What the hell are you thinking, Sarah

My sometimes messed up thoughts.

[forgottenbones]

[jethroq]

[transgayhawkeyepierce]

Everyone reblog with your most unemployable traits

[theconcealedweapon]

When you hear about the Epstein files and you can't understand how people can be so monstrous, keep in mind that every monstrosity that happened on Epstein's island was legal just two lifetimes ago.

A monster kidnaps a barely pubescent girl, rapes and impregnates her, then traffics the baby. That seems like a horror story when you hear about it happening on Epstein's island. But it used to be legal. They used to do this openly. It was not only legal to do this, but also illegal to try to rescue the victims. The police enforced that. The police were originally created for the main purpose of enforcing that.

Rich people acting entitled to do whatever they want? Large numbers of people engaged in human trafficking? Police making the most monstrous people look like saints compared to them? That's nothing new. That's our country's history.

[themoreyoustrex]

Historian here - the original tweet is actually slightly inaccurate, but only in that it is way too generous to Jefferson.

It is difficult to tell when Jefferson and Hemmings "met," per se, but she was a baby when she was first enslaved to his family. He could have met her before she could even walk, and she would have not had knowledge of life experience outside of his household.

Fourteen was not her age when they met - fourteen is the age when some historians believe he began raping her. Disgustingly, there is still a lot of debate around whether or not there was "true affection" there, as though that would make any difference in this situation.

However evil you think Thomas Jefferson is, the reality is far worse. He spent as much time degrading Black people - especially Black women, free or enslaved - as he did philosophizing, and one of my goals is to ensure that his name is never mentioned separately from his abuses.

[departmentq]

This is the world capitalists want to return to.

Instagram

[offwegointothewildblueyonder]

when a child goes to Build-A-Bear and constructs a teddy from the parts available no one bats an eye, but when I, Victor Frankenstein,

[mysteryteacup]

the child doesn't immediately decide the bear is hideous and abandon it to grow up alone in the world after, Victor.

[kosmogrl]

[manwhorewednesdays]

This is actually such a crucial part of healing from neglect and abuse and I have to add to this.

Because indeed, people who like you will not roll their eyes and sigh at the idea of accommodating your needs, they will value your voice and be upset with you about injustice done to you, not at you for "being difficult". They will be happy when you find a way to live a better life, and help you to get there. If you are struggling, someone who loves you wants to see you smile, not tell you to smile because "you have it so good".

[alexseanchai]

[image: tweet by overlyxclusive: "when people love you they find joy in making life easier for you"]

[existennialmemes]

Charles Manson never killed a single person with his own hands. He was still held accountable for the murders his rhetoric led others to commit.

Thinking about this for absolutely no reason.

[femininefreyanyctophile]

the American concept of free speech is utterly flawed because it doesnt consider speaking to be an action. "Sticks and Stones may break my Bones but Words will never harm me" is one of the worst saying from the anglophonie, not only does it dismiss psychological harm, it also doesnt consider the fact that words can make someone else break your bones, often in ways that theyre not even entirely accountable for. Human dignity shall be inviolable.

[parkchanwoohoo]

[thesireofsorrow]

going to get my blood tested and dr acula and nurse feratu walk in. hope everything is ok

[stjohnstarling]

↖ this user has drank from the infernal river Lethe, which flows through Hades and brings total oblivion, eradicating all memory and thought

[incurablydepraved]

how did it taste?

[stjohnstarling]

How did what taste?

[deadmomjokes]

It recently came up in conversation with my toddler that some birds can talk, and this has caused her great concern.

See, we were talking about how movies are pretend and how in real life, animals don’t talk. I mentioned that there are some birds who talk a little bit, but not like the animals in movies, and she just looked at me like “???”

So I informed her that some kinds of parrots can copy sounds that people make, and can learn how to say words. I thought this would give her a giggle, as fun new facts often do, but she was just deeply perplexed and a little worried about this.

“Birds can talk?” “Do they ask questions?” “What do they say?” Why do they talk?” “Do chickens talk?” “What about Blue Jays?” “Why do some birds talk?” “How do they talk?” “Birds TALK???”

We showed her a video of a parrot doing the “Hello, pretty bird, give a kiss” thing, and she was dead silent the whole time, hugging her comfort pillow with her knees to her chest. We asked if she wanted us to turn it off, and she shook her head. But we also asked if she wanted to see another one, and she shook her head even harder.

I don’t know why it has distressed her so greatly to learn that some birds can mimic human speech; but then again, I don’t know why it doesn’t distress the rest of us more to know that some birds can mimic human speech.

I keep thinking about that post that’s like “The first person to hear a parrot talk was probably Not Okay.” Because that’s exactly what happened. She had never been introduced to the concept, and her entire worldview got SHOOK.

[philosophicalparadox]

Part of why Ravens are considered Spooky Bad Things We Associate With The Faeries is because they can and do mimic human speech - but much, much better than a parrot. With a parrot, you can tell something is off about the sound. You can tell it doesn’t belong to a human. Ravens don’t sound like that, no, cause they’re overacheivers. (And passerines). They sound EXACTLY like the voice of whoever they are mimicking.

But more importantly they love the sound of human laughter. No one knows why. But it is totally, 100% possible, and it happens to this day, to walk along the paths in the Black Forest and suddenly hear a strange kind of giggling sound, or maybe even a very clear, definitely human sounding “hello?” “Hiiiii!” Or “let’s go!”.

However, it takes a lot of practice for them to copy sounds as perfectly as they do, so you’re equally likely to hear something that definitely sounds human-like, but the words make no sense and the sound is unlike any language you know.

Ravens at the Tower of London do this all the time. Theyre pretty sociable with humans though, so they do it quite openly. I have seen videos of people, mostly Americans, look absolutely spooked out of their skins when a big ol’ raven (mind ye, these are birds that are 2 feet tall with a 5 foot wingspan) comes waltzing up on the deck and starts talking to them.

And ravens, especially the ones there that have been bred and raised by humans for centuries, don’t just imitate - they have one of the same language processing genes we do, and they understand the way a toddler might that things, places, and individuals have names, and can string together basic sentences much like an african grey.

I know because I used to work with one, Darlene, who knew, quite well, what she wanted and how to ask for it. If you were preparing her breakfast, she would hop on up and investigate. She used to be an illegal pet, and had been taught “manners”. That is to say, if she went for something and you told her, sternly, “mind your manners missy!” She would stop, look at you, perhaps for up to a minute, and then point with her beak to what she wanted. If that did not work, she would ask, in plain English, “grape?” Or “Darl have grape?” And lord help you if you gave her anything less than what she asked for. She would throw it at you, and try to bite you, sometimes while saying “No!” In the same tone as I imagine she was reprimanded in her home.

So yeah. Parrots arent the only ones.

[summer-fruits-and-cream]

WHAT

[roseofithaca]

Was anyone gonna tell me that ravens can talk or was I meant to read about it on a tumblr post?!

[ironedorchid]

Talking Ravens has been a trope in fantasy for so long that people forgot that it is based in fact.

[lierdumoa]

I did not learn that ravens could talk from this post. I learned it from a much older tumblr post about Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Raven, and I can’t tell you how much it fucked me up to realize ravens can literally say, “Nevermore” out loud in real life.

[wizardshark]

flirting: omggg haha that amulet is so neat! Do you mind if I hold it?

[wizardshark]

Give me the fucking amulet

[mitchipedia]

Prices of Both Housing And Rent Are Decreasing In China. “In 2016, Xi said that houses were for living in, not for speculating. The Chinese government took steps to reduce prices, those steps took time to bear fruit.” By Ian Welsh.

[argumate]

the decline in Chinese house prices is a good thing, although “the government took steps to reduce prices” is the funniest way of presenting it, personally I would include a graph of the Evergrande share price which Suggests A Story of the magnitude of the over investment in the property bubble and the impact of the Three Red Lines policy that finally burst it.

[cupcraft]

Do you want to be politically pure in theory or help your neighbor. Is it fruitless to help your neighbor because there's no Perfect Pure way to do it ?

[kingxanthesecond]

Honestly I would rather be politically pure. Your neighbors would never help you, so why help them?

[cupcraft]

Youre who this post is talking about. Individualism and elitism is not going to help the revolution and grassroots activism and mutual aid.

[gean-grey-blog]

When the pandemic hit this old church lady joined our tattooed queer leftist mutual aid group bc her church soup kitchen closed. We shrugged and told her she was welcome as long as she didn't proselytize.

That woman never gendered me right once, but she shut up about Jesus long enough to feed people next to us bc she cared more about action than ideology. She also had a whole network of other church people who helped contribute $ to ingredients. We provided more and better meals together than in our "correct" silos

That's how any of us get out of any of this

[qrgirl-deactivated20220303]

the space race may be the funniest point in history period and i'll stand by that. the US is like "yes whoever gets into space first will prove once and for all that our economic model is superior and that we are, in general, the superior country of superior and smarter people." then the soviets just went and did it and the US freaked out and needed to cover their ass so were like "WE MEAN THE MOON, WE MEAN THE FIRST TO LAND ON THE MOON."

[fanderburker]

[skluug]

yeah its cus walking on the moon was cool as hell and all this other boring shit sucked ass

[togglesbloggle]

When I was a freshman in a red-state college, I had a professor who taught Newtonian physics with a super thick Russian accent.  The student body was unusually conservative for a state college, so there was a sort of general bemusement about learning physics from a Russian, but even back then the Cold War was far enough in the past that not even the red tribe was inclined to stir up trouble about it.

He was aware enough of this to get off on trolling the class, though.  Whenever some force diagram in a homework assignment needed to be weightless, instead of being some generic spacecraft it would be “Mir” specifically.  And he’d always use ‘cosmonaut’ instead of ‘astronaut’, that kind of thing.

One day about halfway through the semester, he’s doing this with in-class examples on the board, and one of the students finally gets up the guts to troll back a little.  So this kid shouts from the back of the auditorium, “Hey professor, what’s the difference between a cosmonaut and an astronaut?”

And this beautiful man spins around on one heel to face the class, whiteboard marker triumphantly over his head, clearly having been waiting for this moment the entire semester: “Cosmonaut go to space first! Ha!”

[biokitty]

I had a patient come in the other day because she wanted her IUD replaced. It was at the end of it's life and she loved having her IUD, this was her second one. My MA let me know that the patient was very anxious about getting the IUD replaced, she'd had painful experiences in the past with her other replacements and was dreading this visit for that reason.

I spoke with the patient and she was literally shaking with anxiety. I asked her to describe her prior experiences as well as what she liked about her IUD and what she didn't like. She said that she wished she didn't have to get it replaced so often, so I recommended we place a Mirena instead of just inserting a new Kyleena IUD. She was nervous about this because she didn't want an IUD that was big. I explained that the Mirena and Kyleena are essentially the same size but the Mirena lasts 3 years longer and would likely bridge her to menopause given her age whereas with the Kyleena she'd probably need another replacement to get there. She was okay with trying the Mirena.

I then talked to her about pain control during the procedure as this was what she was most worried about. I asked about her prior experiences and then laid out what I wanted to do to try and improve her experience during this procedure. I told her I planned to give her prescription strength ibuprofen, a heating pad, and a very dense anesthetic block in her cervix to hopefully make it a better experience. If she had had someone to drive her home I would've also given her an ativan because we have studies that show patients who report higher rates of anxiety surrounding a procedure also report higher rates of pain associated with it.

She was down for this plan. I gave her a very dense block, she only felt three small injections and then nothing else. She was shocked when I told her that her old IUD was out and the new one was in. She didn't believe me when I told her it was over.

I don't tell this story because I wanna brag about how amazing of a doctor I am because I'm not. I tell this story because this is the way IUD insertions SHOULD go and I want people to know that IUD insertions do not need to be traumatic. And I want other providers who may insert IUDs to know that a paracervical block should be your standard when it comes to IUD insertions.

When people find out I'm an OBGYN, complete strangers, acquaintances, etc. , the two things they like to tell me immediately are their horrible birth trauma story and their terrible IUD insertion story and I'm trying to at least make the latter one a little less common.

If you place IUDs and aren't doing a cervical block, you need to start. This should be the standard but over 90% of OBGYNs in the US aren't doing them and it's unacceptable. We are traumatizing people and it's entirely avoidable. We are scaring people away from one of the most effective and long lasting forms of birth control in a time when people are losing their ability to end unwanted pregnancies all for no justifiable reason.

"It takes too long:" No it doesn't, that visit took me 20 minutes with a highly anxious patient from start to finish.

"It's not worth it for such a short/small procedure." It's worth it for the patient.

"It's too expensive." You can do a paracervical block with just normal saline. You don't even need lidocaine if you use a generous amount of volume. And if you place Nexplanons I know you stock lidocaine in your office, stop being fucking cheap at the expense of women's pain.

"Patient's don't need it, they'll get over it." I'm telling you they do need it and they aren't getting over it as evidenced by literally everyone wanting to tell me about their terrible IUD insertion experience as soon as they find out I'm an OBGYN.

We should do better. The cervix has nerve endings, stop acting like it doesn't.

Make cervical blocks your standard of care, there's no excuse not to.

[hawthorn-and-ivy]

My buddy does EMLA before the cervical block, that seems to help reduce pain even further.