Ghoulish Goblin

revenge for @gunshowlover778!

XKCD: Degree Off

“Smallpox was.”

For most of history, smallpox was (!!!) the scourge that haunted human civilisations. We have evidence of smallpox from mummies c. 1350BCE in Egypt. It’s speculated to be one of causative agents of the Plague of Athens c. 430BCE. There were outbreaks of smallpox in Angola in 1484, in South Africa in 1731 that wiped out entire clans of Khoisan people. There was at least one major smallpox epidemic almost every decade across Europe.

Smallpox was transmitted by droplet/aerosol infection; it tore through even the smallest population centres. Typical smallpox incurred a blistering fever, raised pustules, debilitating joint and back pain; if you lived — and that was a fat fucking if, as typical smallpox had a mortality rate of 30% — you’d have tell-tale pockmark scarring, and face stigma for the rest of your life. Some were left blinded.

The worst form of the disease was haemorrhagic smallpox; all the agony of typical smallpox, with the addition of skin haemorrhage and pinpoint haemorrhage in the spleen, liver, kidneys and gonads. Near-universally fatal, haemorrhagic smallpox made up 5-10% of all cases. Of this number, 72% were children.

The global smallpox vaccination campaigns of 1958 to 1977 were a monumental effort by the World Health Organization and its global associates, backed by incredibly diligent public health work and epidemiological monitoring.

Wherever there were outbreaks, there was herd immunisation. Health bodies campaigned tirelessly for the general population to be immunised. In the ‘70s, a concerted effort was made by the WHO to ensure vaccines were administered in the most remote and vulnerable communities in the Horn of Africa, South Asia and the Pacific.

In 1980, the world was officially, finally free of one of it’s oldest adversaries; universal vaccination had been achieved, and there was no population that could act as a reservoir for smallpox.

If mankind has only one great achievement, it’s the smallpox vaccine; to date, smallpox is the only human disease to be completely eradicated.

After over two millennia of suffering, mass disability and death, humanity finally had the means to give one of it’s biggest threats the biggest possible fuck you, and through scientific and public health collaboration, careful epidemiological monitoring and countless hours of on-the-ground vaccination efforts, managed to blot it from existence entirely.

Where there is vaccine coverage, childhood diseases with high morbidity and mortality rates like whooping cough, diphtheria, influenza B and have dropped.

We have vaccines for TB, another of our greatest and longest adversaries.

With enough effort to counter misinformation, more people fighting for vaccine equality, patent free medication for communicable disease, and universal vaccine coverage, and everyone making sure to keep up to date with their vaccinations, one day, we could be fortunate enough to be able to say;

Sometimes I have law student ducklings following me around. This video actually inspires me to be more careful about asking when it’s okay that they observe; I tend to not have much time on court days so I just set the ducklings to “FOLLOW” and skip past it.

I know it’s caused some discomfort in the past. I guess I tended to think of it as unimportant discomfort? That’s on me; it’s so easy in criminal justice to see that your clients are suffering at every stage of the case and forget that doing something like paying attention to minor discomforts can actually make a difference. And I love having interns to teach.

How to gracefully accept a no from a patient.

And as anybody who is medically marginalized in any way can tell you, there are a fuckload of medical professionals who need to learn how to accept a no gracefully and without making a patient feel bad for asserting reasonable boundaries about their body.

It isn't perfect, but I find that it makes it easier for me when I have to draw them lmao

I have included my CSP brush file there, but I also included the pattern itself for all procreate/photoshop/etc users who might want to use the pattern :) I made them myself (except for the infernal font), so apologies if they are a bit janky! What’s in it:

Download it here:

Final notes:

Obv you don't need to credit me when you use it lmao xD - have fun! (Maybe to thank me you can make more raphael/haarlep content lol)

Feel free to toy around with it, edit it, change the brush settings. Whatever your heart desires.

EVERYONE, the EU is gathering signatures for a ubi, last time they did this it was only nearly 300,000 signatures when they need a million please whatever you can do call or email or share please this is Amazing

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about a name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)

Cece, the guardian and protector of Dendera Temple, Egypt

FLY is a Black, Queer, and Magical Coming of AGE story Live on Kickstarter. 10 Days to go. Let's FLY all the way to the end.

(TADC spoilers)

As I grow older I think that the lens of "representation" can be a very limiting way to view queer fiction, especially things drawing from a queer creator's own lived experiences, and Jax's story is a great example of why.

By some rubrics, Jax is "bad transfem representation." She's a fucked up, maladjusted person who never actually even transitions, who pushes away and hurts most of the people close to her, and whose story ends tragically with something that partially evokes suicide. (Though the abstractions are still, you know, alive, and they seem to still be in there somewhere, so I don't like reading it as a 1:1 metaphor. And also obviously Jax's real world counterpart is still alive and seems to be doing better lol.) Jax isn't an aspirational character for trans women watching the show or someone who makes trans women look good to cis audiences. She's unflattering and suffers a downfall of her own making and only realizes that she's still capable of being loved after it's too late. Thus, "bad representation."

The tragedy of Jax's story is something deeply personal, a cautionary tale about the ugly side of dysphoria and internalized misogyny and bad parent-child relationships and what happens when you repress yourself into a jaded, irony-poisoned mess rather than letting yourself be vulnerable in front of other people. It's a pain that a lot of us can relate to, because real people don't always mirror "good representation," and seeing that pain expressed in a work of art like this helps us process those feelings and know that we aren't alone. The ugliness isn't a mistake, it's the point.

Yes, I also love cute and fun and hopeful and sappy stories about queer characters that make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, which is closer to how most of the other characters' stories end in TADC, living happily ever after in a version of the circus where they get to live life how they want to live. Neither is the singular "right" way to tell queer stories, because we need more of ALL kinds of queer stories, because art is subjective and different things will speak to different people. And it's beautiful that this is a story reached such a wide audience and was able to speak to so many people. I hope Jax put things in perspective for some folks.