AgentBlackDog

you ever have just like, a really bad idea

山田維史 「企業PR誌表紙絵 ー 環境シリーズ "カマキリ”」 1987年　キャンヴァスボードに油彩、アクリル絵の具

i'm assuming you're an anti-vaxxer and this is about me being vaccinated

vaccines are complicated and is technically a poison like all medicine is but it's a heavily regulated poison that's designed to make you stronger

as i said before, vaccines work by tricking the immune system into thinking it got infected so that your adaptive immunity can protect you in the future

there are a bunch of different kinds of vaccines: attenuated, inactivated, replicating viral vector, nonreplicating viral vector, RNA, DNA, virus-like, and protein subunit

attenuated means the virus in the vaccine is weakened. this is the oldest type of "vaccination" dating back to china in the fifteenth century. what they did back then was that they got scabs from people who had smallpox and you either snorted it or you put it in an open wound. it very risky but better than getting smallpox naturally and it was in 1769 that edward jenner popularised a method where you infected people with cowpox which made them immune to smallpox. today what we do is grow viruses in nonhuman primate cell cultures and just hope they mutate enough to be harmless to humans. and this kind does have a chance of infecting you but its better than getting infected naturally.

inactivated means we've killed the virus so it cannot replicate. this is safe, much much safer that attenuated. but it can still infect people. still better than nothing.

replicating viral factor means you put the genetic material that creates the protein shell into another virus that's harmless to humans. it will replicate and won't infect you.

nonreplicating viral factor is the same thing as replicating viral factor but the virus cannot replicate.

RNA vaccines are the hot new shit. so you get the mRNA of the virus that codes for the protein shell, inject that, and have your cells make it. your immune cells don't know what it is and bam you have immunity. its so cool and is 100% safe because while reverse transcription is a thing, your body doesn't really have the means to do reverse transcription because primers are very specific to organisms.

DNA vaccines are basically the same as the RNA ones except the cells need to go through the process of converting it into mRNA. perfectly safe.

virus-like vaccines means its just the protein shell with no DNA or RNA inside. no chance of infection or replication.

protein subunits means its just the little spikes on viruses which is what your immune system detects anyway. incredibly safe.

yes the attenuated and inactivated ones can still infect people but having been super damaged either through mutations or attempted murder, the infection is mild. it still causes an epidemic if just one person gets infected because for diseases that these kinds if vaccines are made with, usually no one has the disease anymore.

I think it must be, at least partially, because, people hate the imperfect victim. Its easy for so many people to sympathize with someone who never lashed out. Less so for people to sympathize with people who are angry and lash out. Even though its a perfectly sensible reaction to being hurt over and over. I'm sure most people would like to think they would simply never.

Hey. Just because you loved a show 15+ years ago does not mean it holds up today. I laugh at plenty of things that I later think about and regret. TV shows aren't just the best episodes/moments that you remember, they're also the really questionable and bad parts that you ignored and forgot. Satire requires wit, not just being hilariously offensive.

It's not "this new generation's" problem for calling out your problematic fave, it's the problem of the people who put it on the air. A lot of your favorite creators turn out to be gross people. That's just how it works.

TW: N-word because Boondocks

I've been thinking about the Boondocks recently and I was wondering about how much of it aged well. Some of it did for sure, like the R. Kelly Trial, Luna, and that Obama episode, but there's a handful of things that I think were dumb back then and only got worse. Here's 3 big examples:

Ed and Rummy are two fan favorites who generally represented early 2000s politics via George Bush (Ed the face) and Donald Rumsfield (Gin Rummy, the behind-the-scenes guy). One running gag with them was that Ed was a fucking moron and Rummy was his straight man. Everything Ed said was meant to be seen as stupid and Rummy was supposed to be talking sense into him. One example of this was with the famous "Nigga Technology" bit, technology for niggas. Nigga, in this context, is used as a general ignorant motherfucker and not just black folks (Which has some wild implications right out the gate by the way). So Ed would buy something new on the market and Rummy would try to convince him that it's silly and superfluous. Some examples were texting, wireless headsets, and iphones. Aaron Mcgruder couldn't have been older than 30 when those episodes were written up but they make bro look like a fucking luddite. "New tech bad, old thing good." Now I don't know about you, but I think texting was a handy invention that's made the world a much more convinient place, headsets too even if they do make you look homeless. The iphone joke was made in season 3, which was around 2009 so I think the writers might've realized they would look ridiculous making that same argument for an objectively good device.

A second example that kinda rubs me wrong was Cristal, like the champagne. Now this might be a little spicy but I believe that sex workers are people. Cristal got done dirty as hell in that episode because they kept insisting that her life of hoing and being a human trafficking victim was self inflicted and entirely her own fault. Nobody fucking chooses to work for a pimp, no matter how funny he is. Oh but she's a trifling gold digger so it's okay, what a concept. Then there's the side joke about whether or not all women are hoes and it's just like...eh.

Finally, I want to talk about Return of the King. This is the jewel in the crown of Boondocks social commentary and I really don't think it achieved what was intended. The episode's climax was a speech by Dr. King taking down pretty much everything you can think of about black culture and entertainment, especially fucking BET, and causing societal change. If any writers are reading this, I regret to inform you that you can't get a bunch of black people in one room, call them and everything they care about stupid, and then expect a positive outcome. It's not that it's a bad message, it's just incredibly condescending and unhelpful. That speech does more to help racists than actual black people from what I've seen. The old "Black people vs Niggas" joke that Chris Rock once made is another example of that, appealing to "the good ones" and putting everyone else under an umbrella with very unspecific parameters.

your ones about ed edd an eddy in particular, it's really interesting <3

Bet

So Rolf and his family like Ed for being so strong and working on the farm. Enough so that Rolf felt like inviting Ed over for his family-get-together before even telling anyone else he was having it.

We know this

But question is why was ed so horrified after the fact. He says “they are so otherworldly” but ed has always loved Rolf’s odd traditions and food? So what gives?

I don’t think ed was scared of their customs.

I think ed was scared because Rolf’s family is nice. Not perfect but they have camaraderie, they respect each other, and most of all, everyone’s invited.

I don’t think ed has ever experienced a family that got along, especially not adults who respect him.

(Old doodle time)

Everyone knows Ed’s mum probably treats him like dirt, but I wouldn’t be surprised if his whole family ostracises him. Unfortunately Thats how kids like him get treated allot.