Handwritten Thank You

you know what’s always bothered me? how people talk about their babies having “random weird fussy days” and they get mad about it right but the thing about that is…

babies don’t steadily grow, they grow in spurts, which means on a growth day they’re in quite a lot of pain … but no one takes it seriously because a baby can’t communicate that they’re growing over a centimeter over night and that HURTS

like, massage your fussy baby … theyre having a hard time … theyre growing obscene amounts in a short period of time and need love and care …

people will be like “my baby crawled yesterday but now theyre all fussy and acting like they cant crawl.”

ok i dont see you trying to run a marathon every day during a growth spurt when you did it yesterday … fuckin chill. that baby is hurting.

everything about a babys growth is painful but no one talks about it??? why?! respect your baby and understand what amazing feats theyre accomplishing every day. geez. !!!!

doctors literally have to tell people “no you cant spoil your infant by holding them too much and helping them feel better when they cry” and tbh that alone is disgusting that people have so little regard for their babies they think providing adequate care to them is the same as “spoiling” them and will use their periods of growth and pain as examples of a spoiled baby. 😡

like did yall know youre not even supposed to wait for a newborn to cry before feeding them?? youre supposed to feed them before they cry because crying is actually hard on their stomachs and makes things worse!!! but people would apparently rather be annoyed at their child before feeding them????

cripples-r-us

Wow, as someone thats suffered from chronic pain my whole life this hits close to home.

Growing up I heard endless stories about how I was a fussy baby and was always colicy, and guess what I ended up having?? autoimmune fucking arthritis!! which Ive been suffering from since I was born! My earliest memories involve being in pain but not knowing it wasnt normal. In my memories of preschool and kindergarten I was in terrible pain. I have also learned as an adult that Im very allergic to lactose and gluten, and i cant eat eggs and meat comfortably either. so id guess my stomach was constantly hurting as a baby as well.

But hearing my mom tell it, its like I was intent on ruining everyones good time, there was one story about some family getting together on a boat one day but it was ruined by me fussing and crying. My mom tells this story laughing, saying “you made sure no one had a good time that day!” But first of all babies dont have that sort of complex emotional awareness TO ruin everyone’s day, and even if I had its the last thing I would have wanted. I also should have been diagnosed MUCH earlier than I was, but none of the adults around me were paying any attention till I hit high school and my flares started really becoming debilitating (getting your period and starting puberty often sets off autoimmune diseases like RA to become much worse).

And I have spent a lot of my adult life being pretty angry that no one stopped to think perhaps somethings wrong and they should maybe let me rest extra or anything other than being mad at a baby “ruining” their day.

uhg this is exactly what i mean people dont take pain seriously in others. im sorry this happened 😞

cripples-r-us

I honestly really appreciate you for bringing this up, its not often talked about.

SAME

when christian artists change the line in hallelujah from “maybe there’s a God above” to “I know that there’s a God above” >:c

covington-shenanigans

#idk why i’m so unreasonably angry#maybe cuz it’s my fav line

it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired

THAT IS EXACTLY WHY

hachama

I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah I did my best, it wasn’t much I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you And even though It all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

um woah

cutecreative

I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??

fromchaostocosmos

In Yiddish

In Hebrew

fromchaostocosmos

In Ladino

stoneandbloodandwater

Yeah, I wonder why the verses that reference specific Jewish mystical and chassidic concepts that aren’t readily understood by American “I love Jews, you know, Jesus was Jewish!” Christians never get any airtime. Funny that.

You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

These are specifically about Chassidic Jewish theories of the holy language, how each letter and combination of letters in Hebrew contains the essence of the divine spark and if used correctly, can unlock or uncover the divine spark in the mundane material word. And of course, there are secret names of God which, when spoken by any ordinary human would kill them, but if you are worthy and holy and righteous can be used to perform miracles or even to behold the glory of God face-to-face. The words themselves have power. Orthodox Jews often won’t even pronounce the word “hallelujah” in it’s entirety in conversation, because the “yah” sound at the end is a True Name of God (there are hundreds, supposedly) and thus too holy to say outside of prayer.

None of this is to mention how David’s sin in sleeping with Batshevah (the subject of much of the song, with a brief deviation to Shimshon and Delilah) is considered the turning point in the Tanach that ultimately dooms the Davidic line at the cosmological level and thus dooms Jewish sovereignty and independence altogether. From a Christian perspective this led to Jesus, the King of Kings, and that’s all very well and good for them, but for the Jews, the Davidic line never returned and is the central tragedy of the total arc of the Torah. Like, our Bible doesn’t have a happy ending? And that’s what this song is about? There’s no Grace - you just have to sit with the sin and its consequence.

Of course, Cohen is referencing all of this ironically, and personalizing these very high-level religious concepts. Like the point of this song is that Cohen, the songwriter, is identifying with David, the psalmist, and identifying his own sins with David’s. The ache that you hear in this song is that the two thousand year exile that resulted from one wrong night of passion and Cohen feels that the pain he has caused to his lover is of equally monumental infamy. Basically, in a certain light, the whole of Psalms is a vain effort for David to atone for his sin and I think Cohen was writing this song in wonderment that David could eternally praise the God who would not forgive him and would force him and his people into exile. But he ultimately gets how you have to surrender to the inexorable force of God in the face of your own inadequacies and how to surrender is to worship and to worship is to praise - hence, Hallelujah. You can either do the right thing and worship God from the start, or you can fuck up, be punished, and thus be forced to beg for His forgiveness. It’s the terrible inevitability of praise that’s driving him mad.

Like honestly, I identify with this song so strongly as an off-the-derech Jew, I sometimes wonder what Christians can possibly hear in this song, as it speaks so specifically to the sadomasochistic relationship that a lapsed Jew has with their God. It’s such a different song from a Christian theological perspective it’s almost unrecognizable, man. This song continues to be a wonder of postmodern Jewish theology and sexuality from start to finish. Don’t let anyone give you any “Judeo-Christian” narishkeit. This is a Jewish song.

(Sorry about the wild tangent it’s just 2AM and I love this song so dang much, you guys.)

poetry-protest-pornography

holy shit. woah.

dduane

This.

dispatchrabbi

That last bit from @stoneandbloodandwater, that’s a great articulation of the well of feeling, memory, storytelling, and culture packed into one of the most Jewish songs ever to get real famous. The song is both surrender and defiance, and that those are actually a single path together, not two opposite choices.

jewishnursey

wetwareproblem

A small addition: This song is such a deeply resonant Jewish touchstone that every synagogue I have ever attended uses its melody in services from time to time.

It is so important, so powerful, so spiritually resonant that we use it in prayer.

prismatic-bell

If memory serves me, the cover we most often hear came about specifically because Jeff Buckley was like “man, this song is badass but I don’t know that I can do its concepts justice” and Leonard Cohen was like “you need different verses? Here, I wrote over eighty of the fuckers, pick what you want to use” and so Buckley put together verses that spoke to him as a non-Jew about sexuality and this idea of a failed relationship.

Which wouldn’t be an issue if Christians didn’t then take his adaptation (done, I emphasize again, with Cohen’s blessing) and rewrite it in ways THAT DO NOT COME FROM THE ORIGINAL VERSES.

Yes, this.

arianatheangel-girl

Wow. I never knew any of this. I just thought it was the breakup song from Shrek.

THIS IS ALL FACT AND IT ALL NEEDED SAID AND THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE WHO ADDED ON.

literaphobe

adhd bitches be like. “there’s this very tiny sound that’s extremely quiet that no one can hear but me but the fact that i can hear it means that i can no longer focus on this task” but also go “sorry i have no idea what you said because you weren’t the only sound being produced in this environment at the time and you weren’t super loud and perfectly enunciated therefore i processed nothing” i’m bitches

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

OH ME! HI!

slavicafire

a wonderful pre-plague memory which I just recalled because I used the same justification again, while talking with my dumbass right-leaning holier than thou coworkers:

was forced to talk with a horribly passive aggressive catholic family of a friend as I was helping her move out. you know the type -- not outright hostile, but always making snide remarks under the pretence of polite conversation or curiosity.

I was waiting for her and they were watching TV, and some nonsense came up about the youth's access to media which can "corrupt them". you know, help them realise other sexualities exist and all that modern horror.

"it all starts somewhere, yes" the woman said, her aunt I think, "they are born normal but then they look at certain things too much and their brains get skewed"

they all, of course, knew that my friend wasn't straight. reason for her moving out, after all. but I think that because of the fact that I wasn't saying anything and compared to my friend looked rather... traditional, they assumed I must be, you know, "normal".

"when we were kids, we spent time outside or in a church, and everyone was normal. but I do guess it has to start somewhere, especially with all that internet"

a side eye look at me, of course, to see if I agree. and I just sighed, like old people do, and replied:

"it all does start somewhere. I remember what turned me gay."

a silence, nervous sound of stirring well-stirred cold tea. but, well, point to them, I still did agree with their idea, no? on the wrong side of the barricade but I still did agree that I was turned gay by something. probably some filthy perverted movie on late night TV.

they wait. they really did wait for me to go on.

so I just sighed again, heartbroken over the fact that I was turned gay against my will. a girl from a good home!

and I explained that my unholy condition was born out of one thing and one thing only: long hours of deep contemplation of the unbelievably beautiful -- and numerous -- statues of the Virgin Mary in our local church.

oh how quiet it got. how peaceful.

they changed the channel immediately and became wildly invested in whatever was happening on the screen. the well-stirred tea won another extra stir.

and then: "god bless!" we cheerfully bid them farewell.

I use it each and every time this subject pops up now. makes for great conversation or very pleasant silence.

veeaziel

every day i am percieved™️

There is a reason for this though!

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply.

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail. The fact that you find joy in the process of reading (or listening!) to stories–that is what matters.

attackofjak

I feel understood 🥰

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

a bunch of people have reblogged this with the default “i feel called out” reaction….and i know when we say that we mean it tongue-in-cheek….but this comment sorta blew my mind & shifted my perspective up and to the left a little thank you♥

zadabug98

The Serotonin is stored in the Ao3

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

The Serotonin is stored in the Ao3

npr

Back in the 1960s, the U.S. started vaccinating kids for measles. As expected, children stopped getting measles.

But something else happened.

Childhood deaths from all infectious diseases plummeted. Even deaths from diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea were cut by half.

“So it’s really been a mystery — why do children stop dying at such high rates from all these different infections following introduction of the measles vaccine,” says Michael Mina, a postdoc in biology at Princeton University and a medical student at Emory University.

Scientists Crack A 50-Year-Old Mystery About The Measles Vaccine Photo credit: Photofusion/UIG via Getty Images

jessicalprice

Using computer models, they found that the number of measles cases in these countries predicted the number of deaths from other infections two to three years later.

“We found measles predisposes children to all other infectious diseases for up to a few years,” Mina says.

And the virus seems to do it in a sneaky way.

Like many viruses, measles is known to suppress the immune system for a few weeks after an infection. But previous studies in monkeys have suggested that measles takes this suppression to a whole new level: It erases immune protection to other diseases, Mina says.

VACCINATE. YOUR. DAMN. KIDS.

#science #vaccine

lilacbreastedroller

wild how like PCOS, endometriosis, vaginismus & hell, even frequent yeast infections are “mysterious” with no well known cause and little to no decent treatment, but we have tons of supposedly well researched body fat removal methods, about 20 different kinds of breast implants, laser hair removal, and 100 different dermatologist recommended anti aging creams. we sure had the money and brainpower to cure those “diseases”

scorntrooper-deactivated2024041

The majority of sufferers of autoimmune diseases are women. Guess what else we don’t fucking understand at all