The Elite

I’m in a ton of fucking trouble so I’ll get straight to the point. My name’s D’vante, and I’m a trans man. As of today (4/4) I’m estimated to be 6 weeks pregnant, so while I’ve still got some time before I start to show, there’s some huge problems with how I can go about this on top of the amount of time pressure I’m under.

NO ONE IN THIS CITY WILL DO AN ABORTION. The closest clinic is 37 miles away, the next city over. The only means of transportation I have is Greyhound (which I plan to cover myself, as it’s only $12), but in order to do this I have to skip classes for that day and pray I don’t get called into work.

“Work? So you have a job? Why can’t you pay for it?” My work is part-time and relies entirely on ratio, meaning if clients aren’t present there’s no work to be done, so I’m not going to be paid to stand around. I haven’t been able to work this entire week, meaning my normal paychecks (~300) will be HALVED by this. THE ABORTION IS QUOTED AT $675, which I don’t even make in a month even working full weeks.

And on top of all this shit, it has to remain entirely a secret. I cannot ask for help because the family member I live with, as well as my nuclear family, is very religious and firmly believe abortion is murder. And because I’m not from here, I don’t have any friends who can drive me around or pay for something this huge.

The appointment is 4/17/19, the latest I can go before I risk the pill not working due to how many weeks pregnant I will be. If you can’t donate, PLEASE REBLOG, as you’ll possibly share it with someone who CAN HELP.

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What are your achievements so far?

What are your ambitions. in reference previous education and work history?

I love the mental image, but it wouldn’t work - their skin is inherently wrinkly, and that’s actually part of how they stay cool.

The problem is that elephants are a very large animal living in a very hot climate. There are two methods of temperature regulation that a human body can utilize in the heat: we can sweat, which cools our bodies as the moisture evaporates; or our blood vessels dilate and bring more quantities of warm blood closer to the surface of our skin so the heat can radiate out into the air around us.  Unfortunately, elephants can’t sweat, so their thermoregulation depends entirely on direct heat transfer from their skin. The more surface area an animal’s body has, the more heat can radiate away from that body -  and wrinkles create more surface area! They also trap moisture when the elephant gets wet and slow down how quickly it evaporates, which helps keep the animal cooler for longer. Combined, this helps you understand why elephants mud bathe - they get the cooling evaporation of the water and the dried mud functions like sunscreen.

This isn’t to say that we don’t moisturize elephants in human care, though! In dry / arid climates, or during the winter, zoo and circus elephants are rubbed down with mineral oil after being bathed. It does help get rid of some of the “ashy” coloration and it softens their skin, but it doesn’t smooth out the wrinkles. (And you can’t do it if they’re going to spend too much time outdoors in the sun that day, because (just like suntan oil) it can increase their risk of sunburn.) If an elephant has specific skin issues, they might be prescribed a more intensive or medicated cream, but you’re still going to have the same visibly wrinkly and saggy appearance at the end of the day.

Probably my favorite part of this ask is that, while doing my perfunctory “make sure I’m not talking out of the wrong orifice when I post” google search, I actually found a National Geographic online article that was inspired by someone asking the author if you could put wrinkle cream on elephants. (The article makes a good point, which is that African elephants - who spend time in hotter, drier climates - are much more wrinkled that their tropical Asian cousins.)

A cropped figure from Martins et al., 2018, showing the channels as compared to the visible wrinkles on African elephant skin. (Source)

The new study by Martins et al., which was published in Nature Communications, looked into what causes those networks of grooves. What they found is that African elephant skin doesn’t shed dead skin cells the way most animals do; instead, it continues to retain the dead skin cells until the outer layer of the skin super thick. There’s also a bumpy structure under that layer of skin (called papillae, because it looks kind of like tastebuds on the surface of a tongue), and the outer layer of the skin has to bend to match the hills and valleys from those bumps. 

After a point, though, an African elephant’s skin becomes so thick from dead cell buildup that the outer layers (which are pretty stiff and dry) can’t actually bend anymore. When that happens the outer parts of that skin layer start cracking; the cracks eventually connect and form the network of channels that you can see in © in the image above.This doesn’t hurt the elephant - the inner cells of that layer of skin stay supple and bend because they’re much more moist - but it creates that nice network of connected cracks that hold onto moisture and mud. 

While Asian elephants do have the papillae structure in their skin, their skin doesn’t have micro-cracks; the researchers posited that it’s unique to African elephants as an adaptation to their much more arid habitat. 

The extremes of red-tailed hawk color morphs. White to very, very dark. Both are the same species, Buteo jamaicensis.

The bird on the left has an extreme lack of melanin production and the bird on the right over-produces melanin. Melanin is produced by cells called melanocytes, which also produce pheomelanin, which results in a reddish-brown color. Note that the bird on the left has a red tint to her tail even though her melanocytes aren’t functioning normally, this could be due to porphyrins and/or carotenoids contributing to the red color in red-tailed hawk tails as well.

Kitchen

How to clean up kitchen (particularly the sink, burnt pots and small aplliances)

How to take care of kitchen stuff so that it lives longer

10 commandments of a clutter-free kitchen

Organizing kitchen mini masterpost

5 things to do in the kitchen before you go to bed

What is soapy bowl and why it’s awesome

How to organize your fridge (also here, here and here)

Thins you should know about your fridge

Adding more storage space in a tiny kitchen

Cleaning

Lots of cleaning tutorials and tips. And some more

How to clean up pantry

How to make your house look cleaner than it really is

How to wash pillows

Cleaning the bathroom

How to clean the nastiest places (and get rid of bad smells, etc.)

Floor-to-celling guide to spring cleaning

Recaulking your bathtub

Cleaning grout

How to dispose of toxic waste

Cleaning the medicine cabinet

How to make chores more fun

You mustn’t skip these chores, but you can delay these if you’re busy

Easily forgotten things that you should clean/replace

Why you need a catch-up day

Small cleaning tasks to do in under 15 minutes (also here)

Looking for a flat/moving

First apartment checklist

Where too look during an apartment hunt (and some more tips)

Negotiate these things with your landlord

What to do first in a new place

What do clean before moving out

How not to get crazy during moving flats

How to downgrade to a smaller place

Organisation, storage

10 habits for better home organisation

How to store off-season items

10 storage ideas for small spaces (more here)

Storage secret weapons

How to organise your closet

Things to do before twice-yearly closet switchout

How to store and maintain your sweaters

Decluttering

Why it feels great

How to get rid of clutter

How to declutter (not only a flat)

What needs to be thrown away from your flat

How to let go of the things you no longer need

Things you own too many of; you can throw away these too

Decuttering the bathroom

Decluterring masterpost

Decorating

Projects for every room in your home/flat

Add style to your home

DIY decorating ideas

How to use negative space

4 common decorating mistakes and how to avoid them

Questions to ask yourself before buying something new

How to choose furniture that’ll be easier to clean

Season-specific tips

Things to do before the cold season

Household hacks for winter

Preparing for Christmas

Green thumb 101

How to take care of succulents

Never kill a plant again

Living alone / Sharing a flat

How not to be lonely when living alone

12 things you can only do when home alone

What you learn by living alone

Things you learn while sharing a flat

What to pack when leaving for a dorm

How to seamlessly share a kitchen (or a flat in general)

Safety issues to discuss with flatmates

Benefits of living with strangers

“maybe you should stop buying new ones then?”

These killings are still happening today

Of course, they’re still ignoring how there were black slave owners, and how people who owned slaves were basically the 1% of their day.

And what killed most Native Americans was disease. Unless you’re trying to equate disease to actual murder.

Something that always bothered me is how much Atsuko Nishida is ignored. 

She contributed the most to Pokemon’s success with Pikachu, Eevee and Charizard and many other popular pokemon while Ken Sugimori is the one who has always takes the praise and spotlight unfairly.

Nishida made more kids happy than Ken ever did.

Nishida made Pokemon more successful than Ken ever did

Nishida made creative and beautiful designs, Ken made very bland, boring and silly designs and an unfortunate ugly monster that made an entire starter line often unloved.

Nishida didn’t get fame or much talk, she has been always overlooked and overshadowed by Ken Sugimori.

It also saddens me that Nishida didn’t get a larger role in Gamefreak either, she left the company to be a freelancer while Ken Sugimori got to be the Art Director of every game.

Ken Sugimori, despite your cherry picked selection of pokemon, actually did design way more then “very bland, boring and silly designs”

Point is both creators have made some amazing pokemon and i bet my life you can find at least one pokemon from both that you love