Australian-American aro-ace. She/they. Other gender-neutral pronouns also okay, I don't really give a shit. This will probably be mostly a writeblog. AO3
Amid consumers’ rising dietary supplement use, which spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Mike Braun (R-I
they're finally doing something about the fact that supplements are completely unregulated and companies can literally just put Whatever in there as long as they call it a supplement and not a drug
you know, this thing, where if you actually test them they're just full of beans
New York Attorney General tells major retailers to stop selling popular supplements after 4 out of 5 samples failed tests
the fake covid cures and other cure-alls peddled by people like alex jones are also able to get away with it due to the way the FDA has been hamstrung
the best way to support this bill is to contact your senator and tell them you are someone who buys supplements and you would like them to not be secretly full of whatever the manufacturer happened to find on the side of the road that day. this is especially helpful if your senator is on the health committee.
Hey guys, so I'm a pharmacist in the US and this is desperately needed! I'm gonna tag on a ton of information about dangerous supplements and herbal remedies. Sorry, not sorry.
When I was doing my clinical rotations as a pharmacy student, I spent 10 weeks in a hospital as was required for all students in my state. My preceptor was an amazingly intelligent guy who I ended up having all to myself despite the fact that he was supposed to have 2 students. We had a patient one day who was in his twenties. He was in for liver failure. Want to know why? Supplements. I believe in his case, it was supplements designed to help build muscle. Some of those from the GNC store. My preceptor told me that basically every single time a young person gets admitted to the hospital for liver failure, it's due to supplements. And there's no recourse. The company that makes them only has to give the barest proofs of safety to the FDA.
But, hey, anyone can OD on an OTC. You can get liver failure from Tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol (depending on which name is used in your country), too!
Alright, let's look at another supplement. St. John's Wort. Ever heard of that one? It's promoted as being good for depression and mood. And, you know what, it works! It works so well that back in the 50s or whatever, scientists figured out a way to isolate and purify it and we got our first class of antidepressants ever: tricyclic antidepressants! Most common TCA is Amitriptyline. Only....we don't use them anymore. At least not as antidepressants. Occasionally, you'll see them as a sleep aid. Why not? Many, many reasons. But mostly interactions and side effects. I'll start with interactions because those are the scariest. Not only do they interact with basically every drug ever, they also interact with a ton of foods. Anything that's been fermented or aged. These are your cured meats like salami or pepperoni. Canned foods. I mean your cheeses and wines. All of those have interactions that lead to the build up of a dangerous amino acid byproduct called tyramine in your body. This buildup can lead to a hypertensive emergency that will hospitalize you. TCAs also have so many side effects. Most obvious is the drowsiness which is why our primary use for them today is as a sleep aid. They aren't addictive like zolpidem (Ambien) at least. But let's look at the other side effects. They can affect eye sight, interfere with urination, give feelings of nervousness or excitability. People generally don't feel great when they're on them. And this is sold as a supplement under the name of St. John's Wort where there is no standardized dosing or oversight. When we make a pharmaceutical out of an herb, we make it better. We get the dosing nailed down, we get rid of impurities that add side effects, and we figure out how to best use it. Even after doing all that, we've decided "let's not" with these drugs! Yet I can buy a bottle of several hundred tablets of it right off the shelf in the grocery store.
And final point. This is brought up by OP and in the linked articles, but I'm gonna restate it. THERE IS NO OVERSIGHT IN THE MANUFACTURING OF THESE PRODUCTS!!!! When you buy a bottle of supplements or vitamins, the only quality testing that has been done on it was done by the manufacturer. And do you think that if they found a quality issue that affected some thousands of bottles of pills that they would just throw out all that product? Of course not! There is literally zero incentive to do that! They just label it and ship it out. Maybe they adjust their process so the next batch is better, maybe not. Some companies do pay a third party to validate their products and I do recommend those. You can be reasonably sure you're getting what the bottle says in those cases. They will have a badge on them that says USP verified. Picture below. These vitamins and supplements usually cost a bit more, but you're talking less than $10 for a bottle of 100 that will last 3 months. If you can, I recommend searching for any brand that has this label. Nature made, nature bounty, and sundown are the 3 most common brands that pay for this extra testing. But be careful, because they only test some of their products, not all.
Mm @wolfjackle you’re thinking of MAOIs, not TCAs. The mechanism of action of St Johns wort is still not entirely clear, because there are probably multiple active compounds; it seems to have at least weak MAO inhibiting activity but it seems to work mostly like an SSRI, with some action on other neurotransmitters. It’s been up for debate for a while. But it is almost as annoying as MAOIs interaction-wise. St Johns wort is the bane only my existence because I see it in so many things and it has so many interactions. Anyone who is taking anything should stay away from it, and it’s in a lot of blends (like herbal teas) that are not necessarily labelled “St Johns wort supplement” or whatever, so consumers really need to look.
Anything that has an active ingredient has the potential to be harmful. “Natural” does not mean “safe,” nor does it mean “more effective.” I saw an herbalist claiming that you should use herbs because they had no side effects and were not addictive, and I went off on her. I will remind people that while plants have given us aspirin, quinine, and morphine, they have also given us nicotine, strychnine, cyanide…I am frequently mentally smacking other herbalists with a rolled-up newspaper.
The exception to this is homeopathy, but only because IT’S NOT REAL. Remember what I just said about how anything that has an active ingredient has the potential to be dangerous? Homeopathy doesn’t fall under that warning, because it has no active ingredient. Which is a really fucking good thing because I shit. You. Not. Yesterday I saw someone talking about using Aconitum to treat children’s croup. Aconite. As in wolfsbane, monkshood, the queen of poisons, at one point a capital offence to grow because of its use as a murderer’s tool. If your “remedy” had any active ingredient, it would certainly be effective, but only because kids can’t cough when they’re dead. Unfortunately quite a lot of people do not know that “homeopathy” is not a synonym for “herbal” or “natural” but in fact describes a very specific school of thought that believes something is made stronger by extreme dilution, which is, of course, very stupid.
I am frequently frustrated by the way medical professionals dismiss herbs (not talking about the person above) as nonsense because the problem is that they are often not nonsense. Whether the clinician thinks herbal remedies and supplements are beneficial/useful/appropriate is irrelevant, because they will have patients who take them and it is their responsibility as a clinician to be aware of the risks and interactions. But due to the arrogance of medical culture, they do not want to learn about them or take them seriously. Most doctors’ offices I’ve been to have not asked specifically about supplements when asking about medications, and the important thing to remember is that people are stupid. People often do not think of their supplements as medications unless they were prescribed them. You have to ask specifically. And you have to know what to do with that information. I tell doctors I take such-and-such and it almost never shows up on med rec.
During my pharmacy degree we did a unit on herbal medicine, and had to do a research project on a commonly-used herbal medicine. I did St John’s Wort (which led to a brief panic this morning as I tried to work out whether amitriptyline was in fact related to it, and how I’d missed that fact...) Anyway, somewhat relevant to this: the meta-analyses I read on its use back in the day noted that there was a noticeable difference between the results of European and American studies, in that the European ones showed that it was much more effective. The paper’s theory was that this was because German herbal companies are very good at standardising growing conditions so that their herbs contain approximately the same amounts of active ingredients at all times, even when the active ingredient is unknown or not fully identified in as in the case of St John’s Wort, but now I’m wondering if it was also that the American studies were using herbal samples that weren’t entirely pure.
(And, irrelevant to OP: unsure if you meant that MAOIs aren’t used for depression any more when you said amitriptyline wasn’t, wolfjackle, or if amitriptyline just isn’t used as an antidepressant where you practise, but they’re both used in Australia where I am, though MAOIs are very much a last line treatment. I’ve only seen tranylcypromine used a few times and it’s always in high doses.)
hey hey hey brawl. write the spiderman fic where anti-mutant bigots think jj is one of them because of how he is about spider-man and he experiences no personal insight whatsoever in reaction to this but is so offended he dedicates the front cover of the Bugle to spotlighting the X-Men for like three days straight and peter is keysmash feelings. do iiiiit i want to read.
Because you sent this more than a month after you pitched it, I was briefly like, "This sounds so familiar. I didn't propose this...right...?;;" Anyway I finally assembled myself, here you go.<3
--
The Daily Bugle didn't take walk-ins.
Three men knocked on J. Jonah Jameson's office door. One was young and tall and pale. One was middle-aged, short, and approximately dumpling-shaped. The third had a waxed, curly mustache, which completely distracted from all his other features.
JJJ himself threw open the door and glowered at them. "Who the hell are you people supposed to be?" he barked.
The short one crinkled his eyes up in a winning grin. "We hate people like Spider-Man."
The Daily Bugle didn't take walk-ins...theoretically.
Jonah's forbidding countenance melted at once into perfect amicability. "Well, why didn't you say so? Come in, friends!"
-
Peter sidled into the Bugle bullpen. He did not strictly work there right then, but no one ever revoked his keycard.
He wove his way to Betty Brant's desk and stole the remains of her bagel off her plate. "What's the news, beautiful?"
Betty predicted her old ex's carb crimes and waved a hand around to intercept him, but missed completely because her gaze was fixed on her boss's office door, her eyes alight as she worried the end of her pen distractedly between her teeth.
"Jonah's with some guys," she said. "I'm pretty sure they're HAM."
"Jonah's finally getting better deli meat for the breakroom?" Why did that sound familiar?"
Betty gestured abstractly with the pen. "Not ham,like meat. HAM, like meatheads. It's one of those armchair extremist movements Twitter keeps pretending they don't know how to ban."
"That narrows it down."
"It's short for... Rats. Something militia?"
Peter twitched abortively for the door.
Betty reached over and smacked his arm without taking her eyes off Jonah's office. "Honestly, Peter," she said, "you haven't changed since we were teenagers. It's not a real militia. Don't go anywhere."
He would sense it if they were armed, right? Right?
-
Jonah stuck a cigar in his mouth. He chewed it. He was trying to quit.
"--so nice to see a man in your position who cares about the important things," the short one was saying. He seemed to be the main mouthpiece.
Jonah's mustache quivered pleasantly.
"About upholding accountability for people dragging down our community."
"Yeah, yeah," agreed Jonah, succumbing to autopilot and lighting a preemptive celebratory cigar.
"People who don't know what 'neighborhood' means."
"EXACTLY," exclaimed Jonah, smacking his hand on his desk.
-
Betty swiped out of the search engine on her phone. "Okay, it stands for 'Humans Against Mutants'," she said. "Sorry, I was remembering a sarcastic nickname." She fussed with the phone a little more and then put it down.
Right, right, Peter remembered why it was familiar now. He had punched some of them. Shoulda guessed.
He fixed his own hard glare on Jonah's silent door, still feeling twitchy even though his spider-sense stayed silent. "Betty," he said. "Darling Betty. Why are you giving me this news like a gift? Why is this a good thing?"
Betty finally turned to him and smiled in a mischievous way that reminded Peter of gleefully murderous little housecats.
She said, "You don't want to see what happens once Jonah figures out what their angle is?"
-
"I would love to collaborate with you gentlemen," said Jonah, shaking hands vigorously and indiscriminately. "You're an upright, civic-minded bunch, I can tell." He gestured his good cigar box at them. The younger one took one. Jonah spread his arms wide, biting off a half-manic grin. "I think this is the start of a beautiful partnership. Where do you want to start?" He took a cheerful puff of his not-for-lighting cigar.
"Well, we're especially focused on the mutant threat," said the short one.
Jonah choked on his inhale and started coughing around the cigar.
"Public opinion about them is very in their favor these days," he continued obliviously. "It's just disgusting. Dangerous. But your Spider-Man platform is the perfect jumping-off point. Start with one target and then ease people in from there."
"Boiling frogs," nodded the mustache sagely.
Jonah reached over to his 'decorative' ashtray and ground out his cigar with force. His lips peeled back to reveal crooked tombstone teeth. He inhaled.
-
Robbie walked over to Betty's desk and knocked on it, two short knuckle taps. "What are you two standing around gawping at?" he asked. "Peter, didn't I fire you?"
"Can't write about bloodshed you don't watch," said Betty. "It's a good day in the office, Mr. Robertson."
"...And why is that?" inquired Robbie, who loved Betty like a daughter and knew her very well, with trepidation.
"Wait for it," said Betty.
With the decisive violence of an erupting volcano, there was a blast of raw sound from behind the office door that was only just distinguishable as a voice everyone in the building was familiar with screaming: "W H A T ?"
Robbie scrunched up his face and braced himself against the desk like the sound had had the hair-ruffling gale force it seemed it must have. "...Why is that good, Miss Brant."
Betty twirled her pen on her fingertips and beamed up at him, squinching her eyes. "He isn't mad at us!"
Jonah's door slammed open, the knob bouncing off the abused brass wall guard. "Out, out!" bellowed Jonah, pursuing his visitors waving both arms, one of which was holding an empty mug that read ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ's ᴍᴏsᴛ ʙᴏss like a club. "Out, out of my office, out of my building, out! Hell, leave the state while you're at it! I used to be the mayor of this town! I still have connections!"
"I thought--" sputtered the short one. Jonah brandished the mug at him and he skipped out of the way. "With your vigilante-combatting crusade-- Surely you--" He panted. "You must see that our priorities--"
"I don't hate Spider-Man because he has powers!" shouted Jonah, "I hate him because he's a--"
"Wow," Peter said about a minute into the following deluge. "That's not fit for print."
"You want mutants in my paper so badly!?" finished Jonah, backing the little posse up against the exit. "I'll run nothing but mutants for weeks! --You, wait!"
This last was directed at the tall one, who was at the back of the group. Before he could scurry out of the room Jonah seized him by one shoulder, spun him around, and (juggling the mug) reached into his shirt pocket and plucked out his gifted cigar.
He dropped it in the mug and then pushed the man out the door. He kicked it shut, visibly aiming to clip any lingering ankles.
"Beautiful," said Betty. She tapped her phone to wake it, revealing that it was already open to a contact labeled "Sid S. (Bugle Security)". She hit the call button.
"I'm already doing it!" chirped Betty, waving at him with her phone hand.
"Wh-- Well, good! The rest of you layabouts, take a note of Miss Brant's work ethic!"
Betty mugged a little smugly.
Peter had drifted over to a street-facing window and was looking down out of it, forehead practically touching the glass.
"Bigots!" Jonah was muttering, pacing back and forth strangling the air with his hands. "Hate groups! Trying to use my editorials as propaganda! Me! J. Jonah Jameson! " He twisted his grip on nothing viciously. "As if I would allow that! As if I would think like that! Nobody without their head so deep underground it's coming up in Australia would believe that of me! I'm not... I... ...Do people...really think...I'm like that?"
Silence.
Someone shuffled papers. The sound carried.
Jonah inhaled, deep and angry, then let the breath out as a sigh, his shoulders slumping. The room tensed further in a way it hadn't when it had seemed like he was about to yell.
For a moment, with his posture crumpling, Jonah came dangerously close to looking his age.
Then he straightened back up, recovering his usual vim. "Well, we'll just see what they think this time next month! That's a good idea--somebody put up a comparative poll on the website. Now, speaking of layabouts--" He swiveled his head back and forth, scouring the bullpen. "Wait, where's Parker?"
"He left," supplied Betty. "Just now. Tore out of the room like he thought you were going to hit him."
Jonah huffed. "That punk! Some people just don't know how to act."
-
"What a bust!" the short man said. He kicked a piece of trash viciously off the sidewalk in front of the Bugle building and into the road. "This city is crawling with pamphlet-hawking, soy-drinking, gene sympathizers."
"There's no hope for mutie-lovers," grumbled the tall one.
"Eyyy-men," sighed the one with the mustache.
"Hey," said a new voice, coming from directly overhead.
They looked up.
Blank white lens eyes greeted them.
"We're nonviolent," said the squat one.
"Bully for you," said Spider-Man. "I'm not."
-
"Interviews!" barked Jonah. "Aren't we supposed to not talk over people? Amplify voices?"
"Suppose we are," said Robbie.
"WELL, SOMEBODY FIND ME SOMETHING TO AMPLIFY!"
"Oh, really?" Betty was saying into her phone. "No, just let him have them. Past the doors is public property; we aren't liable." She hung up, satisfied.
"--and if he isn't back here by the time I've set one up I'll get pictures from Grant, and next time he darkens my doorstep I'll mail him to the Globe in a giftwrapped box!"
-
"Well, fellas," said Spider-Man, dusting off his hands, "I'm not sure you've brought me around to the whole 'path of nonviolence' thing. But I've never been very zen. Maybe next time."
He leapt up onto the wall and started creeping around to the back of the building. He had had to bolt down two floors to find an unobserved window to jump out of. Totally worth it. "Honestly," he said. "Some people just don't know how to act."
-
Jonah paced around in an even higher dudgeon than his usual. "Somebody get me a mutant!" he barked. "Why haven't we got any mutants in this room!?"
"Good question," muttered Robbie.
"I had better not hear that we don't have any in the whole building!"
"That's oddly noble," said Glory, who had persisted in picking at the assignment she had open on her laptop at her desk right by Jonah's door through the whole ruckus.
"If I consult somebody who's not already salaried I'll have to PAY them!"
"Aaaaand there it is."
"Do something about it! Start a new hiring program!"
"We have hiring programs now?" asked Peter.
"WHOA, where did you come from," said Betty, startling hard.
Peter shrugged with the arm that wasn't braced on Betty's desk. His hair was mussed and his face was a little flushed. "I had to call my aunt," he said. "For an emergency...fashion consultation. For her. Not me. I think my sense of style is great, don't you?"
"No comment. Do you remember when we met and you wore yellow vests every single day?"
"That is a blistering lack of comment."
"I didn't say I didn't like the yellow vests. Whatever happened to them?"
"I think someone I dated after you might have burned them. Just shows you have superior taste."
"MJ?"
"I think it might have been Felicia.... Have you met Felicia?"
"It's not right!" Jonah continued to rant in the office foreground. "Ostracizing people just because they have powers! It's not right!"
Peter cupped his hands around his mouth and called over, "Gee, does that mean you're going to go easier on the old wallcrawler?" Then he jammed his fingers into his ears.
"SPIDER-MAN GOES OUT EVERY DAY OF HIS OWN VOLITION AND--"
Betty whapped Peter on the arm.
"--A PEST, WHO GOES WHERE HE IS NEITHER WANTED NOR NEEDED-- Wait, Parker?" Jonah did enough of a double take to finally stop pacing. "Why is it you're never here when I want you--"
"I don't work here," said Peter.
"--but the walls spit you out whenever there's an opportunity for a smart comment-- Huh? Well why the hell are you here if you don't work for me!?"
"Can't I drop in to visit my first love, and, frankly, the only woman I've ever--"
"Aren't you back with MJ again?" interrupted Betty.
"While she's on the clock," said Jonah, "no, you cannot."
"Oh, shame," said Peter. "In that case, my rates have increased by twenty percent."
Jonah spluttered. "In my eye they have--!"
"Fifteen."
"Five and I'll send May a gift basket.'
"Make it an edible arrangement and we've got a deal."
They shook on it. Betty rolled her eyes fondly between them.
Jonah plunked his ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ's ᴍᴏsᴛ ʙᴏss mug down on Betty's desk, fished the cigar out of it, and jammed it between his teeth, unlit.
"I am not a bigot, Parker," he chewed out around it.
"No, sir."
"I am not always ahead of the times, but I am a fair man."
"It's true, sir."
"And if people don't see that, I'll just makethem see!" He slammed his fist on Betty's desk. "So I want PICTURES! PICTURES OF X-MEN!"
"....It just doesn't sound right...." muttered Peter. Betty shook her head.
"And if that's not close enough to your specialty, then I don't even know why I keep you around! --Not," he added, "that the X-Men and all the other X-people are anything like that Spider-Man!"
"Oooof course not," said Peter.
"But they've got to be the same kind of tricky shot!"
"So you admit I take tricky shots."
"WHY DO YOU THINK I PAY YOU SO MUCH, HUH?"
"I don't think you--"
"Parker!"
"Alright, alright."
Jonah thrust out his hand, expression a picture. "You'd better actually have something good for me after all this haggling."
"Of course!" said Peter, waving his hands in a very unconvincing reassuring/defensive combo motion. "Just hold that pose while I get a flash drive made up."
Jonah's mustache flexed. "How long will that take?"
"Couple hours?"
Jonah inhaled preexplosively.
"Here," said Betty, turning her laptop around and pushing it at Peter. "Just get them off the cloud."
Peter stared at her. He blinked once, slowly. "I'm not...in the cloud?
"The camera I gave you last winter backs up automatically to the cloud. I set it up before I gave it to you because I knew you wouldn't. I wrote the account information in the card and told you to change the password. Did you even look at the card?"
Peter began to look alarmed. "It does?"
-
After several minutes of Betty reassuring him he wasn't going to be in a data leak ("Honestly, what's in your camera roll? State secrets? Nudes?"), Peter hunched over and started picking at the keyboard. "You're in luck," he said. "Tuesday the original lineup took some newbies out and closed a portal to the prehistoric era out in Hamilton."
"And you were in Hamilton?" put in Betty. "With your camera?"
"My rent just went up," said Peter. "Thing is, JJ, they were teaming up with--"
"Son," interrupted Jonah, "I've done so much for you. I value you as an employee--as family even. Now, for me: Don't say Spider-Man."
"...Bernie Sanders."
Jonah sighed and ran his hands down his face. Several desks over, Robbie stifled a laugh into his fist in a passable impression of a cough.
Leaving one hand over his eyes, Jonah pointed at Betty's laptop. "Show me the damn pictures, Parker."
-
"Not bad...." gruffed Jonah, clicking through the pictures rapidly. "It's good the original five are there--they're classic, reliable, people are used to them capturing their imaginations.... --Do people call them that? The Oh-Five."
"Wow, you really have no mutant opinions," marveled Peter. "Or mutant thoughts. Your head is just empty, like a flower vase."
"Cut the sass, Parker," Jonah said perfunctorily.
"Seriously, don't you run a newspaper?"
"It would be perfect," said Jonah, mercilessly changing the subject, "if Spider-Man weren't in all the good photos."
"Look here, bossman, normally you like that," said Peter. "Demand it, even. Seems like you're cursing your own Pavlovian conditioning."
"We can edit him out," muttered Jonah, ignoring him, still clicking the mouse pad with unnecessary gusto. "Maybe he was attacking them. What do you think, team? 'Vigilante Pesters Helpful Citizens'."
"Boy," said Peter under his breath as Jonah straightened up. He fought to hold a sour expression, and failed. "Some things never change."
Jonah smacked Betty's desk decisively. (She tried to nudge his hand off with the back of her pen.) "But I still need somebody to talk to--a personal account to write out in lights!"
"Jonah," said Robbie moderatingly.
"STATISTICALLY," projected Jonah, who was difficult to moderate, "I KNOW THERE HAS GOT TO BE A MUTANT ON THE PREMISES, SO COUGH THEM UP! THIS IS A HUNT, PEOPLE."
"I cannot imagine why people would think you might be willing to participate in some sort of minority witch hunt," drawled Kate.
"Isn't Beatrice down in Accounting a mutant?" offered Betty.
"I didn't know you were a proponent of hum-- sentient sacrifice, Bets," said Peter.
"You are no better than me," said Betty.
"..."
"She quit last month," said Robbie. "Moving to Florida to be closer to her mother."
"Oh, good for her," said Glory.
"Florida," said Peter distrustfully. Jonah nodded.
Jeff from HR, who did not work in the bullpen but was 23 and as such had been drafted by one of the editors to help her fix a problem with her e-mail and had been there for most of the morning, slowly raised his hand. "I'm a mutant," he said. "Sir."
Jonah's full attention, which was a terrible thing to bear, shifted to focus on him. Jeff's hand drifted downward, and he looked at it like he was second-guessing the body language choice.
"That's wonderful, my boy!" exclaimed Jonah, suddenly overflowing with powerful avuncular energy.
"Ummm," said Jeff from HR. "Thank you."
"Wonderful, stupendous," insisted Jonah. "What do you do?" He fluttered his hands at Jeff. "What's your--special thing?"
Jeff from HR, in less than one second, visibly considered how verbose just the cliff notes on the topic of asking mutants about their powers in a PC way were and discarded the idea of trying to convey them. "I can turn my fingers into French fries, sir."
"...What?"
"French fries. I can generate French fries out of my hands, sir."
"Like...a McDonald's?"
"Homestyle, sir."
Jonah performed a contemplative chewing motion that made his mustache flutter. "...Do you want to be in the paper?"
"Not at all, sir."
"Understandable, kid. Understandable."
-
"God," said Peter, leaning against the wall with his arms folded to watch as Jonah dragged Jeff from HR with him back to the conversation about page layouts he had put on pause to be bothered by his photographer, shadowboxing the ethics of hiring him as a consultant en route. "For once Jonah is running on spite in the right direction."
"Now, Pete," said Robbie, who had likewise stepped back until he was reactivated by an impending major ethics violation, "you know he does that more often than not. Otherwise we wouldn't all still be here."
"...Yeah," admitted Peter. ("The photos need to be bigger," insisted Jonah. "Really use the wing guy to frame the others--") "I do know that."
He fished around in his jacket and got out his phone.
-
"Do you have one of those little flags that look like tropical drinks?" Jonah was asking.
Glory abortively started to raise her hand to cover up the subtle bi triangle pin on her hat band and then lowered it.
"Being a mutant isn't a sexuality, Jonah," said Kate.
Jeff from HR coughed into his fist. "There is a flag," he said.
They looked at him.
"Other things have flags," he said.
"Ha!" said Jonah, pointing at Kate triumphantly.
-
"Who are you texting?" asked Robbie.
Peter's head was bowed over his phone, typing something. He tapped things out with one index finger at a bizarre speed that could not reasonably be called hunt and peck.
"No one," he said. The contact name read: SCOTTY BOY. The last two messages were "Lol, you're in luck," (on the left) and "Don't say 'lol,' what are you, 12?" (on the right). He raised his head to address Jonah, pocketing his phone. "Hey, you still shopping for mutants? If I get you a good one, will I get a commission?"
Jonah swiveled in the ergonomic chair he had commandeered from Kate when she stood up. Once it was facing the right direction he leaned forward forebodingly. "Now, Parker," he said. "I might not be on the ball all the time, but even I know not to hawk this 'one of the good ones' horsesh--"
"NO," interrupted Peter, "I mean-- Not like-- I meant famous, if I can pull in a--"
There was a knock on the outside of the window.
Most of the rabble surrounding Jonah silenced. Betty reached into her purse, gripped something inside of it, and then left her hand there. The action movie gun clicking sound Peter thought he heard was almost definitely imaginary. They were on the highest floor.
"--An X-Man," finished Peter.
Outside the window, a woman in a green body suit, masses of red hair pulsing around her in a telekinetic breeze, raised her hand and twiddled her fingers in a little wave.
Jeff from HR unsubtly sunk down behind a desk.
-
After gibbering a demand that "Everyone stop gibbering, someone let the poor woman in" and eventually giving Jean a polite hand inside, Jonah looked back and forth between her and Peter.
"How do you two...know each other," he asked.
"We're in the same pilates class," said Peter.
"He has a deep, inexplicable bond with my boyfriend," Jean said at the same time.
They looked at each other.
"...Okay," said Jonah eventually, deciding he did not want to know about it if his freelancer had had a threesome with Phoenix and Cyclops.
-
After overcoming the awkwardness of introductions, Jean assumed a businesslike patter out of sync with her dramatic entrance. Peter extricated himself back to the noncombat zone with the nonchalant speed of a man who was hiding something.
"Bets," said Peter.
Betty was back to staring from her desk. "Yes, Pete?"
"Are we about to become the most pro-mutant news outlet in New York?"
Betty worried the end of her pen some more. "I rather suspect it."
"Hell, I rather expect it," cut in Robbie, stepping up behind them and joining their huddle. "Might even swap news outlet with employer."
"--run organizations," Jean was saying while Jonah watched her perched on a desk in a Thinker pose and waved at Glory to take notes. "I can put you in touch with some of our school to work programs."
Robbie ran his hands down his face, looking tired. "There's so much to do," he said. "And always so much to learn, before you can do any of it. I can't claim the high ground on this one--I hadn't noticed we hadn't taken a clear enough stance on this either. It's impossible to stay on top of all of it. ...But we're journalists. We have to keep trying."
"Is that why you stick around?" Peter asked. "...Sir?"
Robbie snorted. "You asking if I never cut the apron strings for long because Jonah tries so hard? Maybe among other things. Don't get too cheeky, Parker."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"He always tries," repeated Robbie. "Now if only he would just let go of his vendetta with--"
"--that rat, Spider-Man?"
Jean pursed her lips and tipped her head to consider whatever character defamation Jonah had asked her to confirm. "He is slightly less funny than he thinks he is," she conceded. "Which is much more annoying than you'd think it would be."
Peter made a drain unclogging noise. Robbie pointedly did not look at him.
"She's not wrong," muttered Betty, whose attention was rapt on the exciting part of the room and as such missed any fine nuances being brandished beside her.
Peter made the noise again.
Jean looked over and stuck her tongue out at him.
-
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
STORY TIME, PEOPLE. I FEARED FOR MY LIFE OR AT LEAST MY DIGNITY AT WORK TODAY
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JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
i'm wearing my worksona rait. i physically cannot stop saying "sir". i think i said sir 47 different times out of sheer social what the hell
YBY Call Me @belovedssdarling
i don't think you have a worksona i think you;re a genuinely boring person
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
okay wow.
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JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
When i say i hid behind a desk i wish i was exagerating for comedy. but.
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
"wow jeffavorite you hid from marvel girl? you must really be a radical!" no she's just really tall OK
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
Also once i met an actor i worshipped and his personality didnt hold up. i cant let that happen again. i'm traumatized
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JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
The effort it took to not say "yeah but it does look like a pride flag probably because every single xman is some kind of gay"
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
god
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
he immediately asked me what my deal was and i was so overwhelmed by the sheer ... yeah that i didn't tell him youre not supposed to ask that... i need to go back in there before he publishes something don't i
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
hes a nice very loud old man i cant let the word choice nitpickers have him
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
fuck
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
he's a coot but like i get it now. that's my coot.
JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy
i'm gonna see if i can get him to wear a magneto was right pin
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A week later, Peter flopped face first into bed. There was a newspaper clutched in his hand which if uncrumpled would have read "Iɴᴛᴏʟᴇʀᴀɴᴛ Cᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴛɪᴇs ᴛʜᴇ REAL Mᴜᴛᴀɴᴛ Pʀᴏʙʟᴇᴍ".
"Awwwwwwwww, Tiger," cooed Mary Jane from where she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed. She put down the script she was looking over. "Are you feeling cherished?"
"Whamph?" said Peter into the bedsheet. "No. By Jonah? No. Why? He's not cherishing me."
MJ patted him consolingly on the back, snickering.
star wars / batman au and bruce is a mandalorian who picks up foundlings like nobody’s business and loudly & vocally disapproves of the jedi even though half his kids are proficient in the force
bruce’s helmet has little points that stick up like bat ears and his armor is mostly black so the non-mandalorians who don’t know his name call him “the bat”
Bruce actually bothers to learn non-lethal takedowns and goes out of his way not to murder people indiscriminately unlike his fellow mandalorians. Which only makes him scarier because now there are survivors to talk about what mandalorians look and act like.
The entire planet of “G’tham” lives in terror and awe of their Mandalorian bounty hunter.
Meanwhile whenever civilians ask other mandalorians about Bruce they all just sigh and are like
“Yeah, that’s the Bat, he’s a bit of a weirdo, we love him but he’s a total pacifist for some reason.”
And the awestruck civilian who’d had 8 bones broken and his house burned down by Bruce is just:
“This is what a Mandalorian pacifist looks like?!?!?”
Bruce himself was a foundling, adopted by the Mandalorians after his parents were murdered. Sometime in his early adult life, his biological parents’ protocol droid AL-4RD (actually an IG central memory unit in a protocol chassis) tracks him down and is like “Master Bruce! Finally! Your parents left you everything in their will and i’ve been trying to track you down two decades” and suddenly Bruce is the richest guy in the sector and doesn’t really know what to do with it all
Absolutely no offense to Sokka/Suki, but I think there should be AU content where Yue becomes the Moon but then she and Sokka just... keep dating. She uses her spirit powers to hang out with him somehow and, well, the one benefit of having given your life for your people is that at least you don't have to give up your love life for them now, right? Sokka adapts easily enough to having a spirit girlfriend, because it is frankly not the weirdest thing that's happened to him.
Potential futures, ranked from most to least angsty:
Sokka being the Moon's Husband until he dies, bringing the inevitable, tragic yet beautiful until-the-end-of-time parting that ends mortal/immortal relationships.
Avatar-world variant: Sokka dies but reincarnates, and the Moon shines more brightly on every one of his future selves, whether he knows why or not. (Sometimes he does.)
Sokka also ascends to spirithood at some point by virtue of Being The Moon's Husband, and basically becomes the Knowledge Owl Guy's nemesis because he A) is very involved in the mortal world and B) thinks that information should be free.
Variant: Sokka replaces the Ocean Spirit through some convoluted turn of events, making him and Yue the new yin-yang of Water.
Related, but different: Sokka just gets a nice house in a corner of the Spirit World where Yue stays between moonset and moonrise. If Iroh can, why not Sokka?
Anyway, this way you get the wholesomeness of these two finding happiness and love together even after everything; the comedy of Sokka actually DATING THE MOON and probably being very chill about the weirdness; and the incredible potential of an immortal spirit Sokka.
HARD vote for Sokka being Wan Shi Tong's eternal rival, especially pre-Sokka-ascension, when Yue is dragging Just-Some-Mortal-Guy Sokka to the spirit world to attend random social functions. The owl just stink-eyeing him as Sokka does the equivalent of standing by the buffet and shoving all the food in his mouth.
Also, Boiling Rock.
Sokka: My girlfriend turned into the moon.
Zuko: That's rough, buddy.
Yue, manifesting in the balloon rail right behind Zuko: Great jump scare perks, though.
Sam “held a burning hot coal until it nearly took the skin off his hand while maintaining perfect calm and eye contact with the asshole in need of intimidation Just Because” Vimes? Sam “sitting on the stoop with a mug of cocoa and a cigar, cautiously aware of every inch of the scene he’s building” Vimes? Sam “could just tear his sleeve to show the mark of the Summoning Dark but instead tears off his whole goddamn shirt” Vimes? A drama queen? Reaching a bit don’t you think
Yep, certainly doesn’t seem to describe Sam “pretends to eat poison as a power move” Vimes. Not Sam “buries an axe in the table in the Rats Chamber” Vimes.
I mean are we really talking about Sam “yes a whole room full of candles with wicks dipped in holy water is the best way to beat this vampire” Vimes, here? Sam “has fought bad guys on top of a speeding train AND a riverboat during a flood” Vimes, really? Definitely Sam “nearly gets shot in the head by a crossbow bolt that shatters his shaving mirror and then uses the bolt to prop up a shard of said mirror to finish shaving” Vimes we’re discussing here?
vimes did not resign from his post in protest, observe the rest of the watch resign from their posts in protest, recruit them into a militia, sail to the country they were at war with, and attempt to arrest two different armies for disturbing the peace so you could sit here and call him a drama queen, as though drama was some myffic quality bestowed by an accident of birth and not the inherent right of every creatively petty and histrionic citizen of ankh-morpork
Yet another post that reads like four shakespeare characters who come out in the middle of the play to talk about something completely unrelated for comic relief
I understand the appeal of wanting every adult hero to instinctively adopt teenage Peter Parker, but can it really beat the hilarity of acknowledging that at 15 Peter was 5'10", unusually buff, went by a moniker with Man in it, wore a creepy full face mask, and had a tightly guarded secret identity and probably a Queens accent thick enough to have come out of a jello mold, and adult heroes reasonably responded to him by going, “Wow, this grown man is an immature asshole for no reason.”
Way funnier to me than adult heroes finding out Peter is a teenager and becoming Concerned is the idea of adult heroes Retroactively finding out Peter Was a teenager because he admits to being like. 22 and they’re like “Hang on you’ve been doing this for like. Seven years.” and he’s like “Haha crazy right? Anyway it’s too late for you to yell at me about that because the statue of limitations on that lecture ran out when I turned 18”
YEAH this trope is instantly more tolerable if it’s fully adult Peter being like, *listen up whippersnappers because I’ve been around the block voice* “I’m thirty, and—” and Tony Stark, who vaguely assumed Spider-Man is maybe two years older than him because he just has that energy and hasn’t reassessed this for four presidential terms, is like, *drunkenly doing math* “You’re how many”
Okay but…them trying to talk about Old People Stuff with him, not realizing that he wasn’t alive to remember xyz thing happening, never used xyz technology bc he didn’t exist yet, not expecting him to agree with the fact that some ppl were saying songs they grew up to were oldies, etc
The thing about Peter Parker is that he was raised by senior citizens the way other heroes are raised by wolves. He has the body of an Olympic gymnast and the soul of a malcontented geriatric. This likely contributed to the perpetuation of the accidental ruse.
It’s when he channels Aunt May so hard he makes it sound like he was personally and immediately affected by McCarthyism that the time traveler fringe theory starts really picking up bets.
Peter has a lot of feelings about the woman that discovered DNA and he strikes me as the kind of person that thinks that distancing yourself from notable figures of history by using their last names is stupid, so he’s going to say something like, “Rosalind worked so fucking hard to have that work snatched from her,” immediately followed by, “I woulda thumped him good,” and inspiring Tony and Banner to frantically look through the 1930s and 40s yearbooks at King’s College and theorize which one was Spider-Man. Captain America tries reminiscing about the good ole days with him. Peter, for his part, has been absently agreeing and making vague “I’m listening” noises about the Rolling Stones and Elton John for the majority of his life, so adding baseball, Duke Ellington, and Ella Fitzgerald to the list wasn’t that much of a stretch.
That’s made funnier by the fact that I feel like Steve’s natural assumption would be that Spiderman’s a non-citizen, so him jumping straight to felon is like, Peter just has such strong criminal vibes.
I am aged between 18-39 and want to get vaccinated but I am shit scared of getting the AZ because I am cis-fem and rely on hormonal contraceptives for health reasons. I've read that its cis-women in this age group that make the high representation of deaths by the AZ vaccine and I wonder it is because they are more likely to be on a contraceptive like the pill, implanon, or hormonal IUD which already has a blood clot risk. Would getting the AZ while being on hormonal contraceptives be 'prodding an already sleeping tiger'? I can't seem to find anything online with cred that gives a straight answer on this.
I'm not a doctor so can't answer that sorry. Any medical concerns you have should be directly discussed with a doctor and they'll be able to comment on the risks, and if you should avoid the AZ vaccine or not.
I’m a pharmacist, and I have a bunch of relevant stuff sitting here in my inbox, so have some relevant information (directly from the Health Department, and you can find more information at health.gov.au/covid19-vaccines ):
1. Being on oral contraceptives, or any other type of contraceptive, isn’t considered a risk factor for the AZ blood clot (aka thrombosis with thrombocytopaenia syndrome, or TTS). The only relevant* conditions here are past anaphylaxis to a vaccine component or past cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (a type of clot)/idiopathic splanchnic thrombosis (another type of clot)/heparin induced thrombocytopaenia/antiphospholipid syndrome with thrombosis. People with a history of these conditions are recommended to receive Pfizer instead. Other types of clots, or blood thinners, or medications that can cause clots (like contraceptives), aren’t considered a risk with AZ.
*Relevant as far as we know, of course. They may discover another condition is an issue at some point. But contraceptives are commonly used, and known to be linked to other kinds of clots, so if they were an issue I’m pretty sure somebody would’ve noticed by now.
Oh hey I scrolled further down and found:
“If you have risk factors for blood clots, you can still have the AstraZeneca vaccine.”
2. More quotes:
“It is not yet clear if women are at higher risk. More women than men have been vaccinated in some countries as they are a large proportion of frontline healthcare workers and have been prioritised for vaccination.”
I went digging for more information and found the TGA’s weekly safety report from 5/8/21. From 6.8 million AZ doses, they identified 57 confirmed cases of TTS and 36 probable cases - so, 93 total, or 0.001% of doses given. Of those 93 cases, 42 were men and 51 were women. Statistically speaking, it’s not a huge difference. Of those 93, 7 died - about 7% of cases, and 0.0001% of total doses given (aka, slightly under one in a million). The report does say that severe cases appear to be more common in younger women, but statistics are screwy as hell with small numbers, y’know? It’s hard to say for sure without more data (which I hope we don’t get). I’m not sure where to find a gender breakdown of people who’ve been vaccinated, if that info is even out there, but there are a lot of women in healthcare, and it’s a known thing that men tend to be less diligent about regular GP appointments and preventative healthcare, which may well have skewed the data.
3. If you’re still reading past the blocks of data - I have had two doses of AZ. I’m a youngish cis female who’s on a hormonal contraceptive. I’m still standing. And so are the vast, vast majority of people who’ve had AZ. Our brains aren’t tooled to be good at knowingly taking risks like this - they’re great at saying “but what if I’m the one in a million???” - but we take bigger risks than this vaccine every day. It just feels different because it’s a choice we’re making (as opposed to one that feels inevitable), and one that’s had a ton of bad publicity.
4. If after reading all this you still prefer to wait for Pfizer - well, that’s your choice. I hope you’re able to get it soon! But I also hope that this has made you more comfortable, at least a little, with the AZ vaccine, because it’s going to be a part of our rollout for a long time to come.
“Average poem parodied three times a year” factoid is actually statistical error. Average poem is parodied 0 times a year. This is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams, which is not a metaphor for Plato’s cave and is parodied over 10,000 times each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
zuko rly thought the avatar was 100 years old, and he was still fully prepared to fucking kidnap him. imagine if that had actually gone down like zuko thought it would. you’re a fully-realized avatar and you’ve been hiding out for over a century and all of a sudden you get approached by this 13 year old kid who’s like “WHATS GOOD I’VE GOT NO DEPTH PERCEPTION AND I’M READY TO FIGHT GOD”
Nah see iroh would walk up to Aang and be like “listen, you ever had kids? humor the boy, I’ll make you some tea.” And Aang never changes so he’d be like “dope free tea this should be fun” and ends up passing wisdom on to Zuko whether he likes it or not, and doing shenanigans to make the trip to the fire nation take twice as long. At one port he escapes and finds another old man and says hey wanna prank a teen and this old dude is like hell yeah, what do I have to do? so Aang’s like imma give you some sick tattoos an zuko is like you know what let’s just bring them both but it turns out the other old dude is king bumi.
okay wait i went back and screenshotted some (most?) of the good ones that were like on the main plot here so you all saw the top posts with the Irish Stegosaurus well that evolved into
also kind of unrelated but because of this stupid subreddit im actually not as bad at identifying flags
anyways sorry for the long post i just really loved this whole thing
i can’t talk shit about the pirates of the caribbean films as if elizabeth swann becoming pirate king didn’t hand my entire ass to me and make me the gay i am today
these 2 looks basically defined my sexuality and i’m not afraid to admit it
things pirates of the caribbean got right:
1. will and elizabeth’s love story
2. elizabeth becoming pirate king
3. avoiding sexualizing elizabeth or the other female pirate characters in the first 3 films by allowing them to wear period-accurate pirate outfits that aren’t tailored to be revealing and impractical for ‘sex appeal’ just because they’re women
4. hans zimmer’s entire score but especially the iconic ‘he’s a pirate’ main theme
5. When the movie came out, morally-gray characters like Jack were actually not really a thing yet in pop culture, and it’s not Pirates’ fault that there are a ton of stupid shitty copycats out there.
6. I run a corseting panel at cons and literally use Elizabeth’s lace-up scene as a video clip of what historical corseting was actually like, because the only thing they got wrong in this scene is that tightlacing wouldn’t be a thing for about another 200 years (and you couldn’t tightlace with the corset style Elizabeth is wearing anyway). It’s one of the most accurate corseting scenes I’ve ever seen.
7. Will’s hat.
8. That scene with all the pirates on the gallows where that little boy starts singing Hoist the Colours? Yeah, that’s fucking legendary. The rest of AWE was kind of a trash fire, but that scene gave me goosebumps.
9. There’s this great shot in the first one where they really drive home the class differences inherent in this time period by having the governor talking about progress and civilization to Elizabeth in their carriage, and then they cut to a shot outside the carriage where a beggar gets splashed by mud from the wheel. It’s a perfect way to underline that everything is not, in fact, a nice little upper-class fairytale, and to give some weight to Will’s storyline, because he has a lot more in common with that beggar than with the governor.
10. For its time, the CGI was fucking amazing.
11. And let’s not forget the work of the makeup department, which had to actually invent new ways of putting on makeup for this movie.
12. The governor’s death scene. Holy shit.
13. They could have gone with a Jack/Will/Elizabeth love triangle, but they didn’t. There are some hints Jack is in love (or at least in lust) with Elizabeth, but he recognizes that she loves Will, and that’s that.
15. The introduction of fantasy elements to historical fiction outside of Tolkein-esque fantasy, and how it contributed to and expanded the Fantasy Media boom we’re still enjoying today.
2. They had a woman pirate right in the first film, when the tradition is to only show male ones (hell, the PotC ride at Disney had a wench auction scene until recently). And it was a female pirate of colour at that!
3. Elizabeth may not have known how to fight in the first film, but she wasn’t helpless either. Her first instinct was to fight, but she also had the brains to recognize when it was best to hide instead. Plus when given the chance she stabbed Barbosa that one time.
4. Elizabeth’s lack of fighting ability was not simply because she was a woman, it was clear it was due to her societal circumstances, since we saw other women of different socioeconomic backgrounds being able to fight (and when given the opportunity to learn Elizabeth took to fighting like a duck on water).
5. The Hoist the Colours scene where we see pirates of multiple ethnicities and their varying flags, reminding us that pirates came in all shapes and sizes and weren’t just white men.
6. One of the Pirate Lords being yet ANOTHER woman of colour. She may not have had much of a speaking role if memory serves, but even her presence is already a big deal.
7. The pirates accepting their King is a woman without much fuss.
I’m pretty sure that female Chinese pirate was a nod to a real, documented female pirate king who was Chinese and had a whole fleet of ships at her disposal but I can’t remember her name rn
My favorite part about the Bretheren Court voting wasn’t that they were against Elizabeth for becoming King as a woman and newcomer. They were pissed at Jack for being a chaotic neutral who broke the decades long tradition of an egotistical stalemate by voting for someone besides himself.
Also, the deleted scenes from Black Pearl and At World’s End that divulge more of Jack’s troubled past, like how he was branded as a pirate by the East Indian Trading Company because he stole a ship full of slaves and freed them.
OH OH OH AND ALSO : INDIAN PIRATE LORD SAMBHAJI ANGRIA
Indians almost never get any representation - it’s either poor savages or audaciously rich royalty. And even though the accent was ridiculous, I love the fact that the creators knew and showed Indian pirates (given we’ve had a historically rich history of piracy)
obi-wan is my favorite character in anything ever because the cosmic forces that control the universe literally have it in for him specifically and this is something thats flat out stated on multiple occasions and literally everyone knows including obi-wan himself but he just keeps on sadly careening from one disaster to another as everyone he cares about dies in increasingly horrible and tragic ways while wisecracking every 5 minutes like it’s going out of style and somehow managing to become the sluttiest magic monk in the galaxy to cope. icon.
