Saved by the actual killer; let’s not forget that Luigi Mangione was almost certainly framed and is most likely not The Claims Adjuster. (I love that name. Robin Hoodie was good too, but The Claims Adjuster is perfect.)
I mean. Days after the killing, he is still carrying around the weapon and a handwritten manifesto in his backpack? A 3d printed weapon, which he could have melted down and destroyed, or thrown into the Hudson River, because the thing about 3d printed guns is that unlike standard manufactured guns, it’s really hard to identify who printed them? When his bag was searched out of anyone’s sight, hours after his arrest? By a notoriously corrupt police district under pressure to make an arrest?
We need to stop accepting reflexively the narrative the NYPD and the media have tried to sell us; it’s got way too many holes in it and it runs the risk that an innocent man will spend his life in jail or be executed for a crime he didn’t commit. The fact that we would all support him if he did commit it is irrelevant; the state will grind him through the gears of injustice if it can.
The US is crazy bc like so many people have intense conspiracy theories about the government like “I think there’s a secret elite group of people who control everything” and you can tell them “actually you’re not completely wrong, it’s just not a secret group of people, it’s a bunch of rich people and lobbyists who are doing it all out in the open” and they’ll be like “hmmn I don’t think it’s THOSE people though. I prefer my racist & antisemitic theories”
They’ll be like “I heard there’s a powerful ring of pedophiles who are influencing the country” and you’ll tell them “I mean yeah that’s what the Epstein files are about” and they’ll say “no I’m pretty sure this has to do with The Queers actually”
Conspiracy theory no one will ever accept: What if the people secretly controlling the world are the same people obviously controlling the world?
PUMPKIN PUDDING PIE w/ ORANGE ZEST & CARDAMOM WHIPPED CREAM
(makes ~3 pies)
2½ cups sugar
15oz can pumpkin puree
2 eggs
½ tsp baking soda
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
2½ cups milk
4 TBSP butter (melted)
1 orange
1 tsp powdered sugar
1 cup heavy cream
2 TBSP powdered sugar
1 tsp cardamom
pinch nutmeg
pumpkin pudding pie w/ orange zest
preheat the oven to 325°F
prepare the pie crust (that’s another recipe’s job—either find a scratch recipe or buy a pre-made dough or graham cracker crust)
blend 2 ½ cups sugar, pumpkin puree, eggs, and baking soda in a large mixing bowl (if using a mixer, blend with a paddle attachment)
add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt; blend until well mixed
add the milk and melted butter, whisk until well mixed (if using a mixer, blend with the whisk attachment)
pour your batter into the crust, filling right up to the edge (the mix will be more liquid than solid, but it will rise/solidify in the oven)
bake at 325°F for 55 minutes
remove from the oven and let it cool
top with sifted powdered sugar
zest an orange over the top of the pie (microplane if possible but regular zester is fine; have found that the most aesthetically pleasing version is to peel the orange and then finely dice the peel but that’s a hassle!)
whipped cream
put your metal mixing bowl and whisk in the freezer for at least 15 minutes
whisk powdered sugar, cardamom, and nutmeg together in bowl
add heavy cream; whisk until stiff peaks start forming
The original percy jackson series is about cycles of abuse and neglect, right. Were introduced to percy as a kid who has clearly been left behind by a school system that has given up on him, restless and unengaged and self-defetist because hes been given nothing that works for him and no one even tries to meet him where he is. Then hes told no, listen, your neurodivergence is amazing and you just need to be given something that actually utilizes your unique palatte. And thats obviously the uplifting idea rick wanted for his kids, right. But once we get to know chb the same cycles are happening there too. There are kids “left behind” there too for one reason or another, because their parents dont want to claim them, because their parents werent important enough to get a cabin. Do you get it, all the kids who dont fit the most common neurotypes get shoved into the same closet. Kids are being left in a cruel world to fend for themselves without the tools they need. Theyre dying because no one bothered to accommodate them. Its such an obvious parallel that the first chapter introduces a teacher whos written to be especially hard on percys disability and she turns out to literally be one of these monsters trying to kill him. Meanwhile sally jackson tells him she named him after Perseus because she wanted a redemption for a hero whos story ended in tragedy. Meanwhile every book in the series replicates a greek myth step for step until the moment they break the cycle. Annabeth, playing Odysseus, is talked down from her hubris and grounded by her friends. Percy, playing Heracles, meets someone wronged by the original Heracles and rights his wrongs by refusing to go down the same selfish path as him. Monsters are reborn because they are–as the books explicitly call them–achetypes. These kids are stuck inside the cyclical nature of mythology because thats what happens to mythology, it gets retold over and over again. But these are the kids who have to live it. The series ends with percy being offered immortality and he rejects it because he wants to use his godly favor to force them to break their cycle of neglecting their kids. The series ends with a declaration that we cant keep letting this happen. The very first book offees the same choice. It ends with percy refusing to keep the head of medusa as a spoil of war, refusing his heroic reward. He lets his mother have the head and use it to kill gabe. Isnt that fucking crazy for a kids book? Gabe wasnt a Monster. He wasnt going to Turn to Dust and Disappear in a narratively convenient way. He was a living breathing mortal dude and percy and his mom killed him without remorse. Break the cycle of abuse!!!! Dont let this happen again!!! Anyway thats why the original percy jackson series is Hey where are you going with our breadsticks
The -mancy suffix, though it has branched out greatly in recent times, originally referred to divination. This is literally wresting knowledge of the unknown from the bones of the dead. So this isn’t just necromancy, it is necromancy in the original sense. Old necromancy meeting new technology.
This is why I call myself a necromancer, btw. I mean it literally: Knowledge from the dead.
being sick & miserable objectively sucks, but it has become significantly easier to cope with since learning that “sickness behavior” is a well documented part of the body’s immune response
feeling not only physically but also emotionally like fucking garbage is unfortunately an extremely effective way to force your body to prioritize fighting infection & keeping you alive. i don’t have to like it, but knowing why i get weepy & pathetic when sick does help at least a little
i just found out that this is not common knowledge and am reblogging so more people know
YOUR BODY DOES THIS ON PURPOSE
YOU ARE NOT A BAD PERSON BECAUSE OR “WEAK” WHEN YOU ARE SICK IF YOU CAN"T CARRY ON AS NORMAL
the epidemic of grown adults playing tiktoks at full volume in public is rampant why are you acting like a 7 year old with their first ipad you have a mortgage
one guy was facetiming his sister, she was in Texas for work and I know this because they were yell-talking at each other. This went on for a few minutes so I got up, walked over and sat down in the chair next to him an asked if she was staying hygrated as I heard Texas can get really hot in the summer and that it looked like she has a bit of a sun burn.
The two of them were flabergasted. And the guy said “what are you doing???”
So I was like. “….well you included me in this call and I’m just worried about your sister.”
He goes “Im having a PRIVATE conversation!”
So I goes “If it was private then how the hell do i know youre talking to your sister who is in texas on a business trip?”
Ultimately im not sure he really got the point but he lowered the volume because now he’s worried about creeps like me listening to his conversations but at least he’s behaving now even if he doesnt understand why
You’re a hero, I hope you know that.
I literally did this to someone. She was listening to very very descriptive erotica on the beach at max volume. So I walked over, sat down next to her, and asked her to catch me up on the plot I’d missed. When she asked what the hell I was doing I said “oh I thought this was like a book club thing? Since you’re playing it at full volume on a crowded beach?” She suddenly remembered she did in fact bring headphones and was willing to use them. She kept looking at me like I was a lunatic for the rest of the time she was there but it was probably the funniest thing I’d ever done
we were hanging out at the river - a location known for its lovely natural sounds not requiring mid ass top 40 played off a tiny bullshit speaker - and some guy had his iphone sitting on a rock playing music. i just swam over, tapped the screen, and hit pause before swimming away. dude saw me do this. dude said nothing. dude did not turn the music back on.
violate the social contract back at these losers 2025
It’s so funny to me that Mary Shelley, her husband, John Polidori, and Lord Byron had a competition to see who could write the best horror story and she wrote fucking Frankenstein. Imagine losing a competition that badly. Imagine just doing a silly little competition with your friend and she basically invents a new genre and creates one of the most famous characters in fiction. Imagine being proud of your little story and then she shares one that people will still read every day in 200 years. Imagine doing a writing competition with your wife and she becomes so recognizable that you’ll always be known as Mary Shelley’s husband
my bf has many interesting stories and observations from his new job as a 911 operator
my favorite is how meandering people are, even in the midst of a terrible emergency
they respond to “what is the emergency” with “well, the thing is, four weeks ago–”
and then he’s like “WHAT IS THE EMERGENCY RIGHT NOW”
and they’re like “so what happened this morning was, i said to my wife, i said–”
“WHAT IS CURRENTLY HAPPENING AT THIS MOMENT”
“oh i’m having a heart attack”
my second favorite is how specific he has to get sometimes
like, “what is your emergency?”
“i’m sitting in a pool of blood.”
“… is it… your blood?”
“yes i think so”
“do you know where it’s coming from?”
“probably the stab wound”
“have you been stabbed?”
“oh yah definitely”
In all fairness shock is a hell of a drug
#MedicalHistoryTaking
Slightly related true story from my family:
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My house is on fire, but it’s just one wall and I have a fire extinguisher, so I think I can put it out.”
“Sir, please get out of the house. The fire engines are on their way.”
“I will in a minute, but I really think I can–”
“SIR. PLEASE. LEAVE THE HOUSE.”
“Fine.” [beat] “Okay, from out here I can see that the whole roof is on fire.”
“Fine.” [beat] “Okay, from
out here I can see that the
whole roof is on fire.”
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
I spent a bunch of time watching nearly every “follow-thru-a-shift/day/whatever” First Responder show that I could find because they turned out to be such a great way to watch how humans actually behave under intense stress/distress and what contributes to each kind of reaction.
One of the things was that anything with a cognitive effect - cold, head trauma, hypoglycemia, stroke, alcohol, drugs - can make younot just really “stupid” but really weird-stupid, really fast.
And cold will do it faster than you think! My favourite example was a British one where the person who needed rescuing was actually an off-duty police-constable who had gotten into danger on the water, and he actually had done everything right, except that he hit a point of being Too Cold from the cold water and became absolutely obsessed with getting the car-keys out of the little single-person boat that was actually Stuck. And like, obsessed, unreasonable, blankly-not-comprehending-arguments, “I got to get my KEYS”.
You could see the first responders pausing and being like how do we deal with this, as he wades back into the cold water to try to haul the boat out. Eventually they decided it was worth giving freeing the boat a shot as clearly their next step was physically dragging him away.
tl;dr they did eventually get the boat out and he got his keys and stomped off to his car - they stayed on-scene to monitor him, since he also started otherwise-rationally changing into the dry clothes that he had in his car, because like I said he had prepared properly etc, and then we cut to the interview afterwards.
And the guy is like: no actually I have no idea what the hell came over me. That was 100% the stupidest, most dangerous thing (the going back for the keys) I have ever done in my life, and I realized it as soon as I’d got the dry clothes on and sat in the warm car for about ten minutes - I stopped shivering and then went what the hell was I doing?
The interviewer was like, was it at least a nice car?
And the guy was like NO IT WAS NOT. IT WAS NOT A NICE CAR. IT’S A COMPLETELY MEDIOCRE CAR AND I’VE GOT ANOTHER SET OF KEYS AT HOME. But at the time I absolutely and without even a hint of doubt knew that I had to get my keys and I was willing to fight everyone there if they tried to stop me. I remember that clearly, I remember that it was the absolute most important thing that ever existed, and then as soon as I got warm again I realized that was absolutely absurd.
He noted it had completely changed how he understood and approached interactions with others in altered states of consciousness, because he now fully understood that they could not be rational and they simply were seeing the world through a completely different window and it wasn’t their fault.
And like that was one of my favourites but there were lots like that, and as the poster up a few notes, even just emotional shock can have a cognitive-state changing effect - and additionally, both exsanguination (heavy bleeding) and cardiac emergencies (like heart-attacks) have very real potential effects on how for instance if your brain is getting enough oxygen to make you a sensible human vs “that person sure is in an altered state of consciousness, they are”.
People are sometimes more meandering in that state of emergency than they are at any other time … . because bleeding to death can feel a lot like being drunk, and having a cardiac emergency can come with bodily effects that make your brain genuinely stupid.
Plus also we like to believe that adrenaline gives us the power to think really clearly for a moment, and sometimes that’s true, but it’s really more accurate to say that adrenaline gives you the power to think really fast. Which means unfortunately if your brain is firing off along the wrong route, metaphorically speaking, it’s a long way down that route before you even have a moment of “hang on wait - ”
(This would apply to the above anecdote about the fire, for example!)
For me this was amazingly useful for writing because it’s really quite difficult, otherwise, to get portraits of how people react to things that are this intense - and how different and disjointed they can be from how people act when not in those situations. You really can have the calmest, most reasonable, most carefully pacifistic person in the world who then hits their head and becomes a violently combative patient; you can have the most sensible person in the world who does something amazingly stupid because their core temperature dropped too low; you can have someone go from sullen uncooperative non-verbal and hostile to the absolute opposite from the application of a tube of glucose paste.
There are ways to up your likelihood of behaving sensibly under this kind of pressure that mostly come down to “practicing over and over and over in calm and controlled simulations of the thing” as it starts training your automatic reactions - this is why fire-drills work.* It’s why real in-depth first-aid training (rather than the one-day certification) involves endlessly Doing Scenarios - I did a year of Junior Lifeguard when I was a kid and I still can feel those habits coming on when a relevant situation comes up.
But yeah. This is ALSO ALSO why well-trained emergency services dispatch have a rote list of information they ask and just keep asking and asking and pushing at until they get a precise answer to that question - because most of the people calling them are absolutely in altered states of consciousness!
This has the result of creating a quite amusing momentary brain-pile-up if you happen to be someone who was drilled by rote as a child on How To Call Emergency Services back in the days when things like “where am I” etc were not easily found out - I was drilled by first responder family members as a wee thing that the moment they picked up and said hello, you recite your location, THEN what service you need (assuming you’re calling centralized dispatch - otherwise they will assume that since you’re calling fire-emergency you need a firetruck :P), THEN describe the problem, THEN say who you are … .
… so that if the line dropped or got cut off or something bad happened to your ability to communicate by telephone (a real hazard in a small northern town in the late 80s and early 90s) the dispatch had the MOST important information immediately (where to find you), before moving onto the others that were somewhat less important in descending order.
Of course now if you’re calling from a landline they know exactly where you are, and even with an internet-phone or a cell they have somewhere to start (no, it’s not an instant location; no, it’s not totally “we have no idea” either); and the dispatchers are trained to walk people who have not had that same training thru giving them the right info. So if you just respond to their “hello please state your emergency” (or whatever) with the descending order of “I’m at [location] and need [whatever service], [specific details of what’s going on to the best of my knowledge], this is my cell number in case we get disconnected and my name is Meredith” their train of thought skids sideways a bit and they have to realign.
Still saves time! But it’s funny.
*[it’s also why the current form of active shooter drills in eg schools actually doesn’t; the drills themselves are basically designed to mimic the actual event too closely and thus mostly result in traumatic experiences for the children in question, and not necessarily in retained safety habits under stress. Conversely, at least when I was in schools, fire-drills were honestly actively boring: the bell rang and then we had to all line up and our teacher was really anal about Exactly Following Rules and then we all filed out of the classroom and went and sat on the hill and it was all very unrealistic in terms of how a real fire FELT … .which. was the point. Anyway I digress.]
I’ve had an experience like this! A couple years ago I was flipping a tortilla and dropped the skillet, and the bottom of it hit my thigh and gave me a sizeable second-degree burn.
My wife had to drag me to urgent care, and that was her compromise down from the ER. And I was really insistent that I be allowed to eat my taco before we left. In hindsight, I don’t know why I was so stubborn about this - I think I was in shock a little bit, and the pain I was in just wasn’t processing. Nothing could make me understand that this was a serious problem.
#1 thing you can do to be a better driver is to be at peace with going the wrong direction for a little while.
like it is not the end of the world if you miss your turn. all the roads are connected to all the other roads. you will find your way very quickly.
unless you’re experiencing a genuine emergency, dont even think about making a sudden movement, ESPECIALLY across one or more lanes, just to avoid missing a turn
just relax. be at peace with the way the universe has led you. who knows you might discover something you never would have seen, like a nice restaraunt or a park you didn’t know about. just. fucking relax
OMG this. You want to help improve road safety? this. A few extra minutes to “make a block” and circle around is worth it.
This also goes if you’re the passenger!!! Don’t ruin relationships over missed turns, cause it happens.
