Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse. So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction. This is your birth. – @recklessprudence
There’s a saying in the streets, It’s easy to fall, harder to rise. The streets are hard, and hot, and freezing cold at the same time. It makes people that are hard, who have hot tempers and cold hearts. They grasp for anything that will get them ahead. Even if it means killing their own. It’s a broiling forge in which the toughest and the hardest make a living, and the cleverest find a way out of as soon as possible.
Assuming they survive that long.
All of this, of course, was mere philosophy now that Cass was slowly bleeding to death in the gutters following a Back-Street Handshake. Or, as the rare police knew it, a quick shiv to the kidneys. At least she’d got him in the goolies before he smashed her face and took what little she had to steal. Rage burned inside her as she watched the retreating back as her thief limped away through her remaining, useful eye. Die in a fire, she thought, and was more than shocked to see the cutpurse burst into flames.
Like most toilets in Educational facilities this one was littered in graffiti, some of it actually, (a) anatomically correct and, (b) spelled right. Someone had scrawled ‘Plumbing does not define Genius or Worth!’ – Anon Guest
Those were inspirational words, but when one was battling digestive upset, plumbing certainly interfered with one’s ability to learn. Taerl read arguments from other scholars, including one who repeatedly asked for proof of assorted statements. Someone else, irritated with the non-rebuttal, had scrawled, DO YOUR OWN FARKIN RESEARCH on top of the non-argument.
Maester Jaal insisted that Taerl was not used to the food in this immense school, or that she wasn’t used to the water. Maester Jaal had also insisted that Taerl take time off to acclimate to the food, the water, and the way of life that was so very different to her former home. Taerl couldn’t do it. This was a place that had everything she could possibly need, where people talked to her as if she were a full-grown man with lands and holdings and everything. Where people greeted her ignorance with reactions like, “Oh, you are in for a treat,” instead of calling her stupid. Where people looked at her in admiration and not revulsion and fear.
And where, unfortunately, the local food or the local water had her going to the privy every five minutes.
I very rarely get angry, but this is one of the things that makes me want to scream at everyone responsible. I had to keep taking breaks while writing this because of how frustrated it made me.
This needs WAY more attention than it gets.
this literally came out today I’m sure it’ll get more attention since everything in it is basically true
Blow. This. Up. This is so important and a huge part of the reason I want to go into politics, more attention needs to be drawn to this.
The current educational system was invented during the industrial revolution to make sure there’d be enough clerks to sit at desks all day and write neatly into their copybooks and perform maths with accuracy so that their boss wouldn’t lose any money.
That was one hundred and fifty years ago.
Now kids need to know:
how to protect themselves from creeps
what sexual identities are
basic repair and maintenance skills
how to recognise a bad relationship
how to be financially secure [beyond “learn these 150YO skill sets and get a diploma for a job we shipped to China by the time you graduate in debt lol”]
how to know what you’re good at
how to sell it
comparison shopping
how to spot a scam
how to budget
the current political system and how it works
the laws of the land
the firkin economy
how to cook on a bare-bones budget
how to save someone’s life
how to write apps
Don’t get me wrong, I love Shakespeare, but we don’t need to know it in order to gain employ. I’ve never once got a job by being able to point out Shakespeare quotes. Or by reciting the works of the Bard.
Nor, for that matter, have I gained any headway on my “exclusive” knowledge of BlitheringWitheringSimpering Wuthering Heights.
We’d probably be more helpful in teaching kids how to sail through a job interview.
1. “…that someone can love food AND have an eating disorder.
Many people with eating disorders spend their entire day thinking and obsessing about food, and many are chefs or bakers themselves. One reason is that restricting directly causes food obsession (see the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, but TW for emaciation, restriction, numbers, disordered thoughts and behaviors). Eating disorders are just that — a disordered relationship with food, rather than no relationship with food at all.
2. “…that eating disorders are an illness, not a choice or a character flaw.”
Eating disorders are a mental illness. The individual behaviors may be choices, but the self-destructive compulsion behind them is not something anyone would choose.
3. “…that eating disorders are about more than wanting to lose weight and get thin.”
Eating disorders are a coping mechanism whereby people all other worries and insecurities are translated into body dissatisfaction/a disordered relationship with food. It may present as a single-minded desire for thinness, but first and foremost it is a mental illness and a self-destructive, slow suicide.
4. “…that ANYONE can get an eating disorder.”
People with eating disorders can be extroverted, introverted, vain, selfless, cheerful, morose, popular, outcasts, smart, learning disabled, rich, poor, young, old, Black, White, Latin@, Asian, male, female, queer, gay, straight, bi, fat, thin, or anything in between. There is no group that is totally immune to mental illness.
5. “…that eating disorders are largely genetic.”
Recent research indicates that people are born with a predisposition for eating disorders; a common analogy is that genetics is the gun, and environmental factors (upbringing, diet culture, fatphobic messages in the media, etc.) are the trigger.
6. “…that diet culture is so insidious, pervasive, and harmful.”
Diet culture is what allows eating disorders to hide so well. Instead of being alarmed at rapid changes in diet or the obsessive following of arbitrary food rules, we laud people for their “self-control” and “willpower.” When someone goes to the gym so often they are letting their other responsibilities slide and injuring themselves, they are “dedicated” and “determined.” Diet culture holds weight loss as a worthy goal in and of itself, so eating disorders become merely a misguided way to a good goal rather than a completely distorted, deadly value system. Diet culture preaches everything that eating disorders preach: that self-loathing and body hatred are normal, that fat is universally bad, that the only way to really love yourself or be happy is to change your body.
7. “…that eating disorders aren’t ‘just a phase’.”
Some people do only have an eating disorder for a short while and it gets better with time. However, many people do not get better without help; and if an eating disorder goes untreated it can become a debilitating, lifelong disability with a death sentence.
8. “…that not everyone with an eating disorder loses weight.”
Not all eating disorders are purely restrictive; some eating disorders are characterized by binges, like BED or bulimia nervosa. Disordered eating also very often leads to weight yo-yoing rather than sustained weight loss.
9. “…that eating disorders are very messy.”
Eating disorders are far from glamorous. They cause great physical damage, everything from dry nails and rotting teeth to laxative addiction and muscle wasting, to eroded stomach lining and Barrett’s esophagus — where throat lining is replaced by intestinal lining, sometimes leading to throat cancer.
10. “…that bulimia isn’t delicately/quietly puking after meals.”
Purging can include over exercising, diuretics and laxatives, not just vomiting. [TW: v*miting] Also, vomiting is rarely delicate OR quiet. Your body doesn’t like to throw up, so it makes it as unpleasant, loud, noisy and messy as possible. It’s nowhere close to dainty OR neat.
11. “…that people with anorexia actually do eat.”
If someone did not eat at all they would be dead in 1-4 weeks. Anorexia is marked by restriction, generally not total abstinence from food.
12. “…that there are other eating disorders besides anorexia and bulimia.”
Binge Eating Disorder (BED), and Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED), which includes Atypical anorexia nervosa, Subthreshold bulimia nervosa, Subthreshold binge eating disorder, Purging disorder, and Night eating syndrome, are also very serious eating disorders that can cause significant emotional and physical damage.
13. “…that just because someone is doing it for attention, doesn’t mean they’re not sick.”
Sometimes it IS for attention; often there are other situations (such as abuse or a pre-existing and untreated mental disorder) which a sufferer doesn’t know how to talk about; instead, they develop an eating disorder as a way to cope with that situation as well as to communicate that something is seriously wrong. Ignoring an eating disorder because you believe it’s “just” for attention is exactly like ignoring a suicide jumper who you think is doing it “just” for attention. The end result is unfortunately very similar.
14.“…that someone I’m close with may have an eating disorder even I don’t know about.”
Eating disorders are very secretive and thought of as something shameful, so many sufferers will lie and hide their eating disordered behaviors.
15. “…that I don’t have to be ashamed of or regret my eating disorder in order to recover.”
Eating disorders serve a purpose for a tough period of someones life. They may not be a good coping mechanism, but it is not something you choose. You should not be ashamed of having an eating disorder.
16. “…that recovery is really hard.”
Eating disorders are an addiction, and are as hard to recover from as any other addiction. But with eating disorders, it’s complicated because total abstinence thing isn’t possible — you have to learn moderation, you have to eat.
17. “…that recovery is so worth it.”
When you can go out to eat with friends and focus on being with them instead of the number of calories on the table, when eating is a part of your day instead of the thing that ruins your day, when you are really living instead of dying… there are infinite reasons to recover that make it worth it.
My biology teacher, Mr. G, used to teach at a K - 12 Christian school many years back, and in his biology class, he taught evolution. Naturally, this made many parents of religious families upset, and he expected quite a lot of backlash at parent-teacher night….
You love a teacher when they’re hiding your children from a crazed gunman in Newtown and getting shot while protecting them. You adore educators when they’re using their body to shield your kids from a falling wall in the middle of a tornado in Oklahoma.
But let that teacher have the nerve to ask for job security or reasonable pay or a manageable workload and all of a sudden we’re lazy union thugs.
Dear America,
If you subsidized education like you subsidize oil and fucking Monsanto, you would not be in the trouble you are now.
