you're in the habit of denying yourself things.

if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.

but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren't raised rich. you don't get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don't spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn't that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?

what's wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you'd fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it's for you, so you need to justify it.

and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don't finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn't, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there's other stuff going on.

you do self-care, of course. but you don't do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can't live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.

so you don't buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you're not spoiled.

it's just - it's not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can't even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.

sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn't get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you're so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.

oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you'd make a cake.

idk what they were going for but this sounds like a dril-tier shitpost

BFKPHFPHPFFH

Except every goat is just waiting its turn to die of pneumonia

Sorry I’m not over “if a dog barked in Kazakhstan”.

My entirely half-assed understanding of Why Horses Explode If You Look At Them Funny, As Explained To Me By My Aunt That Raises Horses After Her Third Glass Of Wine:

Horses don’t got enough toes.

So, back right after the dinosaurs fucked off and joined the choir invisible, the first ancestors of horses were scampering about, little capybara-looking things called Eohippus, and they had four toes per limb:

They functioned pretty well, as near as we can tell from the fossil record, but they were mostly messing around in the leaf litter of dense forests, where one does not necessarily need to be fast but one should be nimble, and the 4 toes per limb worked out pretty good.

But the descendants of Eophippus moved out of the forest where there was lots of cover and onto the open plains, where there was better forage and visibility, but nowhere to hide, so the proto-horses that could ZOOM the fastest and out run thier predators (or, at least, their other herd members) tended to do well.  Here’s the thing- having lots of toes means your foot touches the ground longer when you run, and it spreads a lot of your momentum to the sides.  Great if you want to pivot and dodge, terrible if you want to ZOOM.  So losing toes started being a major advantage for proto-horses:

The Problem with having fewer toes and running Really Fucking Fast is that it kind of fucks your everything else up.

When a horse runs at full gallop, it sort of... stops actively breathing, letting the slosh of it’s guts move its lungs, which is tremendously calorically efficient and means their breathing doesn’t fall out of sync.  But it also means that the abdominal lining of a horse is weirdly flexible in ways that lead to way more hernias and intestinal tangling than other ungulates.  It also has a relatively weak diaphragm for something it’s size, so ANY kind of respiratory infection is a Major Fucking Problem because the horse has weak lungs.

When a Horse runs Real Fucking Fast, it also develops a bit of a fluid dynamics problem- most mammals have the blood going out of thier heart real fast and coming back from the far reaches of the toes much slower and it’s structure reflects that.  But since there is Only The One Toe, horse blood comes flying back up the veins toward the heart way the fuck faster than veins are meant to handle, which means horses had to evolve special veins that constrict to slow the Blood Down, which you will recognize as a Major Cardiovascular Disease in most mammals. This Poorly-regulated blood speed problems means horses are prone to heart problems, burst veins, embolisms, and hemophilia.  Also they have apparently a billion blood types and I’m not sure how that’s related but I am sure that’s another Hot Mess they have to deal with.

ALSO, the Blood-Going-Too-Fast issue and being Just Huge Motherfuckers means horses have trouble distributing oxygen properly, and have compensated by creating fucked up bones that replicate the way birds store air in thier bones but much, much shittier.  So if a horse breaks it’s leg, not only is it suffering a Major Structural Issue (also also- breaking a toe is much more serious when that toe is YOUR WHOLE DAMN FOOT AND HALF YOUR LEG), it’s also hving a hemmorhage and might be sort of suffocating a little.

ALSO ALSO, the fast that horses had to deal with Extremely Fast Predators for most of thier evolution means that they are now afflicted with evolutionarily-adaptive Anxiety, which is not great for thier already barely-functioning hearts, and makes them, frankly, fucking mental.  Part of the reason horses are so aggro is that if deinied the opportunity to ZOOM, it’s options left are “Kill everyone and Then Yourself” or “The same but skip step one and Just Fucking Die”.  The other reason is that a horse is in a race against itself- it’s gotta breed before it falls apart, so a Horse basically has a permanent terrorboner.

TL;DR: Horses don’t have enough toes and that makes them very, very fast, but also sickly, structurally unsound, have wildly OP blood that sometimes kills them, and drives them fucking insane.

I am morbidly gratified that my deep suspicion of horses has grounding!

Writing exercise, July 14, 2023

The first disappearance of a Supreme Court Justice judge did not terrify people. It unsettled them, to be sure—how does one of the most protected people in the country just vanish? But it wasn’t the sort of thing anyone could apply to their lives—so she’d disappeared; what does that mean for me, personally? 

Which isn’t to say that change didn’t happen. As the fifth vote in a conservative court, Joy Garrett had been essential part of Republicans’ efforts to roll back the last century’s worth of progress. Now, the (barely) Democratic Senate, along with the Democratic White House, had a chance to turn things around—at least if Garrett were to ever be declared dead. And so, many people, including Jackie Joyce, just shrugged and tried to keep their schadenfreude in check. Sure, it was weird as hell, what had happened, but wasn’t the world a better place now? 

One month later, just as people seemed in the verge of forgetting, the second judge disappeared. 

After the disappearance of Rufus Wainwright, a fixture of the Supreme Court for over twenty years, all hell broke loose. There wasn’t a pattern quite yet, but the extremely low bar for speculation had been cleared, and so a million new theories arose, many of them centering on the fact that, like Garrett, Justice Wainwright had been a staunch—Jackie Joyce would say radical—conservative. If this was a recurring act of God, it was starting to seem as if it had an agenda.

And so impulsive action was taken. Security measures were beefed up, and investigations begun, for all the good they did. Gun sales jumped, and this time Jackie Joyce had to admit to her girlfriend that she couldn’t blame people for it; if people could just disappear like that, then paranoia seemed, if not quite logical, understandable. They were also starting to see more people at church, although their pastor indicated that she did not expect this to last. It was what always happened, during a crisis, and these always eventually ended or were forgotten.

In the Senate and in the networks, Republicans, realizing they had no real leverage, began speaking of conciliation. Given the tragic disappearances of two justices—not deaths, they always emphasized—it would be impulsive and disrespectful and downright irresponsible to even think about rolling back recent decisions. The White House, with its customary fecklessness, seemed to be suggesting the same thing, although according to some sources, steps were being taken in the background to move forward with nominations, and not altogether terrible ones.

One day before Justice Garrett was set to be declared dead, three senators—two republicans; one, a democrat in name only—went missing.  

this new reblog chart feature is FASCINATING and it is also highlighting how much people on this website fail gifmakers and other content creators. you NEED to start reblogging gifsets and art if you want this site to continue functioning and being a place content creators WANT to be on. look at this

there are almost NO reblog chains!! the majority of reblogs are directly from me, and then it just. ends. the like to reblog ratio is almost 1:4.

this is why posts die. this is why artists have left, this is why gifmakers are giving up. this is killing tumblr.

reblogging is the ENTIRE POINT of this website, and you can’t just like something and move on and expect gif/editmakers and artists to continue putting in the effort to make content FOR YOU.

REBLOG. POSTS.

The New Half-Truths about Corsets

As true as it is that corsets are often misrepresented in audiovisual and written media, and as glad as I am to see people defending them, GOD, am I annoyed by the current discourse.  Not because the defenders are wrong —they’re not, in general terms—but because Twitter, Instagram, and their incentivitization of easily digestible sound bites over nuance haves stripped the conversation from all the complexity inherent in a subject as big as corsets. In seeking to be more accurate, corset defenders have often just muddied the water further, with a brand-new set of half-truths.

Here are my favorite (least favorite) talking points.

Keep reading

#That’s a#That’s a blue ringed octopus#You’re going to die do you realise that#It is literally one of the most deadly animals in the world#Not just in Australia or just in the ocean in THE WORLD#Put it DOWN#And go to a hospital jfc via platonic-rabbit 

me tryna find out if this fool died

“The blue-ringed octopus, despite its small size, carries enough venom to kill twenty-six adult humans within minutes. Their bites are tiny and often painless, with many victims not realizing they have been envenomated until respiratory depression and paralysis start to set in.[8] No blue-ringed octopus antivenom is available yet, making it one of the deadliest reef inhabitants in the ocean.”

Holy shit

And this is why I don’t go in the ocean anymore

Also the blue rings literally only show up when it is distressed so this person has angered it!!! You are in danger friend!!!

Actually this guy keeps them as pets they’re on his instagram (william_exotique) and he frequently holds then and I just? Don’t know why? And also every picture or video he posts of them shows the blue rings so they’re always in distress I just do not understand why he’s doing this

#AMY EXPLAIN HOW DUMB THIS GUY IS 

I mean OP pretty much covered it.  A blue ringed octopus is almost on the level of CONE SNAIL on the list of things you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT PICK UP UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

But ask and you shall receive,  On this episode of “Fun Facts With Cuckoo,” DEAD.  YOU’RE DEAD.  EVERYTHING IS DEAD AND YOU SHOULD NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING IN THE OCEAN EVER AGAIN.

There are many things that will kill you. [citation needed]

There are fewer, but still many things that will kill you FAST.

There are yet fewer things that kill you fast and by such an overwhelming margin of overkill that nervous laughter is our only solace in the dark of this terrible, surprisingly Lovecraftian world of unearthly horrors that we live in.

Of the things that I know about which will kill you fast via just plain insultingly potent venom, which is a not insignificant number of things because I know a not insignificant number of things, there are about 3 things in the ocean – IN THE WHOLE OCEAN – which are so insanely, mind-bogglingly deadly that there is pretty much no possible hope for survival (I mean you CAN, but god help you if you’re ever in that situation, because god’s just about damn near the only thing that CAN help you).  THE. WHOLE. OCEAN.

Those three things are the Irukandji (a tiny (1cm) species of box jellyfish, which has stingers not only on its tentacles but on its BELL, for reasons no one has definitively figured out, and is so toxic despite its size its sting can cause a severe brain hemorrhage), the cone snail (a group of carnivorous sea snails that is accepted to be the most venomous animals on earth, with a STUPIDLY fast acting and extremely powerful neurotoxin that has in at least one case killed a human ALMOST INSTANTANEOUSLY, because the swimmer who found two beautiful shells (unfortunately cone snails tend to have very pretty shells which makes people want to pick them up) was holding them up for a picture and ended up being stabbed in the neck by not one but TWO cone snails at the same time, and it is believed that she was literally dead before she hit the ground, I mean LITERALLY in a 100% non-fictional and non-exaggerated way, in between the time the two cone snails stabbed her and the time her limp body hit the sand, she was not alive anymore), and the blue ringed octopus.

It is POSSIBLE to survive any of these.  But not without immediate medical attention.  Of these three, the Irukandji is by far the most treatable, because Australia and other coastal regions (including Florida and other parts of the US) are kind of experienced in dealing with box jellyfish.

The blue ringed octopus will fucking kill you.  There’s no antidote for their venom, ONE COMPONENT OF WHICH (tetrodotoxin) is 1200 times deadlier than cyanide.  It’s a powerful neurotoxin (most of the worst venoms are because the species that produce them need to kill or at least paralyze their prey quickly, like jellyfish whose fragile tentacles could be damaged if their food doesn’t stop struggling) that attacks the sodium channels and causes muscle paralysis.  It doesn’t necessarily kill you quickly.  It PARALYZES you quickly, so that you can’t really call for help or describe the problem, and you will probably end up slowly suffocating from a paralyzed diaphragm.  Tetrodotoxin can be metabolized by the body in a matter of hours, but it can also kill you in a matter of minutes if you get a lethal dose (which isn’t much, the LD50 or median lethal dose, the dose at which you have a 50% chance of survival, is only 8 MICROGRAMS per kilogram of body weight (as tested in mice)).  This is, by venom standards, not a large amount, which means the animal that is capable of putting this venom inside your body is very very good at killing the absolute shit out of you.

DON’T TOUCH THE BLUE RINGED OCTOPUS.

Now, because overkill is my motto, let me briefly explain why Conus geographus is the undisputed champion of YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE, AND FURTHERMORE FUCK YOU FOR THINKING OTHERWISE.

A cone snail walks into a bar.  You’d expect the bartender to ask, “what’s your poison,” but they were paralyzed before they could ask and OH LOOK they’re already FUCKING DEAD ON THE GROUND.

Conus geographus is about 4-6 inches long and nature’s equivalent of Avada Kedavra.  Cone snails literally have their own KIND of toxins named after them: conotoxin.  Not only is there no antidote, but their venom AGGRESSIVELY RESISTS our ability to find a cure, because we barely understand how it works AND conotoxins are so internally varied, even within a single species, that any one antidote isn’t going to help because they’re constantly mutating and evolving their venom to prevent their prey from evolving a resistance to it.  Plus their venom is like, a bunch of different venoms all at once JUST IN CASE any one of them wasn’t good enough.

I want you to read these two sentences from the wiki page on conotoxin:

Remember how the LD50 of tetrodotoxin is 8μg/kg?  Conotoxin is 160 times more potent.  FIFTY NANOGRAMS PER KILOGRAM HAS A 50% CHANCE OF KILLING YOU. A 220-POUND HUMAN HAS A 50% CHANCE OF SURVIVAL AGAINST JUST 5 MICROGRAMS OF CONOTOXIN.  

I DID SOME MATH.  

IT WOULD TAKE 7-9 MILLIGRAMS OF CONOTOXIN TO KILL A BLUE WHALE, THE HEAVIEST ANIMAL TO EVER LIVE. (based on weight estimates from 300-400,000 lbs.)

Conus geographus is so fucking deadly that “In two cases of envenomation, only 0.0002-0.0005 mg resulted in severe paralysis.”

THIS THING KILLS STUFF SO HARD THAT BEFORE YOU HEAR THE FIRST “MORTAL KOMBAT” IN THE MORTAL KOMBAT THEME, THERE’S PROBABLY ALREADY BEEN A FATALITY.

And guess what?  Cone snails don’t do that NOOB SHIT with the superficial biting or stinging.  Your wetsuit or gloves won’t protect you.  Because homeboy didn’t bring teeth to evolution’s knife fight.  Oh no.  It brought a motherfucking radula POISON HARPOON.  It’s lightning fast and has way more piercing power than some silly little cnidocytes or salivary bacteria.

Another component of their venom is being researched for its potential as a pain reliever.  “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT????” you might reasonably ask.  And you would be right to do so, because science has gone too far and has surely sinned against the very image of Mollusca Kedavra.  Well, it turns out the answer is “Research shows that certain component proteins of the venom target specific human pain receptors and can be up to 10,000 times more potent than morphine without morphine’s addictive properties and side-effects.”  That’s right, the part of their venom that SPECIFICALLY DOESN’T HURT YOU is up to 10,000 times more potent than morphine.

Also, Conus geographus (along with one other cone snail species, C. tulipa) is the only known non-human animal to weaponize insulin.  In addition to the normal insulin that the snails produce for their own use, their bodies manufacture an ADDITIONAL insulin molecule that is similar to the kind produced in fish (which they eat) for the sole purpose of stunning their prey through hypoglycemic shock.  BECAUSE APPARENTLY THEY DON’T FEEL LIKE THEY’D KILL YOU HARD ENOUGH OTHERWISE.

IF you are going to survive the ALMIGHTY CONE SNAIL, WHO KNOWS NO FEAR, TRIUMPHANT HEDGEMON OF THE MOLECULAR ARMS RACE, TRUE BORN HEIR TO THE SCYTHE OF DEATH ITSELF, FISHSLAYER, GOD AMONG MOLLUSKS, WHOSE WRATH IS MERCIFUL ONLY IN ITS BREVITY, ADMIRABLE IN ITS BEAUTY AND UNSULLIED BY THE UNWORTHY TOUCH OF MORTAL HANDS OR SCALES OR REALLY ANYTHING IN RANGE OF ITS RADULA HARPOON, then literally the only thing that’s going to save you is for you to be kept alive artificially (externalizing your respiratory functions to force your body to continue breathing, basically) until the effects of the venom wear off.  And because of how quickly this venom acts, you need to get that medical attention VERY, VERY FAST.

And if you don’t get it, you will still be conscious while the paralysis slowly suffocates you to death.

Don’t touch the pretty shells.

this is a WONDERFUL use of the medium of the tumblr post

YES.

A perfect educational rant.

Minute traces of tetrodotoxin are what makes fugu (pufferfish) sashimi such an exciting entrée. Improperly prepared fugu can be very exciting indeed, to the extent that the over-excited diner loses interest in anything else.

Like, for instance, breathing.

The end part

Can’t not reblog something this terrifyingly educational.

They are not as high-profile as the WGA, but I would like to bring everyone's attention to the imminent strike action by thousands of hotel workers in Los Angeles. They are set to go on strike tomorrow, July 1st, 2023.

More than 15,000 hotel workers are seeking higher pay, better benefits, and working conditions. This includes an across-the-board $5 an hour raise, as well as affordable healthcare and better pensions. They also are seeking a ban on the use of E-Verify, which is used to deny employment to undocumented workers and workers involved with the criminal justice system. You can follow what is happening at their Twitter.

The kind of thing a good coder wouldn't mind seeing on their tombstone:

DEGRADED GRACEFULLY

Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.

The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

I followed the being in the suit.

Took me well over a minute to realize "low frequency right angle shape" was Red Cross.

And speaking of scurvy, I am eternally amused by the thing where some ancient form of healing that was born in a time where people didn't know exactly how the human body works, or what causes it to stop working sometimes, that still somehow worked. Like how so many old folk medicinal plants were listed as a cure for various ailments that - from a modern view - are clearly just symptoms of scurvy, and the plant itself is rich in vitamin C.

I recall reading some story, no recollection of the exact time or place, where the king of a large empire suffered from constant horrible headaches and was incapable of falling asleep unless drugged or blackout drunk. Sick of taking temporary fixes to dull the pain and having to be sedated every night, he called up some old sage healer who was said to know how to fix things nobody else could explain, and the healer heard his symptoms and went

"Hmm. You spend too much time being a king. Your skull is packed so full of kingly thoughts that they don't all fit in there and that's why your head is in pain. You need to spend time not being a king." And prescribed him to schedule three days every month where he must go to a peasant village where nobody knows he's the king, live with a family there under a fake name and identity, work in the rice fields with them, eating the same food and sleeping on the same mats. Absolutely nobody is allowed to address him as the king, speak to him of any royal or political matters, and he himself is not allowed to think any kingly thoughts or think of himself as the king.

And naturally, this worked. Taking a regular scheduled break from a highly stressful office desk job to completely decompress, paired with physical exercise in the form of hard but simple physical labour, plain and simple food and Just Not Thinking About Your Fucking Job All The Time does help chronic stress, which here was worded as "spending too much time being a king clogs your brain."

Sometimes you do have ghosts in your blood, though I'm not entirely sure whether you should do cocaine about it.

people who don't know anything about academics: man y'all are stuffy and boring what's up with that? actual academics: *too busy fist-fighting each other over the beryllium problem or the existence of a dentistry profession in ancient egypt to reply*

people who dont know anything about academics: *for some reason have the illusion of everyone in Fancy Academic Clothes doing Boring Research and glossing over Historical Facts Because Historians Dont Like The Truth*

actual academics: someones lying on the floor in a band tshirt they havent changed out of in three days crying over the paper they’re supposed to be writing that was due over a month ago. the whiteboard says “6 hours since our last fight about Whether Silcrete Exists”. someone wants to give their thesis the title “theyre lesbians harold” but cant figure out how to cite a tumblr post as a title because they havent eaten in 48 hours

People who don't know anything about academics: they're keeping this grand conspiracy about these civilizations a secret!!! actual academics: can barely coordinate a time for a Zoom meeting, will infodump about their specialty for hours without prompting

People who don’t know anything about academics: How dare these stuffy scientists ignore this poor random dude who has a Theory That Changes Everything (and conveniently makes him a small fortune by selling books and DVDs about the Theory) Actual academics: Has already patiently explained to 40 different people why the Theory That Changes Everything doesn’t make any sense and is also kinda racist, but nobody is hyping their answer because it doesn’t make anybody money or make them feel extra special.

Also actual academics in this case: *vibrating with the only barely controlled need to throat punch Erich von Däniken the dude hawking the Theory of Racist Lies*

people who blatantly and obviously hate being told real information: psh those awful gatekeeping academics just sit in their ivory towers keeping important knowledge away from us and also keeping real honest hardworking minorities out of academia which no one should want to go into anyway

academics: god’s weirdest woman desperately wants to tell you about snail poop and your life will be enriched (like snail poop) if you let her

If someone told me $100,000 a year wasn’t enough to live on I think i’d kill them with a rock right then and there.