Day: December 14, 2017

An extra layer of clothes added all around, and I’m feeling slightly less like a block of ice now 🖒 I keep meaning to get some thermal leggings, but a pair of yoga pants under the sweats is bulkier than I want but much better than nothing.

I also managed to dig up some insoles to help make those new warm slippers wearable. Ordered some, but they haven’t arrived yet. Finally remembered there were some that should work in some shoes I haven’t worn in a while. Those are wearing out but usable, thankfully.

The other style of that brand I bought before came with nice cushiony soles. It pissed me off to find that these new ones really, really didn’t.

The problem? “Hollow inferior bottoms” with thin enough padding over top that I could clearly feel the hard plastic grid pressing into my heels 😬

Best illustration I could find quickly, and yes that type of sole deserves a big red X. (“[P]erson easily sprained foot” is the least of it 😒) Sensory issues plus neuropathy making it worse or no. And those were indeed sold specifically as extra-comfy granny slippers.

I was tempted to send them back over the cheap-ass manufacturing making them unwearable out of the box, but that would require too many spoons and finding something else. Glad to finally get them usable, and my feet less freezing.

raelis1:

So I really hate to do this, but I need help again. Last time I asked for help, the response was overwhelming. I’m so grateful to each person who reached out to me, who sent some money and/or signal-boosted my post. Your kindness and generosity are appreciated far more than I can ever express. But I’m in a situation where I have to turn to you once more.

My mom has colon cancer, 4th stage, and is suffering from pain and nausea. It’s been made clear to us there is no way to save her life. However, there should be some way to help relieve the symptoms. Right now she’s so bad she can barely sleep and eat. And the doctors in my area are not interested in trying too hard to help a hopeless patient. None of them have offered any help whatsoever.

I’ve found an doctor from an Israeli clinic online who’s willing to talk to me and my mom via Skype. All she can offer is some advice on palliative treatment, but it’s better than all we’ve got from the other doctors, so we’d definitely take it.

But the fee is $650, and we cannot afford that, having already spent all we had on medication that doesn’t even help.

If you have anything to spare, please consider helping me and my mom. If you can’t, I’ll be very grateful if you just reblog.

You can send your donations to paypal.me/heidimoose (set up by my friend because paypal/other similar sites don’t allow donations to Russian accounts, and this is where I have the misfortune to live)

Thank you very much in advance!

Raw sewage, hookworm and civil rights: UN official shocked at poverty in rural Alabama

conservativemalarkey:

dtsguru:

comcastkills:

lejacquelope:

“I think it’s very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this,” Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told Connor Sheets of AL.com earlier this week as they toured a community in Butler County where raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits.

The tour through Alabama’s rural communities is part of a two-week investigation by the U.N. on poverty and human rights abuses in the United States. So far, U.N. investigators have visited cities and towns in California and Alabama, and will soon travel to Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

Of particular concern to Alston are specific poverty-related issues that have surfaced across the country in recent years, such as an  outbreak of hookworm in Alabama in 2017—a disease typically found in nations with substandard sanitary conditions in South Asia and Subsaharan Africa.

The U.N. investigation aims to study the effects of systemic poverty in a prosperous nation like the United States.

90% of the poorest areas in America are in Republican Red zones. 

B-b-b-b-b-b-but poverty in the Red States isn’t all that bad, right?

Right?

Errrrr

Jesus christ, and to think how many billionaires we have in the US while this is happening

How is anyone surprised by this though?

Do people not look around?

Or is this really not prevalent anywhere but the South? It’s damn near everywhere you look in the South. I had friends in the high school with houses that when you flushed the toilet it went from a pipe in the trailer out to a ravine out back. I remember burning our trash. And it wasn’t unusual. I mean I’m in my thirties and it’s not uncommon for me to meet people in my generation who are the first in their family to have indoor plumbing.

The republicans aren’t blind. They aren’t naive. They’re just greedy. You can’t amass that kind of wealth by giving it away to the less fortunate. And don’t be tricked into thinking the wealthy Democrats are any better. Politicians will say whatever it takes to get voted into a position, and then they’ll vote however they need to in order to keep the money rolling in.

They really don’t look around. Myself included. (I knew things were bad in the Deep South but I didn’t think they’d been quite this bad since the ‘30s.) 

Like…  have you seen how many people complain whenever you talk about poor white people? Most middle-class folks don’t want to believe that things could be this bad for anyone. A lot of lefty middle-class white people want to believe that poor white people are poor because they’re stupid and racist and probably fat, and poor black people are poor because they’re ~discriminated against~ without thinking about what that means for 30 seconds. (And often with a side dose of subconscious racism– of course black people are poor, they can’t rise above their station.)

Talking about what that kind of ‘poor’ actually looks like? Bursts people’s bubble. It means they have to think about how people could be suckered to do something that’s not in their best interests, whether it’s white coal-mining families voting for Trump or black people being anti-abortion because they’ve bought the ‘abortion is racist eugenics’ lie. It means they have to realize that politics isn’t a Tribe Game where it’s good when Your Team wins and Their Team loses, it’s a matter of life and death for a lot of people. It means they have to realise people on Their Team aren’t just stupidracistcrazy, a lot of them are desperate and afraid and have been suckered by greedy people. 

And we can’t have that, can we? However will we have the Horse Race if we have to acknowledge that real humans’ lives are at stake? However will we get to feel superior over other people if we don’t think of social class as a morality-based hierarchy? </sarc> 

[insert obligatory disclaimer that a lot of Trump’s base had a college education and a lot of people who are in the worst circumstances here are black; it’s just that White Is The Default and so people get mad when you talk about poverty happening to Default People.]

(also side note: growing up in the semi-rural Midwest, we had a septic tank, and it busted really badly a couple times. the smell was undescribable and Mum, longsuffering as she was, had to keep us from playing in literal shit more than once. …I can’t imagine living like that full-time, but of course people do.) 

Raw sewage, hookworm and civil rights: UN official shocked at poverty in rural Alabama

The Unsung Role That Ordinary Citizens Played in the Great Crime Decline

zoobus:

larkandkatydid:

This is a big fucking deal.

Comparing the growth of other Kinds of nonprofits, the researchers believe
they were able to identify the causal effect of these community groups
Every 10 additional organizations in a city with 100,000 residents, they
estimate, led to a 9 percent drop in the murder rate and a 6 percent drop in
violent crime.
In a criminology field that has produced some eyebrow-raising ideas, this
one is actually not so surprising. That national finding echoes local studies
of some individual programs, like one run by the Pennsylvania
Horticultural Society that converts abandoned lots into green spaces and
that has been linked in Philadelphia to reduced gun violence.
The research also affirms some of the tenets of community policing: that
neighborhoods are vital to policing themselves, and that they can address
the complex roots of violence in ways that fall beyond traditional police
work.
“It’s absolutely consistent with what I would argue is probably the prevalent
theory of policing among the major cities today,” Richard Myers, the
executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said of the new
research.

“Any time people’s basic needs are met, violence goes down – that’s not new,” said Noreen McClendon, who directs the nonprofit Concerned Citizenes of South Central Los Angeles.

The Unsung Role That Ordinary Citizens Played in the Great Crime Decline

The post about asking random vets for info made me giggle. I am sure you are a lovely and talented vet, but unless you are within 50 miles of me, words are useless without action. It bothers me when people do that stuff it is lazy and neglect IMO.

drferox:

It is usually lazy, but it is the deferring moral responsibility that particularly irks me. Nobody should believe it’s ok to leave their animal without necessary veterinary attention by saying “Well, I sent Dr Ferox a message, job done.”

But more than that, it’s bad for us Vetblrs, and not just on Tumblr.

I stopped counting how many times old acquaintances, people I haven’t seen since school, have hit me up on Facebook to say “Cool, you’re a vet! Can I ask you about my X…” and I’m just sitting there like “Neat, it’s my time off and you want me to jump back to vet mode. Glad to know you respect me as a person.”

It would surprise some of you to know that I came on Tumblr for fun. I joined to keep up with some of my friends and learn about the things that they liked, and all the rest of *gestures around vaguely* this just sort of happened. I resisted at first, but veterinary medicine clearly owns me, so I might as well own it too.

But when I’m trying to relax and just get vague, cryptic messages about pet problems that I have no way of accurately answering, I honestly despair.

Not only from the moral load that makes me now feel responsible, even though I am not in any way, but because it doesn’t give me adequate down time.

And people do seem to think I’m now responsible for their pet’s welfare because they sent me a message. I even had one person tell me their dad was going to shoot their cat if I didn’t tell them how to treat it at home.

And I can’t actually do anything.

It’s distressing. It’s cruel to both the animals and the vetblrs, and this entitlement to our free time is a significant contributor to our poor mental health.

So I encourage people to call the vet, not message the other random vet. One is trying to relax and have some sort of life. The other is already on the clock and waiting for your call.