Guess how we can drastically improve suicide rates among trans people?
Bauer’s team looked at 13 modifiable factors in the lives of trans people. They found that strong parental support for expressed gender “corresponds to a potential prevention of 170 trans persons per 1000” from seriously considering suicide, and those who reported experiencing lower levels of transphobia were 66 per cent less likely to have seriously considered suicide in the past year.
Among those who wanted a medical transition, people who had begun hormone therapy were “about half as likely to have seriously considered suicide.” About one-quarter of trans people in Ontario don’t want a medical transition, the researchers say.
The study also found a significant decrease in suicide risk among those who had identity documents – such as a driver’s licence, health card or passport – matching their expressed gender. Having proper ID was found to have the potential to prevent 90 in 1000 trans people from seriously considering suicide.
*
The silent comedic greats have always been utterly, utterly lost on me, but I can appreciate that this piece about Buster Keaton is legit:
Unfurling this distended postscript without acknowledgement of the astonishing properties of Buster’s art would be unkind. A case study of his childhood might be equally rich, too. Born in 1895, which makes his age exactly synchronous with cinema itself, he was a willing participant in vaudevillian mishegoss as soon as he could walk. According to myths circulated by his father, he had survived a few twirls in the eye of a Kansas tornado when he was three. Alongside his parents, he was part of the Three Keatons, a riotous slapstick act in which his mother played saxophone and his father discoursed on child discipline while hurling Buster about the stage. His education was irregular; his father was an alcoholic. In photographs from this time, he looks like a playful wraith.
*
The New Yorker on that shooting in Chapel Hill we largely stopped talking about too soon, and the family we lost:
At N.C. State, Razan had been studying architecture—a daring choice. Mussarut Jabeen, the principal at Al-Iman, told me, “In our community, we tend to think there are two professions: medicine and engineering.” Razan was thrilled when she won a campus design competition with a time-lapse video of herself fashioning abstract shapes out of cardboard. In September, she tweeted, “Freakin love first year studio.”
Increasingly confident in her taste, Razan began wearing snapback hats and beanies over her hijab, though some people told her it was a weird look. Her Twitter account shows both a youthful insouciance—“I feel so bad for people who only enjoy one music genre like why do you do this to yourself child let me help you”—and a moral seriousness, particularly when it came to Islam’s place in the world. She retweeted comments like “If you think Muslims aren’t condemning ISIS, it’s not because Muslims aren’t condemning ISIS. It’s because you’re not listening to Muslims.”
*
Ontario is looking to regulate carding on a provincial level:
Some possible reforms include setting a limit on how long police are allowed to keep personal information; having police issue a “receipt” to people they card, which would spell out for them all the information collected; and obliging police to tell people they are about to card that the interaction is voluntary and they can walk away without giving up any information.
The regulations could also spell out more specific circumstances in which carding can be undertaken. Right now, Toronto police carding policy states only that officers need a “valid public safety purpose” to card residents, a rationale that rights groups have said is far too vague.
*
I am terrified of Lyme disease as well. One of the great blessings of having moved to Utah from West Windsor, NJ is that it was no longer necessary to pluck our dog like a chicken after a run in the woods. We once took sixty-four ticks off him in a single session. Also, once I was in the shower and reached around to wash my back and felt this MASS and thought I had a massive melanoma and then realized it was a blood-fat tick and screamed and ran out of the shower wet and naked and being feasted upon and got Steve to yank it out.
*
I have been reading a lot of Christian theology recently, for no particular reason, and I am a little obsessed with Dallas Willard right now, especially Hearing God (I’m not religious, but have taken to praying for things sometimes! Life is a rich tapestry!) Here is Mallory’s dad’s beautiful tribute to him in Christianity Today, which kicked off my WillardFest 2015:
Somebody once asked Dallas if he believed in total depravity.
“I believe in sufficient depravity,” he responded immediately.
What’s that?
“I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, ‘I merited this.’”
The doctrine of sufficient depravity is one of a thousand truths from Dallas that seem novel and yet, the more we reflect on them, point to the most fundamental tenets of our faith. Since he died, one of the scenes I’ve had in my mind is of Dallas arriving at the gates of heaven, only to be turned away with a stamp marked INSUFFICIENT DEPRAVITY. Dallas himself would have insisted he had more than his fair share of depravity. He would have insisted that what we love in a life such as his is the One to whom Dallas constantly and joyfully pointed. What we love most about Dallas is the Jesus in him.
*
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Dallas Willard! I went to a Christian college and read his stuff in a few classes. Seriously great.
I’m so glad I took another look at the link list and read that article–he sounds like exactly the kind of person who writes what I need to read right now. BRB finding one of his books.
I recommend The Spirit of the Disciplines and The Divine Conspiracy. They’re both part of a loose trilogy and each have a lot of really intriguing things to say.
Ah, ticks. I was sort of blissfully unaware of Lyme disease as a kid, despite growing up in WI. The only time I got a tick was when I was in elementary school and would sometimes cut through a small forest to get there instead of walking on the roads. Ended up with a tick in my ear. Didn’t notice for a while, it was so distended by the time we got it off it was yellow. (This is a fuzzy memory but I wonder if that means it wasn’t a deer tick?) Only ever found one on my dog, too. Frontline + thick, coarse coat helped, perhaps.
My boyfriend is from WA where “nothing is trying to kill you,” and he’s an absolute baby about ticks, poison ivy, and everything else that makes a hike in the woods exciting.
I’m from WA too! I also tell people that nothing there is trying to kill you…except the crushing gloom of not seeing the sun for 9 months out of the year.
In all honesty, I’d take the gloom, because I’m so pale that the sun is also trying to kill me. And it would be fun to hike in shorts! But now I live in MA which is like Lyme central.
AND you never have to bring a snack while hiking in the summer because there are berries everywhere! When the summer comes that is. It’s not a sure thing every year. The Seattle Symphony once advertised a Vivaldi concert with an ad that read: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in a city that only has one.
That and there’s always a possibility of a devastating earthquake, or that Mount Rainier might decide to explode someday. But as far as low levels of creepy-crawlies go, it’s a really great place to be. There are hardly even any cockroaches!
Out of towners sometimes get weirded out by the giant house spiders tho!
Sounds like a wood tick to me.
Oh my lord, you don’t know tick paranoia until you know Pennsylvania tick paranoia. It’s one of the worst states for Lyme, and people went all out. I still tuck my pants into my socks on hikes, refuse to walk in tall grass, and wear baseball caps in the woods to avoid heat-sensing dive-bombers.
I grew up just outside of San Jose and went to camp in the Santa Cruz mountains. Loads of ticks, and we did “tick checks” on each other in the showers (weird for a LDS girls camp?) we also used to tell the first year campers not to shine their flashlights up in the trees or the ticks would jump down on them, trying to get to the lights. They always fell for it, until their second year when they freaked out the 12 year old campers.
tw: ticks
My ex lived in that part of Jersey, and we hiked often. I can’t tell you how many times we’d come back in from a hike and I’d be sitting on the sofa and felt something crawl out of my hair onto my arm (tick) or be petting his dog and find something that felt wrong (tick) or get ready to go swimming and see something new on my back (tick, actually bitten). I have so many friends and relatives that have/have had Lyme’s that I didn’t think it wasn’t as widespread in other parts of the country – deer ticks are just everywhere.
I also remember very distinctly my mother finding one slightly engorged on her person and had my father burn it out with a match. (THIS IS NOT HOW YOU REMOVE A TICK, PLEASE DON’T DO THIS, IF YOU GET A TICK ON YOU REMOVE IT LIKE THIS)
I have a slightly traumatic childhood memory of my grandpa using a cigarette lighter to try and remove a tick from my HAIR.
Oh, totally. I grew up near West Windsor and tick-searching is always a Thing after being anywhere that’s not a paved road. I’ve found multiple ticks on my dog and myself, usually, fortunately, before they bit in.
After you take them off with tweezers, burning a tick is very satisfying!
My family visited this farm once when I was 11-ish. After a hard day’s frolic, I settled in for a relaxing soak in the bathtub. Had a weird heebie-jeebie feeling that I should check my person for bugs. Look down, there’s a tick *inside my bellybutton*. Like, it somehow worked its head inside my bellybutton and bit me, while its body stayed on the surface. I screamed like I’ve never screamed in my life, and my family got an eyeful of naked me when they came bursting in to see what was wrong.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Ew no I ALSO had a tick inside my bellybutton when I was ~4!! I was sitting on the toilet (shirtless?) and distinctly remember feeling it and being quite confused and disturbed.
wtfwtfwtfwtfwtfwtfwtfwtfwtfwtf
AND THEN, once my mum had dispatched the tick, while I’m still standing there naked and horrified, she says, “Hm. Guess it’s time to buy you a training bra.”
Welp that’s it, I’m never visiting any woody areas of the Northeast. We had some ticks where I grew up in California, but it was pretty rare to get one on you, and they didn’t come with the risk of Lyme.
They do, actually. Prevalence of Lyme in CA is overall lower than it is in the NE, but there are areas where the prevalence is actually nearly as high.
Other things I know for certain you can get – Babesia, a protozoan parasite (it’s an apicomplexan, like malaria!), though generally from a different species of tick. (Ixodid ticks generally carry Borrelia species, Dermacenter species are more generally the ones carrying Bab.)
Eeuughghggh. Reminds me of the time I was talking to my mom in the kitchen (age 8 or so) and she suddenly got super quiet and her eyes zeroed in on something on me forehead, and very quietly she said, “Don’t move. There’s a tick crawling out of your hair. I’m going to catch it.” This was in northern California, so probably not a lyme-disease-carrying type, but still super gross.
Dang I am here for Buster Keaton. Does anyone remember his Twilight Zone episode, where he goes to the future and complains about the price of steak?
Ahhahahahahah.
Buster Keaton = Erronius, forever and ever.
That’s my favorite one.
He is the greatest. <3 <3 <3
I am a very, very devoted Keaton fan. Somehow maybe missed the Twilight Zone episode? From a similar time period, have you seen The Railrodder?
Good books for all and sundry:
The Look of Buster Keaton by Robert Benayoun
Buster Keaton Remembered by Eleanor Keaton and Jeffrey Vance
Keaton by Rudi Blesh (a biography with substantial collaboration with Keaton)
Regretting I don’t know how to put pictures in here. Pretty important when it comes to considering Buster.
Oh my gosh it’s amazing.
“Once Upon a Time”
http://www.hulu.com/watch/440768
Thanks! I don’t pay for Hulu but I do have Netflix and streamed it from there. I like his mannerisms. Even got some silent-style visual jokes in there.
Btw the first two are essentially picture books. Like… good viewing. </busterkeatonevangelizing>
That Lyme disease article is terrifying. I grew up in Massachusetts so I’ve picked many a tick off my self and my pets and I’m relatively desensitized to their threat but gol’ dang if I ever have inexplicable symptoms I am going to demand they treat for Lyme. I’ve seen House! I know how this works!
That shooting. I live about ten minutes from Chapel Hill, and I appreciate that other people are writing about it, because it feels to me like there are no words.
Agreed. I went there, my sister goes there, two of my best friends lived in that same apartment complex…I don’t know what to say about it.
Oh God, I can’t read that Lyme article. My mom got Lyme when I was a kid, but it didn’t get diagnosed for like a year by which point it had gotten into her nervous system. I actually don’t have very many memories of that time in my life, which I think is partly because it was so upsetting and I just tried to repress it as much as possible, but there were definitely IVs and nurses in the house for I don’t even know how long. It’s more or less changed the course of our entire lives.
So basically, ALWAYS check for ticks when you’ve been out in the woods and ALWAYS remove them properly and don’t give people rides in pickup trucks after you’ve been hauling a dead deer (which is how my mom got it). And not everyone gets the ring rash, so be aware of that too.
I had Lyme disease a few years ago, but thanks to being slighty hypochondriac, I recognized the ring rash and went to see my doctor immediately. It turned out I hadn’t noticed the tick as it settled down on the back of my thigh. I then must have scratched it off unconsciously but had missed the head and got infected.
I was treated with antibiotics for three weeks and everything’s fine now, but I’m so, so scared of catching it again. So YES to ALWAYS checking your body after spending time in the woods or in the garden!! I’m going to do it tonight even though I only spend about half an hour sitting on the grass today. But I overheard two girls talking about ticks and Lyme, and got so scared again that I feel an itching all over my body. Yikes.
UGGGGH that sounds terrible. My sister had it as an adult, and it kicked her down for about a year or so, but it was always sort of… treatable. But it meant that we were discussing it a lot, and it turned out that when my mother had her workup prior to being diagnosed with fibromyalgia, she hadn’t had a test for Lyme.
(Insert about 4 completely baffled paragraphs worth of “I don’t understand my mother”).
I have gotten a bit less vigilant about checking for ticks, but I also can’t remember the last time I found one, and I also haven’t done much nature this year (sadly). Also, I mean, I suppose my baseline vigilance was “pretty damn high”…. we suspect that Mr. Toast’s father lures deer into his (rural) backyard with bread in order to shoot them more easily, so any time I visit there, even if I’m not outside more than to walk from the car to the house, I inspect both of us. gross gross gross.
It’s interesting that she got it from hanging out in a truck that had had dead deer in it, as Ixodes scapularis only preferentially feeds on deer in the adult stage, which is large enough that you’d normally notice the tick feeding on you before it had been there long enough to transmit the bacteria. Also, Ixodid ticks only take one blood meal per life stage and can’t start feeding again once they’ve had a meal interrupted, you she’d have to have been bitten by one that hadn’t started feeding on the deer yet. (Or, more likely, someone tracked a nymph or something into the truck from the surrounding area and she didn’t actually get it off the deer.)
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/berkeley-…
Six Irish students died yesterday when a balcony collapsed in Berkley, California. I didn’t know any of them personally, but they’re all from the same place as me, and my mother says everyone is a bit freaked over there. Ireland is a small country, pretty much every death that is not natural causes is national news, and there’s a lot of young people abroad these days, with parents in Ireland, almost always worried about what their kids are doing.
The NY times however has implied that it was the students own fault because there were 13 people on the balcony, and then went on to talk about how bad drunken Irish students are when they come to the states on summer visas. Like no american kids have ever trashed an apartment or had an out of control party. I’m not super close to the story, but it really got me how crass the NYT was being, people are dead, young people, you’d think they could have some respect. I am happy that no one is taking the ‘Drunken paddy’s kill themselves’ angle, yet. *sigh*
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin Ithe equalities minister) tweeted about the NY Times coverage, and it looks like their public editor is looking into it–as she should! https://twitter.com/AodhanORiordain
THANK GOD. I just read that piece this morning, and I cannot believe a tragedy was treated in this fashion.
I would like to know why they chose this angle to go with. If 6 american students had died abroad they wouldn’t be insulting them and where they’re from,
How awful. My brother-in-law just graduated from Berkeley, and his frat rents a lot of rooms to visiting Irish students.
It’s appalling that they would treat those students that way. In 2003, a terrible balcony collapse in Chicago killed 13 people. It was a party for old high school classmates from New Trier and Lake Forest, and I vividly remember it, because friends of my cousins died. There were about 50 kids on the top balcony that collapsed, then it pancaked down on top of the other balconies. Something like 100 people were trapped or thrown to the ground, and 57 had serious injuries. There is nothing unusual or atypically Irish about people gathering on a balcony during a party. And if a building’s balcony is so flimsy that it cannot hold up as many people as its dimensions allow, then it is the duty of the landlord to either make that abundantly clear to all renters, or to FIX THE FUCKING PROBLEM.
That the New York Times would devote AN ENTIRE ARTICLE aside from its initial reporting to tut-tutting that Irish kids would attend U.S. colleges and act EXACTLY LIKE U.S. COLLEGE STUDENTS ACT is disgusting. “Deaths of Irish Students in Berkeley Balcony Collapse Cast Pall on Program” is the headline, in case anyone wants to see the way the NYT framed it.
Whatever they say, J1 students in America are definitely not an embarrassment to Irish people, we send the embarrassments to Australia 😉
…where a capacity for drinking and carousing would elicit only admiration. “Mate!”
ALSO, the “Irish people are embarrassed by this” thing, like…um, I think MAINLY Irish people are reeling from the tragic deaths of young people!
My mother was nearly crying down the phone to me (She has separation issues and a lot of anxiety about me living abroad), everyone is pretty shocked and sad. Its pretty rare in a country of 4 million people to have such a large group of young people die at the same time, I think the last time was a year or two ago when 6 20-ish year olds were in a head on car accident
I can guarantee I’ve been to parties in grad school with tons of people on a balcony and nothing this horrific has happened. GDI NYT, learn how to be a fucking person.
this is so, so sad.
there’s no world, no matter how drunk the kids or how small the balcony, where it’s those kids’ fault. as of now, there are conflicting reports (the balcony was only built to support one or two people, or not built to support people at all, or there was dry rot damage, etc etc)—but if there’s a balcony where you can fit—even CRAM—13 adults, then it goddamn should be built to support even more than that weight.
i live in berkeley, and luckily, i haven’t heard anyone take the crass angle yet. the influx of irish students every summer is routine, and they behave themselves in much the same way as any other group of students. they go to classes, work in shops, go out and have fun. anyone trying to blame them is full of shit. my condolences go out to their friends and families.
I did not know that about the influx of Irish students – I saw a few the other day while walking my dog in South Berkeley, carrying Domino’s pizzas and talking (“I didn’t know the ten-cent piece was so small,” “yeah, the dimes (imagine ‘dimes’ said with a super Irish accent here), they’re tiny”) and I keep thinking that they might have died. Not that it’s sadder when someone you passed on the street dies than when someone you didn’t pass on the street dies, but you know…
i live pretty close to campus and they tend to stick nearby, although sometimes i hear irish accents in the shops in elmwood and rockridge. if you ever ride the 51b in the summer, you’re bound to hear a few irish accents.
i, too, was walking in the evening last week and passed a group of them and thought “it’s that time of year again!”—really very sad.
Interesting–the LA Times article goes out of its way to note that the balcony should have held that many people with no problem: “If you had 14 people and they were all–I don’t know–football players, and they were jumping up and down, you would get a fair amount of deflection,” [a civil engineer] said, “But if the [wooden supports] were designed under even minimal standards, it should still have held.” They’re talking dry rot and criminal levels of not fixing reported safety violations by the owners–an investment fund that is managed by another company that leases its buildings to yet another company, none of which are located even in California, much less Berkeley.
I live in the Bay Area and if it’s any small consolation, the local news story took a completely different tenor — the article in the San Francisco Chronicle focused on the design and maintenance of the balcony and the need, perhaps, for greater oversight, and included this quote: “It seems that those students were just doing what young people do, crowding onto a balcony,” she said. “But it’s up to us, not them, to make this stuff safe. That’s just what kids do. We have a responsibility, not just as citizens of Berkeley but as citizens of the world who send their children here, to make sure our structures are safe.”
I’m an hour north of there and only this morning saw that six of the students were Irish. Was too sad and .50 short of what I’d need to buy the paper, but the front page was both respectful and somber. These things happen with some regularity, but it never seems to lead to better building and maintenance practices.
I am also starting to delve into theology again too – it’s been too long since I cracked open any of the books on my “religion” shelf, and they are starting to collect dust, which feels like a metaphor for the soul I believe I have. I’ve never read any Willard, but if an Ortberg endorses him, I’m intrigued.
I don’t know whether to be like this about the tick stories:
Or like this:
This:
Ooh yes!
Would you rather: ticks or bedbugs?
NEVER BEDBUGS
BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND
AND SALT THE EARTH.
I have bed bugs in my house. Only just discovered and it is being dealt with, but the stress. I was in denial about it for awhile, thought it might just be midges, and now I’ve convinced myself that they are only in one room of the house because no one else is being bit except the person that lives in that room; If they were in my bed I’d be covered in bites, there’s no bitey insect I don’t react to.
Seriously, worst thing that has ever happened. I’m itchy just thinking about it.
It’s the only way to be sure.”
Considering it. Beds are being dumped (they are old AF anyway and SO GROSS).
WARNING UNSOLICITED ADVICE FOLLOWS:
New beds should get “encasements” (available on amazon and similar) prior to entering home, so that the new mattresses can’t get infiltrated. Old beds should get marked as bad or destroyed in some way so that no one tries to pick up the old mattress and take it home.
Actually, in general, for those paranoid about BBs, encasements are a pretty cheap way to protect your bed. Bugs could still live on the sheets/frame/etc, but it’s not quite as homey as a mattress, easier to find them to confirm if that’s what’s going on, etc. Also, for the paranoid, especially if you travel, you might consider a bed bug oven. (Zapp Bug Oven is the one I’m familiar with). The idea is that, after coming home from a trip, you basically attach a small space heater to a fancy popup laundry thing lined in foil, shove your suitcase inside, wait until it comes up to temp, and then take it out, with all the potential bed bugs from the plane/hotel/etc having been roasted.
I actually just bought mattress encasement for the two new beds we have arriving on Monday! they’re Ikea mattresses though so I think the encasement might be too deep, but it will suffice for the moment. They’ll be going on the mattresses as soon as they arrive in the house. New beds are also wood frames instead of the hideous and ganky fabric box frame things that the bugs have made their home, so that should at least remove some of their habitat. Council will collect old mattresses for disposal.
Whole house is being sprayed tomorrow, but I don’t think we’ll be able to bag everything up (for various, housemate related reasons), I’m just concentrating on bagging up all of my stuff (to suffocate the bugs) and everything will be going out in the sunshine to burn/boil them. Currently researching clothes friendly bleach and planning a trip to Poundland to stock up on all the chemicals.
TL:DR thanks for your advice!
Not everyone reacts to bed bugs bites.
Sorry, just saying.
DON’T FUCK WITH MY DELUSION.
….. on the up side, not everyone reacts to poison ivy?
sorry, i really have nothing. except the unsolicited advice i posted elsewhere.
One of our exterminators told us that often, bed bugs will have a “favorite” person in the house and mainly bite them, I guess because they have tastier blood…so since my roommate never had bites and I had WELTS (and I’m p. sure the roomie would have reacted to bites too), I’m guessing I was the favorite in our apartment (cue screaming and crying). So maybe that’s your scenario?? :-/
My suggestion for feeling marginally safer is to wear to bed knee socks over leggings, gloves over long-sleeve shirts, a hoodie drawstringed tight and eucalyptus lotion, just for psychological reasons. (Unless it’s really hot where you are, in which case I’m sorry!)
I can handle removing a tick. Bedbugs require lots and lots of fire to remove.
impossible choice! bedbugs are seriously the worst, and yet do not make you sick (unless you’re allergic to their frass) to the level of lyme and the entire smorgasbord of disgusting things ticks pass on…
Yeah, BBs are a nightmare (had them last year and it SUCKED), but Lyme disease sounds like the worst thing ever, so I would say ticks are worse.
I’ve been reading about rabies lately, so now Lyme seems like no big deal by comparison.
NUKE THEM ALL FROM ORBIT
Tick is brief horror, but bed bug is paranoid misery and frantic sobbing forever.
My standard Talking About Bedbugs On The Internet Warning:
Before anyone publicly posts about having bedbugs, please keep in mind that some landlords make you sign a bedbug form saying that you’ve never had bedbugs, or, if you have, proving that they’ve been taken care of professionally. The idea is that if you bring the bugs with you, they don’t want to be on the hook for paying for getting rid of the bugs, which I suppose is fair, but less scrupulous landlords might choose to try to avoid paying for getting rid of bugs that you definitely didn’t bring with you, or maybe try to not rent to you if you’ve ever had bugs. Posting publicly with details about personal bedbug experiences may not be in your best interest.
But, from what I’ve heard, even having FRIENDS with bedbugs is pretty terrible. So we can all talk about our unidentified friends, right?
So I’m about to move into a new apartment, and the landlord gave us the lease electronically to sign. The lease had a bedbug addendum, but its check marks weren’t properly programmed (i.e., we couldn’t actually check the “check yes or no” boxes). So we’ve signed this lease that has asked us for information about bedbugs and had no way to give them the information either way; our form in the official lease is blank. The current apartment did have bedbugs, but after several treatments, there’s been no sign of them for a year. How bad is it if we *don’t* contact the new apartment complex to say “By the way, your form is broken, we had bedbugs before, but we swear they’re gone”? (Once again pleased that I am entirely anonymous here)
(not a lawyer, etc etc)— I mean, not lying is generally better than lying. And not giving them info to help them screw you over is better than giving them that info (if you don’t have to. like, if they hadn’t asked, you wouldn’t be telling them, right?). And having been professionally treated is better than not.
Then again, I’d keep any records you have showing that your apartment had been professionally treated. I’d maybe even ask the landlord of your old apartment to give you something stating that for your records if you don’t have anything particularly compelling. That way if you’re ever blamed for bedbugs in the future, you can at least provide that sort of thing.
I mean, bedbugs are pretty much Herpes. No one talks about it very publicly, but it’s a hugely rampant problem in many populations, and there’s only so much we can do about it, and people get really really pissed when they get infected, but until more research is done, there’s not a LOT we can all do about it. And because we’re not talking about how rampant this shit is, there isn’t the public pressure to fund the basic science research that will help us mitigate these really freaking annoying (but probably not very deadly) epidemics.
Um, wow, that’s actually more apt than I thought it was when I started typing.
Well thats fucked up. And I thought estate agents were bad in London.
ticks ticks ticks ticks. Momentary annoyance that if you catch quickly will hopefully not lead to lyme disease. Bed bugs are just so awful.
TEAM BEDBUGS ALL THE WAY.
(I am so incredibly phobic of ticks. Like, no bullshit, for real phobic.)
TICKS OH MY GOD TICKS. Ticks can be kept away pretty reliably with insect repellents, and if you know what you’re looking for can usually be found with a thorough tick check after being in tick territory. If you’re bitten and it’s been less than 24 hours, the risk of Lyme is minimal (I don’t know the transmission time for other tick-borne diseases so well), and if you know you’ve been bitten or you have obvious symptoms you take some antibiotics and you’ll be fine. (The issue is when you don’t know you’ve been bitten and miss the early symptoms and get to the point where permanent damage can be done and it’s hard to get a positive antibody test or find the spirochetes in bodily fluids because they actually don’t like to hang out in the bloodstream and will sequester themselves in tissue.)
Bed bugs might not spread disease but they spread TERROR and they are nigh impossible to get rid of OH MY GOD.
Ticks. I live in MN so you encounter ticks just about anytime you go near nature in the summer. I have been doing tick checks since I was a kid; this doesn’t mean I don’t hate ticks and swear loudly when I find them on me, but they are a familiar enemy. Also, they usually don’t latch on right away, can be repelled, and seem relatively easier to catch before they can do any harm than bed bugs.
It might just be my area or people keeping quiet, but I’ve never heard any stories about bed bugs in my city. As a result, they are definitely way more the exotic, horrible and unknown scourge.
Ticks any day over that. Bedbugs are the stuff of nightmares.
One of my cats (Hobbes) had a tick a while ago. I was petting him, was like “hm, whis doesn’t feel like a crust” (he gets into fights a lot, so he tends to have a lot of small crusted over wounds), and then it turned out I HAD BEEN TOUCHING A TICK. Quite upsetting. We removed him using one of those tick thingies, and the legs were still moving, so I think we got the head. Made me paranoidly check myself for a few days though.
Am astonished that I have been a loyal Toastie for so long and am just now learning that Nicole lived in West Windsor??? Nicole, did I take your sandwich order at the Panera next to the Chuck E. Cheese by Wegmans? Did I sell you movie tickets at the Princeton Garden Theater? How long were you in WW-P? Were we neighbors???
North Post Road! In this lovely little house my husband built with a contractor friend when he was at the Institute of Advanced Study. We just sold it, after renting it out for a few years, and it broke my heart a little bit because I liked the area so much.
I was on Village Road East, behind the fire station, so not too far. My mom moved away in 2009, right as I was graduating from college, and I wasn’t a big fan to begin with, but parts of Princeton Junction can be so quaint, especially around the train station.
You might have sold ME tickets at the Princeton Garden Theater. I saw Garden State there (lololololol).
I saw Garden State there, too! But years before I worked there. I was there summers of ’07 and ’08, I think. Sold a lot of tickets to Joyce Carol Oates and Cornel West.
…… I’m just here to talk about Wegmans. It is the best.
It is THE BEST. I am so sad that I no longer live near one.
I moved back home five years ago, ostensibly to be (you know) near loved ones, blah blah, but really for Wegmans.
Wegmans! I have very vivid sense memories from my childhood – we would stop there after church, and my dad would let us wander around while he picked up baguette and donuts and flowers for my mom and scooped coffee beans out of the big barrels. I think I imprinted on Wegmans, and that’s why I like fancy grocery stores so much. I’m kinda “meh” about Whole Foods – just not as good as Wegmans.
the tick is not a boastful fellow
his life you know is rather mellow
he sits upon his blade of grass
waiting for a friend to pass
and then a ride he’s known to hitch
upon a dog, perhaps a bitch
he only wants a drop or two
from your pet or maybe you
and when he’s done he falls away
when he’s full up for the day
he makes a rather silly sight
full to the brim his skin is tight
looking rather like a grape
in this new ungainly shape
he waves his little arms and legs
until he’s ready to lay eggs
The Lyme disease he may deliver
or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
is really just a side effect
and if you get it just reflect
that you’re really not so tough at all
and even though the tick is small
he can take you down a peg
with a little nip upon your leg.
This is like … a perfect nursery rhyme to sing to a child who will uncover deep trauma later in life.
After a just ridiculous winter in Boston I was so happy when the first nice spring day came around. We spent the whole afternoon in the backyard with the kids, and then as I was getting them ready for bed I found ticks on both of them. Fucking A, New England. Between snow and Lyme I’m just giving up and spending the whole year inside watching Netflix.
nature is terrible, netflix is amazing, no one should go outside ever again.
and Netflix has Planet Earth, so you don’t NEED to go outside!
This is my whole philosophy of life right here.
I was just coming here to share the news that my Mysterious Itch has significantly diminished, only to find an article about ticks? Whyyyy.
I am in full denial that there is any tick links and/or discussion today. Nope. Nope. NOPE.
Hooray for less itchiness!
So happy your itch is better. There are no ticks. The ticks live on the nineteenth story with Miss Zarves. There is no Miss Zarves. There is no nineteenth story.
I understood that reference!!
+1000 Wayside reference!
Glad your Mysterious Itch has diminished! Is it still Mysterious?
I think that it’s caused by sensitivity to sunlight, like the Polymorphic Light Eruption that MissSusanST suggested on Monday. I started walking to work shortly before the Itch started, so I suspect the prolonged exposure to morning sunshine is the culprit. I used to have itchy periods every summer when I was a kid and got shipped off to my grandparents’ house in the country, but we all thought it was from getting into nettles or other irritating plants. And I assumed that itchy episodes I suffered as an adult were mild allergic reactions to who even knows what.
After doing some reading on sun-related skin problems, I am grateful that I have at least never experienced this particular nightmare.
gah!
Fun read about a “rogue” Dairy Queen!
http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/06/diy-dairy-quee…
This is AWESOME. I can’t believe DQ Corporate is still honoring the old contract. And now I actually want to go to Minnesota, which is an odd feeling 😉
“Thanks to their old-school contract, the Moorhead DQ still pays the original 1949 royalties rate on Dairy Queen treats that they order from the corporate warehouse.”
As a lawyer, this kind of thing just fills my heart with gladness.
Holy crap i have GOT to go to there.
CONFESSION: I have never been to a Dairy Queen before. (We have a bunch of great local ice cream places, and DQ is not really A Thing here).
But I would go to that one.
“Rogue Dairy Queen” needs to be a band name or a drag persona or a plump and sneaky tortie cat or SOMETHING.
Now I want ice cream. The AC in my office is broken and it was 80F when I got here at 9am. We’re expecting mid 90s by afternoon. Blargh.
If the AC breaks when it’s over 80 degrees, they should HAVE to buy you ice cream.
*ahem*
TOAST FIELD TRIP
Hmm, I might have to talk my parents into taking a slight detour the next time we find ourselves up that way.
Did anyone else not get a chance to read that New Yorker article on euthanasia Nicole linked to yesterday until late and is now HERE FOR IT? I’m going to pretend it’s not a threadjack since Dallas Willard, the afterlife, handwave handwave.
I’m with Nicole on being in favor of right-to-die, but I have such a hard, hard time seeing how it doesn’t get abused, especially in a society where mental health care is so hard to access and we don’t have a great deal of respect for the elderly or disabled. And oof, the exchange in the article where the philosopher, Vermeersch, says that when you die, your relationships are over, so why fear death just struck me as so facile, especially in an article entirely about how this woman’s relationships were absolutely not over after her death, at least on the part of her family that survived her.
I’m here for it. I have NO idea what to say about it, but I’m so here.
this tick article came at the worst time considering I just pulled a massive engorged tick off of my dog yesterday. I dry heaved before, during, and after the whole ordeal, AMA.
it was so gross, you guys.
I’ve spoken with other parents of trans people on this, and none of us can figure out how a parent can not love, protect and support their child in this. It’s a mystery to us. Of course, it’s not especially easy, but neither was changing her diapers or getting her ear intubated because of all the ear infections.
For those Toasties looking for Christian theology and mysticism, I can also recommend anything by Howard Thurman. He’s amazing.
I love Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich. Medieval but soooo fun.
Will someone please talk with me about Buster Keaton. I love him with my whole heart. In return, I offer this short NFB film of him travelling across Canada at the very end of his life. It is totally reminiscent of his silent film days and makes me all melancholy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiqqxyZeDXo
Meeeee toooooo! Though he had a pretty melancholy life, sadly. 🙁
🙁 🙁 🙁 I blame MGM.
(Obviously many factors contributed to his misery, but I’ve held this grudge against MGM for years and just can’t let it go.)
that was an amazing piece of film-making, thank you so much for the link!!!
Oh, posted upthread on some books for anyone at all into Keaton. The stories, pictures, and authors’ shameless intellectualizing… good stuff.
Thoughts on Yuccies anyone?
This guys makes some good points: http://www.refinery29.com/yuccies-new-hipster-mil…
“The silent comedic greats have always been utterly, utterly lost on me”
I’m guessing, like many folks, you may have only seen them played at the wrong speed, with inappropriate or terrible music. (Which used to be standard practice for any silent films shown on TV).
It can be hard to see silent films in an ideal environment, though there are a lot of great DVD transfers these days with good musical scores.
I’m lucky to live in a city with a film museum that regularly screens silents. You really need a skilled projectionist who can adjust the speed correctly, because the wrong speed can kill a comedy stone dead. The music is incredibly important, too, in setting the pace for a comedy. (I’m a little biased here, because my partner is a silent film accompanist!)
So what’s the right speed? Is there a guide for this? Can you give it the proper music at home by syncing up a DVD and a playlist
like the Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon?
The right speed is the speed it was filmed at, which can vary from film to film, from reel to reel, and even within reels. Your best bet is to find a good, recent digital transfer, or even better, attend a silent film festival with live accompaniment. Silent film is AMAZING. (I will not lie and say every film is good – I have seen a number that are really not that great even with a fabulous accompanist, but because so many are lost people cling to anything they can find that’s in good shape.)
It really depends on the film (and what’s happening on screen). Silent films are usually projected anywhere from around 16 to 24 frames per second (FPS), whereas traditional 35 mm. sound film stock is generally projected at a fixed speed (24 fps).
Early silent film cameramen used hand-cranks, so the speed they were filming could change depending on the mood and the action in a particular scene.
Live accompaniment (or a specifically-recorded score on a DVD) by a good accompanist is a must for me. There is an art to it, and a good score enhances the film in ways that you really don’t get if you just add any old music. It’s a totally different experience.
I second the silent film festival suggestion– there are a ton of festivals, in various parts of the world, and going to those is a fantastic experience if there are any near you. There are a lot of good DVDs, too. (Kino and Milestone are some of the more reliable companies).
The best question from the Lyme disease interview was definitely “Were you scared of having a pedophile’s heart?”
Organ transplants actually seem kind of cool because from then on one part of your body will have completely different DNA from the rest of your body. You could commit crimes with that somehow, just gotta think about how…
I’m pretty sure I read a book that used that plotline, but with a bone marrow transplant.
(Hated the book, but the concept is stil cool.)
You definitely need to watch The Eye (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325655/). The 2002 one. No spoilers, though!
TICKS NO NO NO NO NO
I spent a deliriously happy summer chasing a wonderful dog through the tall grass and woods of North Carolina, and wound up with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Fun fact: Not everybody gets spots! RMSF can present exactly like meningitis! The only way to tell the difference between the two deadly things is a spinal tap!
Ticks bad. Spinal tap bad. RMSF bad. Dog still good though.
Upvoted for the dog
Can I say thanks to the Toastie who posted the link to the Pink Truth last week when we were talking about MLM schemes? I am reading it like an addict–Mary Kay was kind of the back-breaking straw in my aunt and uncle’s marriage and I feel like I understand so much more now!
Wait, what?? Please post the link, I missed it somehow!
http://www.pinktruth.com/
It’s amazing!
I got a tick while hiking in Turkey and had to get tested for CRIMEAN-CONGO HEMORRHAGIC FEVER. But honestly Lyme disease might scare me more.
I’m glad I read the article about the NC shooting, although I feel it stumbled a little when talking about the idea of the hate crime: “But hate-crime statutes are symbolic as well as instrumental: they exist not only to maximize punishment but also to underscore disapproval of bias, allowing us to name an ugly motivation and renounce it. To the families and friends of the victims, it was the naming of the crime, not the punishment, that mattered most.”
Well, ok, probably. But “hate crime” status does not exist for our society to frown disapprovingly at bias. It exists because committing a hate crime is not just a crime in itself, but an implied threat to an entire group of people. Spray-painting a swastika on the side of a synagogue, to take the example used in the article, is different from spray-painting a smiley face there not because it is a crime done with “wrong thoughts,” as opponents of the hate crime designation often propose, it is because it is a THREAT. And it’s disheartening not to see that clearly expressed in the New Yorker of all places.
I’m just about to read it. This crime really hit home with my atheist friends. Some of them like to brag that atheists don’t go around killing people because of religion, and then an atheist killed people because of religion. It was our first experience being on the defensive. Hopefully we’ll learn from it. Those poor young people, after it happened I donated money to Barakat’s charity. May some part of them live on through the work they began.
Presented for consideration by the Toast-ariat:
Hobbes is real and he was at the Tampa airport.
NO YOU’RE CRYING.
Yes you are correct
…I think there’s something in my eye. :’)
Someone is ON TOP of their sewing game. That Hobbes face is PERFECT.
I am an ace at finding ticks on dogs, every time I go visit my parents I manage to find overlooked ticks on their dogs within an hour of arriving, and sometimes before I even get into the house. It doesn’t matter if they checked the dogs right before I get there, if there are ticks I will find them.
I am available to provide this service to Toasties. Just know that I need to spend up to an hour petting and playing with your dogs. Please line your dogs up for petting right here
OMG it’s like this Link Roundup was made for me – tick-borne disease and silent film!
(The funny thing about my knowledge of ticks and tick-borne diseases is that technically I don’t study either of them – I’m in a lab that studies the disease ecology of vector-borne diseases, specifically tick-borne diseases, and thus while most of my day in lab is currently spent testing DNA extracted from ticks for the presence of different microbes, and we have a whole bunch of fed ticks we are trying to molt, I don’t actually do any research on the ticks or the diseases themselves, so much, as I do how the system functions and what affects it. In fact, most of my potential thesis projects so far have nothing to do with the ticks – they’re all about one of the host species.)
On silent films – like Mrs_Peel said, you probably have never watched them properly if they all leave you cold. Bad prints running at the wrong speeds with bad scores have turned so many people off silent films. Buster Keaton was a goddamn genius (and did his own stunts which required perfect timing or he would DIE, so).
Here for any silent film and/or tick related discussions.
In that scene in Steamboat Bill, Jr. where the house falls around Keaton, I read that the cameraman couldn’t watch the scene because he was so sure he would die. The risks they took back then were truly amazing/ horrifying.
(Have you ever read The Parade’s Gone By by Kevin Brownlow? There are a bunch of great firsthand accounts by actors, directors, et al., who worked in that era).
I actually haven’t, which is sort terrible of me because I have in fact met Kevin Brownlow.
My partner had him over for dinner once and said he was extremely nice, but likes only the very blandest of foods.
Yes, he is a very sweet man but very Elderly British and I can imagine that he is not terribly adventurous of palate.
In that scene in Steamboat Bill, Jr. where the house falls around Keaton, I read that the cameraman couldn’t watch the scene because he was so sure he would die. The risks they took back then were truly amazing/ horrifying.
I read this article recently on silent film actors who are still around (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/23/i-spent-most-of-my-life-as-a-nobody-the-last-of-the-silent-movie-stars) and was horrified.
“On the day of the shoot, propmen doused their set in kerosene. Then they positioned Baby Peggy in the middle and lit everything on fire – including, the actor thinks by accident, the door by which she was meant to escape. Forced to improvise, she had to claw a way out across a burning windowsill, her performance later praised for its realism. Baby Peggy was four years old.”
You guys, I’m really worried about John Hurt. His rate of survival in his films does not bode well for battling pancreatic cancer.
oh no 🙁 pancreatic cancer is so, so awful. I hope they caught it in time.
TOASTS, I know this is a bit late (I’ll probs repost it in tomorrow’s Link Roundup to make sure it reaches a wide audience) but LOOK AT THIS PHOTO FROM THE WIKI ARTICLE ON FATHER’S DAY. Look at that delighted goofball! DADS.
I’m sorry, this is so off topic, but THERE IS A FURIOSA COMIC! Apparently it came out today. I haven’t read it. Has anyone read it?
Bought it during my lunch break. And it’s… not as good as the movie, to say the least. YMMV, but I really gave props to Fury Road for not making the women’s abuse into a spectacle and the comic takes the opposite approach. I guess it’s interesting to see the group dynamics but eh, the movie set such a high standard for me that I was very disappointed in this comic. There are some reviews on tumblr that articulate it better.
That said, I’m still gonna fork over the $20+ to buy the first comic on eBay and I’ll be getting the Mad Max one when it comes out in July.
Ah, that’s a shame. Thanks for the warning. I thought one of the great things about the film was that they didn’t make it unnecessarily horrible and triggering.
One of the most fun things I’ve ever seen/heard was a showing of some of Buster Keaton’s silent films with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell doing live accompaniment.
Honestly, I’m pissed they want to “regulate” carding. No amount of rules is going to make it any less of a imposition on my rights. Especially since cops seem to think “illegal behaviour” = walking while black.
Lyme disease just scares the crap out of me. I’ve never even had it, but I had Bell’s Palsy a few years ago, and they tested me for Lyme disease multiple times, just to make sure. Then I fell down an internet rabbit hole, and am obsessive about checking my legs for ticks after coming in from doing yardwork. The backyard isn’t even that overgrown.
Three out of four of the people in my family have had Lyme disease; I’m the only one who hasn’t. My dad’s went untreated so long it exacerbated his hip disease. My ex-boyfriend had Lyme disease that went untreated so long he got first degree heart block and almost died.
I present these stories without commentary, do with this information what you would (never go outside again)
that was an amazing piece of film-making, thank you so much for the link!!!
Ah, that's a shame. Thanks for the warning. I thought one of the great things about the film was that they didn't make it unnecessarily horrible and triggering.
Oh my gosh it's amazing.”Once Upon a Time”http://www.hulu.com/watch/440768
Where can I get me some of them Ortberg writing genes?