#this is anecdata btw

[haruka89]

Things like finals week also cause students to study for exams like they have an eating disorder. Before the exams students binge-study and during the exams throw up their knowledge all over the exam questions. (I've literally had professors call this way of studying "Bulimic Studying".)

Which, this wouldn't be much of an issue if the student would retain that knowledge. But in general? They don't. The knowledge is there long enough to pass exams, even do well on them, and then poof, gone.

[dihalect]

also in massachusetts ballot question news: question 5, the ballot measure to eliminate the tipped minimum wage, failed by a 14-point margin. never underestimate the restaurant lobby i guess

[veliseraptor]

I read Life In Reverse years ago when I was still in Marvel fandom…now I’m in MDZS searching for XY fics and I thought your name looked familiar, lo and behold it’s you again XD I wonder if there’s a significant overlap between Loki and XY fans?? Love your songxuexiao stuff btw <3

sldkjfsldkf this is hilarious to me, I kind of love it when someone who knew me from an old fandom trips over me again in a new one. I'm everywhere and you can't get away from me (it's very easy to get away from me, actually)

re: overlap - I have no idea! not that I've noticed, actually? Loki fans and Untamed fans, I've noticed a fair amount of overlap, but not with Xue Yang folks specifically, though my anecdata is decidedly limited.

and thank you, I'm having a good time and actually wish I was writing song(xuexiao) right now instead of what I am doing, which is data entry, which is about all I can get my brain to do today as far as work goes.

[shinybluething]

Anecdata: I have a big NO FERAHEME flag on my medical records, but not because of anaphylaxis. So anaphylaxis is not the only possible complication.

I had feraheme trigger the Big Flare of Psoriatic Arthritis that rendered me completely but thankfully temporarily disabled and thus finally got my random aches and pains properly associated with my psoriasis and thus got both properly diagnosed and treated. And I mean finally referred to a rheum, so I got more than "here's an ineffective cream, use tar soap" (for my 80% coverage guttate-turned-plaque psoriasis that had been ongoing and worsening for four years) and "exercise more, take some ibuprofen sometimes." The first infusion left me feeling like I'd had the Worst Flu Ever and the second one basically made all my joints swell up and not move. I told the nurses I'd had the Bad Flu feeling before they started the second infusion and they started it anyway, BTW, because it went away the first time. Within 24 hours of infusion 2, I couldn't move my hands or open my mouth, or stand up on my own, so Spouse had to dress and wash me, lift me out of chairs, cut up my food, etc. And this time it didn't go away. Also there was a lot of involuntary screaming for about six months until the meds started to really work. There's still enough residual connective tissue damage in my left shoulder (the IV was in the left arm) that my BP measures differently from one arm to the other due to external pressure on the vessels, four years on. Also it did fuck all for my iron levels, because I hadn't hit menopause yet, and my anemia was caused primarily by the kind of menstrual flow that you're supposed to "go to the ER' for (which will get you laughed at, if you've ever tried to). I hit menopause (probably partially due to oral methotrexate for the arthritis accelerating the already happening hormonal changes) and ... the anemia went away.

Mostly I have had shrugging from medical professionals about this. "Autoimmune conditions are weird."

Have your doctors mentioned iv iron supplements? I have anemia, and since i couldn’t tolerate any of the oral supplements either they eventually did it IV. If you already know its an option and it wont work for whatever reason please disregard

That’s what they’re sending me to hematology for. In the meantime I’ve to do my best with oral supplements if I can.

[skeppsbrott]

Anyway, the only hbtq "slur" I HAVEN'T seen people try and reclaim is "breeder"?

[beatrice-otter]

[image descriptions: screencap of tweets from rahaeli @rahaeli 7/9/21.

Hello friends, your regular reminder that a not insignificant number of social media "missing person" efforts are actually someone's abuser trying to get them back, especially with missing older teens. Please don't share unofficial missing person flyers--

--and if you do spot/know the person in them, tell THAT PERSON someone is looking for them instead of providing any information to the person doing the looking.

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a site wide "missing person" turn into the person writing in to ask us to enforce the restraining order, or the custodial parent begging us to shut down the non custodial parent's attempted kidnapping

Every time I say this, someone says "but what if it's real, better safe than sorry" and no, it absolutely is not. For a good while I got "this is my abuser, please make them stop" requests for 70-80% of the viral unofficial missing persons crossing my feed.

This number is obviously anecdata--I've never been able to find a peer reviewed study attempting to pin down prevalance. But based on those experiences, I absolutely advise never sharing one of those posts.

(I used to finish this PSA thread saying that if a missing person alert came from police or a federal agency, it had likely been screened for abusive tactics and was more likely to be real. I no longer say this.)

This should be your principle for any time someone wants you to connect them with someone else, btw. Never give someone's info to the person who asked. Tell the asker you'll give that third party THEIR contact info instead.

--and if you do spot/know the person in them, tell THAT PERSON someone is looking for them instead of providing any information to the person doing the looking.

I will probably be muting this in a bit, but some followup: for those questioning "just how often does this happen, even?", I wasn't keeping an exact count but I think we just hit double digits of people saying "this happened to me/a friend" in replies to QTs of this

As in, of the current 70 or so quote tweets, around 10% of them have a person telling a story about a time their abuser faked a social media post expressing concern over them as a missing/vulnerable person in order to continue abusing them.

It's not rare. It's not unusual. It is, in fact, vastly more common than *any* dangerous situation in which social media attention can do literally anything to improve the situation. (I've rarely seen a dangerous situation massive social media attention can improve, honestly.)

To the people who want to argue about this advice: I have, more than once, personally seen an abuser's viral missing persons post end in suicide or homicide. I have never in 20 years seen a case of stranger kidnapping at all, much less one that's resolved by virality.

All I'm asking you to understand is that the abusers who do this are very, very good at convincing you their "missing person" is irrational, in danger, or has diminished capacity. You will never be able to spot these situations by reading over a single post. Ever.

If you want to retweet missing personsviral alerts because you want to do good in the world, please understand that there is a much, much greater statistical chance you are *actually* contributing to making things much worse for the person instead. Please just think about that.

And to answer the "well why are you qualified to say this", since this has gotten way out of my usual circles: hi, I've been working trust and safety/ToS on social media for 20 years now. I am never, ever the person with the worst stories when I go out drinking with others.

/end id]

If you’re doubting this the thing you have to remember is that stranger kidnapping is very rare, for either children or adults. The vast majority of the time, when someone is kidnapped or held against their will, it’s by someone they already know, someone close to them: a parent, a partner, that sort of thing. So if someone has been kidnapped or whatever, the people closest to them (who are usually the ones to put up missing posters and whatnot) should be the first suspects, not the last. It’s possible that the person putting up the missing person fliers is the parent who has custody and the noncustodial parent kidnapped the kids ... but it’s just as possible that the person putting up fliers is the noncustodial parent who is doing this as part of a plot to find the kids so they can kidnap them. You can’t tell which is which just from seeing the flyer.

And when people choose to leave voluntarily and cut all contact with people close to them, they don’t just do it on a whim. There’s pretty much always a reason. For example, the people they’re cutting contact with might be shitty and abusive. Now, the reason might also be “the person leaving is messed up by drugs” or whatnot, or “they’re being forced by an abuser to cut contact.” Those are also reasons. But a lot of people who cut contact with someone in their life do it for very good and valid reasons. You can’t tell which is which just from seeing the flyer.

genuinely friendly reminder to never EVER share someone’s location/information without their explicit permission. you do not know why that person is asking, what they plan to do with that information, or even if the asker has that person’s best interest in mind at all.

OP is also not exaggerating how common this is. my abusive parents successfully kidnapped me from work once because a coworker who didn’t know my situation told them when my next shift was. my parents didn’t even know where I lived at that point in time, which was very much on purpose. it took me days to get away again. ALWAYS tell the person that is being looked for that someone is looking. never share personal information or even how to get in contact them. you can take information in and pass it along, but you absolutely cannot give any out.

[sfitty]

1) okay, I want you to read that again but slowly

"Murder laws are needed even if they dont stop all murders"

If we're going by that logic, then mass shootings are already illegal so we're good lmao.

2) You control guns by taking them away from people you dont want to have them. Beto O'Rourke wishes to do this. You are wishing to do this. It is one and the same.

3) Right. As if armed murder wasn't a thing when they wrote the constitution. They knew full fucking well that there are people that want to kill other people, but they also knew that a tyrannical government would wish to kill it's citizens too. That's why they said we needed guns. That is why the 2nd Amendment exists, and why it was written.

Oh, and btw, the Amendment also says that it is necessary for the security of a free state. Which translates to "the citizens must be able to defend against all enemies, foreign or domestic." up to and including it's own government. Besides, if they didn't want you to own "military arms" then why the fuck would they encourage you to get your own warship with full cannonade?

Moreover, to insist that the Founding Fathers didn't realize that arms technology would advance is pathetically ignorant. Ever heard of the Belton Flintlock?

They also had in the works a form of automatic cannon (I forget the name of it, could someone help?). They knew full well we wouldn't be using flintlocks forever, you'd have to be a complete dumbass NOT to know that.

4) Anecdata means nothing. Also, school shooters obtaining guns does not necessarily mean that the parents were irresponsible, just that the kid was driven to kill by any means necessary, and they knew their parents had a gun, so they stole it.

Fucking hell, resorting to not putting blame on criminals are we?

5) What do you mean by "intimidation tactics"? If you're saying using guns as a deterrent against criminals, then, sure? Why isn't that a good thing? If the gun owner didn't have to actually use their weapon in defense of their or their families life, then that was a good day and everyone involved should be thankful.

And bruv, either these "threats" don't exist or they're made by people who don't actually own guns and thus don't truly know the responsibilities of owning one. In this day and age with extensive background checks and "red flag" laws, anyone with half a brain would realize that making those threats is the dumbest thing to do.

If you truly are being threatened, then yeah those ppl are idiots but guess what? It means nothing.

Anyways, that didnt actually refute my point. A law abiding gun owning citizen is an enemy to noone but criminals and corrupt officials.

Read: LAW ABIDING. If they threaten or assault someone, or otherwise BREAK THE LAW, they CEASE to be LAW ABIDING. And people can, will, and have cease to be law abiding regardless of whether or not they have a gun. But the law abiding gun owner has an advantage over these criminals, they have the superior force necessary to defend themselves and others if it comes to that.

And before you try a weak ass gotcha, people owning a gun that is controlled under new legislation does not make them cease to be law abiding. It means that the law is not abiding by them. If a law is unjust, you not only have the right to break it, you are obligated to

if black folk went out and bought every single AR-15 out there, i assure you they’d all be banned by friday.