Like most people don’t like to admit this, but one of the reasons a lot of us have so many mental health issues is because we live in a world that has basically become untenable. People can’t afford basic necessities, let alone to cultivate their interests or take breaks and rest or do any of the things necessary for good mental health. People my age are wracked with debt, working at jobs they hate or studying topics they hate, living in a shitty apartment with five roommates. We live in a world that’s very hard to be healthy in. So while yeah, a lot of people obviously do have mental illnesses that would need medication no matter what, they are greatly exacerbated by these issues, and a lot of people have basically just been thrust into an eternal situational depression. So if that doesn’t change, medication is just a band-aid.
And for people suffering, it’s okay to acknowledge your illness is a direct result of being in a terrible situation. It neither invalidates your illness or people who have that illness genetically.
Same goes for more personal-level harmful life situations. If you’re stuck in a destabilizing environment, medications may or may not even help while you’re still living under bad conditions.
None of that is your fault. No matter how invested some people may be in blaming things on you, to avoid looking at/addressing bigger problems in the situation.
And none of this is zero-sum. That type of thinking only harms people more.
I feel like getting people to recognize this as a default would make a huge difference in how bad it is too. Like it is another whole level of miserable frustration that you can be endlessly asking for help while simultaiously being shamed for NOT GETTING HELP or that help not working, because you are for all intensive purposes just stopping the bleeding on a wound that involves broken bones.
Sometimes just hearing yes, this is bullshit you did nothing to deserve is way more helpful then encoragement. Especially since there is a minimum amount of outrage needed for things to change and the fact there isn’t that much over the fact the majority of the population are mathamatically fucked as far as their odds for making it through things.
A caterpillar’s body is a squishy sausage of flesh and fluid encased
in a tough outer skin. As it grows it eventually gets too big for its
own skin, at which point it molts: the caterpillar cracks the old skin,
crawls out, and grows a new larger skin.
Each gum leaf
skeletoniser molts up to thirteen times before spinning a cocoon and
transforming into an adult moth. Starting from the fourth molt, the gum
leaf skeletoniser keeps the head shells from its old skins and stacks
them on its head.
Low placed two caterpillars in a petri dish, one with a head shell stack and one without, then introduced a predatory stinkbug into the arena and watched what happened.
The
stinkbug probed the caterpillar with its rostrum, a needle-like mouth
that injects toxins and sucks prey dry. In response the caterpillar
thrashed about, swung its head, regurgitated food and retreated.
The caterpillars without head shells succumbed within 14 seconds, but
the caterpillars with head shells thwarted the predator for at least
120 seconds – although they also succumbed in the end.
Often, the
bug stabbed the head shells instead of the caterpillar, suggesting that
the horn confuses predators. Also, when the bug stabbed the soft flesh
behind the armoured head, the caterpillar swung its horn to deflect the
bug’s needle.
It was a small study, so the results are inconclusive. But Low feels
“very confident that the head shell stack played a part in prolonging
the attack.”
First of all, it’s not nice to take pictures without sourcing them to the photographer. Which is doubly important because if you had you would have found the rest of Paul Wiggin’s photos of this sumatran tiger cub from the Chester Zoo and and used this one instead, which is objectively 10x better in every way
Like most people don’t like to admit this, but one of the reasons a lot of us have so many mental health issues is because we live in a world that has basically become untenable. People can’t afford basic necessities, let alone to cultivate their interests or take breaks and rest or do any of the things necessary for good mental health. People my age are wracked with debt, working at jobs they hate or studying topics they hate, living in a shitty apartment with five roommates. We live in a world that’s very hard to be healthy in. So while yeah, a lot of people obviously do have mental illnesses that would need medication no matter what, they are greatly exacerbated by these issues, and a lot of people have basically just been thrust into an eternal situational depression. So if that doesn’t change, medication is just a band-aid.
And for people suffering, it’s okay to acknowledge your illness is a direct result of being in a terrible situation. It neither invalidates your illness or people who have that illness genetically.
Same goes for more personal-level harmful life situations. If you’re stuck in a destabilizing environment, medications may or may not even help while you’re still living under bad conditions.
None of that is your fault. No matter how invested some people may be in blaming things on you, to avoid looking at/addressing bigger problems in the situation.
And none of this is zero-sum. That type of thinking only harms people more.
APOPKA, FL—Local man Jeremy Land reportedly voiced his preference Thursday for comic books that don’t insert politics into stories about people forced to undergo body- and mind-altering experiments that transform them into government agents of war. “I’m tired of simply trying to enjoy escapist stories in which people are tortured and experimented upon at black sites run by authoritarian governments, only to have the creators cram political messages down my throat,” said Land, 31, who added that Marvel’s recent additions of female, LGBTQ, and racially diverse characters to long-running story arcs about tyrannical regimes turning social outsiders into powerful killing machines felt like PC propaganda run amok. “Look, I get that politics is some people’s thing, but I just want to read good stories about people whose position outside society makes them easy prey for tests run by amoral government scientists—without a heavy-handed allegory for the Tuskegee Study thrown in. Why can’t comics be like they used to and just present worlds where superheroes and villains, who were clearly avatars for the values of capitalism, communism, or fascism, battle each other in narratives that explicitly mirrored the complex geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War?” At press time, Land was posting on a subreddit that he wished comics didn’t force him to identify with gay or black superheroes when all he wanted was stories about oppressive governments rounding up mutants whose only crime was to be born different.
Let’s talk about penguins, penguins that don’t just look cute in little sweaters, but who desperately need them to help recover from the potentially lethal affects of oil pollution. When their feathers become coated with oil, penguins lose their ability to keep warm. And when they try to preen their dirty feathers they end up ingesting the toxic oil. As a result oiled penguins frequently die from exposure and starvation. The Penguin Foundation at Phillip Island Nature Parks in Victoria, Australia takes in oiled penguins and uses knitted sweaters to keep the birds warm and prevent them from preening until their feathers can be properly cleaned.
And you can help them.
If you’re a knitter you can download the penguin sweater pattern here and send in sweaters. But wait, if you aren’t a knitter but still want to help, you can support the foundation by clicking here to donate or adopt a penguin. Put a penguin in a sweater and you’ve not only made the world a cuter place, you’ve also helped save a penguin.
I think the most healing thing my therapist has said to me was that I’m allowed to be angry and bitter about slipping through the cracks my whole life. I was so obviously and desperately in need of help from kindergarten to 12th grade, and only once did anyone respond, when I was 12, and then I went to middle school and fell through the cracks again. I got detentions for talking out daily in elementary and middle school. I broke down crying multiple times in class as a 17 year old in HS, which is, you know, not normal. I never did my homework, failed multiple classes every year and did summer school, all while ranking in the 99th percentile in state testing.
And nobody said “this isn’t right. someone pay attention to this girl.”
instead most of my teacher’s and a lot of my friends’ parents labeled me a problem child and couldn’t wait for me to be gone.
and I’ve spent all this time thinking “well, I’m getting the help I need and deserve NOW! It’s time to move on! Don’t focus on how, if someone had paid attention, I may be attending a college with a full ride scholarship right now, maybe have my dream job already, wouldn’t have spent so long suffering and suicidal.”
But my therapist told me, not only was it okay for me to be angry that literally all of the adults in my life but my mom and friend’s mom failed me, but she was also angry FOR me. And that I was allowed to be angry at everyone who let young Molly Anne slip through crack after crack. And that being angry and accepting that I was failed would help me move on.
And it has.
You’re allowed to be pissed off about the bad things that happened to you as a kid. You’re allowed to ask life “hey, what the fuck?” It’s part of healing.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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