so I've had chronic insomnia since early childhood and the only thing that helps me fall asleep without the "oh, I've been drugged" feeling is melatonin

and never once have I seen any instructions on the bottle anything beyond "take at or before bedtime"

EXCEPT

my doctor tells me last week that you're not supposed to do this otherwise it really fucks with your circadian rhythms! apparently the optimal time to take melatonin is around sunset (if you want to be asleep by 10pm-12am) because darkness is what naturally stimulates the brain to secrete melatonin

taking it too late (i.e., past 9pm if you intend to sleep around 11pm and wake up at 7am) can majorly screw up your circadian rhythm and keep you feeling groggy and sleepy af well into the day!!! which explains a lot for me personally — not the whole picture but certainly some of it! 

so what I've been doing is I take my regular dose as soon as I notice it's dark outside (around 7:45pm these days) and I start getting sleepy around 10pm-11pm depending on the day I've had. I'm fucking full on passing out by midnight, like phone falling on my face, gotta sleep now. and my sleep isn't perfect but it's a lot better than it was! I get a solid unbroken 6-7 hours stretch which is huge for me and I don't feel like death warmed over needing both vyvanse and caffeine to even think about functioning!

a lot of people are giving examples in the notes of things they just find annoying like not using headphones in public, but OP is talking about actual literal scripts of things to say in awkward situations

if you have a date or two with someone and you don't see a relationship developing? most millennials / gen Zers just end up ghosting. but a social script that might have been taught and rehearsed in the past could be:

"I really appreciated getting dinner with you the other night and I enjoyed your company, but I'm afraid I didn't feel a spark. I wish you the best, and hope you find that special someone!"

im not going to say im charming or pleasant to be around, i know im not, but the autistic abrasiveness has been significantly sanded-down just through politeness. it gets you from Lt Data to Frasier Crane: both weird guys and a little offputting to the average person in their own ways, but Frasier manages to pass as human while he's doing it. its applicable to everyone, not just autistic people, i just mention it because that's been an interesting result for me personally.

And the answer is, we don't.

The unhoused people who come here seeking refuge 99% of the time understand that they will be kicked out if they misbehave.

The people you have to watch out for are Jessica, who only came because the kid she didn't want had to visit for a homework assignment and she just *needs* to yell at her child for asking to borrow two books or stay an extra five minutes, or Michael, who came in to look at porn on our computers for whatever fucking reason, or Karen who just wanted to come by to throw a fit that the particular book she wanted was checked out and harrass our staff about our collection being too limited.

And we did what we could to help. He was incredibly kind and patient despite his obvious anxiety and stress, more than most able bodied, housed patrons are to us under much less dire conditions. I liked knowing that we were the first place he came.

We have so many people like this who come in everyday. Many are quiet and keep to themselves, but sometimes they talk to us.

They tell us about how they're taking a few courses on a scholarship they applied for from our library's computer at the local community college to get their diploma. Or ask about a manga or dvd or book we might have to help them pass the time.

One woman, who comes in daily with her tattered walker always says hello to me and likes to work on the new jigsaw puzzle with me when we set one out.

So like, treat unhoused people like people. Treat disabled people like people. I don't want my library to feel like the only safe space in the world, but I'm glad it can be one of them.

Oops, I never uploaded this one to Tumblr (which I only realized when someone else did, but then was kind enough to tag me, thank you)!

So this thing, and accompanying items?

many clip the wings of the queen, destroy new queen cells, cull queens they don’t like and use bee pheromones to prevent a hive from naturally swarming or absconding. They also try and prevent mating with the African honey bee, which makes them less docile among other things. During artificial insemination of queens, drones are crushed and „spare“ queens are killed.

and commercial beekeepers even cull their hives during winter, or when they are not producing well.

Coupled with the fact that there is evidence that insects do feel pain, this is not great.

“In all our operations with the bees we must use gentleness. All quick sudden jars and motions irritate them. So does breathing on them. Bees are always more gentle and less inclined to sting when they are gathering honey; and at such times hives can be opened with very little danger; whereas when a dearth of honey prevails the inmates of the same hive might show a great spirit of resentment. I have observed that colour exerts some influence on the temper of this insect. I have found that dark shades of clothing, particularly red, are more distasteful to them than white. Hence when working among them I always go in shirt sleeves pr in light coloured clothes.”

The broader page is about how being stung is unpleasant but not the end of the world, and you can easily minimize it…. By being thoughtful and careful and calm. I can’t find reference to clipping wings or culling; there is a mention of removing drone comb but only carefully, and it’s useful to remember that the hive itself literally drives the drones out to die once they’ve served their purpose. There’s no mention I could find of artificial insemination of queens, and I’m VERY sure that in 1859 they did not have reliable access to BEE PHEROMONES xD xD

There is mention of using smoke but dire warnings of oversmoking; and since the first record of Africanized honey bees is from THE NINETEEN FIFTIES, not the eighteen fifties, that poster is DEFINITELY lying about that citation, as unless the Victorian writer of that book was a fucking Time Lord, they can’t have known that cross breeding was a concern.

Imagine evolving capsaicin specifically to stop mammals from eating your fruits, and then a mammal comes along that not only will eat your fruits, but likes them specifically because of the capsaicin, so much that it starts using its weird paws to distribute and care for your seeds, which turns into a strong selective force that literally starts evolving you into producing MORE capsaicin and makes you a WAY more successful and wider ranged species than you ever were before

Instead of, I don't know, EVOLVING TO BE FASTER, this animal finds a faster animal and sits on it. Which shouldn't even work because the faster animal is a prey animal and this animal is a predator, but SOMEHOW they FORM A SOCIAL BOND WITH THE PREY. So they can sit on it while it runs fast. And somehow the prey animal?? is cool with this?? and benefits from this relationship???

eat poison plants, decide they like getting poisoned, and evolve the plants to poison them more

evolve to not have hair, but they find mammals with thick fluffy hair and put the hair on themselves, and evolve the mammals to produce extra hair so they can both have a warm coat of hair

split up their parasitic lice species into two separate species because they start taking other animals' hair and putting it on themselves so much

learn how to set things on fire on purpose. maintain body temperature by just standing beside some wood that's on fire instead of literally any normal option

figure out that their prey tastes better and is easier to digest when they hold it over a fire after killing it. get smarter because they digest food so good after it's been held over a fire.

find a poisonous plant and try washing it in boiling water until they don't die when they eat it anymore

go across the ocean by making a floating nest despite not being able to breathe underwater, drink ocean water, or even swim naturally

drink milk from other mammals even though they can't digest it and it makes them sick. Evolve those mammals to produce more milk than their babies can drink so they can drink the milk. Some members of the species evolve to be able to digest milk because they were so hellbent on drinking it.

find flowers, bugs and minerals that are nice colors and crush them up to try to turn other things that color

"Found family doesn't mean 'we fit into a traditional family structure' or 'we think of each other as siblings/parents/child/whatever,' it just means this group of people are Home send tweet."

I’m sure this will hit the news soon but just in case it’s not out yet — the Governor of Maryland just signed an executive order tonight declaring Maryland a sanctuary state for trans people seeking gender-affirming care, and for all people who provide such care or help trans people access such care. This executive order includes an explicit refusal to cooperate with law enforcement/prosecutors in any other state where accessing, providing, or helping people access such care is now or will soon be criminalized.

Yes it is absolutely a privilege to be able to travel or to think about moving but if someone can access the resources to move or visit to get what they need to survive and be less likely to be actively targeted for LITERAL EUGENICS AND GENOCIDE, then they should and we should support them.

dude killed their sibling because

they found his Tumblr