a heart’s a heavy burden

mel. xvi. nyc. scorpio. she/her.

[jethroq]

[pathologising]

one thing about me is that I am going to cry

[byjove]

whenever I see archeological remains of a human who suffered from a terrible disease that couldn’t be treated in their lifetime but could be fixed now, this wave of sorrow and mourning washes over me. a woman in the 14th century who spent her 35 years of life bent at the waist because of congenital scoliosis. a man from the 18th century who died because of a non cancerous mass on his jaw that made eating progressively more difficult. remains of a woman from the Neolithic who died in childbirth having evidence of peri-mortem trepanation on her skull.

and yet she survived to 35. and yet the physicians in his time tried to strengthen his jaw. and yet someone 4,000 years ago tried to save someone they loved from dying of preeclampsia/increased cranial pressure. we tried. we tried and we tried and we tried. we failed and we learned but we tried. that’s what makes humans so beautiful.

[lyricwritesprose]

My mom sometimes talks about a child in her neighborhood who was born with hydrocephaly and died of it. His parents strove to keep him alive for years, but he ultimately passed after a long decline. No treatment available. No hope at all, and the parents knew it from his birth.

Several decades later my sister had an MRI, as a long shot, to try to figure out why she was sick and deteriorating with a number of symptoms that were close to being written off as anxiety. She was sent straight to the hospital for adult onset hydrocephaly. Two days later she had brain surgery to put a shunt down her neck into her stomach and drain the fluid out. (No, you cannot usually get brain surgery that fast. Yes, it was that urgent.) Recovery was long and squiggly but it happened.

I think of that boy every once in a while. The one who died. I have no doubt that treatments developed for people like him, and tested on people like him, saved my sister's life.

He never knew he made the world better. His condition was severe, he never knew much of anything, I don't think. I think if I ever track down a God or something like one, that'll be somewhere on my List of Wishes. To make sure people like him know that they helped.

[mutedtempest]

I think about this a lot.

I've been type 1 diabetic since I was about one and a half, and was incredibly sick. If my mother hadn't also been type 1 and recognized the signs I likely would have died.

I was born in 1982. Insulin was first given to a patient in 1922, and he survived. Before that, type 1 meant death, often very slow and agonizing. Before insulin, doctors advised a super strict "keto" diet to prolong life, and it could work for awhile - up to a year, I believe. But it was a miserable existence as the body was literally eating itself as the blood turned acidic until the patient eventually died.

60 years. Only 60 years before my birth did that procedure work for the first time. That's absolutely nothing given the span of human history and I think a lot about the people who died from it throughout time.

But yes, people tried. Healers and doctors of all sorts tried all manner of things to allow these (mostly!) kids to live. The fact that it was accomplished at all is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that I've been alive 42 years is fucking insane considering my body doesn't produce a hormone necessary for survival. If you think that doesn't blow me away on a regular basis you have another think coming. It's nothing short of a miracle.

Every medical advancement is. The amount of work that goes into it and the vast amount of luck necessary to get it right even when all the research and information is sound is just astonishing.

Thank you, humanity. Thank you ingenuity and determination to save lives and make them better. Thank you to every medical practitioner and medical researcher in existence now and through all of time. Thank you to all the people who died so I could live.

[ishowdespair-deactivated2026012]

[peanuttoffee]

what if this part of her won

[miniaturekeytar]

has anyone asked this

[lesly-oh]

HUNTR/X 💥

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i should wake up and automatically be restored to full health, that's how sleeping should work, what is this horseshit

[david-goldrock]

I find the fact that the closest mountain point on earth to the moon, the highest mountain and the tallest mountain are 3 different mountains to be a tiny bit disturbing

[deez-no-relation]

Explain

[david-goldrock]

The world's highest mountain is the most beloved, it is mount everest, the mountain that's farthest from sea level. If you connected the other two to everest by a slide and put a ball on everest, it will slide down to the other two (in a frictionless perfect world)

The world's tallest mountain is mauna kea, it's almost 4000 feet taller than everest if you measure from base to top, most of it is underwater though

The world's closest mountain to the stars is mount Chimborazo, it is both shorter and less high than the other two, but it is closer to the equator, so the bulge of earth makes it ever so slightly farther from the center, so it is closer to the stars

So yeah, 3 ways to measure, 3 results

[prunelya]

Details of Painting by M.Graziella Pani

[percjyackson]

Hi, I hope you're doing well. I'm writing to you with a heavy heart and an urgent request for help. My family is in a very danger situation due to the ongoing war, and I've launched a GoFundMe campaign to save them. Could you please share my campaign post from my profile? Each share could be a lifeline for my family. 🙏 Feel free to share it in any other social media platform if you would like. Our campaign has been verified ⭐️ by operation olive branch, and is entry number 26 on their spreadsheet. Also with ⭐️ Project watermelon,line 249/(212) on their spreadsheet. From the bottom of my heart I want to thank you in advance for all of your support and kindness.

posting this for all to see!

[smallsafespace]

Oddish! 🫐🌱

[catchymemes]

[whizpurr]

[exeggcute]

at some point we gotta acknowledge that getting the majority of your news and takes and general opinions from tumblr is not meaningfully different than getting it from tiktok even though on here it's in textual form. understanding the world through the lens of viral videos vs understanding it through breathless unsourced text posts written by dykeastarion69

[astudyinimagination]

#this is what made me switch to actually reading news sites regularly some years ago#(and when something's controversial or doesn't seem quite right I look up multiple news sources to try to get a fuller picture) (@thirddoctor)

A quick reminder that the Associated Press is totally free, and also often covers the news stories that Tumblr users say no one is covering. NPR is also free. So is ProPublica.

Also, here's a chart that might be helpful, in terms of determining bias and reliability: Interactive Media Bias Chart

[nessiandaily]

The Valkyries by kkvaksha [instagram]

[drag0ns-in-cyb3rspac3]

[devil-official]

DO NOT BRING BACK SONGS ABOUT BEATING THE DEVIL IN A MUSIC CONTEST

[softandwigglybones]

Posts that are funnier once you read the username