friend to loki

for friends of loki

[red-priest]

[paxamericana]

The epidemic began on September 13, 2005, when Blizzard introduced a new raid called Zul’Gurub into the game as part of a new update. Its end boss, Hakkar, could affect players by using a debuff called Corrupted Blood, a disease that damages players over time, this one specifically doing significant damage. The disease could be passed on between any nearby characters, and would kill characters with lower levels in a few seconds, while higher level characters could keep themselves alive. It would disappear as time passed or when the character died. Due to a programming error, players’ pets and minions carried the disease out of the raid.

Non-player characters could contract the disease but were asymptomatic to it and could spread it to others.[2] At least three of the game’s servers were affected. The difficulty in killing Hakkar may have limited the spread of the disease. Discussion forum posters described seeing hundreds of bodies lying in the streets of the towns and cities. Deaths in World of Warcraft are not permanent, as characters are resurrected shortly afterward.[3] However, dying in such a way is disadvantageous to the player’s character and incurs inconvenience.[4]

During the epidemic, normal gameplay was disrupted. Player responses varied but resembled real-world behaviors. Some characters with healing abilities volunteered their services, some lower-level characters who could not help would direct people away from infected areas, some characters would flee to uninfected areas, and some characters attempted to spread the disease to others.[2] Players in the game reacted to the disease as if there was real risk to their well-being.[5] Blizzard Entertainment attempted to institute a voluntary quarantine to stem the disease, but it failed, as some players didn’t take it seriously, while others took advantage of the pandemonium.[2] Despite certain security measures, players overcame them by giving the disease to summonable pets.[6] Blizzard was forced to fix the problem by instituting hard resets of the servers and applying quick fixes.[3]

The major towns and cities were abandoned by the population as panic set in and players rushed to evacuate to the relative safety of the countryside, leaving urban areas filled to the brim with corpses, and the city streets literally white with the bones of the dead.[7]

[gaypet-deactivated20150628]

please read the full wikipedia article

[lesbophobes-deactivated20220907]

Orgrimmar during the incident.

[lyinginbedmon]

This is legitimately one of the most fascinating events in online and/or gaming history to date.

[nerdgerhl]

This post leaves out the most incredible part, which is that the CDC straight up contacted Blizzard and asked for all the data they had on the Corrupted Blood Plague for the purposes of refining their models of epidemic behavior in real human populations. 

[blacktourmalinetarot]

[tardis-impala]

spring cleaning!!! unfollow me if youre a terf, homophobic, biphobic, islamophobic, dont agree w the black lives matter movement 

[roughlyokay]

also unfollow if your’e an antisemite, and just racist in general

[i-want-to-be-manhandled]

Also unfollow me if you call asexual people “cishets,” bisexual people dating someone of a different gender “bihets,” or nonbinary people or trans people who don’t have dysphoria “transtrenders.” Bye

[kenderfriend]

Ditto

[byjoveimbeinghumble]

A research tip from a friendly neighborhood librarian! 

I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of subject librarians and Libguides. 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that scholars and writers have academic specialties. The same is true for subject librarians! Most libraries use a tool called Libguides to amass and describe resources on a given topic, course, work, person, etc. (I use them for everything. All hail Libguides.) These resources can include: print and ebooks, databases, journals, full-text collections, films/video, leading scholars, data visualizations, recommended search terms, archival collections, digital collections, reliable web resources, oral histories, and professional organizations. 

So, consider that somewhere out there in the world, there may be a librarian with a subject specialty on the topic you’re writing on, and this librarian may have made a libguide for it. 

Are you writing about vampires? 

Duquesne University has a guide on Dracula

University of Northern Iowa: Monsters and Religion

Fontbonne University has a particularly good one on Monsters, Ghosts, and Mysteries

Washington University in St. Louis: a course guide on Monsters and Strangeness 

How about poverty? 

Michigan State: Poverty and Inequality with great recommended terms and links to datasets 

Notre Dame: a multimedia guide on Poverty Studies.

Do you need particular details about how medicine or hygiene was practiced in early 20th century America?

UNC Chapel Hill: Food and Nutrition through the 20th Century (with a whole section on race, gender, and class)

Brown University: Primary Sources for History of Health in the Americas

Duke University: Ad*Access, a digital collection of advertisements from the early 20th century, with a section on beauty and hygiene  

You can learn about Japanese Imperial maps, the American West, controlled vocabularies, Crimes against art and art forgeries, anti-Catholicism, East European and Eurasian vernacular languages, geology, vaudeville, home improvement and repairs, big data, death and dying, and conspiracy theories.

Because you’re searching library collections, you won’t have access to all the content in the guides, and there will probably be some link rot (dead links), but you can still request resources through your own library with interlibrary loan, or even request that your library purchase the resources! Even without the possibility of full-text access, libguides can give you the words, works, people, sites, and collections to improve your research.

Search [your topic] + libguide and see what you get!

[thoughshebebutlittle1]

This is…amazing. I am angry that I didn’t know about this until now. Now I can ~academically~ indulge my fascination with the 1918 flu pandemic? When I have organic chem homework and a lab report due tomorrow? I both love this and hate this.

[byjoveimbeinghumble]

I have terrible news. 

At a quick glance, Christopher Newport University, Goodwin College, and Harford Community College all have libguides on the 1918 flu pandemic. 

[diebrarian]

LibGuides are magic.

(also let us know if you find dead links, we can fix them!)

[librariandragon]

An even better way to search for libguides?

https://community.libguides.com

Use the libguide community site and search by topic, institution, or even your friendly neighborhood librarian! (If you have a librarian or two who you trust to put you on the right path, you might be able to get that guidance even if you don’t have time to reach out directly!) If their site says “LibGuide” it’ll show up in THAT community somewhere!

Looking to see what books are being used in a particular class in a particular university? Course specific libguides usually have those!

Interested in browsing until you find something that catches your attention? Springshare (the vendor that manages LibGuides) curates lists of interesting, amusing, and innovative libguides! (Okay some of these are boring because they’re geared towards UX and data visualization for librarians, but still…)

Interested in seeing the stuff that YOUR local or institutional librarians are trying to promote? Looking for ways to make the most of the resources that are freely available to you just down the road? Libraries from Atlantic City to Saratoga Springs to South Australia are making guides for their various resources, which describe everything from how to search databases to how to read call numbers to how to access online resources like e-books and video subscriptions!

Even major institutions like the New York Public Library have guides, on everything from genealogy to the history of New York neighborhoods!

[taraljc]

omg

[gogomrbrown]

I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.

[punkrockradio]

When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day. Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.

Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.

[robotsandfrippary]

They’ve also recently discovered a lost Native American city in Kansas called Etzanoa It rivals the size of Cahokia, which was very large as well.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

here are some reconstructions of Tenochtitlan 

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

just a note, we don’t think of old european cities as ruins, because those civilizations continued and kept building over the old–there are no abandoned ruins for us to visit & photograph. when we picture those old cities, we have only mental images drawn from our own assumptions & prejudices–images that tend to glorify ‘civilized’ europe.

since victors write history, our image of native american cities was created by colonizers motivated to uphold the ‘native savage’ myth. when we think of these civilizations now, we think of ‘uncivilized’ (rough, broken, abandoned) ruins, because that’s what remains. ruins are the only thing left. because of the destruction wrought by western invaders, these civilizations never had a chance to continue building. they were destroyed, and all we have left is an unimaginative shadow of their former glory. 

[baby-yodas-mom]

went to peru and visited some of their museums and learned inca history that american schools don’t teach you. basically you know why they were beaten out by the spanish invaders? because incas were mostly scientists and not warriors. they had advanced medicine, farming and science technology. THATS what they were good at - tech - not building weapons to most efficiently kill people. the spanish were good at that. so they won. basically the real savages and thugs won and murdered a bunch of scientists, and their technology and advancements are lost forever. it took into the 20th century for colonizer technology to advance in the field of medicine and agriculture to the level of the incas. colonizers literally set human knowledge back like 500 years. 

[1dietcokeinacan]

The fact that much of the population must be labeled “mentally ill” to explain why so many individuals are not mentally or emotionally equipped to handle the gruelling mindset & method of action capitalism necessitates just goes to show how horrifically unnatural a system it is. It’s not us. It’s never been us

[red--raven]

“It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin… By privatizing these problems - treating them as if they were caused only by chemical imbalances in the individual’s neurology and/or by their family background - any question of social systemic causation is ruled out.”

- Mark Fisher, “Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative?”

[skotoseme]

breaking news: multiple bombings at 3 hotels and 3 churches during easter services in sri lanka. at least 138 are dead and more than 560 injured.

[skotoseme]

there are no words… as news keeps getting updated from many sources, now there has been a serial of eight (8) coordinated bomb attacks! death toll rises to 185. this is beyond horrific.

[skotoseme]

over 207 have been killed.

Relief for Sri Lanka bombing victims

[greedwife]

A reminder that the 24th of April is the day of remembrance of the Armenian genocide, which one and a half million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1923. About two million Armenians were living in the Ottoman Empire at that time. Armenian people were subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and left in the desert to die of starvation and dehydration by the Turks. Even today, Turkey refuses to acknowledge that a genocide was committed against the Armenians during WW1, and dismisses the evidence about the horrible massacre as mere allegations and often prevents efforts for acknowledgment.

[rereincarnated]

I’ve gone 6 months alone working full time as a linecook and living on the couch of my drug addict father for 3 months and now in my grandmothers home. She is giving me until May 1st, to find somewhere else to go or I will be in a shelter or on the streets for refusing to leave the father of my daughter because he’s simply a Jamaican man. We lost a child due to stress-related complications five months prior to this blessing and I’m only 20 so I have faith that I can get everything together on my own, with my fiancée, but we are struggling very much. We have a 7 year old son as well, fighting for custody and getting an interview in the racist town I live in has been hard for his father although we have both filled out tens and tens of applications on his behalf. I help take care of my brothers and sisters due to my mom facing hard times as well. My father has stolen money from me over and over and along with drug use and cigarette smoke in the apartment we shared for those three months got to be unbearable. We stayed in his storage room without a door, we walked 2 miles back and forth with groceries weekly. Moving in here seemed to be the best thing for us but I moved away from my mother’s mother for many reasons and I guess it was naive to think her racist, diagnosed narcissistic ways would be changed by the weeks and weeks without the scariest news we’d ever received prior, that our daughter from our first pregnancy did not make it, resulting in their fizzling idea that they could just cause me to lose our baby.

Many nights I stood outside praying because this experience has been the most beautiful life changing experience I’ve ever faced.

Being pregnant alone is intense and altering but being forced to undergo the changes alone day by day due to even a weekly visit from somebody I love and trust and have been engaged to for almost two years being argument inducing, has opened my eyes to the complete idiocy that is racism. To struggle to bend down, get dressed, make meals, clean all before working two jobs just because your biological family members blatant disrespect and ignorance towards your ethnicity and nationality, to see how they’d treat you if you were not mixed with their daughters slaveowner heritage, changes you as a woman. To see them take out their stupidity on a man who has changed your world in every positive sense, simply because he is a man of color is a different game I’ve never expected to have to play simply to have somewhere to stay. Please please please please P L E A S E E E E E SHARE THIS . That’s all I’m asking

[namasteybollywood]

I rarely reblog, but a lovely follower is in need of help.

[gorps]

happy easter from the united states :)

[dreamofhircine]

what is going on in America

[bpdcassidy-archived-deactivated]

I…? No???? Is this a regular occurrence???

[imawitchywitch]

I need to move immediately out of the US.

[japhers]

ok so maybe Him was an underrated queer-coded supervillain icon, maybe I didn’t fully appreciate his contributions to the world as a kid,

[red-priest]

Happy 420

[quinnlane-moved-deactivated2018]

This 4/20 please remember that even in legalized states, black Americans are still being arrested for possession or use of cannabis 10x more than white Americans despite both groups using cannabis at similar levels.

[aquafool]

Most important to remember this. Also many states have laws in place that prevent people with drug offense on their record to work on the cannabis industry.

[endangered-justice-seeker]

what a fucking hypocrisy

[polar-solstice]

Venture Capital Is Putting Its Money Into Astrology

The investment in Big Zodiac seems … preordained.

This is extremely gross tbqh. Please support you local diviners and astrologers, the small business people you know. Because otherwise this is who is getting your money.

[pangur-and-grim]

man, I have very little sympathy for people who’re like “I gotta let them play in traffic, my cat WAILS and acts MISERABLE unless I let them outside!” 

because like……….so does mine? at a certain point each day Grim decides she wants out, and until that happens she a) follows me about SCREAMING, and b) sits atop whatever I’m doing and bites my hands. this is not an exageration

wanna know what I do? I take her out. either supervised in my backyard or on leash in the front

she naps in the sunlight, eats copious amounts of grass, rolls in dirt, and murders butterflies. after 15-30 minutes (equivalent to the time you’d spend on a neighbourhood dog walk) I take Grim back in, and she happily sleeps/plays/cuddles indoors for the remainder of the day

it’s legitimately low-effort

[screwyouandrew]

Outdoor cat owners: but my cat whines when I don’t let them outside

Rational people: so why don’t you just watch them to make sure they’re not going to get hurt

Outdoor cat owners: