graciethewhale

[graciethewhale]

One of the most life-changing things I ever learned came from Mythbusters, where they tested and proved (with cognitive testing puzzles and reaction time tests) that lying down and resting with the intention to sleep STILL provided significant mental benefits over just staying awake, even if a person couldn’t fall asleep in the amount of time they had. 

It helps me to actually sleep to know that just lying down with my eyes closed is still doing me some good, and helps me to not freak out/beat myself up when I stay up later than intended. Any amount of rest is better than no rest!

So if you didn’t know that…now you do

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you don't like bajo? 🪕? plunk plunk?

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people who want to live in lighthouse - i hear you, i understand you

but i raise you

living in water tower

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What’s the point of grinding to the bone your whole life for money if you aren’t even gonna be there to spend it…

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friend: what’s wrong? do you wanna talk about it?

me:

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You up? Alex Krokus

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From 3DBearnadette on tweeter...

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this tweet hasn't left my mind once in the two years since it's been posted

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[graciethewhale]

So I'm putting this here as a sort of public service. If you have never seen a rabid animal before, and you think you can handle watching it, I think it's a good idea to watch this. It's pretty upsetting to watch, so big CW on it, because this animal is essentially "dead but still moving." This is end-stage rabies. There is no saving this animal.

Before this stage, animals may be excessively affectionate or oddly tame-looking which is part of the reason why seeing people feeding foxes is upsetting to me. These animals might be, or might become, rabid, and there's no way to know without testing, which involves destroying the animal. Encouraging wild animals to be that close to humans is generally bad.

I grew up in the woods, so unfortunately we saw an uptick in rabid animals every spring -- you'd hear there was a rabid bat in this neighborhood or a rabid fox in this one -- but as wild animals and humans cross over more and more, we will see this more and more.

Opossums and squirrels extremely rarely get rabies, and we don't know why. They think the low body temperature of opossums inhibits the virus. The most common animals which get rabies in the US are raccoons, skunks, bats and foxes. Any animal 'acting unusually' -- not skittish around humans, biting at the air or at nothing ('fly-biting'), walking strangely (they kind of look like they have a string attached to their heads and walk kind of diagonal like they're being pulled along, a lot of the time) -- should be treated as though it's potentially rabid.

If you think you have been exposed to a rabid animal, including 'waking up in a room where a bat has gotten into it and there's a fucking bat in your room', please immediately go to the emergency room. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Post-exposure prophylaxis absolutely fucking sucks, it is a series of shots you'll have to get in two stages, it's done by weight, and it feels fucking nasty, but rabies is 100% fatal. I cannot stress enough how essential this is, having been through it.

Thank you for reading, I love everybody, the end.