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Dear FDA:

WHO THE AF are these "stakeholders" your deputy commisioner is engaging with?

https://fda.gov/media/164937/download

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Throckmorton

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newbie asked if we're supposed to look out for 'red flags' in interlibrary loan requests in reference to a request a patron had made for a book about cannibalism. she was looking expectantly at me like she was expecting me to be equally aghast at this........girl why would you work at a library if you want to play book police

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Yellowjacket-Mimicking Moth: this is just a harmless moth that mimics the appearance and behavior of a yellowjacket/wasp; its disguise is so convincing that it can even fool actual wasps

This species (Myrmecopsis polistes) may be one of the most impressive wasp-mimics in the world. The moth's narrow waist, teardrop-shaped abdomen, black-and-yellow patterning, transparent wings, smooth appearance, and folded wing position all mimic the features of a wasp. Unlike an actual wasp, however, it does not have any mandibles or biting/chewing mouthparts, because it's equipped with a proboscis instead, and it has noticeably "feathery" antennae.

There are many moths that use hymenopteran mimicry (the mimicry of bees, wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, and/or bumblebees, in particular) as a way to deter predators, and those mimics are often incredibly convincing. Myrmecopsis polistes is one of the best examples, but there are several other moths that have also mastered this form of mimicry.

Above: Pseudosphex laticincta, another moth species that mimics a yellowjacket

These disguises often involve more than just a physical resemblance; in many cases, the moths also engage in behavioral and/or acoustic mimicry, meaning that they can mimic the sounds and behaviors of their hymenopteran models. In some cases, the resemblance is so convincing that it even fools actual wasps/yellowjackets.

Above: Pseudosphex laticincta

Such a detailed and intricate disguise is unusual even among mimics. Researchers believe that it developed partly as a way for the moth to trick actual wasps into treating it like one of their own. Wasps frequently prey upon moths, but they are innately non-aggressive toward their own fellow nest-mates, which are identified by sight -- so if the moth can convincingly impersonate one of those nest-mates, then it can avoid being eaten by wasps.

Above: Pseudosphex laticincta

I gave an overview of the moths that mimic bees, wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, and bumblebees in one of my previous posts, but I felt that these two species (Myrmecopsis polistes and Pseudosphex laticincta) deserved to have their own dedicated post, because these are two of the most convincing mimics I have ever seen.

Above: Pseudosphex sp.

I think that moths in general are probably the most talented mimics in the natural world. They have so many intricate, unique disguises, and they often combine visual, behavioral, and acoustic forms of mimicry in order to produce an uncanny resemblance.

Several of these incredible mimics have already been featured on my blog: moths that mimic jumping spiders, a moth that mimics a broken birch twig, a moth caterpillar that can mimic a snake, a moth that disguises itself as two flies feeding on a pile of bird droppings, a moth that mimics a dried-up leaf, a moth that can mimic a cuckoo bee, and a moth that mimics the leaves of a poplar tree.

Moths are just so much more interesting than people generally realize.

Sources & More Info:

Journal of Ecology and Evolution: A Hypothesis to Explain Accuracy of Wasp Resemblances

Entomology Today: In Enemy Garb: A New Explanation for Wasp Mimicry

iNaturalist: Myrmecopsis polistes and Pseudosphex laticincta

Transactions of the Entomological Society of London: A Few Observations on Mimicry

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tucson aint got much but it does have a bridge shaped like a rattlesnake

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Snowball in Hell, acrylics, 30cmx20cm

I used a random piece of wire to paint the smallest details..!

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Call me manipulative, but I want someone to reach their hand out to me when I start to walk away.

I want to feel like I'm worth running after. I want to feel like I'm wanted.

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Fabian Knecht, isolation, transforms landscape into a figural great indoors. 

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today is my birthday! i’m 33 today and i have done an ungodly amount of stupid shit in my life that honestly probably should have gotten me killed. so here are 33 hard-won things i’ve learned that i wish someone had told me sooner.

whenever you buy an object, you are going to own that object for your entire life unless you make the conscious decision to throw it away or give it a new home. maybe other people don’t struggle with this as much as i do, but i’ve grown to become a little exhausted by finding a thing and realizing i don’t want it anymore, but i don’t have the energy or motivation to do anything with it. signed, a woman with a packed 10x10 storage unit who is now extremely hesitant to buy new things.

food, and by that i mean good food (and by that i don’t necessarily mean healthy food, but food of good quality that you love), is necessary to live, and buying it, preparing it, and eating it is not a chore. the sooner you accept this and make food a priority in your life, the healthier you’ll be. 

speaking of food, not everything you buy should be the cheapest version of it. personally i’ve found it’s always worth it to splurge on good olive oil, butter, and canned tomatoes. for years i thought i was an awful cook because i was cooking with cheap, disgusting olive oil that made my food taste like shit.

speaking of food part 2, i can’t BELIEVE how long this took me to figure out, but mise en place is the real real. get your shit out and organized and prepped *before* you start cooking, even if it makes things take longer. and yes, it is always worth it to do the dishes as you go, which pisses me off.

when i was teaching myself how to cook and feeling daunted about it, the best advice i ever got was to aim to learn 15 recipes and then put them in rotation.

this is the most horrific and awful truth i have forced myself to accept: there may come a day you can no longer digest your favorite foods, and you will either have to stop eating them, or remain very close to a toilet. i’m sorry.

other people are always going to misperceive you and misunderstand you, sometimes willfully. other people’s opinions of you don’t actually have anything to do with you. they’re not your business, and you don’t have to worry about it or change yourself.

when innocuous or neutral things make you irrationally angry or upset, step back, realize you’re having a big reaction, and then when you’re ready, pay very close attention to the thing that upset you, because you’re about to learn something important about yourself.

a pill sorter can save your life. i don’t know how i managed my meds without one.

sometimes college is about learning stuff, and not about becoming something.

no matter how many perfectionist tendencies you have, it’s worth it to remind yourself that no matter how much of a mess you actually are, you deserve to be loved.

if you’re always forgetting to do important but tedious things, set an alarm and set aside one hour of each week, not to do the important tedious things, but to assess what needs to be done, and *schedule* the important tedious things for the following week. this literally changed my life.

during that hour, make a meal plan too. the point of doing this is condense the time in which you’re making decisions (what to do, what to eat, etc) so you don’t have to burden yourself with them throughout the week. decision fatigue is real. any way you can alleviate that is a good thing.

learn the difference between aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, and assertive behavior. recognize when you’re being one of the first three, re-assess and aim for being assertive, even if it’s hard.

you can tell you’ve processed trauma, not when the traumatic thing stops upsetting you to think about, but when the traumatic thing takes up the same size in your brain as all your other memories.

if you’re one of those people who never seems to finish projects or follow through with things, there’s a chance you may just grow out of it naturally. until then, follow your interests and don’t feel bad about putting down a hobby to pick up another.

if you love stickers but have sticker anxiety, buy vinyl stickers. you can re-stick them.

there are only a few careers i can think of that you have to commit to early in life because getting the undergraduate credentials is a pain in the ass (teachers, doctors, and engineers, from my research). nearly everything else you can switch to later, which takes a LOT of pressure off having to figure out what you want to do with your life.

people say there’s no money in becoming an artist, writer, musician, etc. actually there’s a ton of money in all of those things, it’s just in the stuff other people want you to make and never what you want to make. it’s still worth it to develop the creative skill and not force yourself into business school because it’s more “practical” or whatever. 

sleep when you’re tired. SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE TIRED. don’t beat yourself up about it, don’t tell yourself you shouldn’t be tired or that you’ve already slept too much, just take a fucking nap. you would never say “hm i’ve already had enough water today, therefore i should not be thirsty” so don’t treat sleep the same way.

when you build a piece of furniture from target or ikea or whatever, the first thing you should do is count all the little screws and things to make sure everything’s there that should be. it sucks to get halfway into putting something together only to find there’s a piece missing and you have to go buy it.

learn to travel by yourself, go out to eat by yourself, see a movie by yourself. in my early 20s i was scared to do these things, but i do them so often now i don’t even think about it. it’s the most fulfilling skill i’ve ever learned.

adding to the above, if you’re a people-pleaser, being alone is especially important, because you’ve probably developed the habit of making the people you’re with more comfortable and happy than yourself, and you’re missing a lot of the beautiful and interesting things around you. when you’re by yourself, you can focus on what *you* want without guilt. 

sometimes you’ll want to break things off with a friend for reasons that are no one’s fault, and you don’t want it to be volatile or make a big thing of it, in which case the goal is to simply fade out of their life. it is okay to let people go.

shame is useless. get rid of it.

no matter how much of yourself you put into your art (or writing, or music, or whatever), when people criticize it, they are not criticizing you. they are having a reaction colored by their own tastes and perspectives. their opinion of your work has nothing to do with you. you don’t have to take everyone’s feedback. in fact you don’t have to take anyone’s feedback. the other side to this coin unfortunately is that compliments don’t have anything to do with you either. it’s good to accept this because it means you’ll stop seeking validation from other people and won’t let anyone else’s perspectives impact your work. anything nice anyone says about your work is merely a bonus to an already good thing.

if you’re an artist of any kind, take one day a year to look up opportunities like grants, funding, residencies, workshops, whatever. put the due dates of all of them on a calendar for the year following and get into the habit of applying for stuff. getting rejected sucks, application fees suck, but in all the years i’ve been doing this, it has always, always been worth it. these things give you a chance not only to help fund and support what you’re passionate about, but they force you to take your own work seriously, and that is something that’s absolutely necessary in order to be successful.

you must become your own greatest advocate. in all respects–in health, in love, in happiness, in freedom, you must. no one will ever fight as hard for you as you will. this in turn will give you the strength and motivation to help others fight for themselves too. the only way the world will ever get better is if every person on this planet learns to see themselves as equals to everyone around them.

brag about yourself as often as you can. for one, people develop their perceptions of you based on how you treat yourself and speak about yourself. but for two, it’s the fastest way to figure out which people to keep in your life, because they’re the ones who are going “oh hell yeah, you’re awesome.” 

be the person other people want to brag to.

at some point in your life, someone is going to hurt you, and it’s going to be willful and intentional. it is not worth it to waste brain space figuring out why they did it or why you think you deserved it. all you have to do is let yourself feel that pain, acknowledge it, and try to move on.

no matter how bad off you think you are, recovery is possible. the first and hardest step is to learn you’re worth the time and effort it takes to recover from the awful things that have happened to you.

developing an expertise does not mean you’re getting objectively better at something. becoming an expert is only the process of seeing your mistakes and having the patience to sit in the discomfort of not knowing how to fix them.    

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I'm kind of tired of people speaking for wheelchair users and claiming that label when they don't regularly use a wheelchair.

a lot of mobility aid users get frustrated when someone who has temporarily used mobility aids for an injury tries to speak as if they understand the experience of mobility aid users. it's widely understood that they don't and that their experience is not the same as that of someone who uses mobility aids regularly for a disability.

for some reason many disabled people will do the same with wheelchairs.

I see people acknowledge that they have only used a wheelchair a couple of times, that they do so with no regularity, and then speak for us. they speak about the discrimination we experience, the accessibility we need, they claim our identities. it's like they think we can't speak for ourselves. there are so many wheelchair users on every platform who are capable of speaking about whatever you think you need to talk about and we can do so with actual authority on the subject and real experience and knowledge.

you do not have the right to claim the experience of being a wheelchair user if you have only used a wheelchair a couple of times. knock it off.

leave talking about wheelchairs and the experiences of wheelchair users to actual fucking wheelchair users.

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interesting how tme/tma discourse is often blatantly intersexist… its almost like the terms reinforce the sex binary and do not account for the wide breadth of human transgender experiences… while still sorting people based on genitals and sex…

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sometimes i see cis people say "trans people will understand if you misgender them at first. i call my nephew 'her' all the time and he knows i don't mean it" no he doesnt. he probably never hangs out with you for more than ten minutes because that's how long you can last in a conversation before making him feel like shit. also he thinks you're, best case scenario, stupid for not being able to figure it out, or worst case scenario, uncaring about him and his needs. he doesn't like spending time with you. you're deluding yourself into thinking you're far kinder than you are. you're weird man.

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i hope this is ok to ask, i read ur post abt ABA. im autistic, but diagnosed late and never experienced ABA "therapy" but ive done enough reading abt it to be thankful i didnt go through it. im in college now to be a special education teacher, theres 1 other classmate of mine whos also autistic and weve both been so confused when our classes teach us abt ABA because it never lines up with the horror stories. weve discussed if were just lucky and have awesome teachers (maybe???), if ABA is applied differently in schools than in "therapy", or if the more insidious parts arent directly taught but things that get picked up in the field? i try to be really cognizant of it when ABA comes up in my classes because i have no direct experience with it but both me and my classmate are just kinda left in this weird place where were just really hyperaware of everything were taught and questioning the rationale at all times. do you have any insight to this? is ABA just different in a school setting than in therapy? does it come down to a practictioner and their personal beliefs about how it should be used? i dont know. i just want to teach people who are like me, but i dont want to hurt them. if you have any readings youd suggest i am very open to them, including if any followers have input.

god this is so late I hope you see it

ABA is not applied differently in schools. I'm not an expert on what in-school ABA looks like because I was not part of it. I can say that ABA as a concept has inherent problems. some of the overtly abusive practices (i.e filming a kid stimming while laughing at him <- real thing that happened) are picked up in the field or are a product of preexisting hatred of therapists. many of the problems with ABA are subtler when taught, from my understanding.

what could possibly be happening (assuming you have a good outside knowledge base of ABA therapy to know what ABA looks like) is that they're not teaching you ABA at all. it's becoming more common for other autism therapies to be taught under the label of "ABA" for a variety of reasons. this makes things a mess for autistic people trying to navigate therapies but it means that some practices marketed as ABA are actually fine and are just mislabeled.

if you aren't familiar with what true ABA looks like I'd recommend learning about it and comparing it to what you're taught. I suspect that could be what's happening if you're knowledgeable about the problems with ABA and aren't seeing them

edit to add: even if it's not ABA you should still be very critical of it. ABA often slips into other autism therapies

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anyway shoutout to people with paralysis and nerve damage and spinal cord and brain damage and nervous system disorders who are tired of people with adult ADHD diagnoses en-masse co-opting their terminology and claiming ownership of their struggles and taking over every post made about ur symptoms and experiences. ur anger and frustration and feelings of otheredness are valid and real and justified and ur not alone. adhd is not the only disability on earth that matters or is worth acknowledging and there’s nothing wrong with talking about yourself and your own struggles

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as Christmas quickly approaches I wanted to give a word to people who celebrate. if you have people in your life who struggle to/can't eat for whatever reason please be kind and patient with them. Christmas is a very food-centered holiday so when you can't eat or have a hard time eating it becomes a very stressful and isolating holiday. when you are sitting at a dinner table surrounded by people eating it's often a cruel reminder of what you can't do and how you don't fit into the group. be kind to your disabled loved ones if they choose to excuse themselves from the dinner table entirely.

to the people who can't/struggle to eat, I know the impending doom of Christmas dinner is arriving. you are part of the group that you chose to celebrate with even if you can't celebrate the same way. it's easy to feel excluded from the group when you can't participate in a core part of the celebration but you are so important to that group of people. you are not obligated to sit at the dinner table if it brings up negative feelings for you and you certainly do not owe anyone making yourself sick for the sake of participating. dealing with gastrointestinal disease is more traumatic than people realize and you're allowed to have a complicated relationship with food that might even include not wanting to be around it. be gentle with yourself 💕

-> this post is about gastrointestinal disorders but people with other conditions affecting Christmas dinner are welcome to relate as well