Siofae

they probably cant love me back in a human or even mammalian sense, but my goldfish with their smooth pea-sized brain have learned to trust that i will make them better when they are sick. i feel like crying about this often

Fun fact! Snakes can in fact identify you as a friend. The brain part that they lack actually makes them feel no remorse (Not that a reptile would need to feel any, and while they don't love as intensively as us, snakes still have feelings)

Edit: I fact checked to be sure and yes, snakes do have feelings but the affection part is still being debated, with a lot of evidence suggesting they might only like their owners by positive association with food.

My leopard gecko hears me talking and will come out of her hides and demand I pick her up and will give me the stink eye for 5+ minutes after I put her back because she is offended. She might not love me like my dogs but she's social and knows who I am and crawls up onto my hand when I offer it. She even will try to climb on me instead of eat occasionally. I love my weird pets and they trust me and that's enough.

RFK JR WANTS TO KNOW WHY YOU DON'T SEE SEVERELY DISABLED ADULTS

MAYBE ITS BECAUSE THEY GET MURDERD SO OFTEN

BECAUSE SO FEW PEOPLE MAKE IT TO ADULTHOOD

BECAUSE YOU LOCK THEM AWAY IN HOMES

BECAUSE YOU MAKE THE WORLD INACCESSIBLE

Octavia Butler discussing why she wrote her two books, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. She used the phrase "make America great again", in her books, back in 1995.

She saw it coming

I increasingly feel as though other people who mask indoors are just super attractive. Like, they are obviously smart thoughtful people. They care about the well-being of everyone else around them, and want to make sure everyone has a good time.

They would probably be extremely good in bed, is what I'm saying.

Shoutout to leftists who are too poor/disabled to give back to their community.

Shoutout to leftists who are too poor/disabled to shop at local/small businesses.

Shoutout to leftists who are poor/disabled and have to buy things from Amazon and other megacorps because it’s the most cheap or convenient.

Shoutout to leftists who are too poor/disabled to reduce their environmental footprint because they need the single-use plastics.

Shoutout to leftists who can’t go vegan because of dietary needs, disordered eating, or neurodivergence.

Shoutout to leftists who can’t volunteer or go to community events/protests/noise demonstrations because of inaccessibility.

Shoutout to leftists who can only be politically active online because they’re housebound.

Shoutout to leftists who are disabled and are rarely politically active because they simply don’t have the energy.

Shoutout to leftists who can’t be politically active because they’re under the care of a guardian or are trapped in an abusive situation, and they don’t have control over their finances/belongings.

Shoutout to leftists who can’t read theory, or who have trouble reading theory, but still do their best to learn.

Shoutout to leftists who can’t understand theory at all because of cognitive/intellectual disability.

Shoutout to leftists who want to be more active in their community but can’t because they struggle with anxiety, socializing, or maintaining relationships.

Shoutout to leftists with personality disorders, complex trauma disorders, conduct disorders, OCD, psychosis, and any other leftist whose personality or thoughts often unwillingly go against their beliefs due to a trauma response or chemical imbalance.

Shoutout to leftists who don’t have any “practical” skills that would be needed in a commune (i.e farming, building, sewing)

Shoutout to leftists who are too busy simply trying to survive to even think about being politically active.

Shoutout to leftists who have to always ask for mutual aid but can never give back.

Shoutout to all the leftists who can’t do this and can’t do that and can’t do the things that leftists are “supposed” to do. No one person is perfect.

You aren’t a fake leftist for not being able to do these things. All that matters is that you put in the effort, in whatever way that you can.

It’s not about your abilities as an individual. It’s about our power as a collective.

I'm sorry but it's way too sketchy to have to "sign up" for a protest. There's no reason you should have to give anyone your full name, email, phone number, and/or address in order to march in the streets. People are getting arrested left and right because cops have access to information that connects people to the protests they were at. If an organization is having people "sign up to join the fight," all the cops need to do is access that list.

Just go. Don't leave a fucking paper trail.

im sure someone already made a post about it but i came across a ublock origin add-on that blacklists around 950 AI websites and disables AI overview ☝️ so u can be free from seeing AI in your search

"everyone suddenly seems really stupid and aggressive" its brain damage from covid

"im sick all the time now and everyone at work is sick all the time" its immune system damage from covid

"im sick again, but i tested and its not covid haha" its still probably covid, rapid covid tests have been estimated at 30% positive accuracy by researchers who are factoring in strain mutation and user error

"no one can drive anymore, what happened" its brain damage from covid

"why am i suddenly mentally ill" its brain damage from covid

"i started feeling weak, breathless, confused, distracted, irritable and in pain but it was a while after i got covid so its not long covid" long covid sets in a random number of months after your covid infection and also asymptomatic covid can cause it

"ive still never gotten covid, isnt that great" unless you are an undiscovered genetic freak (possible) or youve been living in a clean room, you have had a covid infection. it may have been asymptomatic

"im sick but its from blood clots, heart disease, asthma, nerve damage, narcolepsy, etc" covid attacks the entire body and can cause all of these things as downstream effects

"ive already had covid so i probably have pretty good immunity by now" covid does not work like this. the more times you are infected, the more permanently injured you will become, and the more vulnerable to further covid infections and infections of all other viruses and bacteria

"ive been vaccinated so im safe" covid does not work like this. vaccination lowers your likelihood of developing severe infection, it does not protect you from contracting the virus

"well what am i supposed to do" wear a mask

not to go "erm actually 🤓☝️" on the billford blog, but this comes off very fear-mongery. scaring people isn't going to do much other than make people feel too hopeless to do anything, so here's some more in-depth information with sources and a couple of corrections.

to preface this, even mild and asymptomatic covid cases can have serious long-term effects, and it's important to be careful, even if you've been vaccinated.

1) how common is brain damage from covid?

not particularly. it can still occur with mild cases, but it's even more rare in those instances.

2) can you recover from long covid and the brain damage it causes? [not a point OP addressed, but i think its important.]

for many symptoms, yes. it hasn't been long enough or researched enough to know definitively exactly how much one can recover, how the amount of reduced grey matter changes based on severity of the illness, and many other factors, but thus far there have been potential for improvements, including brain damage. loss of smell and taste is because of brain damage, and considering that can come back, clearly the brain damage can be reversed to some extent.

another add-on, generally the younger you are, the less brain damage you'll develop compared to older groups, IF you get any at all.

3) can covid cause long-term immune system damage?

yes.

4) can long covid set in at any period of time after contracting covid?

yes. symptoms can also regress and re-emerge at seemingly random periods.

5) does covid cause seemingly unrelated impacts such as asthma, narcolepsy, blood clots, etc.?

yes. the previous sources mention this so i'm not linking one here.

6) how accurate are rapid covid tests?

they're accurate roughly 80% of the time. definitely not great, but not quite as severe as OP said. take multiple and ensure you perform it properly.

7) can asymptomatic people develop brain damage/long covid?

yes, but it's less likely than mild and severe cases.

8) does your immunity to covid decrease after contracting it?

nope. after infection, chances of reinfection is decreased, same as virtually every other disease. however, this mild immunity decreases over time. it also does not provide immunity from wildly mutated strains from the one you contracted.

9) has literally everyone gotten covid?

no?? while most people have contracted covid, not everyone has. also, it has been documented that there may be a gene that prevents infection.

10) what does the covid vaccine do?

it prevents the likelihood of severe cases and long covid + brain damage, as well as the likelihood of getting sick from it at all. you can still carry it, though.

11) what do i do?

as OP said, mask up. also, stay up-to-date on your boosters.

Covid infection and reinfection actually dysregulates your immune system. Please don't spread minimizing BS about how "infection is just as good as a booster" in 2025. Covid immune damage also explains the rise of "victorian" illnesses like TB and pertussis and the worsening of flu seasons since mitigations were dropped in 2021/22

Rapid antigen tests are on average 47% accurate, and that's not including user error like not correctly collecting a sample and it's also not including false negatives (which are high seeing as RATs measure high viral load not if you have covid *at all*)

Mild and asymptomatic cases make up the majority of long covid cases, even in the vaccinated.

Most of the people who haven't gotten covid continue to take precautions. There is no magic "You can't get covid ever" gene: If you read the study that article is based on, you'll see it's just a hypothesis. Sheer luck explains the rare uncautious never-coviders better than *checks notes* eugenics, and more than likely, they've had an asymptomatic infection or a mild infection they wrote off as allergies or a cold since serology is often omitted from such studies. A recent long-term study out of Chiba prefecture showed children's serology increase year to year from 0.6% to 2.2% to 60.9%. Vibes don't count as scientific data or immune responses.

Real talk about covid's widespread, multisystemic effects isn't fearmongering, and polite minimization and oversimplification is part of what makes continual covid a persistent issue.

Cuties

the idea of doing things for the public good is so alien to them they just turn off their entire brains when asked to understand a concept as simple as "the government pays researchers to find cures for diseases"

It's worse than that: some of them think disease is made up while others think that only people who "deserve it" (e.g. too fat too old too [insert category]) get sick and therefore any attempt to treat/cure a disease better is somehow stripping them of superiority. It's called health supremacy and it's not just conservatives doing it. Liberals in droves have abandoned all covid mitigations for very similar reasons, leaving those at the highest risk (including immunocompromised people, the elderly, people with cancer, and newborns among many more) to face the highest burden of a preventable disease.

[Image description: Tweet by @/k1myojong reading: Being a social worker is like being a janitor for capitalism. No amount of counselling will give my clients what they need – more money. I naively entered into a failing, racist and ableist system thinking I could help people. The reality is that the system is rotten to the core. /End ID]

(animal injury tw)

Ventress before she got stuck and afterwards. it will take some time for her scales to grow back and I feel awful for her having gone through this. however, her energy levels are great & her injuries look like they are healing well for now. hopefully this will all be a sad memory soon!

please, please, PLEASE be so careful with the decor you put in your betta tanks. bettas really will try to fit through anything.

Unpopular Opinion-

I’m sick to death of people telling me I’m “brave”, “strong”, “a warrior”, “a fighter”.

I am not- I’m just a person who never had a choice.

Survival is not strength. It is forced endurance.

"i wish i had cancer/a wheelchair/severe disability so i would be taken seriously." so you've automatically assumed that these people are taken seriously or treated well (which they aren't) without even thinking about it huh. the assumed premise undermines your very point. if you took these people seriously then you wouldn't idly wish to have their struggles