This World Has A Lot Of Awful Stuff And If Someone Holding A Stuffed Animal Helps Them Cope, Let Them

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and icarus said to aphrodite- so this is what i'm for. you have a distant awareness that the day you fall is the day you change. change is so very difficult, isn't it? watching everyone leave? you want the light so desperately, but you fear it. one day it will come for you. one day you will stop mourning the future and start mourning the present, and it will be peaceful.

take my quiz if you want to feel sad about yourself

there are ten results, all colours, and no pop culture questions whatsoever.

Being able to read journal articles critically is also such an important skill. I’ve been reading journal articles since late high school, but it’s only been in grad school that I’ve learned how to approach them critically. Fortunately there are a few questions you can ask about any study that will help you decide how much you trust the results even if you know nothing of the field.

What journal was the article published in? Some journals are far more reputable than others. Usually a quick Google search can inform you of if a journal is considered reputable.

Do the authors list any conflicts of interest? Conflicts of interest aren’t an immediate red flag, but if the author has a strong incentive to only publish certain results then I’ll definitely be taking a second or third look at the study.

Who funded the study? If Coca Cola funded a study that says drinking one soda a day is beneficial to your energy levels, I’m not trusting that implicitly.

Is it peer reviewed? Peer review can fail, but this is the quickest test for if a study is good or not.

What are the limitations of the study? This plays into the assumptions the author made. Were the experiments only done on white men (often the first standard in medical research though it’s getting better)?

Similarly do the authors list their limitations? The best articles will have a short section on limitations or a paragraph in the discussion about limitations. I am always slightly wary when no limitations are listed.

What is the sample size in the study? This number will usually be found in methods. The bigger the number, the better. However, there are a lot of standards for what the minimum sample size should be. In small animal research, you’re usually looking at a few dozen mice or rats. In larger animal research, you may be looking at less than ten animals (pigs, horses, cows). In human trials (also known as clinical research), it tends to be dependent on what the study is on. Knee replacements probably 15 people or so. Spinal cord trauma would be more like 5 people. (Social science will also have different minimum sample sizes but I’m not familiar enough to give estimates. In general subjective surveys require a lot of people. More objective testing done by researchers will have less people involved)

How many citations does the study have? This one can be a little more hit or miss. An article published a year or two ago may be great and have no citations. While an article published fifty years ago may have a hundred citations but have incorrect information (in this case it’s usually that methods have improved and new information was discovered instead of poor research quality). Niche topics may also be hardly cited despite being good articles.

There are other questions you can ask like “Can I follow the methods?” “Does the interpretation of their results logically follow from their results?”Etc. but those tend to be harder the less familiar you are with a field. And if you’re reading about a study in a news article like CNN, Apple News, etc. there are different tricks to determining how much you trust them (I tend to look for hyperbole and rhetorical devices. One time I found a news article saying physicists had figured out faster than light travel. They were referencing a theoretical mathematics paper that stated using several assumptions hyperluminal travel is mathematically possible)

What I learn from Science & Technology Studies is that you shouldn't blindly trust science because there's a fair amount of fuckery (mostly unintentional but sometimes not) going on in the background, but you also shouldn't *not* trust science in the way that most people who don't trust science don't trust science.

Anyways, hope that helps!

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America tends to not care about collectives of people. Like, a lot of people were antivax because they didn’t care enough about others, but in other countries that put families, groups, and others first that wouldn’t fly. You’d have a duty to get vaccinated to protect others whether you care about protecting yourself or not.

Which actually explains a lot of strict lawn practices in neighborhoods and stuff. Suddenly the decision of others affects YOUR property value (even if that is stupid and silly and most people love seeing gardens). So there’s strict rules so that no one being individualistic can affect you cause the USA doesn’t care about groups of people.

That’s rambly but maybe it makes sense. I’m sure there’s a better way to put it. But strict HOAs and city ordinances protect the collective from individuals in a country that doesn’t have a culture of caring for the collective. It’s for stupid reasons and all. A garden doesn’t hurt anything and actually helps but remember this is a country that has awful pollen (I literally live in a place nicknamed the pollen capital of the world though it isn’t on the list for 2022. Yeaaaa) because they only planted male trees (of species that have male/female categories) because city planners didn’t want fruit/nuts everywhere on the sidewalk.

not to sound crazy or anything but the fact that HOA's and city ordinances about how you can manage your garden and yard exist is so insane to me. you're supposed to spend your life doing thankless back breaking work so you can own a house with a yard—which you are forced to manage to an exacting, generic, hostile aesthetic appearance according to others preferences, even if it makes the space useless to you?

You can't even have a vegetable garden. or plant a tree. or plant fucking flowers. in YOUR OWN YARD that you paid for and own? this is the american dream?

i was worried my cat is dehydrated because i never see him drink water so i’ve started leaving a cup of water that’s “mine” (aka he sees me drink out of it once before he does) in my room so he thinks he is being a rebellious naughty by drinking out of it but rlly he is just following my plan & being hydrated .

Be unapologetically you. Sing in your car, dance in the grocery store, jump off the sidewalk. Do the things that make you happy.

Do something nice for yourself, you deserve it

It’s absolutely valid to spend time questioning your identity and decide that you aren’t LQTBQ.

I think it’s interesting that our idea of opposite is two things that are only related because of how contrary they are to one another. A lot of opposites are actually absences or abundance’s of something (light is an abundance of photons; dark an absence). Then most others are either spatial (left; right) or arbitrary (dog; cat). Which brings me to life and death. Of the things we experience, they fall into the spectrum of abundance and absence which leads to a couple interesting questions...

What is the spectrum life and death reside on?

And is life the abundance or absence?

Instead of wondering if you’re smart or not, maybe we should just ask ourselves if we have learned something in our life and if we will continue to learn stuff.

a list of 100+ buildings to put in your fantasy town

academy

adventurer's guild

alchemist

apiary

apothecary

aquarium

armory

art gallery

bakery

bank

barber

barracks

bathhouse

blacksmith

boathouse

book store

bookbinder

botanical garden

brothel

butcher

carpenter

cartographer

casino

castle

cobbler

coffee shop

council chamber

court house

crypt for the noble family

dentist

distillery

docks

dovecot

dyer

embassy

farmer's market

fighting pit

fishmonger

fortune teller

gallows

gatehouse

general store

graveyard

greenhouses

guard post

guildhall

gymnasium

haberdashery

haunted house

hedge maze

herbalist

hospice

hospital

house for sale

inn

jail

jeweller

kindergarten

leatherworker

library

locksmith

mail courier

manor house

market

mayor's house

monastery

morgue

museum

music shop

observatory

orchard

orphanage

outhouse

paper maker

pawnshop

pet shop

potion shop

potter

printmaker

quest board

residence

restricted zone

sawmill

school

scribe

sewer entrance

sheriff's office

shrine

silversmith

spa

speakeasy

spice merchant

sports stadium

stables

street market

tailor

tannery

tavern

tax collector

tea house

temple

textile shop

theatre

thieves guild

thrift store

tinker's workshop

town crier post

town square

townhall

toy store

trinket shop

warehouse

watchtower

water mill

weaver

well

windmill

wishing well

wizard tower

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