i learned about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn’t stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive. (x)

i feel like this is selling her a bit short tbh.  It’s not like she was a random woman who decided to tape ‘whatever’ was on television.  She was a civil rights activist and archivist, who was extremely concerned about preserving history.  She believed that, by taping television, she would be preserving history EXACTLY as it was perceived at the time; she didn’t want the detail in the news to disappear with time.  And she was RIGHT.

Like I said, she didn’t just tape ‘whatever’ was on television.  It was extremely targeted towards news stations.  There were 8 VCRs running at all times in her home.  Her life—-and her family’s lives—-were centered around 6 hour blocks, since that was the amount of time that a tape would record for.  Her collections were also extremely organized. 

Archivists are the most amazing people.

During the most poor and homeless period of my life, I had a lot of people get angry with me because I spent $25 on Bath and Body Works candles during a sale. They couldn’t comprehend why the hell I would do that when I had been fighting for months to try and get us on our feet, afford food, and have an apartment to live in.

Those candles were placed beside wherever I slept that night. In the morning, I would move them and set them wherever I’d have to hang out. At one point I carried one around in my purse - one of those big honking 3-wick candles. I never lit them, but I’d open them and smell them a lot.

I credit that purchase with a lot of my drive that got me to where I am today. I had been working tirelessly, 15+ hour days with barely any reward, constantly on the phone or trying to deal with organizations and associations to “get help at”. It’d gone on for almost a year by the end of it, and I was so burnt out, to the point that I would shake 24/7. But I could get a bit of relief from my 3-wick “upper middle class lifestyle” candles. They represented my future goals, my home I wanted to decorate, and how I would one day not be in this mess anymore.

When we moved into the apartment, and our financial status improved, I burned those candles every single day. When they were empty, I cleaned them out, stuck labels on them, and they became the starting point of my really cute organization system I had ALWAYS planned to have.

So whenever I hear about someone very poor getting themselves a treat - maybe it’s Starbucks, maybe it’s a home deco item, maybe it’s a video game… I don’t judge them. I get it. I get that you can’t go without anything for that long without it making you go crazy. You need to pull some joy, inspiration, and motivation from somewhere.

poor people deserve things they want, too. it is unfair to expect poor people to only buy things they “need”.

My grandfather used to tell me: if you only have 20 kr left, you buy grocery for 10 kr and flowers for the other 10 kr because you need a reason to live as well.

“Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.”

As a former hobo I cannot describe to you how much Hope and Beauty are essential for survival. The number of times I gave up a meal for a little taste of humanity were many.

I hate work I should be at the (remembers I don't want to go to the club) the imagination

When I was in the hospital, they gave me a big bracelet that said ALLERGY, but like. I'm allergic to bees. Were they going to prescribe me bees in there.

So there's a medication called hyaluronidase. It's used to make other medications absorb better, because it makes the cell wall more permeable.

One common usage is to make local anesthetic more effective during surgery, for instance. It's used in a number of injected medications.

Bee stings contain an enzyme very similar to this medication, so sometimes, people with bee allergies have an allergic reaction to hyaluronidase.

This is called cross-reactivity, where your body mistakes something for the thing it's actually allergic to, and has an allergic reaction anyway. For instance, sometimes people with latex allergies also are allergic to bananas and other fruits. They don't actually contain latex, but there are some similar proteins.

Apparently, hyraluronidase used in humans is derived from one of four sources: sheep testicles, cow testicles, cow testicles again, and GMO hamster ovaries.

tl;dr: They won't inject you with bees, but they might inject you with purified cow testicle juice, and your body might say 'eh, cow balls are BASICALLY bees' and try to kill you anyway.

The world is full of such beauty and wonder. Thank you for that sentence.

losing my mind at this

ex buzzfeed employees love sitting in threes on couches for their apology videos it's good enrichment for them

Saint Dymphna is the patroness of stress, anxiety and mental illness. Dymphna offers much solace to those suffering from mental illness as well as their family members.

girl help

clocking in for another day at the i dont wanna factory

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happy earth day. don’t forget that someone else’s outdoor cat is your indoor cat

today I learned that in 2008, the city council of florence overturned dante’s sentence of execution if he returned from exile. yes, dante’s inferno dante, who died in 1321.

but the funniest part of this is not that they were debating the exile of a man who has been dead for over 500 years.

the funniest part is that the vote was 19-5. five people voted to uphold dante’s exile.

The objectively funniest part of this is actually that the city that holds his remains, Ravenna, refused to give his remains back. This was a ploy from florence to have his remains moved back for the tourist money and its been ongoing for a long time. Florence had a fake tomb built in the city to trick people into visiting, and have tried to force the return of the remains.

His actual caretakers have been very steadfast in keeping them hidden, moved, or generally out of reach to respect his choice in life to never, ever, ever return to florence, even when he was first offered the chance to return. This is at this point an almost millenium long feud that florence is really, really mad about losing

so basically the five people who wanted to uphold his exile were in the right

we need more lesbians guys

Misunderstood assignment. I made lesbian guys

no this is good we can do a lot with this. We could change the world with this

probably the most real demonstration of online versus offline discourse on "transmascs versus transfems" infighting was at a transmasc meetup where one person was like "eugh i've just had suuuch bad experiences with transfems, i don't trust them" and the guy next to me just blinks and goes "hey uh. my wife is a trans woman" and the rest of us chime in like "yeah we all have transfem friends, what's your problem"

and then after talking to that person for longer we discover that they almost never interact with the trans community outside of tumblr and don't have any contact with transfems face to face