Also on topic of Consent: whenever somebody says "Kids should have bodily autonomy!" some guy always is like "You are too unrealistic. What will you do when a kid is seeing the doctor and doesn't want to get a shot? Would you just let them refuse the shot?"

Yeah I probably would. You're straight up asking the wrong person if you want the nice normal answer here. Doctors and nurses forcibly doing (relatively routine) things to my body against my protests when I was a small kid fucked me up so bad that as an adult anything medical related is a huge trigger for me, I've had persistent intrusive thoughts and recurring nightmares about medical procedures, and I can't have even the most basic tests and health checks done on top of it.

I hate talking about it because I can't get comfortable calling it "trauma" and I don't have any other words that are useful, but it's made my life so much harder and really scary since if I start having a weird symptom, there's nothing I can move myself to do about it.

I figured out a loophole where going to a pharmacy instead of a doctor's office for vaccines reduces some of the stress, but I was still in stress and misery for days before I went to get my tetanus shot. The repulsion is so intense it feels like I literally don't have control over myself, it feels like I can't make appointments or plans about such things out of my own free will, and so every year I have guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt about how I should get the flu shot, and it does nothing but ineffectually hurt me.

Vaccines save lives and all that, but when it comes right down to it, I don't think it's actually a net benefit to public health to give any percentage of kids lifelong psychological scars so deep and painful they're almost completely barred from accessing health care as adults.

I know I'm not the only one, far from it.

Also it's probably actually small portion of kids that would still refuse the shot after having it sensitively and calmly explained why it's important, it might hurt a little but not a lot, it only takes two or three seconds, and being asked what would make them feel better about it or what could be done to make it better

A lot of nurses are demons that see that a kid is a little nervous and just go straight to fucking pinning them down and ignoring their screams of terror.

YOU ARE CORRECT!

foster dad is a pediatrician and I worked in his clinic for a year! when the kiddos had shots scheduled, I was the person who would patiently explain it before they went in. and yes it makes a huge impact, no the kids don’t usually have a problem with it or start freaking out, and if they do, it’s mostly because of their parents. parents being impatient, parents manhandling and demanding, parents escalating the situation by attempting to impose their will upon the child rather than take their fears seriously.

i had a few different ways of explaining it. one of the most effective was The Big Bowl Of Bad Vegetables. ask the kid what their least favorite vegetable is and then make them think of how long and awful and unpleasant it would be to eat a whole bowl of it he size of some very large object in the room. “well a shot is like that. it kind of hurts because it’s like all the broccoli going in at once but that also means it’s over way faster. like less than 30 seconds. and then you don’t have to do it again for a whole year. I don’t know about you but I would take 30 seconds once a year over a bowl of broccoli the size of large object in view.”

if they’re still terrified, give them a hand to hold and a toy for buddy and tell them to chant “only 30 seconds” while looking away. literally cater to the terrified child. terrified children get hugs and kisses and comfort, not physical violence enacted upon their bodies as punishment for refusal to comply.

yes. kids have a right to understand and agree to what is going to happen to their own bodies that they live in. that would be true even if it was hard to provide and took an insane amount of effort and you had to bring the kid back over and over and over again to get the vaccine done. good doctors and nurses will absolutely refuse to vaccinate kids in a severe enough state of panic to require physical restraint to avoid the medical trauma. that is literally how you create adults afraid of doctors and medical treatment.

so yes. bodily autonomy for everyone is not option and it is especially not optional for kids undergoing medical treatment.

Berge sind nur glutenfreie Vulkane.

Remember this joke?

Well, I am going to do something similar only with photography. This is a photo someone took for an Amazon review of their Clinique products.

Honestly, it is not a terrible photo. They did some staging. They have an interesting background. All of the labels are legible. It is properly exposed. This would be a perfectly acceptable product photo for an Etsy page.

I've been taking these advanced photography courses in preparation for whenever I am able to create a new studio in the house. And my teacher is a photography badass. I just watched a 6 hour class on how to recreate a professional Clinique ad. And at first glance it looks deceptively simple. It's just some skin care products being splashed with a little water.

Which is why I wanted you to see an average person for reference.

This is what Karl Taylor came up with.

And I don't think I've learned so much about photography in one tutorial before.

Product photography is just loads and loads of problem solving. You have to light the chrome caps with a gradient. Which requires giant diffusion scrims.

Those big white panels are literally only there for the two chrome caps.

You need a pure white background, but you can't let light spill all over the studio, so you put up giant black light blockers.

And you have to add another light just for the orange bottle on the right.

Oh, and if you want the bottles to glow, well, you have to hide a silver reflector behind them.

But you still want the edges of the bottles to be darker so they have some contrast. So you add some black tape to the sides.

And in order for the reflective labels to have bold black lettering, you have to reflect black cards into them.

Ack! Karl's beautiful bald head is showing up in the chrome caps! He must put on the naughty blanket.

And once you get every aspect of every bottle perfectly lit, you finally get to yeet some water at it all.

I don't love product photography because I have a weird obsession to help greedy corporations make their wares look more beautiful. I love it because it is a complicated and challenging new puzzle every time. Every product is a different shape and requires a different technique to make it look its best.

I don't know if I will be able to live up to Karl's standards.

This is about the level I was at in 2017 before I quit photography.

I have so much more knowledge in my brain now. I'm really hoping I can surpass that.

I know I’ve said this before but vampires

therefore I am in dire need of a heist film where a group of vampires band together to steal back their old stuff from museums

Oceans 1100 AD

Very interested in the hardest part of this beign the vampires trying to trick someone into granting them permission to enter the premises earlier in the day

I feel like this has several simple solutions!

(all ideas shared on this blog are public domain, feel free to go nuts. you can find more story ideas like this on my ko-fi)

It's Star Trek time, so I watch a lot of Star Trek and write about it. You should too.

Today I saw the question "why does Star Trek: Discovery draw so much fire?"

It's quite easy. It was simply not what people were familiar with, and expected.

The Star Trek Formula™ is rougly: Ensemble Crew finds problem, beams over, solves problem. Next week, next problem. Of course there are strays from the path, but more or less, all Trek followed this.

Discovery doesn't have an ensemble crew. It has a main character and secondary characters. It has less Story of the Week™ and more serial storytelling. Well, this is how much TV stuff is structured today. Less episodes, less filler, more steamlined 8-hour-movies.

Nevermind that Discovery has some where excellent Star Trek moments, the dissapointment over all the changes kicked off a whole landslide of memetic feedback.

Which also fed into that was the casual racism ("why does it have to be a black woman???"), sexism ("why does it have to be a black woman???"), toxic views of emotions ("Burnham cries all the time!!!", which is funny because Ash Tyler cries way more, and I see no internet rambos giving him shit over that), casual fatshaming ("Tilly fat lol").

But I really think that the unprocessed, unreflected dissapointment is the core of it.

Didn't help that the New Klingons™ were somewhat debatable in style. In reality, Disco respects a lot of canon and did their homework. A lot of well done references in there. I could write a list.

What ALSO fed into it is that people simply don't like change. There are old news articles that take aim at TNG because it's simply a new crew. DS9 took a lot of fire (Black captain! Stationary station!), VOY (Woman captain! Janeway doesn't get a love interest!). Don't really know about ENT. Plenty of attacks, always. But back to Disco.

Now enter The Orville. Which gave the fanbase EXACTLY more of the Star Trek Formula™. Crew, problem of the week, ensemble cast. The fans who pit Orville against Disco also generously overlook that Seth McFarlane has his own problems.

So, bottom line: Dissapointment, unfulfilled expectations, The Orville rushing in, and all this in a culture with rising toxicity against progressive ideas.

Of course it's all a matter of taste. You don't have to like Star Trek Discovery. But if you give it a chance, there are some REALLY excellent stories, characters, space ship pr0n, sci-fi elements and other stuff in it. Also, Jett Reno. Just watch it for Jett Reno.

✨Having someone who is invested in your story and discusses it with you is like a solid half of the fun of writing. I'm not even kidding.✨

this is a poster i made for my call to action assignment in humanities! it's a bunch of basic and easy stretches for people who sit and work at a desk all day (me)

the idea is that you'd put the poster up above ur desk and do the stretches every 30 minutes or so,, the whole routine won't take more than about 6 minutes to complete and when done regularly it can prevent wrist, shoulder, neck and back pain! :)

all these stretches can be done while sitting (although i HIGHLY recommend you stand up and move around while taking a break from working)

you can get a free digital copy of this poster here on my gumroad!

I cannot get this poem out of my head. It haunts me. Joyously, it haunts me. 

@maxjo

Marijke van Welzen creates wearable art using techniques she developed over the years. Not afraid of experimentation or a challenge, Marijke produces unique art garments that explore a theme or tell a story. She has a BA in Textile Art and in English. She has worked as a middle school teacher for 40 years.

This is one of the greatest things ever. Walk around every single version of the U.S.S. Enterprise in photorealistic 3D in your browser, from the Roddenberry Archive. On a phone you just see wraparound 3D pics. On a PC or laptop you get the full 3D interactive experience. They NEED to make this VR compatible, it'll be beyond words.

There are more Enterprises here than Tumblr will allow me photos of, and more will likely be added.

Here's the TOS Enterprise, which appears in several incarnations ("The Cage", "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and TOS proper as well as TAS with the second turbolift!), has the correct original graphics and is perfect.

This is the bridge from the unmade Star Trek: Phase II series (whose pilot episode "In Thy Image" was rewritten to become Star Trek: The Motion Picture), with it's legendary big comfy command sofa seat and tactical display bubble!

The Motion Picture, such an accurate recreation that there's even a very faint flicker on the rear-projection animated screens as seen in the movie.

Enterprise NX-01, looking exactly as it did in "Broken Bow"

Recognise this? It's the briefing room of Discovery season 2's version of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701. Although at the front of the saucer on the "real" ship, here it's off the second bridge door which may well be where the set was IRL.

I wasn't expecting modern Trek to be represented equally as the originals in this project, but it is. This is the Enterprise from Strange New Worlds, with Pike's Ready Room located just off the bridge.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. My favourite version of the classic bridge, as a kid I drew all these control panels and stuck them on my bedroom walls. And now I can look around and look at them all close-up! They've even replicated the noticable TVs stuffed into the panels for the more complex animated screens.

The Enterprise-C bridge from "Yesterday's Enterprise". This one has always fascinated me, being a low-budget TV set (formerly the Enterprise-D battle bridge, originally built from the rain-damaged TMP set's back wall and redressed endlessly though TNG) representing TNG's immediate predecessor. In the episode they mostly shoot the back wall and imply the consoles make a huge circle, but here you can see the set's real dimensions and the weirdness of the classic movie helm/nav console in front of the TNG con/ops panels. I love it.

You know how much I love the Kelvin movies, so seeing this was amazing. For some reason the consoles don't have their screens lit (hopefully this'll be fixed soon), but you can see the saucer under the window and it's shiny and amazing.

The last thing I expected was the U.S.S. Titan-A/Enterprise-G bridge, but it's here. And the lights are on.

Other bridges available to explore which I'm out of pictures to show: The Enterprise-D (of course), Enterprise XCV-330 (the ringship, based on concept art for the unmade non-Trek series "Starship"), the Planet of the Titans U.S.S. Enterprise (again, based on concept art for a cool multi-levelled set) and the "launch" U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 (based on the very first piece of TOS bridge set concept art), the Enterprise-E, the Enterprise-F (seen on viewscreen for all of 2 minutes in Picard) and the U.S.S. Voyager NCC-74656!

Take a bow lads, you've done good. Now just add VR support!

That link again.

There is good news and 2 bits of bad news. First bit of bad news: The site is down for now while they overhaul it and add new content.

The good news is. . .

THE DS9 PROMENADE IS COMING!!!! Along with the season 4 NX-01, the TNG battle bridge and lots more of the TMP Enterprise, as well as more concept art.

Now the second bit of bad news. The Roddenberry Archive will return "later in the year" with no fixed date, and no confirmation of VR support😣

But when it's back, it will be awesome.

IT'S BACK EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND GO TO RODDENBERRY.X.IO

Now featuring explorable environments of...

...available to see🥺

The bad news is that VR support isn't coming. Apparently even on the highest-end systems they couldn't get it to work with a decent framerate. But otherwise, this is amazing. Enjoy it before it vanishes again!!!

Thank you, Roddenberry Archive for making me feel like a kid again🖖

Another update!

The U.S.S. Discovery NCC-1031 as she appeared in "Context is for Kings" way back in season one

And the Klingon D7/K'tinga-class I.K.S. Amar from The Motion Picture

(Also Archer's ready room on the NX-01 is now off a bridge door!)

And and and also this cool mini-documentary about DS9's Promenade, narrated by Quark himself, Armin Shimerman:

do you ever find yourself bedeviled by writing ideas that are the equivalent of finding a single carrot in your fridge. your brain goes "we should write a pirate story" or "we should write a parisian thief caper" and you ask, "all right, what do we cook with that, then?" and it says "no other ingredients (:"

Fic cover for Arelithil’s ( @procrastinatorproject‘s) brilliant meta take on Agnes’ past in academia.

[META] Never Been Off-World - Arelithil - Star Trek: Picard [Archive of Our Own]

Fandom: Star Trek: Picard Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Agnes Jurati, Bruce Maddox (background) Additional Tags: Meta, Worldbuilding, Academia, conferences, doing synth science, post synth-ban Series: Part 1 of Meta Musings Summary:

Agnes Jurati has been in academia for over fifteen years, but before joining Picard on his quest, she never once left Earth. A few thoughts on how that might have come to pass and whether or not it makes sense.

the way that intermittent fasting is being linked to health problems and heart disease...i'm not going to pretend this is an "i told you so" moment because i was completely taken in by all this at its peak and did it myself!! but i hope it's dawning on everyone that adhering to any kind of eating pattern where you're denying your actual hunger is a fucking awful way to live. our bodies work the way they do for a reason...

anyway i'm going to eat some midnight pad thai and feel good about it and not blame myself for the first time in a long time!! peace and love

link for further reading?

highly recommend this podcast, there's a link to the transcript which has all their citations and studies referenced + researchers they consulted

Okay so, full disclosure, I am on time restricted eating (aka TRE aka intermittent fasting) to help manage my chronic illness and also I used to work in the aging research field for 2 years so this is all very much in my wheel house.

I would like to start by saying that I actually did read the entire transcript of this podcast, and no where in the podcast is it discussed why or how TRE might be harmful for your health. Because it's not. There's no evidence to suggest that TRE (if followed correctly) would be harmful. The general suggestions for TRE are for you to fast for 12-16 hours (max) per day. Personally I'm on the 15 hour fast because that works for me and is not a problem to stick to at all, but everyone is different. Not everyone will lose weight from TRE, but it has a ton of other health benefits such as:

Plus, all the other data THAT WAS mentioned in the podcast that indicates TRE might contribute to overall longevity and improve healthspan.

At the end of the day, it's up to you to make good decisions about your health. No one is advocating starving yourself. Everyone's bodies, brains, goals, and lives are different. No one is making anyone follow any dietary recommendations just for shits and giggles. But please stop spreading misinformation and fear-mongering because there are people out there (like myself) who have genuinely greatly benefited from TRE/intermittent fasting and I hate to think what would have happened if I'd been exposed to a whole lot of misinformation about it first.

I just want to add a link to the study that's been going around, causing a lot of the recent concern about intermittent fasting, and which is mentioned in the podcast:

To be clear, the findings are not nearly as definitive as that headline makes it sound (one of the big issues with science journalism in general, alas...). The study authors are very clear that it's a preliminary study, self-reported data about food and eating habits is deeply unreliable, and without further corroboration, all they've found so far is a correlational between intermittent fasting and certain health outcomes. Also: as I understand it, it's a poster presentation, not a peer-reviewed article (yet).

Still, this isn't a wild flight of fancy based on a handful of anecdotes, it's a survey of 20000 people across many years.

I don't know enough about the field (and haven't read this in enough depth) to offer a real opinion on this issue either way. But I did want to add the link because the recent uptick in concern isn't just a bunch of people spreading baseless panic. There's some real questions being raised as to at least the efficacy, if not the risks of intermittent fasting. Much more research is needed to say anything definitive (as the study's authors emphasize), but this shouldn't be dismissed completely offhand, either.

So just... stay informed and be gentle and kind with yourself and each other, whatever your personal choices regarding food and health may be.

(One thing I will give a bit of my personal opinion about, though: please, just... be careful with this stuff if you're even remotely prone to disordered eating patterns. Please. I'm not saying "intermittent fasting is an eating disorder in disguise", it's not. Definitely not for everyone, probably not for the majority of practitioners. But I don't think anyone can deny that it can be slippery slope or relapse trigger if you're at risk for disordered eating to begin with. So just... be kind to yourself. You are worthy of love and respect, no matter your size or health status.)

The /gardening subreddit is actually full of hippie anti-plastic anti-lawn freaks (affectionate) and I find it enjoyable and I saw a nine-word horror story I thought tumblr would enjoy

The emotion in this photo

IF YOU NEED TO GET RID OF MINT, USE OTHER PLANTS IN THE MINT FAMILY!!!

Related plants like lavender, sage, and thyme are immune to mint’s phytotoxins and will crowd out the mint. Rosemary is my favorite mint-killer since it grows fast and wide (regular pruning helps it cover more area).

These plants are perennials, but they are likely to die after a season since mint can harbor root rot that will affect other Lamiaceae but not mint (or plants outside the family). Leave the plant waste to provide soil cover, the mint rhizomes may still be dormant (but will die out soon). The spring after your mint-killers die, you should get some colonizing vegetation. Once those plants fully take root, you’re good to plant whatever your heart desires in the soil!

IF YOU NEED TO GET

RID OF MINT, USE OTHER PLANTS

IN THE MINT FAMILY!!!

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I once read a bit of ancient Roman folklore that thyme (I think, it might have been rosemary) is so tough and contrarian that if you want it to flourish, instead of talking sweet to it, you hurl curses at it.

My ex just texted me a picture of her new garden bed and excitedly shared she'd planted pansies, tulips, and MINT

Reblog and put in your tags your favorite iteration of the Starfleet uniform

Okay, but instead of the Gorn not attacking Batel because Batel was infected with Gorn eggs, I posit that it would have been objectively funnier if the Gorn hadn’t attacked Batel because Batel had just unzipped a “human suit” proving herself to be Gorn all along and Kathryn Janeway would no longer be the only captain to have banged a lizard.

I’d only shared this concept with a couple of people, but @kirimilliagnhalden’s reply led me to dig it up to put here:

online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.