see we need to get back to our roots of shooting something so hard you change its genetics
We literally just learned this in my class about phytoremediation yesterday and it made me laugh so hard because the professor was like “downfalls include tissue damage and sometimes killing the organism”
Tags:
#genetics #biology #the power of science #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #death tw?
Hey yall, I wanted to make a PSA about this because it’ll be useful to many of you in the United States. You might qualify for public assistance now, specifically because of rising food prices.
The federal poverty line, the biggest determining factor for public assistance, has been kept artificially low for decades because it was based on the outdated assumption that food was the primary expense for most American households. For decades now, shelter has been the larger expense, but the federal poverty limit has still been determined based on the prices of food commodities.
Because food prices have recently gone up, the federal poverty line has gone up significantly as well. This means if you were previously slightly over the income limit to qualify for public assistance such as food stamps or medicaid, you likely qualify now. I’d like to encourage everyone who thinks they might qualify to apply for these programs. The qualification cutoffs are still absurdly low, so please be assured that if you qualify for assistance, you’re not taking something you don’t need or deserve.
Please reblog this if you think your followers will find it useful. I haven’t seen anyone talking about this, it’s just something I noticed recently, so I want the info to become more public to help people who might be struggling.
I’ve found it’s a good practice to, after doing your taxes each year, take a look at that official net income figure and go “does this qualify me for anything?”.
Check your food, your shelter, your utilities, your healthcare. If you take public transit, check that too.
It’s tax season, so it’s about that time again.
Tags:
#adventures in human capitalism #PSA #reply via reblog #I’m still getting my family’s taxes together and I’m interested to see what figures result #it’s plausible they’ll be low enough for subsidised electricity and bus fare this year #it’s also plausible that they won’t #we’ll have to see #(I don’t have access to my brother’s transaction history so I have only a very rough guess at how much he made) #(I’m going to wait to ask until I have the exact net-income figures for everyone else)
If this video helps even one person, it was worth it.
So, I’ve got a ton of ingredients that my body reacts to: corn, citric acid, gluten, chocolate, bananas, peanut oil–I’m all over the place.
It was so hard to read ingredient labels and just find food that I could eat. Grocery trips were unbearable, they took like two or three hours usually.
But I always had this idea on how to make it easier. So I quit my job and helped build an app over the past few years. And that app’s called Fig.
[A phone screen showing the app interface, which Tyler scrolls through. Top text reads: “First up: Do you follow any of these diets? Dietary restrictions are complex – it’s ok to select more than one!” Underneath is a checklist of ingredients and dietary restriction, including categories with suboptions.]
What makes fig unique is we’re trying to help pretty much everybody that has to avoid certain ingredients.
That means we’ve got a ton of things that you can select from–even really specific ingredients.
[Camera briefly returns to Tyler’s face again.]
And like I had dreamed of for so many years, checking ingredients is as quick as this.
[A phone camera scans the barcode on a bottle of spices. Details about the product appear, including an ingredients list and allergen statement. The ingredient “citric acid” appears in red all-caps. There is also an accompanying message that says “This product does not match your Fig.”]
And finding food you can eat is as simple as this.
[The app displays a scrollable list of food items, similar to a storefront. Each item has a save toggle and is accompanied by a photo, the product brand/name, and its size. There is a search bar labeled “search for a product.” There are also menus for narrowing the search; one is set to “allowed,” one is set to “Whole Foods,” and another unaltered menu is titled “Category.”]
[The camera returns to Tyler.]
So if you know anybody with food allergies, stomach issues, other dietary restrictions, I’d really appreciate it if you shared it with them.
[The appstore listing for Fig: Food Scanner & Discovery.]
It’s called Fig, it’s completely free, and you can get it on iOS and Android in the US.
Currently only available in the US, but their website says they’re “excited to expand to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom soon”.
Tags:
#interesting #food #poison cw? #it looks like their business model is the standard intrusive advertising shit #so tread with caution #but it exists if you need it
Were the ‘legendary’ names of ancient Greece common among the population of the time? Ie: were there people named Hercules, Icarus, Midas, Narcissus, Odysseus, etc getting around?
.
The short answer to your question is that, yes, there would have been real people with the names of heroes and gods, but no, they were not common.
The long answer is that Ancient Greek naming conventions are a complex and fascinating topic. On the one hand, there are no surviving sources that explain to us how or why the Greeks came up with names for their children. Ancient authors do not seem to have found this topic interesting enough to write about. On the other hand, Greek names form a tremendously large body of evidence – the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names claims to have published as many as 215,000 so far – and the fact that most names are composed of words with a direct meaning in Greek means that they present a unique window into the social world of Ancient Greece. Because of their components and their meaning, names can often tell us about people’s place of origin, family ties, social status, cult practices, looks, and so on.
With the exception of some restrictions on the naming of slaves, there do not seem to have been any particular rules about what people could and could not be named. We might expect, for instance, that it was frowned upon to give your child the literal name of a god or goddess, but there’s no evidence that the Greeks actually found it taboo. Admittedly the names of divinities, while becoming more popular after the 1st century AD, are rare enough in the Classical period (5th-4th centuries BC) that individual known cases have been extensively discussed by scholars. However, they are not altogether absent. There certainly were people named Artemis and Leto. This shows that there were no hard limitations to what a child could be named, but only conventions by which most names were chosen. The only names that genuinely don’t seem to have been used at all were those of underworld gods (Persephone, Hades).
So what were the conventions they stuck to? One of the most powerful factors, especially among elite families, was the names of ancestors; some sons were named directly after their fathers (such as Perikles, son of the famous Perikles), while others were named after their grandfathers (like Kleisthenes, father of democracy, grandson of Kleisthenes the tyrant of Sikyon). Modern scholars are on pretty firm ground when they assume that people with similar names are related; often a name would “run” in just one family, sometimes for centuries. A related strong influence was the desire to express social status (again especially among the rich), which meant that many wealthy people would have names that contained words like aristo- (the best), -archos (leader), and especially mutations of the word hippos (horse). The latter is often regarded as a firm indicator of high status, since only the richest men in Greece would be able to afford to own horses, and horse-riding was the favourite pursuit of the leisure class. Famous examples include Perikles’ father Xanthippos (“yellow horse”), the physician Hippokrates (“horse power”), and Philippos II of Macedon (“horse lover”).
If there were no particular traditions binding new parents, they would be able to choose a name they liked. Endless possibilities are known. Particularly striking to us, though not necessarily the most common, are male and female names that contain a direct reference to warfare – Kallimachos (“beautiful battle”), Archestrate (“army-leader”), Nikomachos (“victory in battle”), Andromache (“battle of men”), Deinomache (“terrible in battle”). Other names are more straightforward, like Leon (“lion”), Kephalon (“head”) or Melissa (“honey”). People were named after cities, mountains, and, very commonly, rivers; Aristotle complains about rare and ridiculous names like Hermokaikoxanthos, a pile-up of the names of 3 rivers. Generally, words like kalos (beauty), stratos (army), agora (marketplace), demos/damos (people), -anax (king) and old values like bia (strength) and kratos (power) occur often in what we might call “posh” Greek names. Names ending in -kles (Perikles, Themistokles, Damokles) refer to kleos (glory). The combinations of these words don’t always make sense; what sort of a name is Isagoras (“equal marketplace”) or Iphikrates (“strong strength”)?
Interestingly, while the actual outright names of gods are extremely rare, by far the most common type of name in Ancient Greece was actually the indirect reference to a god or goddess. There were 2 ways to do this. First, the name of a god could be easily adapted into an adjective form, so as to become a name derived from a god rather than the god’s name itself. Some of the most common were adaptations of Apollo (for example into Apollonios), Dionysos (Dionysios), Artemis (Artemisia) or Demeter (Demetrios); the latter is still in common use now, in its vowel-shifted form of Dimitri. One of the most famous examples of such a godlike name is Alexander the Great’s companion Hephaistion (from Hephaistos). The second way to adapt divine names was to add words to them – most commonly kleos (glory),-doros or -dotos (gift, given). So we have authors like Diodoros (“god-given” – the reference is to Zeus), Apollodoros, Asklepiodotos; in the Roman era, when Eastern gods made their way into Greek lands, new names like Isidoros (gift of Isis) crop up. While it has proved impossible to say with categorical certainty that names are an indication of which gods were being worshipped in a given place, regional patterns are very clear in the evidence, and names derived from gods are at least a clear indication of which divinities were considered important. Perhaps the most touching are the few cases when parents who consulted the oracle on matters related to childbirth would name their child after the god who had advised them or after the place of the oracle.
Given all these factors and trends, it’s perhaps easy to understand why the literal names of heroes were not commonly used as names, even if there were no strict rules or moral taboos against them. There wouldn’t have been any family tradition to do so; there was no social credit in making pretentious references; since mythological figures were not always the recipients of cults, they wouldn’t often have been credited for advice or protection in childbirth. It’s possible that their names would have been regarded as old-fashioned or an ill omen, given the fates of most of them. According to the searchable part of the Lexicon, Ikaros is attested just 20 times; Narkissos a more respectable 74 times. I can’t find a single person named Odysseus. Only the hero Iason has a famous “real-life” counterpart in the 4th-century Thessalian tyrant Iason of Pherai.
Source for most of this: R. Parker, ‘Theophoric names and the history of Greek religion’, in S. Hornblower/E. Matthews (eds.) Greek Personal Names: Their Value as Evidence (2000), 53-79
i am in my thirties and have somehow spent my entire life under the impression that the only difference between hard and soft water was that they taste and feel different. and which one you preferred was based entirely on what you were used to. now i find out that hard water is why my clothes get so fucked up so fast. people without hard water don’t agonize over how many times they can wash a soft blanket before it stops being soft. all those years of reading online discussions about how showering should only take five minutes and every other day you should just rinse your hair out with water. my intense confusion because if i try to take a five minute shower i come out looking and feeling dirtier than when i went in. if my hair gets wet in the shower and i don’t shampoo it i come out looking like i fell in the creek. if i gave myself a quick soapy rinse before work and then ran out the door without extensively moisturizing i would be the itchiest bitch alive in five minutes. i just assumed it was a body chemistry thing. now you’re telling me that other people don’t have that. that i am in Special Circumstances because every time i step in the tub i am effectively taking a mineral bath.
don’t get me fucking started on hard water and yes i am writing this right in the post i am so sorry op but where i live we have hard water (there’s a higher Very Hard level) so i would like to rant with you about how showering makes your skin so itchy and how you live and breath dandruff because your scalp is crying and how soap won’t rub off your hands no matter how hard you scrub and how drying yourself with a towel just leaves you clammy and how you have to wipe every surface down to combat the accumulation of limescale even though it doesn’t help so everything is spotted white and how your plants can just start dying because of the shitty shitty water and how you can technically drink tap water but it tastes terrible so you have to go on pilgrimages to mountain towns to get water from their fountains and how, since we’re ranting about shampoo, you think your hair is Irrevocably and Horribly damaged until you go to a city with soft water and wash it there one (1) time and your hair comes out silky and shiny and like a goddamned commercial yes i am still pissed knowing what my hair could be like if only i weren’t washing it with liquidized minerals
I hope I’m not barging in too hard, but I saw this in the notes and I thought I should tell y’all in case nobody has yet:
It’s possible to plumb a water-softening device into your home pipes. I have one, as do most homes in my area.
I’m *guessing* that for y’all there aren’t big displays of softener salt readily available in every grocery store and most convenience stores, otherwise you’d have found out sooner (although it’s also possible you *do* have displays and didn’t notice because you didn’t realise they were relevant to your interests, I could definitely see myself doing that), but some models run off of resin beads instead and only need the resin replaced every few years (possibly at the cost of worse taste than salt-based systems, but I’m not sure about that part).
I was doing some googling on prices recently because mine is getting old and decrepit, and it looks like it’s on the order of a few thousand if you don’t already have your pipes set up for it, or a few hundred to slot in a unit on piping already designed around it. I’m aware that a few grand is a lot of money and that many people don’t have the authority to make those kinds of changes to their homes, but it’s still good to know that it’s *possible* to have soft water without having to move to a naturally-soft area.
#conversational aglets #(I mean technically mine is also retrofitted given that I’m pretty sure my house predates the local water grid) #(but fortunately somebody *else* dealt with that) #PSA #domesticity #the more you know
I don’t know if we’re still in the age of Y/N L/N search-and-replace self-insert fanfics but can I just say there’s MASSIVE untapped potential for a Y/N L/N Death Note fanfiction if you just
if you just
hang on. This. Like this:
…
Light clicked his bedroom door shut, and leaned against it, and slid gently down. His attention was wrapped so wholly in the unmarked envelope in his hand. He slit it open, and unsheathed the documents like he was pulling money from a wallet. He was, in a sense. These documents had cost him. The private eye he hired had not been cheap.
But it HAD been worth it, Light knew with relief washing through his veins as he thumbed through the contents: birth certificate, social security card, medical records, vaccination history, school records, IDs with photos – mother’s name, father’s name, date of birth, eye color, hair color, blood type.
Light held in his hands EVERYTHING there was to know about the girl. And he basked in it, drinking it in, a name finally to attach to the woman who haunted him.
First name: Y/N. Last name: L/N.
Light cracked a grin, rib cage rippling with manic chuckles that bubbled to his lips and erupted, cackles, delighted trills. The sense of victory flooded him. That girl who knew he was Kira, that girl who had worked so hard to hide her identity, that girl who plagued him, followed him, haunted him every day, who he could never touch.
Finally, Light could kill her.
He rose, and walked nearly numb to his desk, and pulled out the scrap of Death Note he kept in the false bottom of the top drawer. He reveled in it as he wrote: Y/N L/N, dies alone at 11:48pm of a brain aneurysm.
The damnation felt so sweet.
…
She was waiting for him, early as the sun which crested behind her, all soft smiles and sweet squinted eyes. She was waiting for him as she did every single day. She stood there, as always – a thing of nightmares.
The blood left Light’s face once he opened the front door to her, feet and hands tingling cold, stomach in knots.
He’d been worried when he awoke to no news about his dead university classmate. And the confirmation of his every fear settled as a knot in his gut. Y/N L/N was alive, in front of him, just as she was every other day, smiling.
“You seem surprised, Light. Like you’ve seen a ghost?” Her wry smile was a mockery. Light loathed her more than anything.
“Y/N … L/N…” he muttered, through gritted teeth. “…Good morning.”
“Oh! You discovered my name. Good job good job, that was faster than I expected.”
“Why—”
“Aren’t I dead?” she titled her head and swayed a bit in place. “That’s how Kira kills people, yeah? Full name? And you’ve got mine. So why aren’t I dead?”
Kira. Light’s eye twitched. She did that. At every chance, dropping with such nonchalance that she knew. If he argued back, she would ignore him. If he defended himself, it would get him nowhere.
Ignore, deflect, probe, find a weak point.
“Is it a fake name? Is Y/N L/N a fake name?” It would be hard to believe; it would be beyond elaborate. Every ounce of documentation would need to have been faked, or else perfectly stolen, with a complete erasure of who the girl really was. Not a single piece of contradictory evidence. Enough to completely fool Japan’s most esteemed private eye. It was almost unfathomable.
“No, it’s not a fake name. That’s my name. My real name. You’re right.” She spun on her heel and walked forward, into the sun, toward campus, sunlight streaking through the wisps in her hair. “But you can’t kill me with it, Kira.”
Light refused to answer. He refused to concede. He refused to show his hand, and yet, maybe he already had… Maybe he’d already lost.
He’d try again tonight. He’d try again as many times as it took to eliminate her, this unfathomable girl, who appeared in his uni classroom claiming to be an old elementary school classmate of his, who followed him every day and spoke in hints that suggested she knew, and yet never revealed how, or why, or what she wanted from him.
He’d try again. He’d kill her this time.
“It won’t work, trying again, that is. If you want to kill me, you’ll have to use your own hands.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “But that’s messy, and suspicious, and too easy to solve, right? So you need the Death Note to do away with me. But it won’t work.”
Death Note, dammit, she really DID know.
“Hey Light, what’s my name?”
“Y/N, L/N,” he ground out, almost robotically.
“Say it again.”
“Y/N, L/N.”
“And what name did you write in the Death Note?”
Light hesitated. Did he stand any chance of keeping his hand concealed?
He locked eyes with her, and he knew the answer was no. She knew. He knew.
“Y/N L/N.”
“Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?” she asked. And with her words, Light felt some unsettled something thud in his chest. A disquiet. An unrest. A thinly veiled wrongness.
“My name, that name, Y/N L/N, how do you spell it?” she asked.
“Y…” Light paused. Y? No… That was almost certainly not right.
“First letter, second letter, third letter. Come on. I believe in you.”
A headache was building behind Light’s eyes.
“Y…. S-slash…. N…” No. That wasn’t a name. That wasn’t anyone’s name. And it wasn’t her name. Her name, her name was—
“You can’t spell it, Light. You can’t. And no one can. No one except an extremely, intractably lucky person could even guess what my name might be, at the time that all of this plays out.”
“What does that mean?”
“What do I look like, Light? The Death Note needs a mental image! What do I look like?”
And Light looked. He looked directly at her, piercing, probing, roving, studying, drinking her in. She looked exactly as he remembered, with H/C hair and E/C eyes and….
What color hair?
What color eyes?
What name?
“I’m not anyone, Light,” she offered with the same, sweetly saccharine smile that Light could not describe beyond those words. “Or I’m everyone, I guess. I’m every Y/N L/N who reads this, any one of them. And when the dust settles, and the story stabilizes, and those markers are replaced for real, it will be too late. Because that will not be the name you wrote in your Death Note. You’ll always have written Y, and slash, and N, and L, and slash, and N, and that will never be right. I’ll be someone else by the time it matters, every time.”
Light blinked through the stars in his vision. Looking at her hurt, his vision wobbling in and out of focus on the nothing, and the everything she was. The hair color, and the eye color, and the first name, and the last name, that were every potential quantum combination, and still none of them.
He shut his eyes.
“What do you want from me?” he asked. “Why are you following me? Why do you know who I am. What do you want?”
“Nothing. I want nothing. I don’t have a defined will. It’s not like I’m a person.” She stepped forward again, hands clenched to the bag behind her back. A normal school bag, a normal school uniform, trotting in step eastward toward the college campus. “I’m an insert. And that means I’m whoever they want me to be, every time. It’s not any deeper than that.”
Tags:
#Death Note #fanfic #that one post with the thing #names #murder cw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what
1. Sue someone; doesn’t matter who or why. Or get sued if you’d rather.
2. When listing off your claimed facts, open with “Plaintiff is a natural person, residing at [location].” This will look like you’re just establishing jurisdiction and will raise zero eyebrows.
3. For the rest of time, you can call yourself an “alleged human.”
Pfizers Georg is an outlier and should not have been counted
I think the problem here is precisely that he should have been counted
Tags:
#okay but I want to see the case study #what effect did getting 87 vaccine doses have on his immune system #what’s his titer #covid19 #illness tw? #vaccines #Spiders Georg
Brinens and Things 