#which... it deserves

[keltii-tea]

it's all fun and games until the problem actively consists of my monkeys and my circus

[deadpoets]

SEVERANCE 2.10 | Cold Harbor

[demaparbat-hp]

He truly did.

[normal-thoughts-official]

donated 50 reais to a palestinian GFM today

it amounted to 8 dollars

several days' worth of expenses for me became a single digit donation for them. barely enough for a blanket. just like that

it really sucks to know that my money is inherently less helpful no matter how much it'd pay for me, and there's nothing i can do

[reasonsforhope]

"For most people, a rat is at best an unwelcome guest, and at worst, the target of immediate extermination. But in a field clinic in Tanzania, rats are colleagues—heroes even.

Far from a trash bin-dwelling NYC street rat, the African giant pouched rat is docile, intelligent, easier to train than some dogs, and for East Africans, the performer of lifesaving tuberculosis diagnoses every day.

400,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) were estimated to have been prevented by these rats, whose sense of smell would make a bloodhound take notice. As [TB is] the number-one killer among infectious diseases worldwide, many of those 400,000 can be translated into lives saved.

“Not only are we saving people’s lives, but we’re also changing these perspectives and raising awareness and appreciation for something as lowly as a rat,” said Cindy Fast, a behavioral neuroscientist who coaches the rodents for the nonprofit APOPO.

“Because our rats are our colleagues, and we really do see them as heroes.”

APOPO uses giant pouched rats to sniff out traces of TB in the saliva of patients. In parts of Tanzania, a saliva smear test under a microscope by a human may only be 20-40% effective at detecting TB.

By contrast, a giant pouched rat like Ms. Carolina, a now-retired service rat who worked for APOPO for 7 years, raised the rates of detection on TB samples by 40% in the clinic where she worked.

Pictured: An APOPO employee with one of their trained rats

It would take 4 days for scientists to analyze the number of samples that Carolina could screen in 20 minutes. For that reason, when Carolina retired last November, a party was thrown at the clinic in her honor, and she was given a cake.

TB is sometimes thought of as a thing of the past—a disease for which doctors used to prescribe “dry air,” leading a modern sense of humor to muse at the antiquated, pre-antibiotic medical advice.

But it remains the number-one cause of death globally from a single infectious pathogen, and Tefera Agizew, a physician and APOPO’s head of tuberculosis, told National Geographic that once people see what the nonprofit’s rodents can do to slow the spread, they “fall in love with them.”

3,000 times in her career did Carolina detect one of the six volatile compounds that can be used to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and she got a hero’s send-off to a special compound to live out the rest of her days with her closet friend and sniffer colleague Gilbert, in a shaded enclosure dubbed “Rat Florida.”

“We’ve made special little rat-friendly carrot cakes with little peanuts and things on it that the rat would enjoy,” Fast said. “Then we all stand around and we clap, and we give three cheers, hip hip hooray for the hero, and celebrate together. It’s really a touching moment.”

APOPO has made headlines for its use of these rats in other lifesaving tasks as well: landmine clearance.

One of the world’s great underreported scourges (a lot like TB, coincidentally) is landmine contamination. There are 110 million landmines or unexploded bombs in the ground right now in about 67 countries, covering thousands of square miles in potential danger. Thousands of civilians are killed or injured by these weapons every year.

GNN reported on APOPO’s demining efforts using pouched rats back in 2020. One rat named Magawa alone identified 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordnance across an area the size of 20 football fields.

If at the start of this story you didn’t like rats, maybe Magawa and Carolina will have changed your mind."

-via Good News Network, March 31, 2025

[sinkfood]

a round and unthreatening face

[chloesimaginationthings]

Elizabeth Afton bets on losing dogs in FNAF..

[irisbellemoon]

it's the biggest mischaracterization ever that jonathan harker ends up being taken as a clueless man, when literally in the second diary entry of the BOOK he's so uncomfortable and worried he says goodbye to his fiancée.

[idontmindifuforgetme]

lived my whole life in guilt bc i thought i was responsible for people's feelings. newly realizing that other people are responsible for their feelings and reactions, even if they make it seem like i'm the problem. a lot of the time it really has to do w them and their own emotional regulation. i can't keep thinking i'm not allowed to have space bc of other people's insecurities. like i literally refuse to dim myself. other people are responsible for their feelings just as i'm responsible for mine.

[lucabyte]

in my heart of hearts i do truly believe that if mdp is in any way extant postcanon its as one of those hallucinations that they get so used to it just becomes mundane

+bonus

do you fucking need something

[bisexualpercyjacksons]

pjo tv show episode 5 alignment:

[doberbutts]

Hey remember how I said that A: Khelif was being targeted by transmisogyny regardless of the presumptive "TME" label and B: insisting that she is intersex when she has denied being so was dangerous because I didn't trust anti-trans and anti-intersex governing bodies to not exclude or ban her on a technicality?

And then I got harassed for over a week about how pointing this out was in itself transmisogyny?

So very interesting about that...

[demaparbat-hp]

She will (and he'll let her)

[rosieofcorona]

red raw heart (detail)

[isaacsdevil4108]

Lewis Pullman + muscles💪🏼

you're welcome! ;)

[lazylittledragon]

some of the new prints i'm taking to megacon at the end of the month!!

(psst my gorgeous patr0ns got to peep the whole in progress set)