistics specialist.

I deal with a lot of agencies who provide disaster relief.

I used to say the Salvation Army’s disaster services were the one (literally the ONE) good thing they did.

They would come in, set up a canteen trailer, make and pass out hot coffee and donated food in a disaster, usually being one of the first agencies to get there and the last to leave.

Then I found out.

Every time they did this, regardless of if they were actually invited or deployed by the agency in charge (usually FEMA, sometimes others) they would SELF-DEPLOY. Meanjng they would just show up. Ok. That’s not TOO bad, sometimes agencies have to take initiative and get there before the red tape is sorted out. BUT. They, after they left at the end of the incident, they would send FEMA or the host agency a BILL. They used one or two paid employees (usually the driver of the truck and a supervisor); and many VOLUNTEERS, but they would bill for EVERYONE’s Labor at standard federal rates. They would bill for the food they distributed even though it was all donated by another agency or private parties. They would bill for the coffee they made and the supplies. Except they would use electricity from the shelter location, water from donations or from the shelter, and in many cases, they would get the coffee and industrial filters DONATED, but bill for them at retail prices.

Don’t FUCKING give to the Salvation Army.

[knight-of-vengeance-deactivated]

The Salvation Army is also ass to the workers. A good number of people join it, naively thinking that it’s doing good, and end up leaving cynical and beaten down. The management is hostile, if not outright abusive, and demand some ridiculous hours of it lower to mid-level staff. Don’t support these people.

[fisharescary802]

Unsettling update

[oldearthaccretionist]

Find better local charities and shelters and give to them instead!

[moonybyte]

Also just for even more horrific context on the original twitter thread?

Salvation Army reached out to Milknmuffins and asked what shelter she’s at with the promise to address the abuse in it. She…ended up saying where she was. She was thrown out onto the street. It’s also all on Twitter.

They invited her to a personal talk so she could explain the situation in person.

And then they threatened her with a screenshot of a rape-threat made supposedly by her:

And then threw her out into the street while claiming she broke house rules that

So yeah, the Salvation Army is a bunch of entitled assholes that will treat the most vulnerable like shit if they dare try to do anything that makes them look bad

[supernovafirefly]

The “Fuck Salvation Army” posts are making the rounds again, so conisder this your reminder: Do. Not. Give. These. Assholes. A. Single. Fucking. Penny.

Do not support them in any way, shape, or form.

[eagletrekkie]

‘Tis the season to say FUCK the Salvation Army.

[nikademus1969]

Fuck the Salvation Army, all year round

[kyleesarthell]

Recollection (1/2

[dyk-tv-theme-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you recognize this TV theme song? #499

I know this and can name the series

I know this but can't name the series

I might know this

I've never heard this

Voting ended onApr 15

[freshgratednutmeg]

What's hilarious is that this activitated deep memory and I was actually singing along (some seasons must've had lyrics for the theme) but could not for the life of me place the series so literally just kept singing along until it got to the bit that named the series.

[nikademus1969]

Ch-ch-ch-Chip n' Dale, RESCUE RANGERS!