Finally, what shall we think about those witches who somehow take members in large numbers twenty or thirty and shut them up together in a birds nest or some box, where they move about like living members, eating oats or other feed. This has been seen by many and is a matter of common talk. One should say that it is all brought about by the devil’s work and illusion. The senses of the witnesses are deceived in the manner we have mentioned above.
A man reported that he had lost his member and approached a certain witch in order to restore his health. She told the sick man to climb a particular tree where there was a nest containing many members, and allowed him to take any one he liked. When he tried to take a big one, the witch said you may not take that one, adding, because it belonged to a parish priest.
–Malleus Maleficarum Part II, Question 1, Chapter 7 (via mythsandlegend)
-I don’t always use my witchcraft to steal men’s penises and hide them all in birds nests, but when I do I make sure to feed them only the best whole oats!
zuky:
This is the story of a racist myth that began with a light-hearted letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 and subsequently exploded in North American culture — in direct opposition to every shred of scientific evidence — becoming so prevalent…
Things that suck about growing up with a shitty small town doctor:
You finally figure out, years later mind you, that you’ve suffered almost your whole life with ovarian cysts, a retroverted uterus, and dysmenorrhea.
No fucking wonder…
The Secret to Olive Oil’s Anti-Alzheimer’s Powers:
People living in the Mediterranean have a much lower risk of contracting Alzheimer’s disease than those of us stuck in other parts of the world. Researchers looking for an explanation nailed down an association between extra virgin olive oil and low rates of the disease. They attributed olive oil’s disease-fighting power to high amounts of monounsaturated fats. But now, however, new research shows that a natural substance found in olive oil called oleocanthal is the real hero, Phys.org writes.
Past studies have identified oleocanthal as the likely candidate behind olive oil’s protective effects, but this study helped fill in the blanks of how specifically it bestows that advantage. In trials with mice, oleocanthal protected nerve cells from the kind of damage that occurs from Alzheimer’s disease. It decreased the accumulation of beta-amyloids—the amino acid–based plaques that scientists believe cause Alzheimer’s—in the brain and boosted production of the proteins and enzymes that researchers think play roles in removing those same plaques.
In their paper, published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, the researchers write:
This study provides conclusive evidence for the role of oleocanthal on Aβ degradation as shown by the up-regulation of Aβ degrading enzymes IDE and possibly NEP. Furthermore, our results show that extra-virgin olive oil-derived oleocanthal associated with the consumption of Mediterranean diet has the potential to reduce the risk of AD or related neurodegenerative dementias.
As if deliciousness and protection against Alzheimer’s were not enough to recommend it, other researchers have found that extra virgin olive oil helps to clarify thinking and improve memory.
From Scientific American:
Even cows don’t like Daylight Saving Time. Come Sunday morning, when the milking machines get attached to their udders a whole hour too early, the otherwise placid bovines on dairy farms around the United States will snort in surprise and dismay. They may give less milk than usual. They could take days or weeks to get used to the new milking schedules.And for humans:
The reason for negative health effects of DST is that, in essence, the entire world is jet-lagged for a few days.
So … do you feel as jet-lagged as we do?
The one thing Arizona does right.
Survivor Guilt and Suicide
TW: This is a really personal account about suicide and death and guilt that is extremely personal. If any of those things bother you, please stop reading. The rest is under the cut. Also, I’ve been getting a troll (trolls?) in the past few days, most of whom I just haven’t been responding to. I don’t really care if you try to troll me in general, but this is something really personal so I would prefer if you showed some human dignity and left this alone.
I apologize if this gets incoherent, or hard to understand; I’m just writing this in one go-through because dwelling on it too long will be bad for me, but I just have to get it out. (I lied. I’m adding this in after I wrote it: I’m really sorry if this comes off as melodramatic. I was crying my eyes out while writing this.)
Yes, I will agree that library work is most often times boring, uneventful, and in fact very vegetative, but to make an overarching assumption that there is no physical labor involved is highly erroneous. While I generally sit around on my ass most days trying to invent more work for myself, all of this sitting around is usually made up during summers and breaks. These are the times that we start on major projects. Not the arts and craftsy type projects mind you, more like “lets move hundreds of thousands of books by hand in one week” type projects. Even still this task doesn’t seem too daunting when you consider that 4 students will also be aiding in the project, which is why we normally all agree to it and regret it later.
It’s not uncommon for these types of projects to just be decided upon on a whim and poorly, if not at all, planned out. So what usually ends up happening is that in the process of shifting hundreds of thousands of books, we realize there isn’t enough room for them, so we have to move an additional hundreds of thousands of books so that we can adequately fit the original hundreds of thousands of books which then somehow get out of order in the move and have to be put back in order before being fully moved. Then, we realize that even after shifting these hundreds of thousands of books to make room for the new hundreds of thousands, there is still not enough room, so now both sets of hundreds of thousands of books have to be weeded, withdrawn, boxed, and shipped away.
To properly weed, thousands of books have to be found, taken off the shelf, updated as being withdrawn in the online library catalog, stripped of all indication that it ever belonged to us (peeling of barcode stickers etc.), boxed up, and shipped away to be massacred. While the weeding process may not seem too bad, usually after peeling the stickers off of thousands of books for many hours everyday ones fingernails tend to start falling off in addition to the already sore/pulled muscles, sprained ankles/wrists and book dust induced leprosy rash. Only after this mass weeding can the moving of hundreds of thousands of books, minus a few thousand, commence. Now you’re probably imagining that each person just carries a few books in their hands and quietly walks them to where they should be. Imagine this instead, doing hundreds of squats for 8 consecutive hours with roughly 12 lbs consistently in your arms so that you can load them on heavy carts, push them across the entire library, unload them again using the squatting technique, and repeat.
To make matters worse, our shelves are quite tall, meaning that while moving books you either have to tippy toe to reach the top shelf while holding tens of pounds of books, or perpetually step on and off a precarious stool while still holding tens of pounds of books. This is done, with only one half an hour break, for eight hours, everyday, for weeks. Additionally, the books are precarious and dusty, but not just a little dusty, they hold dust so ancient that much of the black plague has been found to be preserved deep amongst the books dirty pages. So not only do we have to deal with cascading avalanches of books falling on our heads, concussing us, and showering us with ancient book dusts, but the ensuing sneezing, itching, and horrible leprosy rash that accompanies it. Indeed the book dust has been known to cause many cases of library pink eye. In fact, I myself have developed an allergy from over exposure to the dust which generally results in itchy bodily rashes when coming in contact with the books. Indeed at some point I fully imagine that the deadly spores in the dust will one day begin turning us all to stone. My point being, whether the books are in the middle, top, or bottom of the shelves, moving hundreds of thousands of books is a pain in the ass and has resulted in a great deal of lasting, sometimes even permanent library injury.
So next time you envision a library job as one that is simple and involves much sitting around, please reconsider this stereotype, as library workers are usually ripped and badass as the result of rigorous daily saiyan training.
The answer is NO.
The “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli …” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”
(via sunfoundation)
this bullshit fills me with a very specific kind of rage. so, TIME TO DEBUNK!
- that meal from mcdonalds takes virtually no time to acquire AND is available almost anywhere.
- the second meal? that “salad” is lettuce … with nothing else, not even dressing unless its just olive oil or some milk i guess? gross.
- also thats the price of each serving, not an entire loaf of bread, a bottle of olive oil, etc. that stuff adds up which means you have to have a lot of money at one time to buy it all.
- that meal probably took an hour and a half to make, which is a long fucking time when you work multiple jobs or are caring for a lot of people or dont have help! seriously, if you are a single parent of three who works, is spending an hour and a half every night preparing a meal a likely option?
- same with beans and rice! also, you know whats a fucking bummer? eating beans and rice every night because you are poor. ask any person who has done it and they will tell you (you can start with me).
- there is a “nutrition” argument here that lacks a follow up: poor people are more likely to be doing physical labor and need more than 571 calories per meal.
- you know who is less likely to know how to bake or prepare a chicken? people without access to the internet, or libraries, or who werent taught how to by their parents because their parents worked all the time. access to healthy foods is a classist issue and classism is cyclical, you fucking morons.
- seriously, these sorts of infographics make me want to fucking flip tables. do you know why people don’t eat more fresh fruits and vegetables? because fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive, because they take a long time to prepare, because they dont live near a grocery store that has a decent produce section, because they dont have reliable transportation to get groceries to and from the grocery store, because they dont have the energy to plan all of the shit that is involved in making healthy, intentional, filling, balanced meals. basically: poor people get fucked, and then we get BLAMED for being lazy.
- eating “healthy”, aka access to fresh fruits and vegetables, is a privilege, first, foremost, always. so fuck you new york times and your ignorant goddamn infographic.
- there are SYSTEMATIC REASONS that we do not have equal access to fresh fruits and vegetables. they are very REAL problems. besides, you know, systematic poverty in america, the total mis-distribution of farm subsidies is a perfect place to start. read about that, then either get bent or start working on the actual problem.
Also, some people cant afford to pay their electricity bills. that means no fridge to store your food, no stove or oven to cook with, sometimes no water depending on your house I think. eating peanut butter sandwiches every day is not very fun.
I love how this article is attempting to explain the “American obesity epidemic” when the second, supposedly “healthy” is just potatoes, bread, and lettuce. I’ve had to survive on exclusively beans, rice, bread, and potatoes, and as any person who’s had to eat similarly would know, carbohydrates contribute most to weight gain. Similarly, these so called “healthy” carbohydrate rich foods (especially potatoes) spike blood-glucose levels, the long term affects of which can be damaging.
The other commentators are right, this is a class issue, but even if it wasn’t, how is it your business to regulate what other people eat? Maybe people should be more concerned with regulating their own uninformed verbal diarrhea instead.
June 17, 2011 – Christine Mullins was diagnosed two years ago with fibromyalgia, a condition causing complete body-wide pain. The only way she’s found relief has been a regular dose of Oxycontin, an opioid prescribed by her doctor.
The medication, however, causes nausea and Mullins, 38, is allergic to every anti-nausea medication on the market. So for the past year, she’s been using medical marijuana with a prescription from another doctor to relieve the nausea and regain her appetite.
But recently her pain management doctor has said she can’t continue using marijuana if she wants to keep her opioid prescription.
“He told me they don’t recognize it because they get federal funding and that I needed to choose one or the other,” Mullins said. “He said he didn’t care what I used it for. It was an illicit drug and if I continued using it he would no longer fill my pain medication.”
The doctor who prescribed the marijuana, meanwhile, won’t prescribe opioids. Mullins said she’s contacted 150 doctors in the Portland-area and none of them are willing to prescribe both opioids and allow her to use marijuana.
And Mullins isn’t alone…
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