I bet our entire universe is in a tiny glass jar placed neatly on a shelf in some alien child’s room as a science project he got a C on.
No but like, just imagine though.
Some lonely student with no friends who doesn’t even have the benefit of being good at math and stuff. The awkward one in their class, who isn’t witty enough to be the clown, isn’t charismatic enough to be popular, isn’t smart enough to be a star student or sweet enough to be a teacher’s pet, athletic enough for the jocks or creative enough for the art kids. They aren’t even outcast enough for the outcast kids, because it’s not like they’re exceptionally weird or something. They’re just… kind of there.
And then they get this assignment for their science class. Make a micro universe. They’re one of the last kids to pick up their equipment so they get one of the older sets, with the run-down tools that have wonky handles, and the containment unit’s got a dent in it already, and they’re missing some parts that they should have, but the teacher just tells them it’ll be taken into account for the assessment of their end product.
So they start out and it’s just another thing they’re not very good at. They follow the instructions, but the instructions are always calling for this or that they don’t have. They mess up shaping some of their initial celestial bodies, and there’s an early screw up that makes everything explode for some reason. It’s disheartening. But they need it for the grade, so they keep at it. It’s a mess, though. Their stars keep dying and their planets are too far apart, they don’t have enough of the right ingredients to make habitable biodomes, and one of the few they do get working suddenly develops oxygen, like what even…?
It’s a mess. It’s a mess, and they put it aside in disgust and despair, and already start rehearsing all the excuses they’ll give their teacher, about how they just couldn’t do it right because the whole thing was rigged from the outset and it’s not fair and maybe they could do better if someone would just give them the chance to do better instead of always telling them to ‘figure it out’…
When they wake up the next morning, they sigh and check over their project. Probably short an inhabitable biodome, and they were already running extremely low on those, considering they had to make do with an eighth of the expected… wait.
They check the poisoned biodome, and blink.
It’s not dead?
Well… most of it’s dead. But it’s not entirely dead, which is what should have happened. They watch, curious, and tweak a few of the settings. The remaining organisms are technically burning to death, but at a very slow rate. They’re also consuming one another to try and fuel themselves. It’s… bizarre, and strangely violent, but it’s kind of working. And it’s a little mesmerizing to watch, really.
The kid makes a special not to keep an eye on that planet. Then they go back to the other inhabitable biodomes. The good thing about everything being so far apart, they suppose, is that at least if something goes wrong in one segment of the micro universe, it doesn’t have to affect the other. That sounds like the kind of observation they might earn extra marks for, so they note it down. And they change the wonky biodome’s designation from Microbe Rock to Oxygen Disaster.
It quickly becomes the most interesting part of their project, really. The biological life in Oxygen Disaster is weird. It starts out really small, as expected, and then it starts getting huge. Nothing looks right. The natural development rates have been heavily skewed, and everything dies, but usually most species procreate first, so they just sort of carry on with things. Extinction rates are higher than anywhere else in the project, by far. New species crop up and then die out. External factors cause unexpected variations in climate and environment, and the whole thing is dramatically unstable.
Every night the kid goes to sleep thinking they’ll wake up the next morning to find it’s all dead, and they’ll finally cross Oxygen Disaster off their list of ‘successes’. Every morning they get up and it’s still going. By the time they’re supposed to hand in their project, the planet has an extinction list that’s nightmarishly long, and the number of complications and catastrophes it’s suffered is huge. But it’s still going. There’s this weird new species that’s suddenly started to develop civilization, of all things, even though it’s way later and way weirder than anyone else.
When they bring it in for assessment on science day, they’re almost kind of excited to be able to really talk about it with people. Their teacher wanted these to be solo projects, so discussing progress was discouraged - not that any of their classmates would really want to chit-chat with them about it, either. The star pupils turn in their projects and they are, as expected, replete with life. The teacher gives them full marks and has them put their micro universes into the Soul Forge, to distribute the energy of them back into the ether. The under-achievers turn in unfinished projects. Some are even worse than the kid’s, with only one or two inhabited worlds, or the wrong life scheme, or even just utter failure. Those get trashed, of course. The middle-range projects mostly get accepted.
They’re not the last kid to be assessed, but it’s pretty close. They have to remind the teacher about their discussion over the missing materials and limited tools, and then wait while they find the note they made about it. When they finally find them, with an acknowledging nod, the kid can’t wait anymore, and they burst out with all the questions and observations and things they want to ask about. The teacher clearly isn’t expecting any degree of enthusiasm from them. They blink, and just sort of nod.
“Well, these sorts of difficulties were anticipated,” they note.
“But - but it should have all died,” the kid insists, and tries to show their notes on Oxygen Disaster again.
The teacher stops them. It’s been a long day, and the stellar projects have already been seen to. They commend them for having a creative failure, but remind them that this is not supposed to be an art project. But in light of their obvious effort, the failure merits a C grade. Well done. They can put it in the compactor now, and free up the table space.
The compactor.
Right.
The kid picks up their micro universe, and gathers up their notes, and heads towards it.
And they stop, looking again at the readouts for all their biodomes. Not even just Oxygen Disaster, but the other ones, too. They’re pretty good, really. They work like how they’re supposed to, but with plenty of quirks as well. There’s so much space between them all, it’s doubtful they’d have any interactions soon. But they wonder. What would happen if Oxygen Disaster managed to interact with more stable environments? What will happen, regardless, if it just keeps going?
What can a little thing do, if it’s given a real chance?
They glance at the distracted teacher, and then carry their project to their locker instead. They sneak it into the bottom compartment, and when the class is over, they carry it home under their coat. When their parents ask about it, they just say that the teacher agreed to let them work on it a little longer for extra marks. Then they put it back onto the shelf in the room, and hook it up to the data analyser instead.
They go to their research terminal, and start looking up more information on micro universes.
reminder: liking a trans woman doesn’t make a man gay. kissing a trans woman doesn’t make a man gay. falling in love with a trans woman doesn’t make a man gay. having sex with a trans woman doesn’t make a man gay. even having sex with many trans women, or only trans women, doesn’t make a man gay. there is no conceivable sex act a man could engage in with a trans woman, no matter what her genital status, that would make him gay, or even bi.
only preferring men makes a man gay or bi
and trans women are women
it’s really just that simple
rinse & repeat
please please reblog the above again and again until it burns into the brain of every person who comes across it. not for me, hell copy and paste it into your own blog, I don’t care. I just NEED for people to understand. so much hinges on this one stubborn, fundamental misconception.
It’s not hard to understand. Same goes for when a man likes a trans man, because THAT’S gay.
When are we going to stop pretending girls don’t have hair on their boobs, between their boobs, around their nips, on their ass, on their upper lip, between their brows, on their cheeks, etc?
On their belly, on their toes, on their back, literally everywhere men grow hair
humans grow hair everywhere except on the palms of their hands and soles of their feet. this hair can rank from light blond and soft to dark and wiry, regardless of sex or gender of the person. shaving all of it is a mess and plucking it hurts like hell. humans are just animals with less thick fur. you wouldn’t shame a female animal for having as much fur as a male one, so stop doing that with humans.
reminder to my fellow trans girls freaking out about having hair there
This fantasy that women are hairless except their eyebrows and long head hair is so bizarre. Yes, gents, it’s there.
Also, just FWI because this also annoys me: not all natural blondes have carpet that matches the drapes. That’s not a thing you can use as some kind of honestly test. You know, like how blond men often have darker beards? It’s like that.
Women have hair. It’s everywhere. It’s as weird and varied as men’s hair.
“Let the rumors be true.” Janelle Monáe is not, she finally admits, the immaculate android, the “alien from outer space/The cybergirl without a face” she’s claimed to be over a decade’s worth of albums, videos, concerts and even interviews – she is, instead, a flawed, messy, flesh-and-blood 32-year-old human being.
And she has another rumor to confirm. “Being a queer black woman in America,” she says, taking a breath as she comes out, “someone who has been in relationships with both men and women – I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker.” She initially identified as bisexual, she clarifies, “but then later I read about pansexuality and was like, ‘Oh, these are things that I identify with too.’ I’m open to learning more about who I am.”
Janelle Monae Frees Herself, Rolling Stone April 2018 (x)
“so i return to my body.. from the other plane of existence.. in which i scream”
DEAD
“Story time.
I have this one white friend.
And - [mocking] I have this one white friend, I’m not racist. And like - where was I even going with this? [laughs] She’s not even my friend, she’s just someone I know. Okay, whatever, ‘kay, so this one white person that I know - [under breath] (I know a lot, my entire town is white.) Anyway, um, one day, she comes up to me, and she’s like,
“Jenny, what are you?” and, you know, that’s like white person talk for like, [sarcastic mocking] “what FUCKING country do you come from? Like obviously you’re not from here.” And I’m like, “um, I’m Chinese.”
And she’s like “What? You’re Chinese?”
And I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know why that’s so much of a surprise.”
And she’s like “Well, I thought you said you were Asian.”
And - [deep breath] [pause] there was a moment, a good minute and a half, where I left my body and ascended onto another plane, and I screamed into the abyss of that plane [pause] because she did not know that Asian and Chinese are… I, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t even… you know, whatever.
So, return to my body, from the [pause] other plane of existence in which I scream. A lot. And I tell her: “You know, China, China, you see, the country that I’m from, is a part of Asia.”
And she’s like, “Where’s Asia?”
[whispers] She asked me. Where Asia is.
And I say, “Well, Asia consists of, you know..” and I list the different Asian countries and she’s like “Whaat?”
And I’m like [sarcastically] it’s, it’s this thing, you know, that you learn about in like third grade geography. It’s a continent! And she’s like “A continent?”
And I’m like “Yes.”
And she goes, “so it’s not a country?”
I’m like, “No.”
And she’s like “What’s the difference?”
And I’m like [deep breath] “America, you see, has like North, Central, South, so like, take somewhere from Canada; they are North American but they’re also Canadian…”
And she’s like “I don’t understand.”
And I’m like “It’s okay, just know that I am both Asian AND Chinese” and you know what, she is still confused to this day, and I [pause] am still on the other plane of existence, screaming, as I tell this story to you. So you can come join me, on the separate plane of existence.”
I WILL ALWAYS REBLOG THIS SHIT BECAUSE IT IS TOO REAL, TOO TRUE.
Several weeks ago a pet skunk came in to see me because it just wasn’t acting right. The skunk had been purchased from a breeder and had lived with the owner for five years. Although normally an indoor pet the owner had built an enclosed area in the back yard so that the skunk could be safely outdoors. When the owner first purchased the skunk it had gotten a rabies vaccine and a clean bill of health from a veterinarian but had not been in to see a vet since then.
I walked into the room and saw the owner with several blood soaked paper towels wrapped around his hand. The skunk was in a carrier on the table growling and biting at the bars. I asked him if he was ok and he said yes, the bite was very minor and it happened all the time. Slowly I approached the carrier and the skunk began screaming and biting the sides of the cage.
“Has anyone else been bitten?” I asked.
“Oh, probably my whole family. He’s never been very nice.”
Slowly I bent down to look into the carrier again and the skunk rammed the front snarling and snapping. I felt drops of saliva hitting me in the face. Gently I explained to the owner that I was extremely concerned this skunk was rabid and his entire family and anyone else that had been in contact with the skunk needed to get to a hospital immediately and get rabies post-exposure treatment. The owner was understandably upset and asked me to please look at the skunk close. Politely I refused and told him there was no way I was going to open that carrier nor expose my staff to a possibly rabid animal. After several more minutes of discussion he agreed to allow me to euthanize the skunk and have it tested for rabies but he wasn’t going to go to the hospital.
“What could happen if it is rabies?” the owner asked.
Very sternly I told him, “You’ll die. There is absolutely no treatment for rabies and the only possible outcome is death. You will die. Your family will die. Anyone who has been bitten or exposed to the saliva will die.”
“Is it expensive?”
“If you have insurance it should cover it. If you don’t, yes it can be expensive. But this is literally a matter of life or death. I understand being concerned about medical bills but the alternative is death.”
The owner said he would think about it. I sent the head off for testing and didn’t think anything more about it.
A few days later I got a phone call from the health department telling me that the skunk was positive for rabies. The phone numbers and information the client had given me, which I included on the submission form to the lab, were wrong and the department could not get in touch with the family to tell them they absolutely needed to get to the hospital. I got a little sick to my stomach thinking about the saliva that had gotten on my face and likely into my eyes as well. Luckily I had already had the pre-exposure vaccinations so would just need to get two booster vaccines and would be fine. If the family did not get medical help soon they would die of rabies. I gave the health department all of the information we had on the clients.
A few days later I got word that a man had gone to the hospital saying he had been exposed to a friend’s skunk that was diagnosed with rabies. Luckily that man was able to give the correct information to the hospital and the health department was able to get in touch with the family and they came in and were all treated for rabies exposure. I don’t think they ever really realized how close they came to dying.
There are a few lessons to take home here:
Skunks don’t make good pets. Leave them in the wild where they belong.
Rabies is not an old timey disease that people used to die from. It’s still here and vaccinating against it is still very important.
Give the proper information when you go to the vet! These people probably gave false information because owning a skunk is illegal where they live but vets aren’t interested in turning people in. We desperately needed to contact them to save their lives.
Finally, rabies is nothing to mess with. There is no treatment; there is nothing that can be done when symptoms begin. It is far better to pay for vaccines than it is a funeral.
Rabies spreads up the nerves from the site of the bite. It spreads at a certain rate a day, and will infect different people at different times depending on where the bite was. The important takeaway is that, once the virus reaches the brain, you will die. Once symptoms develop, you will die.
60,000 people die every year from rabies.
Fewer than 12 people in the history of modern medicine have survived it.
Rabies. Will. Kill. You.
And it will not be a quick death. You will slowly go insane. The best any doctor can do for you once symptoms have set in is put you into a coma so you won’t be awake to feel your own death.
If you have been exposed to rabies, GET TREATMENT. Infection without treatment is 100% lethal. Those <12 only survived with intensive treatment, and are statistical and medical flukes.
Rabies is arguably the deadliest virus known to man. Nothing else has such a high lethality rate once symptoms show up.
