WARNING TO NORTH CAROLINIANS

our chiggers now carry TYPHUS

The symptoms to look out for are fever, rash, headache, body aches, swollen lymph nodes, general GI symptoms and a crusty nasty looking area around the bite. Not all of these symptoms may be present but if you were bitten by a chigger in North Carolina and you don’t feel well, go to the doctor. Antibiotics can clear it right up but if left untreated, the fatality rate can be 40% for some strains.

Here’s a map of the places tested and the places where chiggers were found to be infected:

(Also, because I saw this in the notes, typhoid and typhus are radically different diseases. Typhoid is caused by salmonella and usually transferred through contaminated food and water while typhus is caused by several different bacteria and typically transferred by insect bite.)

I don’t get it, man. why. why do we have to homogenize everything. why does every product have to look and behave and feel the exact same way. why can’t tumblr maintain its individuality? why can’t it lean into the things that make it a unique and refreshing offering instead of scrambling to make it a carbon copy of twitter? sucks, man. sucks.

it’s just like. this broadcasts loud and clear that the people behind the curtain have no pride or faith in this site at all. that tumblr, as a whole, has no worth or merit unless it’s somehow tricking the larger internet community into thinking it’s actually another site. and the users are supposed to celebrate this? where’s the dignity? where’s the self-respect? where’s the joy? it’s disheartening and embarrassing to be forced to conform. smh.

Last week I accidentally took an edible at 10x my usual dose. I say “accidentally” but it was really more of a “my friend held it out to my face and I impulsively swallowed it like a python”, which was technically on purpose but still an accident in that my squamate instincts acted faster than my ability to assess the situation and ask myself if I really wanted to get Atreides high or not.

Anyway. I was painting the wall when it hit. My friend heard me make a noise and asked what was wrong—I explained that I had just fallen through several portals. I realized that painting the wall fulfilled my entire hierarchy of needs, and was absolutely sure that I was on track to escaping the cycle of samsara if I just kept at it a little longer. I was thwarted on my journey towards nirvana only by the fact that I ran out of paint.

Seeking a surrogate act of humble service through which I might be redeemed and made human, I turned to unwashed dishes in the sink and took up the holy weapon of the sponge. I was partway through cleaning the blender when it REALLY hit.

You ever clean a blender? It’s a shockingly intimate act. They are complex tools. One of the most complicated denizens of the kitchen. Glass and steel and rubber and plastic. Fuck! They’ve got gaskets. You can’t just scrub ‘em and rinse them down like any other piece of shit dish. You’ve got to dissemble them piece by piece, groove by sensitive groove, taking care to lavish the spinning blades with cautious attention. There’s something sensual about it. Something strangely vulnerable.

As I stood there, turning the pieces over in my hands, I thought about all the things we ask of blenders. They don’t have an easy job. They are hard laborers taking on a thankless task. I have used them so roughly in my haste for high-density smoothies, pushing them to their limits and occasionally breaking them. I remembered the smell of acrid smoke and decaying rubber that filled the kitchen in the break room the last time I tried to make a smoothie at work—the motor overtaxed and melted, the gasket cracked and brittle. Strawberry slurry leaked out of it like the blood of a slain animal.

Was this blender built to last? Or was it doomed to an early grave in some distant landfill by the genetic disorder of planned obsolescence? I didn’t know, and was far too high to make an educated guess. But I knew that whatever care and tenderness and empathy I put into it, the more respect for the partnership of man and machine, the better it would perform for me.

This thought filled me with a surge of affection. However long its lifespan, I wanted it to be filled with dignity and love and understanding. I thought: I bet no one has hugged this blender before. And so I lifted it from its base.

A blender is roughly the size and shape of a human baby. Cradling one in your arms satisfies a primal need. A month ago I was permitted to hold an infant for the first time in my life, an experience which was physically and psychologically healing. I felt an echo of that satisfaction holding my friend the blender, and the thought of parting with it felt even more ridiculous than bringing it with me to hang out on my friend’s bed.

I'd use a tumblr badge if they gave me one that was evil bleeding skull flaming skull dark blood skull vampire demon wings horned skull oozing fangs sinister skull. For free

I love these two so much.

Credit: @jellymlk on twitter

It's time we decolonize the Cascadian volcanoes

If we can say Denali instead of Mt. McKinley then we can say Lawetlat'la instead of Mt. St Helens. The mountain is named Tahoma, not Rainier. Naming a mountain after Jefferson doesn't erase its true name of Seekseekqua.

One name tells of the thousand years indigenous history and culture of the tribes who live there. The other name tells me nothing but colonialism.

Mt. Baker: Kulshan

Glacier Peak: Dahkobed

Mt. Rainier: Tahoma

Mt. St. Helens: Lawetlat'la

Mt. Adams: Klickitat

Mt. Hood: Wy'east

Mt. Jefferson: Seekseekqua

Three Sisters: Klah Klahne

poor things, well we should definitely make this easier on them by never repeatedly mentioning their name and deeds on the "reblog things forever" website

Oh yay it's the "cover evidence before the court case" move

It'd be a bummer if there were hundreds of pages of their content archived on the internet archive

Or backups of their YouTube channels

Look, if you're starving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and suddenly someone is like 'oh I have tons of food and it just happens to be meat do you want some lol' you CANNOT act surprised when it's people. You simply CANNOT.

There are times and places where it is realistic to expect NOT to be served people. For example, in a pie shop underneath a barber shop. THEN you can be all 'OH GOD IT'S PEOPLE.'

If you are in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and are suddenly served a really good meat pie, you have to know it's people. Do you see any cows? No, they all apocalypsed. It's your neighbor.

If you're served food in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, ask yourself these questions first:

5. how much did i even like kevin, really

..........

What the eff, my fuckin retail job pays more than that....

PAY YOUR WRITERS A DECENT WAGE

STOP THINKING THERE IS A DEADLINE. THERE IS NO DEADLINE. TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND TAKE YOUR TIME.

I think one of the most frustrating things about modern conservatives is when they hate something for the wrong reason. And then you have to defend something you also hate.

"I hate Disney!" "Yes, their view on labor has been..." "Because of their woke garbage movies!" "Oh."

"I am sick of these Disney remakes!" "Yeah, it would be nice if they focused on creating original IPs instead of copy/paste remakes of animated classics." "They cast a black mermaid!" "Oh."

"Facebook is evil!" "Yeah, selling user data without consent was..." "They deleted my post about whites being replaced!" "Oh."

I honestly don’t understand how people’s first instinct upon making a tumblr account isn’t to immediately customize their profile picture/title/background and go in search of posts to like or share, like couldn’t be me, the second I made my tumblr I had some cringe Dean Winchester photo up and was searching and clicking hearts in the tags for several niche fandoms, while gleefully reblogging silly posts from 2009

10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

AAAND WE HAVE LIFTOFF!

HAPPY MOON LANDING DAY!!!