Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Smithsonian FolkwaSys – The nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution

    Smithsonian FolkwaSys – The nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution

    shadesofmauve:

    OMG DO YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS?!

    They’ve got a HUGE variety of music, much of which you just cannot get anywhere else. I just bought a super political Irish album from 1979. Amazon? Sells you MP3s. Smithsonian? You have the option of flac! Plus free liner notes.

    IZ MUSIC AWESOMENESS.

    This is awesome, but at the same time I feel so sad because I can’t share it with my dad. :-/

    Although that won’t stop me ordering :)

  • Investment in food

    I find it odd how my decision about whether a food is edible includes consideration of its source. So for food from the shops my level of “it’s inedible” is different from the level for stuff we’ve grown ourselves. For example, if we had an apple and I thought I was 95% certain there was a pest in it, specifically an apple boring maggot, then from the shop it would almost certainly go in the (compost) bin. But for apples I’ve plucked from the tree we’ve grown, no. No, then it’s trim all the bits off that are edible, then chuck the remainder in the compost bin.

    It’s the same with the potatoes.

    Particularly for our heritage variety purple potates which similarly are not particularly resistant to some sort of boring creature. Even when only a tiny amount is edible, I’ll hack the potato to bits to save a tiny, tiny bit of our home grown food.

    I find it conceptually interesting, because in reality wasting our home grown food is less damaging to the environment than chucking away a mass-farmed item, because we don’t use pesticides or agro-chemical fertilisers. We try and do ‘crop rotation’ to some degree.

    So really it should be the other way around.

    But it really isn’t.

  • Okay, that’s not good.

    So, I sat her down in triage. She was just over half way through her pregnancy. We discussed the reason she was in the department – abdominal pain – not exactly hugely uncommon in pregnancy. We talked about general health, which was fine, and all the other personal questions that go along with abdominal pain in pregnancy.

    Then I asked about whether she’d had a scan.

    No.

    Okay, no scan? 1st pregnancy? Odd.

    Have you got your folder from the midwife I ask.

    No… she hasn’t got a midwife.

    Err, okay, that’s even more odd. More that 5 months in and not referred to a midwife?

    Then she explains; she’s just moved to the UK to be with her partner (who works here). She’s not got her National Insurance number yet despite applying for it. And so she’s not been accessing any healthcare.

    One of the joys for me of working in the ED is that it’s free*. I take great pleasure in absolutely not giving a monkeys if you’re from the UK or from Mongolia just visiting for the day. I’m a nurse, it’s not my job to worry about whether you can afford the healthcare, it’s my job to deliver it to you as you need it and to the best of my, and the service’s ability.

    I did tell her to go off and register with a GP, which she can do as a temporary resident anyhow. I hoped that would get her off to a midwife.

    But is this the world that people want in the UK? A world where people can’t get proper healthcare because they’re foreign? That’s not a country, nor a service, that I want to be involved in.

    * I do however have moments of wanting to bill people for completely inappropriate use. Or just being too intoxicated to be locked in the cells overnight. But that’s a whole other debate.

  • shadesofmauve:

    I’m an accident prone physically inept idiot. Who has managed to injure her finger a week before a gig,

    From meeting you, I’m going to say you’re a regular human (an ace one, but still subject to the default status of ‘not able to completely avoid all incidents, ever’).

    However, that really sucks.

    But try not to beat yourself up too much about it. I can assure you that nearly everyone who arrives in the ED thinks they’re the only person who’s ever injured themselves in their particularly foolish way; and it’s nearly always not the case.

  • plaidandredlipstick:

    the reason male comic book fans work themselves into a frenzied rage over “fake geek girls” is because they think they can’t get a girlfriend because of their love for comic books (a.k.a nerdiness). if they accept that geek girls genuinely love comic books, then they’re left with the cold harsh reality that it’s not their nerdiness that makes them unattractive to women, but the fact that they are misogynistic condescending dickbags who need to be avoided AT ALL COSTS

  • Johnnie Phelps, a woman sergeant in the army, thought, “There was a tolerance for lesbianism if they needed you. The battalion I was in was probably about ninety-seven percent lesbian.”
    Sergeant Phelps worked for General Eisenhower. Four decades after Eisenhower had defeated the Axis powers, Phelps recalled an extraordinary event. One day, the general told her, “I’m giving you an order to ferret those lesbians out. We’re going to get rid of them.”
    “I looked at him and then I looked at his secretary who was standing next to me, and I said, ‘Well, sir, if the general pleases, sir, I’ll be happy to do this investigation for you. But you have to know that the first name on the list will be mine.’ “
    “And he was kind of taken aback a bit. And then this women standing next to me said, ‘Sir, if the General pleases, you must be aware that Sergeant Phelp’s name may be second, but mine will be first.”
    “Then I looked at him, and said, ‘Sir, you’re right. They’re lesbians in the WAC battalion. And if the general is prepared to replace all the file clerks, all the section commanders, all the drivers-every woman in the WAC detachment-and there were about nine hundred and eighty something of us-then I’ll be happy to make that list. But I think the general should be aware that among those women are the most highly decorated women in the war. There have been no cases of illegal pregnancy. There have been no cases of AWOL. There have been no cases of misconduct. And as a matter of fact, every six months since we’ve been here, the general has awarded us a commendation for meritorious conduct.”
    “And he said, ‘Forget the order.’”

    The Gay Metropolis, page 47, Charles Kaiser (via bibliothekara)

    Phelps tells this story herself in the excellent 1984 documentary Before Stonewall, which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube (she’s at 19:30, but really, watch the whole thing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX7AxQd82H8

    (via theodoradove)

    This makes me laugh every time I see it.

    (via thegreatgodum)

  • I think I want this on a teeshirt.

    (from What if @ XKCD)

  • aceavengers:

    oh my gosh you watched Middleman? that was like the best show ever.

    seananmcguire:

    I love Middleman so much there are no words.

    It was perhaps the most awesome show, although I’m biased because Natalie Morales looks disconceringly like a (much) fitter, much healthier version of me. At least in that show. Not so much any other time I’ve seen her.

    It was cool though, it was like having myself be on TV :)

  • greybeardjim:

    Blah blah handwavium shaped-charge needs to be at that position and angle to hit the fault line *just so* bliddy blah, gimme a scone

    shadesofmauve:

    pyoorkate:

    shadesofmauve:

    …someone’s been talking, haven’t they? Probably one of my former Japanese students (er, formerly students, not formerly Japanese). They all raved about my scones. :P I tell you, it’s only like six ingredients, you should make your own!

    (Actually, if anyone visits me I will totally make them scones, but only if the temperature in the kitchen is below 80. There’s no way I’m turning the oven on for the next few weeks).

    This handwavium might work. Hmm. Just have to figure out whether explaining the way it is or revamping it is more work. :P

    Hrm, do I need to check the forecast and organise some appropriate weather before we come over? ;)

    Talk to Everwest and Caladri. Their goats have a weather machine.

    I’d like you please to imagine that I wrote something hilarious as a follow up to this…

    ….what I’m actually going to do is lie here and go zootlewordle, because my brain appears to have stopped working. Which may be related to the night shifts and the trying to swing back to days and the holyfuckI’mtirednowness

  • m-e-s-t-i-z-a:

    housewifeswag:

    gayspicy:

    im so fucked up over the fact that some countries have free college

    and free healthcare 

    Kinda like their government acknowledges that those are rights not privileges

    But the moment you take those rights for granted they will be taken away.