my favorite thing in the entire world is fiction that takes the concept of “space ship” to its literal extreme i’m not even exaggerating that shit rocks
pics that make you yearn for a life in a universe that only exists in your daydreams
pics that make you wish Treasure Planet was a more appreciated movie
Today is the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin. Before that, Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence.
For perspective, I’ve been diabetic for about 25% of this discovery’s history. When my grandparents were born, this treatment did not exist. If you ask me, “what time period would be fun to go back to?” I can’t even speculate more than one hundred years back, because I know I couldn’t live in that world.
Today, I’m going to pick up four boxes of insulin from my local drug store. My endocrinologist is renewing my prescription, so I’m set for several months to come. I lead a more difficult life than someone without Type 1 diabetes, but I do live, and so do my relatives and friends with the condition. Thank you, Banting, Best, Macleod, and Collip (and all those dogs), for letting me do that.
One hundred years later, after insulin’s discoverer gave his patent away for $1 so as never to profit from the discovery, pharmaceutical companies are forcing people to ration insulin or go without entirely due to unchecked price increases. This is particularly true in the US, and is a major reason why I did not stay there after graduate school. There, and in much of the world where insulin is expensive and scarce, people are dying. Things are starting to change, but not soon enough. It’s been one hundred years, and we need to do better when the alternative is death.
Insulin is worth being grateful about, and its exploitation is worth being angry about. One thing to be aware of is that it is a treatment only, not a cure. Diabetes is still high-maintenance, and I still have a very complicated relationship to it.
Today, though, I’m choosing to focus on my gratitude, and being alive, and being able to go for a walk with my friend in the rain-scented air, do some trivia, see a show.
They say the change in the first child to receive a dose of insulin, 100 years ago, looked like magic.
I reblogged this last month, tagged it, and said “might as well see if it works.” I used this video as a reference to find all the forms that i needed (which is A LOT, especially if you’re a dependent) and sent them through the mail, not really allowing myself to hope.
dude.
$2,714 of medical debt from my top surgery - gone. im shaking this was such a weight on me for 2 years and it fucking worked. what the fuck.
“When Texas sought to enter the Union in 1845 as a slave state, federal law in the United States, based on the Missouri Compromise, prohibited slavery north of 36°30’ parallel north. Under the Compromise of 1850, Texas surrendered its lands north of 36°30’ latitude.”
Tell me more about how critical race theory shouldn’t be taught in school.
I am a grown ass man and I just learned about this 5 minutes ago. Fuck everything about trying to hide the sins of our past.
Critical Race theory, as it actually is, is a high level class taught in Law School. It focuses on how laws in the US that are supposed to be equally affect everyone, actually disproportionately affect marginalized people.
What the is displayed in OP’s image is US history as it is related to slavery.
When certain conservatives are crying about “Critical Race Theory,” they are complaining that they don’t want certain kinds of history taught in school. Anything that might make people feel bad. Making history nice and palatable instead of actually acknowledging the messy realities.
The making of those past mistakes isn’t the problem. It’s the fact that so many people are unwilling to own up to those decisions. By making it problematic to teach about certain aspects of history, they will be able sweep under the rug atrocities that are still effecting people to this day.
There’s a great book called “How the States Got Their Shapes” which goes into how state boundaries were drawn. Most of the later additions were pretty dull (“we’ll just use this river and these latitude lines”) but any state that came about pre-1860 involved one or both of the following:
1) Water access (river, lake, or ocean)h
2) the desperate attempt to keep balance between slave and free states.
This goes to show that a) the United States really is just fifty tiny nations in a trench coat and b) literally everything about the early history of the country was shaped by racial inequality and we need to stop pretending it wasn’t.
Just ask a Jayhawker about that little chunk between Nebraska and Missouri!
