poison cw

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

seat-safety-switch:

Making new parts is fun. Fixing old parts is less fun. This, in a nutshell, is why at-home fabrication has never been more popular. It turns out if you lock a lot of weirdos inside their houses and tell them that they might die if they talk to another person face-to-face, what they do is immediately go on AliExpress, and type “CNC router” into the little search box. Social scientists are still amazed.

Of course, there are downsides to turning your boring residential home into a scale-miniature version of an actual workplace where trained and experienced professionals work. For one thing, trained and experienced professionals work at a real machine shop instead of an IT department, and as such they have no interest in spending thousands of dollars to run off a crappy bushing adapter at home when they could instead eat dinner, drink a single beer, and think really hard about tolerances.

The other thing is the mess. When you cut up a piece of metal, the shavings don’t just disappear into the ether. What they actually do is turn into a mist of razor-sharp death, which you then cut yourself on a thousand times a week. And don’t think you can clean it up, either: all that swarf will be there when you’ve died of heavy-metal poisoning and your home is passed on to another bunch of suckers. Vacuums can’t touch it, not unless they like to blow out their motor windings, so pro-tier home machinists simply stage an arson when the pile gets too big and move into a new house with the insurance money. Hey, if you tool a little bit of magnesium once in awhile, it’ll be a really pretty fire, too.

Come to think of it, if the fire is big enough, that means you’ll get to buy a whole new set of tools all over again. Which will be really good for the brand new shop layout! No more having to drag heavy tools around because you forgot to put the lathe next to the mill. Which is good: if your friends come over to help you move it, they might breathe on you, and then you’d both die.

Tags:

#storytime #unreality cw #poison cw #illness tw #death tw #I like the juxtaposition here between ”getting fucked over by breathing metal fragments” and ”getting fucked over by breathing viruses” #very dynomight-better-air-quality-is-the-easiest-way-not-to-die.html

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

aeruh:

Rosemary? You mean spicy pine needles?

 

malus-syl-vestris:

Are you insinuating that regular pine needles aren’t spicy???

 

aeruh:

Regular pine needles are regular

 

malus-syl-vestris:

Not by rosemary standards

 

aeruh:

…Have you eaten pine needles?

 

malus-syl-vestris:

We’ve been friends for like four years, do you seriously have to ask if I’ve eaten pine needles or not

 

aeruh:

I mean I’m pretty sure you have but I don’t want to assume

 

malus-syl-vestris:

Of course I’ve eaten pine needles. Various kinds. Singleleaf pinyon is weirdly the best

 

aeruh:

Are they…

{{in cursive font:}} spicy?

 

malus-syl-vestris:

You know, I’d love to tell you but I’m pretty unclear about what marks the difference between “spice” and “strong-tasting plant that isn’t considered a spice”

 

aeruh:

I’ll have to eat some pine needles myself then to find out

 

malus-syl-vestris:

Ok but it only counts if they’re PINE needles and not just any old needle-like leaf off a tree

 

aeruh:

I’m going to eat every needle-like leaf I see

 

malus-syl-vestris:

Please Don’t Do That

 

aeruh:

Needle-Like Leaf Roulette

 

malus-syl-vestris:

…I’ll accept this plan as long as you promise not to eat any yew leaves.

 

aeruh:

I can try very hard not to

 

malus-syl-vestris:

Pine needles are distinguished by the presence of a sheath-like structure at the base of the leaf, almost always holding bundles of two or more leaves. Yews don’t have the sheath thing

 

aeruh:

It’s time for me to go out into the woods and stare at needle leaves

 

malus-syl-vestris:

Finally you can gain real insight into my average daily life

 

silverjirachi:

this conversation reads like two shakespeare characters who come out in the middle of the play to talk about something completely unrelated for comic relief and then are never heard from again

 

mortimermcmirestinks:

god fucking dammit gimme a minute

 

mortimermcmirestinks:

Enter AERUH and MALUS SYL-VESTRIS, a pair of JESTERS.

AERUH
I tell thee, rosemary is like a pine
but with a spicy taste.

MALUS
                        Art thou to claim
that needles base of pine have not a spice?

AERUH
A needle base of pine is merely base.

MALUS
‘Tis not when held, comparing, to anthos.

AERUH
My dearest Malus, needles thou’st eaten?

MALUS
How many moons have we as friends seen rise?
How many suns have we as friends seen set?
Thou sixteen seasons in my heart I’ve held,
and hope that I in thine hast been the same.
With brotherhood as rich and old as this,
thou needst not ask me such frivolities.

AERUH
I know thou likely has, to tell the truth,
but I would not assume.

MALUS
                      Well, yes, I have.
A multitude of types I’ve eaten too.
I’ll tell thee now: the best (though it is strange)
is single-leaf pinyon.

AERUH
                    And it has spice?

MALUS
I truly wish that I could tell thee this,
but now, i’faith, I cannot fully tell,
the difference in classifying thus:
to say “has spice” or merely “herbal strength”.

AERUH
To tell this tale most clearly it would seem
that eating needles from a pine’s required.

MALUS
Aye, it would seem that that’s the task at hand,
but caution tells that this is what’s to do:
eat only needles of the honest pine,
and none of lying leaf with pinelike shape.

AERUH
I’ll eat them all.

MALUS
                  I prithee, stay thyself.

AERUH
Roulette with leaves.

MALUS
                    At least restrain from yew.

AERUH
I’ll do my best.

MALUS
               That is all can we do.
The scholars tell that needles true of pine
can be distinguished from the lying yew
by sheathlike clothing all along the base;
the yew has no such guard.

AERUH
                         With this new truth
I now will venture out into the wood
and seek the pines and pinelike fakes alike
to stare them down and learn their secret truths.

MALUS
With this thou canst at long and weary last
Discover for thyself my life’s own path.

Exeunt.

Enter MACDUFF.

MACDUFF.
Yo dudes that king there’s dead. Like dead as FUCK.

Tags:

#food #poison cw #Shakespeare #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #juxtaposition #death tw?

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

larshuluk:

brin-bellway:

brin-bellway:

brin-bellway:

https://brin-bellway.dreamwidth.org/89538.html

@rustingbridges replied:

tomatoes really don’t travel well

they’re one of the fruits where the supermarket variety is the supermarket variety because it survives the trip, not because they’re good

meanwhile tomato plants are really low effort. if you have favorable conditions you can do literally nothing

—

Where are you *finding* conditions that aren’t full of weeds and wildlife-competing-with-you-for-the-food and the occasional blight? A greenhouse?

(…actually, that might not be a bad idea. I *have* heard of people building little personal greenhouses in their backyards, and nothing keeps squirrels from taking one bite out of your mom’s tomato and walking away like a fucking *door*, right?)

Re: surviving the trip, home-grown zucchinis taste about the same but we’ve noticed the shelf life is *vastly* longer. Store-bought zucchinis start to shrivel up and go soft within a few days of bringing them home; home-grown zucchinis can sit in the fridge for several *weeks*. Makes it a lot easier to plan your meals.

Honestly, probably a good part of my problem with gardening is that, because *Mom* loves home-grown tomatoes for some fucking reason, they end up the focal point of the garden and a great deal of my gardening-related labour is thoroughly alienated: I never see the fruits *or* the vegetables of my labour.

A garden optimised for what *I* thought was most worth growing would have zero tomatoes and more garlic and zucchini, with perhaps just enough potatoes to keep in practice so that I can put potatoes in the victory garden. And probably more perennials like mulberries. And possibly mushrooms. And I would want to do a bunch of research and expert-consultation regarding which weeds are secretly edible, since anything *that* easy to grow sounds like something I should take advantage of.

(I’ve been meaning to do some more digging into how to eat dandelions. I’ve heard you can put the new greens in salads and the petals in pancake batter, but I don’t normally eat salads *or* pancakes. Can you just, like, munch on a raw dandelion flower straight-up? Can I fulfil my childhood dream of eating a pretty flower I found in the backyard?)

@larshuluk replied:

Yeah, you can just munch any part of dandelion – I often do that when I’m reading in the garden. Older leaves get bitter and shouldn’t be eaten in big amounts, and roots need cooking. Flower is just fine though.

—

Hell yeah!

—

This is another area where I like a lot of the things the communing-with-nature people are putting out but for completely different reasons. I want to know more about the natural world around me *so that I can exploit it better*. Which wildflowers can I eat? What’s the name of that one plant where when you run through a field of them it sounds like popcorn popping? Can I eat those too?!

(I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it, to assume everything was poisonous until proven otherwise. And for the most part, nobody ever taught me which interesting plants I didn’t have to resist.)

Let’s get a few other cool edible / semi-edible plants out then :)

I mostly like fruits, since they are easy to identify and I don’t really have skills in identifying leaves. (So you see, I’m not an expert, don’t take this as authoritative advice! Also I’m looking up some names in a dictionary, since English is not my native language.)
Most suitable for central Europe, since that’s my location.

First: Poisoning yourself is very much a thing which can happen! Be careful!

There’s a lot of stuff which has some poison of the same strength as found in apple seeds, and that poison is removed by cooking. If you find these things on the side of the path and you snack small amounts, realistically nothing bad will happen. Cool examples:

– Elderberries
– European beech nuts (different, weaker poison. It is said the taste gets better, too, when lightly roasted. I love them as is already. Taste varies quite a bit from nut to nut, and is not very predictable from the look of it. So if you don’t like it, maybe still try a few more.)
– Rowan fruit (they’re disgusting raw, only bother if you want to cook them)

Then there’s stuff which is not commonly eaten, but can:

– ONLY THE FLESH of yew fruit. These are my favourite, they are planted in many locations, especially near graveyards. The pit is *very* toxic. I usually spit it out.
– Cornelian cherry fruit. Tastes great, take the very dark red ones.
– Blackthorn fruit. Need to be frozen before they become tasty.
– Sea-buckthorn berries. Grows on dunes near the sea, and generally on sandy ground.
– Hawthorn fruit. Taste somewhat like flour, not a great taste on its own. Take the very ripe, dark ones. Can be used to extend jam. Is often planted near fields as a hedge.

As a rule of thumb, all the stuff which grows on abandoned lots is mostly focused on settling the place *at all*, and therefore doesn’t focus much on poison. (Meaning they are great plants to *investigate* for edibility, not “just snack them, what could possibly go wrong?”)

Notably, thistles, stinging nettles, dandelions, many amaranths / pigweeds, plantains are edible both raw and cooked, including roots and flowers. Artichokes are basically thistles. Roots are hard even after cooking and don’t taste great, so I recommend not to bother. For stinging nettles and thistles, obviously remove / flatten the stingy parts before sticking them in your mouth.

Any other advice? Or tips for different regions?

(see also)

—

First, a postscript to the previous post:

Okay, better exploitation isn’t the *only* reason I want to know more about the nature around me. It also just bugs me to look at a plant or an insect or what-have-you and not know what it is. It feels…a lot like the feeling I get when I hear my co-workers chatting to each other in languages I don’t speak. Like I’m not a full person, missing a way of parsing the world that a person would have.

—

Thanks for the tips!

—

>>First: Poisoning yourself is very much a thing which can happen! Be careful!

I have a food-poisoning phobia and am *very* careful. That’s part of what concerns me about this whole food-security concept space, that I’m not as flexible as most people in what I’m comfortable with eating.

(On the bright side, if I *am* comfortable eating something I will happily eat it every day for years on end. I hear a lot of people worrying about the morale effects of having to resort to a repetitive diet in times of crisis, and I really don’t think that will be a problem for me.)

—

I did a bit of googling and there do seem to be some local homesteads-and-the-like in my area offering classes and advice to people who want more self-sufficiency. They’re intensely Living in Harmony with Nature types, but even with some clashing values I expect there’s still much to be gained by learning what they have to teach.

—

@rustingbridges: >>idk about potatos specifically but I think durable transportable stuff like potatos and onions is the relative advantage of actual farmers. relative to growing fragile vegetables that kind of thing is probably only worth doing to the extent you’re having fun with it

Like I said, the point would be to keep in practice. Potatoes are among the worse things to grow in a regular garden (because you could have just skipped all the bullshit and bought a 10lb bag at the grocery store for like $3 instead), but one of the best things to grow in a victory garden (high calorie-density, stores well, quite a few nutrients).

(…I should probably clarify that I’m using “victory garden” broadly: the disaster-fucking-with-access-to-groceries need not be a *war* specifically.)

Certainly this makes potatoes a lower priority: one would probably not need to grow them in particularly large or frequent quantities under normal circumstances. Indeed, I have enough other safety-net holes to patch that it’s likely not *currently* worth doing at all, completely crowded out by more important tasks.

—

@florescent–luminescence: >>We also had a lot of Critters come sample the garden.

Yeah. That’s almost always been a major problem for us, and it was *especially* bad in 2020. We’re definitely going to have to look further into physical barriers: greenhouses maybe, but at least some sort of cage.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #gardening #food #poison cw #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia #the more you know #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #apocalypse cw? #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

maryellencarter:

thoughts on Justice League Animated, part two of god knows what:

* The Brave and the Bold: Story by Paul Dini, script by Dwayne McDuffie, who are both fucking great, but this one doesn’t really stand up for me. It’s the one where Gorilla Grodd, a telepathic talking gorilla mad scientist supervillain, attempts to nuke Gorilla City, the hidden African city of hyperintelligent talking gorillas. I think part of my distaste for this episode – it’s not strong enough to be dislike, it’s just not one of the ones I bother with – is just the fact that, you know, over in Marvel the hidden hyper-advanced society in Africa is Wakanda, home of never-conquered black people, and here it’s fucking *gorillas* and that has a very racist smell to me.

* Fury: In which an adopted Amazon tries to kill all the men on Earth with a biowarfare deal. Somehow this works on Superman and J’onn also, despite alien physiology stuff. Also literally no one including Batman wears any PPE despite a worldwide pandemic raging, which hits different these days for sure. Script is again by Dwayne McDuffie, who was one of the greats, and it tries to point out that excluding men completely is not so very far from getting rid of the men, but it also tries to pull the #notallmen thing where one man’s good action in the past is supposed to redeem the whole category, and it’s just… many kinds of not great. One redeeming feature is that at least it does make Hawkgirl the one to set foot on Themiscyra, while in the previous Themiscyra episode Hawkgirl was *completely absent* so the heroes Wonder Woman brought to help were *all* male (for which she got banished).

Now I apparently have a therapy appointment, so more later.

>>Also literally no one including Batman wears any PPE despite a worldwide pandemic raging, which hits different these days for sure.

I watch CinemaSins videos while I’m jogging, because they’re reasonably entertaining and they have subtitles (I can’t hear the video very clearly over the sound of the treadmill). A few weeks ago I saw the one they did on The Happening.

I don’t think he even sinned it (the video was done in the 2010s), but it struck *me*, watching these clips, that I didn’t see *anybody* attempting any kind of air filtration in the face of this incredibly-deadly probably-airborne poison.

Nobody had a surgical mask. The Crazy Prepper People™ getting out their guns didn’t have respirators. Nobody so much as tied a fucking bandana around their face on the grounds that they had nothing to lose by trying.

It’s all-too-realistic, it seems, that *most* people wouldn’t. But there would be exceptions! And the thing is, you could write some really good, really horrifying horror about the exceptions!

Consider this alternate backbone plot for The Happening:

There’s a family. They live far enough from the epicentre to hear about the Happening before it reaches them, but near enough to be in acute danger.

They have one child. Let’s say she’s twelve. Old enough to comprehend the situation about as well as the adults do, old enough to wear PPE sized for adults, young enough to ping people’s Bad Things That Happen to Children Are Extra Bad wiring.

The dad’s a construction worker. He owns a respirator for work. As they’re preparing to evacuate, he gives it to his daughter. He figures, they say whatever this thing is seems to be airborne, maybe the respirator will protect her.

It *does* protect her. But the family only had one.

She watches her parents die by their own hands. She has to find a way to evacuate on her own, without being overwhelmed by the incredibly traumatic experience she just went through, while knowing that if she takes her respirator (Dad’s respirator) off for any reason–eating, drinking, blowing her nose after crying–she’ll die just like they did.

She takes a breath, acutely aware that two inches ago the air she’s breathing in was deadly. The filtered air is like a desert. The clock on dying of thirst is ticking.

Tags:

#I don’t like horror but I also don’t like missed opportunities #The Happening #reply via reblog #reactionblogging #fanfic #story ideas I will never write #illness tw #poison cw #death tw #suicide cw #covid19 #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #sexism cw #racism cw? #Justice League

Anonymous asked: Potion of hydration. A magically enchanted liquid stored in a glass container that, when drank, provides the same benefits against dehydration as drinking an equivalent amount of water.

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

outofcontextdnd:

🥤

I get that this is *trying* to be a joke, but “enchantment that, when cast on a liquid, renders it potable” sounds genuinely useful.

…mind you, they never actually *said* the liquid wasn’t poisonous, just that it was hydrating. Oh dear.

Tags:

#poison cw #fun with loopholes #reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

tumblr_o4z2j726tk1uqekp1o1_1280

rufusdrumknott:

Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook: A Useful and Improving Almanack of Information Including Astonishing Recipes from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld 

→ Lord Vetinari’s recipe for bread and water

Tags:

#Discworld #poison cw #okay but what do you eat while you are in the *process* of arranging your country’s politics over a period of years

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

kortzite:

tilthat:

TIL In the middle ages some kings had clothes made from “Salamander fur” which were completely fire-proof and bright white. The name likely comes from the common belief that Salamanders were “born from fire”. The clothes were actually made out of asbestos.

via reddit.com

Should thou or thy belovèd be distinguished by judgement of a physician of the four humours to have become bestruck by that most terrifying of spectres, that which is known in our physical realm only by his unholiest name “Mesothelioma”, thou may be selected by writ of the law to receive financial benefit at the behest of thy king and kingdom. That unholiest of spectres be one of great recherché, and is beckoned by thy brandishing of, or otherwise exposure to, that material which is called salamander fur. Brandishing of salamander fur within the realms of seaborne nobledom, dockyards, mills, warmthcasting, carpentry, or equine husbandry may bear upon thee that spectre. We insist that thou mustn’t lose haste, summon us by use of the code 1-800-99-THE-LAW-2 within this day to assemble a conference of writ at no financial forbearence upon thee and receive print regarding affairs of the related capital. Bearers of that unholiest spectre beckon now! 1-800-99-THE-LAW-2

Tags:

#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #illness tw #poison cw #history #clothing #advertising

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

randomitemdrop:

dr-archeville:

tsaomengde:

My fiancee and I were discussing the worst metal to use to make armor, and the obvious answers are lead and gold, but she cunningly suggested mercury. Which is a fair point, but then I wondered if solid mercury is any good. Googling told me that the melting point of mercury is -38° c (-37° f), so first you get it really fucking cold. At that point, it turns out that mercury has a tensile strength of 1900 mpa, compared to lead’s 18 and steel’s ~500-940 (depending upon the kind of steel).

Now, I know that tensile strength is not necessarily the best measure of a material’s ability to function as armor, but I’m a liberal arts major and didn’t care to actually do that much more research before going straight to, “EVIL ICE DEMONS IN MERCURY ARMOR. THE PCS CAN’T LOOT IT BECAUSE WHEN THEY PUT IT ON IT MELTS AND KILLS THEM.”

Ice Demons wielding weapons made of frozen mercury.  Spearheads that break off & melt inside the target.  Swords that leave tiny bits of melted mercury inside the wound (the swords re-freeze to razor sharpness while in the ice demon’s claws).

Item: blades, spears, and/or arrowheads made of mercury frozen by Ice Magic; can only be used by one with Ice Magic, but deliver whatever damage the weapon type would normally make plus equal amounts of Cold and 1d8 Poison. Once the wound has been delivered, it continues to deliver 1d8 Poison until the mercury has been removed by healing magic, Wish, &c.

Tags:

#demons #story ideas I will never write #poison cw

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

(I feel like @itsblehnedict might find this interesting)

[under the cut for non-fourth-wall-breaking infohazards, and also cordyceps spoilers if anyone still cares]

So in my dream this morning I was playing a video game (it might have been a VR game, but the way my dreams work all media is VR media, so I’m not sure if it was *meant* to be VR), and part of the plot was an elephant-induced apocalypse†. I thought it was neat how the game handled that.

(Note: in this game, the elephant is foodborne as well as airborne, and was deliberately developed and put into place by some evil conspiracy. Never reached the part where they explain what the conspiracy was trying to accomplish.)

As you would expect, the game tracks physical infection and memetic infection separately. You can actually survive for quite a while after eating a poisoned cookie, if you play in exactly the right way to keep your character oblivious to the apocalypse going on around them.

But it’s really hard to do that and people normally only stumble into it by accident, because the game performs (limited, one-way) fourth-wall breaking.

If this is not your first playthrough to reach the elephant plotline, the game *knows that you know* (because you’ve played before), and will flag you as memetically contaminated even if your character has no idea.

But it goes farther than that. The plot flag that triggers the apocalypse is finishing your dinner that night. (You then–if you don’t have other plans for the night–go to eat poisoned cookies and watch a poisoned movie with your family, and many other people in other places are doing the same. If you do have other plans, your family does it without you.) There is no in-game indication that an apocalypse will start then (in the main branch of the plotline, you actually *die* that night, and are resurrected by plot stuff later). If the game notices you building a bunker, buying gas masks, avoiding finishing your dinner to buy yourself more time to prepare††, the game *realises you must have read a walkthrough* and *flags you as memetically contaminated* (because why would you be doing this stuff if you didn’t know what was coming?).

—

†For anyone who has not read Cordyceps but still wants to read this post, the short version is that “the elephant” is a disease that is fatal when symptomatic but can only become symptomatic *if you know the disease exists*. If you’re infected without ever learning about the disease, it lies dormant for a few months and then dies out, unless you learn about it during that timeframe. (They call it “the elephant” because it’s pink and you mustn’t think about it.)

††If you say you aren’t hungry and put your dinner in the fridge, the “finished dinner” flag is not set and the apocalypse is postponed. You can eat other stuff later, and as long as it isn’t *that* particular meal the flag is not set. Letting the food rot sets the flag, but you can still buy yourself about three days this way.

Tags:

#cordyceps tcftog #illness tw #apocalypse cw #infohazards #oh look an original post #dreams