Mad Gastronomer

Anyway apparently Mr. Eclipse made 5000 years' worth of solar eclipse graphics, which you can find the simpler versions of here

Gandalf: *hurriedly glances at Thranduil. the king of Mirkwood’s eyes shine with curiosity and greed, but not recognition, nor the terrible lust that overtook Feanor and his sons. right, right, he was never in Thingol’s court while the jewel that Luthien and Beren took was there. we’re good. we’re good for now*

Gandalf: [mental image of a goddam Silmaril in hobbit hands, labelled “thisfuckingrockagain.jpg”]

Galadriel, who watched 95% of her family slaughter everyone within 100 miles for several thousand years over these things, including each other and themselves: no.

Elrond, who was very nearly one of those people slaughtered, and did watch most of his town be killed before he and his twin were kidnapped for a while: Absolutely Fucking Not.

Gandalf: Apparently fucking yes. The legendary Arkenstone-

Galadriel: You’ve got to be kidding me.

Elrond: Thorin Oakenshield has a Silmaril right now?

Gandalf: No, no.

Gandalf: Bilbo stole it.

Elrond: *wordless sputtering*

Gandalf: @Galadriel [information packet: BilboBagginsoftheShire.pdf]

Galadriel: Oh yes, Belladonna’s boy, you were telling me about him last winter. 

Galadriel: Btw, orc+warg army probably coming your way. Spotted it in the mirror last night. Thank goodness we dealt with Dol Goldur at least, huh?

Gandalf: [thisfuckingrockagain.jpg]

Gandalf: [oncomingorcwargarmy.jpg]

when i asked whether their autistic classmate's meltdown was dangerous or merely uncomfortable, they said, "i felt like i was in danger!"

yes you should, actually. that's life. upsetting things happen. no one should have to experience any discomfort. but we do. we get stung by bees and sunburns and headaches. we live in bodies in the world.

autistic people are human beings who have the right to exist in society, including during meltdowns. having one class of your entire semester interrupted by a singular meltdown is not anymore of an infringement upon your entitlement to education than having your class interrupted by a fire alarm or cancelled for a snow storm.

one of my peers once experienced a cardiac event 10 minutes into class. it was terrifying. it was desperately upsetting. i was contacted by the school and offered counseling because i happened to be the one who managed the situation until paramedics arrived. everyone was worried about my classmate first and foremost, and then about me. no one blamed anyone, and certainly when my classmate happily recovered and returned to school, no one thought they should be removed from the program.

^^^^^^

Wide-spread produce contamination happens through dirty irrigation water that sewage has leaked into.

Even if workers were taking shits in the field, it wouldn’t be enough to make these events and someone with intestinal diseases wouldn’t last long out doing manual labor in the hot sun (ask me how I know).

but there was a law that was supposed to go into effect earlier this year that would have made it much easier for the government to track produce and other food products, so that instead of "an outbreak has started, now we have to talk to every place that sold that stuff and hope they can track who their suppliers are and where the contaminated stuff came from." There was supposed to be a federal database of such things.

Because everyone keeps asking about it.

These Bastards are available as prints, cards and postcards over on RedBubble.

I’ve had a go at making stickers out of these and it’s bloody horrendous. So I hope you all can suffice with prints for now.

Back when I worked at the hospital, I had to take MRI training and it was my favorite thing every time. It was only like 10 minutes long and went a little something like this:

Hey. The MRI is basically a really big magnet and by basically I mean it is and we literally never turn it off. It's like really big. Really really big and powerful and The Magnet is always on. We don't turn it off Ever, for any reason. We mean it bro, The Magnet is literally always on. It's crazy strong and will definitely kill you. So don't bring any metal into the MRI room, man. You will fuck up the machine (because The Magnet is always on) and then you will die (again, because The Magnet is always on). Here's some fun questions for you to test your understanding!

1) The ______ is always on.

2) The Magnet is ______ on.

3) How often is The Magnet on?

4) The Magnet is always __.

5) The Magnet is always on. T/F

6) The Magnet is usually on but we know to turn it off for you because you're a very special boy :) T/F

7) My weak fleshy body can survive the wrath of The Magnet. T/F

8) Look at this 500 lbs steel hospital bed, which The Magnet has crumpled into an origami crane. Imagine if that was you.

9) Is The Magnet ever off?

10) Sometimes we turn The Magnet off. T/F

Thank you for taking MRI training. We hope you learned that The Magnet is always on, because it is. It's on Right Now and it will be on every time you come to the MRI. Have fun and remember: The Magnet is always on!

It also includes these fascinating paragraphs about the role of estrogen in different types of physical activity, directly debunking the widespread notion that estrogen is the weak human's hormone and only does weak human things:

Given the fitness world's persistent touting of the hormone testosterone for athletic success, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that estrogen, which females typically produce more of than males, plays an incredibly important role in athletic performance… The estrogen receptor—the protein that estrogen binds to in order to do its work—is deeply ancient. Joseph Thornton of the University of Chicago and his colleagues have estimated that it is around 1.2 billion to 600 million years old—roughly twice as old as the testosterone receptor. In addition to helping regulate the reproductive system, estrogen influences fine-motor control and memory, enhances the growth and development of neurons, and helps to prevent hardening of the arteries. Important for the purposes of this discussion, estrogen also improves fat metabolism. During exercise, estrogen seems to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy before stored carbohydrates. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns more slowly, which can delay fatigue during endurance activity. Not only does estrogen encourage fat burning, but it also promotes greater fat storage within muscles… which makes that fat's energy more readily available. Adiponectin, another hormone that is typically present in higher amounts in females than in males, further enhances fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrates for future use, and it protects muscle from breakdown. Anne Friedlander of Stanford University and her colleagues found that females use as much as 70 percent more fat for energy during exercise than males. Estrogen's ability to increase fat metabolism and regulate the body's response to the hormone insulin can help prevent muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Furthermore, estrogen appears to have a stabilizing effect on cell membranes that might otherwise rupture from acute stress brought on by heat and exercise. Ruptured cells release enzymes called creatine kinases, which can damage tissues… Linda Lamont of the University of Rhode Island and her colleagues, as well as Michael Riddell of York University in Canada and his colleagues, found that females experienced less muscle breakdown than males after the same bouts of exercise. Tellingly, in a separate study, Mazen J. Hamadeh of York University and his colleagues found that males supplemented with estrogen suffered less muscle breakdown during cycling than those who didn't receive estrogen supplements.

Her cheerleader friends are supportive, like "Are you kidding, girl? You played Sonic on your iPhone once! She's not out of your league!" but she still doubts if she'd be enough to keep up with Erin's zest for life.

Often, pseudoscience and misinformation comes packaged with a lot of very important sounding words, and the jargon gets to the point where it seems like a lot of work to fact check it. Which makes the 'I encourage you to do your own research' statements real obnoxious. If it's phrased in a way that's impossible to navigate, good luck.

It sucks, but you gotta.

If you don't want to fact check individual words, that's fine. That's a lot to ask of someone that's just trying to figure out whether something is true.

This is where we get into something called 'lateral research.' Instead of trying to draw a map to a sentence, you check the credibility of their source material.

This is your Snopes, your Fact Check/Media Bias, your Follow The Money.

Knowing more context about what someone is saying will save you a lot of time and energy.

Practice SIFT! SIFT is based on lateral research and can be very helpful for these situations.

DON'T just share information without doing your due diligence.

i have found this post and infographic and i want to share it

INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE

zetabrarian's blog says they are a socially progressive librarian monsterfucker, which a quick scroll through their blog seems to support. This makes them pretty cool but not necessarily the perfect source -- anyone can say they are a librarian, and surely not every librarian is correct about processing information

FIND BETTER COVERAGE

if i go to a search engine (in this case google via firefox) i see that several universities, libraries from large municipalities (like Los Angeles) as well as the BBC all agree that this is a real method experts in information fields recommend. I wouldn't necessarily take any single one of these sources as 100% credible, but they are individually reasonably reliable, and taken together indicate a high probability of factual information

TRACE TO ORIGINAL CONTEXT

A brief search reveals that the SIFT method was created by Mike Caulfield, who is a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, where he studies the spread of online rumors and misinformation. This is an extremely good source of information for how to process information on the internet. As the creator of the SIFT method, he has taught thousands of teachers and students how to verify claims and sources through his workshops.

I could not find a post or page about SIFT written by Mike Caulfield himself, so i went to the University of Washington's website for this page about it, since that is the university that employs him.

It corroborates the above information, though there are a few notable differences. For example, under the "trace to original context" section in the Washington U. source (again, as close to the original as i could find) this step contains advice to check the date. This seems very good to include, as in the fast moving world of internet information, things become outdated or get updated very quickly, and yet first takes and outdated articles hang around and get shared for a long time.

EXTRA CREDIT