Hyperfixation Hell

this caused a lot of issues both in terms of fixing said space-time-continuum and in terms of nautical navigation, and after a long and heavy battle in the international maritime organization it was decided that the bureaucratic burden of dealing with this was to be upon Ireland, much to their dismay. the Irish Government then released an app for all sailors and seafarers so they could report titanic sightings during their journeys, even though they heavily dissuaded you from reporting them given the paperwork it caused.

anyway i woke up with a clear image of the app in my head and needed to recreate it for all of you:

We had free healthcare including dental, mind you, my parents just couldn't be bothered. When my brother, as a teenager, asked our mother if she could take him to his orthodontist appointments (which he'd already arranged for on his own) she basically told him she didn't feel like it and he had to take the bus.

Did that, plus the free healthcare, translate into them actually parenting and caring for us properly? It did not. They only ever did any of that reluctantly when not doing it would make them look bad, and most of the time they did a shitty job because they could never resist the urge to boost their egos by means of bullying literal children.

We are at a point in humanity where there is no meaningful reason why we shouldn’t be structuring our societies around wellbeing for all instead of wellbeing for the “deserving”.

The Black Nerd. A common character type, the nerd will always be very interested in all things nerdy: science, video games, mathematics, etc. In an continued effort to combat stereotypes, the Black Nerd will be lack athleticism, probably being asthmatic (the nerdiest of conditions). The Black Nerd will dress smartly, suspenders and bow ties. They’ll always talk smart too, using proper English with complex words.

Now, I don’t have a problem with a black character being a nerd, indeed black people are a people; we aren’t all the same and we all have varying personalities. The problem I have is that too often we see a distinct disconnect between Blackness and the Black Nerd. The Black Nerd doesn’t listen to hip hop or rap, only classical music. The Black Nerd only has white friends, the only other black characters are into not nerdy stuff. The Black Nerd never ever uses AAVE at any time in any context.

Well @dumbey, seems we’re in similar boats

Nevermind the shit in Animorphs and Warrior Cats! It’s good for kids to read about difficult topics. Being a kid is difficult. Difficult things happen to you whether or not you’re allowed to read about it.

In one of the Percy Jackson myth books, which are Greek myths narrated by Percy, the book discusses how Poseidon raped Demeter. Percy basically looks directly into the camera and says “if something like this happens to you, please tell someone.”

Part of it is that the YA boom has siloed away previous crossover books; it used to be that you could have a chpater book series where the characters are 16 but the readers are 8-14. Now characters have to be the same age as the readers, so books for 8 years are about 8 year olds going on adventures that have an appropriate amount of danger for an 8 year old. Also the upper limit for a MG protagonist is 13 and the minimum age for a YA protagonist is 15, so fuck all the 14 year olds I guess.

I think that's part of why animal books like Warrior cats and Wings of Fire are so popular now; they don't have ages that map onto human experience, so they can push boundaries a little. The other thing that is bridging the gap is graphic novels, so kids that aren't ready to read longer books can still engage with more serious themes (the graphic novel Wings of Fire readers tend to skew younger than the prose novel readers)

But chapter books continue to frustrate me. There are very few "serious" adventure chapter books these days. It's all designed for the sole purpose of getting kids to decode words on a page, and I swear some of it is written to be boring on purpose.

And! As long as I'm doing my chapter book rant! Let me talk about the gender gap! Because no one is writing chapter books about boys anymore! And it's great that today's boys are more willing to read about girls, but they should have options! Because they're basically being told at age 8 that "reading is for girls." And then people wonder why boys don't read.

At which point they will find an ovarian cyst, but they now get whatever fucked up satisfaction they derive out of proving you wrong, because you didn't believe it could a cyst at all, but guess what? They did find a cyst! It's such a good thing you didn't listen to your intuition and came to them to verify your lay diagnosis from that third party! Bonus? Doctor doesn't have to feel like they look stupid in front of a patient, which is really what all this is about. Not your health, why would you think your medical diagnosis is about your health? It's obviously about a doctor's potential ego.

And apparently this works. Apparently you just need to be able to always play 4D chess with your medical professionals in order to find an avenue of advocating for yourself and getting you medical needs met. Isn't that great?

oh wow! hey if you take pills check this out. new medicine taking meta just dropped.

according to these models, out of the 4 tested postures, the best position to digest pills is laying on your right side. standing upright has a similar time to laying in your back at twice as much as laying on the right side, and laying on the left side is the slowest by far.

laying on right side: pill dissolves in around 10 minutes.

standing: pill dissolves in 23 minutes. laying on the back has a similar time.

laying on left side: pill dissolves in up to 100 minutes.

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0096877

definitely worth a lot more research.

“God is behind everything but everything hides God….To love another creature is to render that creature transparent so that God may be seen behind them.”

Emergence: A Transsexual Autobiography (1977) by Mario Martino