18+ only || Linguistics, Cosmere, Star Trek, Captain America, social justice, the good place || She/her or they/them (English), sie/ihr (Deutsch), elle/la (Français)
Thinking about a med student who was killed yesterday by russian bomb in Kharkiv with her graduation robe and cap lying next to her. She was supposed to have a graduation ceremony today.
Her friend, Nani Adaobi Merian, a Nigerian graduate, also died from her injuries in the hospital. Another life destroyed by russians that will never be talked about by anyone except Ukrainians, because the whole world has normalized the fact that russians can kill as many people as they want and and has become numb to it.
reminding everyone to wear sunscreen because the sun is a deadly laser: đđ
having to spend 10 minutes slathering yourself in grease just to safely be outside in the sun for 20 minutes. because the sun is a deadly laser: đđ
âPeople should pass a test before being allowed to have kids.â âIsnât it scary how white people have this inborn capacity for evil?â âIâll never pass because males and females have different skull shapes.â âAutistic people have a stronger sense of justice than anyone else.â âI donât want AMABs in my space because theyâre dangerous.â âYou shouldnât have access to hormones if you dress like THAT.â âAnyone who does something that awful isnât human.â âSome people really shouldnât be allowed to vote.â
This is eugenics. This is phrenology. THIS IS NAZI SHIT, YOU ARE A LEFTIST BUYING INTO NAZI SHIT. YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO NAZI SHIT.
the mage keeps giving smug glances in the direction they assume a camera is in. the fighter keeps getting indignant about missing attacks because of "bad dice rolls." the rogue is doubtful that a villain is gone for good because "nobody ever stays dead in comics." the paladin attributes fortune to "good rng." none of them have even considered that "tumblr post" was an option
We have Kea, KÄkÄ, KÄkÄpĆ, and KÄkÄriki (of which there are 3 species).
KÄkÄ are more olive brown than green but are really neat and beautiful birds and are growing in numbers thanks to conservation efforts.
Kea are mostly green with red underwings and b will pickpocket you, but then again so will weka. The bit about them stopping traffic is absolutely true - I have a friend who has witnessed this.
KÄkÄpĆ are, in the words of my ecology professor, âreally bad at being parrotsâ. They suck, but endearingly so. They are so bad at being alive and climbing things and reproducing but you cannot help but love them. Again, they are green, but in a shambling moss pile sort of way.
KÄkÄriki are much smaller and are kept as pets internationally. The three kinds are the red crowned, the yellow crowned and the orange fronted. Of these, the latter is the rarest (currently critically endangered).
There are also several other species endemic to various outlying islands. We have, in total, nine surviving endemic parrot species and several subspecies of those.
If you see ANY of these at all, regardless of whether or not they pickpocket you, all of them are are very cool and very worthy of respect.
[image description: 11 photos of various cats trying their hardest to steal a bite of human foods, while their humans hold them back by grabbing their heads, causing them to have funny stretched faces and bug eyes.]
Heh, sheâs speaking Portuguese! Hereâs what sheâs saying:
*baby voice* â⊠and if you have any questions, just ask me! And now⊠yeah. And now you draw the roots. You draw them all twisted up! Got it? A flower? Now draw it. Did you get it, Luis Roberto? Did you get it, Jurandir? Look. Did you get it? Thatâs how you draw a flower.â
Luis Roberto and Jurandir are people names (Jurandir is especially a name associated with older men) so itâs extra funny that the cats are named that, heh.
@caesarsaladinn I had a whole discussion with a history major who was extremely confident that smallpox is a âcommon childhood illnessâ with a very low death rate. Therefore, she believed that historical smallpox outbreaks were either massively exaggerated or used as a cover-up for something else (since âsmallpox isnât that bad.â) I eventually asked if she was possibly confusing smallpox with chickenpox, at which point she said, âarenât they the same thing?â
One of the less deadly variants of smallpox was called cowpox, and the fact that dairy maids who contracted it tended to avoid the worst affects of smallpox is part of the development of vaccination
Cowpox is actually a separate (but very similar!) virus!
There's a lot of confusion about different "poxes" in this post (which wasn't my intention, and now I feel bad), so here's a general overview (also, obligatory apology for messiness, this was written at like 1 AM):
Smallpox:
Smallpox, caused by variola virus, was a massive problem historically. It existed in the Western hemisphere for thousands of years (genetic evidence of smallpox has been found in Egyptian mummies from â1500 BCE, but it was probably around long before then), and it was introduced to the New World during the Columbian exchange, which had devastating consequences for indigenous populations (which were already suffering from colonialist violence, which made epidemics much worse than they already would've been). Historically, smallpox had a case fatality rate between 30-50%, and survivors were often left disfigured or permanently disabled (you've probably seen pictures of smallpox scars, but smallpox can also cause blindness and other complications). Importantly, smallpox only affects humansâit has no animal hostsâwhich is why it's one of the few infectious diseases to have been completely eradicated. As of May 8, 1980, it officially no longer exists outside of certain designated American and Russian laboratories. (There are, however, concerns that it could be used as a bioweapon, which is why the government still stockpiles smallpox vaccines and antivirals. I wrote my bioethics term paper on this exact issue, and incidentally, it's one of the major reasons why I believe that STEM majors should take ethics courses!)
There were two strains of variola virus: variola major and variola minor. Variola major was much more dangerous, with a much higher mortality rate; variola minor typically didn't cause severe disease. Fortunately, infection with one strain conferred immunity against the other. Both strains are now eradicated. (People sometimes confuse variola minor with other viruses like cowpox and horsepox, but they're different things.)
There were four clinical forms of smallpox: ordinary (classic smallpox, associated with the rash you usually see in pictures), modified (less severe, often occurred in vaccinated people who got infected anyway), malignant (caused a flat rash instead of the usual pustules, associated with immune dysfunction, almost always fatal), and hemorrhagic (caused severe bleeding, and also near-universally fatal.) All of the non-ordinary forms could be difficult to diagnose because they looked so different from typical smallpox. The less serious "modified" form was often confused with chickenpox, and the hemorrhagic form was sometimes assumed to be a completely different disease. Occasionally, historical sources will refer to hemorrhagic smallpox as "black pox," with or without an understanding that it's caused by the same virus as ordinary smallpox.
Other relevant viruses:
Cowpox, caused by cowpox virus (an orthopoxvirus similar to smallpox) causes mild disease in cows, humans, and several other animals. Infection with cowpox virus confers immunity to variolaâEdward Jenner noticed this relationship and used material from cowpox lesions to inoculate people against smallpox.
Vaccinia virus, another orthopoxvirus, is the source of the modern smallpox vaccine. It's closely related to both cowpox and horsepox (weirdly, it's actually closer to horsepox), but it's distinct enough to be its own species. Infection usually causes mild symptoms, and, of course, confers immunity to smallpox.
Chickenpox is an entirely different thing. It's caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is a herpesvirus, not a poxvirus at all! Infection with varicella-zoster does not confer immunity to smallpox or any other poxvirusâchickenpox is from a totally different family.
So why are the names so weird and confusing? Why is everything about all of this so weird and confusing?
There are multiple reasons for this, so bear with me.
Historically, a "pox" was any disease that caused a bumpy rash of pustles/blisters. Chickenpox, smallpox, and the other "poxes" all cause superficially similar rashesâthus the similar names. (Even though we know now that chickenpox comes from a completely different family, this wouldn't have been apparent before the dawn of modern medicine.)
Smallpox was given that name to differentiate it from syphilis, which was known as the "great pox" when it first appeared in Europe. (Fun[?] microbiology fact: There are debates about the origins of syphilis, but the most common theory holds that it originated in the New World, and Christopher Columbus brought it back to Spain. In that way, it's kind of the inverse of smallpox.) Historically, smallpox was also known by a variety of other names in different European, Asian, and African cultures. Again, this gets murky, because historical physicians sometimes struggled to distinguish between similar-looking-but-different diseases.
Other poxviruses are often named after the animals in which they were first identified. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, though, and it can sometimes be misleading (for example, monkeypox virus was first discovered in laboratory monkeys, but it more often affects rodents and other small mammals. The disease formerly known as "monkeypox" was recently renamed "mpox" because the name wasn't accurate.) Also, some poxviruses aren't named after animals at all! It's a weird and inconsistent system (but a lot of virus names are kinda weird and inconsistent).
Related to the above: We don't even know where the name "chickenpox" comes from. I mean, we know it was called a "pox" because it causes a pox-y rash, but we don't know where the "chicken" part originated. There are multiple theories about this, none of which are definitive. The disease itself has nothing to do with chickens.
Basically, a lot of the weirdness is a result of historical naming practicesâpeople identified and named these diseases before modern virology existed, and those names stuck, so now we have similar names for superficially-similar-but-ultimately-different viruses, and names whose origins have been completely lost to time. Later, virologists muddied the waters further by naming newly-discovered poxviruses after the animals in which they were first seen, even when these animals aren't natural hosts or reservoirs of those viruses. It's a mess! And, again, all of this is complicated by the fact that some of these diseases were very hard to diagnose (or distinguish from one another) before modern medicine existed. Now, we can sequence viral DNA and figure out what's actually going onâwhich viruses caused which symptoms, whether those viruses were closely related, and whether being infected with one disease conferred immunity to anotherâbut historical doctors and scientists didn't have those tools, so they were doing they best they could with very limited information, and that led to a lot of weirdness in terms of how these viruses were named and classified. Our current system inherited some of that weirdness, so here we are.
TL;DR: Poxvirus names are messy. Smallpox is caused by variola virus, which has two strains: variola major (the more severe one) and variola minor (less severe). Cowpox and vaccinia are different viruses in the same family, and being infected with one of them confers immunity to smallpox. Chickenpox isn't a poxvirus at all, but a herpesvirusâit just happens to cause a pockmark-y rash that looks superficially similar to smallpox pustules (and mild forms of smallpox were historically confused with chickenpox).
(P.S. none of this is super relevant to the average person, so don't feel bad if you didn't know any of it. Unless you are a history major inventing new conspiracies about smallpox, in which case you definitely should feel bad.)
Sources & further reading under the cut!
Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination
The History of Smallpox (CDC)
The Triumph of Science: The Incredible Story of Smallpox Eradication
Scientific Background on Smallpox and Smallpox Vaccination (from Scientific and Policy Considerations in Developing Smallpox Vaccination Options: A Workshop Report) <- this article is like 20 years old, but it has some interesting information about the clinical forms of smallpox and how difficult they would be to diagnose accurately
Phasing out monkeypox: mpox is the new name for an old disease <- discusses the renaming of monkeypox to mpox, also mentions issues with other poxvirus names and virus names in general
Poxes great and small: The stories behind their names
I can't believe this is how I'm finding out that I got a scam forklift cert.
I took the cargo ops class at school but my teacher explained that it doesn't give a certification and I'd only be okay for ship's crane and the school forklifts. she said I could take an online exam and get my cert. I paid 60 bucks.
I'm googling and I'm seeing a lot of resources saying that the online programs cover the classroom part of the exam but not the in person practical aspect.
the back of the card even had fancy numbers on it. I couldn't have known that this isn't the one. this website sounded more official than certifyme.net, and there wasn't one with a .gov address.
so, I emailed OSHA, and they said that so long as I live and work in California, there's no such thing as forklift certification. I have to be told how to do it every time I get the job.
Update: I took a certification class in shipboard Material Handling Equipment at my federal job. *now* I'm forklift certified, but only on ships and piers and only for this company, but also rated to forklift explosives and hazardous materials. Also I'm a woman now.
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