Wish You Were Here

why am i not pickin' strawberries in my lil' garden, next to my tiny yellow cottage in an eerie forest. i want the early morning sunlight pouring through the tree leaves and hear the birds chirping.

"I like going to the cemetery early in the morning because, if you're calm and patient, the skeletons will approach you and even eat right out of your hand.

am scared

Isn’t that comfortable! What’s that? You like my wallpaper? I’m so glad!

I went to great lengths to acquire it. You see, they haven’t made this color in centuries. But don’t worry, i made sure this is genuine.

Now, would you like a cup of tea? You can pick a glass from my personal collection!

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@frozencranberries doesn't this look so soft and inviting? Wouldn't you just like to snuggle into this lovely fireproof blanket?

(image my own)

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However, a not toxic but fun fact is that bakelite, an early form of plastic:

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Bakelite was used in lot of things like buttons and jewelry, but it was also used for two important things: typewriter and piano keys. This is significant because up to that point the preferred material for these keys had been whale bone, because of the way that it felt when the key was struck. Bakelite provided a much more environmentally friendly alternative that still felt good to type/play.

Because of its chemical composition, bakelite smells like ammonia when it gets hot. The very scientific way that we test for this in the field is by rubbing the object very fast on our pant leg so the friction heats it up. Then we smell it. Of course we verify everything in the lab later.

However, if you're looking for another morbid special interest like Paris Green, I would highly recommend The Poisoner's Handbook,

The book documents the development of the study of toxicology in the United States. The book definitely has that macabre vibe to it, but, as @cloverchameleon so rightly pointed out in the reblogs of this post, the book also addresses how instances of poisoning disproportionally affect women and the poor/working class either through means of manufacture or the targeted demographics. This includes:

the United States prohibition of alcohol

the production of illegal alcohol as a result of the prohibition

cosmetics

leaded gasoline

Through individual case studies the author explains the scientific process of the development of procedures for the detection of different poisons. The narrative of class/racial inequality is strung through the book, connecting many of the cases.

If you really want to go down a rabbit hole with the whole medical toxicity thing, I would check out The Plutonium Files, a book length piece of investigative journalism on how our understanding of how radiation affects humans was gained at the expense of poor people, people of color, and the disabled. If you found yourself fascinated by The Radium Girls, this is one step darker.

Did you know that in post-mortem examinations there is zero correlation between weight and levels of arteriosclerosis and related diseases found?

Did you know that people with an overweight BMI have the longest life expectancy, that those with an “ideal” and an “obese” have about the same life expectancy, and that being “underweight” raises mortality rates more than being “morbidly obese”?

Did you know that losing weight and then gaining it back is worse for your heart than remaining at the weight you started consistently?

Did you know that 95% of people who lose weight do gain it back, and there has never been a single documented weight loss program that has been demonstrated to keep the weight off for five years or more in the majority or even a significant minority of people? Like, telling people to lose weight isn’t much use if we don’t know HOW to make that happen.

Like I have read The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos and Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata and Big Fat Lies by Glenn A Gaesser (Ph.D!) And Fat!So? and several other books that I don’t own and so don’t remember all of their names I spent like four years reading every single study coming out and looking at the methodology and noting which ones had huge holes or terrible methods and which didn’t (the holes were almost always in the pro-weight-loss studies) and like

Big Fat Lies has 27 pages of bibliography. 27 pages worth of scientific citation. The book content itself is only 197 pages. That’s a page of references for every 7 pages of book. Reading the book is just reference after reference and study after study. Most of these doctors (like Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size) started out the same way. They wanted to use the scientific method to find a real weight loss program or health solution that worked and could be proven to work, and so studied everything they could about weight and fitness only to find out that we didn’t need weight loss in the first place. That all the studies calling for it were lacking or nonexistent. That weight and underlying metabolic health have very little relation. That the history of our relationship with health and obesity has little basis in fact and a LOT of basis in capitalism, politics, and fashion. No, really, the association between weight and health was first proposed by insurance companies looking for ways to charge people more by claiming risk. They also charged tall and short people more. And people with different skin colors. When they got in trouble for charging people for things they had no control over and had no bearing on their health, they set out to prove that weight was controllable and that fat was unhealthy to make money. 

These are also a lot of the same people who went on to invent the President’s fitness program, so if you went to public school you probably already hate them. 

*gets an email*