the horrors

I'm Huxley, it/any pronouns. 24. cats love me, cishets fear me. lately in my life i have been spending a lot of energy trying to figure out my symptom disorders Despite it all we stay sillay

[talvin-muircastle]

[gryffindorcls]

Wow, I did not see that coming.

[anglerfl3sh]

Upon inquiry I think there's two fundamental reactions to vampirism hold on I need to make a graph

[anglerfl3sh]

Refer to image above

[eclecticopposition]

what is THE worst thing you've ever drank. all liquids acceptable. please tell me what it was, bonus points for why

[carby]

Hey whoa hi. Hello. I am looking directly into your ear canal. What do you mean you drank a tube of virus concentrate.

[whyamiherewhosummonedme]

So, I was working in a lab, right? My job in the lab was preparing a pure, concentrated enough sample of virus. This is tricky since, y'know, viruses require hosts to replicate, but you then need to get the host cells (and the pieces of the host cells that died!) out of the sample while still keeping the viruses. Once I'd finished and the samples had been sent to the database for analysis as well as a second one sent to be frozen for future reference, there was still some left over that needed to be disposed of.

I, knowing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, waited carefully for the lab director to be deep in conversation with someone else on the other side of the laboratory. And then I took my chance.

Test tubes, as it turns out, are really bad as shot glasses. Their shape turns any liquid inside into a stream, so you really can't knock it back quickly - it takes a couple seconds. Additionally, the best way I can describe the taste of virus concentrate was "sterile rot". A very unique kind of bad! Made worse by the test tube's inefficiency as a shot glass.

(by the way we were studying bacteriophages, not animal viruses. these viruses are too specialized on attacking prokaryotes to even recognize our cells as targets at all, according to studies.)

(but also like. if the viruses managed to successfully switch hosts and killed me with a violent infection, itd still be worth it.)

(for science.)

[violetthunderstorm]

You have a fitting blog title

[nico-the-overlord]

this post is getting 50k easy

[marlinspirkhall]

[geopsych]

Another public service announcement. This time it’s air quality. Some of you are probably in it already if you’re in eastern Canada, New England or New York, but it’s sliding south, a huge mass of wildfire smoke. Please be careful. When it starts getting bad, especially, like when the sky gets orange or brownish, it’s best to run air purifiers in the house and wear N95 or KN95 masks when you have to go outside.

It harms your lungs and it’s especially bad for children (and pets!) or anyone with health problems. There are all kinds of chemicals in that smoke. It’s not only trees that are burning. The heat already makes it harder to breath. This makes it worse.

If any of you are experiencing it, feel free to tell about it in the comments. 💚

Also, throw out the mask every day and shower before you get in bed if you’ve been out or you’ll be breathing the particles all night. Stuff like that. It gets all over you, your skin, your hair, your clothes.

[so-i-did-this-thing]

It's a large (and shifting) smoke plume, so stay safe, folks. Look up how to make a "Corsi-Rosenthal Box" if you need an air purifier inside.

[thatspectacularpigeon]

I know this map shows specific areas but as of July 16th I doubt it's accurate, all of Western PA is covered in smoke, so I expect it has shifted downwards

[so-i-did-this-thing]

Smoke plumes shift a lot. The further east/southeast you are from these fires, the more drastic the shifting will be. And there will always be uncertainty because ironically, smoke can make it difficult for satellite systems to detect wildfires.

BlueSky Canada has a prediction map of their modeled data here:

[ainecdote-remade-deactivated202]

tired of cannibalism as a metaphor for love or sex. can we get into cannibalism as a metaphor for colonization.

[sloppity-bilepiper]

1. Europeans using Egyptian mummies as medicine

2. The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard

3. "Abolitionists turned the tables on Europeans by accusing them of being cannibals when they ate sugar tainted with the flesh and blood of slaves."

4. Zombies (which I would class as cannibals, since they were human and need to eat humans to live) have a root in Haitian folklore and represented enslavement.

[vintagedean]

adding that, if you can find it, cannibal culture by deborah root is about exactly this. the way the white western world is a hungry, destructive force that cannibalizes non-white cultures and creates wealth and status through the cannibal colonization of those cultures.

here's the intro

i almost think there's an essay in bell hooks' black looks about this too? yes! just checked, there's an essay called "eating the other"

[tealightrook]

@lichpire

[kosmogrl]

[kosmogrl]

sorry I didn’t show up it was because umm.. you see, I was busy. maybe another time??

[parkchanwoohoo]

[ralfmaximus]

Never forgor

[messsssmer]

"Whimsy" is truly a wretched term. What maketh thee so carefree?

[fireknightqueelign]

thy mother

[messsssmer]

Art thou for fucking real

[streetkit]

it does suck that the government defunded PBS but it's also so fucking funny that now that they don't take uncle sam's slavery dollars they're running videos like "How america's foundation was built on genocide"

no more being polite about it fuck the USA

[eyrieofsynapses]

PBS Origins my beloved! for the unfamiliar, channel link here. they've been pointing out how fucked up USA history is for a while, but not quite that overtly.

PBS Origins

PBS Origins is the home of history shows from PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to dive into inclusive, intersectional history content that hel

link to the specific video from the screenshot above here:

it's part of their series "A People's History of Native America," playlist link here.

A People's History of Native America

Hosted by comedian and actor Tai Leclaire, A People's History of Native America is a series that explores the current social climate in Nati

and while I'm here I'll plug some other channels because PBS does solid work. also, iirc they are (...were? I'm not actually sure what applies to them now that they've been defunded) legally required to include captions and they actually do that, so you won't run into auto-generated nonsense.

I haven't checked out PBS Documentaries yet, but they have some stuff tackling similar topics. (I am adding things to my watchlist as we speak.) channel link here.

PBS Documentaries

Welcome to the PBS Documentaries channel—presented by PBS Digital Studios and Independent Television Service (ITVS), dedicated to documentin

PBS Terra doesn't pull punches on climate change. channel link here.

PBS Terra

PBS Terra is the home of science and nature shows from PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to explore the frontiers of science and tech, our mind

PBS Eons has some super cool videos on the history of life on Earth, channel here, and Storied does awesome work on linguistics and mythology, channel here.

PBS Eons

Join hosts Kallie Moore, Michelle Barboza-Ramirez, Gabriel Santos, and Blake de Pastino as they take you on a journey through the history of

Storied

Storied is the home for arts and humanities shows from PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to explore art, culture, mythology and much more! The

aaand while we're talking about defunded USA public media that doesn't pull punches when critiquing our history and government, I am once again going to plug a couple NPR podcasts. Throughline does deep-dives on history, culture, laws, and so on (link here); I'm especially partial to their We the People miniseries, which covers our rights from the Amendments. Code Switch covers culture, focusing on race and minority groups, and has been doing some especially good coverage on what the Trump administration's fuckery means on a practical level (link here). (these aren't the only NPR podcasts that talk about this stuff, but they're the big ones afaik.)

Throughline

Throughline is a time machine. Each episode, we travel beyond the headlines to answer the question, "How did we get here?" We use sound and

Code Switch

What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tac

anyway. good public media my beloved

[creekfiend]

Positive comment regarding your posting about how academia is an alligator spike pit: I was looking at some of my old notes from when I was burning myself out trying to succeed academically, and I was halfway down a huge shame spiral about how I'm not capable of that kind of work anymore when I remembered, "Oh! Right! It's an alligator spike pit!" Shame spiral stopped in its tracks. The memory of your posting allowed me to have a good night instead of a night full of self-loathing. Thank you.

YAAAY I'm so glad!!!!

[kawuli]

random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine

[aboutoriginality]

[notaplaceofhonour]

[into-theocean]

My mexican charr agenda is working bc Icebrood saga feels so much like a telenovela im so sorry. Everyones dying, Bangar is a classic machismo mexican father "No one wants you here cub." "Youre the one who ORDERED me here." FUCKING FUNNY !!! Theres exes, theres family dynamics, legacy, Rytlock and crecia wont stop bickering even when theyre in jail together. They keep airing each others dirty laundry (Crecia I need to know the details about Gaheron.) The charr cant stop gossiping among each other (very mexican)

I feel like I just tuned into an episode of La rosa de Guadalupe. Im only 3 chapters in.

[jewish-rock]

it should be socially acceptable to wear whatever type of clothes you want anywhere and i am not kidding

[jewish-rock]

dress is an indicator of status that poor people, people of color, disabled people, some religious people, and women consistently fail to meet due to social prejudice or barriers to acquiring the appropriate clothing

[jewish-rock]

obviously there are scenarios where specific clothing is required (like PPE at a job site)

but a person coming to an office job in sweatpants doesn't make them less qualified to do their work, it just means they're more comfortable while doing it

[jewish-rock]

"you're required to wear a face shield, an apron/coat, and closed toed shoes in this lab environment for your safety" awesome perfect, i love safety, and i can wear whatever i want under it.

"you're required to wear a suit to present your lab work" i do not become less intelligent wearing non-formal clothing, and this presentation has now become inaccessible to someone who cannot wear appropriate formal dress

[jewish-rock]

I FORGOT FAT PEOPLE IN MY ORIGINAL REBLOG, DONT REBLOG WITHOUT INCLUDING FAT PEOPLE

[uncleromeo]

if you don't do anything else today,

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.

[sexhaver]

lmfao the Scots in town for the World Cup have made a pilgrimage to Boston's world-famous Cop Annihilating Slide

[vampire-loving-vampire]

hey white people . if u dont know how to pronounce an ethnic persons name *google it* or if its someone ur talking directly to *ask them*. dont fucking do that "erm i dont know how to pronounce but __" or "im gonna butcher this haha" or "im not even gonna bother trying" . ur not funny. do u know what poc think when they hear u saying that ? u sound like a loser asshole and we dont want to spend time with u . im so fucking tired of watching youtube videos about media from my country and hearing those phrases. im tired of people saying that to my face . i respect someone who clearly looked it up and is tryong but says my name wrong over someone who just goes with whatever bad first guess they had without trying. u have too many resources at ur disposal to keep doing this. for the love of god just Fucking Try. if ur confused Just Try.

[despair-tea]

I highly recommend Forvo.com, the website where native speakers of a language contribute their time and voices to read words and names in their own language. It is a fantastic way to expand your world, open up your ears, and it's way more likely to nab a hit than just googling.

[vampire-loving-vampire]

wow , I didn't know this existed, thanks so much for sharing the resource !! I will absolutely be using it now too 🖤