*says a fact in a conversation and a wikipedia citation appears next to my head*
lazygravez2
*clicks the citation*
beckaboi
*text pops up saying “this is not true. He saw this in a youtube video once in 2014 and took it as fact”. the words “youtube video” are underlined and in blue”
*clicks on the link*
stormy-blue-skies
Bitches out here roleplaying internet trolling
So I'm putting this here as a sort of public service. If you have never seen a rabid animal before, and you think you can handle watching it, I think it's a good idea to watch this. It's pretty upsetting to watch, so big CW on it, because this animal is essentially "dead but still moving." This is end-stage rabies. There is no saving this animal.
Before this stage, animals may be excessively affectionate or oddly tame-looking which is part of the reason why seeing people feeding foxes is upsetting to me. These animals might be, or might become, rabid, and there's no way to know without testing, which involves destroying the animal. Encouraging wild animals to be that close to humans is generally bad.
I grew up in the woods, so unfortunately we saw an uptick in rabid animals every spring -- you'd hear there was a rabid bat in this neighborhood or a rabid fox in this one -- but as wild animals and humans cross over more and more, we will see this more and more.
Opossums and squirrels extremely rarely get rabies, and we don't know why. They think the low body temperature of opossums inhibits the virus. The most common animals which get rabies in the US are raccoons, skunks, bats and foxes. Any animal 'acting unusually' -- not skittish around humans, biting at the air or at nothing ('fly-biting'), walking strangely (they kind of look like they have a string attached to their heads and walk kind of diagonal like they're being pulled along, a lot of the time) -- should be treated as though it's potentially rabid.
If you think you have been exposed to a rabid animal, including 'waking up in a room where a bat has gotten into it and there's a fucking bat in your room', please immediately go to the emergency room. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Post-exposure prophylaxis absolutely fucking sucks, it is a series of shots you'll have to get in two stages, it's done by weight, and it feels fucking nasty, but rabies is 100% fatal. I cannot stress enough how essential this is, having been through it.
Thank you for reading, I love everybody, the end.
To be clear, I have been through post-exposure prophylaxis for rabies. In 2005 or early 2006, I forget which exactly, @urbanprole and I woke up with a bat in our bedroom bc our apartment maintenance hadn't closed up the HVAC system after replacing filters. I shooed the bat out with a broom and it was acting normally for a bat but we didn't take any chances. (Thankfully, MK was at her dad's that weekend.)
I felt absolutely wretched the next day - the worst I've ever felt, excluding surgery and childbirth - after each series of shots. I had to get 2 sets on different days. I got 8 shots the first day, and Emet got like 13 or 15 bc she's very tall, and it's done by mass. The only thing I can think to compare it to is the depths of COVID, but without the coughing. Your immune system is Working Hard to update itself so it can recognize and fight any possible exposure.
I basically laid in bed and ached and sweated and groaned, but after it was over, I was fine.
Fewer than 20 people have ever survived rabies, and none are known to have survived without immediate post-exposure prophylaxis. Do not fuck around with this. Do not approach strange stray or wild mammals, especially without protective clothing.
Several comments on this post talking about 'why can't the US eradicate rabies entirely' and my friends, it can be really hard to understand how fucking big the United States is, and how weird it is to have basically 50 small countries in a trenchcoat. Like, we're fighting each other right now in courts over medicine, for one thing, and for another...
Like, one of the people commenting on this post and wondering this is from Portugal. Portugal is 35,603 square miles, and the United States is 3.97 million square miles. Portugal is 0.0093% the size of the United States, which... yeah. Like. The single state that I grew up in (Pennsylvania) is 46K square miles.
So, like, for one thing, this country is trying not to explode while a small group of people try to make it explode. And for another?
The US? Is. Fucking. Huge.
Australia doesn't have Rabies, because as far as I'm aware it just never got here and we work hard to keep it that way.
But we do have Bat Derived Lyssavirus, which is basically a rabies doppelganger... Don't fuck around with bats. Go to a Dr if you come into contact with a bat because you don't always notice a scratch/bite in the moment.
No need to be afraid of bats, just appreciate them from a distance... They're wild animals. If you find a bat in distress call a ranger.
“My friend told me a story he hadn’t told anyone for years. When he used to tell it years ago people would laugh and say, ‘Who’d believe that? How can that be true? That’s daft.’ So he didn’t tell it again for ages. But for some reason, last night, he knew it would be just the kind of story I would love. When he was a kid, he said, they didn’t use the word autism, they just said ‘shy’, or ‘isn’t very good at being around strangers or lots of people.’ But that’s what he was, and is, and he doesn’t mind telling anyone. It’s just a matter of fact with him, and sometimes it makes him sound a little and act different, but that’s okay. Anyway, when he was a kid it was the middle of the 1980s and they were still saying ‘shy’ or ‘withdrawn’ rather than ‘autistic’. He went to London with his mother to see a special screening of a new film he really loved. He must have won a competition or something, I think. Some of the details he can’t quite remember, but he thinks it must have been London they went to, and the film…! Well, the film is one of my all-time favourites, too. It’s a dark, mysterious fantasy movie. Every single frame is crammed with puppets and goblins. There are silly songs and a goblin king who wears clingy silver tights and who kidnaps a baby and this is what kickstarts the whole adventure. It was ‘Labyrinth’, of course, and the star was David Bowie, and he was there to meet the children who had come to see this special screening. ‘I met David Bowie once,’ was the thing that my friend said, that caught my attention. ‘You did? When was this?’ I was amazed, and surprised, too, at the casual way he brought this revelation out. Almost anyone else I know would have told the tale a million times already. He seemed surprised I would want to know, and he told me the whole thing, all out of order, and I eked the details out of him. He told the story as if it was he’d been on an adventure back then, and he wasn’t quite allowed to tell the story. Like there was a pact, or a magic spell surrounding it. As if something profound and peculiar would occur if he broke the confidence. It was thirty years ago and all us kids who’d loved Labyrinth then, and who still love it now, are all middle-aged. Saddest of all, the Goblin King is dead. Does the magic still exist? I asked him what happened on his adventure. ‘I was withdrawn, more withdrawn than the other kids. We all got a signed poster. Because I was so shy, they put me in a separate room, to one side, and so I got to meet him alone. He’d heard I was shy and it was his idea. He spent thirty minutes with me. ‘He gave me this mask. This one. Look. ‘He said: ‘This is an invisible mask, you see? ‘He took it off his own face and looked around like he was scared and uncomfortable all of a sudden. He passed me his invisible mask. ‘Put it on,’ he told me. ‘It’s magic.’ ‘And so I did. ‘Then he told me, ‘I always feel afraid, just the same as you. But I wear this mask every single day. And it doesn’t take the fear away, but it makes it feel a bit better. I feel brave enough then to face the whole world and all the people. And now you will, too. ‘I sat there in his magic mask, looking through the eyes at David Bowie and it was true, I did feel better. ‘Then I watched as he made another magic mask. He spun it out of thin air, out of nothing at all. He finished it and smiled and then he put it on. And he looked so relieved and pleased. He smiled at me. ‘'Now we’ve both got invisible masks. We can both see through them perfectly well and no one would know we’re even wearing them,’ he said. ‘So, I felt incredibly comfortable. It was the first time I felt safe in my whole life. ‘It was magic. He was a wizard. He was a goblin king, grinning at me. ‘I still keep the mask, of course. This is it, now. Look.’ I kept asking my friend questions, amazed by his story. I loved it and wanted all the details. How many other kids? Did they have puppets from the film there, as well? What was David Bowie wearing? I imagined him in his lilac suit from Live Aid. Or maybe he was dressed as the Goblin King in lacy ruffles and cobwebs and glitter. What was the last thing he said to you, when you had to say goodbye? ‘David Bowie said, ‘I’m always afraid as well. But this is how you can feel brave in the world.’ And then it was over. I’ve never forgotten it. And years later I cried when I heard he had passed.’ My friend was surprised I was delighted by this tale. ‘The normal reaction is: that’s just a stupid story. Fancy believing in an invisible mask.’ But I do. I really believe in it. And it’s the best story I’ve heard all year.”
— Paul Magrs (via yourfluffiestnightmare)
Source: lifeonmagrs.blogspot.de
Spend, Spent - Jimmy Olsen does not want to spend anything. He does not want to pay out money. He spent all his money at the show He likes to spend time at a show. Jimmy likes to pass time watching a show.
i’ll never understand people who can’t make fun of their faves a little. like yes i love this character and would defend them to my grave but also they’re stupid sometimes and they do dumb things and imma make fun of them for it
“You must be so ashamed of me. I know that you’ve been watching me this entire night, a lot of nights, probably–and I know some of the things I’ve done have disappointed you. I’m supposed to be better than this. Than using all the things I’ve been taught to just hurt people that I think deserve it. The entire point is that we stand for something. We take our memories and we use them to seek justice, not revenge. Never revenge. I can lie to myself and say this is justice. But that doesn’t make it true, and it doesn’t make it right. If we don’t understand the difference–then we’re just people in masks, running around beating each other up, with no thought of who could get caught in the middle.”
–Tim Drake to Jack Drake’s grave (Robin #167 – The Promise)
“In 1404, King Taejong fell from his horse during a hunting expedition. Embarrassed, looking to his left and right, he commanded, “Do not let the historian find out about this.” To his disappointment, the historian accompanying the hunting party included these words in the annals, in addition to a description of the king’s fall.“
LMFAOOOOOO rip to that guy
i thought maybe this was fake, but there’s even a citation!
Taejong Sillok Book 7. 5th year of King Taejong’s Reign (1404), February 8.
Happy 618th anniversary of the day King Taejong fell from his horse!
Apparently the recorders were really intense about this. We have a record of King Taejong complaining about a recorder who followed him on a hunt in disguise and another who eavesdropped on him behind a screen. No one was allowed to see the records, even the king (one king did and killed five men based on what was written there, after which they took greater care to ensure it would never happen again), and changing the content or disclosing it was a capital punishment. Even when there were rival political factions trying to influence the writers, they wrote down what was a revision and what wasn’t and kept an original version with no revisions in it.
They also made sure to back up their data. They made four copies of it, then when three copies were lost in the Imrim Wars they decided to make five more copies just in case. One copy was destroyed in a rebellion, another was partially damaged in an invasion, and Japan stole one copy during their occupation and moved it to Tokyo University, where it was mostly destroyed in the Kanto Earthquake (47 books remained and were returned to South Korea in 2006). Now the whole thing is digitized, free on the internet, and translated into modern Korean for all to see.
It took centuries of meticulous recorders, justifiably paranoid copiers, absolutely determined historians, and painstaking infrastructure for this joke to be possible. Happy 618th anniversary to the day King Taejong fell from his horse.
i personally do lateral tripod. dynamic tripod is the "proper" way and i believe most common, feel free to correct me.
“The Archive of Our Own has none of these problems. It uses a third tagging system, one that blends the best elements of both styles. On AO3, users can put in whatever tags they want (autocomplete is there to help, but they don’t have to use it). Then, behind the scenes, human volunteers look up any new tags that no one else has used before and match them with any applicable existing tags, a process known as tag wrangling. Wrangling means that you don’t need to know whether the most popular tag for your new fanfic featuring Sherlock Holmes and John Watson is Johnlock or Sherwatson or John/Sherlock or Sherlock/John or Holmes/Watson or anything else. And you definitely don’t need to tag your fic with all of them just in case. Instead, you pick whichever one you like, the tag wranglers do their work behind the scenes, and readers looking for any of these synonyms will still be able to find you. AO3’s trick is that it involves humans by design—around 350 volunteer tag wranglers in 2019, up from 160 people in 2012—who each spend a few hours a week deciding whether new tags should be treated as synonyms or subsets of existing tags, or simply left alone. AO3’s Tag Wrangling Chairs estimate that the group is on track to wrangle over 2 million never-before-used tags in 2019, up from around 1.5 million in 2018. Laissez-faire and rigid tagging systems both fail because they assume too much—that users can create order from a completely open system, or that a predefined taxonomy can encompass every kind of tag a person might ever want. When these assumptions don’t pan out, it always seems to be the user’s fault. AO3’s beliefs about human nature are more pragmatic, like an architect designing pathways where pedestrians have begun wearing down the grass, recognizing how variation and standardization can fit together. The wrangler system is one where ordinary user behavior can be successful, a system which accepts that users periodically need help from someone with a bird’s-eye view of the larger picture. Users appreciate this help. According to Tag Wrangling Chair briar_pipe, “We sometimes get users who come from Instagram or Tumblr or another unmoderated site. We can tell that they’re new to AO3 because they tag with every variation of a concept—abbreviations, different word order, all of it. I love how excited people get when they realize they don’t have to do that here.””
—
Gretchen McCulloch, Fans Are Better Than Tech at Organizing Information Online
(My latest Wired column is up and it’s about AO3 and taxonomies!)
As a trans woman I can confirm that they indeed found an ancient forest inside a 630ft deep sinkhole in China
cis people can reblog this but keep it on subject, please
Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals
The breadsticks thing to me is hilarious I think it must be another Europe/America thing bc my whole life ‘breadsticks’ have been these hard crunchy thin stick things you buy them at the supermarket and it says breadsticks on the box Never in my life has anyone around me referred to an actual stick of bread as a breadstick lmao But then we don’t have Olive Garden either
samfuckingvimes
wait, that’s not what they’re talking about?
unreliablefairyservant
Are you telling me this meme is not about grissini? My life is a lie!
I… did wonder why there would be such a focus on going to somewhere with unlimited dry wheat twigs. Googling ‘olive garden breadsticks’ does seem to suggest a tastier thing.
Huh.
this changes everything
little-fleur
I mean, I thought it was odd that they everyone was so excited about breadsticks… but then I thought, well, it’s America…
Wait they’re talking about actual bread???
grissini:
breadsticks:
… I want American breadsticks. ;_;
@goodbyecassiel - this is the Great Breadstick Misunderstanding, companion to the Epic Lemonade Confusion post
accursedsith
@charlottedabookworm my life is a lie
Omfg same
wtaf why did nobody ever tell us they were talking about actual bread?!?!
We literally did tell you. We. We used the word BREAD.
but………… those aren’t breadsticks!
They are sticks.
Of bread.
🤷♂️
crewdlydrawn
We didn’t know you had breadtwigs instead.
OH the joke is funnier than previously thought because those are bigger and therefore it would be harder and more socially awkward to shove them into your purse! Lol
All this time, I was picturing people grabbing huge handfuls of bread twigs! All this time…
im having feelings about the uffington white horse again
so essentially there’s this cool horse drawn into the hills in england made out of chalk and it’s like 3,000 years old.
people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.
we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.
the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?
couldn’t agree more we’re best friends now
I feel like a good shorthand for a lot of economics arguments is "if you want people to work minimum wage jobs in your city, you need to allow minimum wage apartments for them to live in."
"These jobs are just for teenagers on the weekends." Okay, so you'll use minimum wage services only on the weekends and after school. No McDonald's or Starbucks on your lunch break.
"They can get a roommate." For a one bedroom? A roommate for a one bedroom? Or a studio? Do you have a roommate to get a middle-wage apartment for your middle-wage job? No? Why should they?
"They can live farther from city center and just commute." Are there ways for them to commute that don't equate to that rent? Living in an outer borough might work in NYC, where public transport is a flat rate, but a city in Texas requires a car. Does the money saved in rent equal the money spent on the car loan, the insurance, the gas? Remember, if you want people to take the bus or a bike, the bus needs to be reliable and the bike lanes survivable.
If you want minimum wage workers to be around for you to rely on, then those minimum wage workers need a place to stay.
You either raise the minimum wage, or you drop the rent. There's only so long you can keep rents high and wages low before your workforce leaves for cheaper pastures.
"Nobody wants to work anymore" doesn't hold water if the reason nobody applies is because the commute is impossible at the wage you provide.
the process of double knitting socks mentioned in “war & peace”. this is the oldest historical mention of the method, hence why nowadays it’s known as ‘the war & peace method’, and it seems like the knowledge of how to do it was lost/forgotten until this article from 2006 that details it. it’s still not a very popular way of knitting socks due to its difficulty , but it’s fairly interesting in how it works.
every other stitch on the needles belongs to the inside sock and, as you go, you knit one stitch with one yarn and the next one with the other, so that the two projects share the same needles but aren’t actually connected to each other
then you can, in fact, magically pull out the second sock from inside the first
Know your puppies!
Sharks and owls are cats, as well.
Thank you for this insight, you’re right!
WILL CHERISH THEM ALL <3
Okay two things
1) every time I see something like this, or photos of wild unrealistic landscapes that really exist, or spectacular architecture, whatever it is, I think again that when we write fantasy, we NERF REALITY. That is, here’s some dude with a special interest and a brain that somehow lacks basic self preservation mechanisms, and he’s out here looking like a super hero. Regular humans are capable of things we seem super human. Real landscapes are more fantastical than our fantasies. Reality is more fantastical than our fantasies.
2) how the fuck did he not kick out any windows that’s the most impressive part of the whole video.
this man is his own zombie apocalypse team, adding anyone else would just slow him down
So as someone who used to teach parkour back in the day, this dude isn’t just talented. His technique is amazing.
It’s not just about not kicking out windows. Controlling how you land is about shock absorption, about minimizing the strain on your joints. It also makes you quieter when you move. A good landing should be as silent as possible, because loud landings hurt. That’s the foundation of everything else you do in parkour. So by the time you’re climbing buildings, if you’re breaking windows it means you don’t have enough control to land safely and it’s time to go back to your ground basics.
😶
A real Spider-Man lol