Honestly The Biggest Disappointment I Had Researching ABC Was That Medieval Authors Did Not, In Fact,

hey! so normally I'm 100% for vaccines and all but I'm,, suspicious about the COVID vaccine bc of the rushed timeline and Pfizer's history. I also have some personal mental issues that's making it difficult for me to break down the likelihood of the vaccine being dangerous/fake/etc and was wondering if you could help me with that? What do you think the likelihood is that Pfizer faked their data? Or that the vaccine has long-term side effects? Or that it was dangerous materials in it?

I've been wanting to write something about this, so I thank you for this question!! I am confident in the vaccine, and will be getting it as soon as I'm allowed. I have done my research, spoken to physicians within my family who have also done their research, and am happy to say that a lot of the fears people have are unfounded. Let's get into it!

Was the vaccine rushed?

No. It was prioritized. The Covid vaccines, to receive approval, have undergone all of the same trials, rules, testing, and processes as every other vaccine. No corners were cut. Over 45k were used in human trials. The reason most vaccines take a number of years is because a) availability of persons with said illness for testing, b) availability of persons willing to undergo human trials, c) resource availability (scientists work on a number of things), and d) funding. The covid vaccines could move faster than usual through these barriers, for obvious reasons, leading to quicker outcomes.

Pfizers history? Likelihood that they faked their data?

They have had a number of lawsuits against them throughout their existence as a company (best known for Chapstick, Advil, and Prep), most involving undisclosed side effects in medications they have produced. Some involving unapproved human trials. Vaccines are, of course, different from medications. However, the Covid vaccine has undergone extensive external review and has been found valid and safe.

Wall Street Journal - FDA review confirms safety and efficacy of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine

Medical Xpress - Pfizer vaccine results published in peer-reviewed journal

The New Daily - FDA publishes first peer-reviewed report on Pfizer trial as Britain rolls out COVID vaccine

The New York Times - Pfizer’s Vaccine Offers Strong Protection After First Dose

BBC News - Safety data on Pfizer jab released by US

Vaccine long term side effects?

This is hard to say! However, the nature of how the vaccine works leads to minimal concern about long term side effects. To quote a physician I'm related to when I asked him about it, "I imagine the worst it could do would be....not work for someone, so that they still get Covid." Let's jump to the next question to see why that is.

Dangerous materials in it?

Vaccines train the immune system to recognize the disease-causing part of a virus. Traditionally, this means they contain either weakened viruses or purified signature proteins of the virus.

But an mRNA vaccine is different, because rather than having the viral protein injected, a person receives genetic material – mRNA – that encodes the viral protein. Think of it like instructions to make a fake shell of the virus. When these genetic instructions are injected into the upper arm, the muscle cells translate them to make the viral protein directly in the body. Your body creates the fake shell, which looks like the virus.

This approach mimics what the SARS-CoV-2 does in nature – but the vaccine mRNA codes only for the critical fragment of the viral protein. This gives the immune system a preview of what the real virus looks like without causing disease. This preview gives the immune system time to design powerful antibodies that can neutralize the real virus if the individual is ever infected. In conclusion, your body creates a dummy virus uniform with no virus inside of it. Your immune system then learns how to defeat it, without risk of harm. That way if it ever runs into the real virus, it sees the shell and knows how to effectively attack.

While this synthetic mRNA is genetic material, it cannot be transmitted to the next generation! This means your body won't continue creating fake shells. After an mRNA injection, this molecule guides the protein production inside the muscle cells, which reaches peak levels for 24 to 48 hours and can last for a few more days. So essentially, you create fake shells for a few days, then you stop. It doesn't keep going forever, which I know some folks were concerned about.

Conclusion:

It is a trustworthy, worthwhile vaccine. If you don't want to go first, that's alright! It will be first responders, essential workers, and folks in long term care facilities who will receive it this year and early next. But I do encourage everyone to take it if they are at all optioned to.

I hope this helps!

I feel like this should say “Leaf me alone,’ instead of ‘Leave me alone,’.

everytime zuko goes out he leaves iroh a note that says “gone insane, back later”

I’ve learned the first minute of the dance so far, so I’m a third of the way through!

I’m kind of invested in learning this choreography now

it’s not really a substitute for actually brushing your teeth but sometimes when I can’t brush my teeth one night/morning for whatever reason, I put some toothpaste in my mouth with some water and swish it around as best I can. I wouldn’t suggest doing it too often; always brush your teeth whenever you can!; but this is at least something.

“if you can’t brush your teeth that’s fine uwu one step at a time” posts are supportive and that’s great but I’m about to have a 4.4k$ dental bill because I wasn’t taking care of my teeth when I was super depressed so uhh brush your fuckin teeth

tsatsiki is the best I make a big batch of it like every other week

i am high on tzatziki

Our world does not welcome wild things.

As a zoology student, this is a brutal truth I must face. We slaughter keystone predators, leaving ecosystems to rot, then ponder why we are so overrun by the animals they hunt. We destroy forests, jungles, prairies and marshlands, then wonder why these pests dare encroach on our land. 

We hunt rare creatures for their tusks, for their horns, for their skin, for their bones, forcing those that remain onto reserves, culling them when their populations grow beyond our control. Our highest-ranking political figures publicly delight in murdering endangered species for mere thrill of the hunt. If a creature is fierce, or frightening, or mysterious, or beautiful… we kill it. 

This is why How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is important. Grimmel is a trophy hunter. He kills dragons for the fun of it. Because Night Furies are beautiful and rare and dangerous and the world heralds him as a hero for it. He doesn’t need another reason for it, anymore than any of the trophy hunters of our world need a reason for shooting an elephant and proudly posing with its bloody tail other than it boosts their egos. 

“Our world doesn’t deserve you…”

…because our world destroys all that which is fierce and beautiful and wild. So until the day comes when mankind stops desecrating, polluting, and exploiting the natural world we are meant to protect, I hope the dragons stay hidden, where man cannot reach them. 

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA. I wish I could have gone to a school like this. Can you imagine an education that is academically well-rounded, teaches life skills and hobbies, ensures the overall physical and mental health of its students, and it’s ALL GIRLS? Girls who learn to be supportive of each other? No male teachers who ignore female students and put them down. no worries about being sexualized at school. (no teenage boys. no dress code.) 

this is the dream. I wish I could have gone there. I want to leave my astronomy class to go to figure skating and then later I have embroidery club and martial arts. 

just. please. I want this to be a thing. I’ve dreamed about something like this myself lol.

I want to meet the amazing, talented, well-rounded and extraordinarily competent and fierce women who would come out of a program like this.

My biggest personal feminism fantasy?

I make a lot of money. Enough money to buy an old estate on a large bit of property. Something like this:

Then, I modify it into classrooms and dormitories. I make common areas and a cafeteria that is open to the kitchen. All of this serves a purpose.

I open a girl’s school. Grades 6 through 12. It’s called something like

Artemis Academy

or some other strong female symbol name. It has no religious affiliation. It is scholarship based, maybe a pay-what-you-can model, but ideally we work our way to 100% donation based maintenance, with every penny going back into paying the staff and bettering the schools.

Our teachers and instructors are all women, highly educated women or women skilled in their trade. There is a STEM and Law focus, ideally, with plenty of the arts. The girls are taught history and painting and music and writing alongside biology and law and physics and calculus and coding. The curriculum does not hide women, it highlights them and their accomplishments.

They take shifts to help cook meals in the evenings with the female chefs, so they can be self-sufficient. There is a large garden on the ground that everyone tends so the girls have that connection to their food, that understanding and pride. Maybe there is room for chickens and goats too, for milk and eggs, and to teach them how to get their hands dirty. Chores like mopping, and dusting, and laundry, and mowing are divided among the girls and rotated so every one of them learns how to live independently.

Science classes can venture onto the grounds for sample collection, some instructors may prefer to give their whole lecture in the courtyard. A painting class may spend an afternoon setting up easles on the lawn to study capturing light.

The lawn is for physical activities: running, and yoga, and kickball. Any sports teams the girls want to form, maybe there’s a rec league run by the older girls.

Movement, and the possession of one’s own body, is important. Uniforms are comfortable and non-restrictive. Something like this:

Clubs are abundant. Poetry clubs, and book clubs, and dance, and knitting, and debate, and scary movies, and whatever they want! There’s a mentorship program that pairs each girl with one in the grade below her. There are event nights, for movies or crafting or “How To” presentations where the girls can teach things to one another (how to sew a button, how to draft a professional email, how to change the oil in a car). The community is diverse and close.

We bring in women judges, and physicians, and professors, and engineers, and sculptors, and chefs as speakers. They talk realistically on the struggles of being a woman in their field. They talk about how they overcame and thrived. They talk about career paths, and college admission, and navigating the world through the unique lenses of womanhood.

It is a school by women for girls, to let them become self-sustained, self-realized, self-loving, truly empowered women.

It’s my dream to make it happen.

So if anyone’s curious about how this ended up getting resolved, here’s what happened. 

He came back in multiple times looking for me, according to my coworkers. They and my boss had all been made aware of the situation. Thankfully, I was only there one of those times, and it was shortly before closing, so I was able to get rid of him without too much trouble. After that, my boss insisted on calling the police to ask for advice - and so that there would be a record of what was happening.

Then, while I was off-shift for a week or so for exams, he came back in a couple more times, and this time, he started harassing my boss. The second time he started bothering her, she called the cops. Apparently, while the security at our mall is basically nonexistent, there’s a police precinct across the street. They came. It was quickly discovered that we were not the only store in the mall that had had a problem with this man harassing female employees. 

Anyway, he’s banned from the mall now, and if he comes back, we can call the cops again and he would receive a citation for trespassing. I feel so much better now when I go to work since I no longer have to worry he’s going to pop up and start bothering me. I was so on edge for a while, worrying incessantly about what clothes I wore and whether I was going to be on shift alone. The fact that he’s gone is such a relief.

Thanks to @radicallyaligned and everyone else for your support and advice!

(1/3) So, the store I work at just moved to a new location where there's greater foot traffic. Today was my second day there, and my first shift manning the store alone. I’m 18, by the way. Towards the end of the day, this guy came in. Sweaty from a run. Seriously muscled, maybe mid-to-late-twenties. Anyway, he started talking, being kinda friendly and joking, and also I had the impression of flirtatious too.

(2/3) I was, you know, wearing my ‘customers’ face. Anyway we’re chatting, I’m telling him about our soaps, etc. Then, he kinda stops, looks me up and down, and says, “You know, you have a great body. Do you work out?” And I’m like, ugh, internally. I shrug and tell him I do ballet. I go back to talking about the products, kind of just, you know, moving away, but he kept moving closer to me, getting within about a foot of me.

(3/3) We talk for a little bit more about the products, then he looks down, says “Wow! Your feet are so small! They’re tiny!” and then he knelt down and he grabbed my foot around the heel and lifted it up to examine it. I was so startled I nearly kicked him, but I just ended up just jerking my foot away. He stuck around for the rest of my shift (half an hour), and said he’s planning to come back and see me again. Any advice, anyone?

Okay that is seriously creepy and I’m so sorry you experienced this. Touching you without permission is harassment. A couple thing to do if he comes back in, optional, of course:

1. Immediately alert your manager or another person on staff. Tell them he has come in before to bother you, touched you without your permission, and makes you uncomfortable. Allow them to handle him while you wait in a back room.

2. If you do not have another person working with you, be sure to keep your distance from him. Stay behind a counter. If he lingers, inform him your “boss” has a policy against loitering, and you’ll have to ask him to leave if he isn’t shopping. If he inquires further, say that the door “has a counting metric, to see who enters and leaves without a purchase, and it affects your formal review”. (A retail shop I worked at before had this, it’s real tech). This is to encourage him to leave.

3. If he strikes up casual conversation about yourself, or asks your number, work in that you “have a boyfriend”. Creepy men often respect the “authority” of a created man having “ownership” of you more than your own bodily autonomy. This can make you safer and deter him from returning.

4. If he touches you again, tell him you are going to have to ask him to leave. He will likely do a big show of “wow you’re making something out of nothing!!” Calmly ask him again to leave. If he seems aggressive, remind him of the “cameras”. It doesn’t matter if you actually have cameras.

5. If he continously shows up to bother you, make sure a manger is on shift with you to deal with him.

6. If he ever follows you home, or shows up anywhere else in your life, call the police.

I hope some of this helps!

Technically, ice is a mineral. Minerals are defined by the presence of a uniform chemical composition and a regular crystalline structure. (Ice has a hexagonal structure, due to the polar nature of water molecules!) 

A rock is typically defined as an aggregate of one or more minerals.

aw, sweetheart. this is adorable.

Bedtime cuddles