gravelgirty

[gravelgirty]

I was at a courthouse once, and saw an indigenous australian woman in a dressing gown very carefully and gingerly making her way down the steps outside the courthouse, surrounded by family who were helping her down the stairs. We asked if she was OK, because she looked awful. She looked like she should have been wrapped up in bed with blankets and hot soup, not on the steps of a courthouse.

One of her family told us that she had given birth yesterday evening, but that Child Protection services had taken her baby away with no warning, claiming that she wasnt prepared to look after him. What had happened, is that she'd literally only just given birth -- hadn't even passed the afterbirth yet, is holding her blood-coated, crying, newborn baby to her chest -- and a nurse asked what her feeding plan was. She was tired from the birth and distracted by the brand new baby in her arms and thrown off by the timing of the question, but still, she managed to answer, and said she planned to breastfeed him whenever he was hungry.

Well apparently that wasn't enough of a plan for the hospital staff, who reported her and claimed that she was unprepared to look after the child, and claimed that had no social supports, and that the baby was at risk if left with her. All because a brand new mother, 30 seconds after giving birth, didn't have a PowerPoint presentation ready to go that cited the timing cycle she would feed her kid on, and instead simply said that she would feed him when he was hungry.

Child Protection services showed up, took her kid, and she was told to show up to court the next day to contest custody if she wanted her baby back.

So a woman who had given birth less than 24 hours prior was forced to rally her family and show up to court to prove that she a) had a feeding plan for the child, and b) had enough social supports to justify reclaiming her baby.

It was one of the most appalling things I'd ever seen. I don't even know if she won her case. They didn't know at the time we saw them, and after that brief interaction on the stairs, i never saw them again. I sincerely hope she got her newborn baby back.

That was about 5 years ago. And the exact same kind of thing is still happening today.

News broke today from a South Australian whistle-blower of the appalling treatment new mothers frequently receive, including hospital staff taking the baby away from the mother "for medical tests," only for the mother to then be told, with absolutely no prior warning, that the baby was not going to be returned to her.

Here's the article, and here are some excerpts:

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So Fox News ran a story about how they think libraries are turning into drug-infested sex dens and I am shocked, shocked that I was never offered any drugs during my 15+ years working in libraries.

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A pike jumped out of the water likely chasing prey and got stuck in a branch and died. Now, a bird has made a nest in its mouth. One of the most interesting things I’ve seen.

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I would be the worst spy of all time because on one hand I overshare like hell, but on the other hand I also have THE shittiest memory so it’s really a lose/lose scenario for everyone involved.

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#clover park technical college #cptc

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I have an interview at the Maine Oceanarium today and the guy emailed me JUST NOW and was like Hey can you put together a short presentation on an animal of your choice. My interview is in like 3 hours

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American Woodcock demonstrates "distal rhynchokinesis," the ability to flex the end of its bill. This allows it to grab earthworms it encounters when probing in soil. Other shorebirds, including Dunlins & Sanderlings, can bend their bills in this way. 😃

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So here’s how laws work in the US. The federal government can’t tell the states what to make their drinking age but they can tell the states that if they don’t make the drinking age 21 then they’ll take away all of their money for highways. So the federal drinking age is not 21 but the drinking age is 21 in all 50 states. But not the territories. Because they follow different rules.

The federal government can tell the states to make marijuana illegal however but the states in return can say “lol no” and for the most part the federal government just can’t be assed to enforce this so a bunch of states have made recreational marijuana legal in varying capacities. But the businesses that sell weed can’t use federally backed banks because what they’re doing is still illegal even though it’s legal and that’s why the IRS has regulations for taxing illegal businesses.

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Its from that meme

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Found my old workplace in a video game...??

Um, yeah. FALLOUT.

Organ Cave was based on a cave I worked for. Just...well.

HOWEVER

I think the game designers missed out on some really awesome things they could have done if they had spent a few weeks poking about the cave.

Organ Cave was an actual government nuclear war fallout shelter. They could have led with that, folks!

No it didn't have a giant fossil sloth, but it sure as heck had some craze-tacular things they could have used:

that petrified porcupine skeleton. Give it enough radiation and make it move around

Dead Confederates. The more dead Confederates the better. Yes, I'm still fighting the Civil War. I'm pro-Union all the way.

revive the saltpetre munitions factory and make it haunted like legends have it

Put some authentic grafitti on the walls. We're STILL trying to find Henry Cadiz, and he wrote his damn name on the wall back in the 18th-century. Like, dude. How can you want to record your name for posterity AND be a census dodger?

Make the aragonite crystals break off and fall from the ceiling at random. Yeah, they're delicate but they'd potentially main/kill/add to plot if a large enough chunk fell down

The hodags. For god's SAKE...WHO FORGOT THE HODAGS???

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this stupid dream I had

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so like up until the 1600s, people believed that plants got their mass by eating dirt, because where the fuck else would they get it from. a guy named jan van helmont thought this sounded kind of funky and decided to test it by planting a willow tree sapling, letting it grow in a pot for 5 years, and measuring the soil before and after. lo and behold, at the end of the 5 year experiment the weight of the soil was basically the same. he decided that the mass of the growing willow tree would HAVE to be from water, because what the fuck else could the plant possibly eat, am i right lads???

anyway what im trying to get at is that its actually a really common misconception that plants eat dirt. they do not eat dirt. they get their mass from carbon dioxide in the air that they converted into sugars and starches in photosynthesis. yes, they get nutrients and stuff from the soil, but the bulk of what you see in terms of like, leaves and bark and Non-Water Plant Stuff™ was made from materials converted from carbon dioxide in photosynthesis. 

jan van helmont did not know this. jan van helmont self-identified as an alchemist and spent most of his time thinking very hard about how eating things worked while under the assumption that plants apparently got bigger from only water and absolutely nothing else. this, although some sort of mood i can’t pin down– a small worm, a similar hat, if you will– is not a life style i would encourage

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