People are like “these animals have exoskeletons and these ones have endoskeletons” but no. It’s all exoskeletons, your exoskeleton is protecting your bone marrow which is where your soul (which is you) is. The rest of the stuff is extraneous decoration that Big Pharma wants you to think is important/
Why do you think there’s so few ghosts around? Why are most ghosts people who died violently? You gotta crack the bones to let the soul out. Most souls are trapped alone in the dark and silent ground (or teaching hospitals) for hundreds or thousands of years until the bones eventually start to break. People who are cremated get their whole soul released and it can reincarnate. But if someone dies violently then maybe only a couple of their bones are cracked and a little scrap of the soul escapes but it’s incomplete and confused. Can’t figure out how to leave, gets obsessed with its own circumstances, repeats actions, CANNOT be reasoned with. PROOF that the soul is in the marrow.
Sin is stored in the teeth btw which is why young children are innocent (they’ll get a do-over with replacement teeth) and the elderly are shameless (once you have no teeth to remember your sins, you have nothing to fear).
I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only
BARELY
enough space for the fireworks
and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand.
This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins,
and this is crucial to what happens next,
by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it
unsecured
on his lawn.
Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.
His process for unloading the fireworks is to
1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls.
2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile
He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things.
3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed
4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup.
5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her.
6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house.
7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too.
8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate
9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed
10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.
Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man?
Answer: Absolutely Not.
There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else.
(This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual)
Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally.
Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.
I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.
However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up.
and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop"
And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."
For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."
I move under the eaves.
"Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not."
"Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."
Sometimes,
the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.
The Gods were not merciful today.
It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this,
But I got to see it today.
Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before.
Oh. I realized as it got closer.
That's RAIN.
Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say,
five to tent square miles,
is instead concentrated into an area of say,
my neighborhood exactly.
So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.
The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel.
Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge.
Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.
My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp.
They do not have a tarp.
They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.
Which is when the hail begins.
"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy.
"HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!"
"OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"
I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic.
The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor.
Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.
So.
I was raised Agnostic
-but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.
---
(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)
If you think about it your grandparents talking to the cashier isn’t actually weird and in the grand scheme of things we’re the weird ones for being afraid to talk to strangers. Like obviously if someone doesn’t wanna talk don’t talk to them. But I’ve made a point recently of giving cashiers and strangers openings to talk to me if they want like saying how’s business today or how long have you owned this shop, or asking how’s things, or commenting generally how hot it is today. Things people can ignore if they want or comment on if they want.
And honestly I think it’s made my life a bit richer. I’m still terrified. I’m still scared of people because anxiety is a hard thing to fight. But it’s just nice to connect with strangers actually. Chatting with the Uber driver about his engineering degree hes getting, learning about the history of a glass shop I visited, chatting with a stranger about his escape from a war zone, telling people I’ll never see again about my dreams I know are unlikely but I’m pursuing anyways, connecting even briefly with other coffee lovers, cat people, babysitters, and wine haters. I almost never see these people again but they make my life way more fun when they take my invitation or I take theirs.
Maybe we do need to talk to other people instead of being on our phones sometimes actually. Not forcefully. And time alone on your phone is a right you have. A good thing in its own right. But you don’t have to be isolated either. It’s nice sometimes to chat with the old lady in line at the grocery store. And she’s not weird for giving you that option.
I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with random strangers. I've met some truly delightful people in line for this or that thing, or on the other side of a checkout counter.
The interactions aren't usually long, and they usually start with a sincere compliment (from me to them, there is no better way to brighten someone's day) or a comment about our current shared experiences.
As OP said, sometimes they respond and we chat, and sometimes they smile and ignore me, but it's always interesting to see which.
And, as an added bonus, it makes going up to people to talk to them when I do need something (help in a store, directions, etc.) that much easier.
It is almost five centuries ago, and the girl who will one day be a swordswoman is lying in the red-tinged mud. She can't get up—broken bone? severed tendon? She can't tell. She's yet to cultivate her palate for pain. Her enemy towers over her, a cataphract mailed in screaming steel and poisoned light. His warhammer falls, and it is death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable.
"No," says a part of her. She is not even seventeen years old. Her body is mangled and broken, wound piled upon wound piled upon wound. A dull kitchen knife is her only weapon, though she lost that in the mud the second her grip faltered. Her enemy is no thing of this earth. And yet—
"No. It is not death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable. It is only a hammer, falling. It is only 'an attack.'"
And the girl understood.
~~~
It is the better part of three centuries ago, as best the swordswoman can reckon, and she is beset on all sides by foes. They are not monsters—just mountain bandits, or highland rebels, as one cares to see it. But they outnumber her by dozens, and even an exceptional swordswoman might struggle against but two opponents of lesser skill.
From in front of her, beside her, behind her they advance, striking from every angle with spears and blades and axes. Others fill the air with arrows, sling stones, firepots. It would be effortless, to parry any single blow. It would be impossible, physically impossible, to defend against them all.
"No," says a part of her.
"You are not outnumbered. You do not face 'multiple' foes. It would be impossible to defend against every attack — but there is no 'every' attack. Only one."
"Oh," the swordswoman said. And it was, in fact, effortless.
~~~
It is eighty years ago, or thereabouts. A coiling spire of stony flesh and verdigrised copper throbs like a tumor on the horizon, coaxed from the earth by spell and sacrifice. It is the tower of a sorcerer-prince, and a birthing place of abominations.
Seven locks of rune-etched metal are opened with her single key. Wretched shapeling beasts, grown by sorcery in vitreous nodules, flee wailing from her, absconding before she even draws her blade. Demons sworn to thousand-year pacts of service find the binding provisions of their agreements unexpectedly severed.
These things dissatisfy the sorcerer-prince. He waxes wroth. He makes signs of power and chants incantations. With a flask of godling's blood, he draws the binding sigil inscribed upon the moon's dark face. With cold fire burning in his eyes, he speaks the secret name of Death. It is a king among curses, all-corrupting, all-consuming, and it falls from his lips upon the swordswoman.
"No," she says, and she turns it aside with her blade.
The sorcerer-prince's brow furrows. How did she even do that?
"Parried it."
But—
"With my sword."
No—
"See, like this."
Stop—
"Well," the swordswoman finally says, "I figured that if I just...looked at it right, and thought about it, and construed your curse as a kind of attack...then I could block it."
That's not how it works at all!
"If you insist," says the swordswoman, shrugging, and decapitates him.
~~~
It is now. It is the end. Death couldn't take the swordswoman, not when she'd spent all her life cutting it up. At times, Death might sidle up to one of her friends, or peer down into a grandchild's crib, and she'd just give it a look. That's all it took, by then.
Heartache couldn't take her, either. Bad things happened to her, and they hurt, and she lived in that hurt, but if it was ever more than she could take...she'd just, move her sword in a way that's difficult to describe. And she'd keep going.
Kingdoms fell, and she kept going. Continents crumbled and sank into the sea. Her planet's star faded and froze. She started carrying a lantern. Universes were torn apart and scattered, until all that had been matter was redistributed in thermodynamic equilibrium. With one exception.
But now it is the end. There is no time left; time is already dead. The swordswoman has outlived reality, but there is simply no further she can go. This is not a thing that can be blocked. This is the absence of anything further to block.
"No," says the girl who will one day be a swordswoman. "This isn't the ending. And even if it was, it's not the ending that matters."
The swordswoman looks back at who she was, at the countless selves she's been between them. She looks forward, at the rapidly contracting point that remains of the future. She grasps the all of linear time in her mind, and sees that it is shaped like a spear.
I just played a video game called Vale: Shadow of the Crown. It has a blind protagonist and is 100% navigated by audio. You need headphones to play it. I was intrigued by the premise, but worried that it would be a gimmick that wouldn’t actually hold up well.
Turns out it worked just fine and I found myself really sucked in! I even turned off all the lights and played much of the game with my eyes closed. Though there were a few difficult sections (for me, using the bow was hard), it was mostly pretty intuitive. Honestly, the biggest problem was getting sleepy after a while, because as far as my body is concerned, if I spend that much time with my eyes closed, it’s bed time.
Anyway, it was a neat story with good voice acting and I actually really enjoyed the combat sections. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a novel gaming experience, as well as to anyone who has impaired vision.
A couple job interview hacks from someone who has to give a job interview every single goddamn day: (disclaimer: this goes for my process and my company’s process, other companies and industries might be different)
1. There are a few things I check and a few questions I ask literally just to figure out if you can play the game and get along with others in a professional setting. Part of the job I interview for is talking to people, and we work in teams. So if you can’t “play the game” a tiny bit, it’s not going to work. Playing the game includes:
- Why do you want to work here? (just prove that you googled the company, tell me like 1 thing about us, I just want to know that you did SOME kind of preparation for this interview)
- Are you wearing professional clothing? I don’t need a suit just don’t show up in a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants.
- Are you able to speak respectfully and without dropping f-bombs all the time? Not because I’m offended but because I don’t want to be reported to HR if you wind up on my team.
- Can you follow simple directions in an interview?
2. Stop telling me protected information. I don’t want to know about what drugs or medications you’re on, I don’t want to know about you being sick, I don’t want to know if you’re planning to have children soon, I don’t want to know anything about your personal life other than “can you do the job?”
3. When we ask, “What questions do you have for me?” here are my favorites I’ve heard:
- What does the day-to-day look like for a member of your team?
- If one of your team members was not performing up to his usual standard, what steps would you take to correct that?
- What can I start doing now to accelerate my learning process in this job?
- What are some reservations you have about me as a candidate? (be ready for this emotionally….it will REALLY help you in the future, and I’ve had people save themselves from a No after this, but can be hard to hear)
- In your opinion, what skills and qualities does the ideal candidate for this job possess?
- What advice would you give to a new hire in this position/someone who wanted to break into this industry, as someone who has worked here for a while?
Those are just my tips off-the-cuff. I work in sales in marketing/SAAS, so these can be very different depending on the industry, but I wish the people I interview could read this before they show up.
“either take off your cross or put on your underwear” (ukrainian) to say that you can’t have both things at once is my favorite expression to ever exist in any language. i needed to put this out into the world so bad, im finally free.
my blog is, and always will be, a safe place for people who are not confident in their english speaking abilities. you will never be judged or mocked here.
1) Your English is probably better than you think it is. I’ve read many posts that ended with something along the lines of “sorry for my bad English” and was surprised because it was worded exactly the way a native English speaker would word it.
2) The main purpose of language is to communicate. Even if communication is a little awkward, as long as we can understand what the other person is trying to say, there’s no need for it to be perfect.
3) You speak English better than I can speak your language.
5) Being able to speak a second language at all is a huge achievement and something most of the people ragging on “bad English” are incapable of themselves. You’re doing great.
7) I genuinely and unapologetically love everything that makes your language different from English, and the only way I can discover those things is if you talk to me
8) Infodumping about words and grammar and why we say things in this way is one of my favorite things ever, and if you ask me, I get to explain
9) When you ask about things in English that don’t make sense, it forces me to notice that they don’t make sense, which is much more fun than going my entire life not noticing the absurdities of human communication
I love that Aral and Cordelia Vorkosigan look from a distance like some flawless immensely competent power couple when like
They are ENTIRELY a HotMess4HotMess relationship
He saw her puking her guts out in the middle of a disaster and thought, "I'm going to marry that woman someday."
She got a cheering crowd and a fancy medal for her bravery and stole the mic to tell everyone to get his name out of their ill-informed mouths
The bedrock of their marriage is their separate and combined willingness to look the possibility of utter failure in the eye and say, "Might as well try anyway."
This is. So. Incredibly. Accurate. If you start with Warrior's Apprentice then you primarily see them after they have embraced their hot-mess-ness and decided to work with it, and therefore it's easy for it to pass under the radar, but reading Shards of Honor or Barrayar, it's much more obvious: Aral and his incredibly slow and painful suicide by alcohol ... Cordelia's decision to drown her therapist on her way to convincing a pilot that he needs to assist her emigration (but that she can't explain her slippers because it's "classified")...
... these people are not hinged. And yet --
"I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is ... the higher achievement." She gave him a crooked smile. "It should give you hope, eh?"
"Huh. Block me from escape, you mean. Are you saying that no matter how much of a 𝕙𝕠𝕥 𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤 I was, you'd still expect me to work wonders?" Appalling.
She considered this. "Yes," she said serenely. "In fact, since 𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕪𝕠𝕟𝕖'𝕤 𝕒 𝕙𝕠𝕥 𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤 it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of 𝕒 𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕙𝕠𝕥-𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤-𝕟𝕖𝕤𝕤. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same
(Mirror Dance, chapter 16)
-- and yet they are an immensely competent power couple. Compare the Barrayar where Kou is barely considered worthy of life, much less eligible to consider courting a civil-servant bodyguard ... to the Barrayar where that civil-servant bodyguard is considered an acceptable substitute for Lady Alys Vorpatril at Official Imperial Functions, and Kou is considered the lucky father of the four most eligible non-Vor maidens on the planet.
Compare Ezar's reign to Gregor's expectations, Serg's goals to Gregor's.
Compare Komarr's status in Galen's day to Galeni's position in ImpSec.
These people Get Shit Done. And they get it done not despite being a hot mess. They get shit done by being a hot mess.
"Well. For your fourth consoling thought, I would point out that in this venue," a wave of his finger took in Vorbarr Sultana, and by extension Barrayar, "acquiring a reputation as a 𝕙𝕠𝕥 𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤 who would kill without compunction to obtain and protect his own, is not all bad. In fact, you might even find it useful."
"Useful! Have you found the name of 𝕓𝕖𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕒 𝕙𝕠𝕥 𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤 a handy prop, then, sir?" Miles said indignantly.
His father's eyes narrowed, partly in grim amusement, partly in appreciation. "I've found it a mixed... damnation. But yes, I have used the weight of that reputation, from time to time, to lean on certain susceptible men. Why not, I paid for it."
(Civil Campaign, chapter 15)
So yes, absolutely: the bedrock of their marriage, their careers, and their success is a combined and separate refusal to give the slightest damn about whether they're going to succeed wildly or be utterly humiliated.
"I've always thought -- tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.... If you think it's really wrong," said Cordelia to Vorkosigan, "that's one thing. Maybe that's the test. But if it's only fear of failure -- you have not the right to refuse the gift for that."
"It's an impossible job."
"That happens, sometimes." (Barrayar, Chapter 15)
And you know what? It's fabulous. Mark could not possibly have asked for a better landing place than a family that is 100% made of hot messes and doesn't judge how messy you are, only what you choose to do with your mess. What kind of depressive disaster would Kou have turned into, how much worse a monster would Bothari have been, if they hadn't had an in-house demonstration team of Seven Habits of Highly Effective Hot Messes? How absolutely perfect is it that when Gregor confessed his fears of being genetically destined to become a hot mess, Cordelia could say, with absolute honesty, "Everyone's a hot mess; let's get you some ethical principles and compatible goals."
I love heroism, I love paragons, I love stories that give me this unreachable ideal to try to follow. But I can't measure myself against fairytale princesses and pure-of-heart superheroes. I am not the One True King, to behave correctly at all times and never be tempted to the path of selfishness; I am a person. I am very often a hot mess. What advice, what hope, for someone like that?
And Bujold says, "All the hope in the world. Look what a disaster battle couple can do, if only they accept their shortcomings and decide to push on anyway."
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
But there's no way Nate should know those things. No way the client could have told him, no way he could've figured it out on his own. Not when these things were nothing more than fleeting thoughts from the mark. But Sophie notices him quietly go for the scotch behind the counter and rub at his head in pain with extra vehemence some days despite the latest con having no personal connection to him.
They don't talk about it.
But someone should've recognized Sophie on that con. There's no way she could have that many characters per con. No way none of those diplomats didn't recognize her from any of her previous cons. Not when she didn't change any more than her clothes and accent. But Nate notices her features seem to flicker at the peace and safety of home when she thinks he isn't watching.
They don't talk about it.
But no one could've survived that. And certainly not looking the way he does. There's no way he didn't come out of that fight broken and bloodied to all hell. Not when instead he walks out with a purposeful stride and only a clenched jaw, rolling his shoulders. But when he's cooking and accidentally burns himself, Parker notices the unmarked skin left behind.
They don't talk about it.
But not all vents are human sized. They all saw the size of the vent cover as she exists with a grin. There's no way she could've fit in there. Not when the human body can't bend that way, a way that even the greatest contortionist can't bend. But some days Hardison notices as she seems to stretch and bend before his eyes when she's feeling relaxed and safe enough.
They don't talk about it.
But that's not how computers work. There's no way Hardison could access that kind of thing. Not when he describes how he did it like that. Not when he does it so quickly like that. Not when he says he's taken berries and the next thing they know he's recreated a colonial era journal to perfection. But Eliot swore he shoved a glass of water at him, not more goddamn orange soda.
They don't talk about it, the thing lingering over their heads as they conduct each con, the unacknowledged thing between the five of them that's a little deeper than just a desire to take down the rich and powerful.
They aren't perfect, they all know that- sometimes they're too good with their covers, sometimes they have to shift gears as the con unfolds before them, but somehow things always seem to work out.
Look, with very few exceptions no one sets out with the intention of being a shitty abusive parent. A lot of shitty parents think they're doing it right. A lot of shitty parents think they're doing their best. A lot of shitty parents think that abusive shit they do is not really abusive and for the greater good of their child.
A lot of shitty parents love their kids, and would die for them, but they can still be abusive and shitty parents because they do shit they learned from their parents and don't pause a moment to think they may be doing it wrong because "I love my kid, abusive parents don't love their kids, so I can't be an Abusive Parent, not me, I'm good". A lot of shitty parents have their good moments, their good sides, and their kids can love them for it and then be doubly hurt when the good moment ends and things are shitty again.
Shitty parents are complicated people, the kids they raise are complicated people, and human relationships as a whole are a complex hot mess. There is not one right or wrong way to respond to abuse or choose how to handle the relationship to a shitty parent. No we don't wanna hear how you'd personally handle it in our shoes. You're not in our shoes. STFU.
BTW this is not some weird defense of shitty and abusive parents but for Christ's sake, this attitude that Shitty Parents - either real or fictional - are monsters out of a scary story who are contractually obliged to be shitty 100% of the time, all around, in every aspect of their lives, is actually harmful. It's untrue. It's stupid. It will lead kids of Shitty Parents to think that well, THEIR parents are not 100% evil and dastardly all the time, therefore they're not Actually Abusive, I must be exaggerating.
Shitty parents are not old school Disney villains breaking into song about how they love to do evil deeds to hurt their own children. They're people. Learn to tell the two things apart, for fuck's sake.
Today in "I understand why it happens but it's still frustrating"
I've been looking into topical magnesium, more commonly known as an "epsom salt bath". And, like, on the one hand, "alternative medicine" is a great source of ideas for treating medical conditions, and basically every single existing non-alternative medicine has been the result of doing some science on "alternative medicine" techniques. And on the other hand, the placebo effect is both strong and very real, and humans are terrible at understanding randomness, which is why we even invented science. You really do gotta check, you always gotta check. AND, back on the first hand, humans are eerily good at finding patterns, to the point where there probably ought to be a Humans Are Space Orcs story about it, and a lot of humans, whose conceptions of reality have been put through some pretty intensive stress testing, believe that epsom salt baths work. AND, on the second hand, we invented science, we have science, we ought to use science.
So anyway, several studies have looked into whether topical magnesium has any effect, and in 2017 someone went through and did a meta-analysis of it, and admittedly some of the studies were insufficient to draw any conclusions from them, but still, none of them showed any kind of evidence that there was enough happening here that it was worth looking into further. Since (despite our best efforts) you can't test everything, it makes sense to prioritize doing real amounts of research on things that are showing promise in the initial trials.
EXCEPT
none of those studies, nor the meta analyses, acknowledge that (quoting directly from the National Institute of Health)
Assessing magnesium status is difficult because most magnesium is inside cells or in bone. The most commonly used and readily available method for assessing magnesium status is measurement of serum magnesium concentration, even though serum levels have little correlation with total body magnesium levels or concentrations in specific tissues
[https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/, accessed 2023-03-28]
All of them checked whether topical magnesium influenced the amount of magnesium in the blood. And it does not. But that result is entirely consistent with the expected result if topical magnesium is absorbed into the skin: if your soft tissues, which hold 39-49% of your magnesium, are deficient, then you would expect it to stay in the nearest tissues, and not make it to the blood.
Which is not to say that this proves epsom salt baths work: this is the same result you'd expect if they don't work at all. Which is to say, the experiment would be expected to have the same result regardless of whether the hypothesis was accurate or not, which is to say, this was bad science. It tells us absolutely nothing. And it's especially frustrating because an experiment to test the actual claim would have been quite a bit easier -- measuring range of motion and muscle pliability is much cheaper than taking blood samples. A double-blind, randomized controlled trial would have been actually quite straightforward to carry out.
All of which is to say, I'm kinda thinking about buying 100 lbs of magnesium sulfide and finding myself some test subjects
An Evening (wasted) With Tom Lehrer:
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Revisited:
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That Was The Year That Was:
str
Fearing such hits as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “National Brotherhood Week,” “The Masochism Tango,” “The Element Song,” “Be Prepared,” and “Lobachevsky”
Tom Lehrer is amazing. I was well into my twenties when I learned that he was writing songs in the 50s! I had known about him since I was in my tweens and thought his subversive songs must have been from much more recently.
He's just freaking awesome. If you don't know, check him out. You won't regret it.
I talk to many people who say things like "oh I have trauma but I don't have PTSD", but then when I talk to them a little more I realize that they most likely do, they just can't recognize it as such due to how lacking PTSD awareness is, even beyond the whole "it's not just a veteran's disorder" thing.
The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.
In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.
"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.
"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.
"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.
"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.
Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.
PTSD awareness is not just about flashbacks and nightmares.
