Guten Tag!

do you ever start writing a comment on the internet and then think “oh what the fuck am i going on about” and delete it

I also enjoy writing an entire paragraph, thinking "you know, I don't actually need to be involved in this conversation," and deleting it

I like looking at vintage pucca merch and yearning for this era before they turned her into crypto

it’s so joever

JUST LET HER DIE OML

my history is not good enough to say it's plausible but imagine the comedy potential of like. having an elderly acquaintance who's always telling you tall tales abt fighting in the pyrric war and you're like 'yeah yeah sure the elephants were huge senex' and then one day you're just hanging around cisalpine gaul and see them coming through the alps like holy shit

now that trump has tiktok, twitter, facebook and insta in his pocket, get ready for a massive wave of internet censorship. one of trump's greatest weapons has always been misinformation; it's going to become harder and harder to spread facts and criticism going forward. posts that aren't made invisible will be magically ignored by the algorithm. dissidents will have their accounts deleted and voices erased.

this is a suppression tactic. this is another stage of fascism.

huh. something small but unexpected happened and it threw me off my rhythm. the whole day is ruined now. its gonna take me 3-5 business days to recover

this post has people calling me kuzco and autistic. at least one of those things are true

Mobility assistance

Woah, what a great idea!

For people that couldn't watch the video, it's a way to rate public places and businesses and share info on access for wheelchair users.

maybe its because im an asylum seeker but i am of the opinion that even if immigrants and asylum seekers contributed nothing to a nation that nation should not have the right to deport them.

"oh now no-one will do these jobs," well i think its bad that we take advantage of immigrants and asylum seekers' desperation to force them into exploitative jobs that the ordinary citizen is entirely unwilling to put up with.

we saw this in the UK after brexit "oh these crops are rotting in the fields nobody wants to pick them who isn't a lithuanian or whatever" yeah you pay fuck all for backbreaking work and provide appalling living conditions for your workers, the foreign workers just had no better choice so you exploited them and now that you can't do that any more (because apparently 37% of the voting population was enough to enable this utter xenophobic storming out of the EU) your tears are salting the employment ground

but also borders are bollocks and immigrants deserve to be here by virtue of simply being people who need a place to be

this is an absolutely horrible post that makes no sense but last night i told my roommate that trying to take the lord of the rings, the silmarillion, and the hobbit and explain the tonal and narrative difference and what it all means as a series is like if you only had three sources about what happens in england (a made up place, as we all know) and they were geoffrey of monmouth’s ‘the history of the kings of britain’, modern doctor who, and a singular episode of peppa pig. and you’re out here trying to force these to be part of a cohesive narrative

A fresh batch of walnut curio cabinets (one's in my etsy! Link in bio. Or message me if you're interested in a particular one or want more than one!)

we made this video for you.

The cauliflower is draining their life energy to stay fresh

there's no other explanation, how else would it be the actual same exact cauliflower?

no matter how hard i try i will always be that little girl wondering why everyone is better friends with eachother than her and begging to be loved

in another life we're all on the playground sitting by the fence in the grass together and we all have eachother. maybe not here but somewhere it wasn't like this.

I had a dream that opened immediately to me sitting on the edge of an indoor, hotel swimming pool. I was in a bathing suit with my feet dangling in the water. I knew right away that this was a dream, and I thought to myself that it was a pleasant one, because I love hotel pools so much. I love when they're so warm and accompanied by a hot tub as well that the entire room is steamy. I love when there are big windows so you can see winter outside. I love the children making friends and inventing intricate games in the water with strange children they'll never see again. I was enjoying all of that, when a woman appeared beside me, sitting with her feet in the water.

It was as if she blipped into existence, but it also felt that perhaps she was there before, and I hadn't noticed her. We both took a moment to look startled, and then we said hello. She looked like she was in her 60s or 70s. I started on small talk, and then she calmly and politely told me that she believed she was dying. I didn't know what to say. I said, "Oh. Are you sick?"

She said, "No. Right now. I think I'm dying right now."

She pointed across the swimming pool, and sure enough, she was there too, lying on the ground while someone performed CPR on her. Everyone was silent. The children stood in the pool and watched, ignoring their parents frantic, silent waving to come out.

The woman told me that the young woman and man beside her were her adult children. The children behind them were her grandchildren. Her husband was in their hotel room. I still didn't know what to say, so I asked her about her children.

She was worried about her son, who was going through a terrible divorce. She said he needed her. I told her that he would be okay. I told her about losing my dad when I was young and the way my friends and family took care of me. She was happy to hear it. She said she felt better about leaving. Then she said, "OH! I think I'm going back."

She was gone in an instant, and across the swimming pool she started vomiting water. I thought, "How nice I could keep her company during that ordeal" and "I should have asked her name so I could reach out to her." And then I woke up feeling like I didn't sleep at all.

MCAS update: since starting iron treatment with the aim to get my ferritin stores over 100 for migraine prevention, I’ve finally been able to raise my protein intake.

(Hey, did you guys know that while some MCAS patients present with abnormally high levels of ferritin, low ferritin can cause mast cells to degranulate? And mast cells store and release ferritin when they degranulate, so it’s like a shitty ouroboros of self-fulfilling misery? I didn’t. No one told me, the person with a mast cell disease and chronic lifelong anemia 🙃🙃🙃)

This is a big deal for me because even after years of treatment, this time last year I was living on 7-16g of protein a day because attempting to eat more than that was priming me for an anaphylactic reaction.

As of today, after 3 months of consistent iron treatment, I’m able to eat 50-60g a day.

Progress!!! 🎉

Mind if I ask what you’re doing to raise your ferritin? I can’t do iron infusions so I’m on a diet of beans and lentils, while also taking ferrous gluconate.

I’m also currently unable to do infusions so I’m taking regular doses of oral iron supplements as directed by my hematologist.

My current rx is 325mg of ferrous sulfate but my stomach struggles with that, so I’m alternating between that and iron bisglycinate which my body seems to handle and absorb better.

I was taking an iron bisglycinate before that had added vitamin c and my ferritin store rose quite quickly but unfortunately vit c is one of my worst mast cell destabilizers so I started reacting to it.

I’m also trying to eat gluten free grains that are enriched with iron because I can’t have beans or lentils at this time. Hopefully if my GI tract keeps healing I can add them back in.

It's wild to me how every doctor seems to ignore low ferritin despite very, very clear guidance from every medical authority that ferritin below 30 is iron deficiency with—or without!—anemia. I have mentioned my low ferritin to multiple doctors but no one seems to think it matters, so I'm over here paying for ferritin tests (which I'm glad you can do, to be clear, but why should I need to?!? If you're in the US, check out Life Extension's lab tests, they're cheaper than ordering directly from Labcorp), trying to interpret results, and coming up with a treatment plan on my own. And like, I have a PhD, but NOT IN THIS! So far over my head.

My most recent research deep dive showed that usually with chronic illness and inflammation, ferritin is high (and that's bad and portends bad outcomes), but it's almost impossible to find info about low ferritin and MCAS. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that these doctors really just do not know.

If it's useful for anyone reading, I've had good luck with the heme iron tablets called Simply Heme. They're animal-based, so they're heme iron, which is more easily absorbed and doesn't have timing precautions like non-heme supplements. It also hasn't caused me any GI issues like the non-heme I've taken. They're expensive. :( But I've got my ferritin up to 40-70 (from a low of 12). I wish I knew how important it is to try to get it even higher (eg. to 100) and if I should be prioritizing that, but I have no one but strangers on the internet to guide me.

My PCP and neurologist (who I see for migraines) both maintain there are no benefits to getting ferritin (or Vitamin D for that matter) higher than 30 because once it’s above the cutoff you’re not deficient anymore and it’s therefore fine. I just do not know how to advocate for myself past that because they say there’s no hard evidence that higher has better health outcomes, even though I am still cold all the time/sore all the time/have terrible headaches and fatigue/hair is falling out…

I’d suggest trying to see a hematologist.

My (former) neurologist said the same despite me showing up with numerous studies. My PCP was unaware but thankfully intrigued and wrote me a referral to hematology/oncology who agreed with getting my levels over 100 because of how he personally has seen patients with chronic ailments, including migraines, improve when they get well above the “acceptable” range.

His view was that if the patient is “within range” but symptomatic then you need to treat the patient in front of you, not the theoretical one that should be “fine” based on lab work. He also takes the view that there is nothing wrong with helping a patient build up a healthy store to fall back on in the event of illness to keep them from getting wiped out, which is probably his view as an oncologist forming his outlook. He takes the view that getting people to the 100 mark is just sensible where feasible.

Obviously this won’t work for everyone. There’s no magic bullet that will work for everybody and their individual needs, but for some of us it’s a literal life saver.

graph of what being hungry is like with adhd