was talking to a coworker and realised i could not for the life of me remember his name but i was too embarrassed to ask because we've spoken multiple times so mid-conversation i started concocting a plan to nudge the conversation towards the ID photos on our building passes so that i could be like oh my ID photo is awful haha the camera they use to take these has a real talent for making me look as unphotogenic as possible and then he would say oh yes me too haha everyone says that (because they do) and then i would be able to say well let me see yours it can't be as bad as mine! and he would show me his ID because we are coworkers and why wouldn't he and this would allow me to see his building pass which of course would have his name on it and then i would be able to say well yours is perfectly nice it must be me that's the problem! and then we would have a polite chuckle about it and i would have his name without needing to ask for it and he would be none the wiser and all would be well but then before i could execute this fine plan a little voice in my head went "so this is some light yagami bull shit you are about to pull" which was such a violent reality check it shocked me completely out of my embarrassment and i went "hey im so sorry your name has slipped my mind could you remind me" and he did and it was fine.
"This is some Light Yagami bull shit you are about to pull" <- Littany against avoiding small embarrassing/awkward moments that don't matter with over the top ass mind games.
Labubus are blind bags but they're also blind bags with some of the most insane dark patterns stacked on top. The online store for them has a thing where they tell you what you got the second you order it online so that you can immediately try again if you didn't get the thing you wanted.
There's also a shake feature that is designed to encourage you to buy more than one by narrowing down the possibility space on a crate of options so that if you're hunting a specific model you can verify that it's guaranteed to be in one of these three IF you buy all three right now!!!!!
I just thought of this post, which was actually how I learned what Dark Patterns are, because I tried to cancel my Adobe Acrobat subscription, and it took much longer than I anticipated because several times throughout the process it felt like it was intentionally trying to trick me into thinking I'd cancelled my subscription when I actually hadn't yet.
Please read up on Dark Patterns and learn how to recognize them.
@caesarsaladinn I had a whole discussion with a history major who was extremely confident that smallpox is a “common childhood illness” 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 “smallpox isn’t that bad.”) I eventually asked if she was possibly confusing smallpox with chickenpox, at which point she said, “aren’t they the same thing?”
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 ≈1500 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 humans—it has no animal hosts—which 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 variola—Edward 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 poxvirus—chickenpox 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 rashes—thus 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 practices—people 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 on—which viruses caused which symptoms, whether those viruses were closely related, and whether being infected with one disease conferred immunity to another—but 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 herpesvirus—it 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
taylor swift already spending 20 million dollars on her wedding and closign the streets around madison square garden for 3 days #ok whatever. there are 1 thousand guests for this wedding hte carbon footprint is going to be insane
saw somebody reporting that she's ordering multiple custom made wedding dresses so she can have outfit changes durign the ceremony and that's not confirmed but it wouldn't surprise me. what's another couple mil right
Pleased to report that after a day of this i am not longer craving caper brine and my mouth is not dry as usual. There's some good suggestions in the notes too that I want to try.
-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)
-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt
let’s talk about how they made it impossible to function without a phone and digitalised everything and then turned around and went “actually! these phone things aren’t safe for kids but it’s magically ok once you’re eighteen. guess you’ll have to have your life dictated by your parents now lol cause we’re gonna take the devices away from you. IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD WHY ARE YOU COMPLAINING”
ok my apologies. take away my ability to buy anything too ig because these fuckass stores don’t accept cash anymore. take away my ability to communicate with people outside my house and school because I can’t text and I can’t email and I cant drive to them either and I can’t even fucking get public transport without a phone either. can’t order at a fucking restaurant without being asked to get a membership and install an app and also very sorry but you can only order through our online menu now! have you ever considered that it’s not just about instagram?
The stupidity of Crowley not having his miracles in the finale has already been thoroughly dissected but I gotta say if they were going to do it, they could have at least been funny about it. Crowley miracles his clothes, right? So he should have been naked. Give us some Crowley bum to complete the bare asses triptych (Eve in S1, Jimbriel in S2). Have him wandering around Soho carrying a potted plant in front of his crotch for modesty.
Unfortunately, I am now picturing Crowley doing exaggerated yoga poses behind strategically placed items in the bookshop like its an Austin Powers film while Aziraphale valiantly tries to avert his gaze.
Sorry, sorry, I could barely sleep last night thinking about this, it's super important that I clarify: Naked Crowley still has his sunglasses in this scenario. They were a designer purchase. The silver scarf stays on as well, for the aesthetics.
Now you can go ahead and picture Crowley lounging in the sleeping bag like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: "My eyes are up here, angel."
u ever see someone with extremely fucked up views (or actions) and think wowww if a couple of things in my life went the tiniest bit differently that would have been me
Sometimes people bitch about media, both fiction and nonfiction, that they think "humanizes" bad people, especially bigots fascists Nazis et cetera. And I'm just like. Hey. Hey. The problem is. They ARE human. HUMANS did that. Your next door neighbor could do that. Your grandma could do that. You could do that.
"No I'm a good person" why? Because you've gotten lucky and not seen propaganda yet that perfectly hit your buttons? Because you had people to correct you when you fucked up? Idk man I don't think we're all so different from the bad people. We're all just people.
Reminding ourselves of our shared humanity with terrible people does NOT serve to justify their actions. It serves to remind us that the seeds of what happened to them could get into us as well, or might already have. It reminds us to be vigilant and interrogate the hatred inside us.
If you convince yourself that you're just an Inherently Good Person who would never believe hateful things well. Now any little hateful thing that makes its way inside you undetected is never going to be interrogated. It will be left to grow undisturbed.
If you remember that those things can get into anyone, you know to look out for them, and weed them out when they appear, and take the criticism when others point them out in you. So remember, that could have been you. If you forget, maybe it will be.
Cellulose nitrate was used to make dice from the late 1860s until the middle of the twentieth century, and the material remains stable for decades. Then, in a flash, they can dramatically decompose. Nitric acid is released in a process called outgassing. The dice cleave, crumble, and then implode.
From Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck by Ricky Jay and Rosamond Purcell, 2002.
It's been almost 48 hours. I have processed the finale. I'm past my grievances. I've ran out of the conventional stages of grief and I'm currently on the secret 6th one. It's time for memes
wiggles like a worm on pavement @vulphi - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
