the things we cherish are small indeed

I might translate this article later today. This one was the most complete one, even in Italian news it's not talked about that much.

“So... We got the exploding diarrhea. Here's my advice for anyone who doesn't have it yet:

It's going to take a minute for the government to pin down where this is coming from, and then issue a recall, because the FDA has been gutted. But, I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt : this is coming from Taylor Farms produce, and you will see them recalled.

You'll want to avoid all Taylor Farms produce in the grocery store. They supply McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, about any fast food place you can think of.

Raspberries, watermelons, cilantro, and the veggies you're hearing about are not causing this many people to get sick. It's the shredded lettuce, specifically, that's the problem. But, you'll want to stay away from every type of produce this company puts out, because one strand of shredded lettuce is all it takes to contaminate bushels.

Taylor Farms is the source. Taco Bell proactively pulled their produce from their restaurants. You're going to see other fast food places doing this, and probably will see that before the government names a source. The FDA knows this, but they can't come out and tell us all until there's proof, which takes resources and research, which takes manpower, but the FDA has been cut by about 20-30%

During the Biden term, onions at McDonald's had ecoli. We knew this because DNA testing was done quickly and they were able to narrow it down to one place that caused the outbreak. And, it was traced back to Taylor Farms. This isn't going to be solved as quickly though.

When you get this, make a virtual appointment to your PCP - a "same day sick" appointment. Tell them someone in your family just tested for this and was positive and was prescribed Bactrim. If you go in person, they're probably going to make you poop in a cup and wait until results come back to prescribe.

You'll know when you get this. Trust me on all of this.

You'll want to stay hydrated because this parasite damages the lining of the small intestine. Your small intestine, in turn, secretes more water into the gut, and less nutrients and liquid are able to remain in the body. So no matter how much you shit, you're going to want to drink. A day of this leads to dehydration if you don't increase your fluid intake, and a few days will land you in the hospital.

If you have headaches, weakness, muscle cramps, dizziness, or an increase heart rate - hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Go to the ER for fluids if you can't drink enough.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Brought to you by America's 250 birthday celebrations, workforce reduction in the FDA and CDC, and viewers like you.

Please feel free to share this.

And, MAGA - don't blow up the comment section. I argued with y'all on COVID bc I was afraid y'all would die, but I really don't care if you get explosive diarrhea.

- How the word 'Ibiza' is pronounced

- Whether or not silicone-based lubricant counts as a liquid vis a vis CATSA regulations

- Whether or not it is acceptable for Ilya to free up suitcase space by not packing underwear

- A recurring argument that is now simply known as the Skin Cancer Fight, which resulted in the purchase of four different bottles of sunscreen.

- Ilya wants to wear coordinating outfits so that they can do the Pink and White fit check TikTok meme. Shane tells him with his mouth that this is stupid and secretly wants to do it so badly that he emails his stylist from 2017.

- No Ilya Anya cannot come to Spain (x8)

- Ilya hides Shane's neck pillow because he wants Shane to use him as a pillow. Shane buys a new one at the airport and Ilya doesn't speak to him for an hour (Gives up eventually because he's bored.)

- "Hollander, I don't think CATSA will care enough to search your bag unless the butt plug is shaped like bomb--" "Ilya you can't say that word in a fucking airport--"

- Flavor of gum to chew to make their ears pop on the plane.

- Ilya spends the entire month pre-honeymoon on a relentless campaign to convince Shane to join the mile high club. Shane ducks and weaves like his fucking life depends on it until they get into a whisper-shout argument about it on Shane's parents' back porch the night before they leave. Argument ends when Shane snaps, "Of course I think it would be hot!" and Ilya laughs for so long he has to sit down.

- Does a very quick and silent handjob underneath a blanket in the back row of first class count as joining the mile high club? A debate that gives them a good hour of entertainment.

- Shane does not want to go to a nude beach. Ilya thinks that this is because he's a prude (he's fucking not) and they argue about that (He undresses in front of twenty other guys for a living Ilya.) until Shane admits that he's worried about how jealous it will make him when Ilya's insane ass is inevitably the star of the show on the gay nude beach.

- "I did not think you noticed these things, lyubimyy." "Fuck you, I may be a bottom but I'm still a man and I'm not fucking blind--" (New Argument+)

- "How was I supposed to know that hair mousse counts as liquid?? Is not liquid when it comes out! Is mousse."

- Argument that is triggered when Shane realizes that Ilya has been keeping him occupied with stupid silly spats so that he doesn't make himself insane with anxiety over the continued fallout from events pre-wedding until they are in a private villa on the Mediterranean Sea about a million miles from anyone who cares about hockey.

Do I miss some foods I can't eat anymore without getting sick? Sure, but that's not what really bothers me. What bothers me is being excluded from a huge portion of human social life of which food is a crucial component. What bothers me is the stress and social stigma of trying to figure out what I can safely eat. What bothers me is the amount of extra work and cost that is required of me to identify, obtain, and prepare safe foods. What bothers me is people treating my needs like a nuisance, as though I chose to be like this - as though their brief inconvenience to check an ingredients list is unreasonable, when I deal with this every day of my life forever.

I don't miss the food that much. I miss not having to worry about what I eat. I miss freedom. I miss when trying new foods and new restaurants was fun instead of a minefield. I miss not having to plan my entire life around the need for safe foods.

Here's what I need you to do:

If you see a post with a "mature content" label, and it's 2026, DM me a link to the post.

Yes, that's really it.

I am hoping to collect several thousand such posts, so that I have a decent sized dataset. I do not care what the post is about; if it's labeled as "mature content", I want to add it to my dataset.

What's your hypothesis, OP?

I am not talking about that unless I have results to share. That would bias the results.

I did write them down and I did share them with a trusted contact who can prove that I wrote them down the same day I made this post. (While I did so before I made this post, I am not sure they will be able to provide proof of that, because I did so on the same day.)

OP are you interested in...?

Do you have to click through to see the post? Does the clickthrough contain the words "mature content"? Then yes.

OP are you interested if the post is about...?

Should I reblog this for reach?

Yes, please. I felt really silly when I noticed I forgot to include that in the original post.

Is it okay if I send you my own posts?

Yes, those are perfect for what I'm looking for. I actually need to do some processing on a post to make it useful for testing my hypothesis, and this makes it easy.

Are you looking for "potentially mature content" also, or just "mature content"?

I want both, please. Anything that throws up a blocking screen that you have to click through. The distinctions between them are one of the things I am hoping to study.

Does it matter when the post was made originally?

Technically no. There's no way to respond to this without introducing some bias in the results, and I don't want that. However, I do collect some data on a post as part of making it useful to me, and that data is easier to collect if the post is recent.

What if I request content label review on a post after I send it to you?

I need to see the mature content label to be able to use the post. Because the mature content label hides the content of the post, it is very hard to use a post that no longer has a mature content label. You could send me a screenshot, but people could use that to lie to me.

Basically, it's more work for you to make it usable to me.

OP are you a transphobe? It would ruin the experiment for me if you're a transphobe.

Stories stall when everyone behaves. Real tension appears when someone:

• asks the wrong question • says something they shouldn’t • notices something uncomfortable • refuses to drop the topic • misunderstands something important • interrupts at the worst moment

They want something REALLY REALLY REALLY bad, but for some reason they can't ask for it -- or can't have it even if they did ask.

They don't notice something that the audience HAS noticed (like in a horror movie when the monster is sneaking up behind the protagonist, or if someone drinks a glass of unboiled water during a cholera outbreak because they don't know about germ theory)

Takes a risk (or otherwise does something they "shouldn't" do) which the audience has to sit through for a prolongued period of time (e.g. slips away from the party to go into the host's private office and rifle through their papers before the guards catch them)

I posted this poll because my spouse thinks the above arrangement is reasonable and their prerogative. They feel that what is theirs is theirs, and they don't have to share it with their spouse, and wouldn't expect me to share what's mine with them if the tables were turned. I deliberately avoided using language in the poll that made any of the responses leading, because I didn't want to influence the results. When my spouse and I have arguments about how few of my basic needs they meet, and how vulnerable I feel, they tend to dig their heels in and insist that defining what a partnership looks like is up to the individuals and it's ok to deviate from the norm (which I agree with in principle, but only if both parties agree to the arrangements and can do so freely, not through coercion), and sometimes I genuinely feel like I'm crazy for thinking that there's a basic standard we get to expect from each other mutually, not in this one-sided way, and that my partner is being being both neglectful and controlling at the same time. I posted this poll because even when my spouse makes me feel like I'm being unreasonable, I know in my gut I'm not (not least of all because we very much did talk about our expectations of each other in both the best and worst potential situations, and what they promised me is not what I'm living now).

To see how many people have responded by straightforwardly calling this financial abuse, and to see how few people see this as normal, is validating to say the least. I've begun the process of building myself a life raft out of this situation, and I think I needed to see this feedback - so many strangers responding to what I hope is as neutral a summary of the situation as I intended it to be, and still calling it like I see it.

What I didn't put in the above poll is the even crazier stuff: A few years ago I ended contact with my abusive family, and my spouse promised to take care of me. Not long after they stopped giving me emotional support and asked me to seek it from my friends instead of them. When my computer, my main work tool, suddenly stopped working, they would only help me pay for a new one if I paid them back for it (they put me on a payment plan, but it was better than a bank loan because there was no interest and they let late payments slide). I also contracted a serious chronic illness because my partner was careless and ignored my existing health issues which made me vulnerable, and they failed to take care of me to the point I wasn't even eating properly while in bed with a fever, and for months after. Any support they gave was won at the cost of arguments I didn't have energy for, and reluctantly, but to friends and family my partner presented themselves as a caretaker.

I've struggled to work steadily and most of my limited income went to repaying the cost of my computer, so I depleted any savings I had left after the pandemic. As a result I sometimes couldn't even afford basics like toiletries or even clothes (I once showed up half an hour late to a doctor's appointment because the zipper on my only jeans broke and I had to wear a skirt in the freezing cold), and my partner, while expressing sympathy verbally, didn't take any action to offer tangible support, ie. buying me a new pair of jeans. I didn't have my family to rely on for safety and support. Anything I want or need, whether it's a necessity or something like a trip to visit family or friends who all live far away, I have to meet my partner's parameters since they're the one footing the bill. It took many arguments and detailed explanations of my difficulties and expectations before they would give me basic support like a one-off clothing purchase, and even more negotiation for it to be given in a way that allowed me autonomy in decision making (ie. they handed me a limited budget instead of going shopping with me or asking me to run purchases by them first).

I've given my partner a lot of leeway because they're struggling with several simultaneous neurodiversities and they tend to be passive observers in most situations, rather than active participants. I can see the ways in which they struggle to understand my experience because of their NDs. It has also been several years now since their diagnosis, and they use their ND as an excuse, but won't seek support for it. I have to do the emotional heavy lifting for us both, and if my expectations of them feel reasonable to me, it doesn't matter because if it's outside of their comfort zone, even the simplest things become contentious and they get the final say, since they're the only one in the relationship who have financial independence right now. I have no access to, nor do I get updated on, any of their bank accounts or savings (worrying in case of an emergency), except for a debit card which has a set amount on it at any given time and is only for groceries and recurring bills.

My spouse will give me information on their financial standing occasionally if I ask, but they are very hesitant and reluctant. I have a bank account of my own, and my spouse has asked to see my monthly earnings for the purpose of understanding my needs, but I'm hesitant to show them because of how much of my trust they've compromised, and how private they've always been about their financials (not to mention that it indicates they don't trust me to state my needs reasonably and reliably). I believe that everyone in a marriage should have at least one personal bank account, but our finances aren't shared at all, save for the one shared groceries/bills account. That account does, however, include medical costs, and as long as my spouse approves the spending, I can use it for things like amenities.

I never did show my spouse this poll, but what I did do was go to

A lawyer

A domestic abuse non-profit

A government agency

and had all three confirm that the situation was economic abuse. It took me several months but I scraped together enough to have a consultation with a divorce lawyer and learned what my options were. I wasn't expecting to get much - even though they'd have to either sell our home and give me half of what he got for it, or buy out my half, I didn't think they'd be willing to do the former or have the money for the latter, but I could at least get alimony and I could take care of my needs and my health problems better and get away from the stress of the marriage. So I asked my spouse for a divorce.

The divorce process itself was... illuminating. I found out that my spouse had several massive savings accounts they had conveniently forgotten to tell me about. And what was lucky for me, they didn't seem to understand that in a marriage all things are legally shared. They seemed to think that if something was only under their name, it was theirs exclusively - like putting a label in your clothes for summer camp. So they didn't secure any of their accounts, and most of them consisted of funds accumulated during the marriage. Not long after that came to light, they moved out (their ND includes being severely conflict averse and you can imagine things became... tense). It took a long time until I could start to relax and feel like I could be safe again.

In the end I walked away with enough to have a safety net. I bought an apartment that meets my disability needs, and have enough to live on for a few years while I get back on my feet (though hopefully it won't take that long). Moving, and doing all this on my own was really hard, but luckily I've had wonderful friends who've helped me and been incredibly supportive. I still feel like I'm putting myself back together and finding myself, but am doing worlds better.

Thank you to everyone who commented and reblogged and added tags - that massive and unapologetic naming of this situation as abuse was so so validating and meant the world to me. I was significantly luckier than most people facing a similiar situation and found a way out. I hope you'll consider donating to one of these domestic abuse non-profits if you're able to, to help others who are struggling: