Staying on message for decades.
Day: March 10, 2016
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Just a few of the stories my great aunt told me about women in the 60s:
1) A woman she worked with at the hospital who had a baby with one of the ambulance drivers. When work found out they fired her (he kept his job). She tried to self-abort with a knitting needle.
2) The sister of one of her neighbours who wasn’t able to rent a room because she was a ‘fallen woman’.
3) A girl who got sent to a convent house and scrubbed floors until the day she gave birth. Her baby was given up for adoption without her consent.
4) Girls who had babies with priests.
5) Women who were on their fifth, sixth, seventh child, who had been pregnant for the best part of a decade, begging for sterilisation because their husbands wouldn’t wear a condom.
Banning abortion has never ever stopped it from happening. It’s just meant more stigma, more prejudice, more risks and more deaths.
In 1962, my mother was going thru a divorce, got pregnant and knew this fact would be used to deny her divorce (they used to do that, in case you didn’t know).
My mother was given a “shot”; she lived 3 blocks from the doctor. He never told her what it was, likely an “overdose” of progesterone, which is how they used to “induce menstruation” in a hurry (i.e. abortion off the books). She was about 7-8 weeks by her estimation. He said, GO STRAIGHT HOME, go to bed and stay there. She walked fast, but nearly collapsed at the curb and my grandmother went out to guide her into the house. She went to bed, stayed there and bled steadily and heavily for 3-4 days. She said it was like being very very sick, headaches, nausea, vomiting… and then, gone.
She never let me forget this and took me to my first NARAL meeting when I was 15 yrs old. And here I am today, in my 50s–and I still remember my grandmother’s scary account; my mother swaying, literally, at the curb, and nearly falling, under the strength of that one shot.
How did she get the doctor to do it? She told him, “If you don’t, I will do it myself”–and if you knew my mother, you knew she meant it. She would have. After all, lots of women she knew had.
This is what they want to take us all back to, the fucking middle ages. Please remember.
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i have basically implemented a soviet joke | Crime and the Blog of Evil
i have basically implemented a soviet joke | Crime and the Blog of Evil
I have more or less implemented an old Polish joke about the Soviet Union, only in real life.
And just to be clear, by “Polish joke,” I mean actual joke from actual Poland.
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Dear Jeremy: a message from junior doctors
Junior doctors in England are striking today for the third time in three months over the terms of a new contract imposed by Jeremy Hunt. This time the walkout will last 48 hours, whereas on the previous two occasions the industrial action lasted 24 hours. Junior doctors say the new contract will create unsafe conditions for patients.
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that golden moment when your “useless knowledge” comes up in conversation and you sound like the smartest person in the room but really you just spend too much time on wikipedia
I’m fairly certain that people think I’m smart because I spend so much time getting distracted by things like wikipedia that these moments come up rather often.
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A way to make renewable plastic from carbon dioxide and plants figured out
Stanford chemistry graduate student Aanindeeta Banerjee and Assistant Professor Matthew Kanan with
co-workers
have discovered a novel way to make plastic from carbon dioxide (CO2) and inedible plant material, such as agricultural waste and grasses. The new technology could provide a low-carbon alternative to plastic bottles and other items currently made from petroleum.
“Our goal is to replace petroleum-derived products with plastic made from CO2,” said Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford. “If you could do that without using a lot of non-renewable energy, you could dramatically lower the carbon footprint of the plastics industry.”
Changing the plastic formula
Many plastic products today are made from a polymer called polyethylene terephthalate (PET), also known as polyester. Worldwide, about 50 million tons of PET are produced each year for items such as fabrics, electronics, recyclable beverage containers and personal-care products.
PET is made from two components, terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol, which are derived from refined petroleum and natural gas. Manufacturing PET produces significant amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
The team focused on a promising alternative to PET called polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF). PEF is made from ethylene glycol and a compound called 2-5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA).
“PEF is an attractive replacement for PET, because FDCA can be sourced from biomass instead of petroleum,” Kanan said.
The plastics industry has yet to find a low-cost way to manufacture PEF at scale. The bottleneck has been figuring out a commercially viable way to produce FDCA sustainably.
One approach is to convert fructose from corn syrup into FDCA. The Dutch firm, Avantium, has been developing that technology, but growing crops for industry requires lots of land, energy, fertilizer and water.
Turning plant waste into plastic
The Stanford team solved the problem using a far more benign compound: carbonate. Graduate student Aanindeeta Banerjee, lead author of the study, combined carbonate with CO2 and furoic acid, a derivative of furfural. She then heated the mixture to about 290 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) to form a molten salt.
The results were dramatic. After five hours, 89 percent of the molten-salt mixture had been converted to FDCA. The next step, transforming FDCA into PEF plastic, is a straightforward process that has been worked out by other researchers, Kanan said.
Read more here
Pretty cool! If we’re going to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, we also need to find different ways of making products (such as plastics).
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Someone: *makes something gender neutral*
Assholes on Facebook: HOW DARE YOU THINK OF PEOPLE WHO AREN’T MEEEEE
its a just a toilet that anyone can use… like the toilet in like, every single person’s home… why are people so ..inflamed.. about everything
and the thing is these are in a lot of places? but they don’t label them “inclusive restroom” they label them “family restroom”
because if it’s about Family Values then it’s all right see but if it’s about Those Queers it’s a bad
it’s literally the exact same thing *headshake*
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i hope you always have enough money to pay your rent on time, to buy your favorite groceries, and to invest in your art.
I receive that blessing & send it to everyone that follows me
And So It Is.
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The spread of the black death.
Poland
Poland, tell us your secret.
Poland is the
oldnew Madagascar.If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there.
Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.
Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it.
I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.
Damn Italy, you scary.
Poland: “Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”
Milan: “Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”
Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.
Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world.
WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL
When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.
Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!
This is great and amazing! ????????????????????????????????
Fucking Milan. Damn.
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Fantasy casting a woman time lord for Doctor Who (since we’re never going to get a lady Doctor). Current faves: Amita Dhiri and Nina Sosanya.