Abuse culture describes the way our culture systemically indulges, excuses, and ultimately normalizes abuse. It frequently overlaps with rape culture, and has intersections with oppression (racism, sexism, ableism, classism, homophobia, etc).
Examples of abuse culture include:
Applauding “creative” methods of abuse as punishment, such as parents shaving their children bald, or someone destroying their partner’s valued possessions.
Insisting some people and children deserve physical violence (that is not self defense).
Making a hierarchy out of rape and abuse in general, “at least it wasn’t–” type rhetoric, and trying to make survivors compete or attack each other.
Trigger jokes.
Punishing people who defend themselves from their abusers, and the way laws and society view self defense as only being what is “equal” to the abuse (such as, a person being violently abused by their partner for years wouldn’t be justified in killing them because their partner was not literally threatening their life, thus it was “an overreaction” and not actually self defense).
Victim blaming, and having more sympathy and empathy for abusers and assailants than their victims (”This could ruin their life", serial killer fandoms, “They’re just sick and need help”, etc).
Ignoring emotional abuse, financial abuse, dietary abuse, cultural abuse, and religious abuse as forms of abuse that can be just as bad as physical abuse.
Insistence that bullying is necessary for whatever reason.
“Well life’s not fair” and similar rhetoric compounding a belief that life is naturally unfair rather than synthetically unfair (ie, it is unfair because of cultural and social issues and impacts, not because it just is).
Saying victims should change instead of their abusers. “Well if he wasn’t so weird he wouldn’t be bullied. He needs to stop being weird.” instead of telling his bullies not to be bullies.
Parents being allowed to do basically whatever they want to their children; seeing children as property, your personal therapists, etc.
Joking about crazy ex girlfriends; crazy ex girlfriends being funny stories and anecdotes instead of being acknowledged as abusers, or instead of acknowledging their justified grievances.
Stalking, paranoia, and possessiveness being played as romantic and dedicated.
“Quiet hands” and other abusive practices being touted as therapeutic for neurodivergent people.
If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there.
Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.
Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it.
I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.
Damn Italy, you scary.
Poland:“Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”
Milan: “Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”
Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.
Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world.
WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL
When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.
Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!
1. Doctor finds anecdotal evidence that people are passing kidney stones after riding on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney World
2. Doctor makes 3-D model of kidney, complete with stones and urine (his own), takes it on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad 60 times
3. “The stones passed 63.89 percent of the time while the kidneys were in the back of the car. When they were in the front, the passage rate was only 16.67 percent. That’s based on only 60 rides on a single coaster, and Wartinger guards his excitement in the journal article: ‘Preliminary study findings support the anecdotal evidence that a ride on a moderate-intensity roller coaster could benefit some patients with small kidney stones.’”
4. “Some rides are going to be more advantageous for some patients than other rides. So I wouldn’t say that the only ride that helps you pass stones is Big Thunder Mountain. That’s grossly inaccurate.”
5. “His advice for now: If you know you have a stone that’s smaller than five millimeters, riding a series of roller coasters could help you pass that stone before it gets to an obstructive size and either causes debilitating colic or requires a $10,000 procedure to try and break it up. And even once a stone is broken up using shock waves, tiny fragments and “dust” remain that need to be passed. The coaster could help with that, too.”
SCIENCE: IT WORKS
Update:
“In all, we used 174 kidney stones of varying shapes, sizes and weights to see if each model worked on the same ride and on two other roller coasters,” Wartinger said. “Big Thunder Mountain was the only one that worked. We tried Space Mountain and Aerosmith’s Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and both failed.”Wartinger went on to explain that these other rides are too fast and too violent with a G-force that pins the stone into the kidney and doesn’t allow it to pass.“The ideal coaster is rough and quick with some twists and turns, but no upside down or inverted movements,” he said.
I just love this because it’s HILARIOUS and yet also a perfect archetypal example of The Scientific Method:
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Results
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
6. GOTO 1 (the scientific method is iterative, don’t forget that part)
was this like… done in cooperation with disney management or did some random scientist go through bag check with a 3d printed kidney and a bottle of piss and start looking for big thunder mountain fastpasses
Of course, the researchers had to get permission from Disney World before bringing the model kidney onto the rides. “It was a little bit of luck,” Wartinger recalls. “We went to guest services, and we didn’t want them to wonder what was going on—two adult men riding the same ride again and again, carrying a backpack. We told them what our intent was, and it turned out that the manager that day was a guy who recently had a kidney stone. He called the ride manager and said, do whatever you can to help these guys, they’re trying to help people with kidney stones.”
spacemaverick archive 