exemplarybehaviour - Tumblr blog

[exemplarybehaviour]

you're going about your normal day when, suddenly, surprise! you've been pokémon mystery dungeon'd!

unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the pokémon assigning quiz has been canceled. instead, you must spin THE WHEEL, assigning you a random, unevolved, non-legendary and non-mythical pokémon. you must now go on some sort of world-saving adventure as this pokémon. good luck!

tell me in the tags what you rolled, and how you feel about it - for bonus points, you can spin the wheel again for (or just take your pick of) a pokémon to be your partner.

bonus rules:

you're not shiny unless the wheel tells you you're shiny

take your pick of regional forms and evolutions (for example, if you roll vulpix, it's up to you whether that means normal or alolan vulpix)

apply whatever logic you like with regards to gender

have fun and be yourself!

[exemplarybehaviour]

oh yes it's that time of year

[exemplarybehaviour]

actually, one of the most fascinating things about debunking posts to me is when people turn around and just add new misinfo to the post. for example, this one on the origins of STIs. here's some tags:

#yeah its from people eating infected monkey brains - This is likely about the theory that HIV came from wild chimps via hunting practices. It's also a racist stereotype. Bushmeat (basically, hunting wild animals) is of concern for epidemiologists because of the risk of disease transfer compared to more controlled livestock practices, BUT attacking consuming bushmeat as morally bad or "uncivilized" is a common tactic to spread xenophobia and racism. "Eating monkey brains" in particular is a common racist trope in Western media.

#I learned about this in school#the way that dominoes had to fall in line for thousands upon thousands of years#for those two diseases to mix in that chimpanzee’s stomach is actually insane#and it happened on such a small island before the contact travelled up river to a city - I genuinely don't know what this person is talking about, but they also provided a link to the CDC's page on HIV so they're likely talking about HIV.

The evolutionary origin of HIV is SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus - that's from monkeys and apes). SIV is blood born, and was likely spread to a human when someone with an open cut handled butchered meat infected with SIV. There were actually multiple jumps from primates to humans, but the variant that went on to become a pandemic likely happened in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are also rarer HIV strains that came from other "jumps" across Africa, none of which were on islands. There isn't a way to be 100% sure, but the evidence discussed in the linked article suggests the jump that eventually led to a pandemic happened in a major city (Kinshasa) and the increased urbanization (more people interacting) and railroad travel helped it spread. Framing HIV origins as something that could only happen on isolated islands and traveling on rivers, when rapid disease spread is often the result of large populations able to move feely in urban environments, is both incorrect and also has xenophobic/racist undertones.

I don't know what this person means by "two diseases" "mixing." I do want to note that people frequency give unverifiable sources like "in school" or "my professor said" to legitimize incorrect information, either on purpose or not. It's a yellow flag you should look out for.

[exemplarybehaviour]

It's always good to check your sources, even when the person giving you information presents themselves as an expert!* This person did helpfully give sources, so I'll link them.

*microbiologywes doesn't include his full name on his profile so I cannot verify his credentials. He does say he has a masters in microbiology. i don't actually think random online people SHOULD give their full credentials if they don't want to. after all, i'm just some rando giving you a wall of links

HIV from is from hunting primapes:

"CDC/WHO" is not great sourcing, but

CDC page on basics of HIV

I couldn't find a WHO page explaining the origins, but here's an in depth article on the evolutionary origins, and here's a more popsci article on some of the social factors that helped it spread.

The rest are PubMed IDs which are easier to look up (use the "full text" links on the right if you want to read beyond the abstracts):

Herpes: "Here, we investigated whether the additional human simplex virus is the result of ancient viral lineage duplication or cross-species transmission. [...] This selection-informed model favored a scenario in which HSV-1 is the result of ancient codivergence and HSV-2 arose from a cross-species transmission event from the ancestor of modern chimpanzees to an extinct Homo precursor of modern humans, around 1.6 Ma."

Syphilis 1 : This is more of an account of historical documents. Be aware that there's some racially charged language.

Syphilis 2: This one is from 1968 and is likely outdated.

My additions on syphilis: This article on syphilis might be slightly more accessible to read, but also check out this newer study. I also wanted to point out that it's unclear to me where that person got "from goats" as an origin. I think the microbiologist continued with the example as a rhetorical tool, but like the rest of the video, "from goats" seems to have been pulled from the ether.

HPV 1: "We discuss arguments that today's HPV-16 genomes represent a degree of diversity that evolved over a large time span, probably exceeding 200,000 years, from a precursor genome that may have originated in Africa."

HPV 2: "This estimated timeframe for the divergence of the Japan-specific clades suggests that the introduction of these HPV variants into the Japanese archipelago dates back to at least ~25,000 YBP and provides a scenario of virus co-migration with ancestral Japanese populations from continental Asia during the Upper Paleolithic period." AND "Pimenoff et al. showed that HPV16 A and B/C/D variant lineages split apart ~500,000 years before present (YBP), which largely predates the birth of Homo sapiens (~200,000 YBP) and coincides with the timing of the split between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens."

For absolute pettiness, I will also include a map of the historical range of manatees and their relatives. There WERE dugongs in China, I guess?

Chlamydia: "The origins of both sexually transmitted and ocular C. trachomatis are unclear, but it seems likely that they evolved with humans and shared a common ancestor with environmental chlamydiae some 700 million years ago."

I have not gone through and validated every single claim in the video, just looked up the sources provided (and some extra reading for the topics that interested me) and linked them to expedite you checking his sources. Most of the quotes provided are just from abstracts. This is all very easy information to look up, and you will find plenty of accessible articles from trustworthy sources.

Misinfo about disease origins and spread, especially for STIs, has been a tool for bigotry and stigmatization since the dawn of civilization. Don't repeat it.

[exemplarybehaviour]

Another fevered dream and I find it hard to sleep again.

[exemplarybehaviour]

coming for you

[exemplarybehaviour]

How did the crab get out of prison? And why did the crab get bad grades?

The answers to these conundrums and other clawsome jokes were among the competitors for the inaugural World’s Funniest Crab Joke competition, held by the Crab Museum in Margate to celebrate International Crab Day.

The winning gag, submitted by an anonymous joker, was: “Why did the crab cross the road? It didn’t. It used the sidewalk.”

An expert panel of judges, including the comedians Harry Hill, Rose Matafeo, Sally Phillips and Phil Wang, as well as children from Ramsgate Arts primary school, scored their favourite jokes before the totals were tallied and a winner crowned.

The only rules of the contest were that the jokes should be kept PG, and that lobsters could be mentioned in the setup of the joke, but not the “pinchline”.

Organisers said that, although most of the 700 submissions did abide by the rules, several jokes “were disqualified for scientific inaccuracy, and rather a lot for lewdness”.

In an unexpected sideways move, the crabs themselves picked the winner from the four jokes ranked highest by the judges, with the help of some tinned fish in bait bags and rolled-up pieces of paper with the jokes written on them.

The twist on the classic road-crossing formula proved triumphant, and was followed in second by another variation on a classic: “Man walks into a restaurant with a crab under his arm and says, ‘Do you make crab cakes?’ Manager answers, ‘Yes, we do.’ ‘Good,’ says the man, ‘because it’s his birthday.’”

Third place was awarded jointly to: “Why didn’t the crab help the chicken cross the road? Because it was eaten by a pelican crossing,” and: “What format do you have to save photos of crab soup on to? Floppy bisque.”

A Crab Museum spokesperson said the organisers hoped the contest might inspire people into environmental activism: “The quality and quantity of jokes this year has been astounding. We’ve been pinching ourselves since the submissions closed! That said, laughing at jokes, much like learning about crabs, can be a powerful tool to help us reassess our relationship with our environment. You’d be surprised how quickly you can go from chuckling at crab gags to letting down SUV tires. Whilst we may not have made this clear to our judges, it is in this spirit that the World’s Funniest Crab Joke competition has been organised.”

The museum, which opened in 2021 and claims to be “Europe’s first and only museum dedicated to the decapod”, aims to raise awareness of the often unheralded but incredibly diverse world of crabs.

[exemplarybehaviour]

I have been waiting all year to post this.

[exemplarybehaviour]

dunken.mp4

[exemplarybehaviour]

I didn't even question this at first, but the notes turned me on to the fact that it's misinfo. This is Pete Weber winning the 69th US Open in 2012, which was his fifth time winning this tournament. I assume this is why he yells NUMBER FIVE despite coming in first. Here's his explanation for his iconic victory yell:

Being caught up in the moment of throwing the strike and being as excited as I was, I had a kid rooting against me during the match, and he was doing it loud enough for me to hear. And it kind of made me mad, and people know, don’t make me mad on TV, ’cause I’ll just get better. But what I really wanted to say was, ‘Who do you think you are rooting against me? I’m the man of this tournament!’ That’s what I really wanted to say.

He was yelling at a rude child. 😌 (Also according to the linked interview, he likes that his iconic nonsense is a meme now.)

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE I AM

[exemplarybehaviour]

I can't explain how much I love baguette child. I would protect them with my life.

[exemplarybehaviour]

god if there was a book of forbidden spells I wouldn’t even hesitate

[exemplarybehaviour]

[exemplarybehaviour]

what the fuck we can put colors and gifs in asks now. what happened to this website after I left it almost passes for functional ???

my dude this has been true for a WHILE and i'm still excited by it

although i think maybe you can't do it on anon? so you wouldn't notice if you're one of the weirdos sending me hate about my pro-voting stance <3