#anecdotal

‘This isn’t a life’: The crushing burden of Long Covid | RNZ News

Ashleigh was saving up to travel overseas in the near future. Now, she's housebound at 28, sometimes even bedbound, unable to drive or walk more than a short distance.

"My mum has had to take care of me a lot this year, and I feel a bit bad for her experience as well."

Michael, 32, was a busy Crown prosecutor. Now he's been disabled for more than 18 months, taking long stretches off work and struggling with his mental health and damaged relationships.

"It's probably the worst thing that's ever happened to me."

Renee was elected as the first Samoan and first female Pasifika on the Palmerston North City Council in 2019.

"It felt like I was just reaching the top of my career, with loads of future potential."

Then she spent a year living on the couch, with a commode toilet next to her because she couldn't walk to the toilet. More than a year later, she can now take a few steps from her chair to the toilet. She can chat with people, if she paces herself, and use the internet. The rest of the time, she sleeps or rests.

"This isn't a life. I'm only hanging on for my kids."

I get to drive us girlies through the hills like some caffeinated chauffeur of fate, we get the free coffee and roll up to this building that feels halfway between a university and a spaceship, and then spend the day like. actually Doing Science. like wdymmm we are cool scientists now o.o

You make a good point, friend.

Just for funsies, I'd like to break down the gene combination that causes extreme stupidity in corn snakes.

Snows are the combination of amelanism and anerythrism; the removal of black pigment melanin and red pigment erythrin.

My most intelligent snakes are Amels, but they tend to make impulsive choices that are not within their best interests. Escaping the night before dinner day, for example. These snakes express erythrin but no melanin.

My Anery snakes tend to be less "bright" but they are calm, deliberate in their actions, and learn patterns easily. These snakes express melanin but no erythrin.

Therefore, we can postulate that melanin is linked to a snake's wisdom and erythrin is linked to their intelligence.

A corn snake lacking melanin will experience a negative modifier to their WIS stat but they may still be very intelligent. Amel snakes make very good rogues (they already have race-based +2 DEX) and can be gifted magic users if their party doesn't mind dodging the occasional way-too-close range effect spell. They may need to be reminded to rest and to not put tomatoes in a fruit salad.

A corn snake without erythrin, then, will have a negative INT modifier but they may have a very high WIS stat. Anery snakes can be very strong clerics, rangers, and monks, and may also choose classes like warlock or druid. Their lower intelligence is rarely a hinderance when the other members of their party have complimentary stats and skills.

So what do we get if a snake is lacking both erythrin and melanin?

It's happened multiple times now where I'll have a single post get really popular, really fast; and then out of the blue, posts that are MONTHS old (that I haven't seen in my activity feed for months, too) will suddenly start gaining notes.

You can't tell me that's a coincidence. That's the Tumblr algorithm going "oh hey, this person makes content people like, just look at this one post that got really popular really fast. Let's show people more of their stuff," and then it shows these random old posts to people on their For You Dash.

HBO Max has a new special from Julio Torres, a self-admitted Aquarius.

His special is just so…

It’s so aggressively Aquarian and just brilliant for it.

Please watch his special, Shapes. It’s worth it as an experience.