• michael °

the vivisection jokes have to get old at some point right

Like, Grace is in the bathroom, shaving, the curtain pulled to the side and suddenly he stops and says "stop touching my stuff". Rocky, frozen, somewhere behind him, can't fathom how Grace sensed that. He was so quiet. The razor is so loud. Grace's still facing away from him. What the fuck.

“yeah, sure.” grace holds up the tooth to the xenonite barrier.

“no, closer,” rocky says, claws clicking nervously. “want to hold.”

grace considers that. if rocky were to, say, lose a chunk of carapace, he’d ask to have it without a second thought. he’d probably make an excuse about wanting to point a spectrometer at it or test its properties, and he’d obviously do those things, but he’d mainly just want to touch it. to hold a piece of rocky without fear of either of them being harmed.

LESBIANnne maria

ASEXUALjo

BIoey

brick

camerNONBINARY

Obviously, there are Eridian kids with special needs, and a few of them even filter into his classes. But one specific type of special needs kid has never shown up in his classes, and the only reason he even learned of the condition is because Rocky and Adrien's first pebble has the condition.

It's initially quite a struggle for them to deal with, and Grace sympathizes of course, because the child will apparently have huge learning and academic struggles and will likely never be able to live on their own. That is, until he learns the details of the disability.

Basically, it's a condition where the part of the Eridian brain that gives them their eidetic memory isn't fully developed, and so these kids just... can't remember things the way most eridians do. And in a culture where an eidetic memory is the norm, all things cater to that, so not having that is actually a massive disability.

But Grace is like, so... this kid just learns the same way a human does, or something like. Which is nothing new to him, though he is somewhat boggled at how much Rocky and Adrian struggle with their infant and their "slow" learning curve, even as far as initial developmental stages. Grace, on the other hand, simply treats the kid the same way he would a human infant, and Rocky and Adrien are impressed with his patience.

But, through this, it occurs to Grace that there must be other kids out there with this disability who likely aren't getting the attention and chances in life that they deserve, because Eridian culture is particularly hostile toward this disability, and actively views those with it as unable to function in regular society.

So Grace demands that a special course be put together where he teaches kids with this disability specifically. Rocky is hesitant, as most kids with this disability are home schooled and kind of... kept shut away. But Grace insists and as one of Erid's saviors, he gets what he wants eventually.

His first class is super small, maybe only three kids because so few parents were willing to advertise that their children have this disability. And because of the stigma around it, even those who agreed to it are super unsure and want to be present during the lessons, perhaps paranoid about the impression it will leave on Savior Grace, who is so accustomed to only teaching the most gifted students.

But Grace knows exactly how to deal with these kids. Some of them have varying degrees of function when it comes to their memory banks, which isn't so unlike teaching kids on earth. And so Grace is able to introduce all these tools and teaching techniques that were previously unheard of on Erid (though very normal on Earth) like having textbooks for reference with you at all times and having strategies that are less focused on memorization for understanding, and providing these kids with tools like calculators and teaching them the art of taking notes to look back on, etc etc.

Suddenly, with all these tools that most Eridians don't need, these kids are learning at a much faster rate, and succeeding with the help of all their little tools. And because so many normal eridians are ignorant of Grace's actual biology, it's shocking to them that Savior Grace doesn't have an eidetic memory either (shocking to everyone but Rocky anyway)--that his brain functions quite similarly in capacity to these "disabled" children.

Once this news gets around, suddenly there's more kids in his special classes, and there's all kinds of discourse being inflamed because the real reason these kids can't live on their own or function is lack of support from Eridian society.

If Savior Grace, who is well respected as a genius in his own right amongst the Eridians, can function so successfully, they why can't these kids?

#my old phone looks like this on my shelf lmao #im too scared to touch it to throw it away #idk what trash this even goes into when its at this point

The pillow-shaped object here used to be the phone’s battery. It’s not a battery anymore. Now it’s a balloon full of corrosive, pyrophoric chemicals and hydrogen gas and it’s one puncture away from burning your house down. I am 100% serious. You should be scared to touch it.

But you gotta touch it, because you gotta get it out of your house before the pressure builds up to the point where the balloon pops. This isn’t going to happen soon – there is no need to panic – but it will happen eventually.

And, indeed, it doesn’t go in the ordinary trash. You put this in the ordinary trash and you’re gonna set the garbage truck on fire. Don’t do that to the garbage collectors, their job is hard enough already.

The first thing you need to do is get a fireproof container. The most common household item that qualifies as a fireproof container is a cast-iron cookpot with a cast-iron lid – often sold as a “Dutch oven.” Any other cooking container that’s unreactive, has a very high melting point, and has a lid made of the same materials will also work: enameled or stainless steel, Pyrex with glass lid, etc.

However: Do not use a pot with a PTFE-based non-stick coating. If the battery does explode, the fire will probably be hot enough to degrade a PTFE coating, producing toxic smoke. (Not that you should breathe the smoke from the battery fire either, but PTFE breakdown products are worse.) Do not use a pot made of aluminium or copper. The fire might even get hot enough to melt those.

Whatever container you use, you might have to throw away along with the phone, so don’t use your good Dutch oven for this. Go to a thrift store and buy a cheap one.

Once you have the fireproof container:

Gently pick up the phone and put it in the fireproof container. If possible, gently tape the phone to the bottom of the container to prevent it from bouncing around. Don’t put any padding in there, that’ll just make a fire worse if it does happen. Put the lid on and tape it shut.

Put a label on the container, something like “DEFECTIVE LI-ION BATTERY – FIRE HAZARD”.

It is now reasonably safe to move the container around. However, if the battery does explode, the container is very likely to leak smoke and get hot, so keep it in a well-ventilated area and away from things that will be damaged by heat. Don’t leave it exposed to the weather, either.

You need to find either a hazardous waste disposal site, or an e-waste recycler that will accept defective Li-ion batteries. I can’t help with that because I have no idea where you live.

However, your local fire department, if you have one, will probably be happy to help. Call their non-emergency number. Nothing is on fire yet, so this isn’t an emergency, but things that can easily start a fire are still within the fire department’s responsibilities. Tell them you have a phone with a bulging lithium-ion battery, you put it in a fireproof container, and you want to know how to dispose of it safely.

If the fire department tries to tell you this isn’t dangerous or it’s okay to throw it out in the regular trash (with or without fireproof container), hang up on them and write a cranky letter to your local government representatives, then keep looking for a proper disposal site.