Halp, I've Fallen Into Tumblr

1. "Five second rule!" while scrubbed, after dropping a sterile scalpel on the floor (no they did NOT pick it up again but I swear everyone's buttholes puckered)

2. (spoken during the closing of a particularly long and difficult case) "Nurse - my tunes." :heavy metal starts blasting:

3. Gently to a fretful patient, pre-anaesthesia: "It's going to be okay. I promise, I've dealt with worse." As soon as the patient is unconscious: "This is literally the worst thing I've ever seen."

4. [okay this one was a med student] "Wowwww, that's so gross!!" Reg: "Please remember that [patient] is awake for this procedure." Student to patient: "Oh my god. I am so sorry, that was really unprofessional - " Patient, cheerfully, also engrossed with what's happening inside them on the screen: "Nah - it's, like, super gross, right?"

6. Elderly surgeon to the anaesthetist who is gossipping with their reg: "I need you to pretend you're in church." [weirdest way to ask people to be quiet, but whatevs]

Anaethetist's new reg with big, horrified eyes: "You mean we should start praying???"

7. Panicking rad tech: "Uhhhh my machine broke. I need to jump on this part and kick it, but I am not paid enough if I break it. Can you - "

Surgeon, casual as: "Yeah, sure."

:violently beats up the C-arm until it starts pumping out those sweet, sweet x-rays:

8. ODP to theatre assistant: "Saw the new tasche earlier. Suits you."

Theatre assistant: "Thanks! it grew on me :)"

9. Surgeon using the electrocauter, leaning over the incision and inhaling deeply: mmmmm, that smell always gets me hungry. I'm having barbeque tonight.

Spinal surgeon: hey, that scoli's getting bad. want me to fix it for ya?

Me: I mean. There's a pretty long wait list

Spinal surgeon: yeah but I could do it tonight

Me: that would be very illegal, Jeff

Three-cueing is essentially crutches that help you get by but let you down eventually. It's very common when learning a foreign language, I misread kanji sometimes because I pattern-recognize based on context instead of really looking. The solution is to do some proper studying, but I don't wanna.

... Is absolutely terrifying in the context of all other anti-intellectualism happening right now. This guy is STILL pushing his 'observations' while denying evidence that it doesn't work.

I have dyslexia and I learned to read with phonics and I genuinely cannot fathom how anyone with dyslexia would benefit from not being taught phonics. All of my dyslexia education was focused on finding ways that I could slow down and see words distinctly so I could sound them out. I'm a really strong reader despite having dyslexia and I credit that to phonics. If I couldn't isolate a word and slowly sound it out I'd never be able to read anything.

Like I am fully wondering if I'm really a gifted reader or if I just got lucky and got taught to read correctly???? What the fuck????

Aside from that, this bit stuck out to me:

"Experiments that force people to use context to predict words show that even skilled readers can correctly guess only a fraction of the words; this is one reason people who rely on context to identify words are poor readers."

Yeah, and as someone who is and has been a skilled reader since she was a young child (no seriously, I'm not trying to be egotistical, they literally wanted me to skip a grade because of my reading skills and I've always outstripped my peers when tested.): that's not how you figure out what a word means. This all happens very quickly in my brain, but context is the literal last thing I check to figure out the meaning.

When I was in elementary school we used to take these reading comprehension tests called DRP tests. You'd read a paragraph with missing words and fill in the words from the choices you were given. The thing is that to correctly accomplish this you had to know what the word choices meant. They had no context, and so if you didn't know what they meant you wouldn't get the question right. So you had to know the meaning of both the context AND the word you were inserting. I had perfect scores on these tests for years. They went in order from easiest to hardest and once I started taking the tests backwards and doing the hardest ones first I pretty much got perfect scores for the rest of my time in elementary school. Anyway, when I come across a word I don't know the first thing I do is break the word down to its component parts and compare it to words I don't know. Like ok, I do know what this word means but I'm going to use it as an example: lithography. Well, I know that "lith" is a prefix that means "stone", and although I don't know what -ography means I do know other similar words, like photography. I do know what photography means and "photo" sounds like "photon", which is a particle of light. So "image of light" makes sense there. If I replace "photo" with "lith" and you get "image of stone" but that doesn't really make sense because there's lots of ways for there to be an image of stone, but image ON stone makes a whole lot more sense. *Then* I add in the context clues to get a more precise meaning. If I don't know any of the component bits of a word then I probably won't be able to identify it except based on context and that's not very accurate. These days I'll often just look words up on my lil lightbox, but I still think about words this way and use this method to help me have to memorize less and it got me through all of my schooling, up to and including my masters degree. Can't use a phone on a test, after all.

In Europe: I see you supported Trump as late as 2026, after he made comments about annexing Greenland and disparaging Ukraine. Have you been sent here to help destabilize the European Union and support foreign incursion into European holdings? Prove it. Wait here for ten hours while we search all of your bags.

Central and South America: Were you personally involved in bombing fishing boats, kidnapping Venezuela's president, and running concentration camps for migrants on American soil? Are you here to identify targets, or get revenge on specific individuals who spoke up against this treatment and were deported? Prove that you aren't. Wait here for ten hours while we search all of your bags.

Also? Children should be taught when it's appropriate to break the rules. When you *should* break the rules. I have this argument with a close friend on the regular because he's autistic and he places too much value on rules and will follow them simply because they are rules. He'll even follow rules that don't matter. One I find particularly baffling is that He'll only have 1 cup of tea a day because when he was a child his mom said he was only allowed to have one cup (because of the caffeine.). He's an adult with bodily autonomy and he can easily stop following that rule but he doesn't. His only explanation is that "it's a rule". Whereas I have ADHD and I only follow rules that make sense. If a rule is nonsensical and the consequences are something I don't mind I'll just break it. If you don't teach kids that sometimes they can and should break rules you get them to a place where they follow bad rules without ever considering who made the rules and why they exist. They become adults who don't think critically about the systems around them and don't have the ability to rebel when such an action is vitally necessary. Or even as children, if you teach them to never question authority and rules then they won't tell you when an authority figure in their lives is make bad rules. Rules that put kids in danger.

Most of them liked women. But they weren’t there for that. And the ones who genuinely wanted to find other men to flirt with didn’t feel like they could do so because the straight women wouldn’t stop gawking at them, staring, and treating the entire bar like a petting zoo. This happened multiple times in different states and bars.

So if you have a gay bars with a bunch of straight women and no gay men, chances are the gay are gone because the straight women drove them out.

I’ve brought straight female friends to gay bars before because I knew they could handle it respectfully, and we had no issues. But that’s different because they came with a queer friend/friends, and because they weren’t there with a whole group of other straight women who didn’t know how to act.

The issue is that if you’re a straight woman coming into a gay bar, you need to recognize that that is not your space. It’s not for you. You’re allowed to be there and no one is stopping you, but you are not who is being catered to and the other people there do not exist for your entertainment. You need to respect that it’s their space and you’re a guest, and treat them with respect. Don’t touch or comment on them in ways you wouldn’t want straight men touching or commenting on you. Leave people alone if they’re not interested, and don’t insert yourself into conversations you’re not a part of. Don’t touch strangers unless they explicitly ask you to. You’re going to see a lot of people acting gay, men flirting with men, people you think of as men wearing makeup and feminine or flamboyant clothing (not all of them are actually men), drag artists, visibly trans people, and, in some cases, male burlesque dancers, strippers, or workers/patrons doing sexy dances for the entertainment of men. Don’t bother attending if you aren’t capable of seeing all of that without gawking at all the overt queerness and making everyone else feel like they can’t safely express themselves or enjoy those things without you getting weird about it.

If you’re a woman in a queer space, there is a non-zero chance that another woman or someone you percieve as a woman will show up and try to flirt with you. There aren’t many lesbian bars, and sometimes, queer women who are friends with queer men or other gender diverse queer people will go to regular gay bars because that’s the space they have where they can go out and be queer. You can politely explain that you’re not interested, but you don’t get to be offended that a queer person in a queer space assumed you were queer and found you attractive.

I think a lot of straight women think they’re automatically friends with the gates and welcome in our spaces because they’re straight women with more or less progressive politics, and they’ve seen a lot of media that makes them feel like there’s automatic solidarity between them. But having that relationship to the queer community requires you to view them with respect, and not as an accessory or pure entertainment.

I have several straight friends who are so welcome in queer spaces that they may as well be queer. Two of my best friends are a husband and wife who regularly engage in and even plan and host events that spotlight queer performers and are attended by largely queer crowds; the husband likes to put on elaborate events with performers, ans many of the performers end up being drag and burlesque artists simply because he makes decisions based purely on who is best suited to the event, and many people who apply are drag and burlesque artists of all genders. Sometimes, in connection with larger events, he helps organize drag shows that are hosted by trans members of the community.

No one I know has ever said anything about feeling like they’re intruding or making people uncomfortable by being present and visibly straight, and it’s because they’re respectful and appreciative of queer culture and identities. They genuinely respect the art of drag and burlesque performers that they actively choose to give platforms to. They explicitly ban behavior and costumes that may come across as hateful (e.g. nazi-inspired costumes and armbands will get you kocked out). They allow queer people to step in and be the face of events where appropriate. They’re there because they have queer friends that they love and because the community and subculture they’re a part of, while not explicitly a queer community (it’s just the local goth scene), is full of queer people, and engaging with that community means engaging with queer culture.

We were asked all these questions about how long the costumes took us, how we did it, etc. 

I paused the video right when we were asked how much money we spent on our cosplays and

fjdkaf;jkd;al

But anyway cotton can be grown in lovely natural shades of greens, reddish-brown ochres, and browns, all of which deepen with a good boil in water with a bit of washing soda thrown in.

Anyway, scientists DID figure out how to grow colored cotton. They genetically engineered it to be bright fuckin pink, and they didn't "just find out" about it, they already knew which is literally what inspired them to attempt the thing they just accomplished. Begging y'all to stop pretending that scientists don't know things, don't have interests, don't grow up in farming communities or have family who taught them this. Scientists are people. Do you seriously think people who use genetic engineering to make eco-friendly pink cotton don't know anything about textiles?

Anyway. Bright pink cotton without dyes, because science is awesome

Yes. CSIRO scientist Doctor Colleen MacMillan led the team that figured this out. They used tobacco plants for testing because of the genetic similarity. Basically if the tobacco leaves produced colors when injected with a bit of the experimental genetic material, the scientists on the team already understood that the color change would affect cotton bolls as well.

They grew bright red and bright yellow in a petri dish.

And yes, Doctor MacMillan knows lots of things. Here's a list of some of her publications.

@csirogram on Instagram

All I'm saying is give the scientists some credit. They went real deep in a structured way on a subject they were passionate about and they are held to different standards. It's asinine to think that someone got to the point that they were genetically engineering pink into cotton and somehow didn't know about naturally produced colors. They probably know more about how the coloring works than you do.