Okay, So I Have A Sleep Disorder (hence The Sloth In The Name) And I Follow This Sleep Advocacy Group/non

Okay, so I have a sleep disorder (hence the sloth in the name) and I follow this sleep advocacy group/non profit on Instagram which of course, this month, felt the need to "highlight voices from the LGBTQ+ community" who struggle with sleep disorders. So today they posted about this one girl and she writes "I identify as queer and bisexual, and as disabled."

I'm sorry what? Are any of those things something you can "identify" as? Que*r is a slur, and even if it wasn't, what would it even mean? Like why is it a separate thing from your sexual orientation? Which by the way, that's what bisexuality is: a sexual orientation. Not an identity. And disabled, how tf do you identify as disabled? You either have a disability, or you don't. And then underneath that she writes "I have narcolepsy".

Are you sure? Maybe you just identify as narcoleptic. But that would sound ridiculous. 🙄

hello 911 feminists are being mean

RELEASE THE LESBIAN BEETLES POST

Oh man, buckle up cause this one is crazy. Male-killing bacteria, mom-eating daughters, deadbeat sons (that also eat their moms), genital destruction, kids that refuse to grow up until you roast them (literally), multi-cloning, and of course, lesbianism. All in one nearly-microscopic beetle.

Micromalthus debilis is possibly one of the strangest beetles out there (which is saying a lot). It probably started out as a normal-ish beetle millions of years ago, until it got infected with Wolbachia, a bacteria that lives in insects and gets passed down from mother to offspring. Wolbachia figured out that more daughters is a good thing, since female insects can pass on the bacteria whereas males are a dead end. So it alters the physiology of its host to produce more females, or it just straight up kills any males it ends up in. In a few insect species (such as Micromalthus), it went a bit really overboard. Imagine 200 females for every ONE male.

      The male-exclusionary bacteria burrowed inside an insect cell

When you have to compete with 200 other females for a chance to mate, it pays to be a bit... assertive. Multiple females beetles will aggressively try to mate with a single male, often resulting in the male getting his dick chopped off or destroyed. Needless to say, this reproductive strategy sucks. Evolution swooped in with a scorched-earth solution and said “you know what? Fuck mating. Lets just clone ourselves. Also fuck being an adult”. Fast forward to the present, and we have ourselves a really a bizarre life cycle. 

For those that don’t know, beetles have a life cycle a bit like a butterfly, with a larval stage (a beetle grub) that then pupates and becomes an adult (beetle). Micromalthus is entirely larval. There are NO ADULTS. The grubs live their whole lives as grubs, then clone themselves to make more grubs. Well, really its only the females that clone themselves. They either make multiple female copies of themselves, which eat the mother alive, or they make a single precious baby male. Which also eats the mother alive, but this time from the inside out. And for all intents and purposes the male is a total deadbeat, since he can’t make any clones and he can’t mate. 

                     Yeah, the moms really do have it that rough (x)

But researchers discovered that you can induce development of the larvae to adults by roasting them. Literally, they heat them up to 55° Celsius (which is 131° degrees in Freedom units). The vast majority of them die in the process, but for the ones that survive it seems that the vestigial genes used for metamorphosis into adults get re-activated. These “ghost adults” are totally sterile yet still mate with each other. It’s through this process that we discovered their mating strategy mentioned above. 

And it’s how we discovered the oldest case of lesbianism (sort of). Some of the ghost-adult females will eschew the free-for-all violent hetero mating and instead mate with each other (but without any genital destruction). Now here is the interesting part- Micomalthus has gone tens of millions, possibly over a hundred million years without mating. And since they stay in their larval form, that means that “sexual orientation” has been vestigial for millions of years. Any genes responsible for sexual behavior have lied dormant for far longer than anything resembling humans has been around. Those genes have been frozen in a dormant state, essentially fossilized. So when we observe the sexual antics of this tiny little beetle, we are looking at behavior that was possibly last expressed when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. And that includes lesbianism. 

Happy pride month, everyone! (and if you liked this post, check out the male homosexual blood parasites)

Me: has a test on Wednesday to study for, an essay to write, 2 discussion posts due, a community health project, and a group project on cancer that I need to start

Also me: well this seems like an optimal time to re-watch a few seasons of teen wolf.

Mexican artist Gabriel Dawe creates a rainbow sculpture woven from over sixty miles of colored thread.

(Artist)

The faces of child marriage

Tehani, 8, Yemen. “Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him,” Tehani (in pink) recalls of the early days of her marriage to Majed, when she was 6 and he was 25. The young wife posed for a portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their home in Hajjah.

Destaye, 11, and Addisu, 23, Ethiopia. Addisu and his new bride Destaye are married in a traditional Ethiopian Orthodox wedding in the rural areas outside the city of Gondar, Ethiopia. Community members said that because of his standing as a priest, Addisu’s bride had to be a virgin. This was the reason Destaye was given to him at such a young age.

Rajani, 5, India. Long after midnight, Rajani is roused from sleep and carried by her uncle to her wedding. Child marriage is illegal in India, so ceremonies are often held in the wee hours of the morning. It becomes a secret the whole village keeps, explained one farmer.

Bishal, 15, and Surita, 16, Nepal. Bishal accepts gifts from visitors as his new bride, Surita, sits bored at her new home. Here in Nepal, as in many countries, not only girls, but boys too are married young.

Faiz, 40, and Ghulam, 11, Afghanistan. Ghulam and Faiz sit for a portrait in her home before their wedding in Afghanistan. According to the U.S. Department of State report “Human Rights Practices for 2011,” approximately 60 percent of girls were married younger than the legal age of 16. Once the girl’s father has agreed to the engagement, she is pulled out of school immediately.

Sarita, 15, India. Sarita is seen in tears before she is sent to her new home with her new groom. The previous day, she and her 8-year-old sister Maya were married to sibling brothers.

Leyualem is transported by mule to her new home on her wedding day. The men later said the cloth was placed over her head so she would not be able to find her way back home, should she want to escape the marriage.

Asia, 14, Yemen. Asia washes her newborn at home in Hajjah while her 2-year-old daughter plays. Asia is still bleeding and ill from childbirth, yet has no knowledge of how to care for herself or access to maternal health care.

Mejgon, 16, Afghanistan. Mejgon weeps in the arms of her case worker near fellow residents at an NGO shelter run by Afghan women in Herat, Afghanistan. Mejgon’s father sold her at the age of 11 to a 60-year-old man for two boxes of heroin.

Jamila, 15, Afghanistan. Kandahar policewoman Malalai Kakar arrests a man who repeatedly stabbed his wife, 15 and mother of two children, for disobeying him. When asked what would happen to the husband for this crime, “Nothing,” Kakar said. “Men are kings here.” Kakar was later killed by the Taliban.