anyway, in honor of pride month, thank you to all of the leatherpeople, bondage lovers, rope lovers, rubberists, sadists, masochists, mommies, daddies, littles, brats, tamers, petplayers, dom/mes, subs, crossdressers, sissies, bimbos, and other kinksters who have protested and fought alongside other queers for our rights and for bravely displaying their lifestyle and queerness for closeminded people to see. pride has never been a "family friendly" event- it has always been a protest and you *are* going to to see things that shock you. that's the point. thank you, queer kinksters and fetishists

I do hold scorn for people in weed states I do. I really do. The way your stupid 21 year old ass can go to the weed store and buy weed. The way your stupid 21 year old ass can buy weed online not a care in the world. And you have so much to choose from. You have so much fucking gorrila cumshot big fat load of cum horse cock mega 1 billion tch % to choose from and they all got different names and when our good texan plugs come home from colorado they bring that poison with them. They bring that poison home to us. And the people of texas, we're smoking that poison. Were smoking that filthy filthy colorado 10000 thc shit, and were dying. Were dying out here. The soil down here is lerfect for weed. If we could have weed we could create, beautiful poison. Way more toxic than colorodo. Way more toxic than california. We can make weed so insane, bitched from colorado will come down here, to smoke OUR poison. And WE could name it shit like Ram Ranch. We could name it shit like Horse Erection. We could name it shit like, I dont know, Forget The Alamo. YOU, worthless idiots up north, can smoke our latino magic. You dont got tejanos. You dont got our technology. You don't got what it takes. You dont know what its like. Theyre not legalizing weed down here cause they hate us. You know they do. You know for a fact they do. So yeah. Just think before you spark up with that shit you got down the street trouble free. Do so in my name. In our name. Keep the less fortunate in mind. I HOPE THE CIELING FAN FALLS ON YOU

I'LL KILL YOU

the cognitive dissonance from people who want the products of modern medicine but get weird about animal research. like im sorry but this is necessary for the survival of the society we currently live in. and the scientists who work on these things are not evil cackling psychopaths. anyone you talk to in animal research has incredibly complex feelings about their work and incredibly complex relationships to the animals in their care. there are regulations and oversight and penalties in place to make the work as humane as possible and scientists are overwhelmingly the ones enforcing and advocating for better care.

@velvetdemon I'm doing a full reply because I want to give this question the time and space it deserves, and I really do appreciate your curiosity about this.

The short answer: It is deeply unethical. There are nowhere near enough willing patients in the world to be able to do this, and it would be criminal to put them through this.

The long answer: The one side of the equation you're focusing on is: how much of a drug is too much, to the point where it will cause negative side effects or even death? And this is crucial to know. But it's not just a matter of finding out the lethal dosage of a heart cholesterol medication, you need to know that it can actually lower the cholesterol of any living thing. There is no way to know this without giving it first to...a living thing.

But beyond this, I need to emphasize: The goal of a drug trial is to effectively cure people who are already suffering from disease, who are living on limited time.

Drug trials don't just happen on any member of the public, they need to happen specifically on people affected by the disease you're trying to treat. There is at any time a very limited and very marginalized population of the world affected by early onset, familial Parkinson's disease. Because you cannot ethically induce disease in a human being, you are working with, speaking with, and helping patients and their families who are hopeful and desperate for a cure.

If you were to jump straight to human trials from petri dishes, not knowing absolutely anything about how the drug functions in a living, breathing animal body, it would look like this:

I could go on, and on, and on.

The vast majority of these problems can be nearly or almost entirely averted by testing other animals first.

These are all people who possibly could have waited for the normal progression from animal testing to human testing and thus received better outcomes. Some people will pass away in the time it takes to get to that point, and that's heartbreaking, and we all wish science could be faster.

But the cost of expediting science could mean a life of profoundly greater suffering or an even shorter life than the one where no intervention happens at all. And at that point, you have completely exhausted your trust, your goodwill, and your patients' hope, after you've failed to do anything or even worsened the lives of people who are already deeply suffering.

hi, i’m an animal research professional. making sure laboratory animals stay alive, healthy, and enriched has been my full-time job for several years now.

animal research is not the mad scientist wild west that PETA wants you to think it is. there are extremely strict federal laws in place to protect the well being of these animals. animal welfare organizations like AAALAC ensure that lab animals are treated with dignity & respect and are given enough specialized care & enrichment to be happy and content in captivity, just like AZA accreditation with zoos.

not a single animal from a zebrafish to a mouse to a dog to a macaque goes unaccounted for. if an animal gets moved to a new cage, paired for breeding, has a procedure performed on it, gives birth, gets sick or injured, dies, etc. it is legally required that this information is recorded and kept on file for the US federal government to access. failing to record & retain this information is very much punishable by US federal law.

let me tell you - if you abuse or kill an animal, even a mouse - you are almost certainly getting both fired & blacklisted from the industry. if you abuse or kill a more ‘advanced’ animal, such as a dog or monkey, you will likely face criminal charges. killing a monkey is as serious and disastrous as a nuclear meltdown. you are expected to reasonably explain every illness, injury, or death of an animal under your care. you must record all of this information. animals that are clearly suffering with low QOL are required to be euthanized according to AVMA guidelines.

research animals are highly expensive. yes, even the "lesser" animals like mice. the cheapest mice will run you a few hundred $ per individual, with some of the most expensive mice i've cared for being $25,000 per individual. in research we have the "three Rs" - reduction (reduce amount of necessary animals to a minimum), refinement (refine processes to ensure research is accurate and animals feel no pain or distress), and replacement (replace animals with non-living research models as they become available). i can assure you no proper research team is wasting animals (*do not* say "b-b-but elon musk--" his research team is actively being investigated for animal abuse by the government).

research methods that do not require live animals are currently being looked into & efforts spearheaded by - you guessed it - the animal research industry itself (notice how the animal rights people are strangely silent & unhelpful when it comes to this?) but current technology is rudimentary and does not compare to live animal models.

some research animal fun facts (US edition):

so yes, you can rest knowing that laboratory animals are treated with the utmost respect by their caretakers. and you can stop this awful, ignorant talk of human experimentation that will only end in the abuse of nonwhite people, LGBT people, disabled people, indigenous people, and so many others. please just take a look at this wikipedia page if you think “ethical” human experimentation can exist.

Thank you for the wonderful explanations (and also the lagniappe of Neuralink getting scrutinized and stink-eyed).

The ethics of experimental treatments with humans are already really fraught and full of pitfalls and the vast majority of people involved really are trying as hard as possible to make them not so, because - you'll be shocked to know - people who need medical treatment and aren't served by something that already exists tend to be a bit desperate.

That in and of itself, inherently, right there, introduces a MASSIVELY dangerous power dynamic. And that's WITH all of the care and, in fact, the animal testing being discussed above. It's already fraught and risky, and it only goes downhill from here if you require human testing earlier.

my phone has had this glitch lately that when I paste a photo into discord it shows that I sent a completely different photo and I just tried to send the above image to comfort a friend and the image it showed was. something else

⋆ ｡ ° ✩ Starquilt ✩ ° ｡ ⋆

38"x39.5" English paper piecing - all handsewn

I finished it! I took the green quilt out on a little adventure today before it goes off to it’s new home tomorrow!

I’m sooo happy with the way this came out. I’m really glad I took the time to start over with the quilting. I think the end product shines 🧡💚

Down a Rabbit Hole I Went

I screwed up. I didn't think that using an ancient language on a piece of tumblr merch was necessary but I forgot what site I was on :) . This is tumblr, of course it has to be in linguistically accurate cuneiform. I went and hired an expert on Ancient Semitic Languages and Cultures. There aren't as many as you'd think that are willing to translate text for an internet gag so I'm so happy I found Paul.

Notes on the translation from the translator:

I used the ventive suffix on the imperative "give (rib+am)" which is a special feature of Akkadian that indicates the motion of direction. It makes it a little bit more authentic. The longer version actually includes the words "to me (ana iasim)", but a typical Akkadian speaker probably wouldn't have needed to say that.

Also, for the word "money" I used the Sumerian (KUG.BABBAR) instead of spelling out the Akkadian, because that was a common feature in Akkadian scribal writing. For the font I was happily surprised that Google has a Cuneiform font, so not only is it correct but it looks pretty neat too. Right now you can buy both versions in the shop but cuneiform version won't ship for a week or so as I have to order new stock with the new design.

I appreciate that the tumblr merch store also understands the importance of Commitment to the Bit.

See I thought it was the elimination of entry level jobs in things like game design, rendering and drafting in favor of making machines do the work

Yeah, this. An AI made with only Public Domain art and art shared with consent would be less effective, so it might take 5 more years of development before such an AI got good enough to cause the current problem, but in the end we would still have this problem just slightly later.

This is a labor problem and ultimately a capitalism problem. Creative workers (artists, writers, website designers, programmers and several other groups of workers) are going to face the same labor problem that factory workers have faced before: the automation of a lot of entry level jobs, followed by the creation of a small number of new jobs (working with AI) that have far higher education requirements.

This is a centuries old labor problem. What we've seen in the past is that established workers with strong resumes can often find a way to adapt in such a situation, but newer workers are going to have a much harder time finding a job and without a strong union it is likely that all wages will end up going down because of the growing pool of unemployed workers willing to take a job for any pay just to get a foot in the door.

Creative workers need to realize that this is an old well-known labor problem. They need treat it as such, unionize and start thinking of real collective solutions.

The tranny knows where she is loved at all times. She knows this because she knows where she isn't. By subtracting where she is from where she isn't, or where she isn't from where she is (whichever is greater), she obtains the difference. If the tranny does not feel loved, she will leave.

I’m getting genuinely emotional y’all don’t understand how ISOLATING it can be when cultural dress for most other Asian countries are popular and represented and Filipino clothing barely is, LET ALONE PRE-COLONIAL?!

I- 🥹

I hope to find the time and energy to fulfil my dream of making the clothes and dressing like this

STOP. moment of gratitude for those precious times of breathing from your nostrils when you don't have a stuffy nose

Everyone who doesn't have a headache right now, stop right now for a moment and appreciate how good it is not to have a headache.

Flew too close to the sun and now paying the price. (Ate too many snacks when my niece was here and my delicate tummy is protesting.)

Joy, I’ve been following you for a very long time now.

I just teared up a little because. Joy. Joy.

You were able to eat snacks with your niece.

And I just. It hit me. Because, I remember when you had so few safe foods you gave us a list, and it wasn’t a long one. I remember those posts about seriously scary hospital visits, and not knowing what was happening with you, and how fucking scarily thin you were in the very few pictures we got of you.

And now you’re still here, and able to eat snacks with your niece.

I’m so happy for you.

Thank you. I'm really happy too :)

It's still not perfect (possibly going to need intestinal surgery, I find out next month), but I'm no longer going into anaphylaxis at the drop of a hat. My mast cells are stabilizing, and I'm getting to try new foods more often with less severe reactions.

And in peak pollen season too!

I remember the day you ate a grape and we all sat in nail-biting stillness, waiting to see if you had an anaphylactic reaction.

You’re not done yet, bucko. You’ll be scaring the local adults and delighting the local children for a long while yet.

Here’s hoping!

Wind speed 2.0 m/s. Sea temp: 29.6 °C, air temp: 28.2 °C. #transgender

"How many fics are in your ao3 history" this and "what's your most read fic" that. Listen. Listen to me. I don't go into my ao3 history. Whatever is there is between the archive and god and it is quite frankly none of my business what past me decided to open.

@yesjejunus

Sigourney Weaver (1983) by Helmut Newton.

[ID: A statue of a person lying on a very plush looking pillow-bed; the sculpture is nude with back to the camera, face turned to the side, lying on a dramatic drapery, with one foot gently raised.]

This is an incredibly compelling work in person for a number of reasons -- to begin with, the raised foot isn't done justice by the photograph, but it's really funny and very human in person. It looked ancient enough, but also whimsical enough, that I was surprised I hadn't seen it in the records yet, so I checked out the placard, which put the date at around 100 CE. I must have just missed it while paging through the records. I'm sorry I did, because it's a gorgeous sculpture. (Its history is complicated but it appears the figure and draperies are ancient while the bed itself is 17th century.)

And it's called the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, because...

[ID: The statue as seen from the side; head still turned away, the torso is visible, and shows both the generous curve of a breast and also a penis and testicles resting on the drapery on which the figure reclines.]

In ancient history, Hermaphroditus was the child of Aphrodite and Hermes, originally male, who was merged with a naiad who was obsessed with him and became both male and female. He's generally represented as a very feminine-looking person (hair in the female style of the time, prominent breasts, female clothing, rounded hips) with male genitalia, often coyly on display. The history is complicated; we don't have good sourcing for the story and we don't truly know how Hermaphroditus was viewed in the ancient world, as far as I know (classicists feel free to correct me on this). Hermaphroditus, generally referred to with male pronouns even after developing a female appearance, may have represented trans women, intersex people, or some spiritual concept that had little to do with human gender expression at all.

Regardless of the complication surrounding the narrative, the sculpture itself is beautiful, and well worth sharing, I think.

Link to the gay porn library of Alexandria.

Happy pride.