❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Keni
JVL
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Three Goblin Art
Product Placement
art blog(derogatory)
noise dept.
styofa doing anything
trying on a metaphor
@theartofmadeline
todays bird
tannertan36
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Cosmic Funnies
Kiana Khansmith
Misplaced Lens Cap
Show & Tell
★
Stranger Things
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Côte d’Ivoire
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Vietnam
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
@timberdoodle-jamboree
12 frames of animation I made using knitting! I spent a long time on this and I’m so pleased with the results, really looking forward to trying more ‘yarnimation’ in the future. Process video out now too! 🐑
“Stop motion animation doesn’t take long enough already, let’s add textile arts.”
[video description: an animation in yarn of a row of sheep all jumping over a fence in a grassy field. /end description]
On the River Table Placemats - Bird Patterns From Ruby and the Foxes ... Great For Blankets & Pillows Too! 👉 https://buff.ly/3LyYwcm
decor for @elodieunderglass and other waterfowl
Oh yes!!!
Tara Rule says her doctor in upstate New York was “determined to protect a hypothetical fetus" instead of helping her treat debilitating pai
What (and it's hard to say this strongly enough) the F.
Last September, New York resident Tara Rule posted a raw, emotional video on Tiktok saying she had been denied a medication to treat a debilitating condition called cluster headaches, because her neurologist told her she was of “childbearing age” and the medication could cause birth defects to a hypothetical fetus.
Rule said that as she sat in her neurologist’s office at Glens Falls Hospital, she told him she never planned to have kids and would have an abortion if she became pregnant; referencing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, he responded that getting the care she was seeking is “trickier now with the way things are going.” He also said she should bring her partner “in on the conversation” on her medical care. Rule asked if the issue preventing her from getting the “highly effective” medication was solely that she could become pregnant and, “If I was, like, through menopause, would [the medication] be very effective for cluster headaches?” The doctor affirmed it would. He also asked about her sex life and whether she’s “with a steady person.” Rule shared audio recordings of the appointment on TikTok at the time.
Last week, Rule filed a lawsuit against Albany Medical Health Partners charging the largest hospital system in upstate New York with discrimination over the denial of her medication and a string of incidents afterward. […] In addition to Rule’s allegations of discrimination, her suit accuses Albany Medical Health Partners of privacy violations and fraud. According to Rule, after she shared audio recordings of her interactions with the neurologist on TikTok, an employee at the hospital contacted another hospital in the area, alleging that Rule livestreamed her appointments. This led to Rule’s removal from the second hospital, Malta Medical (also under Albany Medical Health Partners), in the middle of treatment for her cluster headaches. Rule denies livestreaming. In the lawsuit, Rule alleges her nurse practitioner at Malta discharged her against her will with the help of armed security, but her insurance company was told that she voluntarily left mid-treatment, which Rule argues amounts to falsification of records. Rule also alleges that the nurse practitioner who had her removed at Malta violated her privacy rights by sending Facebook messages to Rule’s partner that include her medical details.
[…]
Rule’s case shows how the notion of fetal personhood—an ideology that regards embryos as separate people with rights at odds with the pregnant person’s—can be taken even further, said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director at Pregnancy Justice (which isn’t working on Rule’s case). “What we’re seeing is how this ideology can extend beyond pregnancy itself—the idea that if you can even become pregnant, then you can no longer make decisions about your own body or access medical care,” Sussman told Jezebel.
I had a college classmate who broke her ankle, and the Catholic hospital refused to do an X-RAY on her because of concern for a hypothetical fetus (she wasn't pregnant and had no reason to presume she was). This is nothing new. I wish I were stunned it's still happening.
let’s gooooooooooooooooooooo
Ok Horseblr listen up
It can’t be all drama and discourse so today I’m gonna talk to you about my favourite horseriding event, the Warendorf Stallion Parade in Germany. Some of you probably know that Germany is very proud of its horses, and often rightly so. And to promote their different studs, the Northrhine-Westphalian state stud farm holds this incredibly strange event where they show off different breeds and disciplines.
That’s all fun and games, right? Some old horse fans watching a few showjumpers and dressage champions canter around for an hour or two.
But this particular parade appears to have a history of just… doing stuff for shits and giggles, I guess. For example, they tend to just toss a bunch of stallions performing wildly different things into the arena at the same time, with no particular rhyme or reason to it:
Why are the draft horses on the ground now? Why is there another warmblood stud in the background lying down? Why did the long-reining guy decide to walk right through there?
The wildest thing about this is that there’s so much going on, the Grand Prix-level dressage in the background is the least interesting thing here.
The opening number is traditionally a jumping quadrille. That’s a concept within itself, but in the context of this madness you’ve forgotten about that part by the time it’s all over.
They tend to show a lot of driving variations, ranging from whatever the go-fast yellow ones (I gave up on trying to look up the names for these)…
…to the quadrigas…
…to the german version of the Budweiser Clydesdales
There’s also a part where they toss every other carriage they had left into the ring all at once. It’s a beautiful expression of utter chaos.
And let’s not forget about the in-hand driving! What’s in-hand driving you ask?
Basically, you do dressage while also long-reining a different horse. Is this the point where I have to remind you that these are all stallions?
They also toss in a quadrille of some sorts every once in a while, ranging from pretty normal stuff with four warmbloods strutting in circles to the part where they put their working students on their draft stallions and watch it all unravel
That is not a picture of the latter, the working student part mostly consists of them doing handstands on their horses. The picture just shows the normal draft quadrille.
Then there’s the hungarian post, which is the most unneccesarily dangerous thing to do if you have two horses and not enough money for a proper saddle:
They do this with both drafts and warmbloods, and while the drafts have a steady pace and seem to be relatively easy to balance, the pair of warmbloods barreling through the arena with the poor lad holding on for dear life radiate completely unleashed chaotic energy.
And no one can tell me that this is even remotely useful. Not even photographic evidence could convince me that there was a time when barreling down the road on the back of two unleashed stallions was a commonly acceptable way of getting from point A to point B.
But I have yet to tell you about my all-time favourite discipline. There’s no english word for it, afaik. I mean, why would there be? It’s basically up to half a dozen draft stallions tied together, charging at whatever gets in their way:
This is the Kaltblutkoppel (roughly translates to “leash together the drafts”). Don’t ask me on what kind of mission that poor guy in front of them is, but where he stands is probably the one place you don’t want to be.
I don’t know what this does to show off the stallions, but it’s incredibly entertaining to watch those poor handlers get dragged around by them. I think they reduced the number of horses that are tied together, as well as only showing one Kaltblutkoppel instead of tossing four teams in together. Why? Because they kept getting loose. Who would’ve thought.
What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.
I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.
Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.
Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.
To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.
The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.
Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia apart from the Chinese...which were already banned since 1880.)
From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:
First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.
Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.
And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.
There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.
My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.
In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."
Invasion ecologists are taking seriously how many of our commonly-used terms reinforce xenophobia.
- Time to retire “alien” from the invasion ecology lexicon
- The Language of Invasion Ecology
- Aliens & Invaders & Exotics, Oh My: The Language of Invasive Biology
I had a discussion with someone I work with about the term "pioneer species" and the rather inaccurate and questionable colonialism-tied implications.
I prefer "disaster species," but "pioneer species" is still the typically used term.
My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.
Okay wait. Wasn’t there that post about the word “pokemon” being used in the early 20th century or something? About how it meant someone who was really slow or something?
Either I’m misremembering it, or there may be a connection here...
Pokeweed comes from an Algonquin word translating to "dye plant" so it's probably not related.
Wait wait wait is that why USAmericans would rather do all the nonsense involved in importing fucking quinoa rather than like... this is why amaranth is classified as a noxious weed in so many places, isn't it? Because a hardy pseudocereal that just grows wherever would like, help poor people not fucking starve? And while there are native amaranths in a lot of the US, it's pretty damn cosmopolitan, so many immigrants would know what to do with it, because there was also amaranth where they lived before?
A lot of the way we live is focused around avoiding the aesthetic appearance of poverty, yeah.
So, it seems what you're saying is more or less: If people could even partially live off the food growing in their neighborhood, they wouldn't be as exploitable. If they worked together to build a community farm that built solidarity and diversified nutrition, they would be even less exploitable. So the exploiters use laws and propaganda to avoid such things as much as possible.
So maybe we should be doing more sustainable farming, community gardens, homegrown fibres, and generally more pleasing and diverse environments in our "lawns" (while doing due diligence to ensure that we aren't causing inadvertant ecological problems)?
That is punk as hell. I am getting many ideas and many questions. Maybe I'll do research and post something when the Texas heat dies down enough that I can think.
Absolutely.
I haven't been able to read about it in much depth yet but there's this concept called food sovereignty which is basically people especially marginalized people having agency over their food systems instead of relying on Corporation which controls their resources
I think gardening and knowing plants and growing food and useful plants as part of a COMMUNITY is very powerful because it creates a kind of safety net that you can partly rely on for your basic needs instead of depending on the whims of Corporation
hang on I gotta post something two weeks late and in poor taste
op what are you saying “in poor taste” the man was a billionaire
from it takes ass to whip ass: understanding and confronting violence against sex workers, a roundtable discussion with miss major & mariko passion, from the revolution starts at home, edited by ching-in chen, jai dulani, & leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha, 2011
Q: What are ways you, or other sex workers you know, have found to deal with violence when it has happened (from cops, customers, lovers and partners, child services, the medical and psych establishments, immigration, and other sources) without using police?
Miss Major: The thing we've learned about calling the cops is that we've learned not to call them, period. Most of the time, even when we have a problem with our partner, we hope they'll take our side. They don't. So we learn how to talk ourselves out of things. Or we'll walk close to the building to protect our back when we're in a crowd that might not be safe. With police you simply ride that out. You'll hear the zipper or the belt unbuckle and you know they just want a blow job. Usually on the hood. So you just position yourself so you can back away. You never turn your back to them because then they can say you were trying to get away and do whatever they want. Do you get a badge number and complain? No.You got no proof that he made you suck his dick.
With lovers, you really learn to deal with it yourself.You try hard not to make it adversarial, not to escalate, and when it calms down, you manipulate the situation to put yourself in a safe space. For example, send him out to the store and change the locks while he's gone. If he's acting the fool outside your door, you can get the cops to come because they won't be taking any sides. If he [your partner] is inside, you've got to handle it yourself. You learn to think on your feet. The amazing thing is how a sense of humor and sarcasm can take you right across the bride [to safety] before they ever know what happened. You've got to read a a group to see who is the real agitator. Mob mentality always has one person leading everyone else on, and they're rarely at the front. You need to make fun of that person. Then he'll need to [turn his attention to his friends and] defend himself to restore their respect.
Dealing with violence is different for everybody. Like with hooking, there's folks who do it for survival and some who do it because it's fun and exciting. Each of them will have very different experiences. I got involved with hooking because I thought it'd be exciting and it was. It wasn't horrible, frightening, miserable, or annoying. So for me, the violence was what came along with prostitution; it was the nature of the beast. Going through that, I'd rather go to the hospital, but if someones tries to hurt my spirit or wound my pride, it's those things that I never get over. Being beaten up or raped, I have found that the mind is a wonderful thing. It can get you over and out of shit you never thought possible. Your body heals, the pain subsides, the thoughts slowly, slowly, fade and the mind replaces those thoughts with other things.
When you've been hurt, friends have more than likely gone through similar things so you can learn from them how to deal with it - or hide it. It's often the same thing we did as a kid! Take time to pay attention to yourself, sort out what works for you. If you have a decent lover, who'll give you a human response, they can help you.
Agencies, psychologists, doctors - I don't think they give a damn. The longer you hold onto [the pain], the longer they can milk you. The solution isn't what's going to get them money. For example, a cure for AIDS won't get them money, only the drugs will. AIDS is another form of violence. Society never realized that people [with AIDS] didn't have to die. That when these people died, a part of them died too. I just kept going and did my best to help my friends. They older you get, the more you realize how true the cliches are! And so "there but for the grace of god go I." It could easily have been me. Easily. This [AIDS] was brought on us; it wasn't a natural thing. I've had two lovers die of HIV and people don't think about the guilt of the survivors. You ask yourself, "Why am I here?" A question no one can answer but you.
from it takes ass to whip ass: understanding and confronting violence against sex workers, a round table discussion with miss major & mariko passion, from the revolution starts at home edited by ching-in chen, jai dulani, & leah akshmi piepzna-samarasinha 2011
If I die young, it was Covid.
descriptions of cross stitch patterns:
1. “NORMALIZE / MASS / DEATH”. a plague doctor in a plague doctor costume below the text. stem flowers below and to the left and right of “MASS / DEATH”.
2. “PLEASE / MAINTAIN / POSITIVE VIBES / WHILE FACING / OBLIVION”.
3. “Live / Laugh / Long / Covid”. a pulse oximeter that reads “93 [SpO2] / 140 [pulse]”, other medical objects, and (nonanatomical) hearts around the text.
4. “IT IS AN HONOR / TO / SACRIFICE / YOUR BODY / FOR THE / ECONOMY”. a row of 3 United States flags between “YOUR BODY” and “FOR THE”. a column of 6 dollar signs on each left/right side of the text.
5. “PRETEND / TO BE WELL / DON’T / SCARE / THE / OTHERS”. drug capsules and tablets around the text.
6. “TRUST / YOUR / IMMUNE / SYSTEM / BAD THINGS HAPPEN / TO OTHER PEOPLE”.
shannon perez-darby, from the secret joy of accountability: self-accountability as a building block for change, from the revolution starts at home, edited by ching-in chen, jai dulani, & leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha, 2011
The rapid spread of COVID-19 underscores the need for new treatments. Here we report that cannabidiol (CBD), a compound produced by the cannabis plant, inhibits SARS-CoV-2 infection. CBD and its metabolite, 7-OH-CBD, but not congeneric cannabinoids, potently ...
I love that phenomenon where ur talking to another neurodivergent person for the first time and u haven’t quite grocked their flavor of brain yet and they haven’t grocked yours and you’re both using your Acceptable Friendly Person Getting To Know You Script on each other but of course those scripts have been calibrated mainly for use with, like, normal people, so you just end up being like two conversational roombas bonking gently off one another like “hello fellow human” “hello fellow ‘hello fellow human’” until you both at some point manage to adjust your programming and actually like, communicate
It’s like when I was a kid I had two furbies and when you put them next to each other they’d just natter nonsensically past one another for a bit and then at some point one would abruptly recognize the other with its furby sensor or w/e and it would shout “DANCE!” and the other one would flap its ears and reply “HEY, DANCE” and then, in perfect unison, they would begin to rock back and forth while chanting “doot doot doo doot doot doo”
It’s exactly like that. I love it. Crazy people are the best, we are super excellent, i love us, i love crazy ppl
I wrote this post in my head while having a major dissociative episode in the bathroom and its the best and truest thing Ive ever said
CHRONIC Steven Phillips/Dana Parish MTHFR You may have heard about these genes that are now mentioned in psychiartric circles. There are at least two genes that encode for the enzyme methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, or MTHRF for short. These are frequently mutated in the population, and cause varying levels of metabolic disruption depending on how many copies of each mutated gene are present. Mutations of these genes contribute to increased levels of homocysteine, an amino acid, which is recognized to be a significant risk for vascular disease, dementia, psychiatric illness, and certain cancers.
The American College of of Obstretricians and Gynecologists, College of American Pathologists, American College of Medical Genetics, and American Heart Association do not recommend testing for MTHFR. Likewise, most medical societies do not recommend routine screening for homocysteinie levels. I (Dr. Phillips) have been very surprised by this, giving the following: Studies show that certain B-vitamin supplementation resulting in lowered homoscysteine reduces the risk of stroke, which is confirmed by a metanalysis of many studies. Homocysteine reduction by vitamin supplementation also reduces retinal atherosclerosis in diabetic patients with high blood pressure, as well as brain shrinkage and cognitive decline in patients with early dementia. Other studies also demonstrate a significant treatment benefit to psychiatric symptoms in patients with depression and eating disorders.
Although studies of homocystiene reduction by vitamin supplementation demonstrate a reduced rate of recurrent blockage of the coronary arteries after balloon angioplasty, a procedure to open clogged arteries, most studies do not demonstrate a reduction of overall heart disease that meets statistical significance. This may be because the B-vitamin reigmens used in those studies were sub-optimal, as homocysteine levels were frequently only modestly reduced. I offer my patients with elevated homocysteine vitamin therapy to lower it. For most patients, methylfolate and methylcobalamin will markedly lower homocysteine. For some patients, additional therapy is required, such as vitamin B6, but it can cause heartburn in some patients, and if taken in excess, can damage nerves. Thus, it's always best to follow up with your doctor before starting any supplements. p133-134
A FAILED VACCINE p142
Vaccines have a long and colorful history. They have eradicated many ills that used to debilitate, disfigure, or kill entire swaths of populations. The first vaccine was for smallpox, a common epidemic prior to the eighteenth century. In the late 1700s, a small-town doctor, Edward Jenner, noted that farmers and milkmaids exposed to cowpox, which was common among cattle at the time, never seemed to suffer from smallpox during its frequent outbreaks. They would have a brief bout with the illness, which was less serious and less deadly than smallpox, but retained their beautiful complexions. Others, who suffered immensly from the disease, would either die from it or be left with severly scarred skin. For Jenner, this was a huge clue. He began looking into whether or not these workers were being naturally vaccinated by exposure to the cowpox virus. (Interesting trivia tidbit: the word vaccine come from the latin word VACA, which means "cow.")
In 1796, Jenner met a young diarymaid named Sarah Nelms who had cowpox lesions on her hands. He carefully extracted material from her lesions and injected it into an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps, who was the son of a gardener. This was before the days of informed consent, not to mention parental involvement of consent, but it also speaks to the long tradition of medical researchers experimenting on the poor. Phipps developed fevers, chills, and loss of appetitie about a week later, but recovered thereafter. The real experiment came two months later, when Jenner injected Phipps with smallpox material. As he predicted, the boy stayed well, leading Jenner to conclude that Phipps was protected from the deadly smallpox. The boy was now "immune" to the disease. Better yet, two other children who shared a bed with Phipps did not catch smallpox from him either, further strengthing his evidence. His report of the events called for more vaccinations, and elicited skepticism. Jenner was not discouraged. He documented more vaccinations throughout the next year. By 1800 Jenner's work had been published in all major European languages and had reached Benjamin Waterhouse in the U.S., a respected physican and a cofounder of the Harvard Medical School. The rest as they say, is history. Other vaccines for many other disease would follow. After decades of continuous worldwide vaccination and improvements in public sanitation and hygiene, in 1972 smallpox was declared eradicated in the United States; in 1977 a single case of smallpox occured in Somalia, the very last one.
By 1980, the WHO considered smallpox to be eliminated worldwide. All vaccines work the same way: they prime the immune system to recognize and attack a particular pathogen, or in the case of a toxoid vaccine, a pathogen's toxin, if it shows up in the body in the future. This can be done in four main ways: inactivated virus, live attenuated vaccines, toxoids, and subunits/conjugates. Inactivated vaccines do not contain live viruses or bacteria, but either whole killed germs or simply parts of these organisms. (The development of a vaccine against parasites continues to be elusive - deeply troubling, given the breath of their presence and toll that they take on global health.) These microbial parts are either DNA, protein, or specific molecules on the germ's surface. They allow your immune system to identify this as the enemy and obtain advance notice if that virus or bacterium were to invade. Immune system cells then have memory to be able to recognize the organism when they next encounter it, in order to produce antibodies to fight it. The immune cells remain circulating in your blood on guard, ready to stop an infection in its tracks if you body is later exposed to the real thing. However, these antibodies often don't remain for your whole lifetime or aren't strong enough to protect you after just one shot, which is why booster immunizations are recommended, for example for whooping cough or rabies.
The smallpox vaccine wa a live attenutated vaccine, but it was given in much smaller concentrations than the original, Jenner-like smallpox vaccine. These types of vaccines often confer a lifelong immunity after one or two doses. But people with compromised immune systems are usually not able to recieve these. Examples of live attenutated vaccines include the measles vaccine, the rotavirus vaccine, and the yellow fever vaccine. There's a vaccine for tuberculosis that's given in several countries around the world, known as BCG, which is also a live bacterial vaccine, but the CDC recommends that it should not be given to those with weakened immune systems. A toxoid is a form of vaccine that is an inactivated bacterial toxin. Examples of this include toxoids against diphtheria and tetanus. These types of vaccines enable the body to render the real toxin harmless if it were to show up in the future. Tetanus is exceedingly rare today (fewer than thirty cases per year occur in the United States) and most doctors have never seen a case. Tetanus is not like other infections that can spread between people. It's a spore forming soil bacterium and is transmitted by entering an open wound. Its spore can survive on surfaces, like a rusted nail, for long periods, only to start replicating in the unsuspecting person who steps on the nail. The spore produces a toxin that causes powerful and life-threatening muscle contractions, unless of course that person has been vaccinated.
Like inactivated whole-cell vaccines, subunit/conjugate vaccines don't contain live components of a pathogen, but rather small fragments of its outer surface protein, which stimulates a protective immune response. Some examples of subunit/conjugate vaccines are those for influenza, hepatitis B, HPV, and some for shingles.
At a time when many infectiou diseases have been brought or kept under control with global vaccination efforts, one has to wonder why it has taken so long to develop a vaccine for lyme+. There are several reasons for this. Lyme is the only one in the family that has gotten any significant attention by the medical community, and that attention has been fraught with controversy. BARTONELLA is an emergency infectious disease that has only been recognized in earnest since the 1990s. Before that, only two species were known - one that was restricted to the high Andes Mountains and caused Carrion's disease, and the other that caused trench fever. Over the past twenty years or so, about forty-five more species of this bacterium have been discovered. In sum, we're dealing with a tribe of infections, all of which are poorly understood, and all of which have been mismanaged by the medical community.
Moreover, these are complex germs that behave in crafty ways in the body. A good analogy is to consider the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, for which we still do not have a vaccine after decades of research. Not only are there many different types, subtypes, and strains of HIV, each genetically distinct, but the virus also mutates frequently. These characteristics make the prospect of a vaccine practically impossible - there are too many rapidly moving targets. The Lyme+ family of infections suffers from similar complications. It's like trying to shoot a gun at a swarm of flies.
Not that vaccines for Lyme haven't been developed and tried. SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline) developed the first and only liscenced vaccine against Lyme disease. It was called LYMERix and it was rolled out in 1998. Given in a three-dose series, the vaccine had an unusual method of action: it stimulated antibodies that attacked the Lyme bacteria in the tick's gut as it fed on the human host - before the bacteria were able to enter the body. More specifically, it was a recombinant vaccine containing an outer surface protein (OspA) from BORRELIA BURGDORFERI, the Lyme bacterium. A recombinant vaccine is one that's been engineered using recombinant DNA technology, whihc means inserting DNA into bacterium. The bacterium then produces a specific antigen, in this case the surface protein from BORRELIA, which is then purified and used as the vaccine.
Before licensure by the FDA, 6,478 people recieve a total of 18,047 doses of the vaccine during clinical testing. It was reported to be about 78 percent effective in protecting against Lyme after all three doses of the vaccine had been given (note that what constitutes efficacy is subject to interpretation, since we're talking about BORRELIA BURGDORFERI only - notany of the myriad other virulent infections included in the Lyme+ family such as RICKETTSIA,EHRLICHIA,ANAPLASMA,BARTONELLA,F.TULARENSIS,COXIELLA, the Powassan Virus, and BABESIA, just to name a few.) Between the time of its licensure in 1998 and July 31, 2000, about 1.5 million doses of the vaccine were distributed. It was intended for use in individuals between fifteen and seventy years old living or working in areas with high rates of Lyme diease. By 2002, SmithKline Beecham had withdrawn LYMERix from the market. Report of sobering side effects were accumulating, some of which were serious - resulting in life-threatening illnesses, long hospital stays, or severe disability. The vaccine was followed by crippling arthritis in some and neurologic disorders, including cognitive issues, in others. It was a cruel twist of irony, given that Lyme itself can cause all of those conditions. But people couldnt' get an active Lyme infection from the Lyme vaccine, as it contained no live bacteria. That's true, but it's also true, and indeed well known among Lyme researchers, that asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic Lyme infection is common. What if Lyme was widespread in the general population but the narrow CDC surveillance laboratory criteria adopted by IDSA for its diagnosis missed a large portion of those infected? Well, it turns out thta Lyme IS common in the population - 11 percent of healthy people without symptoms turned antibody-positive by the CDC criteria. Although it wasn't admitted by the CDC at the time the vacine was released, in 2013 the CDC admitted that the true number of Lyme cases is approximately ten times higher than the number reported to them. This means that the true infection rates with Lyme are alarmingly high. So what happens if the Lyme vaccine is give to a patient with asymptomatic Lyme infection? Since the symptoms of Lyme are caused largely by the immunse system going after the bacteria, can vaccinating someone with hidden, undiagnosed Lyme turn that asymptompatic infection into a symptomic one? During a heated meeting with the FDA, Donald H. Marks, MD, phD eviscerated LYMERix and its makers. Dr. Marks was the director of the Lyme vaccine program for the pharmaceutical giant Aventis Pasteur, previously called Connaught, and had been brought in as a consultant to independently review the reported adverse events of LYMERix. He accused SmithKline Beecham of using "confusing" language to mislead physicians administering the vaccine. His strong words:
"SKB (Glaxo) has acted in an unreasonable manner by marketing LYMERix without adequate warnings about the risks of severe rheumatologic, neurologic, autoimmune, and other adverse events, and by failing to caution and educate physicians about these dangers." "In my opinion," he told FDA officials, "there is sufficient evidence that LYMERix is causally related to severe rheumatologic, neurologic, autoimmune, and other adverse events in some individuals. This evidence is such as to warrant a significantly heightened degree of warnings and possible limitations or removal from marketing of LYMERix."
With that, LYMERix was hasitly pulled from the market, though the offical PR story from its maker was that it was yanked due to lack of demand. Many individual lawsuits followed, as well as a class-action lawsuit from vaccine recipients who became ill after vaccination. We continue to hear from patients who say they have still not recovered from their LYMERix injuries.
Vaccines are enormously expensive to develop, often costing more than $1 billion, as was the case with the rotavirus vaccine - a vaccine for a condition whose seriousness doesn't compare to what Lyme+ can do. Federal institutions and global organizations have already spent more than $9 billion trying to develop and HIV vaccine. At this expense, it is hardly believable that a drug company would pull an approved vaccine due to a relative "lack of demand." Today drug companies are trying to develop vaccines for zoonotic infections, among them some that target multiple tick-borne pathogens and some that target tick saliva, but this area of medicine continues to be fraught with challenges. Lyme+ presents unique difficulties that make developing a vaccine a very onerous, if not impossible, task.
(The same is true of malaria, which has its own unique complexities and no commericially available vaccine despite more than fifty years of trying.) There needs to be a major leap in vaccine technology and a cleanup of the industry; otherwise, it's an enormous waste of resourses, with so many different strains of Lyme and with so many other pathogens that can be transmitted with Lyme, or on their own, there may never be a single vaccine to cover this extensive territory. And a "Lyme vaccine" could give people a false sense of security since it will not prevent any of those other infections from taking hold. The hurdles are formidiable, just like those for testing and diagnosing. p148
[Image ID: A checklist of Green Flags. The following are personality and behavioural traits of a positive and healthy relationship:
Affection
Not comparing you to others
Takes an interest in your interests
Respect for privacy
Friendship
Respect for job
Positive and supportive about you even when you are not
Respect for children
Know that they are not the centre of your universe
Sense of humour - laughs at self
Willingness to share financially
Maturity
Share on all levels
Sense of perspective (not over-reacting)
Being vulnerable
Confidence in self
Being a listener
Fits in- makes an effort to get to know friends and family
Having a fun or childish side
Enjoying similar things
Respects individuality
Enjoying each other’s company
Admits mistakes
Having individual interests
Takes responsibility for own needs
Supportive of personal growth - not feeling threatened by it
Shares household chores
Enjoys solitude
Accepting past without judgement
Willing to cope with ups and downs
End image ID.]
very beautiful, very powerful
[“The reason it is possible to imagine property as a relationship of domination between a person and a thing is because, in Roman Law, the power of the master rendered the slave a thing (res, meaning an object), not a person with social rights or legal obligations to anyone else. Property law, in turn, was largely about the complicated situations that might arise as a result. It is important to recall, for a moment, who these Roman jurists actually were that laid down the basis for our current legal order – our theories of justice, the language of contract and torts, the distinction of public and private and so forth. While they spent their public lives making sober judgments as magistrates, they lived their private lives in households where they not only had near-total authority over their wives, children and other dependants, but also had all their needs taken care of by dozens, perhaps hundreds of slaves.
Slaves trimmed their hair, carried their towels, fed their pets, repaired their sandals, played music at their dinner parties and instructed their children in history and maths. At the same time, in terms of legal theory these slaves were classified as captive foreigners who, conquered in battle, had forfeited rights of any kind. As a result, the Roman jurist was free to rape, torture, mutilate or kill any of them at any time and in any way he had a mind to, without the matter being considered anything other than a private affair. (Only under the reign of Tiberius were any restrictions imposed on what a master could do to a slave, and what this meant was simply that permission from a local magistrate had to be obtained before a slave could be ripped apart by wild animals; other forms of execution could still be imposed at the owner’s whim.) On the one hand, freedom and liberty were private affairs; on the other, private life was marked by the absolute power of the patriarch over conquered people who were considered his private property.
The fact that most Roman slaves were not prisoners of war, in the literal sense, doesn’t really make much difference here. What’s important is that their legal status was defined in those terms. What is both striking and revealing, for our present purposes, is how in Roman jurisprudence the logic of war – which dictates that enemies are interchangeable, and if they surrendered they could either be killed or rendered ‘socially dead’, sold as commodities – and, therefore, the potential for arbitrary violence was inserted into the most intimate sphere of social relations, including the relations of care that made domestic life possible. Thinking back to examples like the ‘capturing societies’ of Amazonia or the process by which dynastic power took root in ancient Egypt, we can begin to see how important that particular nexus of violence and care has been. Rome took the entanglement to new extremes, and its legacy still shapes our basic concepts of social structure.
Our very word ‘family’ shares a root with the Latin famulus, meaning ‘house slave’, via familia, which originally referred to everyone under the domestic authority of a single paterfamilias or male head of household. Domus, the Latin word for ‘household’, in turn gives us not only ‘domestic’ and ‘domesticated’ but dominium, which was the technical term for the emperor’s sovereignty as well as a citizen’s power over private property. Through that we arrive at (literally, ‘familiar’) notions of what it means to be ‘dominant’, to possess ‘dominion’ and to ‘dominate’.”]
david graeber and david wengrow, the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity, 2021
Want to learn something new in 2022??
Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)
40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)
Excellent basic crochet video series
Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)
Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)
How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)
Another drawing character faces video
Literally my favorite art pose hack
Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??
Introduction to flying small aircrafts
French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding
Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)
Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)
Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)
Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:
Calculus 1 (full semester class)
Learn basic statistics (free textbook)
Introduction to college physics (free textbook)
Introduction to accounting (free textbook)
Learn a language:
Ancient Greek
Latin
Spanish
German
Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)
French
Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)
Want to learn something new in 2023??
Cooking with flavor bootcamp (used what I learned in this a LOT this year)
Beekeeping 101
Learn Interior Design from the British Academy of Interior Design (free to audit course - just choose the free option when you register)
Video on learning to read music that actually helped me??
How to use and sew with a sewing machine
How to ride a bike (listen. some of us never learned, and that's okay.)
How to cornrow-braid hair (I have it on good authority that this video is a godsend for doing your baby niece's black hair)
Making mead at home (I actually did this last summer and it was SO good)
How to garden
Basics of snowboarding (proceed with caution)
How to draw for people who (think they) suck at art (I know this website looks like a 2003 monstrosity, but the tutorials are excellent)
Pixel art for beginners so you can make the next great indie game
Go (back) to school
Introduction to Astronomy (high school course - free textbook w/ practice problems)
Principals of Economics (high school course - free textbook w/ practice problems)
Introduction to philosophy (free college course)
Computer science basics (full-semester Harvard course free online)
Learn a language
Japanese for Dummies (link fix from 2022)
Ukrainian
Portuguese (Brazil)
American Sign Language (as somebody who works with Deaf people professionally, I also strongly advise you to read up on Deaf/HoH culture and history!)
Chinese (Simplified)
Quenya (LOTR fantasy elf language)
