Rb if you want your mutuals to alert you if you accidentally reblog AI generated images

I hate these motherfuckers and I hate everybody whose actions contributed in any way whatsoever to how we got here. None of this bullshit needs to be happening and none of it would be if enough people had pulled their heads out of their asses on or before November 5, 2024.

Hi I was healthy and able bodied and in my mid twenties when I got covid in 2022. As a direct result of ONE infection I am now a full time wheelchair user (power chair because I lack the strength to self propel) and I need daily home care. I was very unlucky but I am far from being an isolated case, millions of people have been disabled with Long Covid and it could be YOU bc each infection increases the risk of long term damage.

It's currently May 20th as I write this and there's still an open comment available for three days. If you want to feel like you're doing something (aside from calling your reps) this is something.

Ok, here's my fastest and roughest lit review ever to make a template for this:

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I strongly oppose the FDA’s proposal to block Americans under the age of 65 from accessing booster vaccines to protect themselves from COVID-19. [This part is critical. State as clearly as possible what your stance is, right up front. Seriously, do not bury the lede and talk about something tangential like supporting rights to access healthcare or valuing science; get straight to the point, then explain why afterward].

[Then expand: Include supporting evidence and cite sources; your arguments could include any or all of the following:]

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A couple of notes: The comment opportunity linked here is a notice that the vaccines advisory committee will be holding a public hearing about this on Thursday the 22nd from 8:30am-4:30pm; the link will be posted here (https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees) on the day. I’ll keep an eye out on the day of and share the link when it’s up. The hearing is open to the public; oral presentations from the public will be scheduled between approximately 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time on May 22, 2025. The submission period to request an oral presentation timeslot has closed.

Also, I read a sampling of the current (~6000) comments and there are a SHIT-TON of anti-vax comments; do not look at these links being passed around and think “oh everybody else has got this.” We need as vocal a response as possible to counteract these demons.

reblog if you would give cheeses to these meeces

about fucking time

Reblog to give the prev person some dopamine.

the two fundamental truths of historical and contemporary mankind:

Someone I know not well enough to voice my opinion on the subject said something like why didn’t God make potatoes a low-calorie food so I am here to say: God made them like that because their nutrition density IS what makes them healthy. By God I mean Andean agricultural technicians. Potato is healthy BECAUSE potato holds calories and vitamins. Do not malign potato

For all evolutionary history, life has struggled against calorie deficit… So much energy goes into finding food that there is no time for anything else. Our ancestors selectively bred root vegetables to create the potato, so that we might be the first species whose daily existence doesn’t consist of trying to find the nutrients necessary for survival. One potato can rival the calorie count of many hours of foraging… Eat a potato, and you free up so much time to create and build and connect with your fellow man. Without potato where would you be?? Do not stand on the shoulders of giants and think thyself tall!!

I nearly teared up reading “Andean agricultural technicians” bc fuck yes! these were members of Pre-Inca cultures who lived 7 to 10 thousand years ago, and they were scientists! food scientists and researchers and farmers whose names and language we can never know, who lived an inconceivably long time ago (pre-dating ancient civilizations in Egypt, China, India, Greece, and even some parts of Mesopotamia) and we are separated by millennia of time and history, but still for thousands of years the fruits vegetables of their labor and research have continued to nourish countless human lives, how is that not the most earthly form of a true miracle??? anyway yes potatoes are beautiful, salute their creators.

There are approximately 4000 varieties of potato in Peru. I’ve seen an incredible variety of corn and tomatoes, and root vegetables I’ve never seen before, on the local farmer markets. Yet some expats insist on buying only imported, expensive American brands of canned veggies… 🤷🏼‍♀️ Peruvian potatoes 👇🏼

It is long since time for us to start viewing plant domestication as the bioscience that it is. Because while the Andeans were creating potatoes, the ancient Mesoamericans were turning teosinte into corn:

And then there’s bananas, from Papua New Guinea:

These were not small, random changes, this was real concerted effort over years to turn inedible things into highly edible ones. And I’m convinced the main reason we’re reluctant to call them scientific achievements is, well, a racist one.

And it’s such a shame too, cause this was probably the most impotrant scientific effort in human history, it bought us the time to do everything else we do, to go from just trying to get enough calories every day to everything we do now, it game people the freedom to do other things with their lives, human society would not have existed as it is today without this

We need to appreciate our ancient food scientists

First you procrastinate on the task because it is not a big enough deal to get done urgently. Then you procrastinate on the task because it has become such a big deal that doing it is overwhelming. You would think that this implies a middle point where it is just big enough of a deal to get done easily, however the inherent perversity of the universe's causal geometry prevents this

This, from 13 months ago, has just been noticed by transphobes, who have been screenshotting it, announcing that I'm jumping onto a bandwagon and they won't read my books any more. So I thought I'd reblog it, because there may be some trans men or trans women out there who need reassurance, and this might help. (Thank you to all the people who turned up on my Twitter feed hoping for a fight for reminding me to reblog it, even if that wasn't what you thought you were doing.)

Y'ever think about what absolute mad decadence we live in that "vanilla" means "plain"

every day i am percieved™️

There is a reason for this though!

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply. 

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail. The fact that you find joy in the process of reading (or listening!) to stories–that is what matters.

I feel understood 🥰

a bunch of people have reblogged this with the default “i feel called out” reaction….and i know when we say that we mean it tongue-in-cheek….but this comment sorta blew my mind & shifted my perspective up and to the left a little thank you♥

The Serotonin is stored in the Ao3

#this 100% happened to me#but i’m a middle aged writer and english teacher with an academic literature background#when i burned out got sick and had a breakdown i couldn’t read regular books anymore i could only read fanfic#i saw on twitter where someone said literature is prescriptive. you read the kind of fiction that fits your personal need#we’re all overwhelmed right now and that’s why we like the tropey fiction whether fanfic or romance novels or superhero movies#we UNDERSTAND the rules of fiction and dont’ have to work to understand while the payoff comes quickly. kiss. hea. battle/victory

The Good Trek 

Trying

HELP HIM TAKE SIPPY

Who enchanted this PFUCKING wizard

Ohhh my god. he trying to music like a people

He’s playing the Breath of the Wild soundtrack, don’t disturb him

Bilbo was declared dead while he was away in the Hobbit (and had to do a bunch of paperwork to get declared alive again) but there’s no indication he was formally declared dead after leaving the Shire, even though most people assumed he had died.

Therefore I posit: having a missing person declared dead in the Shire requires the consent of their next of kin. Whoever Bilbo’s next of kin was at the time of the Hobbit (possibly Otho? I’m not sure) had him declared dead at the first opportunity but Frodo refused to ever do it.

Frodo had anxious hobbit bureaucrats knocking on his door every couple of years like ‘Mr Baggins… blease… it’s been 10 years… he was eleventy-one… can we fill out his death certificate yet’ and Frodo was like ‘absolutely not’.

Early on he genuinely couldn’t bring himself too but after a while it was more that he enjoyed irritating the local magistrate’s office than anything else.

I raise you: the hobbitish bureaucracy has no means to re-declare someone dead. They had no precedent to declare someone who was once-dead dead again. They would need the Thain, the Mayor, and the Master of Buckland to agree to changing the statute, and since the Thain and the Master are too amused by the whole henclucking that they haven’t gotten round to it just yet.

I’m upping the stakes with: last time Bilbo was declared dead when he was, in fact, not dead, they removed the law stating that you can have someone declared dead without a body, so when Bilbo left (happily aware of this legal loophole and snickering) he could never become legally dead again.

I am loving the implication here that Bilbo can literally never die in the eyes of the law. He’d love that.

a hobbit parent telling their kids the story of Mad Baggins and being like “thanks to a loophole in hobbit law he’s technically still alive today”

a hobbit child misinterprets this and lies awake at night worrying that Mad Baggins is still out there and will appear in their room without warning 

Alternatively: the laws for declaring somebody dead if they’re missing for long enough are still in place, but the magistrates are just refusing to enforce them in this particular case.

After all, last time they declared Bilbo Baggins dead— which involved filling out all the paperwork necessary to declare somebody dead without a body— he had the rudeness to show up again, forcing them to do a lot more paperwork, and this time with an indignant Bilbo having a go at them while they did it.

As a result, the magistrates have decided that they’re not going to declare Bilbo Baggins dead a second time unless they have a body, a coroners reprt explaining the cause of death, and a three day wake to make sure that he doesn’t get up and walk away again.

Centuries later, hobbit parents tell their children that Mad Baggins is forever gone from the shire— at least until the day when somebody is stupid enough to declare him legally dead, at which point legend states that he will immediately come marching back, demanding an explanation.

is there anything, any single thing, cuter than when a sleepy cat heaves their whole entire body into a sigh,

sleepy cat kneading kind of half heartedly but absolutely refusing to stop

uh huh uh huh what about sleepy cat waking up just long enough to realize your foot/arm/side/neck is right there and sort of half consciously moving to snuggle up to it, doing that thing where they’re curled in a ball but still also showing their tummy

a ha! but consider, sleepy cat snuggling up with you and then reaching out a single paw specifically to hold your hand, and then dragging it back and cuddling it like a teddy bear

you make a good point, however, have you considered the moment when a cat sort of headbutt-burrows itself under your arm, pressing its little tiny head up against you and under you like it is almost trying to cuddle so much that you merge

i see your point and it is a fine one, however, what about when it’s cold and you’re wearing a baggy jacket and your sleepy cat paws their way inside and falls asleep purring against your heart

once again, a solid rebuttal! however, might i suggest when your cat is snuggling with you and purring and yet also falling asleep and is struggling to keep purring while also sleeping and so the purr fades and then comes back and then fades again

it appears i’ve been outmatched! a very fine suggestion indeed

you were a most worthy opponent, my good sir; i tip my hat to you and your valor

The reason the heroes are always so easily able to infiltrate the bad guy’s secret base isn’t because evil minions are stupid. I mean, they may well be, but that’s not why.

Rather, it’s because effective operational security depends on establishing and enforcing norms. No behaviour is suspicious in the abstract; that judgment can only be made with reference to some accepted code of conduct.

And if you’re a minion? You basically have no point of reference, because working for an evil overlord is, scientifically speaking, weird as hell.

You had to fight a giant squid as part of your orientation. You’re pretty sure Alice over in engineering is a version of you from a parallel universe, but neither of you have ever had the guts to bring it up. Your supervisor wears a horned helmet in the goddamn break room.

So when you’re confronted with that “new hire” who’s really, really obviously three raccoons in a trenchcoat, you’ve gotta ask yourself: is this… normal? Should I be reporting this to someone?

More importantly, do I want to make this my problem?

And for those who make it as minions, the answer very quickly becomes no, no I do not.