pigeony:

pigeony:

what if you’re giving birth to twins and it’s the end of daylights savings day and the older twin was born first but the second twin travels back in time and is born an hour before the first twin, would that be fucked up or what.

I don’t even remember typing this holy shit

i should go to bed now. but i want to play minecraft and apparently there is an animal crossing direct in like an hour??

jewsinventedcomics:

marvel keeps taking characters and putting these tags on them like “Theyre the smartest character in the whole marvel universe!!!” or “theyre the 3rd smartest person in the world!!!”…like with reed richards and amadeus cho and moon girl…..when are they going to tell me whose the dumbest? who is the biggest idiot in the marvel universe? give me idiot representation so i feel included

brinconvenient:

intersex-ionality:

wishyounew:

mercy-misrule:

marxism-sjwism:

animeismybestfriend104:

marxism-sjwism:

btw… important PSA: cutting off the mold on the surface of food does nothing. you can only see the spores on the surface, but mold itself has spread and grown roots into the food. by the time you can actually *see* the spores, that piece of food is completely full of it. youre still eating mold

many of which are poisonous and have been shown to cause cancer. youre not even supposed to sniff it, because that can get spores into your lungs. like if you look up the health and safety guidelines for mold they barely stop short of telling you to put on a hazmat suit. 

like produce is okay as long as you cut around it at least an inch, but cooked foods? you gonna die. stop eating mold people 

does that include bread

yes

it’s been linked to before but this is a good solid source

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/molds-on-food-are-they-dangerous_/ct_index

and there’s a lot of ‘whose doing this!?!??’ in comments

the answer is, unsurprisingly, poor people. poor people, and people who fear poverty, honestly

it’s horrible what that will do, how people will endanger themselves because of it, of fear of food scarcity

source for that: me, a lifetime of living under the poverty line and also being mentally ill

I’m on mobile and can’t caption, but the image is a text chart of what foods are safe to cut off the mold, and what must be discarded. The full, text version of the chart is in the usda link above.

Oh thank goodness. I’ve been cutting the mold off hard cheeses my whole life. This post had me worried because I grew up poor as shit and we could not just throw out food on a whim, so I’ve been carving around soft spots on apples, moldy spots on cheeses, and hard lunch meats my whole life.

fleetwoodmac-andcheese:

scribblings-of-a-madcap:

thefuzzhead:

aspacelobster:

goddammitstacey:

I’ll be the first to admit I thoroughly enjoy all the “holy shit, Australia” posts that circulate around here but I feel like there’s a very important caveat when it comes to the discussion of swooping season that no one seems to mention.

For those not aware, swooping season is when the magpies start to nest and turn into mini dive-bombers comprised of talons, feathers and spite. It’s not fun. I bled heavily after a particularly vicious swoop when I was a kid, and I’m definitely not the only one.

But here’s the thing: swooping is not an innate behaviour. It’s a learned one. I realised this the moment I moved out of home and began my decade long (entirely unintentional) habit of moving to a different suburb every two years. 

I’ve met a lot of wildlife, walking everywhere as I do. And I’ve met a lot of magpies – hella intelligent creatures that are probably thinking “what the fuck is this chick doing” every time I say hi to them as I walk past.

When I first moved out of home, I automatically started taking notes on areas I saw magpies in preparation for swooping season. It was just the done thing. It wasn’t until September came and went and the magpies in my area continued their quizzical but otherwise completely non-aggressive behaviour that it started to twig with me.

The next few years of moving around solidified my suspicions.

Anytime I lived close to a school or in an area with a high concentration of families with young kids, the magpies would swoop. Any suburb (usually inner city) with a high concentration of childless households and/or share-houses: no swooping to be seen.

And it’s any goddamn wonder.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve yelled at kids for messing with wildlife. I grew up in the outer suburbs, so there was no shortage of mini-assholes with an empathy shortage. Australian kids will poke anything they can reach with a stick, and throw rocks at everything else. Including birds nests.

Magpies are intelligent as hell, and they remember shit for GENERATIONS. Some human-shaped fucker throwing rocks at them and their nests? That’s something that’d stick.

So anytime you read one of those “lol the birds try to kill us here” posts, remember: it’s not the birds that started that shit – it was the asshole humans.

country magpies don’t swoop

@enthusispastic

Adding on to the fact that magpies are super intelligent:

In primary school there were these really huge gum trees in which a family of magpies took up residence one year. 

(an important thing to note is that I grew up in the country with A LOT of magpies -that were basically like relatives for the amount of time they spent on the veranda- and never encountered any swooping)

So one morning walking in to school I noticed that all the kids ahead of me were giving the really huge gum trees a wide berth, with other kids shouting warnings from the buildings. Being an airy-headed little kid, I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were actually saying, so I just kept walking straight under the trees.

Nothing happened.

I got to the buildings and asked why everyone was making a big fuss about the trees, and one of my friends just pointed back the way I came and said “the birds!”

And sure enough, any of the other kids that tried to walk under the trees got immediately swooped and chased to what the magpies thought was a good distance from their nests.

Magpies not only remember humans that are mean to them, but they recognise humans that have been given the seal of approval by other magpies.

For the last 40+ years there’s been a rapidly growing family of magpies at my grandparents house.

The lady next door would feed them every morning and they would do that beautiful warble. After she died my grandad started feeding them. Everyday.

They come to the same place everyday and wait for him, he used to take my sister and I as kids to help him feed the magpies and it was honestly a highlight of our visits. He still does it with our younger cousins.

They’ve never swooped anyone in the family, they scare off cats that try and get in my grandmas garden and they sing for my grandparents everyday.

Last year my grandad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He sometimes forgets what he’s doing and what he was saying and repeats conversations over and over.

Sometimes he’s late to feed the magpies, and they wait. It’s kinda like they know. They’ll come right up to the house and gently tap on the window to remind him, and he’s so happy to see them and feed them.

Magpies are beautiful birds, and anyone that thinks otherwise is probably a dick to them.

About Executive Dysfunction; for neurotypical people

strangerdarkerbetter:

spoonie-living:

anarcho-shindouism:

truthisademurelady:

beowulfstits:

Friends, family members and loved ones of learning disabled and mentally ill people need to have a working knowledge of what Executive Dysfunction is, and respect the fact that it is a prominent feature of that person’s psychology and life.

Executive Dysfunction is best known as a symptom of autism and ADHD, but it also features in depression, anxiety disorders schizophrenia, OCD (which by the way is also an anxiety disorder), personality disorders; etc, a whole myriad of mental illnesses and disabilities can result in executive dysfunction.

Years ago when I was like 14 and had recently learned of my autism diagnosis, I watched a youtube interview between autistic people, and an autistic woman said something along these lines:

  • “Sometimes, a lightbulb will burn out, but I cannot change it. I have the physical capability to change the lightbulb, and I want to change the lightbulb, and I know I need to do it, but because of my autism I just don’t do it. So the lightbulb remains unchanged for weeks. Sometimes people have to change the lightbulb for me.”

When she said that I related so much, because constantly throughout my whole life I have wanted and needed to do things with my wanting and needing being akin to my spurring an extremely stubborn horse who refuses to move. For the first time I learned that I wasn’t just “lazy”, I had a condition that prevented me from doing things as easily as other people can, but unfortunately it took me years since then to understand that.

Imagine that you are a horserider, but your horse is entirely unwilling to move even if you want to move. You dig in your heels, you raise the reins, but the horse refuses to respond. Your wants and needs are the rider, and your executive functions (the parts of your mind responsible for getting things done) are the horse.

I think it’s incredibly dangerous for neurotypical loved ones to not understand, or be aware of, or respect executive dysfunction. Neurotypical can assume that we are just being lazy, careless, selfish or difficult, when in reality we want to do the thing but our brains prevent us from consistently and reliably doing the thing.

That misinterpretation can lead to toxic behavior and resentment on the part of the loved one, which will harm us emotionally and do us a lot of damage gradually over time.

That damage can take the form of internal self-criticism, complicating executive dysfunction even further and making it worse.

I think about this a lot, because I have to.  In my own life, as a parent who struggles with executive dysfunction and yet has to teach a child basic life skills, it’s important to know my blind spots and learn to function around them.  He’s watching me and learning from my example, so I have to do my best to explain what I can’t always do, and try to do it anyway.

Executive function is such a fundamental and yet hidden trait.  It is in charge of reasoning, flexibility, problem solving, planning, and execution/prioritization of necessary steps in any action.

Each task is never one task.  Take changing the lightbulb – from beginning to end, it’s a series of steps that must be put in proper order:

  • Notice light bulb is burnt out.
  • Recognize that it can be fixed by putting in a new light bulb
  • Remember where new light bulbs are stored
  • Go to light bulb storage area
  • Select new one
  • Find stool or chair to stand on
  • Take out old bulb, put in new one
  • Screw in bulb
  • Replace chair or stool to previous spot
  • Throw away old bulb

That’s not even all of them, but it’s a good enough summary for now.  There are hidden stumbling blocks in every single step. 

  • A burnt out bulb may go unrecognized as a problem – there’s two other bulbs in the room, it’s a little dimmer, so what?  It might take all three burning out before you see it as a problem.
  • Maybe you forgot where the bulbs are, because it’s been a while.  Searching the house is a task you put off, because it’s messy/disorganized/big/you have other more pressing matters.  The bulb can wait.
  • You find the bulb storage, but you’re out of new ones.  You have to shop.  You’re busy, you put it off until the next time you shop, by which time you’ve forgotten you need a light bulb.  Repeat cycle.
  • You’ve been depressed for a while, or maybe you’re just a messy person.  A stack of important documents is on the chair you’d use to stand on to get to the bulb.  You know if you move those documents you’ll forget where they are, and it’s tax stuff/homework/your mom’s birthday card, and you can’t forget that.  The bulb gets put aside until you deal with those things.  But you don’t want to deal with them now, so the bulb waits.
  • Throwing out the bulb requires safe disposal so that you don’t break it and accidentally cut yourself, or someone else in your home.  You have no idea how to safely dispose of it.  You put off changing the bulb until you figure out what to do with the old one.

On and on and on.  Each step requires problem solving, prioritization, and reasoning.  These are the hidden processes that go on in our minds every single moment of every day.  Difficult tasks build up, compounding the problem of completing others, until each action requires ten more before you can solve the minor problem you started with.  Changing a light bulb ends in a night of doing your taxes.  Doing the dishes ends in standing in the dish soap aisle at the grocery story for a half hour trying to figure out which soap to buy for the dishwasher.

When a simple action requires the same effort from you as the most complex, abstract problem-solving…. to put it mildly, you’re fucked.  Every day tasks require exhausting mental gymnastics.

So, be kind to the person who can’t seem to change a light bulb.  There’s a lot that can stand in the way.

this is such a good addition to my post

Important info!

“Difficult tasks build up, compounding the problem of completing others, until each action requires ten more before you can solve the minor problem you started with. Changing a light bulb ends in a night of doing your taxes. Doing the dishes ends in standing in the dish soap aisle at the grocery story for a half hour trying to figure out which soap to buy for the dishwasher.”

I relate to this so hard.