My chronic pain doctor suggested I exercise more

I asked him “how?”

He looked confused. Said I should try a bit every day

I said “not when, how?” I asked what exercises I should do

He suggested half a dozen options that had all been explicitly banned by other doctors. I’m not allowed to run. I’m not allowed to bike. I’m not allowed to use my rowing machine or my punching bag.

I walk my dog whenever I have the energy and when it doesn’t hurt too much

What else can I do?

He told me I should exercise more

And then he changed the subject.

doctors: you need to exercise more

disabled patients: can you give me an example of exercises someone with my condition can/should do?

doctors:

Ask for a referral to a PT and an OT! Their job is very much teaching you how to exercise safely. If you get a PT who won’t listen to your restrictions, ask for a new one.

This is a problem the writers of the Simpsons have had to deal with - the Simpsons are late 80s, early 90s poor. They have two clunker cars, they live in a house that's old-fashioned and has crappy furniture because they can't afford to redecorate. Their TV is ancient. Their neighbors have visibly better stuff than they do, and when they shop they have to buy the bargain brands.

But their lifestyle now seems wildly out of reach to most modern kids! They have two cars! A big three bedroom house! Only one of the parents has to work! They have 3 whole children who they can afford to feed and clothe on a single income! It's an impossible dream life for most people today.

People are always like "why do they let Data play poker with them, his brain is a computer, he has an unfair advantage," and the answer is simply because it's for fun!! He's their friend! Like can you imagine if they told Data he can't play, he'd be like "I understand, that's a logical decision, and as an android I am unable to feel left out," but then any time the poker game came up he'd be looking at Riker across the bridge like

I do think it's pretty funny that fanfic premises based on illegitimate kids as an excuse for crossovers over the years have gone from "Mom character CHEATED on Dad character 😡" to "once upon a time, mommy and daddy had a threesome and now we have YOU!" lmaoooo. People don't want marital discord they just want a third parent

This post is "three parents living happily in one house" erasure smh

Only two parents? In *this* economy?

I love this post. I LOVE this post. When I was in Kindergarten, my teacher wanted to show my family a drawing we were supposed to do if our parents or family members (something like that). At that time, I was living in the house with my mother, my aunt, my grandparents, and my dad would visit sometimes on the weekend. As a baby, my mom was involved with a gay man who even after he came out stayed close with the family (there’s tons of pictures of him holding me as a baby). Anyway, they showed the picture I drew, where I told my teacher I had FIVE PARENTS.

I was an only child, but I was never lonely. My aunt was like the cool big sister, my grandpa pushed me on the swing and taught me about yardwork and exposed me to classic musicals, my grandma is the reason I can cook and bake.

It doesn’t matter how they get there: more people in your child’s life is a good thing.

Fast forward to when I am 15. My grandparents adopt me. My aunt legally becomes my sister, her children legally become my niece and nephew, my grandfather, almost near retirement, gets to joke around with his office that he has a teenager at home and she’s accomplishing xyz insert whatever activity they were keeping me busy with. My grandparents wouldn’t have it any other way.

You know who “gave me away” at my wedding? Six different people all in unison agreeing to help me and my husband on our journey.

I had TWO father/daughter dances that night. No one batted an eye.

More people doesn’t make your kid’s life complicated. It makes it better, I promise. It takes a village. Whether that village comes about organically, legally, through marriage, or polyamory.

Because she was an intentionally mysterious woman initially only seen in a single episode, and before she got an on-air backstory in the recent streaming series, Star Trek supplementary material developed contradictory information on who - or what - Number One, the female first executive officer of the Enterprise, was. To my count, she has four different, completely incompatible backstories in the comics and novels, and this is absolutely unique in Star Trek, which usually keeps it consistent.

Peter David, in his New Frontier novels, identified Number One as a long lived immortal human mutant (like Flint from the original series) named “Morgan Primus” who was an early genius in cybernetics and artificial intelligence, which is why the Enterprise computer has her voice. One of the names Morgan Primus assumed to hide her immortality was Morgan Lefler, and one of her daughters was Robin Lefler, Wesley Crusher’s love interest from the Next Generation Series played by Ashley Judd. Robin Lefler did not inherit her mutant ability to heal all injuries.

Alternatively, the DC Star Trek Comics of the early 1980s said that Number One was from an obscure planet of peaceful, open, friendly telepaths who resemble humans exactly, and that she was present at first contact with Starfleet. They explained that her blunt, direct, undiplomatic manner is due to her being from a telepathic culture that values total honesty. This would make her the first telepath on the Enterprise, with Spock and Arex coming later. Her planet was created before the Next Generation, but her species being a peaceful, open, telepathic race resembling Mediterranean humans who are not well known or commonly encountered in the original series era….well, that certainly sounds an awful lot like Betazoids to me. If this backstory is true, she may have been the first Betazoid seen on screen, in much the same way fans generally believe Trelane was either Q or a member of the Q Continuum.

D.C. Fontana’s only Star Trek novel, “Vulcan’s Glory,” was one of the earliest attempts to give the character a backstory, and was the most consequential long term. The first novel set in the era of the first Star Trek pilot with Captain Pike and a young Spock, "Vulcan's Glory" identified Number One as being an Illyrian, a race of human-like beings who specialize in species wide breeding programs and genetic improvement. This genetic superiority is why she was cool, intellectual, aloof, and a bit arrogant. Her nickname “Number One” came from the fact she was the supreme product of the hyper-competitive Illyrian system, and won at everything from academics to athletics. According to DC Fontana, her actual Illyrian name is impossible to pronounce, so when dealing with humans, she assumed the human name “Una Chin-Riley.” Una of course, being “Number One” in Greek.

As DC Fontana is such an important figure in Star Trek history and only actually wrote one Star Trek novel in her life, many future materials used the backstory established in “Vulcan’s Glory,” like the David Stern Pike-era novels of the 2010s....but more importantly, the Discovery and Strange New Worlds series, which canonized the “Una Chin-Reilly” name by using it on screen (I remember gasping when Pike called her Una in a Discovery episode, meaning they were going with the Fontana backstory, a detail that may not have been significant to the casual viewer). Since DC Fontana wrote “Vulcan’s Glory” in the 80s, a lot more information was learned about the role of genetic engineering in the Federation, however, and interesting things were done in that series to bring her in line with everything we’ve learned since in Deep Space 9 and Enterprise about augmentation and the society wide prejudice against it. For example, they established that the fact Number One was Illyrian was not public knowledge, but that she pretended to be human her entire life.

The one person who didn’t see fit to give her a backstory or even a real name was John "Johnny Redbeard" Byrne in his comic series about the Cage era Enterprise, who thought the mystery of the character was the most interesting thing about her, and he was deliberately cagey about any details. To Johnny Redbeard, she was just “Number One.” There was a running joke that every time someone says her actual name, or when we see her personnel file, it was blurred out, or somebody’s thumb was over it, and so on. It was rather like the running joke where Mr. Burns never remembers Homer Simpson's name. Johnny Redbeard loves mystery men and women who don't talk about their past, since that was the characterization he famously gave to Wolverine in his X-Men comics.

The one detail of Number One's past that is clear is that Number One in Byrne's comics is competent, mysterious, and has mystique, certainly, but she is completely human, without any powers. Byrne always got exasperated that his X-Men co-creator Chris Claremont added fantastical and far out details to the background of X-Men characters (like how Nightcrawler's girlfriend Amanda turned out to be a sorceress) because he felt "some people should just be allowed to be normal." Byrne always said his original idea for Wolverine's "true" backstory was that he was a Vietnam veteran in intelligence who volunteered for bionic experiments that wiped his memory, and disliked the idea he was immortal, and vetoed the very, very early Dave Cockrum idea Wolverine was an actual mutated wolverine who achieved sentience and a human shape (which early X-Men comics hint at). Byrne was reportedly enraged that they gave Moira MacTaggart a mutant power, as he saw her as just being a scrappy Scottish housekeeper.

Johnny Redbeard didn’t give Number One a past (other than to show she was on the Enterprise's shakedown cruise with Robert April as a rookie officer), but he did give her a future, as he showed an older Number One as a starship commander in the Kirk era (aging gracefully with a white tuft like Tongolele), and later, a flag officer in the Motion Picture era.

To what extent are these backstories compatible? Well, with what we currently know about Number One, that she hid her true species and status to avoid prejudice, it could be that some of the other versions were tall tales she spread to obscure her true origins. The John Byrne idea she served as an Ensign with Robert April in the Enterprise's very first mission hasn't been confirmed, but hasn't been denied, either. The Peter David "Morgan Primus" backstory is completely incompatible, but perhaps there are some elements to it that are true, like the idea that the early part of her career involved working as a computer engineer in artificial intelligence, which is why the computer has her voice.

Untitled © Peter Solarz

hey you, learn about the phases of a migraine attack!

migraine is a neurological disorder that involves a shit ton of different symptoms that might not seem related, but are often debilitating and can disrupt someone's life for days at a time.

not every person will experience every phase of this timeline with every migraine attack, not every possible symptom that can be associated with a migraine attack is listed, and many will experience phases lasting longer than what is listed here. this is just a helpful graphic to get an idea of what the timeline of a migraine attack can look like.

a single migraine attack can last a week or more!

PRODROME: this phase lasts a few hours to days. there are a ton of seemingly unrelated symptoms that can actually signal the start of a migraine attack. being able to identify prodrome symptoms is essential to navigating migraine attacks, as they can vary from person to person, and most patients have no idea that there can be warning signs like these up to days ahead of the severest part of the pain.

prodrome phase symptoms can include:

AURA: 5-60 minutes. more migraine patients seem to be conscious about the aura phase than the prodrome phase, because these symptoms might only show up in a specific person right before the headache phase of a migraine attack. some people get blurry vision, blind spots, or temporarily stop being able to see altogether. others might see lights, flashing, or geometric shapes that are not there.

aura phase symptoms can include:

HEADACHE: the ouch part. this is where the pain climaxes, and it can last 4-72 hours. for some the pain is mild, and for others the pain is really really really really bad. the apparent site of the pain often moves throughout the headache phase of a migraine attack. despite being called the headache phase, not all symptoms are actually related to having pain in the head. this is just the phase where the worst part of the headache happens.

headache phase symptoms can include:

POSTDROME: also called a "migraine hangover". after the main head pain is over, and the pain should typically drop in severity pretty fast around now, the migraine attack is still not fully over. the postdrome phase can last 24-48 hours.

postdrome phase symptoms can include:

being able to identify patterns and symptoms associated with migraine attacks at all phases can be critical to understanding when something is a medical emergency, a different medical condition, or part of migraine. the symptoms associated with a migraine attack can easily be mistaken for something more life-threatening like a stroke, but migraine attacks often have patterns, timelines, and buildup.

migraine patients can wind up getting unnecessary and unsuccessful surgeries (such as in the mouth, sinuses, or shoulders), or getting misdiagnosed with one thing or another because they might not be able to recognize their own migraine symptoms, or might not recognize that they can have so many seemingly unrelated symptoms from a migraine attack across such a long period of time.

when it comes to migraine attacks, the severity of pain ≠ the severity of the pathology, at least in terms of things that might endanger someone's life. it can hurt like hell, it can really really really fucking hurt like hell, it might feel like death, and it can still be a migraine attack.

which is important to understand, because migraine can be more painful and debilitating than many immediately life-threatening conditions, and is among the most debilitating neurological conditions in the world.

does it indicate anything about me that I immediately recognized what paper this figure is from

so I had to immediately go and pull this other amazing figure from the paper, which is "THE HEXAGON" a device with six rooms for fruit flies to have sex in and a central room for a fruit fly to observe six couples having sex at once

they made a fruit fly sex panopticon and no one told me about it, what is science education coming to

Elephant Trunk Snake aka Javan File Snake (Acrochordus javanicus), family Acrochordidae, Malaysia

photograph by Bryce Trevett

these things are WAYYY smaller than this photo makes them look btw

teeny lil guys.

he looks like he's about to burst into hysterical tears

Okay but why do they look like if a giant river otter was a anake??

TIL that in 1903 the New York Times predicted that building a flying machine would be possible in 1-10 Million years.

via ift.tt

To understand how ridiculous this is, the first successful powered airplane flew this same year, 1903

You’re understating how ridiculous

it wasn’t just the same year. it was nine days later

average new york times cringe fail

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is such a weird theory because it's like there's a very obvious explanation for why middle school kids who didn't have dysphoria before might suddenly have dysphoria. Like huh weird I wonder what very obvious and widely known change that could cause kids to suddenly become very uncomfortable in their gender or sexual identity starts in between the ages of 10 and 14. Guess we'll never know. Must be peer pressure to *checks notes* become the only gender minority in your whole school singling you out for harassment by your peers. Couldn't be puberty suddenly giving you new body parts/bodily functions that are wrong for you.

Turns out Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is a natural consequence of the often comorbid Rapid Onset Gender

It's important to drink a lot of fluids when you're sick so that your body has the raw materials to generate gallons of snot.

I learned recently that mucus basically traps the viruses and expels them from your body which is why your body makes SO MUCH of it so now I just imagine drinking liquids as hiring a bunch of goons to take out the thrash y'see nyeehh see we taking back the streets from the bowler hat boys flush em out real good

Perhaps there are many problems which could be solved if you just made enough mucus

Reblog if you are solving problems by generating enough mucus

I feel like a mom on facebook reblogging this but I genuinely like it. I want to make this into a full size poster and put it in my 3rd grade classroom but I’m 20 yrs old and not a teacher

Can someone please explain to me WHY no one can accept that I knit for pleasure?? Every time someone compliments me on my knitting they ask me if I've thought about selling it. NO GOD DAMMIIT NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE A SIDE HUSTLE

It would take all the pleasure out of it.

Bring back people doing things for fun. Jesus.

When people ask me that, I usually just say “yes” and wait. Either they’re taken aback by the one word answer and don’t push it, more usually they fall into my cunning trap and ask where I sell stuff. To which I then reply, “I don’t. No one wants to pay $500 for a pair of socks.”

If they are foolish enough to continue their questioning, they are subjected to my rant about the historical devaluation of textile labour, analysis of the time put into each garment I make and its retail cost at a fair wage, and the methods by which fast fashion has trained consumers to devalue handmade goods even more than was the case historically when labour was cheap but materials were expensive. Sometimes I even manage to squeeze in a few words about the problems with the puritanical notion of productivity, how it’s been further bastardised by capitalism, and how attempts to monetise every facet of one’s life results in burnout and despair. Though by the time I’ve warmed up to that they’ve usually fled in terror from the short bearded king who’s gone on such a terrifying rant while aggressively knitting a sock at them.

The radius and ulna are among my favourite bones specifically because they do this

I hate this. I hate that they do this. I think about this every time I rotate my wrist. It seems like the sort of thing that would go wrong in all sorts of horrible ways and leave a bone sticking out of my skin. and yet it keeps happening. every day of my life.

I rotate my arms regularly just because I like it when they do this.

iiiiiii dont. think thats how bones work

Here are two videos on Reddit demonstrating how the radius bone rotates around the ulna bone: link / link

Yeah i doubt someone would make these gifs for the purpose of an online joke so I have no choice but to believe it

i have a degree is bones (bioarchaeology) this is how bones work and i hate it

A fae being stands before you.

“Every day you will receive one thousand dollars in your bank account. But every time you lift a glass to your lips to take a drink, you will hit your front teeth on the first try. Every. Time. Do you accept this deal?”

Yes. Quite easily so. You see, making deals with the Fae is down to very specific word choices. They shot themselves in the foot with their own words here while making this deal, even though they thought their word choice was so very, very clever. The Fae specifically uses the word “glass”. This, in turn, limits the person that agrees to the deal to the “hit your front teeth on the first try every time” to only be hitting their teeth on the first try every time if they drink out of a glass. If the person decides to drink out of a container that isn’t made out of glass, like, say for example… A paper cup. Or a soda can. A plastic bottle. Styrofoam cup. Yeti Tumbler. Their own hand. A bowl. Who knows, a person can get hella creative when they realize there are ways to get around the rules without actually breaking them. So. A Fae being stands before me, and offers me this deal. I smile, wide and unassuming, offer my hand to shake. “I accept this deal and all of it’s terms unconditionally.”

I was in a swing accident as a child and lost my front teeth, the ones in my head are implants. That glass is gonna WORK to hit some Mound of medical waste in Tacoma, Washington

Also like. It says lift a glass. What if you leave it on the table and use a straw? I feel like that’s a work-around if you’re like at a fancier restaurant that only uses glasses too. Which you might be a lot if you’re getting $1000 a day.

Also, straws exist. That glass never needs to touch your lips in the first place.

Either that fae is new at this, or they really want you to get $1000 per day. I wonder what they think you’ll do with it.

Ok now we have a booping feature I propose to tumblr next ides of March we have a stabbing counter and the person with the most stabs gets crowned Caesar and the blog with the most stabbings gets crowned Brutus

Jokes on you @fortheloveofdata my posts don’t break containment

It seems I have fallen victim to hubris

Armored woodlice:

1. Pseudarmadillo spinosus 2. Unknown, Armadillidiidae 3. Loreola sp. 4. Loreola sp. 5. Unknown, Armadillidiidae 6. Echinarmadillidium fruxgalli

Photos by Nicky Bay // Facebook // Website

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

This article is actually about a very serious problem. If you overgenerate electricity it increases the phase frequency of the power grid, and if that goes out of sync with your generators (including solar panels) it can destroy them. In the kind of way where your power grid is fucked for months. It is very very very very bad.

California started a program to make solar panels more affordable by offering very low interest rates for solar panels, to allow people to benefit from their lifetime $/energy cost that's below fossil fuels, without having to worry about the high frontloaded cost. However they did not do this for batteries. And power grid quality batteries with massive energy storage and serious charge-discharge lifetimes, are expensive.

And they did this because while solar panels are cheaper than fossil fuels per kilowatt hour of electricity over their lifetime, solar panels plus batteries are not. And California wanted a supplemented free market solution and didn't really want to think about the part that direct government intervention in the form of taxation and paying for this change would be necessary.

So everyone in California just kept adding solar panels to the grid with no disconnect mechanisms, until eventually it hit a point where at noon, solar panels generated more power than the entire grid needed. With no batteries to store the excess. This is a motherfucking power grid killer. It is a scenario where people get left in the fucking dark for months because of how badly it destroys the powergrid.

So the power grid authorities did the only thing they could do. They called up every industrial plant with heavy duty equipment and ovens they could and paid them to turn it on full blast (because using that equipment costs money in wear and tear even without the electricity cost). And in doing so, avoided disaster.

That's what this article is talking about. They are solar panel researchers criticizing a capitalist adoption strategy and promoting direct government intervention to create renewable energy. However as with most newspapers they don't get to choose the title, the editor picks the most provocative title that will get clicks.