i think grossness is a vital aspect of life btw and we all experience it and i think its important to represent in art and i think oversanitization of popular media is 100% our downfall. things are gross and disgusting and yucky and thats life we cannot deny ourselves this
I keep thinking about this in the context of caring for my ageing patients. No one TELLS them, before they’re old, how things are going to change, or why. No one talks about the loss of elastin, and how that doesn’t just affect your skin looking old, but also how it heals. No one warns them that their skin will become paper-thin if they live long enough, incredibly fragile and easy to tear. Just “hurr dur wrinkly!!!”
No one tells them their bowels are going to lose strength and coordination, so it gets more and more difficult to have bowel movements. No one warns them about obstipation, much less bowel obstructions. I have a saying I repeat often in clinic: “Proper pooping prevents problems!” I say it because it makes people chuckle, because it destigmatizes needing to poop. Everyone poops. And it turns out pooping requires both a complex network of nerves to create peristalsis, and stools soft enough to move through the bowels, and I have watched more than one elderly patient die because their bowels stopped working right.
No one talks about hemorrhoids, so I have patients coming in terrified by blood in their stools–and listen, blood in your poop is definitely a good reason to see a doctor; if you’re over 50 and you haven’t had a colonoscopy, get one. It’s the best health screening we have evidence for, in my opinion. Colon cancer is a bitch. But more commonly, people have bloody stools because they have either hemorrhoids that are bleeding or because they have an anal fissure after straining on a hard bowel movement. Do you know what a hemorrhoid is? I didn’t, until I was well into medical school. Everyone has them. They’re venous columns that surround the rectum and anus. Internal ones can bleed; external ones can itch. Most people will get them eventually. Be kind about them.
Everyone is going to have trouble peeing if they live long enough. Men can’t start, women can’t stop. Because people with prostates will often have benign enlargement of the prostate–it’s not cancer, but it gets bigger–and the urethra, the tube that lets urine leave the bladder, goes through the prostate. Bigger prostate = compressed tube, less flow. Meanwhile, people with uteruses have much shorter urethras, which means that when we lose that beautiful collagen and elastic, we also lose it in the two sphincters that help us keep from leaking urine, and so we leak urine. Especially when something triggers an increase in intra-abdominal pressure, like a sneeze or a cough or a laugh.
All these things people are taught to be ashamed of and embarrassed about–they are so common. They’re normal parts of having a human body and doing the things one does with a human body. Poop trouble? Welcome to the club! People have been writing about their cures for constipation for as long as written language has existed. Listen, you are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone. And that means that when someone else has a gross problem, you must be kind to them, because that is going to be you. There will be a day when you have diarrhea, because viral gastroenteritis spreads like wildfire every winter. There will be a day when you cough a huge glob of mucus comes out, because mucus is a natural defense mechanism and kind of miraculous but also nasty. Every gross thing a body can do, yours is likely to do, if not now then later.
Be kind.
Most of the responses to this are about how gross bodily stuff shouldn’t be stigmatized, it shouldn’t be viewed as a moral failure, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it shouldn’t be covered up or lied about, especially since it can be very important information for health.
Which is indeed the important message here, so I’m glad there are so many responses like that!
But I do want to go back to the initial post saying that “grossness is a vital aspect of life” and “we cannot deny ourselves this”.
Maybe it’s just saying that our lives function a certain way right now and we aren’t currently able to change that. But a phrasing like “vital aspect of life” really sounds like it’s going beyond that. It sounds like it’s saying that if it was possible to live a life free of this gross stuff, that in itself would constitute some sort of impoverishment of experience.
And sure, maybe deep grossness (as opposed to just, like, finding the architectural style of someone’s house to be vaguely yucky according to your personal tastes or whatever) is something that some people would miss having in their lives if they somehow didn’t have it; maybe they actually would feel impoverished and would go seek out gross experiences, and I want them to be able to get what they want!
But not everyone would miss that. If it was possible to live without the gross aspects of life that are currently inescapable, that would be a great thing for some of us. I wouldn’t be losing any important part of who I am, if I had the choice to live without that gross stuff and I took it.
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#…yeah to me the obvious reading of OP is ”escapist fiction is wrong‚ if you’re not disgusted by what you’re watching you #ought to get a different movie” #(I originally wrote ”reading” and ”book” there‚ but actually this is a much bigger issue with video because it’s harder to skim) #the stuff in the comments about the importance of having forewarning about aging is good‚ but… #…are they *sure* they’re actually agreeing with OP? #I’d be a lot more willing to reblog that comment if it weren’t attached to OP #originally I’d decided against it‚ but with this new addition I’m leaning towards #(I guess the main argument I can see for not reading OP that way is that #there’s a difference between saying *more* media should be gross and saying *all* media should be gross) #(but…what media environment are they living in such that the grossness levels are far too *low*?) #(*I* go upstairs in the afternoon and find Mom watching a movie about people dying horribly of hyper-Nipah‚ you know?) #((and that’s if I’m lucky and she doesn’t try to watch it in the living room over the speakers)) #(and honestly I’m still not 100% over the very visceral food-poisoning scene in Minority Report) #(people in movies are *constantly* yelling in each other’s faces‚ making out‚ getting covered in blood) #((sometimes all in the same scene!)) #(yeah‚ yeah‚ I know‚ something something pathogen-stress hypothesis) #–((it’s a different person‚ but I notice the aging-forewarning commenter casually mentions viral gastroenteritis as ”a day”)) #((which‚ uh))– #(but god‚ please‚ don’t make *me* live at *your* setpoint) #tag rambles #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #aging cw #unsanitary cw #discourse cw #medical cw
#1 – 2. I don’t know‚ why can’t you #3 – 5. fast-food restaurants (and also grocery stores) #no you don’t have to pay‚ and it weirds us out when you ask our permission to use the restroom #you *do* have to ask for water because we’re supposed to check that you’re filling your cup with water and not soda #although the probability of getting an employee who doesn’t give a shit about that is fairly high #(many people buy bottled water from us and I look down on them) #(there is a water fountain (with cups!) Right There) #really almost any non-tiny store and some of the tiny ones will have public bathrooms #6. masks are a solution to many of life’s problems #(let’s face it‚ it’s ragweed season‚ the air wasn’t going to be breathable anyway) #(also I do hear vehicle electrification is gaining a good foothold) #(including the buses) #7. I don’t live in cities because they exist in a state of constant sensory overload #good luck re-designing that #no‚ really‚ I wish you luck #(in the cities I’ve visited‚ though‚ the things I listed above were still true) #(is this‚ like‚ an America thing?) #(no that can’t be right‚ the American cities I’ve visited weren’t like this and also this guy’s username is albertvancouver) #(what the hell is going on out in Vancouver) #(maybe move to Kitchener‚ you poor thing) #(you already have right-of-abode there) #(life doesn’t have to be like this) #tag rambles #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #our home and cherished land #autism #venting cw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #scrupulosity cw? #illness tw?
Actually, a computer’s soul is located in its hard drive (or equivalent storage unit). This can be demonstrated by removing the hard drive from a computer and placing it in the hard-drive-less shell of a second, compatible computer: the shell then *is* the first computer.
Of course, this becomes somewhat more complicated in the case of computers with multipartite souls, such as SSD/HDD dual-drive laptops and smartphones with microSD slots.
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#I always keep my smartphone thoroughly anesthetised when I have to remove its microSD card for direct laptop-to-microSD data updates #I don’t want the poor thing to suffer through missing part of its soul :( #also there were a couple months there as kids where my brother and I each had a hard drive and were time-sharing a single vessel #reply via reblog #transhumanism #(sort of) #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #[epistemic status: semi-serious] #[it’s pretentious and/or exaggerated and/or something to call a computer’s essence-of-individual-identity a ”soul”] #[but it’s not *that* far a stretch of the term] #[and many computers clearly do possess a meaningful amount of essence-of-individual-identity]
#oh my god #adventures in human capitalism #covid19 #vaccines #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick? #(ftr the NYT pirates say that the ”terrific news” is that the bivalent boosters reduce your risk of getting Long COVID)
New SCP Foundation piece: an informal collection of tips for new researchers, from Dr. Sophia Light. Do good work. Also available on the SCP Foundation wiki [link].
#SCP #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #love how the redaction ink bleeds through onto the next page #suicide cw? #I was going to say it might need some other warning tag but I think ”SCP” covers the rest
(status: I acknowledge that this is psychological damage from an extended period of financial hardship during formative years, but I nonetheless mostly endorse it)
Hmm. I seem to be having a bunch of thoughts and feelings about this.
There seems to be a…maybe “divide” is too strong a word, I don’t know. But…like, I called it “fuck-you money vs fuck-me money” in a post a while back. Even when the actions are the same, there’s this psychological difference in how people can approach it.
When I see FIRE people, they always frame it in terms of *freedom*. (It’s right there in the acronym: Financially *Independent*, Retiring Early.) But to me, it strikes me as being a thing about *safety*. “Enough money that you can run your household solely off the interest from your investments” can protect you from a lot of different problems, and *that’s* why the idea appeals to me.
A few weeks ago I saw some distant acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance on Tumblr (I don’t recall who) advising a young person with a high-paying job and relatively low expenses (Silicon Valley programmer, I think, or something like that) to go on some trips and enjoy themself, because they weren’t going to have this much disposable income again until their forties if not later. And it felt like a very weird framing to me, because…the way I see it, if future-me doesn’t have money to spare, then neither do I. I don’t have spare money unless I can afford to feed myself, and I can’t truly afford to feed myself unless I can afford to feed *all* of my selves.
16-year-old me got to eat because 7-year-old me’s dad put away some “”extra””, and eventually that “”extra”” was all he had left. Where is 33-year-old me getting *her* food from?
Because if the source isn’t me, then I don’t trust it to come through for her. I want to do all I can to make sure that, no matter who is or is not willing to employ her or for how much, 33-year-old me (and 44-year-old me, and 55-year-old me…) is fed and housed and so forth.
—
(This was going to be a tag ramble, but then I thought it should probably stay with the post if somebody reblogs it to respond or something. I’m just going to leave it in tag format.)
#this post probably partly inspired by my first anniversary of non-freelance employment #which is coming up soon #I think I will celebrate by scheduling the dental checkup I have been putting off for ~3 years because I didn’t feel I could afford it #(yes government healthcare does not cover dental) #(OHIP has some very weird-looking exceptions) #(this is probably the result of some kind of complicated political negotiation that I’m not sure I want to know the details of) #anyway a dental checkup seems like a good compromise between celebratory and practical #(and [practical celebrations are easier to enjoy]/[I find myself drawn to practical gifts these days anyway including gifts I buy for myself]) #((that safety thing manifests here especially)) #((the things I dream of buying these days are always things that protect you from something)) #((checkups that protect you from tooth damage and electric cars that protect you from rising oil prices and solar-powered phone chargers that protect you from power outages)) #((this I am much less sure I endorse)) #((I mean I think it is good to want practical things but it would also probably be good if I felt safe enough to want a few non-practical things too)) #(((sometimes on especially bad brain days I can’t even bring myself to play Flight Rising))) #(((that is currently the most common cause of my FR hiatuses))) #(((it used to be the most common cause was that I felt like playing some other game instead)))
#I will put this in the tags though: #I was reading my Tumblr archive recently and *damn* 2014!me was having a hard time #she didn’t talk about it much in public but occasionally she couldn’t quite hold it in anymore and it leaked out into a post #I felt very sorry for her #basically what I’m saying is #hi 2022!me #I hope you’re in a good enough position that you can feel sorry for me rather than going ”yeah I still know that feel” #(but if so please do still provide for farther-future!us) #(just with a healthier frame of mind) #(maybe buy solar chargers *and* video games)
Hi, 2018!me.
I won’t lie to you: I do still know that feel. Things haven’t really changed much for us financially: still a slow bleeding kept at bay by unpredictable one-time cash infusions, still with a-home-in-good-repair being a cherished but distant dream. Still taking some gigs at $1.30/hour, though only the especially easy ones now. We graduated last year, and the diploma’s been *exactly* as much of a waste of time and resources as we feared it would be, though I have not quite lost hope altogether. I have made only $309 in deposits to my retirement fund, in the time since I was you.
Financially, we still don’t have the stability and security that we long for.
*Non*-financially, though, our position has improved. We’ve made new friends, and even mostly managed to keep the old, and (in addition to the non-practicality-related aspects) they’ve taught us (and we them) many useful things. I’m in better shape now: not *great* shape, but on a good day I can run for half an hour straight (almost two miles!), and even on moderately bad days I can do twenty minutes. I still work at the restaurant, but I’m allowed to mask at work now (I know, right, we thought that would *never* happen, didn’t even dare hope for it), and we were–by, admittedly, a terrifyingly narrow margin–not fucked over by the travesty that set the precedent that workplaces allow employees to mask.
(If this were two-way communication, I’d have opened with advice on getting higher-grade and more durable masks while they’re still easy to come by, so that the margin won’t be so terrifyingly narrow. But it isn’t, and I will have to content myself with knowing that it worked out for us in the end.)
(It didn’t work out, for a lot of people. A lot of people, in a lot of ways, are worse off now than they were in 2018. I do not live in as flourishing a world as we would hope.
But we, personally, were fortunate in this regard: we rose through the cracks of the problems that hit everyone, and that actually ended up counteracting a lot of the problems that were specific to us. It’s where most of the one-time cash infusions came from; it’s why I haven’t been sick–not *really* sick, not anything bad enough to make me wish I were unconscious–in over three and a half of the four years that separate us.)
((common-cold-induced depression isn’t normal, BTW. you know that weird non-depressive cold we had in December of 2017? yeah, that’s just what colds are like for normal people. sure does explain a lot about why people are Like That.))
The Ontarian government has announced plans to start covering dental care in a couple of years (a long enough delay that I’ve decided it’s still worth paying for a checkup this year, though I may skip next year). Our parents’ pensions will start trickling in next year, with the bigger ones starting in 2025. I still have a couple more ideas for how to break into an accounting career, and I still have the option of changing tacks and making a living in an unrelated field.
In the time since I was you, I have bought both a solar panel and a video game.
One way or another, we’ll get through this.
Remember, I love you.
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#reply via reblog #oh look an update #adventures in human capitalism #adventures in University Land #in which Brin has a job #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #covid19 #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #venting cw? #bragging cw? #kind of both
Brinens and Things 