For My Followers In The States—please Vote. “boycotting” An Election Is Not A Viable Strategy To

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Tell Etsy that #ThisIsNotNative

We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it

Evidence is growing that a bacteria involved in gum disease causes Alzheimer's, raising hopes over new kinds of treatments that are currently undergoing testing

This is not the first article I’ve read about this in recent months, and y’all, if this works, I will sob happily and run to go get that fucking vaccine. Dementia/alzheimers runs in the family on both sides. My batshit insane mother was early onset. DO NOT WANT gimme the shiny fix pls.

thinking about Aasimar au warlock Kristen again (wow what a series of words lmao) so have some more silly thoughts about it:

- when Kristen first multiclasses Fig says "don't worry, I got you, I know a lady" and drags them both to see Zara. Zara looks at these two (Kristen, literally about to vibrate out of existence with excitement and happiness, Riz, looking like he's five seconds away from hyperventilating to death) and is like "oh this one's gonna be interesting"

- Zara Sool takes one look at this poor rogue-paladin-patron who looks like he's gonna have a mental breakdown, but deep in his heart trusts Kristen enough to dedicate his love and his time and his magic and his oath and his goddamn soul to this girl (warlock relationships are about exchange, after all, even if he doesn't know that yet. Kristen isn't the only one who's handed away her soul to safer hands with this) and says ">:) I'm gonna trick this boy into talking about his feelings." the following conversation goes pretty much like this:

Zara: look it's really safer for Kristen herself if you tell her what's going on with yourself emotionally, otherwise you might make a faulty contract, which will put her soul in danger.

passive investigation of 21 Riz: >:((( you're trying to guilt trip me

Zara: yeah, is it working????

Riz: ..............maybe

- following Zara's intervention, Riz and Kristen sit down and have a real conversation about their fears and their struggles and the things they want from their lives. Riz admits that he's scared that none of them will stay together after high school and that's why he's pushing so hard to keep them together. Kristen tells him that, yeah, she can't guarantee what will happen after high school, but that they're all prepared to work to keep their friendships, and that she in particular is gonna make sure she's always always friends with him. Kristen talks about the specific things she's been struggling with between school and her religion and they make a plan to help her and also actually talk to Jawbone and Sandra Lynn because Jesus this girl needs help. so after this conversation they make the most detailed fucking contract that has ever been (Riz's anxiety goes crazy) and they show up back to warlock class like "is this good?" and present Zara with an absolute mess of a document that is overflowing with footnotes and sticky notes and annotations and is written in this unholy mess of common-goblin-celestial-rogue cipher, but she kinda quizzes them on it, and lo and behold, they have it fucking memorized

- Riz is still pretty worried so Zara fully enlists her paramour to come down and talk him into being a little bit calmer. Zara and her paramour think this is the cutest thing ever.

- Zara tells Riz he can audit warlock class if he's still nervous about it but he's like "fuck no, if I'm taking a class I am damn well gonna get credit for it" and gets his mcat signed to do three classes. Fig-Kristen-Riz are the terrors of the warlock class but also the best students Zara has ever had. everyone both loves and hates them in there (but mostly loves. they're just too cool)

-after The Conversation, Kristen drags Riz to have another Conversation with the rest of the bad kids, and they echo all her sentiments about staying friends even if they go their separate ways after high school (except Adaine and Riz, who nail down that at least they are gonna go to college together). so even though it feels super unnatural, Riz kind of takes a breath like a whole half a year early. he stops pushing them so hard to perform academically, but the rest of them finally understand why he was doing that, and also understand the consequences of the party failing a little more. so they're all just trying their best, but more organically

- Kristen is technically borrowing from Riz's well of power, and he's not like, a full angel or anything (yet) but magic is a muscle. the more you use it, the stronger it gets. and again, warlock relationships are about exchange. so what happens is that as soon as Kristen starts using her warlock magic routinely, Riz finds that his smites are getting more powerful??? his radiant soul damage is increasing???? he suddenly has access to spell slots he shouldn't??? turns out, power borrowed is power returned, and while his power base is incredible, Kristen is a much more accomplished spellcaster than he is, so she exercises his magic more effectively than he does, and he starts getting more powerful as she gets more comfortable in her powers

-Riz can feel whenever Kristen is using her warlock powers. sometimes she'll start eldritch blasting shit for fun along with fig and five minutes later her crystal will start blowing up like "kristen what are your doing that requires eldritch blast every ten seconds" and then she has to admit that she and fig were seeing who could eldritch blast tin cans off the roof of mordred better

-Riz's wings kind of start to, for lack of a better word, calcify? like, they're still intangible, but they start sticking around even when he's not in radiant soul form. just two ghostly, intangible wings always hanging out, and they only start to really glow when he actually turns on Radiant Soul. he has a flying speed now. he's also frantically researching whether or not its possible for aasimar to start organically rising to angelhood because THIS ISN'T NORMAL, KRISTEN STOP TRYING TO GRAB THEM! (everyone else is so enamoured with his wings. he starts using them like his tail to wrap around people and even though they're intangible everyone swears up and down that they feel cooler and calmer and safer when wrapped up in a Riz wing)

-Kristen and Riz start to more or less have the same magical signature because they're sharing so much power. a side effect of this is that if Kristen is in the room, and Riz is stealthing, even casting something like Detect Evil and Good won't give him away, because his aura is so much like Kristen's and vice versa. they abuse this relentlessly to get Clues. kristen is team distraction and riz is team extraction

-at some point Adaine approaches the two of them like "hey all this stuff that's happening is totally fascinating, can I write a research paper about it?"

"sure," says Riz, "but only if you list us as co-contributors for college credit and stuff"

"well, duh," responds Adaine, and the three of them proceed to make the most detailed paper the world has ever seen about the magical and physical effects of a patron-warlock relationship between two mortals. it comes out sometime in their senior year and the magical research community loses their shit

-Kristen gets up to second level warlock in junior year, and her eldritch invocations are Eldritch Mind and Eyes of the Rune Keeper. the first time she realizes she can just read every single language her friends speak she cries. also she's sooooo scary now. she can hold two concentrations at once AND has advantage on concentration checks. terrifying.

-soooo many prospective warlock students start approaching riz and fig for warlock powers. they didn't know you could just ask normal students!!! (riz and fig are not normal students but that is beside the point.) fig thinks it is amusing. riz thinks it is stressful. kristen thinks it is fucking stupid, like, it's not like he's gonna share, no, I'm not jealous, what are you talking about? at one point it gets so frustrating for riz that he gets up on a table in the middle of the lunch period and shouts "blanket statement for everyone who is not in my party, NO I WILL NOT BE YOUR PATRON, STOP ASKING!!!" the bad kids think it's the funniest thing, but they're also being hella protective of riz and fig. everyone stop BOTHERING them, no they're NOT interested in being your patron!! the number of physical fights that they've all gotten in because of this, in order of least to most, is riz (2, on behalf of fig), kristen (3, on behalf of riz), fig (5, on behalf of riz), fabian (7, on behalf of both), gorgug (8, on behalf of both), and adaine (14, on behalf of both). after about a month everyone has mostly taken the hint

-kristen develops a terrible habit of just. hexing anyone who even remotely annoys her. you were breathing too obnoxiously in class today? blocked hexed. you said something mildly shitty about one of her friends? hexed. aelwyn took the last bagel at breakfast and she really wanted it? hexed. she's experiencing the newfound freedom of being a hater. riz is texting her like "kristen why are you hexing someone at nine in the morning" and she's like "I am experiencing little sister rage for the first time in my life, leave me alone"

-Buddy Dawn does not know what the fuck to make of Kristen's warlock multiclass. she makes him fully bluescreen. Bobby Dawn and Kipperlilly, on the other hand, are absolutely incandescent with rage. they're gonna die mad about it.

-on the other end of the spectrum, Kristen and Riz break Bucky's brain open. he speedruns the emotional crisis that Kristen had freshman year when he Divine Senses their magical connection and nearly cries because he can feel this absolutely overwhelming love. he never knew anyone else could love kristen than fiercely. nothing that full of love could ever be bad

-ooouuuuuugggghhhhh there comes a terrible scene between riz and cassandra where she is like "she believes in you more than me" and riz has to be like "maybe. but that doesn't mean she doesn't believe in you. kristen has enough faith to go around. and so do I. I'm still counting on you too." it's about sharing the most important person in your life. self-recognition through the other (bittersweet). "I see why she loves you so much" says cassandra, and for the first time riz doesn't sort of still feel the nightmare king beneath her, and for the first time she feels him as someone to exist alongside without competing with. and riz, who is kind of sort of maybe ascending to angelhood, is not really becoming an angel of cassandra's pantheon, but he's also not not becoming that

-just. augh. kristen and riz are literally so sickeningly happy as patron and warlock. absolutely attached at the hip. best friends of all time. saint kristen applebees and her own personal guardian angel. they make me ill

anyway that is all, thank you for coming to my TED talk

tiny death roll

I’m seeing so much hate going around and it makes my heart ache so here are some adorable pictures that will hopefully make your day a little better even if it’s only for a few minutes.

And along with that, here’s a friendly and gentle reminder for you:

Reblog to make someone else happy.

Have a good rest of your day/night.

holy fucking shit people simulated the 302 neurons in a worm’s brain with software, put it in a Lego robot and it behaves like a worm

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/weve-put-worms-mind-lego-robot-body-180953399/?no-ist

Franz Kafka, 1912

i think the worst thing to come out of this site are the ‘NAZIS ARE TERRIBLE. they WILL KILL ALL JEWS in COLD BLOOD, LET THEIR FAMILIES DIE IN FRONT OF THEM, and start the HOLOCAUST 2.0!! also reblog to make a jew feel safe.’ formatted type posts

I think part of what makes the McElroys so lovable for millennials and gen z is that they’re a REAL underdog success story. All the ones about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs starting Apple and Microsoft from sheds and Jeff Bezos starting Amazon from a shed are wrong. They all came from well-off backgrounds with upper-class privilege coming out their goddamn ears, but the brothers didn’t.

They really were just three ordinary boys from West Virginia, and if you listen to Griffin’s Florida State lecture (the whole thing’s on youtube) he talks about how rough things were for them when they started their podcast. He mentions how they were in mourning over their mother, fighting all the time, and ready to separate forever, but held on and decided not to abandon each other in the thick of it. And things were still rough, because their father had to work stupid hours at the radio station to support himself, and the brothers were trying to make it in game journalism.

And then they started MBMBaM, a goofy bad advice podcast full of improvised bits and comedy segments, and it blew up. They started TAZ, a fun D&D podcast where they played with their dad, and were able to bond together and let him retire comfortably on the revenue it generated, and now Clint oversees the TAZ graphic novel series that’s still releasing issues and spends boatloads of quality time with his three sons. Monster Factory is just a funny game stream where Justin and Griffin try to destroy character creators as much as possible, but it’s one of their biggest IPs. Their TV show was short-lived but explosively popular among their fanbase.

They sell out entire stadiums and Lin-Manuel Miranda plays them We Didn’t Start the Fire parodies as they walk on and people lose their collective minds. Tom Holland fanboys over them at SDCC. People come from all over the place to hear them perform, and that performance never got less authentic. It’s just three brothers and their dad being goofy together and trying to make each other laugh. And the laughter and love they carried for each other was so contagious that it made an entire world of people love them, too. 

Maybe they’re a bit weird, and their jokes don’t always land, but they’re not always supposed to, because it really is just a tight-knit family living in the moment. And in this world where our two generations may be close to each other but horribly disadvantaged socio-economically, the idea that these three boys carved out a way for themselves through the sheer force of their own happiness out of such a dark place is more hopeful than any “millennials are killing the mayo industry” article ever written.

educational youtube channels:

for when the burnout is real and all you really wanna do is lie in bed and watch things but you gotta at least try to study. these are mostly channels i’ve watched and subscribed to! (updated 17/12/2015)

sciences

veritasium

it’s okay to be smart

pbs space time

crash course: astronomy

crash course: ecology

crash course: biology

crash course: chemistry

crash course: anatomy and physiology 

crash course: psychology

the school of life: sociology

the school of life: psychotherapy

scishow

scishow space

asapscience

minute physics

minute earth

khan academy

the brain scoop

sexplanations 

healthcare triage

sixty symbols

periodic videos

deep sky videos

literature / art

crash course: literature

the school of life: literature

the school of life: art/architecture

art assignment

thug notes: shakespeare explained

thug notes: classic literature

history / geography / government

crash course: world history (season one)

crash course: world history (season two)

crash course: us history

it’s history: the industrial revolution

it’s history: the history of pirates

it’s history: battlefields (military history)

it’s history: the cold war

the school of life: history

alternate history hub

crash course: intellectual property

crash course: economics

crash course: u.s. government and politics

geography now

the school of life: political theory

it’s history: the history of china

it’s history: weapons of mass destruction

it’s history: the history of sex

extra credits: extra history

khan academy: history

khan academy: american civics

the great war

tom richey: ap euro review

tom richey: ap us history review

cgp grey

math

numberphile

khan academy

vihart

philosophy

the school of life: philosophy

the school of life: eastern philosophy

philosophy tube

8-bit philosophy

misc / no particular subject

crash course: big history

ted-ed

smarter every day

in a nutshell

vsauce

dnews

test tube news

test tube plus

seeker daily

the good stuff

thoughty2

how to adult

mental floss