To The Wolves

too many people completely separate disability from themselves in their mind. it's something that happens to other people. other sad people i don't want to think about. are they really even people, it's too much to bear thinking about that happening to a person... those background characters over there. it would never be me, i can't cope with thinking about that possibility.

this mass denialism of the fragility of the human body (YOUR human body) has created a whole category separate from the disabled - the "elderly." since anyone can join it if they live long enough.. no they can't be disabled. that's scary, and worse it's political. so they are just "old." so what they lost their hearing, their mobility, their heart function? that's just how it goes for old people. as if that's not a person as real as you. as if you wouldn't be devastated if that happened to you today (and it can btw). as if you won't be when it's your turn to be old, and disabled.

My grandparents lived to 98 and 103. Read that again— 98 and 103. My grandmother died 5 months ago and was born in 1923.

She was extremely wealthy. My grandfather left her millions. She paid about 13,000 a month for her care.

And her nurses abused her. She could do nothing. She could not speak for herself, feed herself, clothe herself, and the humiliation they made her endure was disgusting. When she tried to express discomfort, they gave her drugs to “keep her calm” (keep their shift easy). We fought like HELL to hold that fucking place accountable. The only reason we were aware is because we hired a private nurse on her behalf, too.

The elderly are a massive, extremely vulnerable, and disabled group. You cannot leave them out of your advocacy, you cannot leave them out of the conversation. “They’re loud, they smell, they’re opinionated, they’re rude, they make me uncomfortable”. I don’t care. I don’t care! They need your advocacy too! I want you to think, if my grandmother— who was in the best retirement home she could afford, with a personally hired third-party nurse to step in where the other carers failed, had such abhorrent care… what about everyone else? What about all the elderly who don’t have a support system?

I know it is.

But I'm old, and I need y'all to just listen to me a second. Ten seconds maybe.

Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, there were kids outside. 40 years ago I was among Those Screaming Kids Outside.

Suddenly, kids being outside became a PROBLEM.

Some dumb fucks started suing parents when their kids got injured at their homes. They started calling CPS on kids who were "unattended" outside and levying abuse charges.

We went from It Takes a Village, to I'll call the cops on you if you hang out at the mall for too long without buying something.

It went from Hanging Out at The Park with Your Friends, to getting escorted home because a group of teens was automatically a Gang, and Gangs were terrible and awful and no one wanted their property values to go down because of hooligans.

No big kids outside. No one to watch over the littler kids, so no little kids outside. Less kids outside, more kids inside.

And hey, hey - Look At ME - I loved video games and computers and I was not a fan of "Outside". But I walked down to the Blockbuster than was 3 miles away from my house, and I rode my bike through parks and I played basketball in the street, and now that's gone.

Sure, kids carve out space here and there where they can, but as a general rule, it's all gone. It's paved over, under surveillance, with "This will be exhibit A" signs plastered all over the place.

The cacophony of loud, irritating, barely contained children missing from the day to day sounds of society were the first sign of its death, frankly. I don't know how it lined up to happen so fast, I'm sure someone smarter than me could point to the assholes that got the ball rolling in the wrong direction.

As horrible as infectious disease has been throughout history, we also have to look at the major horrors that have been committed when the government violates people's consent for medical procedures.

The last big war that was fought with any vaccinations was the American Revolution. The first smallpox vaccine was invented in 1796.

If you want to make the case that that wasn't really widespread, fine. Pasture published germ theory in the 1870s. By WW1, we have vaccines against cholera, bubonic plague, typhoid, tetanus, and diptheria.

We didn't have a vaccine for influenza in 1914 when WW1 started, because Spanish Flu didn't exist until 1918.

While Spanish Flu did kill more people then WW1, two years of the global pandemic happened after the war; they were not concurrent.

While it is called a "world war," WW1 was not really a world war. There were very few theaters outside of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin, and only 3% of the world population ever saw combat. Conversely, Spanish Flu spread through the Western Front and East Asia concurrently, then quickly spread through the Americas, Oceania, South and West Asia, and Africa. 3% of the population died, and 30% were infected. The number of people involved make the comparison apples to oranges.

The only number that I could find of people dying in WW1 from Spanish Flu was 43,000 of the 116,000 deaths of American troops only, which is 37%, and while that is very high, that's not more people dying from the flu than war.

I'm sure this is about Hegseth no longer requiring flu shots for service members if they're not in the field, but before covid, I remember the flu shot being regarded as the least reliable vaccine we had, which was why people referred to it as "the flu shot" and not "the flu vaccine." Anyone older than 16 should remember the arguments over calling the flu shot a vaccine at all because it did not provide permanent immunity against the flu.

(This is because there are multiple variants of influenza. It evolves very quickly and makes any attempted vaccination limited in its effectiveness. The current method is to take the most prevalent strain(s) from the previous year and use them in the flu shot. Which is the strain that most people already have T-cell immunity to for the next two years. This usually proves unhelpful.)

Which makes it ironic that they're bent out of shape over the flu shot no longer being required since it has never been proven to be an effective vaccine. Studies come out that "prove" the shot reduces the risk of getting the flu by 30% (which is not a vaccination), and others come out to show that people who get the shot are 40% more likely to develop the flu. It is, at best, dependent on which strain they use for influenza and which one is active that year.

The first flu vaccine introduced in 1945 (during WW2) was virtually ineffective, and the reduction in death due to disease was likely entirely due to the newly dynamic nature of warfare. Trenches that bred disease and field hospitals that spread them were no longer on the front lines of battle. Instead, injured soldiers were triaged, moved to a MASH unit, and then transported to an actual hospital in an actual city where they would recover away from the unsanitary conditions of a battlefield.

This is one reason why America has army bases around the world, so that they can get wounded soldiers to sanitary hospitals as soon as possible.

06/05/2026

Yes? Gnaw?!

The way I explain it to my patients is that our neurons don’t regenerate. They make connections with each other and that’s it. If you don’t use your brain, they make fewer connections and, if one of them dies, you’re gonna miss it, because that was the only one that knew how to do X. Now, if each one of them has many, many connections, you won’t notice the difference when one of them dies. The others pick up the slack.

As of 2024, 45% of dementia risk factors are modifiable. Relevant to this conversation, 5% for less education and 5% for social isolation.

We absolutely are going to see the reflection of this, but it’s gonna take decades and it’ll be too late. So, for the love of your brain, pretend that it’s a muscle and make it work. People complain about “when am I ever gonna use this maths formula in my life?” You’re not. You’re teaching your brain to think logically. Those sinapses will be there for when you need to figure out your week’s schedule. English classes taught me how to interpret data and how to convey it in this text so it’s clear and you understand what I’m saying, not because I needed to justify why the curtain is blue.

Make your brain know how to do different things. Logic games, puzzles, taking care of a garden even if small, planning a church’s event or birthday, learn a new instrument, learn a few words in another language, look at a calendar every day, do some manual labor if possible. Do not, I repeat, do not let your brain get rid of sinapses by letting AI do everything. Your brain uses 20% of your body’s energy — do you really think it’s going to maintain connexions that aren’t in use?

Most cases of Alzheimer’s are sporadic, meaning no family history. Family history of a first-degree relative with Alzheimer’s starting before they were 80yo increases your risk in 2-3x on average.

and EVEN WHEN things were more muted/neutral, the neutrality was OFFSET by ACCENT COLORS and HIGH CONTRAST between the wood tones and everything ELSE

ALSO AMERICAN COLONIAL INTERIORS POPPED OFF, Y'ALL (IN TERMS OF COLOR/COZINESS)

PEOPLE USED WHITEWASH AND COLORFUL TRIM OR EVEN JUST COLORFUL FURNITURE IF THEY COULD AFFORD TO DO SO

AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON FRENCH AND BRITISH AND AMERICAN WALLPAPERS

"ELIZABETH" YOU CRY, "WHY ARE YOU BEING SO EXTRA THIS MORNING?! IT'S MONDAY"

Because, my friend, my war on GREIGE will NEVER end.

Historic interiors were filled with LIFE and LIGHT and COLOR. ALWAYS HAVE BEEN.

Part of the reason we don't see a lot of textile art is because, frankly, textiles tend to degrade over time - especially ones that had utility! And yes, pigments and weaving and dying all boosted the expense of things, when we were finally reliably block-printing fabrics and broad reams of paper, it was no longer just the wealthy who could afford pretty patterns!

In the Americas, a far wider variety of pigments also became available because of the abundance of... well, a shitton of flora and minerals, some of which weren't as common in Europe.

WHY THE HIGHLIGHTER COLORS? you ask.

CANDLES.

Those colors reflect candlelight and natural sunlight REALLY WELL.

Humans LOVE bright colors, it's NOT just a thing for kids. We live in a brilliant, vibrant, multifaceted world. We ALWAYS have.

Like for the majority it really is "oh i'm hungrier and moodier than usual"

If, before you get your period, you feel furiously angry, suicidal, irritated by every tiny thing to the point you want to murder someone, stuck in a black hole you'll never escape from. If you are experiencing extreme emotions for what seems like no good reason, especially if you get your period and those extreme emotions just go away. You're probably not just PMSing , you may have PMS's feral big sister PMDD and it's treatable.

It's very obviously not a Christian story? Too bad. I'll find the themes anyway.

I’ll explain why, again: the message of Wish? Awful. Anti-Disney.

But they've been doing this for a long time. Saying one thing with their movies, and saying another with their PR and Disney Parks Soundtracks.

I'll explain.

Main Idea of Disney's Wish (and the You Are the Magic theme park song and merch): "The power to make your wishes come true is in you."

≠

Most Disney Movies' Idea on How to Have Wishes: "Do what's right, (trust a higher power) and something even more wonderful than what you wished will happen."

Don't try to argue with me about this. You have to look underneath the slogans and the sweater designs and the song titles to what the stories actually support to acknowledge this.

Because you can’t say “do what’s right” has power unless you answer the question “who gets to decide ‘what’s right?’” (Which, coincidentally, is a question Wish brings up and then doesn’t answer.)

Audiences of Disney used to accept that wishing on a star was much like prayer; there’s something you long for, and it’s out of your hands, but you wish for it and you do what you know is right in the meantime. And you’re not crushed, you’re not downhearted, because somewhere in your mind you trust that the combo of those two things—wishing on a higher power and diligence to do what’s good—will be what makes your wish come true.

Trust in a higher power—COMBINED WITH:

—diligence to do what’s good.

The Blue Fairy (higher power) gave Geppetto his wish specifically because he had demonstrated commitment to do good, whether he got what he wanted or not. The Fairy Godmother (higher power) gave Cinderella her wish specifically because she kept on being kind and good to low creatures like mice and wicked stepsisters, whether she got what she wanted or not.

Do you know why that combo (higher power + diligence to do good) is impactful? Timeless? Important?

Because it’s selfless. You want something, but you’re not going to sacrifice doing the right thing to get it. You’re not going to focus so hard on making what you want a reality, on your own, that you miss out on things that could be more important than what you want. And, you’re not so self-focused as to believe that if you don’t do it, it won’t get done.

Jeez, that’s the whole point of The Princess and the Frog!

Tiana wishes to have her own restaurant, and she believes that only her own hard work will grant that wish. She misunderstands her dad’s advice before he dies. She isn’t willing to trust a higher power combined with her own diligence to do good—she only trusts her own ability.

It’s not until she realizes that Ray, the character of faith, was right all along that she learns—what she wished for was too self-focused. It wasn’t complete without love. Something bigger than herself. And getting that was never going to happen just based on her own hard work.

But you know what? It was never going to happen just by a “higher-power” flavored shortcut, either. Because Facilier offers her her wish if she’ll just trust him, no hard work needed. But what does she say?

Trust in a higher power + diligence to do what’s right = selflessness, and getting more than you could have ever wished for. And if your wish is selfish, doing those two things will change your wish into something selfless.

More examples? Get ‘em while they’re hot, in case Wish made you forget, just like the current #NotMyDisney executives have forgotten, what real Disney wishes are for.