My mom saw this on Facebook and I thought it should be shared here.
To my coastal comrades, please stay safe.
This is true. We didn’t lose our ENTIRE house in Ivan. But you see in places the roof came off and pictures we sent on were basically reciepts for the fact that everything was destroyed anyway by black toxic mold.
Yes. Toxic mold is going to happen if you get ANY kind of water damage at all.
Here’s something NO ONE teaches you in hurricane evacuation unless you’re in Hurricane Alley:
Take ANYTHING you possibly can that was handmade(think school art projects, gifts from friends of art you can take out of the frame, knitware from grandma), stuff inherited from a relative especially paperwork like marriage licenses and family bibles that hold your history and pictures that are non-digitized. If you have insurance you can rebuild and if you don’t you can find donations of additional clothing food even housing, though it will be a struggle I know. But let look here’s the thing.
Pieces of your history are the one thing, aside from your physical safety, you cannot replace. Trust me on this ok?
The Katrina people lost everything but I come to you as a multiple hurricane survivor who was displaced and made precariously housed on the homelessness scale twice by hurricanes in less than 20 years.
My first major evacuation was when I was 8 for Opal. My mom gave me a suitcase and sent me into my room and said “Go see what you want to bring that’s just yours. We can buy new toys and new clothes but we may not come back. What can’t we buy no matter how much we want to if the house is gone when we come back. See how I’m bringing these pictures of you and your sister and this that my mommy got me for my wedding? What is like that for you?” It was heavy shit to lay on an 8 year old but she was right … I don’t remember but it took more than six months to get back into our house in any real way and at 8 the toys I brought were THE comfort items and not much else and even then? I didn’t need for much because I had the irreplaceables.
Ivan gets lost because it was right before Katrina and was not a racist catastrophe but let me tell you: we never real moved back. Not really. Same situation- photos, letters, handmades, gifts from the dead, records. And this time we lost it all in slow motion.
These two major ones don’t count the fact that I had at least one(1) evacuation every two or so years after Opal until I was 25. After more than a dozen evacuations, you learn what to take.
Hear my experience where federal officials don’t listen to what Floridans have tried to teach.
If a storm is going to make landfall at a Category 3: You are facing a very real possibility that you might NEVER go home even if the building is still standing. Take what CANNOT be replaced. You don’t know how life will be when you return – the crises, stressors and obligations of hurricane aftermath create massive restrictions you cannot predict. You may not have a chance to replace it.
Please signal boost this with my addition attached because every time I hear a report about people lamenting how it’s the pictures they regret the most I just think “Someone should have told you. You deserved to be told as part of basic evacuation procedure.” I’m trying to post this to help fix that. At least a litt.
28 including allergies, potential allergies, and sensory processing issues with smell, texture, and taste. I’d only be able to cut out four or five for just don’t like them.
Taste processing trouble: Lettuce, liver, mustard, beets, asparagus, and grapefruit.
Smell processing trouble: Pickles, blue cheese, and ranch dressing.
Texture processing issues: Avocado, yogurt, oysters, and snails.
Other reasons: Beans (ow), peas (ow), nutella (no one to hand it to if I try it and don’t like it), white chocolate (not my kind of chocolate), and coconut (sunscreen and shampoo ingredients are not food).
Things I will eat, but require specific circumstances/preparation? (If I counted these, I’d add another 18 to that number at the top.)
Brussel sprouts must be roasted with garlic.
Cucumber must not be soapy/bitter.
Wheat bread and sourdough bread should be homemade.
Canned tuna, celery, and mayonnaise get mixed with pasta for a summer salad dish.
King Crab Legs, the other crabs I am not interested in.
Pork must be bacon.
Cabbage and cauliflower should be cooked.
Tea should be orange-and-spice flavored.
Watermelon means I’m probably dehydrated or overheated.
Raw fish I am particular about the species.
Turkey is for tetrazinni.
Soy sauce must be cooked, and I really, really shouldn’t have it very often, because see the issue with tofu. (Seriously, soy is so very not my friend, even fermented. Fermenting it just makes it less horrible.)
Vinegar is for making sticky rice and/or sweet-and-sour.
TL;DR: Allergies suck, sensory processing issues make eating a minefield, and there is NOTHING WRONG with being picky about what you eat.
The photo above is the closest humanity has ever come to creating Medusa. If you were to look at this, you would die instantly.
The image is of a reactor core lava formation in the basement of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It’s called the Elephant’s Foot and weighs hundreds of tons, but is only a couple meters across.
Oh, and regarding the Medusa thing, this picture was taken through a mirror around the corner of the hallway. Because the wheeled camera they sent up to take pictures of it was destroyed by the radiation. The Elephant’s Foot is almost as if it is a living creature.
Friendly reminder that this blob of core material was so hot and dense, it melted/burned through three floors of the building before coming to rest in the lowest basement.
And there’s now a unique species of black mold that feeds off the gamma radiation it produces.
Is no one else seriously freaked out by that mold? No? Just me, then?
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhy was someone shooting it with a kalashnikov
dps check
I mean, the Elephant’s Foot is very very dangerous, but it wouldn’t kill you instantly. When it was first created about a minute of exposure would give you a fatal dose (x, x). That number is now around one hour. And yes, that photo was taken with mirrors, but you know which one wasn’t?
Yeah, this is a selfie. The guy set the timer on the camera and went and stood by it, and it produced this horrifying image that now haunts my dreams. The reason all the photos from Chernobyl are grainy and poor-quality, by the way, is due to radiation. The cameras were fine; radiation just… does that.
Anyway, that guy’s name is Artur Korneyev- and I use ‘is’ because he’s still alive! He helped to build the original sarcophagus which encased reactor 4 after the meltdown, and kept going back inside with reporters to be like ‘look how fuckin weird this is’. He helped plan the New Safe Confinement which now surrounds the sarcophagus, and would probably have helped build it too if they didn’t full-on ban him.
A quote:
‘Korneyev’s sense of humor remained intact, though. He seemed to have no regrets about his life’s work. “Soviet radiation,” he joked, “is the best radiation in the world.”‘
Possibly the coolest guy alive? I’m tempted to think so.
Honestly, I feel like Chernobyl has been shunted into this category of like, ‘a lot of innocent and naive people died horribly’, when in reality a lot of tough as fuck people saved everybody else. The oft-told story of the ‘suicide mission’ to dive into the reactor and open the valves of the pool? Yeah, all three of the men who dove lived. One died in 2005 of heart failure; the other two are still alive.
A total of 31 direct and 15 indirect deaths are thought to have occurred from the Chernobyl disaster. Long-term deaths are… difficult to measure. Oh, and there’s a few hundred people still living in the exclusion zone.
If you’re at all interested, I really recommend reading up about Chernobyl- and, in particular, what was done to contain it and deal with the radiation. This is a beautiful write-up, and the wiki page is also worth checking out.
A lot of people did absolutely incredible work and it goes unrecognised most of the time.
People always gloss over how mentally damaging it can be to work in retail. I fucking hate that whenever I say “I could never work in retail again” someone has to reply “You snowflake millennials can’t take a starter job because you have to INTERACT with other people” No. Fuck you. I’ve worked as a planetarium host. I’ve worked as a public speaker. I’ve worked as a tutor and as a student teacher. I can work with people. I can work with crowds. Retail was fucking different. Retail was being treated as a subhuman. Retail was being treated so poorly that you have anxiety attacks before work. Having to work retail was a factor in my last suicide attempt. If I hear you say one fucking word about retail workers playing the victim I will personally break every bone in your body. Fuck You.
The holidays are coming up. Retail workers are going to be spiraling into a nightmare beyond human comprehension. If you’ve worked retail, you know this. If you haven’t, be aware of it. Please be kind to every retail worker you come across. Please be patient and understanding. It is misery out there.
Boromir lives AU where instead of being around for the events of Two Towers and ROTK he just kind of shows up in Minas Tirith after the Ring is destroyed all bloody & bedraggled like ‘you GUYS i had to swim all the way back what the hELL’
Aragorn: *watching Boromir’s funeral boat drift away* you checked for a pulse right Legolas
Legolas, who definitely does not know how human pulses work: sure did!!
*later*
Aragorn: LEGOLAS I TOLD YOU TO CHECK FOR A PULSE
Legolas: I did!
Aragorn: …..
Legolas: ….
Boromir: …..
Gimli: …..
Legolas: oh you meant check that he DIDN’T have one?
This is the only version of LOTR that I accept now
There's a Mirror on the Wall 