it was so funny watching the rock climbing event that was on for the first ever time at the Olympics this year. the commentators couldn't wrap there heads around how supportive the competitors were and how that actually planned and discussed the climbing routes and problems as a group. it's so funny because first of all the people commenting on this sport have obviously never stepped foot in a climbing gym in their life and second of all if you do any kind of rope or lead climbing, you are literally required to trust your fellow climbers with you safety because they're the one at the other end of the rope stopping you from breaking your neck in most circumstances

like. i know it's a competition for the purposes of the Olympics, but that doesn't mean that all sport is inherently competitive, or that all competition is inherently conflict, and those kinds of attitudes towards sport are why im only just starting to enjoy exercise now in my mid 20s

your biggest competitor in a sport should be yourself and that’s my hot take.

In hindsight it's very insulting to be told that flunking out of college due to adhd is actually "quite common"

just like, if there's a history at your institution of disabled kids not being able to make it you realise that's your fault right. like why don't you fucking do something about it. i guess they tried to do something about it with me and it failed so they let me go. crazy. nice work. why should we try to do any better.

only 5% of people with adhd who go to college finish a degree. FUCKING. FIVE!!! PERCENT!!!!!!!!!!!

that should disgust and enrage you.

if any other demographic of students had a 95% failure rate, we would be demanding reform and studies to understand why that’s happening

when i was at my first university, trying to get accommodations for my ADHD, they just kept asking me what accommodations i wanted, and refused to answer when i would ask what was available to me. how the Hell am i supposed to know what i can have? what’s available???? also, i don’t know!!!! i’m an adhd sufferer, not a fucking disability expert for the fucking college, unlike you, DISABILITY EXPERT WHO WORKS FOR THE COLLEGE.

but because the us is OBSESSED with making sure no one gets anything “”for free””, she literally would not tell me what my options were until i broke down in tears and asked her why she was refusing to help me. and then she did a big sigh, like i was fucking up her entire career by *checks notes* asking the disability center in my university to help me, a disabled student

at the second uni i went to, i tried to explain to a dean that i was literally two gen eds that had nothing to do with my degree away from graduating and that i was burnt out and broke and exhausted and suicidal and i just needed to be able to finish my degree without the gen eds. and this. fucking. guy. looked me right in my face and said in the most patronizing tone he could muster “if you can’t handle it, then maybe college just isn’t for you.” keep in mind that up until that semester, i had been an honor student who made Dean’s List every semester and didn’t get below Bs. if it hadn’t been for my mental breakdown, i would have graduated cum laude, maybe even summa cum laude.

but this dean of students looked a disabled person right in the face and said well i guess you just can’t do it, short bus

Pulled these from a couple articles really quick but yeah the statistics are not kind. I remember writing a scathing essay about my issues with ADHD and college as part of an assignment for academic probation. I got back an email calling me entitled and lazy. Somehow, this thread helps me feel a lot better. I still have about a semester of school unfinished that I’m unsure if I’ll finish but… yeah. Makes me feel better to know it’s not just me.

PSA: The Job Accommodation Network maintains a searchable database of accommodation suggestions for a wide variety of disabilities.

The full database can be accessed here and the ADHD page is here. The full database can be filtered by disability, by limitation, by work-related function, by topic, and by accommodation. Many of these accommodations are applicable to academic settings as well as the workplace.

Here are the section headers for ADHD accommodations ideas to give an overview of what the page contains - this post would become Do You Love the Color of the Accommodation if I attempted to list them all here

The ADHD page linked above also includes case examples and strategies for determining what sort of accommodations might be necessary. More broadly, the JAN website as a whole is a treasure trove of information related to the Americans with Disabilities Act and resources for both individuals and employers.

Oh fuck that's really nice, I will read it

Also just heard a podcast interview with a software developer who had good suggestions

The head of disability accommodations at my college just kept ablesplaining to me that “accommodations are to level the playing field, not give you an advantage,” and that her job is to “protect the school’s rights” rather than help disabled students. The only accommodations they would offer me were 1. extra time on tests, and 2. an alternative test-taking location - neither of which I needed. I ended up getting (most of) what I actually needed by unofficially asking the individual professors, but it should have been legally protected.

some harm reduction orgs give out narcan in injectable form bc its easier to get in bulk so its given through the thigh, kinda like an epi pen except you need to insert the needle and push the plunger yourself.

in terms of satey, there is No safety risk of giving narcan to someone withoit opiods in their body. my harm reduction trainer said her young daughter once administered a injection dose by accident into her moms leg while her mom was teaching her kids how to use it. since she had no opiods in her system, there was nothing for the narcan to remove from the opiod receptors so she didnt feel any effects from it. so if youre not sure if an unconcious and unresponsive person has taken opiods, its still worth it to try narcan. the nasal spray is best recommendation iirc bc u dont have to worry about body size when taking dosage into account

This is extremely useful and a wonderful compilation of information, it's also really important to note that some people who get narcan'd will come up swinging. My dad was an EMT for longer than I've been alive and he's told me how many times he or someone on his crew got decked in the face. However, because EMTs are trained for this, they are a little better prepared to deal with that possibility, and that's another reason why it's a really really good idea to call for paramedics (not cops, fuck cops). If not, just be very prepared that the person you are saving may be very very unhappy about that fact.

"A medical technology company in Australia is aiming for a world-first: it wants to launch a blood test for endometriosis (sometimes called 'endo' for short) within the first half of this year [2025].

In a recent peer-reviewed trial, its novel test proved 99.7 percent accurate at distinguishing severe cases of endometriosis from patients without the disease but with similar symptoms.

Even in the early stages of the disease, when blood markers may be harder to pick out, the test's accuracy remained over 85 percent.

The company behind the patent, Proteomics International, says it is currently adapting the method "for use in a clinical environment," with a target launch date in Australia for the second quarter of this year [2025].

The test is called PromarkerEndo.

"This advancement marks a significant step toward non-invasive, personalized care for a condition that has long been underserved by current medical approaches," managing director of Proteomics International Richard Lipscombe said in a press release from December 30.

Endometriosis is a common inflammatory disease that occurs when tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows in other parts of the body, forming lesions. The disease can be very painful, and yet the average patient often suffers debilitating symptoms for up to seven years before they are properly diagnosed.

While there are numerous reasons for such a long delay, symptoms of endometriosis are often highly variable, unpredictable, difficult to measure or describe, and dismissed or overlooked by doctors.

Today, the only definitive way to diagnose endometriosis is via keyhole surgery called a laparoscopy, which is expensive, invasive, and carries risks.

Proteomics International is hoping to change that.

In collaboration with researchers at the University of Melbourne and the Royal Women's Hospital, the company compared the bloodwork data from 749 participants of mostly European descent.

Some had endometriosis and others had symptoms that were similar to endo but without the lesions. All participants had a laparoscopy to confirm the presence or absence of the disease.

Sifting through the bloodwork, researchers ran several different algorithms to figure out which proteins in the blood were best at predicting endometriosis of varying stages.

Building on previous research, a panel of 10 proteins showed a "clear association" with endometriosis.

For years now, scientists have investigated possible blood biomarkers of endometriosis to see if they could differentiate between those who have endo and those who do not. Similar to cancerous tumors, endo lesions can establish their own blood supply, and if cervical cancer can be diagnosed via a blood test, it seemed possible that endometriosis could be, too...

Proteomics International claims patents for PromarkerEndo are "pending in all major jurisdictions," starting first in Australia.

It remains to be seen if the company's blood test lives up to the hype and is approved by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). But that's not outside the realm of possibility.

In November of 2023, some researchers predicted that a "reliable non-invasive biomarker for endometriosis is highly likely in the coming years."

Perhaps this is the year."

-via ScienceAlert, January 9, 2025

--

Note: As someone with endometriosis, let me say that this is a HUGE deal. The condition is incredibly common, incredibly understudied, and incredibly often dismissed. Massive sexism at work here.

I got very lucky and got diagnosed after about 6 months of chronic pain (and extra extra lucky, because my pain went away with medication). But as the article says, the average time to diagnosis is seven years.

Being able to confirm endometriosis diagnoses/rates without invasive surgery will also lead to huge progress in studying/creating treatments for endo.

And fyi: If you have a period that is so painful that you can't stand up, or have to go home from school/work, or vomit, or anything else debilitating (or if any of those things apply if you forget to take pain meds), that is NOT NORMAL, and you should talk to a competent gynecologist asap.

“Oh how do you stay positive when the world is so awful how can you stay positive when our lives are falling apart-“ SPITE!!!!! ITS SPITE GODDAMN IT!!! REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE ANGRY AT THE WORLD AS A TEENAGER?? THAT KID WAS RIGHT AND YES IT FUCKING SUCKS AND NO, ITS NOT FAIR, SO YOU HAVE TO KEEP TRYING TO MAKE IT FAIR!!!!

Broke af?

But still interested in feeding yourself? What if I told you that there’s a woman with a blog who had to feed both herself and her young son…on 10 British pounds ($15/14 Euro) per week?

Let me tell you a thing.

This woman saved my life last year. Actually saved my life. I had a piggy bank full of change and that’s it. Many people in my fandom might remember that dark time as when I had to hock my writing skills in exchange for donations. I cried a lot then. 

This is real talk, people: I marked down exactly what I needed to buy, totaled it, counted out that exact change, and then went to three different stores to buy what I needed so I didn’t have to dump a load of change on just one person. I was already embarrassed, but to feel people staring? Utter shame suffused me. The reasons behind that are another post all together. 

AgirlcalledJack.com is run by a British woman who was on benefits for years. Things got desperate. She had to find a way to feed herself and her son using just the basics that could be found at the supermarket. But the recipes she came up with are amazing. 

You have to consider the differing costs of things between countries, but if you just have three ingredients in your cupboard, this woman will tell you what to do with it. Check what you already have. Chances are you have the basics of a filling meal already. 

Here’s her list of kitchen basics. 

Bake your own bread. It’s easier than you think. Here’s a list of many recipes, each using some variation of just plain flour, yeast, some oil, maybe water or lemon juice. And kneading bread is therapeutic. 

Make your own pasta–gluten free. 

She gets it. She really does. This is the article that started it all. It’s called “Hunger Hurts”.

She has vegan recipes.

A carrot, a can of kidney beans, and some cumin will get you a really filling soup…or throw in some flour for binding and you’ve got yourself a burger. 

Don’t have an oven or the stove isn’t available? She covers that in her Microwave Cooking section. 

She has a book, but many recipes can be found on her blog for free. She prices her recipes down to the cent, and every year she participates in a project called “Living Below the Line” where she has to live on 1 BP per day of food for five days. 

Things improved for me a little, but her website is my go to. I learned how to bake bread (using my crockpot, but that was my own twist), and I have a little cart full of things that saved me back then, just in case I need them again. She gives you the tools to feed yourself, for very little money, and that’s a fabulous feeling. 

Tip: Whenever you have a little extra money, buy a 10 dollar/pound/euro giftcard from your discount grocer. Stash it. That’s your super emergency money. Make sure they don’t charge by the month for lack of use, though.

I don’t care if it sounds like an advertisement–you won’t be buying anything from the site. What I DO care about is your mental, emotional, and physical health–and dammit, food’s right in the center of that. 

If you don’t need this now, pass it on to someone who does. Pass it on anyway, because do you REALLY know which of the people in your life is in need? Which follower might be staring at their own piggy bank? Trust me: someone out there needs to see this. 

Reblogging for all the impoverished students. Jack is the breadline queen. And if you don’t need this - donate to your nearest food bank, stat.

Reblogging for students, working folks, and everyone who’s ever had to choose between essentials at the store because you can only afford milk OR bread, not both.

Her blog is called Cooking on a bootstrap now

Here’s an up to date link

reblogging and adding another very useful website of cheap recipes: budgetbytes.com

Linked websites are down (at least for me, at this particular moment). Try this link:

More bugs and some mushrooms!

Sometimes I’m looking for something online - often “how to” articles - and I want to filter for - like - a website that was clearly built in 2010 at the latest, which may or may not have been updated since then, but contains a vast wealth of information on one topic, painstakingly organized by an unknown legend in the field with decades’ worth of experience. I don’t want a listicle with a nice stolen picture in a slideshow format written by a content aggregator that God forgot. I want hand-drawn diagrams by some genius professor who doesn’t understand SEO at all, but understands making stir-fries or raising stick insects better than anyone else on this earth. I don’t know what search settings to put into Google to get this.

thank you for articulating this cri de coeur for me

ngl these days i’m just happy when it’s not a video

search.marginalia.nu is the search engine you want!

“It is a search engine, designed to help you find what you didn’t even know you were looking for. If you search for “Plato”, you might for example end up at the Canterbury Tales. Go looking for the Canterbury Tales, and you may stumble upon Neil Gaiman’s blog.

If you are looking for fact, this is almost certainly the wrong tool. If you are looking for serendipity, you’re on the right track. When was the last time you just stumbled onto something interesting, by the way?

I don’t expect this will be the next “big” search engine. This is and will remain a niche tool for a niche audience.“

i clicked around for a few minutes searching various things and I now have two fourteenth century pie crust recipes and an apple filling recipe i want to try, so thanks!

it has been twenty minutes and I am deeply in love with this search engine.

INCREDIBLE. I *do* want to know how to test Windows 95 for Y2K Compliance and I am glad that someone is still hosting step by step instructions for that.

tl;dr: search.marginalia.nu for the old or old looking and just plain serendipitous stuff that google or Duck duck go are gonna not find/bury on the 20th page. For perfectly good reasons, but …

My absolute favorite part of having made this post - other than causing people to be introduced to this site - are the people in the tags/comments talking about their interests and stuff they found about their hobbies.

Good luck out there surfing the cyberweb, you crazy cats. I love the shoelace website too - Ian’s Shoelace Site [link], unless there’s another. My personal favorite old-school site is Alysion’s string figure collection [link].

thinking about this again

hey fun fact this album is actually named after a book called steal this book (first edition came out in the 70s)

here’s the 2023 version, it’s got everything from how to apply for work, ways to feed yourself for cheap, how to start your own printing workshop, bunch of stuff. the pdf is tiny so personally i have it downloaded on my phone

It’s so fascinating to me that we’ve only been breeding Komodo dragons in captivity for thirty years. In that time, our understanding of them has actually really revolutionized the way we understand the social lives and behaviors of lizards in general, and it’s mostly thanks to this lady right here, who was born 30 years ago on September 13, 1992.

Kraken was the first Komodo to be bred in captivity. She hatched out at GMU, but was raised at the National Zoo. Her parents were wild-caught dragons- there’s still WC dragons in the AZA today- and this one specific individual probably did more to revolutionize lizard care in professional settings than any other individual lizard throughout zoo history.

Until Kraken, social enrichment wasn’t a thing people thought about. It wasn’t something anybody felt was necessary for lizards, because they were just… lizards. Sure, some keepers would play with their favorites, but it wasn’t until the National Zoo started documenting what she was doing that anybody realized how much Komodo dragons like to play with us too.

Kraken’s not in that video, but she’s the one who inspired all of the social studies that have been done on captive Komodo dragons. When she was at the National Zoo, her keepers  started getting curious when, for no apparent reason, she kept gingerly stealing things from peoples’ pockets and tugging on their shoelaces. So they started giving her stuff- Frisbees, blankets, soda cans, anything she showed an interest in.

She played with them, just like a mammal might. The way play behavior is described in psychology is a given activity that’s voluntary, repeated, and conducted under “relatively benign” circumstances. Keeper staff found that her conduct during the study met all of these criteria. “Kraken,” they wrote, had clearly demonstrated “play-like behavior with objects and even with humans (tug-of-war).” Moreover, she “could discriminate between prey and nonprey” while showing “varying responses” with different items (rubber rings, shoes, etc.). (There’s an excellent book on Komodo dragons that has an entire chapter devoted to her.)

Kraken died several years ago, but her legacy continues today. There’s several of her descendants still in the AZA, and the intelligence and social needs she demonstrated led to the improvement of life for these guys- and other lizards. The Komodo dragon program has been an eye opener, not just for reptile conservation, but for understanding reptile intelligence and how this incredible clade of animals functions.

Happy birthday to the lizard who changed it all.

Here’s another baby picture of Kraken! This is her with Dr. Geoffery Birchard, the George Mason professor who supervised her hatching:

She was five weeks old in this picture, which ran in the GMU student paper.

vegans making honey a bee labour issue is the funniest thing imaginable because like, you picked the one animal that has already unionised

You literally could not exploit bees if you TRIED

"Oh well if you stop the queen leaving the bees are trapped" wrong, bees can and will swarm without a queen. They will also make new queens if they don't think theirs is good enough

"Bees don't consent to their honey being taken" wrong, bees are actually more than intelligent enough to know we take the honey. They LET us take the honey if they think what we provide in return (shelter, food, protection) is a fair deal.

"Taking honey starves the bees" WRONG AGAIN! Domestic bees overproduce honey. A beekeeper NEVER takes honey the bees would need because then you piss off the bees, and if you piss off the bees you don't have any bees. They stockpile honey for the winter, but because domestic colonies do way better than wild ones they stockpile too much. That's why beekeepers can take out whole frames and then have them filled in no time. Domestic bees actively overproduce because they know humans are going to skim some off the top.

And if they didn't want humans to take it, beekeeping WOULD NOT work.

To keep bees you have to let them fly free. If they can fly free they can leave. Meaning if they don't like what you're doing, they WILL leave.

The whole idea they're basically slaves to the queen is also not true, they can just make a new queen literally whenever, and if they don't like her, they kill her.

There is no way for a beekeeper to exploit their bees. The bees are EMPLOYEES.

Employbees, if you will.

Her name is Katalin Karikó. Hungarian. Daughter of a butcher. Her thesis work became the basis of the mRNA vaccine technology. Read the article here.

My favorite bits from the article include how Dr. Kariko celebrated the fact that the vaccines that used her mRNA research worked

“On Nov. 8, the first results of the Pfizer-BioNTech study came in, showing that the mRNA vaccine offered powerful immunity to the new virus. Dr. Kariko turned to her husband. “Oh, it works,” she said. “I thought so.”

To celebrate, she ate an entire box of Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts. By herself.”

I sincerely hope she is recognized more than she currently is.

She won a Nobel Prize! (02 October 2023)

cool so you can hide ads for knowing too much now

hey!

hey!

probably don’t do this!

when you tell facebook an ad “knows too much” you’re essentially confirming that their advertisement algorithm is working, it’s just making people uncomfortable because it’s working too well

it’s still positive feedback on them trying to either flood people with advertisements or socially engineer you into buying things by tracking frankly enormous amounts of data on your location, the other websites and apps you use, your conversations recorded through your phone, everything

instead? just mark all ads as "repetitive” or “irrelevant”- something that doesn’t give them information on how well the ad catered to your tastes.

don’t give huge creepy corporations valuable information on your ad tastes. they will use it against you in any way they can.

them: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST MEANS HUMANS MUST BE INDIVIDUALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT AND COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT

biologist:

Like literally the only reason we didn’t go extinct is because we are aggressively social creatures who community organized and helped each other when faced with disasters that drove other species over the brink. 

 (Like we’re so aggressively social that we looked at APEX PREDATORS and went ‘they look soft! Friend????’)

(The answer was yes because wolves are also aggressively social and they adopted the strange tall not-wolves just as eagerly.)

humans @ wolves: holy shit these things are so cute i wonder if they’ll let us pet them?

wolves @ humans: holy shit these things are so cute i wonder if they’ll pet us?

Just in case people want source, here you go: humans are compelled to help each other in disaster situation, humans feel an innate urge to help others. We will help strangers too, not just family, and it has been tested. 

Also we’ve always taken care of our elderly and disabled. When life was literally “hunt and gather every day to live”, we saw value in taking care of those with disabilities. 

reblog to make a libertarian mad

social darwinism is a concept exclusively employed by people who are both evil and pseudointellectual, 100% of the time, & is basically always code for upholding white supremacy and patriarchy

there may be a day that i don’t reblog this post, but it’s not today

there may be a day

that i don’t reblog this post,

but it’s not today

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

We literally evolved in symbiosis with another species (honeyguides). Honeyguide finds beehive, human opens beehive, honeyguide eats grubs and wax, human eats honey. Self-sufficiency isn’t on the menu.

mutualistic symbiosis is so fundamental to every ecosystem, plants would never even have come on land without it

Apparently there’s a website called Public Square where conservatives register their businesses to identify themselves as “anti-woke” so other conservatives can find them. I just thought I would share in case anyone wanted to put their zip code in and learn which local businesses to avoid.

He sits on my lap while I spin, he does the little jiggle