starsunderfog:

brainstatic:

Amazon’s LOTR series is going to focus on young Aragorn, which actually sounds pretty dull. He’s the most conventional character in the series by far, and his backstory is basically Jon Snow’s. We’ve already seen the rightful king in exile among the wilderness rangers, we don’t need to see it again.

…what?

I mean he and the wilderness rangers are in exile, because they’re all Dunedain, nobles of Gondor and heirs of Numenor, also he’s really not … . like … similar to Jon Snow in any way, shape, or form? He’s not a bastard, he knows he’s a prince the entire time, he was raised in The Last Homely House by his elven cousins and … look, I get that 85% of fantasy is people copying tropes that look like Tolkien, three degrees removed, but Tolkien himself was a master.

ETA: I’ll absolutely concede that if they don’t know what they’re doing and actually write Aragorn as young Jon Snow, that sounds pretty bad.

therobotmonster:

the-real-seebs:

crescellerose:

vampireapologist:

the most fucked up thing about married straight couples in paranormal reality shows is that the husband is almost always the skeptic and the wife will be like terrified to exist in her own home and she’ll beg her husband to believe her and she’ll be crying every night and he’ll straight up look at the camera and be like “I don’t know I guess I just thought she was imagining things.”

like this is beyond belief in ghosts what it comes down to is one member of these couples was so distressed they were in tears nightly or at least weekly, BEGGING their partner to listen to them, and their partner was like “whatever this’ll blow over.”

how does your relationship survive that?? how are these people still together?? if my wife came into the room crying and told me she’d seen bill watterson, author of acclaimed comic calvin and hobbes, manifest in our kitchen and tell her he didn’t like our wallpaper, I’d like. obviously have some questions. but I’d fucking address her distress and take steps to make her feel better lmao???

these husbands are all garbage and they feel justified bc they weren’t the “crazy one” who believed in ghosts.

they were the good, logical,  “sane” spouse who did rational and good things like, completely and purposefully ignore their partners’ growing and life-altering distress for months.

reblog if you want bill watterson, author of acclaimed comic calvin and hobbes, to manifest in your kitchen and roast your terrible choices in wallpaper

this post caused [reads smudged writing on hand] bill watterson? to physically manifest in my house

As a skeptic, I find these kinds of scenarios just as irritating, because in my book, and those of the skeptics I associate with, the idea is that one doesn’t doubt there was an experience, its what that experience is that’s in question. “I don’t doubt you saw something, but saying what it is will require investigation” and all that.

If anything, the skeptic is the one who should be pushing for them to go to a hotel for the night, because carbon monoxide poisoning produces the effects of a haunting. 

So if your spouse, who is spending more time at home than you are, is reporting scary inexplicable shit, then the first place a skeptic’s mind is going to go is something in the environment causing it. Probably carbon monoxide, but there’s all kinds of gases and molds that can cause hallucinations, not to mention infrasound if the acoustics are just right. Regardless, anything that can cause you to see Bill Watterson materialize in your kitchen is probably dangerous, and the solution to that problem, be it a legitimate ghost or an infestation of ergot in the wallpaper, is to leave the dangerous area until the problem is identified and dealt with.

None of the creepy stuff from hauntings is really stuff you’d want to ignore even with its mundane causes. Even if it does come down to a 100% ‘in your head’ kind of thing, that means the house is causing a sharply negative psychological reaction and you shouldn’t stay there. 

I’d totally dig the reverse film, though. Believer spouse is too stubborn to be chased out by the ghost, while the skeptic spouse is pulling their hair out because they’ve bought this money pit that just develops one problem after the other.

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

fozmeadows:

– The reason you get extra hungry before and during your period is because your body is physically burning more calories, sometimes as many as 300 more per day for the duration of your period, with an elevated BMR (base metabolic rate) in the days before it starts. So no, you’re not being weird or gross or undisciplined if you want to eat a bunch of chocolate – your body is just burning the same amount of calories you’d expend in 25 minutes on a crosstrainer to shed your uterine lining. 

– This is especially important to remember if you’re already, for whatever reason, eating fewer calories per day than it takes to maintain your current weight, which is about 2000 for an adult, though it can be dangerous to have much less than 1300 per day. Think of it like this: if you’re eating 1600 calories a day out of a potential healthy 2000, and your body suddenly wants an extra 300, you’re not craving 1900, but 2300, which is the difference between wanting a chocolate bar and a slice of toast, and wanting an entire extra meal. So, I say again: DO NOT feel bad about wanting to eat more during your period. Your body is working hard, and needs fuel!

–  Paradoxically, despite the rate at which you’re burning calories, you’re also retaining water, which can make you both feel and weigh as heavier. Speaking personally, I’ve noticed my weight fluctuate by as much two kilos (4.5 pounds) before and after a period, rising before and during, then dropping sharply afterwards. So if you’re struggling with body image or weight issues, this is a suboptimal time at which to get on the scales: the result you’ll get will only reflect a temporary reality, not your actual progress, and is therefore unhelpful.

– If, for whatever reason, you’re self-conscious about easing your cramps with a hot water bottle where other people can see it, whether at home or work, consider using a plastic soft drink bottle filled with hot/boiling water. Even if you put it openly on your lap, instead of tucking it under a shirt or into a front hoodie pocket, it will just look like a regular bottle of water, and any relief is better than none!

– No, it’s not weird if you shit more during your period than usual, either. The hormones your body releases that make your uterus to contract and release sometimes end up in the bowel, particularly if you happen to produce a lot of them, which means that bowel contracts and releases, too.

– If anyone tries to make a dumbass sexist joke about your being more [insert stereotypically negative feminine quality here] while on your period, you can tell them that actually, menstruation raises testosterone levels, not oestrogen. (Telling them to go fuck themselves with an angry cactus can also be therapeutic.)

– The cramps and lower back pain often experienced during menstruation, when the uterus expels its contents and your hips shift slightly wider to accommodate it, are a microcosm of what happens during actual labour. So yeah: it can hurt!

– That being said, we’ve culturally accepted the idea of massive period pain as normative to such an extent that many people don’t realise their pain is a sign that something’s wrong. Despite how common they are, a lot of conditions like PCOS and endometriosis are poorly understood in terms of their etiology, which means it can be hard to get an accurate diagnosis. But if your periods regularly have you screaming, vomiting or totally incapacitated, get checked out: you shouldn’t have to just shut up and endure because it’s ‘meant’ to feel like that. It’s not, and there are ways to manage it.

– As well as being a form of birth control, you can take the pill to control or stop your period. When used to prevent menstruation, the pill tricks the body into thinking you’re already pregnant, which stalls your cycle (and stops you from actually getting pregnant). Though some people worry that it’s unnatural not to menstruate for long periods of time, or for your body to ‘feel’ pregnant for so long, it’s also important to remember that, after an actual pregnancy, especially if you breastfeed, your period won’t resume right away. This is called 

lactational amenorrhea, which can work as a form (though not, I hasten to add, a 100% reliable form) of natural birth control. Basically, it means your body is focussed on producing milk for an existing child, such that you can’t easily conceive another one until the first child is weaned. While this varies from person to person, the important thing to remember is that there’s ample biological precedent for stopping menstruation for long periods of time whether you’re pregnant or not, and that choosing to do so via the pill doesn’t make you unnatural, nor does it cause your body to do something it otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t. 

In conclusion: periods suck, but knowing how and why they work and how best to manage them can make them suck slightly less. So go ye forth, and be educated!

As someone who had to have a uterus removed for severe endometriosis, I will always reblog this sort of information. Don’t sit and endure, and don’t listen to the twatwaffles who insist that the pain is normal or you’re just overreacting. It isn’t just in your head and you are in legitimate pain.