This is Thunderdome. Death is listening, and will take the first man that screams.
icon by brightgoat!
late 20s ◦ queer, not lgbt◦nonbinary, not enby ◦ they ◦ chronic pain & nd ◦ white ◦ heathen ||
local cryptid. punkass extraordinaire. i talk about queer stuff, disability, mad max, the witcher, bloodhound apexlegends, monsters and paganism.
terfs, fash, nazis/supremacists & other shitheads get the block.
no i will not make a carrd
slam-dunkleosteus is now i-am-the-nightrider
pinning this ‘cause searching for my tags on mobile never works lol
It’s worth pointing out that cops in the US adapted to these problems through using grand juries to cast wide nets and do punitive fishing expeditions in the wake of any serious suspected left-wing actions.
Here’s how it works:
Someone starts a fire at an army draft office.
The cops look through their files for anyone who might be in the political orbit of someone who’d want to do that. People picked up at protests, for drug charges, vandalism, anyone who is already on their radar. They look into their known associates, anyone they live with, anyone they drink with.
Then they start subpoenaing these people for a grand jury summons. They give you immunity (but only for the matter of the grand jury!) so that you can’t exercise the fifth amendment against self incrimination. If you say nothing, they can imprison you almost indefinitely for contempt of court. If they catch you in a lie, that’s criminal perjury.
They’ll ask you for information on everyone you know. Obviously they’ll ask about their involvement in any crimes, but they’re casting a wide net. Who knows who, where do they hang out, who talked to who about what and when. They’ll ask you to spill interpersonal stuff, whether anyone is cheating on someone, whether people have substance abuse problems or embarrassing personal issues, if anyone is closeted, anything they consider dirt. Anyone you name is gonna get subpoenaed and they’ll be asked for all this information on everyone they know, including you, and although you have immunity from your own testimony, you don’t get immunity from each others.
Assuming you didn’t personally do anything they can prosecute you for in the matter of the grand jury, they’ll go after you based on what they know. The cops will arrest you on any little thing they have suspicion of, even if they know they can’t prosecute you, just so that they can keep you in jail for a few days while you miss two shifts at work and your friends have to scramble to raise bail. They’ll leak any embarrassing info that comes out, to your boss or your family or even the local press. Whatever they can do to make your life a little harder.
They will lean fucking hard on anyone who is involved in the scene but had second thoughts or felt like they were dragged into something they never wanted to do in the first place by their friends. The cops will say ‘do you want to get your life ruined by people who did something stupid over something you barely even believe in’ and sometimes that’s a very compelling argument! If people have dependents or kids who they think won’t be looked after if they go to prison, there’s a lot of pressure to cooperate.
It’s important to note two things:
1) Based on the ratio of actual prison sentences to maximum possible sentences for the charges, it’s better for people not to cooperate with the jury both individually and as a group. People who talk still get sentenced, with the information they helped provide.
2) These aren’t surgical strikes, they’re an artillery barrage designed to destroy infrastructure and send people running for cover. Cops don’t want you to have friends, they don’t want you to hang out and have fun, they don’t want you getting or providing food or shelter through anything you can’t get fired from. They don’t want committed direct-action people swimming freely through a sea of friendly people. They’re not scared of the flower, they’re scared of the soil that grows it.
Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with “In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights.”
This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find
Some people get existential dread from this
Me? I think it’s fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating
@makaeru peer review cos this made me check when the Sumerians happened and I forget how recent history is for every other continent. 7000 - 8000 years ago just isn’t that long when you’re in Australia, and the amount of detailed history we have access to here is wonderful and should be recognised more internationally
And a quote I picked out from a longer interview with an Aboriginal local elder about the area where he touched on the history
Source (the rest of the interview is really interesting and all transcribed, have a look if you’re curious)
This is part of my Ancient Civilizations class that I teach, which does a whole week about Australia and the Torres Strait Islands because I was sick of never seeing them represented in USAmerican history contexts. With the help of @micewithknives and @acearchaeologist I’ve learned so many incredible things about Australia’s past and it’s been incredibly rewarding to share them with students.
My favorite fact about Aboriginal oral history is the fact that we pretty recently discovered that the Aboriginal myth of the 7 Sisters, an origin story for the Pleiades star cluster, accurately reflects a point TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO when two stars in the constellation got close enough together to no longer be distinguishable by the naked eye.
The story? 6 sisters running from something that took their 7th sister.
as a gilgar gunditj woman, i was not expecting to see my culture on my dash.
thank you for spreading our words and treating our culture with respect.
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
The search engine calculates a score that aggressively favors text-heavy websites, and punishes those that have too many modern web design features.
This is in a sense the opposite of what most major search engines do, they favor modern websites over old-looking ones. Most links you find here will be nearly impossible to find on a regular search engine, as they aren’t sufficiently search engine optimized.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
“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!!!!
“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.
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
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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.
Billie Joe Armstrong literally wrote a song about coming out as bisexual as a teenager, and then like two years later wrote one that was pretty much all about dressing up in drag and getting fucked by/fucking guys, and y'all STILL say he’s a “straight ally” because he married a woman??
The same goes for Freddy Mercury and David Bowie. Both were openly bi. Both wrote (multiple) songs about their queerness. Both are pigeonholed as either “gay” or “straight”. They were both neither of those things.
hey remember when freddy mercury wrote a literal song about wanting to be allowed to be bisexual without it being a big deal and was incredibly obvious about it and then straighties went “oh lol look at how quirky queen is writing a song all about bicycles!”
This also happened to p!nk, she’s openly bisexual but since she’s married to a man and has had two babies with him, people say that she’s straight.
Like, yeah she does a lot and shows a lot of support for the LGBT+ community but she isn’t just an ally, she’s part of that community.
Biphobia is completely real and so many Bi wlw and mlm are assigned the “straight” role when they just ARENT.
Also let’s add Lady Gaga to the mix. She’s repeatedly shit on for Born this Way for not being part of the community when she is, in fact, openly bisexual and writes song about being LGBT
[Image 1: the “It’s free real estate” guy with the altered caption “It’s Biphobia”
Image 2: a picture of Chris Fleming with the altered caption “Okay, was anybody going to tell me that ‘Bicycle Race’ was about being bi or was I just supposed to learn that from a post about Billie Joe Armstrong myself?” End ID.]
its baffling that bisexuality is considered ‘invisible’ when theres a whole pantheon of the most loud rhinestone bedazled spectacles of entertainment being openly vocal that theyre bi
its like a simpsons bit where everyone ignores the blinking neon sign
For those of you that may have just finished watching Cory Booker’s record-breaking senate speech and are inspired to “get in good trouble”, you have a great opportunity for it this Saturday!
On April 5th, numerous advocacy groups are banding together into one nation-wide rally that will be held in major cities all over the country - you can easily find a participating location here!
