like the betrayalâs always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didnât matter. someone discards you because they didnât give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say âI love you. I would make the same choice again.â You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.
âI thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.â <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.
âI thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldnât.â <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
New free pattern from me: Juicy Gossip Hexagon! Full pattern on my blog or grab the PDF from my Ravelry shop! Both links are in my bio! đ đđ«¶
â â â â â â â â â â Thanks for visiting my page! Here is a new free pattern from me! My Juicy Gossip Hexagon pattern is so pretty and easy t
As always, I will explain what materials you will need for this pattern. I will explain every stitch you will need to make this item, with
Juicy Gossip Hexagon â Beginner Crochet pattern by crochetmelovely. Interactive digital Crochet pattern with progress tracking on Ribblr. Cr
â â â â â â â â â â PATTERN CATEGORIES: Check out all of my free Blanket Patterns here! Check out all of my free Motif Patterns here! (Gran
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Martina McBride didn't win Country Music Association Song of the Year for a song about how burning your house down with your abusive husband still inside it is good, noble, and an allegory for the American Revolution for people to act like the genre belongs to bootlicking fucks
how the hell did I leave Morgan Wade off this list. wrote a song about being depressed, alcoholic, and suicidal and how mental illness stigma sucks, saw how much people connected with it, wrote a Part II of that song about how she's doing better now but you're never totally free of the risk of relapse. fucking icon.
I specifically curated this list so people couldn't be like "ah yes but you see here is my simple binary of good and bad country music which always works", I made sure to add different genders, eras, subgenres, etc and y'all are still pulling that shit in the tags!
listen. Alan Jackson, the archetypal mister big hat man sitting on a tractor singing about a pickup truck, wrote a shockingly normal song about 9/11 that was like "yeah I don't know jack shit about politics but my copy of the bible says we're supposed to love everyone" and then went on the radio and explained how he specifically wanted to write a song about that day that "wasn't vengeful". Miranda Lambert took the southern leftist slogan "y'all means all" and made it the title of a corny ass pop-country song for the Queer Eye soundtrack. Kenny Chesney stole a horse from a cop and Tim McGraw put the cop in a chokehold defending him, and I know that's not about their music but it is, and this is very important, fucking sick as hell
it's fine if you only listen to female country artists or pre-1990 country artists or whatever the fuck you want but stop acting like you've cracked the secret code to dividing a whole genre of art into good pure anti-establishment folk songs vs bad corrupted right-wing sellout pulp
Luke Combs covering Fast Car and keeping the line "I work in the market as a checkout girl" and doing an interview about how he couldn't change a single word because it's not his story. king shit
Morgan Wallen doing I Had Some Help, literally the first song that spoke to me as a male survivor of domestic abuse. also shoutout to the guy for getting caught saying a racial slur and responding by specifically telling his fans not to defend him and raising a bunch of money for the Black Music Action Coalition. bro had an engraved invitation to the culture war and said "nah I'd rather be normal"
Shaboozey just absolutely obliterating the drunk roadhouse anthem glass ceiling
Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne with a song that okay, released in 2019 but I didn't hear until recently, about how good friends mind their own business and let you love whoever you want and also get high with you when you're broke
Kimberley Perry! If I Die Young Part 2!! "actually I'm glad I lived, bitch" ass song that I bet is gonna mean a LOT to kids fighting depression
Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan with Cowboys Cry Too. okay it's shallow and corny but genuinely a shallow and corny song about how men shouldn't be afraid to have feelings is what a lot of men need
But literally this is why I can't let go of my love for the genre. There is so much country can say, has said, that is accepting and deep and hopeful. Unfortunately, what mostly gets played (at least on the stations by me) is the shallow, the bigoted, 'beers trucks and hot chicks' for guys and 'i love God and my husband' for gals. I miss, so much, how angry country music used to be at the system. And there are still artists who do that! But now, with few exceptions, what comes to the top is what doesn't make waves. And I think that's antithetical to the core of country music.
Pondering Armand's speech to Daniel in San Francisco. In the moment it seems quite eerie but also strangely tender. We know the actual context: heâs posing as Death itself, painting Daniel as the one longing for oblivion, for rest, for an end. Itâs manipulative. Itâs not framed romantically in the scene itself.
But if you know where those two are supposed to end up, the whole thing starts feeling deeply soulmate-coded in a very gothic, meta kind of way.
âRest. Iâm the quiet youâve been longing for.â
It starts sounding less like âdieâ and more like: your soul has been restless all your life, looking for its other half, and now that youâve found it, you can finally rest.
âIâve been calling to you for some time.â
Armand has spent centuries lonely, searching for someone who could truly see him, someone he could love and be loved by in return. And now that person is finally here. He can rest too.
âFrom every bad fix, from the unnamed malaise you feel Sunday afternoons.â
Daniel is always portrayed by the narrative as restless. Always searching, moving, chasing something, unable to settle. And under a soulmate frame, Armand is positioned as the answer to that ache. Like without him Daniel feels incomplete, vaguely unwell, pulled toward something he canât name.
âAnd now here I am and you can rest.â
Again, it becomes less about death and more about completion. Everything is turmoil when they are apart, constant motion, constant loneliness, and now theyâve finally found each other.
And when we ask, âWhat were the first words of the ancient vampire to the future love of his life?â and realize the answer is actually âRest,â the entire speech suddenly changes under a more meta, all-knowing lens.
Because yes, in the moment, itâs eerie, predatory, manipulative. Armand is essentially saying: âYou wish for death and I can give it to you.â But retrospectively, it feels prophetic. Tacit foreshadowing. Like what heâs actually saying is: âYou can stop searching now that youâve found me,â and he doesnât even know it.
It reminds me of those soulmate myths where two people are basically one soul split apart, condemned to wander in agony until they finally find each other and become whole again. Armand's horrifying, deathly trance transforms, unknowingly, into a romantic prophecy said out loud when viewed through the lens of knowing where their story is headed.
For training, he started out by comparing flat racing and endurance - a flat racer's career is usually over by age 4, while an endurance horse only starts at 5, and, if ridden and trained with an eye to longevity, may retire in its late teens. Speeds and distances are hugely different as well, with flat racers averaging 55-60 kph and attaining maximum speeds of 70 kph over distances of between 1000 and 3000 m, while endurance horses have a mean speed of 15-25 kph over rides ranging from 40 to 160 km in a day, and (ideally) maximum speeds of 35 kph, if you want to pulse down and finish sound.
Throughout the training presentation, he kept reminding us that the horse cannot speak and that riders and trainers must continually evaluate their training and management and be prepared to adapt it to the horse.
As for muscles, there are three types of muscle fibres, Types I, IIA and IIX. Type I muscle fibres are slow-contracting, small in diameter, and low in force, with a high oxidative capacity and resistance to fatigue. These are the muscles which dominate in endurance athletes. Type IIX muscle fibres contract very fast, are large and generate a lot of power, but fatigue quickly and have a low oxidative capacity. Quarter horses and racing Thoroughbreds have a high proportion of these muscle fibres. As for Type IIA, apparently Arab horses have more of these than other breeds. These are fast-contracting, medium in size and produce a moderate amount of force, with moderate resistance to fatigue, but a high oxidative capacity.
Endurance training converts Type IIA muscle fibres into Type I. It will also increase the mitochondria, and improve the aerobic, oxidative and enzymatic capacities of the horse. Different training styles select for the production of different antioxidant enzymes, which protect muscle cells from exercise-induced oxidative damage. So endurance training results in an increase of one set of antioxidant enzymes, while high intensity interval training and resistance training increase the production of different enzymes.
Endurance training also increases energy substrate reserves (fats and carbohydrates). Essentially, long-distance rides deplete these reserves, which stress stimulates the metabolism to produce more reserves in anticipation of another endurance effort, making the horse metabolically more efficient over time.
The first phase of training a horse for endurance involves lots of long, slow distance so that its system adapts to travelling significant distances. Power and resistance training form the second phase, with the goals being to increase the heart rate, encourage faster lactate recycling and develop a better ability to tolerate the lower pH that comes from lactic acid accumulating in the muscles during exercise.
In endurance competition, horses will be working in a mix of anaerobic and aerobic zones, so it is important to raise the anaerobic threshold through training, as the longer it takes to reach the anaerobic threshold, the longer the athlete can delay metabolic acidosis, i.e. the build-up of lactic acid as a result of the body switching to the anaerobic zone.
Musculoskeletal adaptations: ligaments and tendons
Tendons are affected by exercise as well, with horses that have access to pasture turnout having larger superficial digital flexor tendons than horses kept in stalls. Collagen fibres also increase in size with exercise, as do the number of small-diameter fibres in the periphery and centre of the tendons. In horses which are exercised regularly, the space between the fibres making up the tendons decreases as well.
Conditioning tendons to withstand the demands of endurance takes at least eighteen months. (I think. My notes are unclear, sorry.)
When ligaments and tendons are injured, the collagen fibres do not return to normal afterwards, and the scar tissue means that the site of the injury is weakened. This puts increased strain on the area around the former injury, and so reinjury to the tendon happens near the scar.
Cardiac function
Endurance training seeks to increase the volume of the heart, its wall thickness and its output, while decreasing heart rate variability at rest. Sustained exertion over long distance increases the size of the cardiac chamber, while power training increases the thickness of the heart wall. Larger hearts are associated with elite performance at the 160 km distance in endurance horses.
Improved cardiac function also changes the anaerobic threshold, allowing the horse to sustain higher intensity effort for longer.
Digestion
Exercise, and the type of exercise, changes the number and diversity of the microbiota of the digestive system. There is also a difference between the microbiomes of horses which perform well and horses which perform poorly.
It is important that endurance horses develop the ability to preferentially use fatty acids rather than glucose as fuel, as this makes it possible for them to keep going for longer. The microbiomes of horses competing in the truly long distance rides are better at producing fatty acids as well.
This was of interest to me, not only because Abba is clearly excellent at producing fat, but also because I have a paper stashed away somewhere that found that Arabian horses metabolise fat differently from other breeds; unfortunately it takes me hours to find it to check it each time I want it, but my recollection was that they store fat in a way that makes it more accessible as an energy source when exercising.
Thermoregulation
Fit horses regulate their body temperature more efficiently: they start sweating sooner, and their sweat is less concentrated. Unfit or dehydrated horses tend to lather, as their blood is more concentrated, while endurance training results in more water and thus higher plasma levels in the blood. When dehydration stress is induced (carefully) in training, the horse's metabolism reacts by storing more water in the cecum and the blood, to stave off dehydration in future.
Testing a horse's haematocrit (volume of red blood cells) at the start of the season and again during the season is one way to measure fitness. When the endurance season begins, a horse will typically have a haematocrit of 40-45, but as the season and training progress, the red blood cell count will drop due to the increased volume of plasma, and a fit endurance horse may have a haematocrit of 28-30.
Overtraining
Training, in general, should encourage the horse's body to adapt to physical stress. In order to do this, not only do you have to work the horse appropriately hard, and fatigue it, but you also have to rest the horse, in order to improve its functional capacity over time. However, if a horse is overworked and given insufficient rest, it will lose weight and its performance will decline over time, falling below the level at which it entered training. Some endurance stables try to counter this by using medications both legal and illegal; this often results in catastrophic breakdowns for the horses.
Conclusion
In sum, exercise affects all bodily systems. Training must be slow and progressive, and designed to enable the horse to adapt to the sport. Recovery periods are vital. Throughout it all, the trainer must evaluate the effect of training on the horse, to ensure their approach remains balanced, as the horse cannot speak and its welfare is paramount.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Cottin, F. et al.. 2010. 'Oxygen consumption and gait variables of Arabian endurance horses measured during a ïŹeld exercise test'. Equine Vet. J. 42 (s38):98-104. doi: 10.1111/j.2042-3306.2010.00184.x
Firth, Elwyn. 2006. 'The response of bone, articular cartilage and tendon to exercise in the horse'. J. Anat. 208:513-526. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7580.2006.00547.x
van der Kolk J.H., et al.. 2020. 'Serum acylcarnitine profile in endurance horses with and without metabolic dysfunction'. Vet J. 255:105419. doi: 10.1016/j.tvjl.2019.105419
Mach, NĂșria, et al.. 2022. 'Mining the equine gut metagenome: poorly-characterized taxa associated with cardiovascular fitness in endurance athletes'. Commun. Biol. 5: 1032. doi: 10.1038/s42003-022-03977-7
MyÄka, Grzegorz, et al.. 2024. 'Molecular insights into the lipid-carbohydrates metabolism switch under the endurance effort in Arabian horses'. Equine Vet. J. 56(3):586-597. doi: 10.1111/evj.13984
Park, T., et al.. 2024. 'Comparison of the fecal microbiota with high- and low-performance race horses'. J. Anim. Sci. Technol. 66(2):425-437. doi: 10.5187/jast.2023.e45
Powers, Scott K., et al.. 2023. 'Exercise Training and Skeletal Muscle Antioxidant Enzymes: An Update'. Antioxidants (Basel) 12:39. doi:Â 10.3390/antiox12010039
Robergs, Robert A., et al.. 2004. 'Biochemistry of exercise-induced metabolic acidosis'. Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol. 287:R502-R516. doi: 10.1152/ajpregu.00114.2004
Robert, C., et al.. 2010. 'Hydration and electrolyte balance in horses during an endurance season'. Equine Vet. J. 42 (s38):98-104. doi: 10.1111/j.2042-3306.2010.00198.x
Sleeper, Meg M., et al.. 2014. 'Comparison of echocardiographic measurements in elite and non-elite Arabian endurance horses'. AJVR 75:893-898. doi: 10.2460/ajvr.75.10.893
Trachsel, D.S., et al.. 2016. 'Relationships between body dimensions, body weight, age, gender, breed and echocardiographic dimensions in young endurance horses'. BMC Vet Res 12 (226) doi: 10.1186/s12917-016-0846-x
Whitton, R. C., et al.. 2013. âExercise-induced inhibition of remodelling is focally offset with fatigue fracture in racehorsesâ. Osteoporosis Int. 24:2043-2048. doi: 10.1007/s00198-013-2291-z
New video tutorial up on my YouTube channel on the crochet Horizontal Drops Stitch! Find me on youtube @crochetmelovely! Like and subscribe! đđđ
â â â â â â â â â â https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayb1jmsREzw  â â â â â â â â â â  Thanks for visiting my page! Here is my newest vide
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