why are u looking at my blog

"but the text never explicitly stated it!!!" hey, so that's actually what they tried to teach you in those english classes you barely passed 😁

I love when household beasts are like whoa. You were gonna piss all on your own? No backup or companionship or anything? Babe. I got you. I'm right here. You don't have to be alone during this difficult time (pissing), and you won't be. Ever. This is not a discussion.

my friend's shiba inu is extremely good at puzzle toys and deeply obsessed with them and today she's been consumed by madness in one room she doesn't want to leave and we finally figured out it's because i sucked up some loose kibble in the little handheld vacuum, thus creating an unsolvable puzzle toy

Warding spells are real, if you want me to stay far away from you forever tell me that you practice reiki.

The nice thing is that I will probably never bring this kind of thing up. I'm never going to go out of my way to figure out if the people around me are, like, really into homeopathy. The less nice thing is that if you bring it up with me I am never, ever, ever going to shut up about it and if you attempt to show me a *study* on the healing power of prayer or the use of chiropractic to treat asthma we are forever enemies and I probably won't talk to you again but I will use the several hours of furious debunking that I did after our conversation to make arguments against your beliefs in the future. You are already a lost cause to me but other people are less stupid about the way that ice crystals form and I can work with them.

I *loathe* medical woo, it kills people and the people who engage in it are shitty human beings who are hurting other human beings.

RE: Herbalism

I don't think that there's a proponent of science-based medicine alive who doesn't understand that plant compounds are important in medicine and it is important to research them. We *DO* get a lot of medicine from plants.

But "medicine from plants" and "herbalism" are not the same.

The example that most people like to bring up is aspirin and willow bark tea. You can use willow bark as a painkiller, you can collect your own and brew it up when you've got a headache.

What you can't do is control the dose. You can't do this for a number of reasons, including having little control over the conditions the tree grew in and variations in preparation technique. If you're measuring very exactly you can control for some of these things, but even if you were in charge of the willow tree you collected the bark from it's not going to be the same at different places on the trunk or in different seasons.

That's not a huge deal if you're using aspirin for a headache, it can be a much bigger deal if you're using aspirin as a bloodthinner.

And the example that people LIKE to use is aspirin because it *isn't* a big deal. The example they *don't* like to use is foxglove (digitalis, which produced digitoxin, which can be used to treat heart failure) because that's a medicine from a plant that you can't fuck around with using herbalism, it needs extremely careful extraction and preparation because if it's done wrong it'll just straight kill you.

And then you get into herbal treatments that are generally safe and largely not harmful even if they may not do anything, and it can feel totally reasonable to recommend red raspberry leaf tea to a friend who is having cramps. As long as that friend isn't diabetic because red raspberry leaf interacts with insulin. And as long as your friend isn't on an anticoagulant because red raspberry leaf can ALSO act as an anticoagulant.

And those are just examples of what can happen if you know you are actually getting the plant that you think that you are getting and that it is unadulterated with fillers and uncontaminated with anything else and is properly prepared (or is prepared the same way as the last batch you bought and so it can be dosed the same way).

There are two ways that Kava Kava can be prepared; do you know which of those two ways is associated with more deaths and liver transplants? Do you know not to take Kava if you have a history of liver issues or if you are on antidepressants? (ctrl+f for "Hema Ketha" for the study from that overview that goes in depth on that; for whatever reason you can read the whole article in the overview but if you click on the link you only get the abstract)

Are you attempting to take therapeutic doses of turmeric? There's some evidence that it can help relieve joint pain. However you need to take really, really high doses because the medicinal compound in turmeric has low bioavailability. And because you're taking high doses you may be swapping out the risks of NSAIDs for the risk of lead poisoning, because it is unfortunately very common for turmeric to be contaminated with lead.

One of my big, big problems with CAM - including herbalism - is that people turn to it because they think it is safer than "allopathic" medicine. They think "it's better to drink raspberry leaf tea than it is to take midol because midol is full of chemicals and raspberry leaf tea is just tea." But midol doesn't interact with insulin, and most people are *aware* they're taking a blood thinner when they take NSAIDs.

There's this tea shop I go to that has maybe a hundred different kinds of herbal teas, some of which are clearly supposed to be medicinal, but the one that always stands out to me is the St. John's Wort tea that has "NOT FOR PREGNANT" on the label. It's good that they're recommending that pregnant people don't select that tea, but that tea is also not for people on antidepressants, triptans, birth control, warfarin, stantins, protease inhibitors, or people who have had solid organ transplants.

But it's just tea. And what could just tea do, right?

(It could make your anti-rejection meds so weak that it kills you. That's what just tea can do. But maybe one cup of older tea, or one cup that is more leaf than flower, or one cup that wasn't steeped as long doesn't hurt, so you drink it and you think it's fine, it's not a problem, and it isn't a problem until it is but you don't know the difference between one cup of tea and the next because this shit is impossible to dose)

This is also why I'm extremely leery of the "you can try CAM as long as you are using it alongside your doctor's care and you do what the doctors say" thing because that is relying on:

So long story short I'm not particularly bothered if you try herbalism on yourself after looking into things that you think will help you. I do have a problem with people who *recommend* herbal treatments without A) a full medical background understanding of the person they recommend the treatment to and B) comprehensive knowledge of whether the thing that you're recommending will interact with any medications they might be taking or exacerbate any conditions that they might have and C) some kind of accountability mechanism in place - like a malpractice suit or the loss of license - like a doctor might if they prescribed a medication that was dangerous to their patient.

Because that's the other infuriating thing - CAM practitioners often aren't held to the same standards as medical professionals. Patients who trust CAM practitioners often think of them like doctors, but they don't have the same protection from CAM practitioners like they would from doctors. If your herbalist tells you to treat your cancer with apricot pits or black salve - even if that's in addition to chemotherapy - it could end up seriously injuring you and they're not committing malpractice because there's no legal standard for their practice. Nobody can remove their license because there's no such thing as an herbalist license, so whatever harm they did to you can be done to other people after you with no professional consequences.

I have pretty much limitless tolerance for things that people want to do to themselves. If you want to take valerian because you think it helps you sleep (in spite of essentially no evidence that it does so and more adverse reactions among natural sleep aids than things like camomile - which also has no evidence that it's an effective sleep aid) I don't care, just make sure to check for drug interactions first.

If you want to replace your elderly parent's NSAID painkillers with clove oil, fuck you.

for people on the other post who are not familiar with my position on herbalism.

This is what my children's lives have become... Every night, instead of dreaming about their future, they are haunted by scenes of blood, destruction and genocide. All they have left is fear and hunger. Your small donation, 5 or 10 euros, makes a big difference in their lives. Help us share this message so that their suffering can be heard and heard by everyone. Be their hope... Donate now.

Please donate so we can live.

People often say LOTR is a story about hope. (I'm reminded of it because someone said it in the notes of my Faramir post.) And that's true, but it's not the whole picture: LOTR is in large part a story about having to go on in the absence of hope.

Frodo has lost hope, as well as the ability to access any positive emotion, by Return. He is already losing it in Towers: he keeps going through duty and determination and of course Sam's constant help.

For most of the story, Sam is fueled by hope, which is why it's such a huge moment when he finally lets go of the hope of surviving and returning home, and focuses on making it to the Mountain. To speed their way and lighten the load, he throws his beloved pots and pans into a pit, accepting that he will never cook, or eat, again.

When Eowyn kills the Witch King, she's beyond hope and seeking for a glorious death in battle. It's possible that in addition to her love and loyalty for Théoden, she's strengthened by her hopelessness, the fear of the Nazgúl cannot touch someone who's already past despair.

Faramir is his father's son, he doesn't have any more hope of Gondor's victory or survival than Denethor does, he says as much to Frodo. What hope have we? It is long since we had any hope. ... We are a failing people, a springless autumn. He knows he's fighting a losing war and it's killing him. When he rejects the ring, he doesn't do it in the hope that his people can survive without it, he has good reason to believe they cannot. He acts correctly in the absence of hope.

Of course LOTR has a (mostly) happy ending, all the unlikely hopes come true, the characters who have lost hope gain what they didn't even hope for, and everyone is rewarded for their bravery and goodness, so on some level the message is that hope was justified. But the book never chastises characters who lost hope, it was completely reasonable of them to do so. Despair pushed Théoden and Denethor into inaction, pushed Saruman into collaboration, but the characters who despaired and held up under the weight of despair are Tolkien's real heroes.

(In an early draft of Return, Frodo and Sam receive honorary titles in Noldorin: Endurance beyond Hope and Hope Unquenchable, respectively. Then he cut it, probably because it was stating the themes of the entire book way too obviously, because this is what Tolkien cared about, really: enduring beyond hope. Without hope.)

Also, people who know more than me about the concept of estel, feel free to @ me.

I agree with everything in the above post, and think that the knife's edge balance between despair and hope in LOTR is a really important theme when you see the characters that fall into despair and the ones that don't, and the ones that despair but don't fall.

But the thing about estel is that it's not the only elvish word for hope. There's amdir, which is hope with a foundation, it's based on something. Estel is hope without that foundation, based on nothing at all--a fool's hope, if you will. It's what drives the entire Quest, because sending the Ring to Mt Doom is objectively insane and there is no reason to believe that it'll work beyond like, Elrond saying so (and if anyone is familiar with estel, it's Elrond). But it does work, because everyone in the Fellowship comes together to make sure that it will, because they're clinging to that estel with their last fingernails and they aren't letting go. Even if they give up hope for themselves or for their homes for for their loved ones.

Anyway all that to say I just wanted to highlight this passage from ROTK:

That's the hope that people are talking about when they say LOTR is about hope, I think. It's a hope that's bigger than any single character, and it's so hard and at times impossible to keep holding on to, but in the end it wins out, in spite of everything.

To Tumblr celebrities and followers, please read my message.👇

My posts are always about pain, bombings, hunger, and destruction. What else can I do? This is the life we have been forced into by an endless war. We used to be one of the happiest and most loving families.

I support my family through your donations—I buy medicine for my father and mother, who suffer from chronic illnesses, and I provide for my siblings, my wife, and my children.

Please help us. This is the short version of my plea: donate and share—it makes a huge difference

Don't leave us alone. Every donation and every act of kindness is an investment in humanity. Right now, our living conditions are beyond desperate.

A donation = saving a family from being wiped out.

Gaza without bread .. The sector's bakeries were closed all of the day .. The remaining flour is not enough for more than a week, and the sack of flour if its price is exceeded 60 dollars ..

I swear to you that Gaza is hungry, and the remaining food stocks are not enough for the maximum of more than ten days and will completely end .. What do you expect after that from a people who kill around the clock and now hunger?! God does not forgive those who brought us here, God does not forgive those who have the ability to stop this genocide and did not.

Please, if you can't donate and help us, speak up. At least your voice might be heard. Donate from here if you can.

I wish Mythbusters was still around so we could see them fuck up a Cybertruck

Every day that passes our life gets worse in Gaza there are more than 2 million people we need large quantities of food but with the crossings closed it is impossible every day food is getting scarcer and its price is increasing dramatically there is no water or even electricity to operate the water wells our life is tragic in addition to all of this the sounds of explosions and cannons and planes that never stop they never stop when we ask you to donate you are our only hope with this money we can eat some of the available food or even some clean water to drink there is no sanitation or health services diseases are everywhere insects too everything is difficult so difficult that you cannot imagine what we are going through without experiencing it it is more difficult than what you see on TV our life is tragic so I ask you to donate to us any amount you can afford my family and I need something to help

The last donation was 7 hours ago guys and we have less than 65 euros left and we will reach 11 thousand please donate to us

i feel strongly about this

ID. tweet from user necroish that says, "When I was 16 I got into a fistfight gave the guy a nosebleed and then ran away because I got hard." End ID.

“covid is a seasonal illness” ok sure. what season though? because, for multiple years, people have gotten covid every single season. we’re very much out of winter in my area (and even longer out of what would be considered winter weather), but my coworker tested positive a few days ago. i would put money on there being people getting it in the depths of summer. a disease isn’t seasonal if it’s year round

"There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.

"No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul."

I don’t want to see you naked; send me a picture of all your clothes

you can be in the photo too I guess

please think about male pregnancy outside of a meme context at least sometimes. idc if you say "I'm gonna get him pregnant" or things like that but male pregnancy is going to become an increasingly serious issue for us trans men/mascs

just. acknowledge that there are men irl who can get pregnant, not always by choice, and how that effects us. because we're going to need it. we already need it

I loveee fantasy settings doing magical exhaustion:

Druid, low on magic: I'm [coughs up flowers] fine.