TIL that the reason lead levels in children’s blood have dropped 85% in the past thirty years is because of an unknown scientist who fought car companies to end leaded gasoline. He also removed it from paint, suggested its removal from pipes, and campaigned for the removal of lead solder from cans.

via ift.tt

Yep.  It also correlates extremely strongly with an increasing decrease of violent crime.  One of the symptoms of low level constant lead exposure is increased aggression and volatility. 

“Unknown scientist”? That was Clair Cameron Patterson.

Gas companies are still so mad at him he’s “unknown scientist”, know his name

Daily reminder that health and safety standards like these are what politicians mean when they talk about “deregulation.”

Patterson died 5 December 1995.

Petition to make his date of death a Tumblr holiday celebrated by talking about cool shit the gas and petroleum industries don’t want us to know about, and fighting to continue his work.

Merry CCP Day!

Check out the trailer video for Re: Dracula, and then hop over to our crowdfunding page to help make this show a reality!

Jonathan's behavior while... enraging and also heartbreaking (he's gonna hate himself for it real soon and that makes me sad) is also interesting to me. He admits today that he originally thought Mina could handle the Horrors but now after the doctors suggested otherwise he's been convinced that she is more at risk of madness and trauma bc of female frailty

Jonathan mostly associates with women. This is as many male friends as he's ever had. Mr. Hawkins is mentioned but he's a father figure. I think Mina mentions a newspaper correspondent friend of Jonathan's once, but that's it and who knows if that was a good friend or just someone he liked well enough.

He spends his intimate time with women. The past months of his life he has been taken care of by women (the nuns and Mina) and talked about everything with them. He doesn't see them as women he sees them as people. It did not naturally occur to him that Mina would have less nerve because of her gender- he has avoided picking up The Sexism so far, and you can see it by his behavior towards her the whole novel. He doesn't treat Mina like a child, the way that the suitors treat Lucy like a child.

Then he got his polycule ID card, and suddenly is with all these men. And Jonathan is not a stubborn or prideful person. It's never been difficult for him to admit a mistake or when he doesn't know something. He has excellent instincts but he doesn't trust them. His lack of confidence in himself is imo his fatal flaw. And these men, two doctors among them are like yes we need to cut Mina out. It would be irresponsible to keep her in. She could never handle it. And this is not a natural conclusion for Jonathan to make. He writes that he finds it hard to keep things from her. It's not his instinct. But he feels inexperienced, and he desperately wants to be a good husband. The idea that he has not done his duty, that he's been careless in letting Mina do so much, that he's been unchivalrous and selfish, it's a new feeling but it's a horrible one and he bows immediately to what he perceives as the expertise and knowledge of Van Helsing.

That doesn't excuse him. It was wrong of him to do and he should have spoken for her. But I think it's interesting to look at how societal pressure and sexism worked on the character of Jonathan Harker in this instance to twist the love he has for her into something that hurts them both.

His rolly polly instinct to curl up into a sad little ball

I wanna say something about Dr. Seward...

He has a single very important role in this novel, and that is Observer. He is extremely good at fine details, noticing behaviors and patterns, especially when those behaviors are aberrant in some way, and he is diligent about recording all those details precisely.

Things Seward has Observed

And as the book goes on he's going to be the one person to consistently notice / observe changes or uncharacteristic behavior in his fellows. Observing and Noticing is something he is extremely good at.

HOWEVER.

He has functionally no capacity to draw conclusions from his observations. Here are the thrilling conclusions to his observations.

We make fun of him, but he's not stupid. It's just that assembling the pieces and putting them together are two different skills and Jack has exactly one of them.

(And this is consistent with the notion that Jack might be autistic. The thing he struggles with is drawing connections. But patterns and deviations from patterns he is very VERY good at)

And this really stands out in his interaction with Quincey because Quincey is excellent at drawing connections. As well he should be - he's a storyteller, and what is a story but putting together pieces? He doesn't magically know it's a vampire attack, but he connects Lucy's situation to the situation with his horse. He connects his transfusion to the others and correctly deduces that they've given transfusions as well.

It's like each of our heroes is a stand in for a different part of the Scientific Process. Van Helsing is Research, Seward is Observation, Quincey is Synthesis, Arthur is the Bibliography - getting all the sources together.

And there's an already hinted synergy between Jack's role and Mina's role in that they stand in for the difference between Data and Information, structured vs unstructured data perhaps

But I think the point is that these people have incredible skills but they're useless alone. They need to be put together to do anything. Jack is never going to draw the correct conclusions because his skill and his role is Observation untainted by analysis. The analysis will have to be done by someone else, but the observation is a crucial first step in that process

Lucy, Jonathan, Mina, and the Bastardization of Their Horror Story

I’ve been chewing on this one for a while. I thought it kind of went without saying among all us bitter bookworms when it came to the TV and movie treatments of Dracula and the characters/arcs therein. A lot is a given by now; a running joke. But goddamn if rereading today’s entry didn’t just tick me right off all over again. So here we go.

Keep reading

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quincy p. morris: this is my boyfriend, jack seward, and this is his boyfriend, art, and this is art's fiance, lucy, and this is lucy's girlfriend, mina, and mina's fiance jonathan is in romania with his boyfriend, vlad, cause vlad lives there with his own three girlfriend roommates, blonde and brunette #1 and brunette #2

let. the cat. PLAY!!!

Somewhere in the Bureau of Increasingly Less Faithful Dracula Adaptations

Directors 1-60: Look, Mina clearly needs to be the sexy vampire bait-heroine in the next every one. She’s her era’s modern woman! She’ll appeal to all the wistful nerd chicks in the audience when we have her drop that Victorian snore Jonathan and pair her with Dracula!

Directors 61-99: Please, Mina’s old news. The real spotlight belongs to the original man harem juggler, Lucy. Everyone knows from the movies and shows that she 1) Is the hot one, 2) Brings all the dudes to the yard, and 3) Has plenty of potential for unfulfilled bisexy goings-on with Mina and Dracula. (Cannot stress enough that the Mina stuff stay unfulfilled, though.) If anyone’s the Babe-for-Bloodsuckers damsel protagonist, it’s Lucy!

Director 100: …Shouldn’t it be Jonathan? 

Directors 1-99: what

Director 100: I mean, in both Dracula and the cut prologue, “Dracula’s Guest,” Jonathan Harker gets sought out by the most lusty/bloodlusting vampires, period. In “Dracula’s Guest,” he gets approached by a vampire woman in a tomb, then an entire graveyard full of eager vampires in a storm, all of whom he was only shielded from because Dracula was stalking him in his giant wolf form and literally laid on top of him as protection while he howled to get the villagers’ attention. Then he left after tasting Jonathan’s neck. 

When Jonathan finally gets to the castle in the novel itself, Dracula destroys his personal space and imprisons him outright, full gothic heroine style, and at one point undresses and redresses Jonathan while he’s unconscious–after rescuing him from the three vampire girlfriends who hypnotize and try to take turns preying on the guy, which they and the Count go out of their way to call ‘kissing’ him. With the latter setup being only the first of multiple attempts from the ladies. 

Point being, if anybody should get acknowledged as the resident vampire magnet and damsel in distress with unwanted toothy intimacy issues in a new adaptation, it should be Jonathan Harker. 

Directors 1-99: …

Director 100: …

Directors 1-99: We always figured him and Dracula were just good friends

Yes omg yes. this! this! it makes me so angry in the movies.

I found this on tiktok and I laughed so hard so I thought I’d share on here

It’s so chaotic I love it

just so you guys are all aware, the only reason gritty exists is allegedly because the NHL made a rule that every team HAD to have a mascot and were apparently assholes about it. so the fliers made him as a chaotic fuck you. hell the first tweet made on his official account was a “sleep with one eye open” threat towards another mascot for making fun of his design

are we not going to talk about how he launched an entire sheetcake into that man’s face, probably killing him?

He also collects crystals

I fucking love Gritty.

i hope he dies

didn't say a name but he popped into your head didn't he <3