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acme

@idontwearflesh

Hey

- Make characters OTHER THAN VILLAINS fat too

- No not just the greedy or food loving ones

- Not just older people or moms

- Make more characters fat

- Like actually fat

- With double chins, bellies, thick arms, fat necks, rolls

- And let them be love interests or protagonists or in respected positions.

- Let them be portrayed as hot. While being fat yes

- Make more characters fat

listen hobbit pussy could be mediocre (doubtful) but even if it was it's still followed by a 17 course homecooked meal and the kind of weed that would make sauron scared. lithe beautiful immortal elven pussy has no power compared to the simple, hardworking hobbit. and it goes without saying that you cannot handle dwarven pussy.

you know her bush is adorned with elaborate braids representing a long family tradition of training a grip that could deglove your member if she so chose

dwarf pussy could shuck your foreskin off like a corn husk

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i get why a lot of people don’t like reading mockingjay as much as the rest of the trilogy, but i think it’s actually so essential to understanding the central thesis of the entire hunger games series.

the whole point of the hunger games is this: all human life is valuable, and artificial divisions between people keep them weak. and the only way out is radical love.

and this is something that is literally echoed again and again in the books. take, for example, gale. why is gale such an interesting, complex, and yet reprehensible character? yes, it’s because at the end katniss cannot separate his bomb from prim’s death. but it’s deeper than that. why does gale build the bomb in the first place? it’s because gale doesn’t see every human life as valuable. gale is willing to kill people and to deny them their humanity simply because they are his “enemy.” so, there’s the obvious example of his willingness to blow up the nut with everyone inside and his disregard for the human casualty. and the people in the nut aren’t even from the captiol, he just wants to do it because the stereotype of that district is their allegiance to the capitol, and gale hates that.

but there’s another scene, also in mockingjay, that i think goes under-discussed which is his view of katniss’ prep team. when katniss finds her prep team literally imprisoned in 13, she’s horrified and upset by the conditions they are in. but gale isn’t. and he’s confused about why katniss would care for them! her response is to say that it’s because they cried when she went to the quarter quell. and gale is like, “sure, but they’re still from the captiol.” and this argument is so important. because katniss argues that the prep team deserves to be treated as human beings, and when he presses her on why, she basically says because they treated her as a human being. but gale can’t see that–all he can see is that they’re from the capitol, and he’s confused about why katniss should care.

and this is, so crucially, what katniss learns in the hunger games. she realizes that she doesn’t want to kill the other tributes just because they are from the other districts. she hates the fact that they have turned her against people who are, in their core, just like her. frightened children who have been manipulated to kill other children against their will, all selected based on their district, a social divide that has literally been invented and imposed on them.

and another just absolutely essential thing to understand here is that peeta knows this all along. we talk at length about how peeta’s defining trait is his kindness. but what’s so important about peeta’s kindness is how it transcends any boundaries of social class or social division.

when peeta gives katniss the bread, it’s important to note that just before he does that, we hear his mother talking about “seam brats pawing through her trash.” peeta’s mother buys into the social divides in district twelve–she views herself as better than someone from the seam simply because of her standing as a merchant, and reinforces these class divides by refusing to extend the simplest humanity to a child from the seam. she literally refuses to feed a starving child on the grounds of a social divide, within a world that already has divided them into districts. but peeta doesn’t see it like this. peeta refuses to deny katniss food just because she’s from the seam. peeta gives her kindness. peeta gives her humanity.

and he does the same thing in the games! his entire first interview, the dramatic king focuses, not on the games, but on his genuine love and adoration for another tribute. how radical! to refuse to subscribe to a system which asks him to hate her? to want to kill her? and to instead confess his love for her? sure, katniss ends up being the mockingjay. katniss might have held out the berries. but peeta in that moment is the one who sets the rebellion in motion. peeta is the one who refuses to engage in the senseless hatred of someone who “should” be his enemy. instead, he reaches out in love.

and it all culminates at the end of mockingjay, when katniss votes for the capitol hunger games to gain coin’s trust. and peeta is utterly horrified by this. because he can’t understand how she could have been through everything he has been through and not understand that continuing to senselessly kill human beings (children!!) for some kind of revenge just reinforces these binary modes of thinking. but the thing is–katniss DOES see that. and when coin proposes it, that’s when she knows she has to stop her. because coin, like gale, like peeta’s mother, and like so others many around her, is still buying into these divides. is still viewing the captiol as the enemy. is still viewing a human life as expendable. 

and there’s a quote in mockingjay that i think lays this out pretty explicitly. katniss says, after she kills coin and is recovering, point blank: “they can design dream weapons that come to life in my hands, but they will never again brainwash me into the necessity of using them.” she’s realized the crux of the entire hunger games–that manipulating us to hate and kill our fellow humans, that drawing up divisions between people because of where they live and what they produce, that believing that hating someone on the basis of any of these is justification for their death, is all a farce. it’s all a distraction. it’s all pretend. she says, in the same chapter: “no one benefits in a world where these things happen.” not the districts. not the capitol. not the victors. no one.

the entire arc of the hunger games is really just about katniss catching up to what peeta has known from the start. katniss overcoming all the manipulation from those around her, all the glitz and glamour, all the artificial social and class divides to see what peeta has seen clearly from the start: love.

I think the best most human thing in the world is strangers doing a silly thing together

Examples:

- guy at work "Yes, and -" ing the bit me and my coworker were doing where we pretended to be owners of a fantasy medieval tavern not minimum wage retail staff

- at the gay club when Die Young by Kesha came on and two hundred people, all dancing and drinking separately, jumped up and down to make the "- beat of the drums *STOMP STOMP*" as loud as possible

- person who watched me stomp round the beach singing a made up song about breakfast foods to name a cat after and suggested more breakfast foods that would be good cat names

- guy who started a dance off with everyone across the road while waiting for the lights to change

- very tiny girl at the pharmacy interviewing everyone in the queue and every single one of us in turn sat down and answered this toddler's questions like we were on Letterman

The three pillars of humanity, in no particular order, are Joy, Absurdity, and Sharing

The Horrors of Insecticides You Can Buy at Home Depot

Since saving the bees is something I am passionate about, I did a deep dive into lawn chemicals, specifically: insecticides.

So I spent like 4 hours today on the Home Depot website with several tabs open to various google searches and chemical safety and properties databases, taking notes on the insecticide chemicals that a random American homeowner can buy.

Conclusions, in summary: OH MY GOD. WHY IS THIS STUFF BEING SOLD IN STORES. WHY IS THIS ALLOWED ARE WE A LAWLESS WASTELAND?????

So the first thing I want to draw attention to is how these chemicals are labeled and advertised, and how this is deceptive and misleading.

On the Home Depot's website, I found many products advertised to kill a specific variety of pest. Examples include:

  • "Terminate" Termite and Carpenter Ant Spray
  • "Black Flag" Flea and Tick Killer
  • "Terro" Ant Killer
  • "Bioadvanced" Termite Killer
  • "Hot Shot" Spider and Scorpion Killer
  • "Spectracide" Wasp and Hornet Killer Aerosol Spray
  • "Ike's" Lawn Grub Control

You will also see many products advertised as effective against a broad variety of pests:

  • "Bioadvanced" Spray Home Pest Insect Killer
  • "Cutter" Bug Control Spray

What's wrong with this?

THEY HAVE THE SAME ACTIVE INGREDIENTS

All of these products, including the ones advertised for use against specific pests, are broad-spectrum insecticides that indiscriminately kill or harm almost all invertebrates, not even limited to insects. (We will come back to this in a second.) Often, the exact same chemical is advertised as a "spider killer," "roach killer," "wasp killer" and so on, just in different packaging.

"Black Flag" flea and tick killer, "Terminate" termite and carpenter ant spray, "Terro" ant killer, and "Cutter" bug control spray all have lambda-cyhalothrin as their active ingredient.

There are two other active ingredients in the products in the above list, prallethrin and imidacloprid. (See if you can guess which list items are the same chemical in a different bottle.)

The problem? This packaging makes people think they are buying a pest control with some level of targeted effectiveness against a specific type of pest, when they are actually buying an indiscriminate toxic substance that can kill almost anything alive enough to move.

The following information was mostly compiled from resources on the safety and properties of various chemicals found on pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. I also searched up documents from the EPA and various scientific papers studying the effects on specific organisms.

Lambda-Cyhalothrin

(mentioned above)

The US Environmental Protection Agency says this insecticide is "highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment or residues" and advises, "Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds if bees are visiting the treatment area." The EPA website also states, "This pesticide is extremely toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates. Do not apply directly to water or areas where surface water is present...Do not apply when weather conditions favor drift from treatment areas."

Since "water," "wind," and "bees" aren't exactly uncommon phenomena outside, this leaves me wondering what applications these requirements don't rule out. I'm particularly bemused by the bit about not allowing the product to drift from the treatment area, as if the average person has telekinetic powers that allow them to direct and confine an aerosolized mist.

Carbaryl

(found in some sprays and powders marketed under the label "Sevin")

I know my parents used this stuff on our garden plants when I was a kid, so I read all of the information I am about to relay with absolute horror.

Carbaryl is highly toxic to bees, causing entire hives to perish when the deadly toxin is brought back to the hive by foraging workers. It is incredibly toxic to earthworms even at incredibly low concentrations. In reptiles, it negatively impacts the ability to move and flee from predators. In one study conducted with leopard frog tadpoles, exposure caused deformities in nearly 18% of tadpoles, while only one single tadpole in the control group showed similar deformities.

According to the EPA website, humans exposed chronically to carbaryl (for example agricultural workers) experience symptoms such as headaches, muscle weakness, and memory loss. In experiments done with rats, dietary exposure to carbaryl results in reduced fertility, lower litter sizes, and higher mortality in offspring.

Regarding cancer risk, the EPA states that "No information is available on the carcinogenic effects of carbaryl in humans," which comes off as weirdly ominous in spite of the reassurance that animal studies haven't shown an increase in cancer.

It is banned in the EU.

Its manufacturing was also responsible for the Bhopal disaster.

Bifenthrin

(found in a wide variety of insecticides including Ortho Home Defense, Ortho Bug-B-Gon, and some products sold under the Sevin label)

Bifenthrin is very highly toxic to fish, other aquatic life, and bees. It has been shown to accumulate in the bodies of bluegill sunfish. One of the studies referenced by PubChem involved collecting sediment from creeks in a suburban neighborhood and exposing amphipods (tiny water animals) to the sediment in a lab. In half of the samples, the sediment was so contaminated with bifenthrin (presumably from lawn care applications) that almost all the amphipods died.

Bifenthrin is classified as a possible human carcinogen and may cause a wide variety of other respiratory and neurological symptoms. It also interferes with hormone receptors in humans and is considered to be "of significant concern with respect to maternal-fetal health." It has also been shown to mess with the immune system and potentially is a cause of asthma even at "acceptable" levels of exposure.

Cypermethrin

(found in Raid and many Spectracide products)

Incredibly toxic to bees and aquatic life, with one study showing 75%-95% mortality within 24 hours of exposure in bees. It has been shown to cause deformities and reproductive problems in many fish. It is a possible human carcinogen.

There have been a ton of animal studies where feeding animals doses of it over time, or giving them acute doses, causes a huge array of horrifying results, including incontinence, seizures, convulsions, dehydration, weight loss and unwillingness to eat, writhing spasms, hypersensitivity to stimuli, lowered testosterone, lowered sperm production, developmental delays in offspring, and "dopaminergenic neurodegeneration," whatever that means.

Residues of the stuff have been found to last up to 84 days in homes (hopefully at low concentrations).

Cypermethrin is also particularly highly toxic to cats. This is why you do NOT use flea and tick shampoos meant for dogs on a cat.

Imidacloprid

(sold as "tree and shrub protection" products, which is insidious considering how awful this pesticide is, as well as "Bioadvanced Spray Home Pest Insect Killer," "Ike's Systemic Landscape Care," and other products under the "Bioadvanced" or "Ike's" label)

A neonicotinoid pesticide that causes toxicity effects at 10 parts per billion in bumble bees. It is also ACUTELY toxic to many birds. One study investigates an incident where 26 American goldfinches were found dead on the ground after some elm trees were treated with imidacloprid. A review of studies and reports of toxicity to birds tallies up 734 dead birds reportedly associated with this pesticide.

As a neonicotinoid, imidacloprid works by dissolving in water and being absorbed by a plant, which effectively makes the whole plant including flowers and pollen poisonous to insects. Because of this, neonicotinoids have been suspected to be a major cause of the decline of pollinators.

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This is only some of the most common or popular active ingredients for insecticides, there are many others. You will notice that each one listed is INCREDIBLY toxic to bees!

I wrote this out because I feel it's important to raise awareness, because I think the branding and labeling on these products makes them appear much safer and more precise than they really are.

They're labeled as insecticides, but that's misleading. They're poisons, and insects are only some of many things they harm or kill.

And it really hits me: is this the best we have??? These incredibly broad-spectrum poisons that kill not only "pest" insects but bees, fish, and songbirds too??? Killing pests with imidacloprid or cypermethrin is like trying to scramble an egg by throwing hand grenades at it!

People are spraying this stuff as a matter of course on their lawns. In their homes. Around their children. Even on vegetables in their gardens. Because that's just what you do, because "bugs" make a space dirty, contaminated, and unfit for your children to play in. Yes there are warnings on the bottle, but they are no more compelling or eye-catching than the warnings on a bottle of dish soap. There are a lot of bug sprays with a "clean fresh scent," which is a little troubling for a substance you really should not be inhaling at all.

People don't know their "flea and tick killer" kills monarch butterflies and bumble bees, and they really don't have an inkling of how seriously they should take the warning label.

I glimpsed at the questions buyers had asked for one of the products, I forget which, and I saw a lady asking if she had to remove the dishes from her cabinet before spraying the insecticide in the cabinet.

Yeah.

Dopaminergic neurodegeneration is... Parkinson's, basically? In Parkinson's, for reasons that are partly genetic but then there's other factors, neurons with dopamine receptors either die or stop being able to interact with dopamine properly. Other things can also cause that, including apparently your cypermethrin up there. Loss of dopamine receptors is also involved in MS and Huntington Disease. Other problems with dopamine receptors have been implicated in...I'm not gonna say every mental illness, but it's pretty close. Anyway, the practical upshot of dopaminergic neurodegeneration is that it can fuck up your ability to *checks notes*, control your muscles, feel happiness, remember stuff, and have executive function. So, yeah.

Oh God

in case you wondering what twitters like rn the answer is "not good"

i just bust out laughing

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I just want to point out that even the most generous estimates of Elon's net worth are around 200 billion these days. If this lawsuit he's trying to hide succeeds, he is actually, finally, 100% finished. He'll have to sell off much of his stakes in businesses, including yes twitter, and probably file for bankruptcy. And he's already obliterated all trust in him, so it's unlikely he'd be able to climb back up the ladder.

So he's hiding this lawsuit in hopes that he can recover his image a little before that all goes down. Don't let him. Keep posting about his ineptitude. He will fall.

LIKE TO CHARGE REBLOG TO CAST

POWER WORD BANKRUPTCY!!!

Emily Dickinson, from ’All these my banners be’ (Poem #22), Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

[Text ID: “You and I the secret Of the Crocus know– Let us chant it softly– “There is no more snow!””]
tapireye-deactivated20220708

‘Aphrodite’ Shoe by Simona Vanth x Lorenzo Dox Dossena.

Made of a single piece of fibreglass, coated in aluminium and decorated using Dox’s ‘Acid Etching’ Technique.

I've seen this before, but it's been years and it just came across my Twitter in its dying days. The words are from a favorite author of mine, Maggie Stiefvater, and they are the words I most need to hear when it comes to dealing with chronic pain and illness. I didn't need this the first time I saw it, six years ago. I need it now. Maybe you do, too.