sodapop000

[sodapop000]

Astrology doesn't seem to work.

[sodapop000]

Headcanon that Luke and Obi Wan got the money to pay Han Solo by selling the moisture farm at bargain-basement prices in Anchorhead without telling anyone that it was totally torched, and by the time anyone find out they were well off planet. Luke now has a reputation as one of Tattooine’s most famous con men despite the fact that it was Obi Wan who ran the con.

[sodapop000]

post on "eating viscerally and animalistically" for anarchist reasons and its just how indian people eat food with their hands

[sodapop000]

"I want to live in a world in which teenagers can fulfil their natural purpose of being annoying" and "I do not always want to be annoyed by the teenagers" are compatible sentiments

[sodapop000]

Great news! Belgium today becomes the first country in the world where sex workers can sign a legal employment contract and gain access to all employment-dependent social security (which includes saving for a pension, pregnancy leave, sick leave etc.). It gives sex workers more rights and makes them less dependent on the goodwill of their employer because they now have state protection through a legal contract.

[sodapop000]

im not criticising brilliant minds because i haven't even watched an episode yet, but i sincerely cannot imagine a less appealing endorsement than "its like house if everything that made house awesome was removed" like hey guys you wanna watch this zombie apocalypse movie but with the zombies taken out? yeah its just a group of people in a run club. house if he was nice and not addicted to drugs. well ok. let me show you the sinstine chapel without all that fucken paint i guess

[sodapop000]

Giulia Bersani, Self Portraits (2011- ongoing)

[sodapop000]

ramune

[sodapop000]

i feel strongly about this

[sodapop000]

One hill I will die on is that it's always infinitely funnier for mad scientist characters to have an actual area of expertise, and the narrower it is, the funnier it gets. Like, they're mad scientists. They can branch out from it. But it's a very special thing to be able to point to the person who built a death ray/engineered life in their basement/etc and be able to confidently state what they got their PhD in.

"Doc Brown is a mad scientist" Well yeah, obviously.

"Doc Brown is a mad physicist" Now we're getting somewhere!

"Doc Brown is a mad nuclear physicist" Specifically conjures up images of a guy who spent his PhD doing a million repetitive cyclotron tests and eventually said fuck this, I'm building a time machine instead. Comedy gold.

[sodapop000]

tiger tale toys 🐀🐁

[sodapop000]

I've seen a number of people worried and concerned about this language on Ao3s current "agree to these terms of service" page. The short version is:

Don't worry. This isn't anything bad. Checking that box just means you forgive them for being US American.

Long version: This text makes perfect sense if you're familiar with the issues around GDPR and in particular the uncertainty about Privacy Shield and SCCs after Schrems II. But I suspect most people aren't, so let's get into it, with the caveat that this is a Eurocentric (and in particular EU centric) view of this.

The basic outline is that Europeans in the EU have a right to privacy under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive (let's simplify things and call it an EU law) that regulates how various entities, including companies and the government, may acquire, store and process data about you.

The list of what counts as data about you is enormous. It includes things like your name and birthday, but also your email address, your computers IP address, user names, whatever. If an advertiser could want it, it's on the list.

The general rule is that they can't, unless you give explicit permission, or it's for one of a number of enumerated reasons (not all of which are as clear as would be desirable, but that's another topic). You have a right to request a copy of the data, you have a right to force them to delete their data and so on. It's not quite on the level of constitutional rights, but it is a pretty big deal.

In contrast, the US, home of most of the world's internet companies, has no such right at a federal level. If someone has your data, it is fundamentally theirs. American police, FBI, CIA and so on also have far more rights to request your data than the ones in Europe.

So how can an American website provide services to persons in the EU? Well… Honestly, there's an argument to be made that they can't.

US websites can promise in their terms and conditions that they will keep your data as safe as a European site would. In fact, they have to, unless they start specifically excluding Europeans. The EU even provides Standard Contract Clauses (SCCs) that they can use for this.

However, e.g. Facebook's T&Cs can't bind the US government. Facebook can't promise that it'll keep your data as secure as it is in the EU even if they wanted to (which they absolutely don't), because the US government can get to it easily, and EU citizens can't even sue the US government over it.

Despite the importance that US companies have in Europe, this is not a theoretical concern at all. There have been two successive international agreements between the US and the EU about this, and both were struck down by the EU court as being in violation of EU law, in the Schrems I and Schrems II decisions (named after Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who sued in both cases).

A third international agreement is currently being prepared, and in the meantime the previous agreement (known as "Privacy Shield") remains tentatively in place. The problem is that the US government does not want to offer EU citizens equivalent protection as they have under EU law; they don't even want to offer US citizens these protections. They just love spying on foreigners too much. The previous agreements tried to hide that under flowery language, but couldn't actually solve it. It's unclear and in my opinion unlikely that they'll manage to get a version that survives judicial review this time. Max Schrems is waiting.

So what is a site like Ao3 to do? They're arguably not part of the problem, Max Schrems keeps suing Meta, not the OTW, but they are subject to the rules because they process stuff like your email address.

Their solution is this checkbox. You agree that they can process your data even though they're in the US, and they can't guarantee you that the US government won't spy on you in ways that would be illegal for the government of e.g. Belgium. Is that legal under EU law? …probably as legal as fan fiction in general, I suppose, which is to say let's hope nobody sues to try and find out.

But what's important is that nothing changed, just the language. Ao3 has always stored your user name and email address on servers in the US, subject to whatever the FBI, CIA, NSA and FRA may want to do it. They're just making it more clear now.

[sodapop000]

If Pikachu were real, it would not be a very pleasant animal. An enormous mouse that shocks you like an electric eel. I would run from these beasts

[sodapop000]

Almighty Tumblr user Teaboot, what is your wisdom?

uh

You don't have to eat the gross jellybeans, you can just eat the ones you like, they have no nutritional value so there's nothing wrong with tossing em, candy is for fun not for food

Spiders and other household bugs are repulsed by cedar and lavender- you can get cedar balls online like how people used to sell mothballs and use em to keep spiders out of your closet

When you unplug an appliance from a wall there may still be an electrical charge in it for a sec so don't touch the metal end of the plug or you might get zapped a bit

Tiger's eye gems are a type of asbestos so if you crack or chip your tiger's eye you should probably not wear it anymore idk I'm not a rock scientist

If you wanna stay warmer when camping you should leave your sleeping bag rolled up until the moment you go to bed cause the fabric can absorb humidity in the air and make it damp and colder. Also fresh socks before you go to bed, even if your day ones still seem dry

Rayon, Viscose, and Lyocell are all made of plant fibers

Capsaicin is fat soluble, so if you eat something too spicy then drinking milk or cream will wash it away better than water. Swishing with vinegar should also work too if you're desperate

Fish are WAY more maintenance than you think they are. Goldfish can live well over a decade under proper care. Fish are not "easy" pets for the love of God. And they're smarter than you think they are

People having seizures are not going to swallow their tongue. At worst they may bite it. Hitting their head on something is a far bigger risk. Don't put shit in their mouth.

Children are more sensitive to bitter tastes as an evolutionary safety measure against accidental poisoning. If theycdont like eating something because it's bitter, remember that the taste is stronger to them.

Most symptoms of hauntings are also symptoms of gas leaks and black mold. Whether or not you believe in ghosts you should probably check you're not being poisoned before you drop money on a spirit medium

Purple skittles are grape flavour in some places like North America and blackcurrant in places like the UK. I personally prefer blackcurrant

Saguaro cacti can weigh literal tons and will crush you to death if they fall on you

Palm trees are technically grass

[sodapop000]

Source

[sodapop000]

[white-knuckling a submachine gun] i'm never puppy stressed when i do my puppy best

[sodapop000]

A doctor discovers an important question patients should be asked

This patient isn’t usually mine, but today I’m covering for my partner in our family-practice office, so he has been slipped into my schedule.

Reading his chart, I have an ominous feeling that this visit won’t be simple.

A tall, lanky man with an air of quiet dignity, he is 88. His legs are swollen, and merely talking makes him short of breath.

He suffers from both congestive heart failure and renal failure. It’s a medical Catch-22: When one condition is treated and gets better, the other condition gets worse. His past year has been an endless cycle of medication adjustments carried out by dueling specialists and punctuated by emergency-room visits and hospitalizations.

Hemodialysis would break the medical stalemate, but my patient flatly refuses it. Given his frail health, and the discomfort and inconvenience involved, I can’t blame him.

Now his cardiologist has referred him back to us, his primary-care providers. Why send him here and not to the ER? I wonder fleetingly.

With us is his daughter, who has driven from Philadelphia, an hour away. She seems dutiful but wary, awaiting the clinical wisdom of yet another doctor.

After 30 years of practice, I know that I can’t possibly solve this man’s medical conundrum.

A cardiologist and a nephrologist haven’t been able to help him, I reflect,so how can I? I’m a family doctor, not a magician. I can send him back to the ER, and they’ll admit him to the hospital. But that will just continue the cycle… .

Still, my first instinct is to do something to improve the functioning of his heart and kidneys. I start mulling over the possibilities, knowing all the while that it’s useless to try.

Then I remember a visiting palliative-care physician’s words about caring for the fragile elderly: “We forget to ask patients what they want from their care. What are their goals?”

I pause, then look this frail, dignified man in the eye.

“What are your goals for your care?” I ask. “How can I help you?”

The patient’s desire

My intuition tells me that he, like many patients in their 80s, harbors a fund of hard-won wisdom.

He won’t ask me to fix his kidneys or his heart, I think. He’ll say something noble and poignant: “I’d like to see my great-granddaughter get married next spring,” or “Help me to live long enough so that my wife and I can celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary.”

His daughter, looking tense, also faces her father and waits.

“I would like to be able to walk without falling,” he says. “Falling is horrible.”

This catches me off guard.

That’s all?

But it makes perfect sense. With challenging medical conditions commanding his caregivers’ attention, something as simple as walking is easily overlooked.

A wonderful geriatric nurse practitioner’s words come to mind: “Our goal for younger people is to help them live long and healthy lives; our goal for older patients should be to maximize their function.”

Suddenly I feel that I may be able to help, after all.

“We can order physical therapy — and there’s no need to admit you to the hospital for that,” I suggest, unsure of how this will go over.

He smiles. His daughter sighs with relief.

“He really wants to stay at home,” she says matter-of-factly.

As new as our doctor-patient relationship is, I feel emboldened to tackle the big, unspoken question looming over us.

“I know that you’ve decided against dialysis, and I can understand your decision,” I say. “And with your heart failure getting worse, your health is unlikely to improve.”

He nods.

“We have services designed to help keep you comfortable for whatever time you have left,” I venture. “And you could stay at home.”

Again, his daughter looks relieved. And he seems … well … surprisingly fine with the plan.

I call our hospice service, arranging for a nurse to visit him later today to set up physical therapy and to begin plans to help him to stay comfortable — at home.

Back home

Although I never see him again, over the next few months I sign the order forms faxed by his hospice nurses. I speak once with his granddaughter. It’s somewhat hard on his wife to have him die at home, she says, but he’s adamant that he wants to stay there.

A faxed request for sublingual morphine (used in the terminal stages of dying) prompts me to call to check up on him.

The nurse confirms that he is near death.

I feel a twinge of misgiving: Is his family happy with the process that I set in place? Does our one brief encounter qualify me to be his primary-care provider? Should I visit them all at home?

Two days later, and two months after we first met, I fill out his death certificate.

Looking back, I reflect: He didn’t go back to the hospital, he had no more falls, and he died at home, which is what he wanted. But I wonder if his wife felt the same.

Several months later, a new name appears on my patient schedule: It’s his wife.

“My family all thought I should see you,” she explains.

She, too, is in her late 80s and frail, but independent and mentally sharp. Yes, she is grieving the loss of her husband, and she’s lost some weight. No, she isn’t depressed. Her husband died peacefully at home, and it felt like the right thing for everyone.

“He liked you,” she says.

She’s suffering from fatigue and anemia. About a year ago, a hematologist diagnosed her with myelodysplasia (a bone marrow failure, often terminal). But six months back, she stopped going for medical care.

I ask why.

“They were just doing more and more tests,” she says. “And I wasn’t getting any better.”

Now I know what to do. I look her in the eye and ask:

“What are your goals for your care, and how can I help you?”

-Mitch Kaminski

Source