oh my god god god god god my dad just tried to complain about me wearing earrings with ghosts on them because they're "not very festive" so i said Well Actually ghosts are very appropriate for christmastime and he said tell you what if you can show me a single christmas themed thing that has ghosts in it i won't say another word about your fashion choices this entire holiday. i Promise. so i got him to lean in realllllll close as i opened up the browser app on my phone and slowly began to type "A CHRISTMAS CAROL" while the blood rapidly drained from his face.

Cradle

Fandom: Parahumans Series

Sample Size: 659 stories

Source: AO3

Note: I could not find an image for this ship without possibly stealing someone's artwork.

Then vs. now:

My methodology is a little different I guess, but the numbers are close to OP's at least.

"All of yours for one of ours" is a Nazi slogan basically meaning "since you killed one of us we are going to kill all of you."

That's psychotic enough, but what's worse is that no ICE agent was killed recently. You can see that on their own website dedicated to dead ICE Agents.

The closest thing to "murder" of an agent was in 2005 (I couldn't find a specific article or wiki page on the guy) and in 2011. (And there was a guy who was killed in 1905, too. Are we going to count the 121 year old case?)

And one dumbass killed themself by accident in 2021. (Again I couldn't find a specific article on them.) Are we going to count that dumbass?

Most of them died from an illness. A fuckton of them died from COVID because they ignored guidelines.

You can't support anybody who would use Nazi slogans and then cry when somebody is calling you a Nazi.

Look, you guys gotta stop saying shit like this on all of my skeptic posts. You can't tell someone "of course it's okay to believe in things, as long as you never let it affect your behavior in any way and also you admit it's not actually true."

Stand up, accept that you are one of those "mean" skeptics, and tell people to stop believing in shit that isn't real with your whole chest. Stop doing whatever this wishy-washy nonsense is. People who read their horoscope or collect crystals for fun don't need to be told that it's not real and people who genuinely think crystals cure cancer and geminis are deceitful don't need to be patted on the head and told "it's okay to ~believe~ in things!"

Interesting how tumblr liberal 'totally not atheists' utterly refuse to comprehend that many people actually BELIEVE their beliefs. Like, theyve got this idea that all religious, spiritual, or woo beliefs are just, what, LARP? Culture and aesthetic and identity utterly disconnected to belief.

It's like the whole thing secular jumblr does about religion having nothing to do with belief and everything to do with ethnicicty and culture (itself an absurd overstatement that frankly doesn't apply to a lot of Judaism much less anyone else), but filtered through a game of telephone and broadened to basically any belief.

'You atheists are so dumb, of COURSE everyone considers their spiritual beliefs to be nothing more than metaphor, aesthetic, and LARP, why are you acting like anyone BELIEVES?'

It's been said before but "ugh, you atheists are so stupid that you don't even realize that nobody ACTUALLY believes all that mumbo-jumbo nonsense, you just think they do because you think all non-white cultures are backwards savages" is uhhhhhhhh SIGNIFICANTLY more offensive than anything most atheists are saying

Ah, yes, I see you’ve taken notice of the fine knight I keep dangling in a big gilded cage above my evil throne. Quite the pretty little ornament the would be savior makes, wouldn’t you agree~?

What? No, it IS a big cage. That’s- it’s the standard size for a knight’s cage I’m pretty sure. NO I’m not going to invest in 500 square feet of dungeon, it’s ONE knight! I’m pretty sure knights live in hovels in the wild anyways which is basically the same- Look, the cage is quite literally gilded. He loves the cage! He loves obediently preening in the cage! Yeah well, when you capture your own knight you can keep it in whatever size castle you want to, but this one’s mine. Especially since you’re so obviously jealous of me and my cute and awesome knight anyway.

He loves the cage!

He can't even swing a sword around!

Can't swing a sword, doesn't have a charge to protect. Doesn't even have a horse! This is just downright barbaric.

This is great.

for the record if you picked no I expect you to prove it. it is more likely that you don't know what "pronouncing things differently" means than it is that you actually say them the same way

surprising number of people in the notes saying things like "yeah they're the same, my tongue is in the same position for both of them" which is wild because I've been assuming that most people are aware that there are other muscles involved in speaking besides the tongue

transcript under the cut

so i went to buy shoes

Axis of Awesome's 4 Chords Song, but I put the original artists back in.

SONGS USED

(Note: This was mostly copied from Wikipedia)

this is how i feel when ppl say genshin has diverse body types sorry

So turns out the US are setting babies up for a lifetime of illness and increased likelihood of liver cancer in Guinea Bissau in the name of “research”

7000 newborns will be denied the neoneatal HepB vaccine until 6 weeks to ‘prove’ that the HepB vaccine is linked to neurodevelopmental disability on the directions of the Department of Health vis RFK Jr and in collaboration with researchers in Denmark, despite the fact that the vaccine’s efficacy rate and best protection is when administered to newborns, and the total lack of correlation between vaccination and neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Guinea Bissau has some of the highest rates of HepB on the continent, and infants are the group at the highest risk of contracting HepB, leading to chronic hepatitis & long term hepatic diseases like cirrhosis and liver failure as well as increased chance of liver cancer.

The study can’t be carried out in the US or Denmark because it fails almost every benchmark for medical ethics — surprising absolutely nobody, it is in fact heinously unethical to expose babies to preventable disease that causes liver failure and liver cancer, but the “study” has been green lit in Guinea.

Fuck the US imperial project in Africa, fuck RFK Jr and the US Department of Health, and fuck every single collaborative researcher in Denmark. This is some nightmare Tuskegee Study shit and every single individual involved deserves to be in The Hague.

I do not think this is an accurate description of the study. Guinea-Bassau - like many countries - *currently* gives "everyone" (it fails to reach full coverage) the Hep B vaccine at 6 weeks. That is the default state. They are transitioning to WHO guidelines starting in 2027 to give them at birth instead. What this study is doing is taking advantage of the transition to *start* giving some babies the vaccine at birth instead of the 6 weeks they are currently doing, and recording data on the control group. You couldn't normally do that because the policy is the policy, but since they are changing the policy there is gonna be a mixed population for a while. This is a "natural experiment" they are taking advantage of for data. From my read they are actually accelerating how many babies are getting the vaccine earlier, since they are doing this before 2027 (not 100% confident on this part).

It is a pretty stupid natural experiment clearly being conducted by biased parties? Scientists don't like this for the same reason they dont like any study that is pushing obviously discredited ideas, it is a waste of money and things like p-hacking will let you find what you want. But at baseline this study could be done in the US, or Denmark. Or elsewhere. Taking advantage of staggered treatment roll-outs for natural experiment is extremely common. This is not being done in Guinea-Bassau because ~Imperialism, it is being done there because that is where the natural experiment is occuring.

Jenny and Ted discuss Buzz 7.12.

Episode Notes:

Of course, Leviathan's arrival is the textual reason for Dinah's numbers changing, but I don't think this necessarily means that the narrative reason isn't Taylor finding out about Dinah. This is the point where she decides to take down Coil, not in the form of a coherent plan, but in that visceral 'fuck this guy' way. In fact, Coil getting Leviathan as the answer immediately after might stop him from looking closer into what made those numbers change.

But there's a third influence here.

There's that post floating around about what it has to be like for Lisa to watch Taylor's face in that moment. Here's the girl she's trying to save, seeing someone whose situation is basically the same as Lisa, and go 'no, this is not acceptable, I will not stand for this, fuck you'.

You note in this chapter that Lisa's voice is a bit odd, and I think it's Lisa, for the first time, having that odd little spark of hope. We know she was planning to betray Coil well before this, but more in the 'I'll gather resources and then there'll be an opportunity some day' way. Keeping this escape hatch in her mind, more as cope, as fantasy, to help her deal with the reality she's in, rather than something she thinks will actually happen.

But here, in this moment, I think she starts to think it might be possible for her to get out of there, and an actual plan starts to coalesce.

theres something else about Alastor btw also. in the pilot he tells Charlie he wants to watch sinners in her hotel try for redemption and fail

which is taking her premise and her enterprise more seriously than anyone else has in the entire show who wasn't already at the hotel and being ground down into accepting it lol

like... hes the only one who thinks people WOULD try for it. and he specifically thinks that it wont just fail because That's Not How It Works Mechanically, but that they will specifically fail to overcome their flaws

which is again more detailed thought than anyone dismissing Charlie's hotel is shown giving it ever. Lucifer's opinion is just "sinners suck and so does Heaven so none of this will work". generally everyone laughs at the idea this is even desirable, to some degree perhaps sour grapes not believing it will work for any number of reasons and refusing to hope.

Alastor? Alastor has VERY specific opinions and 0 sour grapes insecurity about saying them. He doesn't think Charlie's premise is incoherent, he thinks a very specific failure will occur.

(And he has already been proven wrong, and has not particularly commented on it. I would be very curious to see someone in the show actually ask him what he thinks about the hotel now in a context where he'd be inclined to be honest about it)

In the 2000s, phones had quirks and class....

In the ye olde days, when technology allowed phones to become small but there was no general concensus on what a phone should/ought to look like, it was like the wild west of phone design. The crazier it was, the higher the prestige. Phones back then did two things and they did them with flamboyance.

And then Steve Jobs ruined everything.