Tragedyofmedusa - A.

Do not punish the behaviour you want to see

I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right?

But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize,  snarkily say, “So, you’ve decided to join us”?

Or when someone does something they’ve had trouble doing, say, “Why can’t you do that all the time?” (Happened to me, too often.)

Or any sentence containing the word “finally”. 

If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don’t complain about how it’s not enough. Don’t bring up previous stuff. Encourage it.

Because I swear to fucking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.

So this is definitely a case of "we did not expect Harvard to fight back and we forgot they have billions of dollars and the best lawyers"

"Ya look like a freaking deer dad"

Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.

Okay I’m currently furious that migraines are often so blindly easy to treat and I had to find this out myself at the age of 26 when I’ve been to a neurologist since I was 11 lol so I’m about to teach you two neat and fast little tricks to deal with pain!

The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.

This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.

Here is a short and easy video showing this in action

The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.

You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.

If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!

I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.

If any of this information helps you I’d love to hear it btw! It’s so so fast and easy to do. Good luck!

dark percy this, dark piper that, what about the entire 7 being dark?

You know what hits me hard? When 5 to 6 year old children, all the way in Southeast Asia, knows about what's happening in Palestine right now. That children their age is getting bombed, that they're starving to death, that they're getting shot at, and sniped in the head. Because, just this past 2 or so months, I heard some of the little ones in the Kindergarten classes I'm TAing in as an Intern talk about it. Hell, one of the little boys downright said he didn't like Isreal, because Isreal is bad, because they do scary things. Another was questioning whether Palestine was bad too, because, "why else would they shooting at them?". A little girl in one of my classes doesn't want to finish her food at all, because she wants to save at least half her meat and rice for kids in Palestine, because she heard that, they don't have food. And that's just the ones I remember. Namely the inciting cases before their classmates slowly follow suit. The littles are fricking SCARED. We had to sit these kids down, and tell them that the topic is too mature for them at the moment, that they shouldn't even be concerned because they're KINDERGARTNERS, they're not even old enough to properly understand. The one teacher I was TAing for had to make a class announcement saying that. What gets me is, these are 5 to 6 year olds, the youngest I've worked with in this specific age group is 4. 5 years old on average, and they've already been exposed to the worst horrors genocide has to offer through the news and snippets of conversation among adults and hell, considering how many of them say they like to play games on Mama's phone, or their IPad, even from fricking social media. And the fact that, these literal babies, from all the way in Cambodia, has more empathy in their entire body and soul, than full grown fricking adults have in the nail of their pinky finger, gets me. FFS we as adults could LEARN from them I feel sometimes. I honestly don't know what to feel about it anymore. On the one hand, this is the next generation I'm working with. And if the next generation's default response to a tragedy such as Palestine, is what I've seen come up on occasion so far? Perhaps there's some bloody hope for this world after all. At least in this country. Especially since a majority of them already come from families who survived a genocide. These are the 3rd - 4th generation descendants of those who survived the Khmer Rouge. They've got grandparents at home, who no doubt are more than intimately familiar with what Palestine is going through right now. And it shows.

But on the other, it makes my heart sink because these are CHILDREN, these are LITTLE KIDS, they should be playing with their toys and watching cartoons and talking to their friends about everything from Spiderman to Speakerman to Kuromi and her friends, and be worried about whether or not they can go to playground that day, guranteed they're well behaved, or if Mama remembered to pack in their costume for swimming lessons that week. NOT JUST MY KIDS. But the little ones in Palestine too. They deserve better. They all deserve, so much better. Hell, it's come to the point that whenever I look at my kiddos right now, whether they'd be working in class, playing, doing something as mundane as eating lunch or getting ready for their nap. I think of the children their age in Palestine that didn't even get the chance to survive. I think of the ones whose memories from this age, is nothing but absolute horror and pain, rather than what has slowly become my normal, who never got to experience what my littles do on a daily basis right now.

Children shouldn't even be concerned about "War", about a Genocide. The last thing that should be on a 5 year old's mind, is pain, and suffering, and the worst horrors imaginable ever to be inflicted on a human being. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S INFLICTED, ON OTHER CHILDREN THEIR AGE. And for that alone, the world has failed them. Especially the kids in Palestine who didn't ask for any of this. They just wanted to carry on with life as kids do, the same way as my littles do on a daily basis no doubt, learning, playing, chatting with friends over their favourite cartoons and characters, worrying about whether they'd get to go to the playground or not that day.

I apologize for talking about this on this blog. I know my blog tends to be lighter in feel, a lot more unhinged and light hearted typically. I mean, I'm just a fricking nerd who likes to draw and write, and lurk about her favourite fandoms to consume and support what is shared among other nerds who also like to draw and write. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. About contemplating it, especially since I'll be back on a roll tomorrow, working with my kiddos again after not seeing them for 5 days straight because of Holidays. And, I just had to talk about it. This is something I felt I couldn't keep to myself this time, I don't think my soul'd be able to carry it. I had to talk about it.

FREE PALESTINE. Our children deserve better.

On this year women's day, all we could think about are Palestinian women in Gaza.

Nearly 9,000 women have been killed in Israeli attacks in five months. Another 2,100 are missing and presumed dead, while 23,000 have been wounded and over half a million are displaced.

“Palestinian women, especially in the Gaza Strip, are exposed to the worst humanitarian catastrophe,” Ashraf al-Qudra, the health ministry’s spokesperson, said on Thursday.

Dozens of women and girls have also been detained and face harsh conditions in Israeli custody, including sexual abuse.

Women in Gaza also struggle to find menstruation products and access the necessary pregnancy and post-natal care. The consequences on reproductive health, including a rise in stress-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births, have increased significantly.

Women in labour are undergoing caesarean procedures without anaesthetics, and a shortage of post-operative care such as medication, antibiotics and pain relief further exacerbates the situation.

According to the health ministry, 5,000 women give birth monthly in Gaza under “harsh, unsafe and unhealthy” conditions caused by Israeli bombing and displacement.

There are 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza suffering from “malnutrition, dehydration and lack of medical care.

There have also been repeated cases of Israeli soldiers mocking Palestinian women by posting videos and pictures of themselves rummaging through personal belongings in Gaza homes, making derogatory comments and posing with women’s underwear.