alicedowntherabbitholeworld

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

“Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”

— Aristotle, Rhetoric

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

And it’s gonna be okay

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

I remember when I first found out the truth about “Somali pirates” I got chills because of how horrific the truth was and how insanely creepily well the media had twisted the situation. Every single fucking article making it seem like these “pirates” were just after money or something holding innocent people hostage and I never gave it a second thought, why would I? There was no indication that people were trying to legitimately fight off disgusting imperialism that left nuclear waste in their waters, that over 300 people have died from radiation sickness, that Europeans have been stealing Somalia’s seafood because they overfished their own waters and the indigenous fisherman are starving and so these “pirates” emerged to deal with those stealing their country’s natural resources. The truth is enough to make anyone sick to their stomachs.

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

PLANET EARTH II PRESENTED BY : DAVID ATTENBOROUGH

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

Nigeria sues Pfizer for $7bn over ‘illegal’ tests on children

The Nigerian government is suing the world’s largest drug manufacturer, Pfizer, for allegedly carrying out illegal trials of an anti-meningitis drug that killed or disabled children. Nigeria is demanding $7bn in damages from the US company for the families of children it says died or suffered serious side effects when the antibiotic Trovan was administered in the northern state of Kano during a meningitis outbreak in 1996. The Kano state government also has civil and criminal cases pending against Pfizer. The Nigerian authorities say that 200 children were part of the Trovan experiment without the approval of local regulatory authorities. They allege that as many as 11 died as a result of the treatment and others developed conditions including brain damage and paralysis.

Trovan was approved in the US in 1997 for use by adults but not children. Two years later the US Food and Drug Administration warned that the drug could cause liver damage and it has since been discontinued.

In court papers filed in Abuja yesterday, the government accuses Pfizer of conducting illegal tests on children.

“The plaintiff contends that the defendant never obtained approval of the relevant regulatory agencies … nor did the defendant seek or receive approval to conduct any clinical trial at any time before their illegal conduct,” it said.

A Pfizer spokesman in New York, Bryant Haskins, said in a statement that the drug was administered in accordance with Nigerian law.

“These allegations against Pfizer, which are not new, are highly inflammatory and not based on all the facts. We continue to maintain, in the strongest terms, that the Nigerian government was fully informed in advance of the clinical trial; that the trial was conducted appropriately, ethically and with the best interests of patients in mind; and that it helped save lives,” he said.

Pfizer has previously said that it obtained “verbal consent” from the parents of the affected children, and that the drugs were administered in a way that was “sound from medical, scientific, regulatory and ethical standpoints”.

Two years ago, a US court dismissed a lawsuit by several Nigerian families who allege that they were not sufficiently warned that their children could be affected by the antibiotic.

A civil and criminal suit by the Kano state government against Pfizer was postponed yesterday until next month. It is seeking $2bn in damages.

The Nigerian government is looking for compensation for the cost of treatment of the victims of the drug test and their families. It is also seeking $450m for what it says is the suspicion of western medicines created by the case.

The country’s health authorities say that the Pfizer controversy is partly responsible for many families in northern Nigeria refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated against polio. That in turn has been blamed for an outbreak that spread across parts of Africa. The Kano authorities also refused to distribute the polio vaccine.

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

capitalism is like. resting is a waste of time. eating is a waste of time. sleeping is a waste of time. playing is a waste of time. living is a waste of time. you must prove your worth to live here and everything else is a waste. and we’re taught not to question it. 

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

You want to know the logic behind my actions? 

Here is one explanation:

Call me by a man’s name instead of a woman’s, 

and suddenly every horrific thing I’ve done,

makes me a hero. 

“Medea’s Reasons” by Salma Deera

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

Fun fact: Gender and Sex are both human made constructs designed to describe natural phenomenon but are not actually based in any biological reality. Much like the concept of “species”, it’s a model, and no model is an actuality - then it would not be a model, it would be a fact. 

In truth sexual characteristics are diverse and varied and do not always match up with sex chromosomes; also, a sexual “binary” of sorts is not constant amongst all living things, and most organisms have other systems of reproduction. 

Furthermore, gender is the suite of societally-defined social roles and behavioral characteristics that is typically assigned based on the externally perceived sex of a child; and does not actually have anything to do with biology - even less so than sex. Even though it is assigned based on this externally perceived sex, a person’s gender does not have to remain with the one assigned; much as we don’t determine people’s careers based on who their parents were anymore, your birth has no limitation on who you are and what gender identity you construct for yourself. Since it is a societally defined construct, people can and do construct more than the two traditional ones, and all are valid. 

Just because you cannot handle your societally constructed worldview surrounding sex, gender, and genetics being dismantled by sociology & biology itself doesn’t mean, additionally, that you have the right to make other people feel unsafe and uncomfortable - in short, that you have the right to remove people from moral consideration - simply because you don’t like having your world view being dismantled. Believe it or not, the complexities of human behavior & the diversity of sex and reproduction in life cannot all be covered in a simple high school biology class. 

So next time you want to say “didn’t you pass biology” remember: a biology PhD student, who graduated from the University of Notre Dame with an actual degree in Biological Sciences, has reminded you that you’re wrong. 

There are more than two genders. 

The end. 

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

this morning NASA abandoned their mars rover Opportunity (aka Oppy) because it (she) got hit by a storm on Mars and it knocked her camera and wheels out and her last words to the team were “my battery is low and it is getting cold”. I know she’s a machine but I’m devastated. Oppy is the one who discovered water on Mars. RIP oppy ily space baby

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

Complaining about “grown women” being in fandom is the easiest way to get blocked by me.

I’m really sorry that misogyny has made you believe that women are only supposed to have kids, take care of the house, and maybe be allowed to have a couple “acceptable” hobbies.

Women are allowed to enjoy things for the rest of their lives and that includes continuing to be in fandom, a space they intially carved for themselves and other adults.

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

bg doodles + ref

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

Foliage from Sleeping Beauty, Upstate NY [OC] [2725x4088] - Author: moon_lova on reddit

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

normalize my 12th grade English teacher, who admitted that his favorite TV show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and when a male student suggested that it was because Buffy/Sarah Michelle Gellar was hot, wrinkled his face like he’d bitten into something rotten and dead, and said, “At my age (he was 53), there is nothing less sexy than a teenager. You’re all disgusting messes.” It was 1999, I was 17, and I’d grown up in conservative Christian schools and churches. In my life I’d heard heard dozens of sermons from male preachers and teachers and even some older students, whining about how hard it was to be a dude and not commit the sin of thinking sexual thoughts, and how they needed women to wear long skirts and cover their bodies to objectify them

and my bitter, misanthropic, atheist Brit Lit teacher, who hated my class because he was obsessed with teaching Huckleberry Finn but got stuck with Shakespeare and Jane Austen, was the first, and this day the last man I have ever heard articulate a rebuttal from the depths of his soul to the idea that it was normal for teenage girls to be desirable to middle aged men

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

school schedules are designed in such a way that kids are deprived of adequate food and sleep. the sleep piece has been written on extensively, but it’s quite plain that requiring young people to wake up at 6am during the developmental phase when they need the most sleep and tend to stay up later is a terrible public health move. 

from an eating perspective, it’s just as bad. say a middle or high schooler eats breakfast (if they even eat breakfast) at 7am, then doesn’t eat lunch until 11-12 (and lunch is often inadequate), then has after-school activities, etc. and may not get home until late afternoon, or eat dinner until evening. and kids in school are not generally allowed to snack in class or given time to snack between classes. these gaps between eating times are way too big for adolescents! they need a lot of food–more than adults–to support the growth process, just as they need more sleep.

it’s no wonder many kids start eating reactively in their teens, especially after school or at night–they’re not being adequately fed during the day. even if kids aren’t restricted from eating freely/fully at home, their daily lives regularly involve periods of energy deficiency. add to that the social pressures around body size, and it’s a recipe for disorder at an epidemic level

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]

Castle Hill, New Zealand & Milk [1638x2048] [OC] - Author: paul_wilson_images on reddit

[alicedowntherabbitholeworld]