Stuff Goes Here

My favorite detail, though, is his performance of Pure Imagination. On the surface, the song is charming and inviting, but if you look closely at him throughout the scene, you'll notice that Gene never blinks. He looks around, down at his feet, up at the trees; his eyes never fully close. He moves erratically, stuttering up and down the steps of the chocolate room. The lyrics are warm and friendly, but his face is blank. He bows to permit his visitors to run amok, but his posture is stiff. He helps Violet and Mike reach a couple of treats, but there is no joy in the gesture. The final post-chorus feels like a dirge, a threat, and a warning, all at once; Wonka sits in repose under a tree, but his eyes are glassy and dispassionate. "There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination; / living there / you'll be free / if you truly / wish / to be.......... "

A pun post crossed my dash, and I reblogged it with an equally bad pun in return. A couple of my followers find it funny, it's a good day for everyone.

That was on July 7th.

Virality on Reddit was entirely algorithmic. You could garner a couple crossposts, but the success of a post was entirely dependent on whether or not it hit r/all--the main page of Reddit. If your post does that, it's immediately exposed to 10x the number of people and immediately gets upvoted.

On my pun post, I get a couple reblogs. And those reblogs get a couple reblogs--nobody really adds any content to the post, it just gets a couple reblogs here and there.

There's a specific chain of reblogs that I'd like to focus on. The most popular post on this chain has about 25 reblogs on it. Half the posts have three reblogs or fewer. Five posts in this chain have just one reblog total.

But the reblog chain keeps going. And going. It breaches containment many times over. And finally, after a chain THIRTY SIX posts long, at 9:30 AM, July 22nd this morning, it hits a popular account.

99% percent of the people who have seen the post--virtually unchanged from how it left my dash--have seen it because it was curated by 36 different people. That's insane to me.

None of those 36 people know that they're part of this chain. They saw a post, reblogged it, and moved on. If any one of these people had not reblogged, the post would have a fraction of the impact it has.

And yet, after two weeks, the post has effectively hit the main page of tumblr. It was picked up, only because people liked it enough to show it to their followers. There were no algorithms necessary.

KEY FACTS

New World screwworm, a parasitic fly with larvae that burrow in healthy tissue of cattle, deer, horses and other warm-blooded animals, was first discovered in may in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, near the Mexico border, and the number of cases has since risen to seven.

The cases are in cattle, goats and a dog in Texas and New Mexico, according to the Department of Agriculture, and the FDA on Thursday approved the use of generic Nitenpyram tablets—an oral treatment usually used to kill fleas—in dogs, puppies, cats and kittens infected with screwworm. 

Experts have warned a wider screwworm outbreak could severely impact already-suffering cattle numbers and put even more of a strain on ranchers as they spend money on treatment and prevention which could, in turn, increase the price of beef, which has already gone up roughly 75% since December 2020. 

The U.S. cattle herd is already at its lowest level in 75 years, and a major screwworm outbreak would cause more calves to die, adult cattle to lose weight and limit what animals are suitable for sale, meaning fewer pounds of beef reaching the market. 

Even without a major outbreak, containment efforts may cause the government to implement widespread cattle movement restrictions, limit border crossings or impose quarantine on certain herds, all of which would further impact the nation’s cattle numbers. 

The return of screwworm comes after the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, launched by the Trump administration, last year cut funding for a project dedicated to monitoring and containing New World screwworm in Central America. 

The funding was axed days before the U.S. ended a temporary suspension of cattle imports from Mexico, meaning livestock was allowed to cross the border without any of the monitoring previously funded by the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID). 

Agriculture officials and cattle industry leaders raised alarm about the cuts at the time and, for the last several months, pleaded with the government to step in as they monitored screwworm infections moving north through Mexico—but they were ignored, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told NBC New

this one has been passed around recently from the mayo clinic and that actually makes me so happy because how many of transfeminine people are aware of what their options even look like?