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[shadowoflightt]

Tonight in The Odyssey: Teller gets Dr Mann to help fight his war. Got lost returning while haunted by MJ, and this time has to rescue himself. Dr Brand holds down the crown being creeped on by a sparkling vampire. SpiderMan secretly goes in search of news of Dr Mann from The Punisher.

[aqueerkettleofish]

For those who have missed it, a tourist in Hawaii decided it would be fun to chuck a rock (a BIG rock) at a monk seal. He missed, but he was captured on video, and when told it was illegal to interfere with them, said "I'm rich, I can pay the fine."

Is the best part that he got doxxed? No.

Is the best part that he got tracked down by a local and beaten? No.

Arrested on state at federal charges, looking at up to 5 years and 50K? Nope.

The best part is the local city council's reaction.

And the best part of that is the look on the attorney's face.

[ralfmaximus]

More of this please, everywhere.

After the incident, another video went viral showing what appeared to be that man getting a beating. The Maui Police Department said they had no record of any reports of disorderly conduct or assault related to the monk seal incident.

Even the local police are being cool about this.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.

[badwificonnection]

Blood is what now?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

It’s imitation seawater what part is confusing

[badwificonnection]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#are you telling me#humans are just sentient aquariums? 

Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.

Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.

[badwificonnection]

Thank you that’s…very disturbing

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

It’s not my fault you’re human.

[apatheticshipwreck]

Ok but “It’s not my fault you’re human.” Is the best comeback ever.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

You can use it against anyone except children that you biologically helped to create.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#/blood is imitation seawater/ is the part that’s confusing 

Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”

“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”

“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”

At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)

You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.

And that’s what a human is!

[shadowoflightt]

Oh great.

So we were all salty to begin with.

[tnerdbean]

Know what I’m salty about?

In all my art classes, I was never taught HOW to use the various tools of art.

Like yes, form, and shape and space and color theory and figure drawing is important, but so is KNOWING what different tools do.

I’m 29 and I JUST learned this past month that India Ink is fucking waterproof when it dries. Why is this important? Because I can line something in India Ink and then go over it with watercolors. And that has CHANGED the ENTIRE way I art and the ease I can create with.

tldr: Art Teachers: teach your students what different tools do. PLEASE.

[spookyscaryscouticus]

WAIT INDIA INK JS WATERPROOF ONCE IT DRIES????? THE ENTIRE REASON IVE AVOIDED MARKERS MY ENTIRE LIFE IS BECAUSE JNK BLEEDS AND YOURE TELLING ME INDIA INK IS

F U C K I N G W A T E R P R O O F

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

yall calligraphers out there this is extremely fuckin important if u wanna get into illumination shenanigans because i swear to you there will b discoveries like these^

heres some of mine, pls take with a grain of salt im a total gotdamn amateur:

a lot of the time, the ability for colored ink to bleed will vary wildly WITHIN A SINGLE BRAND OF COLORED INKS. my cobalts bleed like fucking CRAZY compared to my reds, which, when u reference manuscripts that tend to put white ink ON TOP of either red or blue… you see where shit gets real and real annoying. 

u can buy an aeresol, fully transparent workable sealant for like 5-10 dollars at your local art store. when i realize a piece ive been working on needs a color on TOP of a bleed happy ink, i give it a layer of this stuff. trouble is it CAN warp the paper so its important as soon as it dries to use heavy things (paperweights, books) to counteract the paper curling.

ink solvent, like koh i noor’s rapido-eeze, is only compatible with SOME inks, but will work on most acrylics. If you happen to be working with sturdy vellum that you have pre-sealed, it can be possible to literally use ink solvent to wipe away your calligraphy mistake like a goddamn bounty commercial

[sarahlumweejee]

Shit I Learned Working At Dick Blick: 

WD40, found at your local hardware store, will remove Sharpie marker from almost any hard surface. 

 Acrylic inks will show brush strokes in large areas but are waterproof and quick-drying. 

 Acrylic gouache is vivid, fluid, dried matte, is UTTERLY opaque on black paper, handles exactly like watercolor, and is waterproof. 

Putting an oil painting in the sun will turn the yellowed portions back to their original white and wont hurt the painting. 

 Cheap acrylic paintings will bleach out if left in the sun - get UV protectant spray or varnish. Nicer acrylic paints are less prone to sun bleaching, but they still do. Plan accordingly. Oil paints are much less prone to this. 

Solvent-based markers blend together MUSH MORE SMOOTHLY than alcohol-based markers. 

There is an acrylic paint medium for literally every effect you can conceivably think of (fabric paint medium, gloss medium, fluid medium, sand medium, fast-dying/slow-drying medium, etc.). 

 If you’re going to buy student-grade paint to save cash, buy earth-tones (burnt sienna, ochre, etc.); they are made with cheap pigments already, and you wont tell a difference. You WILL tell a difference between student-grade and artist-grade bright colors (all yellows, blues, and reds). 

If you’re working with markers but aren’t using marker paper, you need to switch. Markers don’t blend on printer paper, they just layer (even expensive markers). 

If you want a glass palette for paint mixing but don’t want to shell out the cash, buy a giant picture frame at Goodwill, take the glass out, and electrical tape it to a piece of foam board the same size for stability. 

 Hog bristle brushes are for oil paint, sable brushes are for watercolor, and synthetic brushes are for acrylic and oil (but not watercolor because synthetic bristles can’t absorb water). 

 If you’re going to splurge on any aspect of your creation, splurge on the paper. Get the good stuff - crappy markers/paint/pencils look good on good paper, but not the other way around.  (There is more, but these are the big ticket items)

[stoneybaloneyskeletony]

Some more, also from working at Dick Blick:

- Palette knives are for mixing paint and TRUST ME you want to learn how to use them. When you mix with your brush you loose paint and it’s hard in your brushes.

- DO NOT FIX YOUR ARTWORK WITH HAIRSPRAY. If you’re proud of your work and want to keep it, buy the actual spray fix. Hairspray is not archival in the slightest and will damage your work.

- On top of that, be careful how you store your work. Newsprint is handy and cheap, but also not acid-free and it will yellow your paper. Foamboard? Matboard? Also not always acid-free (but you can get them acid-free).

- There is no food-safe paint. Period. There are lots of ways you can decorate pottery that aren’t glazes, but only glazes are food safe (and even some of those aren’t).

- Also not food safe: Polymer clay (sculpey), air dry clay, oil-based clay, ceramics that have not been glaze fired, oil pastels, sharpie, glues of any kind, or mod podge (even the ‘dishwasher safe’ kind).

- Don’t even get me started on mod podge. It’s not consistent. It’s not archival. It’s not a sealant, it’s a glue (setting aside some of the weird hyper-specific ones they make that I’ve literally never seen in real life).

- If your glue isn’t archival or at least acid-free, don’t use it in your artwork.

- There are so many different kinds of paper out there, just go try them. But also make sure you know if it’s acid-free or not (it probably is).

- Marker paper is usually 15 to 20 lbs. News print is usually 30 to 35 lbs. Tracing paper is usually 25 lbs. Rice paper can range from 20 to 50 lbs. Printer paper is 20 lbs. Vellum paper is usually 48 to 55 lbs. Sketchbook paper is usually 50 to 60 lbs. Drawing paper is usually 70 to 80 lbs. Cardstock can range from 50 to 110 lbs. Charcoal paper is usually 50 to 65 lbs. Pastel paper can range from 70 lbs to board. Bristol paper can range from 50 lbs to board. Mixed media paper can range from 90 to 140 lbs. Printmaking paper can range from lbs 90 to 300 lbs. Watercolor paper can range from 90 to 500 lbs.

- The heavier and rougher the paper is, the more it will absorb. If you’re using a paper too smooth for your medium it will take forever to dry and may smudge. If you’re using a paper too light for your medium, it will warp and curl.

- If you’re working heavily with water, you need to stretch your paper (aka seal down your edges of the paper to a hard, water resistant surface). If you don’t like doing that because it’s a hassle, buy a watercolor block instead of a pad/individual peices.

- If you’re working on a thicker paper, and make a mistake that your can’t erase or cover- you can scrape and/or cut it out! With a really sharp exacto knife, you can very CAREFULLY remove the top layer of paper fibers on most paper.

- DO NOT USE ACRYLIC AS BODY PAINT. It’s plastic.

- If you paint with oil, buy a silicoil jar. It’s the best $10 you’ve ever spent.

- Acrylic paint is basically water-based plastic. It will basically fuse with anything plastic (like a plastic palette), and will not stick to anything oil-based.

- Acrylic paint and house paint are not the same thing and you cannot mix them together. Acrylic paint is made from a water-based acrylic polymer, and house paint is almost always latex and can come both water-soluable and not.

[auressea]

@pamelab has this amazing reference crossed your dash yet?

[dduane]

Useful info for fellow art students. :)

[prguitarman]

[prguitarman]

Happy Anniversary. This is the original post. On this day in 2011 I was doing a charity drive for the natural disasters in Tōhoku and drew this. A few hours later I turned it into a gif and posted it here.

Here’s the original doodle before I drew it into a GIF

[prguitarman]

Happy 14th birthday Nyan Cat! The original post originated here on Tumblr

[prguitarman]

A lot has changed these past 15 years but it’s delightful to see this little cat continuing to zip past every corner of the internet. Happy 15th birthday to Nyan Cat!

Thank you to everybody who has kept it going all this time. Drew a special cake version today to celebrate 🎂✨

[starryeyed-stars]

Hey, when you talk to children, you know you can explain things to them right? thats theyre capable of comprehension? In fact you should be explaining things so they understand comprehension better?

Earlier my little sister slammed her closet and room door-- not out of ange as far as im aware, she just pushed them too hard. I yelled at her to stop it.

she said she would, but it was clear from her tone she just said so out of obligation and was annoyed. i tell her to stop making loud noises a lot, so she probably assumed this was just another example of that.

realizing this, i explained her the reason: our rooms are right next to each other. When she slams doors, the wall shakes. When the wall shakes, my mirror shakes, and if it shakes too hard it can fall and break

after the explanation, she apologized genuinely and actually understood the reason instead of just thinking im nagging her or just want quiet. the fact that she knows the reason means shes more likely to remember, and she can apply the knowledge in different ways: "even if my older sibling isnt home, their mirror could still break, so i still shouldnt slam the door." She knows im not just trying to annoy her or assert dominance over her like a lot of rules and demands we give to children do- i just dont want my mirror to break. It helps her understand cause and effect.

Would this result be the same if i had just screamed at her or spanked her? Or did it make more sense to just explain? After all, it was a simple mistake. I could see my parents doing the same thing-- when you close a door, youre not usually thinking about the walls in the other room.

Children are humans, humans use logic. Use logic with children. Its simple.

[shadowoflightt]

I never understood why most people hardly explain.

For some, they don’t understand not everybody automatically gets their reasons/perspectives, but for the rest?

Explaining could prevent so much misunderstanding.

But then again, as an explainer, I realised a lot of people don’t listen, and don’t care.

So half the time I’m like agh whatever. Lol. Back to square one.

[aurin-avenir]

“Creative people have trouble recognising their skills as skills, because eventually they feel like second nature. This stuff really is valuable, if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t be stealing it. Creativity doesn’t feel special or unique until you realise people have to plagiarise it.”

— Hbomberguy on plagiarism.

[helenvaughans]

[itsmistybitch-deactivated202605]

These posts are sisters

[infectiouspiss]

violence and death and dying and blood and guts and gore and violence and viscera and fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you

[thelaughingserpent]

The courage to slay a god.

[beemovieerotica]

the cognitive dissonance from people who want the products of modern medicine but get weird about animal research. like im sorry but this is necessary for the survival of the society we currently live in. and the scientists who work on these things are not evil cackling psychopaths. anyone you talk to in animal research has incredibly complex feelings about their work and incredibly complex relationships to the animals in their care. there are regulations and oversight and penalties in place to make the work as humane as possible and scientists are overwhelmingly the ones enforcing and advocating for better care.

[beemovieerotica]

@velvetdemon I'm doing a full reply because I want to give this question the time and space it deserves, and I really do appreciate your curiosity about this.

The short answer: It is deeply unethical. There are nowhere near enough willing patients in the world to be able to do this, and it would be criminal to put them through this.

The long answer: The one side of the equation you're focusing on is: how much of a drug is too much, to the point where it will cause negative side effects or even death? And this is crucial to know. But it's not just a matter of finding out the lethal dosage of a heart cholesterol medication, you need to know that it can actually lower the cholesterol of any living thing. There is no way to know this without giving it first to...a living thing.

But beyond this, I need to emphasize: The goal of a drug trial is to effectively cure people who are already suffering from disease, who are living on limited time.

Drug trials don't just happen on any member of the public, they need to happen specifically on people affected by the disease you're trying to treat. There is at any time a very limited and very marginalized population of the world affected by early onset, familial Parkinson's disease. Because you cannot ethically induce disease in a human being, you are working with, speaking with, and helping patients and their families who are hopeful and desperate for a cure.

If you were to jump straight to human trials from petri dishes, not knowing absolutely anything about how the drug functions in a living, breathing animal body, it would look like this:

We didn't know that minute quantities of the drug interact lethally with x, y, z medication that people are commonly also taking. X number of patients have died as a result.

We didn't know that the drug is fatal to people with [common variant] in their genetics. X more patients have died.

We didn't know the drug exacerbates x, y, z chronic illnesses. X number of people have acquired permanent, lifelong disabilities.

We didn't know the best way to deliver the drug, so we tried multiple ways: the people who received it intravenously are now suffering from a painful, costly, and debilitating condition that did not happen with the ingested form.

I could go on, and on, and on.

The vast majority of these problems can be nearly or almost entirely averted by testing other animals first.

These are all people who possibly could have waited for the normal progression from animal testing to human testing and thus received better outcomes. Some people will pass away in the time it takes to get to that point, and that's heartbreaking, and we all wish science could be faster.

But the cost of expediting science could mean a life of profoundly greater suffering or an even shorter life than the one where no intervention happens at all. And at that point, you have completely exhausted your trust, your goodwill, and your patients' hope, after you've failed to do anything or even worsened the lives of people who are already deeply suffering.

[manslaughter]

hi, i’m an animal research professional. making sure laboratory animals stay alive, healthy, and enriched has been my full-time job for several years now.

animal research is not the mad scientist wild west that PETA wants you to think it is. there are extremely strict federal laws in place to protect the well being of these animals. animal welfare organizations like AAALAC ensure that lab animals are treated with dignity & respect and are given enough specialized care & enrichment to be happy and content in captivity, just like AZA accreditation with zoos.

not a single animal from a zebrafish to a mouse to a dog to a macaque goes unaccounted for. if an animal gets moved to a new cage, paired for breeding, has a procedure performed on it, gives birth, gets sick or injured, dies, etc. it is legally required that this information is recorded and kept on file for the US federal government to access. failing to record & retain this information is very much punishable by US federal law.

let me tell you - if you abuse or kill an animal, even a mouse - you are almost certainly getting both fired & blacklisted from the industry. if you abuse or kill a more ‘advanced’ animal, such as a dog or monkey, you will likely face criminal charges. killing a monkey is as serious and disastrous as a nuclear meltdown. you are expected to reasonably explain every illness, injury, or death of an animal under your care. you must record all of this information. animals that are clearly suffering with low QOL are required to be euthanized according to AVMA guidelines.

research animals are highly expensive. yes, even the "lesser" animals like mice. the cheapest mice will run you a few hundred $ per individual, with some of the most expensive mice i've cared for being $25,000 per individual. in research we have the "three Rs" - reduction (reduce amount of necessary animals to a minimum), refinement (refine processes to ensure research is accurate and animals feel no pain or distress), and replacement (replace animals with non-living research models as they become available). i can assure you no proper research team is wasting animals (*do not* say "b-b-but elon musk--" his research team is actively being investigated for animal abuse by the government).

research methods that do not require live animals are currently being looked into & efforts spearheaded by - you guessed it - the animal research industry itself (notice how the animal rights people are strangely silent & unhelpful when it comes to this?) but current technology is rudimentary and does not compare to live animal models.

some research animal fun facts (US edition):

all species of animals are only allowed to have one single major surgery performed on them in their entire lifetime.

institutions with nonhuman primates must have a behavior program in place (run by knowledgeable primate specialists) to ensure that they are happy and receiving enough daily enrichment and social interaction.

institutions with dogs are required to have physical exercise programs in place. this means every individual dog gets a substantial amount of leashed AND free-roaming exercise daily, including playgroups with other dogs.

a majority of nonhuman primates get to retire to sanctuaries like peaceable primate sanctuary, and almost all dogs get retired and adopted out by organizations like homes for animal heroes. some institutions will also adopt out unneeded young rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, etc.

some strains of mice glow neon green (or orange or blue) under UV light. this is not harmful to them and is commonly seen in cancer research.

so yes, you can rest knowing that laboratory animals are treated with the utmost respect by their caretakers. and you can stop this awful, ignorant talk of human experimentation that will only end in the abuse of nonwhite people, LGBT people, disabled people, indigenous people, and so many others. please just take a look at this wikipedia page if you think “ethical” human experimentation can exist.

[flower-crow]

[ID: A comment by velvetdemon that reads: Couldnt we just do minute doses for humans ??? Like teeny tiny and work up from there? Otherwise are they just killing 38838383 mouses trying to find a small enough dose to not kill them. end ID]

[headspace-hotel]

thought about that quote "homosexuality exists in 1000+ species, homophobia only exists in one" but how awkward would it be if we discovered another species that was homophobic

"homosexuality exists in 1000+ species, homophobia only exists in two. what? oh, humans, and the yellow-patched cuboid pinecone wren that was recently discovered on an island off the coast of canada. they're fucking bigots"

[byjove]

I have said it before but (mostly cis) men have the situational awareness of a fucking gnat and then become irritated when women are more aware of their surroundings. A dude on TikTok made a video about basic etiquette for male hikers to follow to keep from frightening solo female hikers and it was common curtesies like “announce your presence to avoid startling a fellow hiker” and “do not follow women” and “do not ask potentially concerning questions like ‘are you alone?’” and you would have thought he asked these men to transfer $10k to a woman’s bank account right now. Asking why they should INCONVENIENCE themselves to make women safe, mocking women for being afraid of strangers on trails. Bitch, your rugged masculinity will not save you from a guy with a knife in a secluded place. No, other humans are generally not the greatest threat on a hike but you should still remain aware of them and lone women have a completely valid reason to try to avoid strangers, I’m sorry if that hurts your little feelings.

[penandinkprincess]

parenting commitment level 3000

[penandinkprincess]

apparently a requirement for working at poison control is a talent for stand-up comedy

[starsarefairylightsfornerds]

[writing-prompt-s]

Humanity didn’t invent Faster-Than-Light travel, we invented Faster-Than-Light weaponry. Now, the rest of the galaxy lives in terror of the "Slow Monkeys" who can’t leave their solar system but can snipe a star out of the sky from across the quadrant.

[crsinclair]

A couple and their child were looking over our Marvel Characters plush at my work, right? And the dad turns to his little girl and asks, “Which Marvel character do you want?”

His little girl, maybe 9, replies, “Mmm, I think I want Captain Marvel.”

Dad makes a face, and says, “How about you choose a real super hero and not a little princess?”

Me and my coworkers were about to smack down on this man when his wife makes a FACE and says, “Honey, you get Captain Marvel.” Then she turns to her husband. “Shut the fuck up, Greg.”

And that has become our new motto for dealings with mysogenists at work.

Shut the fuck up, Greg.

[timemachineyeah]

I just remembered one time in like sixth or seventh grade (we had the same teachers and class both years so hard to remember which) somehow we got into a debate of “who is better, boys or girls?” and instead of stepping in to stop it our teacher formalized it and egged us on by providing thoughtful prompts and counters to each side and by the end each group had built a barricade of desks on either side of the classroom and we were throwing balls of paper at each other and screaming about personal hygiene while our teacher just watched and enjoyed a Baby Ruth candy bar.

[timemachineyeah]

This was the same teacher that got the cops called on our school like three times and would reward us for being good by spraying our hands with rubbing alcohol and setting them on fire.

He was the best teacher I ever had.

[timemachineyeah]

STUFF MR ROBINSON DID THAT WAS VERY GOOD:

One time Mr. Robinson closed the door to the classroom furtively and asked a student near the door to keep an eye on the door’s window in case anyone from the administration was coming.

He explained the next curriculum was one he had been explicitly disallowed from, but he didn’t know how we were going to cover the next portion of our history work fairly without covering it first. He said if any of us were offended by it or felt it threatened our beliefs to be discussing it, please talk to him and he would gladly find alternative work for us to do instead. But he asked if we would be okay not broadcasting too loudly to the administration (our parents were fine) about it.

At this point we’re on the edge of our seat. Forbidden curriculum? YES PLEASE.

“All right, do I have a promise from you you won’t tell on me to the principal?”

We, of course, promised.

“Good. Then let’s talk about World Religions.”

-

(A side note here, if you ever have a not-forbidden courseload you want your students to really enthusiastically consume, I think pretending it’d forbidden will up interest levels immensely. The work was informative and we loved it, but the Secret Agent-ness of doing a SECRET ASSIGNMENTS and having SECRET PROJECTS and LOOKOUTS FOR THE FUZZ upped our investment in the material beyond description. Even if you DON’T have secret coursework, PLEASE DO THIS WITH YOUR CLASS SOMETIME. IT’S FUN.)

-

At the start of the Great Gender Debate when someone would try to say boys and girls aren’t different and they can do whatever the other does, he’d super respectively ask them if they really thought that, or if they were saying it because they thought that’s what they were supposed to say, and encouraged us being honest about how we actually felt about the difference between between boys and girls and who was better.

Then lots of super fun shouting and throwing paper at each other and making desk barricades and more yelling.

(Keep in mind, this was 1999/2000. A lot of people didn’t even have internet at home. This was a small conservative town. Being trans or nonbinary wouldn’t have even been an option we knew about.)

Then he eventually stepped back into the fray of the Great Gender Debate and made us break down our points, which he had been taking notes of, on the white board and then had us carefully and intentionally refute or discuss them one at a time. Until we had reached a real and honest consensus that actually we’d been tricked into thinking gender was anything at all. Now when we said we thought neither was better than the other and being a boy or girl didn’t mean anything about what you could or couldn’t do, we fucking meant it.

One of our male classmates started wearing nail polish the next week and we told him it looked rad.

-

One time it was a nice day out and even though we weren’t doing trig at that point he was like, “Wanna learn something cool? I’m gonna show you how to calculate how tall something is using shadows” and then we went outside and learned how to find out how tall things are by measuring their shadows and measuring the shadows of stuff we knew the length of, and then for fun we also independently worked out the world was round and how big it was.

-

One of the times the cops were called on us it was because we were having a Hot Air Balloon making contest and people thought there were UFOs or spy planes.

-

Another time we were just setting off dry ice bombs, lol.

-

They changed the milk at lunch and we hated it and Mr. Robinson may have given us ideas about civil disobedience and direct action that led to the lunch room sit-in the schoolchildren ended up staging until they would switch the milk back. At the time it felt like he was being really cool, and he was, but thinking on it he may have also been using us as props to prank the administration and also give himself an afternoon off while all the administration tried to get a hundred 11-12 year olds to leave the damn cafeteria while we chanted about milk.

-

We grew up in a town that was about 2% black. It was not uncommon for people living there to not know any black people at all.

One day Mr. Robinson told us we were going to be having a very important speaker come talk to us, and that he expected us to treat her with respect and deference. That she was one of the most important people we could be learning from, and we were honored to have her come to us. We all sat up, wondering who this important woman could be.

And he opened the door and it was one of the ladies who worked the front office, accepting our tardy slips and making us wait for the school nurse. A black woman, one of the only black people you’d find in the school.

She then sat down with us and talked to us about the racial history of our town. Explained to us what a Sundown Town was. Explained to us the racism she experienced growing up there. Explained the mistreatment of the police.

She wasn’t even that old. It struck us all. But you’re not even old. Is this still happening? Why didn’t you leave? Did anyone help you?

It was an incredibly powerful day.

When I went home to talk to my parents about it, they had no idea about any of it, even though this was the same town they had grown up in.

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Mr. Robinson would occasionally repeat this habit of special guests were not academics, just people who had lived in our town for a while, bringing in a lunch lady or a janitor, making us talk to them, learn our town’s history, learn to respect their jobs, learn manners and deference for the working class.

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One time he gave us bread, water, and ziploc bags and set us loose on the school to rub the bread on stuff, drip water on it, seal it, and watch what mold grew. The kid that got the grimiest piece of bread with the most enthusiastic mold would win.

We learned that many of the surfaces we consider the most dirty get the most regular cleaning, and so are in fact the least likely to produce mold. While many of the surfaces we eat off of and touch regularly are nasty as hell.

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Similar to the Great Gender Debate, one time he let class go wildly off course while we debated hotly for over an hour about The Lion King. I do not, for the life of me, remember the substance of this debate. I think The Little Mermaid may also have been a point of conversation? I just remember it got HEATED, and Mr. Robinson always thought these heated debates were REALLY ENTERTAINING and would quietly sit back and egg them on.

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One time he gave me detention and I cried through the whole thing thinking my parents were gonna kill me when I got home and instead when I got home my mom hugged me and told me how he’d called her and said I’d been really honest and showed moral fiber in standing up for a friend and taking the detention in the first place and she was really proud of me for being a good person or whatever and idk if he actually was impressed with my actions or if he saw that I was stressed about my parent’s reactions and wanted to mitigate that, but that was such a good move.

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IDK. I just have a hard time thinking of any teacher I ever had both as capable of chaotic dry amusement and completely upright righteous anger. He modeled for us what it was like to evaluate things based on merit rather than based on rules and expectations, and you felt that energy constantly.

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Plus like getting to set your hand on fire for good behavior is a way better reward than whatever dumb stickers or candies or whatever it is teachers usually use. “Behave and we will play with fire” is the BEST incentive.

[reasonsforhope]

Big Insurance Uses AI to Quickly Deny Claims, One Man Fights Back with AI App That Quickly Appeals

"The idea that American health insurance companies are using AI to analyze and adjudicate claims for approval or denial sounds terrifying, but one North Carolinian is using AI to fight back.

When Raleigh resident Neal Shah had a claim denied for his wife’s chemotherapy drugs, he thought it was rare, that he was the only one, that it was just bad luck.

Litigating his case on phone calls that lasted for hours changed the husband and father, and he set about creating a sophisticated app that uses artificial intelligence to compare claims denial forms against health insurance contracts, before automatically drafting an appeal letter.

“For a doctor to write this, it’s not rocket science, but it still takes hours,” Shah told ABC News 11, adding that a well-written appeal letter, sent in immediately, can sometimes get denials reversed within days or weeks, but most people either don’t know they can appeal, or don’t know on what grounds they can appeal.

In fact, according to Shah’s research, 850 million claims denials occur every year, and less than 1% are ever appealed.

That’s where Counterforce Health comes in, a startup that’s created a free-to-use app for claims denials.

It’s all the more critical a service now that health insurance companies, already armed with statewide government-protected pseudo monopolies and duopolies, are using AI to deny claims within seconds of them being filed.

“Before, you used to have a reason you would deny it, and you used to have a doctor review or a nurse review it, but once AI rolled out, they could just have AI deny it,” Shah explained.

For Counterforce Health, Shah brought onboard Riyaa Jadhav, a Jill of all trades who has helped grow and expand the undertaking through her experience in both the business world and working alongside patients at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.

Together, they’ve built Counterforce to the point where it boasts a 70% success rate in appealing claims.

Thousands have already logged on; many going on to use the service.

“Sometimes when enough people get loud, enough people put pressure, then I think all of a sudden society wakes up, so I really feel like it’s really about to click,” Shah said.

-via Good News Network, August 5, 2025

Here's the link to this organization, by the way. According to their numbers, less than 1% of denials in the US are appealed, but 75% of appeals are approved. This could do so much good.

And another source for validity:

AI is helping patients fight insurance company denials

Stephanie Nixdorf's insurance company repeatedly declined to cover a drug to treat her arthritis. That changed after she sent an appeal lett

-via NBC News, July 18, 2025