#food science courses

[soarrenbluejay]

Supervillains for a community. (Well, except those jerks over in Gotham, insular lot, but they’re they’re one problem) Of course they do- supervillains are a group defined by strong opinions and a willingness to see them through, often with a healthy dash of societal failures and trauma as a catalyst.

The fentons, while not active even on the online message boards, are well known and explosive when they do show up, full of fascinating insights and hours long rants on mad science on hair pin turns courtesy of that ADHD attention span. Bit of the cryptids you feel honored to bump into kind of deal. Besides, like a good quarter of the community as it aged, they’d settled down and had kids (not necessarily in that order) and taken it very seriously! Out in the middle of nowhere, where even the most fearsome government outpost members, the local branch of the IRS, quake before them in fear. Out of the way.

Reveal gone okay-ish, Danny moves to Gotham still to get some air bc now things are Akward and he landed that engineering scholarship which is loads better than any other college would give him with his track record. So- the mysterious Fenton children are finally crawling out of hiding! Everyone is psyched! And roll in to Gotham en masse to witness the fireworks!

Except Danny is Determined To Be Normal. He’s had enough of the throwing himself into harms way shit for a lifetime- he wants to be free to peacefully built Rube Goldberg machines and unintentional increasingly complex bombs to his hearts content. JAZZ, on the other hand- the coveted token Normal One, has finally snapped! She’s watched her baby brother she practically raised throw himself into danger over and over and could do nothing, and now that she’s exposed to this whole network of superheroes outside of small town Amnity, some of those uglier emotions are coming out. And boy is she pissed! And can’t afford to show it much while filing the paperwork to have Arkham legally razed to the ground!

See I love this idea of like, niches in superhero society. A villain the heroes know they can plop their kiddo down with for an exciting afternoon brawl while they take care of a particularly grisly case and come back to a few hours later ranting about some new life lesson and a new move they really want to try. A villain who has a functioning moral compass despite their somewhat batshit long term goal and you can contact to fuck with another villains’s plan so they can laugh at them and you can have an easy afternoon. One who pries up hostile architecture and fills in pot holes, idk man. Get creative here, there’s such potential!

So Jazz becomes a Training villain- someone the heroes know their sidekicks will walk away from in a fight 100% of the time, usually with some new lesson to ponder and only a couple of bruises. Sometimes even snacks!

She also absolutely ambushes mentors to check that they’re worth the kiddo, which they appreciate once they get over being jumped in a dark alley by a 7 foot Amazon trained force of nature. They are not used to being on that side of the jumping, it’s a little unnerving.

(Yes, she low key adopts Shazam upon checking in with him on cursory ‘is the main hero of this city and asshole’ checkin. Yes, the super clones get yoinked out from under Superman’s negligent thumb to go have a blast with Ellie. What about it?)

This however only encourages more assorted weirdos to crawl out of the woodwork. It’s not often one of their own forfeits their potential spot for the running of the coveted Most Normal I Swear prize, but when they do it’s bound to be good! But jazz is off hounding various heroes and punching the faces in of pedophiles and shit whenever there’s no cape within easy reach, and so is a mite bit harder to contact than Danny, who has innocently gotten an apprenticeship under a clockworker for access to their workshop and is gleefully going about doing nerdy shit with great abandon.

Plus this is Gotham. No one gives a shit if someone in the Mad Alchemist uniform and still smoking from their latest experiment pokes their head in a window to bother the local shrimp teen- none of the usual social rules apply, everyone’s crazy here! So everyone drops any and all attempts at masking and just acts their genuine unhinged selves, much to the alarm of the Bats and frustration of Danny.

Bc he cannot get these mfers to go. Away. Even liberal use of the creep stick has little effect when the interloper is calibrated for an opponent with super speed or laser vision or whatever, and he’s trying to maintain his guise as a Normal College Student Do No Investigate.

So he calls in the big guns. He’s not super active in the supervillain kids group chat ever since things in amnity calmed the fuck down post becoming King and then immediately using a loophole that says he will not take the throne until he is grown, as defined by finishing learning his trade a la the medieval standards Pariah set up. So he can just take his sweet ass time with his graduate degree and out of inter dimensional bull shit that much longer! Point is, he hasn’t taken the chance to rant over there in a while, so his Crazy friends are getting a lil worried.

The change to come over and shout at their batshit crazy but (mostly) well meaning parent AND see Danny? Score!

The bats, however, are getting awfully suspicious about this one kid that villains from all over the country are flocking to, especially young and upcoming ones as of recently! And he’s acting his engineering course- all the worst rogues are known to have flown through their PhD studies prior to Cracking. They seem to have a real problem on their hands with this Fenton guy.

[frenchiepal]

21.10.24 🍁 first day of my first master's semester! even though one class was cancelled i came back home utterly exhausted but i was overjoyed to finally attend linguistics courses again <3 missed it so much

[sysig]

Experimentation (Patreon)

[ryuusea]

sherliam halloween doodles, based on sensei’s art

[askblueandviolet]

Have you ever tried dating Syntax?

MASTER POST

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[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Valicer Severance AU Time

Okay, so, it's been a while since I talked about this one -- blame various things in my life being distracting and having trouble getting all of my thoughts together, for there are a loooot of thoughts. But I am here now and we are going to talk about it, damn it. Let's go --

-->To recap from my previous post, this is a multi-fandom crossover AU using the premise of the "Severance" (2022) Apple TV+ show, where a group of workers for the Lumon company have their consciousnesses "severed," splitting their minds into Innies (who only exist on Lumon's "severed floor" and are perpetually at work, with no memories of their outside lives) and Outies (who only exist outside the floor and have no memory of what they do at work), with the switchover between the two happening in the elevator that goes to and from the severed floor. My AU would focus primarily on the Innie versions of Victor, Alice, and Smiler, who together with their supervisor Wheatley make up the Macrodata Refinement team on the severed floor of Aperture Science. Because I can't see corporate malfeasance and not think "Aperture Science." XD

-->Some worldbuilding for you about how the severance procedure came about in this universe: When Cave Johnson got sick and started demanding that, if they couldn't successfully shove HIS consciousness into a computer before he died, they shove CAROLINE'S into a computer instead, one lab boy, seeing how reluctant Caroline WAS to become a computer, went, "Well, what if we try copying your brain into a computer instead?" Caroline was more on board with that, and they gave it a go --

And got GLaDOS, a computer intelligence that had most of Caroline's personality and intelligence, but none of her memories. This version of GLaDOS did indeed still try to kill the scientists (pissed off by them insisting she was an "imperfect copy" and yet trying to force her to work for them regardless), but they managed to shut her down -- and Caroline, despite the danger, thought there was something to this. They thus started experimenting with scanning the brains of various employees, turning them into artificial intelligences, and seeing what resulted. Some were -- imperfect (one "personality core" wouldn't do anything but recite cake recipes, while another wouldn't stop going on about space), while others were almost perfect replicas of their human counterparts, just without any memories of who they were before. Which made them more amendable to doing jobs that their human counterparts might have balked at. Caroline was all for having a workforce that couldn't REMEMBER why they might not want to work at Aperture and do inadvisable science, and thus the severance chip was born!

-->And one of the first test subjects for that chip? Why, none other than Test Subject 0001, aka Chell! Who was just as intent as escaping THIS version of Aperture as she is the canonical one. The scientists at Aperture were hoping that her Innie would be much more amendable to doing all their tests without complaint --

Instead, they got an even angrier Chell who, upon realizing she couldn't fucking remember anything, rebelled by refusing to even talk to anyone and tried even harder to escape. The scientists decided to try and put her under the supervision of one of their newly-made personality cores -- a scan of one of their janitors, Stephen "Wheatley" Wilco -- to see if the talkative robot could maybe convince her to be more compliant --

Instead, Wheatley -- who, having overheard some scientists talking about the outside world and grown very curious about it -- ended up befriending Chell and helping her escape. The IDEA was that he would join her in the elevator to the surface world once he got her safely inside -- but when he disconnected from his rail, Chell failed to catch him. And of course, once the elevator went up, Chell swapped to her Outie form, who had no idea that Wheatley even existed, and Outie!Chell just fucking ran for it when she reached the surface. Leaving poor Wheatley still trapped in Aperture. The angry and embarrassed scientists promptly wiped his memory of the whole incident and moved onto new test subjects, figuring maybe they should start with office workers instead...

-->Bringing us to the "present day" and the Macrodata Refinement team! So why exactly are Victor, Alice, and Smiler all down there when they're not canonically Aperture employees? Well --

Victor signed up after the death of his fiancee Victoria Everglot and their mutual friend/secret third Emily Merrimack during a mugging perpetrated by Emily's old boyfriend Barkis Bittern. The poor guy ended up extremely depressed after their deaths and even tried to take his own life, which led to him (unwisely) allowing his parents to take more control over his life and finances to stop that happening again. They were told about the program by one Dr. Kellard Kelman, one of Aperture's chief psychiatrists and "social compliance officer," and they talked Victor into trying it so he'd have at least eight hours a day where he wasn't moping about his lost love (William also wanted to see how it worked because, well, as owner of Van Dort Fish, he was interested in the procedure for his own employees...).

Alice was signed up for the program after it was offered as a "rehabilitation program" -- to the prison she was currently in. Yes, unfortunately in this reality, while Alice did successfully shove Bumby in front of a train for what he did to the children of Houndsditch and her own family, she was subsequently caught and convicted of murder. (With the silver lining being that Bumby was exposed for all the horrible things he was doing in the process, so the public is pretty sympathetic to her reasons for murder.) She wasn't exactly keen on the program, as you might admit, but as a prisoner of the state and an orphan with no one really speaking up on her behalf (not even Nanny, who thought it might be good for Alice to forget Wonderland, even for a short time each day), she didn't really have a choice in the matter.

And Smiler -- well. Smiler, aka Marmaduke Kelman, had no interest in joining the program, having no real idea it existed because they'd gotten away from their asshole father as soon as it was possible for them to do so. They were happily living on their own, hanging out with their friends and working a barista job they loved while studying chemistry in college --

And then Kelman, with the help of his assistant Miles Cedars, managed to kidnap them and forced the procedure on them because a) he thought it would make his "son" more socially compliant and b) it would look good for Aperture for his kid to have gone through the procedure as well. Smiler, as you might imagine, was furious about the whole thing, but unfortunately they were also trapped inside Kelman's "Sanctuary" and unable to do anything about it. The most they were able to do was to convince Kelman to let them keep their purple-tipped hair and yellow contacts -- and that was only because Kelman decided that Smiler asking for a haircut "would be a good sign that you're becoming more socially compliant." (Smiler made a vow right then and there that they would do ANYTHING they needed to maintain their haircut.)

-->As for the order they were "hired" -- Alice entered the program first, then Victor came along about a month later, and Smiler a month after that. However, despite being the second employee hired, Victor is in fact the Team Lead of Macrodata Refinement (aka MDR) because Nell insisted he have some sort of "managerial" role, and that was the best they could offer under the circumstances. Innie!Victor has no freaking idea why he's Team Lead and doesn't actually want the position, basically ignoring it as much as possible.

--As stated above, their supervisor is Wheatley, post-Chell memory wipe, with the scientists wanting to see if his "deviant" behavior of "wanting to escape the horrible basement" comes back despite the change in circumstances. Caroline especially wants to keep an eye on this experiment after the whole "Chell" debacle, so she takes on the persona of "Miss Glados" for the Innies, serving as their terrifying and misanthropic boss. She finds it a great way to blow off steam after having to play up the perky "Ms. Caroline McLain" persona for the rest of the world. Dr. Kelman rounds out the department as their "social compliance therapist," monitoring the group for unwanted behaviors and pushing them to become happy corporate drones with the help of "guard core" Rick (who keeps hitting on Alice, to her annoyance). (And yes, Rick has a human counterpart upstairs -- ironically, he's the security guard who swipes all the severed employees into the elevator at the start of their day. And yes, he still hits on Alice, to her annoyance.)

-->The AU would "officially" start with Smiler's hiring, with their Innie self ("Marmaduke A" according to their badge -- Dr. Kelman thought it best not to even hint that they might be his kid) waking up on a table in a conference room and being asked a series of questions to confirm that all their personal memories have been locked off by the chip (as per "Severance" canon). Once that's been sorted, they're introduced to the rest of the team by Wheatley, and learn from them what exactly it is they do -- which is stare at files full of various numbers on their computers and try to sort them into bins based on if the numbers make them feel scared, happy, angry, or sad. (Smiler: ...we sort numbers based on vibes? Alice: [sarcastically] The work is mysterious and important.) They also learn the incentive system for sorting these numbers -- at 10% file completion, you get an Aperture-branded eraser; at 25% done, you get an Aperture-branded finger trap; at 75% done, you get a "Music & Dance Experience" (a five-minute dance party for the team); and at 100%, there is a Cake Day for everyone. Though -- well, I'll let Alice explain it --

Smiler: We get cake if we complete a file? Victor: Ah -- theoretically. Alice: Yes, don't get your hopes up -- for whatever reason, these files mysteriously vanish on us after a while, and we have to start new ones. Victor and I have never been able to fully complete one. Smiler: Really? Victor: [shaking his head] 73% is the closest I've come. Alice: 74% for me...so while earning the "Music & Dance Experience" is probably possible -- I think the cake is a lie.

:D

Oh, and there's also the possibility of earning a "waffle party" if the entire team does really well, which Wheatley is mildly obsessed with.

-->Speaking of food, the Innies have lunches provided for them by Van Dort Fish -- tuna fish sandwiches and carrot sticks! Every single goddamn day! Victor has made it clear that, if he ever meets him, he is punching "that asshole with the mustache" on the label. XD There is also a vending machine, with each Innie allowed two tokens per day to get snacks -- Victor, however, immediately warns Smiler off getting any of the pudding cups in there. Reason being, Victor got one of the blue puddings shortly after he was brought in, only for Alice -- annoyed with him for some reason, I haven't quite decided why yet -- to grab it from him and throw it on the floor -- and the damn thing BOUNCED all the way up to the CEILING. There's still a small blue stain up there. Among the "safe" snacks are dried blueberries, cubed ginseng, roasted peanuts, and "Raisins (Shriveled)." Smiler is naturally like "what" and Alice tells them "this place is so weird I bet they HAVE made unshriveled raisins."

As for drinks, the Innies have their choice between water, lemonade, and coffee from the coffee machine. Smiler feels oddly drawn to the latter, and it is quickly discovered that they are mysteriously amazing at making coffee -- to the point where, after allowing Smiler to make her a cup, even Miss Glados has to say "...good job." XD They cheerfully take over all coffee duties going forward, which everyone is happy to let them do.

-->Anyway -- after some time spent as part of the MDR team, dealing with the baffling work and the fact that they're trapped on the severed floor (because every time they get into the elevator, from their perspective, they just end up getting right back out again in different clothes -- Smiler had a bit of a hard time adjusting to that the first time it happened), Smiler goes "I am assigning myself the duty of keeping us all sane so we don't snap" and goes to raid the supply closet for stuff to decorate their cubicle with, settling on grabbing as many colorful Post-It notes as they can. Victor and Alice are initially reluctant to join in, but Smiler points out that there's nothing in their employee manual that says they can't decorate their cubicle -- and when Wheatley protests, saying they can't "deface company property," Smiler shows him how the notes just pull right off. And then gives him an orange Post-It note with "Supervisor" written on it, which makes him MUCH more amendable to the whole idea. XD The gang ends up having a lovely time using the Post-Its to make pictures on their walls, and even manage to suss out what they think are their favorite colors (Smiler yellow, Victor blue, Alice red).

-->Not long afterward, Smiler comes up with the name "Smiler" for themselves (they'd been going by "M" previously because, well, their name is fucking Marmaduke) and uses a label maker they found to update their name badge appropriately. Wheatley insists THAT is defacing company property and gives them their first write-up for it --

Smiler: What exactly happens when I get written up? Wheatley: It means you can't earn any incentives -- no erasers, no finger traps, no nothing -- for a week! [beat] Alice: [holds out her hand] Give me the label maker.

Yes, it's not exactly a deterrent. XD However, unfortunately, not long after that, Miss Glados shows up and starts making snide comments about their decorations -- and a fed-up Smiler deliberately tears a hole in their cubicle wall. Victor immediately is like "I'm sorry, I didn't onboard them well, please don't punish them," but Miss Glados will not be deterred, and Smiler is taken to the Break Room. Which, as per "Severance" canon --

is the place where they break you. Usually by having you recite an apology over and over and over again until they're content you mean it, but occasionally Miss Glados gets -- creative. Smiler gets the apology, though, and ends up staying in there three hours until she's content they're truly sorry. They slump back to their cubicle feeling miserable, and with the "Smiler" label on their badge scraped off. Victor and Alice immediately offer them water and comfort, talking about the first times they ended up in the break room (Alice actually ended up in there on her second day after trying to smash her way through the fire escape door with a fire extinguisher; Victor ended up there at the end of his first week for threatening to take his fingers off with a paper cutter unless they let him go home) -- and Wheatley, who was being a bit of an ass about the "Smiler" thing before, starts using their preferred name because now he feels bad.

-->From there, we have a bunch of random Innie adventures and discussions --

A) Victor taking the group on a trip to the "Johnson Memorial Wing" as a "team-building exercise" when Smiler asks who the hell "Cave Johnson" is anyway -- the little museum features such things like the giant singing "stone" head from the Desk Job game/tech demo, causing Smiler to go "Are we in a cult?" (Alice: "I haven't ruled out the possibility.") Grady from that game is also there as the local "Maintenance Core" -- Wheatley hates him because he gets to have an arm and Wheatley doesn't XD

B) Smiler discovering one day while playing with index cards that they can fold hopping frog origami, and the Innie trio wondering what other skills they have that they might not know about -- notably, Victor discovers that he can speak French when Wheatley tries to show off his command of languages (telling the core that he said "Please consult your user manual for help using this translation software"), and Alice realizes she seems to know a weird amount about photography

C) Relatedly, the trio wondering who their Outies are and why they would go through severance -- notably, Alice's theory is that they are all in jail and were made to get severed to make sure they remained "productive citizens." Smiler goes "like we're all murderers or something?" and Alice goes, "oh no -- you robbed a bank, and Victor probably committed tax evasion." An amused Victor goes "what about you?" and she replies, with a big grin, "Oh, I totally killed someone."

D) Alice dealing with hallucinations still, because being severed does NOT cure her mental illness -- most often, she sees horrible black goo dripping from the ceiling, and the walls being covered in rotting pink flesh, with occasional glimpses of this weird grinning cat and this white rabbit with a pocket watch observing her. Victor and Smiler do their best to support her as she deals with the weirdness

E) Smiler getting the orange pudding cup of the vending machine one day just to see what the "pudding" does -- after determining that it massively speeds up anything rolled across it after painting some on a piece of paper, the gang end up making rally cars out of office supplies and holding a race. Unfortunately, Miss Glados catches them partway through -- and while she doesn't force any of them to go to the Break Room, she does give them all a second-level write-up. Which means they don't get any vending machine tokens at all for the rest of the week. As you might imagine, they spend the rest of that week kinda hungry

F) The gang having "social compliance sessions" with Dr. Kelman which don't really make them feel any better about their lives -- Smiler in particular does not understand why the guy seems so annoyed by them using they/them pronouns, or why he's utterly obsessed with their haircut...

G) The gang going on a trip through the hallways after getting utterly bored and disgusted with their jobs, taking Wheatley with them on a handcart after it's revealed his management rail doesn't go to the places where they want to explore They find on their wanderings two people named Dan and Trish making a video of some sort (a reference to the "Smile Always" ad campaign for The Smiler); someone named "Des J." inspecting toilets in a room with a giant conveyor belt (aka the protagonist of Desk Job); a room of defective cores, including the aforementioned Cake Core and Space Core; a room full of musical instruments, with Smiler discovering they can play guitar and Victor piano; and a random guy who is taking care of baby goats and insists they're "not ready" when the MDR group shows up (this is something that actually happens in "Severance" itself -- though unlike in the show, the MDR team here gets to pet the goats). Unfortunately, all this wandering causes them to get lost, and they're unsure how to get back to their department --

And then Alice spots the mysterious white rabbit waiting for her at the end of the hall they're in. She asks Victor and Smiler if they trust her, and when they affirm they do, she goes "then maybe I can trust myself" and chases the rabbit. Rabbit, naturally, does successfully lead them back to their own department -- though unfortunately Miss Glados catches them as they return. Smiler immediately takes responsibility for the trip, having been the one to suggest the "mental health walk" -- however, Miss Glados decides that this is actually a failure of their Team Lead and punishes Victor instead, knowing that this will get to them worse than if she punished Smiler. Victor's actually in the Break Room for the rest of the day, to the point where, when he goes home, he has lost his voice from repeating the apology -- leading Outie!Victor to think maybe he's getting sick and take a day off. Smiler and Alice are naturally a bit freaked out by their coworker not showing up for work, and only calm down when Victor reappears the next day (a bit freaked out himself after he realizes they experienced a whole day without him).

H) On the opposite end of that, Smiler actually gets to 75% on a file and earns them all a Music/Dance Experience -- cue the gang actually having corporate-mandated fun with five minutes of "defiant jazz" played through Wheatley's speakers and learning which of them can dance XD

I) Victor doing something to piss off Miss Glados and getting one of the "creative" Break Room punishments -- namely, he's locked in a pitch black room and left to stew on his own baffled terror for a while. He ends up in the kitchenette afterward, curled up on the floor having a panic attack -- Smiler finds him in there and -- without really knowing how they're doing it -- hypnotizes him to calm him down (having Victor picture an image of that swirly-eyed smiley face they keep doodling when they're bored). Having thus discovered the talent, they end up using their surprise hypnosis skills on Victor and Alice at their request whenever they come in a bad mood thanks to their Outies or after a bad Break Room session or the like (yes, Alice too -- no memory of Dr. Bumby's hypnosis shenanigans, remember?). Victor and Alice are very grateful for the chance to turn their brains off for a bit and do their best to return the favor however they can to Smiler (Victor, it is eventually revealed, is quite good at shoulder massages).

-->Now, this is a Valicer AU, so we must have Valicer content -- so how do the romantic times start? Well, at one point after the hypnosis stuff is discovered, Smiler and Alice both help Victor coming in with a nasty headache thanks to his Outie. Victor desperately wants to pay them back for all the good they've brought into his life afterward, so he gets Wheatley to distract them right before their lunch break and tapes up a bunch of green and blue construction paper in the corner of the kitchenette by the vending machine and spreads more paper on the ground for a "blanket" for their sandwiches so they can have a picnic together (as it's the closest they'll ever get to going outside). Alice and Smiler are naturally touched, and the three enjoy a lovely lunch together...and during said lunch, Victor goes "fuck the fraternization policy" and kissing happens. Alice and Smiler fully reciprocate, and the trio become romantic partners as well as coworkers. Now, there are some initial worries about them getting punished when they realize their accidental "date" got recorded on the security camera --

But then they come in the next day, and discover Miss Glados giving Wheatley shit for practicing his "hacking" skills on the security footage, which reveals that he deliberately deleted the footage to stop them getting in trouble. :) The trio thank him, and keep their romantic activities (mainly just making out, though I have some ideas related to the "Kink Discovery" prompt on this year's Polyship Week prompt list...) to the storage closet from then on.

...and holy HELL this is getting long! O.O Like I said, lot of thoughts here. So let's take a quick break to have our tuna fish sandwiches, and we'll pick up after lunch for Part II -- The Rest Of The AU!

[rodrickheffley]

quite a romantic way of describing food in my anthropology textbook (from Eating Culture: An Anthropological Guide to Food, 2013)

[winglssdemon]

Omg

Weight loss does not automatically mean your body is eating your muscles and organs. The antivaxxer level of anti science on this site when it comes to weight loss is unbelievable.

Your body will only start "eating" your muscles if you're losing weight AND YOU DONT NEED TO AND ARE HEADED TO BEING UNDERWEIGHT.

WEIGHT LOSS CAN BE SUSTAINABLE. WEIGHT LOSS IS A VIABLE AND SOMETIMES A NEEDED OPTION FOR SOME PEOPLE.

HUGE REMINDER THAT THERE ARE TIMES WHEN WEIGHT LOSS CAN HELP DISABLED FOLK ESP FOLK WITH CHRONIC PAIN. It's not a cure-all but people with chronic pain experience large amounts of inflammation in the body and having excess adipose CAN cause inflammation just by itself. Compound that with extra weight on joints can make movement that may already be difficult even more difficult.

And while I'm on this rant, I'm SO sick of people acting like overeating and binging aren't disordered eating and also forms of self harm. I'm sick of the "body positive" activists who get SO mad that some fat people HAVE become fat through overeating and binging and want to talk about it. Like why can't those of us who gained weight through disordered behaviors actually talk about it? Why don't you talk about or let others talk about the fact that some people go from a restrictive eating disorder to a binge eating disorder.

Reasons Why I a Disabled Person decided to lose weight:

1. I knew I was eating too much junk food and not eating enough fruits and vegetables. So I started working on moderating how much junk food I was intaking and I have been trying really hard to make sure I choose healthier options.

2. My chest was/is too big. It was beginning to cause actual dysphoria issues along with the excess weight giving me constant shoulder and neck pain. Weight loss cannot be targeted at any specific part of your body, but overall weight loss can help you lose cup sizes.

3. The food was making my chronic pain worse. Many ultra processed foods are known to increase pain in people with chronic pain and it's been proven in multiple studies that eating a healthier diet can help decrease pain. It won't get rid of it, but it can help.

4. I was using food as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Stress eating is not actually helpful in the long run. Sure it makes you feel better while you're eating it, but once it's gone the problems, the pain, the stress is all still there.

5. I want to be able to use my crutches and KAFOs more often and having already lost a fair amount of weight, I can definitely 100% say that I have less difficulty using them than when I was at my heaviest. It's easier for myself to push myself in my wheelchair, and it's easier to propel myself in sled hockey. Among this, getting a bigger chair was just out of the question when I last ordered my most recent chair. The world is already so hostile to wheelchair users and spaces are already so narrow, it's easier to have a smaller chair if possible. Like we can talk all we want about how things need to be more accessible and universal design needs to be implemented everywhere so people in all sizes of wheelchairs esp those in power chairs, can get around easily without this being something to worry about, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to get through as best I can, and making sure I'm not going any bigger with my wheelchair is legit just something I have to do.

And you know what, even with all of these reasons, there's still the fact that people deserve bodily autonomy so if I want to safely lose weight for ANY reason, then that's my choice.

[nightshadeowl]

thoughts on etho

Etho is cool. He's not overrated or underrated, he's just-right-rated. The hype is correct.

I still don't get how anyone can have watched every single one of his videos considering how long the solo Let's Play series alone is, which from my perspective seems to be just a regular rite of passage among Etho viewers, but all I have to say to that is more power to you

[immamapletreekid]

the fuck is unitary diagonalization someone let me out of here let me out let me out pLEASE (lost in the linear algebra catacombs)

[mythdr]

"Our attitude towards nature is a strangely contradictory blend of romanticism and gloom. We imagine it to 'belong' in those watercolor landscapes where most of us would also like to live. If we are looking for wildlife we turn automatically towards the official countryside, towards the great set-pieces of forest and moor. If the truth is told, the needs of the natural world are more prosaic than this. A crack in the pavement is all a plant needs to put down roots. An old-fashioned lamp-standard makes as good a nesting box for a tit as any hollow oak. Provided it is not actually contaminated there is scarcely a nook or cranny anywhere which does not provide the right living conditions for some plant or creature.

Think of the sites inside an urban area which can provide this opportunity: the water inside abandoned docks and in artificially created reservoirs; canal towpaths, and the dry banks of railway cuttings; allotments, parks, golf courses and gardens; the old trees in churchyards and the scrubby hawthorns at the back end of industrial estates; bomb-sites in old parts of the town and building sites in the new; the sludge of sewage farms and the more elegant mud of watercress beds. Every patch where the concrete has not actually sealed up the earth is potential home for some living thing."

-Richard Mabey, The Unofficial Countryside (1972)

i've been reading a lot of books about urban naturalism recently, and the one big thing they all talk about is how you HAVE to stop seeing nature as something that happens somewhere else. nature is not just charismatic megafauna and state parks and mountain ranges. nature is that abandoned lot that's growing native milkweed in it. nature is the murder of crows that lives in your block. nature is the moss growing on your roof and the dandelions growing in the sidewalk cracks and the song birds at your neighbor's birdfeeder. and you should care about it! you should notice it! that's YOUR nature!

[wallabywannabe]

I followed my vet's advice to a T and absolutely zero results. So then I followed a hunch of my own and...voila!

So I love my vet and she's the only reason I would hesitate to move too far away. I went through a lot of vets to find her when I was having trouble with my first cat.

I've grown and learned a lot and will always be learning more. I know anecdotal evidence is not great. I KNOW this. But the problem is there often isn't much else to go off of! And nutrition is especially lacking in veterinary medicine. All of the research is pretty much in the hands of the big pet food companies. Which is obviously suspect.

I have also learned that human doctors don't do a lot of nutrition schooling, which I believe carries over to how veterinary schools work. But at least there are human nutritionists that can fill that gap a little bit. That's not common for veterinary medicine.

Anyway, I refuse to believe feeding corn/wheat/soy/legumes/plant starches in high proportions can be good for obligate carnivores like cats. Zoologists and wildlife experts try to fit diet for captive animals in their care as close to what they would eat in the wild as possible. Why would it be different for domestic animals? Their brains are a little different from their wild ancestors which makes them domesticated, but their digestive systems have not experienced consistent evolutionary pressure for long enough to cause big changes there.

What Hills and Purina recipe formulators and scientists do is start with a cheap base of calories (corn, soy, or wheat) and add in supplements till it meets the basic nutritional needs for a cat to not develop short term problems (for a couple years). Long term problems do develop, because animals get sick. (But also I suspect that they get sick more often than they would because of the diet.) And they take their base formula and see if they can tweak things like pH and concentrations of vitamins and minerals to conteract a specific illness until they get results. It works for some diseases, so those they make food for and market it to vets. It goes through research and trials and results are measurable, so they're convincing and scientific! And they can sell them as a prescription diet at a huge markup.

But they don't do any research to see if feeding a more biologically appropriate ingredient profile would have even better results, or not lead to the problems in the first place. And they don't check long term to see if their tweaked prescription diet might cause other long-term problems down the line.

For example, I have never heard of a cat who has only ever been fed wet food and/or properly hydrated raw food who ended up with urinary crystals. It's very common in cats that eat dry kibble, though (but don't worry! Hills has several prescription diets for that!).

Anyway, I largely operate off the idea that I should feed wet and get as close to a carnviorous diet as possible with my cats. Not easy to avoid all problematic ingredients in commercial foods, but I don't feel confident enough that I have the time and energy to make my own at this point.

Petra started having loose stool about 8 months ago. No other symptoms. Vet went through the checklist with bloodwork and a detailed ultrasound, leading to a diagnosis of simple colitis. Vet told me I could keep feeding her normal food, but I just had to add a probiotic in the morning and beer root fiber powder in the evening.

Now, I already give a probiotic that I've had great results with. It completely cured my first cat's constipation, and I have noticed that if I don't give it, my otherwise healthy current cat Purrcy seems to get a little constipated. My theory, and this I admit could have no merit because it's just an idea I can't prove, is that wild cats eat the intestines of their prey and get a dose of naturally occurring probiotics every meal that way, so maybe their intestines aren't built to maintain a healthy microbiome without redosing every meal.

So I give my cats probiotics. I worked for a bit in microbiome research, so I know enough to know that we really don't understand why probiotics work or what certain strains are doing exactly, but we know from trial and error that there are benefits. I started with an expensive pet probiotic with several strains and good reviews, which worked. I eventually switched to a human brand with a few strains that have good general reputations, high CFU count, and good reviews. That worked just as well.

My vet gave me a Purina brand probiotic to use instead. She said try it and see, and if I didn't see results I could go back. This prescription (expensive) Purina probiotic only has 1 strain that I hadn't been using, but I didn't do any research on it so I don't know much about it. I was going to follow her instructions exactly, though, to see if there was anything to it.

So I gave the new probiotic and the fiber in my cat's food, slowly increasing the amount of fiber as directed. I reached the full dose she initially recommended, but she said I could do more, so when I saw no improvement, I eventually went up to double that.

6 weeks of no improvement. Her stool might even have gotten more watery. And on top of that, Petra had stopped eating as much of her food, either because she could taste the fiber at that dose or it was making her feel too full.

I was willing to try the plant fiber additive. Sometimes when you have an illness you need an atypical diet. That happens. But after it didn't work, I decided to try something else.

In the past I tried a lot of different foods with my constipation-prone cats. Most raw foods I couldn't feed 100% of the time, because they tend to have a rather high bone content, since they grind the meat whole with the bone in. Too high and it would make constipation worse. (There was ONE brand that substituted bone with eggshells as a calcium source and it was amazing until the FDA shut it down after testing a sample that had been in a hot car all day. I'll never forgive that. RIP Radcat!)

But, maybe bone was what I needed to firm up my cat's stool and get her colon back on track, since fiber wasn't doing it.

So I got a couple types of commercial raw. One brand Petra loved immediately. It's been 2 days and already her stool has form to it again!

I'll have to monitor for constipation in the other cat, since trying to separate their food seems to give them a whole new anxiety disorder. Maybe I'll have to tinker a ratio of wet and raw. But I think I'm finally on the right track!

I'm going to tell my vet what I discovered and I'm sure she'll be fine. Like I said, I think she's great! But there are still a lot of unknowns in veterinary medicine.

I don't think there's any magical property about raw food that makes it better than canned or kibble. (I do think there are a lot of dental benefits to feeding whole prey raw or pieces of raw meat/bones, but that's a whole other post). The commercial raw food I buy has been pasteurized, so does it really even count as "raw" still? But what's important is these raw foods tend to have species-appropriate ingredients, and this isn't the first time I've seen that kind of diet make a difference.

[jcmarchi]

Q&A: A graduating student looks back on his MIT experience

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Q&A: A graduating student looks back on his MIT experience

Christopher Wang is a senior graduating from MIT this month. The Course 6-3 (Computer Science and Engineering) major has discovered a love for theater during his time at MIT, developing his playwriting, acting, directing, and even lighting design skills through involvement in student groups. But he nearly didn’t come to MIT at all; a chance conversation with his brother brought him to Cambridge. Here, as he prepares for his next adventure, Wang shares some of his experiences at the Institute.

Q: Describe one conversation that changed the trajectory of your life.

A: I spent the first five semesters of undergrad at Washington University in St. Louis, during most of which I was a biology major pursuing medicine. When I switched to computer science at the start of my fifth semester, my brother suggested in passing that I apply for transfer admission to MIT. I did, but honestly, it was mostly to appease him.

By the time the decision came out, I had completely forgotten about it, so I was shocked to see that I’d gotten in! I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go — I had already settled in at WashU, academically and socially, so it was tough to give all that up — but one of my professors told me to go and never think twice about it.

It’s pretty crazy to think about how different my life would have been if I hadn’t applied or gone. I think I would have been happy either way, but looking back, I feel incredibly lucky to have met all the thoughtful, visionary people I know now at MIT.

Q: What’s your favorite place on MIT’s campus to study, and why?

A: One, the lounge on the sixth floor of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning building. It’s a small-ish, cozy room with several tables and a nice view of Mass Ave. In particular, I like that it’s usually pretty empty, which makes it a great place to pset together or work with teammates on a group project! One caveat is that you need to be a Course 11 major/minor/concentrator to gain access, but thankfully, I have two friends who can let me in.

Two, the third-floor atrium in Building 46, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences building. I often run into friends going to or from their Course 9 classes, and sometimes pastries or snacks are also served. Most of all, it empties out in the evenings, and I just really like studying in wide-open empty spaces!

Q: What’s your favorite food found on, or near, campus?

A: I’m a bit of a health nut, so I’m going to say Life Alive! They have a lot of salads, grain bowls, and wraps that are both healthy and delicious, and the nutrition information is also on the website. My personal favorite items are the teriyaki shiitake wrap or the greens, egg, and cheese breakfast wrap. When I’m not being a health nut, I also really like Toscanini’s B3 (brown sugar, brown butter, and brownies) ice cream.

Q: Tell me about one interest or hobby you’ve discovered since you came to MIT.

A: Theater! I didn’t have any theater experience before coming to MIT, but MIT has a vibrant theater scene, including both academics and student groups. I got involved in student groups like Next Act (a musical theater group based in Next House that performs for Campus Preview Weekend every year) and Life On Stage Theater (a group focused on performing contemporary plays) and I completed my HASS [Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences] concentration in Theater Arts as well. I’ve dabbled in many different aspects — ranging from writing plays to playing a Spanish womanizer onstage, from designing lights for dance shows to directing a musical written from scratch. The theater community at MIT is very beginner-friendly, so I’d highly suggest checking it out for anyone who’s interested!

These days, I also frequently seek out plays to watch in the Boston area, and even travel to [New York City] for particular productions from time to time. Of the ones I’ve seen, my favorite musicals are “Beetlejuice” and “Come From Away,” and my favorite plays are “Wolf Play,” “Manahatta,” and “Prayer for the French Republic.”

Q: Tell us about your favorite game — it could be a computer game, a board game, a video game, a game you made up to make long car rides more interesting — anything!

A: Ooh, that’s tough. I’m a big fan of video games and don’t have one clear favorite, so I’m going to cheat and give several:

“Celeste:” A precision 2D platformer with perhaps my favorite game-play mechanics and level design! The physics just feel so smooth and fluid, and the game constantly introduces new mechanisms that allow for some extraordinarily satisfying movement. The difficulty ramps up to insane levels throughout the game, but it’s always paced such that each level is just doable enough for you to keep pushing through. It also has some really nice pixel art and music, and a simple yet powerful story about struggling with anxiety and self-acceptance. (It’s also surprisingly popular among my friends at MIT!)

“A Dance of Fire and Ice:” A precise rhythm game where geometry meets music! Two rotating orbs traverse a track, and you have to tap in rhythm based on the shape of the track. A series of tiles in a straight line (180-degree angles) represents a quarter-note beat, whereas eighth notes are represented by 90 degrees, triplets by 60 or 120, and so on. It makes more sense when you see it, so if this sounds interesting, take a look here!

“13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim:” Of all the sci-fi stories I’ve consumed, this game has the most intricate, staggering, mind-blowing one by far. The basic premise is that 13 high school students are tasked with using the Sentinels — giant mechanized robots — to fight off the kaiju (monsters) invading their world — but that description barely scratches the surface. It takes every science fiction element ever known and combines them all into a single narrative in unique and subversive ways. The game includes the intersecting story arcs of 13 different protagonists that you can play in (mostly) any order, resulting in a dizzying amount of complexity, but never so much that you lose interest. Along with the narrative segments, the game also includes several dozen real-time strategy tower defense game-play stages. Did I mention that the music and art are also gorgeous?

Q: What’s your favorite TikTok, Instagram or YouTube video?

A: “me and the boys after watching mary poppins”

Q: What are you looking forward to about life after graduation? What do you think you’ll miss about MIT?

A: I’m looking forward to having free time that’s completely mine, without having to worry about whether I should be getting ahead on work, investing more time into my research, etc. Normally I’m good at establishing a sustainable balance even at MIT, but sometimes it’s all too easy for me to do too much without realizing how much strain I’m putting on myself. This semester, I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until spring break finally hit.

But that flexibility goes both ways, too: I’ll miss psetting with friends in the evenings on a problem that’s enraptured our brains. I’ll miss the freedom to sip tea and read a book on weekday afternoons without worrying about being somewhere. I’ll miss the opportunities to organize last-minute food outings and hiking trips, the ease of walking down the hall and knocking on people’s doors, the spontaneity of “Smash Bros.” sessions in the dorm lounges.

Most of all, I’ll miss the friends I’ve made here — the friends I play party games with, the friends I go running with, the friends I talk with about the future and our ideals and the kinds of people we want to become. For all of you, I wish nothing but the best, and I hope we still find ways to remember and see each other once we graduate.