anyway. onto better things

recently I discovered that Kawayoo, one of my all-time favorite Pokemon TCG artists, has some art of Loudred floating around and it's the best thing I've ever seen

Shoutout to whoever it was who informed me a few weeks ago that some types of Zofran have stevia in them because I got to tell my doctor about it today, and he literally made this face behind his mask because he had no idea, and he is also stevia intolerant:

Me, rocking up for my annual physical and my bucketload of weird health problems: so anyway [drops some new medical lore here]

Dr. Brandon who has been hanging on for dear life to the rollercoaster that's been my health saga since he saved my life in 2019, sweating nervously as he yet again learns something new about himself against his will: exCUSE ME?

Thank you for the warning. I go to my doctor who handles my Zofran prescription next week, so I'll talk to her then.

I have a laundry list of medications I have to take already. The fact I have to specify which generic manufacturers I can use on over half of them is obnoxious.

I feel you. It's a pain in the ass, constantly having to check ingredients. Fwiw, I've got an old (empty) bottle that doesn't list it on the ingredients, but my latest batch from a different manufacturer does.

So, y'know, before anyone panics and throws their meds away, check the ingredients on your bottle. It just never occurred to me to check my new Rx until someone pointed it out, and I had a "mother fucker" moment of realization.

So, for those in the notes wondering how it's possible to have an intolerance or allergy to stevia, I hate to break it to you, but bodies can react to just about anything in weird and unpredictable ways.

However, one of the main reasons people may react badly to Stevia is that it is not artificial, as some people seem to think it is.

Stevia is actually a plant (Stevia Rebaudiana) in the Asteraceae/Compositae plant family, which just so happens to be the same plant family as Ragweed, y'know, that little bastard that makes hayfever season so fucking miserable.

There are other components of stevia that a person may react to, but given how common ragweed allergies are, I'd bet a number of people are also sensitive to stevia due to the overlap.

So there you go. That's your 'fun' little tidbit for the day from your weird Auntie Joy with too many allergies.

how many times are we going to rediscover that we need functional ecosystems

Agreed that the amount of articles esp on ecosystems over the past 20(ish) years are stating and restating this idea. But just a heads up, it's not because the scientists don't already know this. It's because we're trying to convince legislatures and stakeholders to actually give a shit about this part of ecosystem recovery. Unfortunately, it seems to take several of these studies per ecosystem to get them to understand that *all* parts of this ecosystem matter.

well then. challenge fucking accepted, assholes

Thought I'd share the Palestinian colors version of my MASK UP! poster 🍉😷🇵🇸 Thank you so much to everyone who shared and downloaded the FREE MASK UP! poster pack!

Hypothetically, you can print this on a risograph by download the design in separate color files and using red, black, and green, and it'll look basically like this mock-up. Let me know if you actually print it in any way, I'd love to hear more C:

We CAN take care of each other, and a better world is possible. If you're feeling alone and helpless, masking up with N95s/KN95s when around others, indoors AND outdoors, is a great place to start. Masking helps protect us from deadly pathogens (like viruses and smoke) PLUS it stymies police surveillance and makes events more accessible to disabled people. All our struggles against fascism and genocide are united, and Palestine will be free!

[ID: "MASK UP!" above 3 figures in different respirator masks, drawn from the waist-up and moving forward shoulder-to-shoulder, all in the colors of Palestine’s flag (red, black, white, and green). Top figure: An Arabic person in a fluttering white kufiyah over a black hijab and dress, plus a white Aura 9210+ N95 disposable mask. L: A fat teenager with monolid eyes, in a black hoodie with a genderqueer symbol, and a black disposable Laianzhi HYX1002 KN100 mask. They’re holding a box labeled FREE that’s full of COVID-19 Rapid Tests and plastic-wrapped N95s. R: middle-aged Black person in a power chair, wearing a Flo Mask eslastomeric respirator with a customized rainbow cover, a winter hat with a Disability symbol pin over mid-length dreads, and shirt featuring 6 flags. (R to L) Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Palestine, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Tigray, Ethiopia. Underneath reads: "RESPIRATOR MASKS PROTECT: your health, your identity, and your community. Find resources near you at COVIDActionMap.org." End ID.]

to my knowledge these are all of the existing examples. if you have more please add them to the post

Giving this Teacup Demon pup his own post because he came out so CUTE!

And because the link was pointing to the wrong pup in the last post whoops

in ye old shop

Maids, cleaners, janitors, and sanitation workers are all the most important people of civilization by far. Even 12 hours without them is VERY noticable and they simply need to be highly compensated for it

'Six AM', 1930 - William Wolfson

Hi, I'm a janitor. The facility I work in had its first floor flooded with sewage and while a restoration company came and sucked up all the water and placed fans everywhere to try the place out, I still cleaned the entire floor and threw away all the contaminated furniture. Same thing happened last year, but only a couple of rooms flooded on that floor and it was only water from a sprinkler system. This year was so much worse and I feel like no one in management gives a shit. The entire upstairs was absolutely going to shit because I was focused on the downstairs. Despite the work I do, I have to beg folks to spread around my little bear commission posts every month because I simply can't afford to live on what I'm paid lol

So, truly thanks to everyone who makes and shares posts like these recognizing sanitation workers. It's really a thankless job.

As an omnivore who likes vegan and vegetarian cooking I think the mistake a lot of people make when trying to convince meat eaters to go plant based is trying to convince them that something you’ve got will replace meat for them.

I like vegan nuggets and real chicken nuggets for different reasons. They taste different. They only taste identical to you because you haven’t eaten meat for five years.

When cooking for myself I only eat meat maybe like three times a week because vegetarian cooking is often cheaper and it tastes good.

Like just give people the actual recipes you use that aren’t pasta. Every time you ask what to eat on a meatless day people are like. Pasta. I don’t want pasta every day.

Point out the foods people already eat that are vegetarian. Like sweet potato fries, veggie chow mein, grilled mushrooms, mashed potatoes, black bean enchiladas, peanut butter sandwiches. Tell people what you microwave when you’re drunk at 3am. Show people that vegetables are so good they’ll want them in their diet.

Also some people are just never gonna go vegan. They’re just not. I’m certainly not, and I love vegan food. But since I’ve fallen in love with vegetarian cooking I eat meat much less and I’m much more careful about picking the meat I do eat. Doesn’t that align with a lot of your goals?

Impossible burger doesn’t taste like meat. But you know what tastes really good? A mushroom fajita taco. Falafel. Potato pancakes with applesauce. Smoky vegan collared greens. Hot potato salad with herbs. Palak paneer with rice. Tofu Pad Thai with extra peanuts. Some of my favorite foods of all time, and I’m a dirty rotten meat eater. Use THAT to get your foot in the door. And be more accepting of some half-assed victories. I’m on your side for the most part, believe it or not. But stop trying to claim certain things are just like meat. You and I both know you don’t plan most of your weeknight dinners around meat substitutes.

tags update: gaza, palestine, free palestine, free gaza, israel, yemen, tel aviv, palestine news, iran, jerusalem are all trending... 4 front page

QUICK psa

the attack on the Iranian embassy(just like israel's other attacks on syria, Lebanon, iraq, egypt, west bank, ect.) have been largely ignored by western media outlets so get ready for a ton of news headlines trying to act as if iran's actions were unprovoked

quick catch up:

a couple of weeks ago(april 1st 2024) israel bombed the iranian consulate annex building adjacent to the iranian embassy in Damascus... quick geography class, that is in syria. the attack killed 16 people

sense attacking a country's embassy constitutes an attack on that country's soil iran has started retaliatory attacks sense the 13th. and now israel is calling for an emergency meeting in the UN.. the same UN they ignored for months on end

absolutely losing my mind that a bunch of nimby assholes spent $500k to build a sandcastle that was promptly wiped away

ted i really could not disagree more this is far from catastrophic. i am ensconced.

literally selling sand to people who live on the beach. some people's hustle and grift game cannot be overstated. world class shit right here

i love tumblr but i hate that we have been conditioned to think you can’t add some of the most insightful shit you’ve ever seen to absolute shitposts. please by all means reblog my posts with this kind of context because it’s so important. excellent points here.

So basically, Dolly the sheep was an accident. They were trying to clone sheep cells, and they ended up unintentally generating an embryo, which turned out to be viable, hence we got Dolly.

The method they used proved unsuccessful in primates, and the risk of cloning primates (and thus humans) outweighs the benefits (because there really aren't any real benefits, scientifically speaking), so they don't do it.

Where it's most likely to be used is in agriculture, cloning livestock embryos.

What they use cloning for is stem cells. Cloning adult cells to create stem cells means they don't need embryonic stem cells, which is probably the most important thing that came from cloning research in the past 25 years.

The reason it was so important was that it proved that you didn't need an embryonic cell to clone live animals. The nucleus of an adult cell contains all the DNA you need to clone, because Dolly was cloned from an adult cell, which was previously unheard of. Now they know that adults cells can be reprogrammed back to an embryonic stage, and was a major breakthrough for stem cell research.

So basically, we don't hear about cloning anymore because they aren't doing anything that is so exciting it will capture the world's interest, like Dolly did. But it was a major scientific breakthrough that is still very important.

One of my favourite cloned animals is Kurt, a Przewalski's Horse who was cloned from the preserved samples from a horse that died in the 90's so that he can hopefully introduce some additional genetic diversity into the Przewalski's Horse population. Oh hey there's actually two clones of this one horse now, the second one is Ollie who was born last year. Kurt is now about four years old. Last I checked he was at the San Diego Zoo.

We don't tend to clone animals that are more common because we already have a very efficient machine for making sheep, it's called sheep.

All of this. In lab settings we don't really clone animals either, because they're pretty much clones already: laboratory animal strains, whether they're mice, flies, fish, whatever--they're usually genetically stable, healthy inbred populations. Each individual only differs from the others by a small amount.

Even so, we do see genetic drift that has to be rolled back every so often. Mostly what's done is freezing sperm and embryo samples in a biobank, which allows the genetic stock to be refreshed without introducing extra complications to the process. This was especially vital during covid lockdowns, for two reasons:

biobanks were a relatively quick and highly effective way to preserve the genetics of animals that naturally live short lives, thus preserving years worth of science and allowing labs to get back on their feet quicker.

The other reason is that during the outbreak of SARS, a few laboratory mouse strains had been created that could catch the virus (mice were otherwise immune). The intent had been to use the strain to test vaccines, but SARS went away with unexpected speed. Samples of the SARS-vulnerable mouse were preserved, though, as were a few more strains that were generally susceptible to coronaviruses. When covid was identified as a SARS virus, the mouse strains were pulled out of biobanking and resurrected.

At the time, vaccine development felt horribly, unfairly slow, but by the usual standards of science? It was blazing fast, requiring a huge amount of coordinated effort around the globe, helped along by our biobanking capabilities and genetically standardized mice. The techs and veterinarians that brought the lines back and cared for the animals deserve awards.

April 12, 2024. Source: Quds News Network. "Despite the loss of lives, the devastation and the displacement, the children of Gaza make sure to have little room for joy at Eid al-Fitr."

heyyyyy reminder for other cane users.

don't forget that cane tips need to be replaced.

i've been using my cane for almost two years on a near daily basis and i JUST switched out the tip and

[image IDs in alt text]

the new tip versus the old tip. i'm not sure how clear it is but, YEAH, there's like. half a millimeter of tread left on the old tip, if that

the replacement was LITERALLY 2 dollars. i bought two to justify the four dollar shipping but. TWO BUCKS.

i had noticed that i was having slipping issues on linoleum recently, but i did not realize how bad the issue had gotten until the new tips came so. PLEASE check your cane treads and if they're notably worn out PLEASE get yourself a new tip they're SO cheap and the grip i get on the new one is INSANE

please don't forget to replace your cane tips!

I know this is a niche one but I can’t get it out of my head.