Gender?Sometimes

had….had someone been punishing them for this?

Peer review because it genuinely could not be more clear that the concern was coming from the idea that it might be bad for the animals.

Several decades later my sister had an MRI, as a long shot, to try to figure out why she was sick and deteriorating with a number of symptoms that were close to being written off as anxiety. She was sent straight to the hospital for adult onset hydrocephaly. Two days later she had brain surgery to put a shunt down her neck into her stomach and drain the fluid out. (No, you cannot usually get brain surgery that fast. Yes, it was that urgent.) Recovery was long and squiggly but it happened.

I think of that boy every once in a while. The one who died. I have no doubt that treatments developed for people like him, and tested on people like him, saved my sister's life.

I've been type 1 diabetic since I was about one and a half, and was incredibly sick. If my mother hadn't also been type 1 and recognized the signs I likely would have died.

I was born in 1982. Insulin was first given to a patient in 1922, and he survived. Before that, type 1 meant death, often very slow and agonizing. Before insulin, doctors advised a super strict "keto" diet to prolong life, and it could work for awhile - up to a year, I believe. But it was a miserable existence as the body was literally eating itself as the blood turned acidic until the patient eventually died.

60 years. Only 60 years before my birth did that procedure work for the first time. That's absolutely nothing given the span of human history and I think a lot about the people who died from it throughout time.

But yes, people tried. Healers and doctors of all sorts tried all manner of things to allow these (mostly!) kids to live. The fact that it was accomplished at all is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that I've been alive 42 years is fucking insane considering my body doesn't produce a hormone necessary for survival. If you think that doesn't blow me away on a regular basis you have another think coming. It's nothing short of a miracle.

Every medical advancement is. The amount of work that goes into it and the vast amount of luck necessary to get it right even when all the research and information is sound is just astonishing.

In 1930, having diabetes type I would basically mean being hospital bound, being woken every few hours for regular injections.

In 1965, you'd be able to live at home and get by with a very strict diet and a few timed injections. You'd struggle with chronical side effects. Having children wasn't done - passing on your genes would be immoral, and it might not even be legal for you to marry.

In the year 2000, you'd have a device clipped to your belt that would measure your blood sugar and distribute insulin, you only need to change the needle a few times a day. You might even be allowed to join in P.E. class

In 2025, you stick on two patches that do the same thing. They're synchronized through your phone.

And now, humans are working with fungi that can safely break down petroleum plastics, and with techniques that allow us to actually recycle these materials.

The world is full of difficulties... Medical, mechanical, environmental, so much more. But the world is also full of change, and humans are capable of working with that change purposefully, intelligently, cumulatively across time and populations. There is always a value in trying, in learning, in making an effort or building a community. Even if we don't succeed, every effort helps build the support for the thing that will, even if we can't always see how.

Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

>"reddit snark communities are extremely misogynistic"

>"aren't those communities mainly made up of women though?"

I am PRO-WOOL

I am PRO-LEATHER

I am PRO-BEES

Fuck the idea of replacing durable, sustainable animal products with cheap, flimsy plastic that doesn’t bio-degrade. Agave nectar and other artificial sweeteners are expensive, labor-intensive, and destroy the environment to be farmed.

Leather - one cow makes SO MUCH leather. One deer makes SO MUCH leather. Well-treated leather lasts almost FOREVER. Even animals with small skins like rabbits, a pair of well oiled rabbit leather gloves will last decades. Every animal usually made into leather is also a meat animal, so it’s more sustainable to get more than one product from a single ethically butchered animal (humane kills make less punctures in the hide!) Leather can be tanned with natural resources like brains and doesn’t require treatment with chemicals that seep into the groundwater!

Cotton: Cotton is a fucking plant, it burns. The growing and harvesting of cotton is rather water intensive but it IS possible to sustainably harvest and reuse the water spent in the cleaning process to reduce the ecological footprint of the crop. It burns clean, it cuts clean, it’s sturdy, and there are 1000 ways to weave it to change its properties.