It's a perfect day for dreams come true

has everyone seen the website that gives you a rothko for your local weather?

whenever I see archeological remains of a human who suffered from a terrible disease that couldn’t be treated in their lifetime but could be fixed now, this wave of sorrow and mourning washes over me. a woman in the 14th century who spent her 35 years of life bent at the waist because of congenital scoliosis. a man from the 18th century who died because of a non cancerous mass on his jaw that made eating progressively more difficult. remains of a woman from the Neolithic who died in childbirth having evidence of peri-mortem trepanation on her skull.

My mom sometimes talks about a child in her neighborhood who was born with hydrocephaly and died of it. His parents strove to keep him alive for years, but he ultimately passed after a long decline. No treatment available. No hope at all, and the parents knew it from his birth.

I think about this a lot.

Diabetes is one of these illnesses that really throws medical history into perspective. It's so common, everyone knows someone who has it, people live pretty normal lives with it. And yet, a hundred years ago, it was an instant death sentence. And then we were able to treat people with insulin and yet - it was extremely disabling. The insulin was extracted from animal pancreas had severe side effects, even with how similar the hormones are, there is always an averse reaction to proteins from foreign species, especially during long-term treatment. Injections had to be given every few hours, at-home-tests were only available from the 70s onwards. Insulin pumps entered the market in the 80s. Genetically produced insulin - humanized insulin - was first available in the US in 1982, in many countries only around the year 2000.

“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”

my biggest word of advice to anyone scared to post their work/ocs/involve themselves in creative spaces online is to earnestly get interested in other people. be kind to others, like/reblog their work, tell them what you like about their work, get to know them as people.

I've never loved anyone as much as I love Ursula Le Guin

Existence is crushingly hard. It’s very tempting to step off its road, to avoid living one’s life. One has to work hard to make sure to go through existence, not around it. It’s a terrifying reality that you can end up, almost as if by accident, not having lived your given life. At its harshest, and most literally brutal, it can be taken from you by the appalling carceral state, by systemic racism, by the endless crimes of inequality—by the theft of opportunity. But it can also be taken from you minute by minute by the shortcuts that everything you encounter invites you to take—to keep up, to do more within less time, to trade in wisdom, or even knowledge, for information. Our ever-shortening attention span craving its quick satisfactions—which affects whatever creative act might even be attempted, curtailing it before it even finds deep water—is the most powerful tool of the surveillance capitalist state, or whatever you want to call this enmeshment of powerful interests using our desire for instant access to enrich itself.