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10 or 11 little ducks have been spotted crossing the dash board

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- Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the wife of deceased firefighter Vasily Ignatenko, Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexeivich (transl. Keith Gessen)

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#I feel like having Ree as your favorite is an eldest daughter thing #when she picked up that wand in the second book and contemplated crowning herself empress I was like yes girl. do it #the morals of these books were so lost on seven-year-old me

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say what you will about the historical figure of Cardinal Richelieu but the ‘black breastplate over cardinal’s robes’ look is some warhammer shit

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nothing sustains me more than extremely petty academic debate. i love when professors and researchers get ridiculously riled up about the most low-stakes issues on the planet. the more minor the disagreement, the better it is when they start aggressively rebuking each other in journals

#people trying to determine how historical figures died are the best for this #because a lot of the time they don't understand the diseases they're talking about at all #(or they're biologists who understand the diseases but not the history) #so you see papers like “Justinian Died of Syphilis” #followed by “No The Fuck He Didn't. Do You Even Know What Syphilis Is?” #followed by “Okay Science Man. You Know What Syphilis Is. But Do You Know Who Justinian Was?” #and Science Man does not #its fantastic

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Ask A Manager is my favorite blog on the Internet solely because none of her advice is tailored to anyone in my field, so it's like peeking into an absurd corporate mirror universe where every professional norm is backwards

#if I followed any of that advice in my actual life I'd look insane

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mutuals you would sit on a power line like little birds with

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Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula)

April 10. 2024

Southeastern Pennsylvania

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🥰 is truly the best emoji there is it can be used for a myriad of different occasions like for example when you see a bird or when you hear a bird or when you think of birds

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finch fancam❤

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Peacocks are hilarious, really. They really are just like

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also cannot stress enough that "Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine" (Americans who hold DO degrees) are extremely different from "osteopaths."

In America, a DO is equivalent to an MD, and people with DO degrees are fully qualified medical doctors. There are a few minor differences between MDs and DOs, but they undergo very similar training. This system is unique to the United States. In the rest of the world, there are no osteopathic medical schools, and "osteopathy" is a largely unregulated field—people who hold osteopathy-related degrees are more like chiropractors than physicians, and their degrees are in no way equivalent to MDs or American DOs. (You can read more about the history of osteopathic medicine in the US and why it's diverged so wildly from the rest of the world here.)

Basically, though:

DO/osteopathic physician trained in an accredited American osteopathic medical school = doctor, equivalent to an MD

DO/osteopath trained anywhere else in the world = not the same thing, not equivalent to an MD

If you're not in America, you might see American DOs referred to as "Dr. Lastname, DO USA" to differentiate them from local osteopaths (this is especially true in Australia and New Zealand). It's not a patriotic thing—they do this because American DOs really are very, very different from osteopaths.

Anyone who claims that a general "diploma of osteopathy" is the same thing as an American DO degree, or who attempts to make it look like they were trained at an accredited American medical school when they weren't, is probably a quack. Do not take advice about COVID from these people.

cannot stress enough that, if you see someone on twitter who identifies themselves as a "scientist" or a "PhD" but refuses to specify the field, you should not trust that person to give you advice about COVID

#I mean you shouldn't be taking advice about COVID from random people on the internet anyway #this is why I always tell people to listen to the CDC and WHO over online randoms #anyone can make shit up or go off the rails #but the DO divide is a huge thing that I see people mess up on all the time #and people are very prone to assuming that differentiating American vs. foreign DOs is like. an ego thing #or a dumb patriotism thing #but no! they are actually different! Just confusingly named! Do not be fooled by internet quacks!

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cannot stress enough that, if you see someone on twitter who identifies themselves as a "scientist" or a "PhD" but refuses to specify the field, you should not trust that person to give you advice about COVID

#just saw some lady make really wacky claims about airborne transmission #but her profile said she had a PhD from a reputable school so I was like ???? #Anyway I looked her up and she's a physicist. Boy did she go to great lengths to make herself seem like an authority on viruses!

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so apparently some huge corporation is trying to build an expensive "wellness resort" in my very small and rural hometown, and obviously the locals are pissed, but the funniest thing about this project is the fact that a.) we are sitting on top of a tiny nuclear disaster—like, there is plutonium in the water, and b.) our tap water is also insanely bad for you because of runoff from the plastics factory. mr. wellness resort guy is trying to build utopia in a place that Physics Today has called "unusually prone to rare leukemias"

#there is zero doubt in my mind that if this resort happens it will market itself as a haven for rich people #while doing absolutely nothing whatsoever for anyone who actually lives here

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dying at the eventbrite page for my graduation. What do you MEAN “21% of attendees are repeat customers”

#I guess part of it could be staff and faculty reserving tickets for themselves year after year but the wording is so funny #i just imagine students returning over and over again to recreate the experience

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