Julius Caesar’s two most famous assassins, Brutus and Cassius, were the son and son-in-law, respectively, of a Roman noblewoman named Servilia. And Servilia and Caesar were fucking. Not just a one off thing, either. They were having an affair for literally decades. Everyone knew it. Why did everyone know? Well, one time Caesar and Cato, who was Servilia’s brother, were having a debate (catfight) in the Senate and a servant came in and passed Caesar a note. Cato jumps up, all indignant, and announces that Caesar is committing treason right in the middle of the Senate. See that treasonous note he just got handed? (Like I said, it was a catfight.) And Caesar is like, well Cato, here’s the treasonous note, how about we read it aloud to the Senate, huh? It was a love letter from Servilia. And that’s the story of how Caesar made Cato stand there and listen to the sexts Cato’s sister sent Caesar get read aloud in front of the whole Senate.
I’ve always been privately convinced (on no evidence whatsoever) that Brutus and Cassius killed Caesar because they were so fucking embarrassed that he was fucking their mother/mother-in-law.
Ej you can’t just drop all the goss and then say there’s more without sharing
Oh boy. I guess I can’t back out now, can I? Ok, let’s do this.
So Brutus’s great-grandfather was named Quintus Servilius Caepio and he was a completely shit person generally and got two entire armies massacred because he was an elitist shithead and wouldn’t work with someone he thought was low-class but anyway. He was on campaign and he captured this huge hoard of gold at this town called Tolosa and sent it back to the Roman treasury. But then the caravan carrying the gold was hijacked by bandits and it all disappeared. Surprise! Caepio hired the bandits himself and stole all the gold. People were (understandably) pissed.
I was actually wrong in the tags, it wasn’t Brutus’s grandfather, it was his great-uncle. Anyway, so Roman citizens were allowed to vote, but the other Italians, who made up like half of the Roman armies, weren’t technically citizens and couldn’t vote. Which annoyed them. So Brutus’s great-uncle, Marcus Livius Drusus, basically got all the Italians to swear an oath that they would do whatever he said if he could get them citizenship. And he almost managed it. Only historical example I can think of of someone trying to take over a country by expanding democracy. Drusus got assassinated pretty fucking fast.
And then there’s Cato, which, don’t get me fucking started. The dude tore out his own intestines with his bare hands because he hate Caesar so much. I am not fucking joking.
So Caesar fucked everything. Everything. This wasn’t a secret or anything. The dude (probably) fucked the King of Bithynia when he was like 20 and the king was like 80. He made a habit of seducing the wives of his political enemies just to be an asshole. When he held a triumphal march through Rome, his soldiers chanted “Home we bring the bald whore-monger, Romans lock you wives away.” Caesar was basically the embodiment of Big Dick Energy and he made sure everyone knew it.
So Clodia was like the tabloid sensation of her day. She had lots of affairs, maybe killed her husband, and then she got involved with this guy Caelius. Eventually they broke up, so Clodia got Caelius prosecuted for attempted murder. You know, like you do. I don’t have time to get into all the juicy details, but let’s just say it involved accusations of incest, gleeful slut-shaming, and Cicero’s wife being bizarrely jealous.
As for Antony and Curio, they were friends and Cicero at one point (after Curio was dead, if I remember correctly) accused Antony of having had an affair with Curio when they were young men. It’s not clear if this is true, because on the one hand, it’s totally believable (if Caesar was the embodiment of Big Dick Energy, Antony was the embodiment of just Big Dick. Like, he had a really big dick and he liked to show it off to everyone) but on the other hand, Cicero hated Antony and was talking all kinds of shit about him at the time, so who the fuck knows.
Anyway, please buy my Roman tabloid, because the next issue will discuss that time Clodius dressed up in drag to sneak into Caesar’s house and Caesar’s mother organized all the Roman noblewomen to hunt him down.
This is Arwen, she’s a Husky/Kelpie mix and a little Asshole:
“I wonder if she can jump?” my dad asks the first five minutes we have her. She perks up at the word, and clears a six-foot fence form sitting on the ground. “Oh.” Says dad. “Shit.”
Later that night she got up on the counter and ate three pounds of corned beef in roughtly 68 seconds but this was considered part of the learning curve of having a new dog.
I wake up at 4 AM to the sound of the toilet being flushed repeatedly in the hall bathroom, and assume plumbing is now posessed by angry and wasteful ghosts. I get up to disconnet it and find her in the Bathroom, standing to flush the bowl, then shoving her head in to drink the running water. I’m not totally awake, so I stand there like an idiot trying to understand this, and my sister gets up to see what the noise is, sees the same thing and also stands there. Fiance notices my absence and does the same. Mom eventually wakes up and finds us standing around like very confused zombies and almost joins the parade of baffled zombies before shreiking “THE WATER BILL!” We got her a circulating water bowl after that.
My parent’s don’t have AC, but they haveone of those “fridge on top, pull-out-freezer below” fridges. Last summer, we were remarking that we might need to shave her so she didn’t get heatstroke, to which she looked up and made a disgusted noise at us. …Then got up, used the dishrag to pull open the freezer and climbed on top of the frozen vegetables, stretching out and sighing contentedly. “Arwen,” Mom began, but was interrupted by a loud ‘WHAAAaaaaarrr?” from Arwen. “Ok you can stay there for now but we’re getting you a kiddie pool so you have to get out when we get back. Don’t eat anything.” She ate a bag of frozen green beans and farted for three days straight.
Took her walking along the lake with the long lead so she could sniff things to her hearts content. She went about shoving her head in the undergrowth, usually coming up with her head covered in leaves and pollen.
Except for the bush where she came back out with a 7-foot Bull Snake wrapping itself around her ehad and neck, trying it’s best to strangle her before she can eat it. She immediately ran back to me, the parts of her face not occupied with the snake arranged in a gleeful expression of “Look! I found Snacks!”
I screamed, not immediately regognizing that it wasn’t a rattler, and fell, splitting my knee on a rock. The screaming made her let go of the snake, but I still had to grab her and wrestle the snake off her because it lacked the sense to just scuttle away. I finaly got it lose from her (Despite her best effort to continue trying to eat it and turned around to fling it off the trail-
-And directly into the face of one of my 90-year-old neighbors who’d come out to see what the screaming and profanity was, making her collapse.
I’m pretty sure being told “I accidentally threw a snake at my neighbor.” was the highlight of that EMT’s day. Dottie was unharmed but she still doesn’t speak to me.
One day, we left her in a Harness and overhead tether in the (at the time) unfanced back yard so she could enjoy some relatively free-range outdoors time. I walked by the window not a minute later to find her completely GONE, and race out to the yard to find her. It took me a good heart-pounding five minutes to realize the overhead tether was goign UP into the ancient silver maple and realized that 1. Arwen can apparently do something really weird with her shoulders where they pop out sideways, allowing her to bear-hug the tree and 2. climb a good 40 feet into the three to fight 3. A porcupine, which i didn’t even know LIVED out here.
Fortunately, Porcupines weigh considerably less than Awen and she couldn’t get a good enough foothold to get all the way up to it, but I still had to climb up there and lower her down, barking dog profanities at the porcupine the whole way.
My parents recently acquired a mechanized recliner which has been instumental inmom’s hip surgery recovery. Execpt that Awen Also likes lounging on the furniture, and is more than capable of hitting a large, elder-friendly button with her paw. So now when she gets back from a walk or the dog park she makes a beeline for the living room, get in the recliner and pushes the button until it’s flat and stretches out in it.
My parents didn’t have a problem with this because she gets out of the chair when they ask her (Mom even tells her “Go get my chair ready” in winter because she does a good job pre-warming it), until last winter when Arwen taught my dog Charlie, another devoted couch animal how to do this.
One afternoon there was a tremendous outburst fo barkign and snarling from the living room and we rished in to find both dogs in the recliner, Charlie on the fully-reclined back and Arwen on the elevated seat and foot rest, bellowing at eachother for control of the recliner, thier movments having pitched it back to it’s two hind feet, the device swaying to and fro like a leather covered boat upon the high seas, a furry mutiny on board. Neither dog was willing to yeild the plush throne, nor to listen to the humans yelling at them to knock it the hell off, until Arwen tackled the usurper, kocking him off and managing to cantaleiver the recliner clean over, flipping it into the hall, both dogs and all humand miraculously unharmed.
She still doesn’t let him sit in it.
I love her so much.
(If you got a laugh out of this, please consider donating to my Tip Jar or Paypal to get Arwen (and Charlie!) nice treats)
Evening reblog with an additional Shenanigan I just remembered:
One of the regulars at the dog park was an unfixed basset hound with an obnoxiously indifferent owner. “Brad” shows up pretty much to smoke weed and let “Bojangles” harass the other dogs, in spite of regular complaints about Bo starting fights and trying to mount every dog, leg, and toddler in sight.
One evening, Bo was particularly interested in Arwen, aggressively following her, nipping her heels and trying to mount her, even after her usual wolverine-like Snap’n’Snarl, which has tended to discourage unwanted suitors before. Brad was Too Damn High to notice, as usual, but mom knew that if Arwen actually bit Bo, Arwen would be the one in trouble and was trying to call her when Bo made yet another attempt and Arwen finally had it.
Instead of rightfully tearing his face off, Arwen instead did what Mom described as “A Judo-style front-flip” that pulled Bo clean off the ground and threw him on his back, Arwen landing on her feet like a cat. Bo’s stubby little legs didn’t allow him to right himself before Arwen jumped on him, front paws slamming into his saggy basset balls, squatted over his face, and peed on him.
“ARWEN NO!!” howled my mother as nearly everyone else present laughed, but having made her point, Arwen daintily got off Bo, and trotted to the gate, ready to go home. Bo yelped but got up and skulked away, only moderately bruised, cowering under the bench by Brad, who finally noticed something might be amiss.
Mom remembers hearing “Dude, why is my dog all wet?” right as they were leaving. Apparently nobody told him what happened, becuase Brad still brings Bo to the park, but Bo has much better manners now.
I read this whole thing to my mom and upon reading the end part she was like “OH MY GOD! Our dog Lady once flipped another dog and I didn’t know it was a thing dogs could do!!”
So there’s that.
Update: Arwen was at the vet’s office for a check-up and daycare, and decided partway through the afternoon that the other two kelpies were annoying her, but she didn’t want to go inside to be kenneled for a nap, so she instead…
…ninja’d her way onto the vet’s roof despite there being three people in the yard watching the dogs and no clear way up there. She had a pleasant hour of watching the vet staff try to figure out how she did that and how they were going to get her down before mom came to pick her up.
“Arwen, get your furry butt down here!”
At which point Arwen obidently got down by jumping into a nearby tree that’s technically inside a neighboring house’s yard, shimmied down that like a bear, then walked out of their side yard and back around the block to come sit at Mom’s feet, putting her paws up like she expected a treat.
That tree is not accessible from the daycare yard. We still have no idea how she got up there.
Shine on you beautiful bitch.
This just gets better and better every time i see it
I…
I have fostered doggos for a good majority of my life and my brain simply cannot process half of the bullshit in this post…
1. She’s a mix of two extremely smart breeds 2. She’s a mix of two extremely energetic breeds 3. The inmates trained her to do lots of “Extracirriculars” like veritcal leaps, how to climb chain-link fence, agility courses, physical-comedy type tricks becuase they finished teaching her the regular Service Dog Cirriculum and wanted to keep working with her. 4. Due to said Extrcirriculars, she doesn’t have any fear of heights, strangers, animals, or the nonsense of other dogs.
She does do the Professional Service Animal thing when we put her vest on, but then she’s working and has things to do like teaching social skills to people or being a living stress ball to someone having a bad time, so all that brains, energy and training can be put towards a productive end, but if she hasn’t got an active job, Shenanigans Ensue.
I love everything about this omg
Update:
She ate a four inch hole in the carpet because someone dropped a pork chop there. She’s completely fine, it all passed without so much as an upset stomach on her part.
-also ate the garden hose because we weren’t spraying her with it.
-conned one of the guys that installed the AC out of his sandwich by pretending to bark at something on the other side of the house, and doubling back when he came to investigate.
-is back on the therapy circuit helping kids in a summer school program get better at reading by having them read books to her. Her favorite student right now is a boy from Venezuela who is still learning English who gives her a big hug every morning. She doesn’t normally like hugs but she puts a paw on his back to hug him back.
Who is voltron didn’t the avengers kill him in 2014
No, you’re thinking of Ultron. Voltron is the boy genius protagonist in a defunct Nickelodeon cartoon.
You’re thinking of Jimmy Neutron. Voltron is a spherical, electric-type Pokemon from gen 1 that resembles a poke ball.
No, you’re thinking of Voltorb. Voltron is that movie with the guys that rode motorcycles on lines of lights? It looked really like simplistic future tech.
No, you’re thinking of Tron. Voltron is the main antagonist in the Harry Potter fictional novel series created by J.K. Rowling.
No, you’re thinking of Voldemort. Voltron is the royalty class of vampires from Stephenie Meyer’s infamous teenage fantasy romance series, the Twilight Saga.
No, you’re thinking of the Volturi. Voltron is the company that infamously built all of the bomb shelters in the critically acclaimed Fallout franchise.
No, you’re thinking of Vault-Tech. Voltron is actually a video game reviewer with a robot bird, and is slightly responsible for the flex tape meme
No, you’re thinking of JonTron. Voltron is the main character of the High School Musical franchise who is a basketball player.
No, you’re thinking of Troy Bolton. Voltron is the guy who sang in Disney’s Lion King.
No, you’re thinking of Elton John. Voltron is a state in the northeast United States
No, you’re thinking of Vermont. Voltron is the unit of electrical potential.
No, you’re thinking of Voltage. Voltron was a french Enlightenment writer and philosopher during the 18th Century.
No, you’re thinking of Voltaire. Voltron is an evil symbiote that fights Spider man.
No you’re thinking of Venom. Voltron is that fire type fox pokemon
No, you’re thinking of Vulpix. Voltron is a Danish heavy metal band.
No, you’re thinking of Volbeat. Voltron is a distilled beverage composed primarily of water and ethanol, but sometimes with traces of impurities and flavourings
No, you’re thinking of Volvic. Voltron is the leader of the Decepticons, the antagonistic alien race in Transformers.
No, you’re thinking of Megatron. Voltron is a German automaker company founded in 1937.
No, you’re thinking of Volkswagen. Voltron is the Swedish automaker company founded in 1926.
No you’re thinking of Volvo, Voltron is that one dinosaur that’s super fast and has very big and sharp claws.
No, you’re thinking of Velociraptor. Voltron is a treatment with a weakened or dead form of a disease to produce immunity against that disease.
No, you’re thinking of Vaccine. Voltron is a household item used to suck up dust and dirt to keep the carpets of homes and buildings clean.
No, you’re thinking of Vacuum. Voltron is the guy who was in Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
No, you’re thinking of Van Dyke. Voltron is a measurement of the space taken up by matter, calculated as length x width x height.
No you’re thinking of Volume. Voltron is a large black bird that eats dead animals at the side of road
No, you’re thinking of Vulture. Voltron is a subatomic particle with a negative electric charge.
No, you’re thinking of Electron. Voltron is an instrument used for measuring electrical potential difference between two points in an electric circuit.
No, you’re thinking of voltmeter. Voltron is the french word for car.
No, you’re thinking of Voiture. Voltron is a salt and soda lake in nothern Tanzania.
No you’re thinking of lake Victoria, voltron is a measurement that has quantity/magnitude and direction, it’s used in physics
Jonathan, like Phryne Fisher, clearly hasn’t taken anything seriously since 1918.
And, I would suspect, for similar reasons.
^^^This. Jonathan being in World War I makes total sense. It’s
almost impossible for him not to have been. Given his age and background, he probably
volunteered in 1914.
Of course he’s going to not take anything seriously. Of
course he can shoot. The drinking, the skittishness, the recklessness, the
sense of ‘keeping your head down’, the scepticism about traditional heroism….
The one with more actual experience of death, carnage and
fighting is Jonathan. Not Rick. Not Ardeth Bey. Jonathan.
When Rick says ‘I’ve had worse (situation/odds)’ and Jonathan replies “ Me too”. That’s probably true.
Drop The Mummy
into the real world context and that’s a character who’s going to have seen a
lot of his school friends die, along with the myths and tales of heroism they
were raised on. Sort of makes the line where Evie’s scolding him for drinking/messing
about a lot darker…
Evie: Have you no respect for the dead? Jonathan: Of course I do, but sometimes I’d rather like
to join them.
I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS RIGHT NOW
*record scratch*
Wait a minute. Why is it being assumed that Rick and Ardeth wouldn’t have fought in WWI, as well? Johnathan isn’t that much older than any of them–in fact, there is a good chance that he, Rick, and Ardeth are all of an age. Just because Johnathan’s hair is thinning doesn’t mean he’s a decade older.
It was a LOT easier to lie about your age back in the day. So much easier.
Johnathan is the soldier who fought in WWI and became disillusionsed with pretty much everything except wanting to live (most of the time) and live well–and where is the shame in that? He would have seen some of the darkest shit humanity has to offer, and he kept going. And the thing is, though, archaeological digs at that time were DANGEROUS. Not from curses (usually) but from assholes who would turn up with guns to try and steal anything you discovered. Johnathan never really STOPPED having to deal with dangerous pricks, it was just less dangerous than death raining down from the sky in bomb, bullet, and mustard gas form all the time.
Rick grew up in Egypt as an orphan. What paperwork? He joined the French Foreign Legion, which fought in World War I in some seriously critical battles on the Western Front in Europe. Rick is the soldier who quickly grew disillusioned with everything, but he didn’t know how to stop being a soldier. Johnathan had a career and schooling to fall back on. Rick had guns, the talent of not dying easily, and not much else. When the army finally left him behind because he was literally the only survivor of his last FFL battle, he literally didn’t know what to do. At all. “Looking for a good time” was code for “Please someone give me a fucking purpose.”
Ardeth grew up in the desert. He probably never enlisted…but if you think his people didn’t fight against invading forces during WWI, think again: that region of North Africa was swarming with soldiers on both sides, and they alll tried to claim everything they stumbled over even while in the midst of fighting each other. Ardeth spent his entire life fighting to protect what belonged to him, what belonged to his people, and trying to keep assholes from stealing things that didn’t belong to anyone (for good reason). By the time the war was over, Ardeth was disillisioned in everyone except his own people, and seriously fucking done with stupid idiots who stole in the name of archaeology. He is completely (justifiably) resigned to the worst when Rick the Magic Survivalist returns to Hamunaptra.
This has been another episode of “Actual History adding context and depth to character behavior”
I love when “The Mummy” fandom comes out to play. But it’s even better when the history side of tumblr is also in “The Mummy” fandom.
Every time this post comes around I am compelled to watch The Mummy again.
malachite is a poisonous mineral. please do not fuck the malachite stalactite
@lizaleigh do you know any rock people that can confirm/deny because I am very curious and really don’t feel like getting into a conversation with my geophysicist brother that MAY somehow get back to the fact I saw a malachite that looked like a weird dildo.
…sadly, I am not on good enough terms with any of our partner geologists to just attach this to an email with the subject line: “EXPLAIN.”
Although I think @mollisaurus is a mineral person. Thoughts?
oh geeze, i’m kinda rusty on minerals but malachite is just copper carbonate and is really common in both antique and modern jewelry so i think like if you were really gun-ho about it you could go ahead and put it wherever you want?
It’s really only a problem if you’re polishing or cutting it. The particles would be bad to breathe. It’s rather porous too, so I would worry about bacteria growing. Well, being literal anyway… Better to leave the poor thing alone. ._.
I mean it kinda depends on where you stick it because malachite does not like acidic environments very much and the malachite will degrade and also might dye your bits blue-green as the copper dissolves out.
So use a condom when fucking rocks is the takeaway here.
Oh my god guys it’s poisonous
It is super poisonous
There is a reason we do not use it in make up any more
Not even with a condom, do not fuck the rock
Try this one instead.
malachite literally explodes in water does it not?
I… no… I think you’re thinking of pure sodium?
Malachite is however water soluble, which really just means it will poison you quicker
This is both hilarious and cool as fuck because you’re getting all this information on minerals and rocks. You’re also watching people argue over wether or not you can fuck this rock
I go on hiatus for a week and come back to find tumblr molesting my post, but hey, at least we all learned something so yay tumblr, you just keep on being you.
I’m still not sure if I can fuck this rock.
I’m looking into it.
UPDATE:
Today in “I’m so sorry, coworkers, it’s for Tumblr,” I brought this post to the attention the science reporters at BuzzFeed. Dan Vergano did a some research and weighed in on the question “Can you use malachite as a dildo or is it toxic?”
The answer is “It’s probably fine, just wash it first and maybe use a bunch of lube.”
Oh man this got so much better than the last time I saw this post
This is my favourite. Science side of tumblr: asking the REAL questions
*biologist crashes through the underbrush*
Ok so here’s the thing though
Malachite is not poisonous to YOU. BUT fucking this stalactite will probably wreck your vaginal flora and leave you with a gruesome infection within a couple days.
Want details? SO GLAD YOU ASKED, ‘CAUSE HERE THEY ARE.
• Malachite is not copper oxide. It’s Cu2CO3(OH)2. Like most carbonates it’s water soluble– that’s how it became a stalactite in the first place! And technically any given chunk of “malachite” isn’t just malachite– it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. This will become important later.
• When malachite dissolves it makes a bunch of copper (Cu++) ions. Cu++ is GREAT at killing bacteria and fungi– so good at it that sprays with Cu++ get used a lot as a spray in agriculture to stop plant disease. It takes such a large dose to harm larger organisms that copper sprays are used a lot in organic agriculture (like Bordeaux mixture).
So bottom line, yes malachite is technically nontoxic to humans. But it kills bacteria when it dissolves and releases Cu++.
• Malachite dissolves somewhat slowly in water– but vaginal secretions aren’t just any water. A healthy human vagina has a pH of 3.8-4.5 and a salinity of about 0.9%. It’s also warmer than your average underground cave at 37°C (or 98.5°F in American meat units). As luck would have it, acidity, salinity, and warmth all make malachite dissolve faster.
• In other words, the human vagina dissolves malachite.
• I have no deeper explanation for why human females can dissolve rocks with our genitals. It simply is.
• Gonna to take a quick moment to point out that sex toys that dissolve when you use them are maybe not the best investment.
• Anyway the key question now is “how fast does the human vagina dissolve malachite?” Are we talking geological timescale, a Nazis-in-Indiana-Jones situation, or something in between? If the reaction kinetics of dissolution are very slow, then there’s nothing to worry about. An encounter with a stalactite would have to last years for enough Cu++ to leach out to cause problems. If it’s quick then we’re in trouble.
• Unfortunately it looks like nobody really knows. One of the best sources on how malachite dissolves & precipitates in water– an EPA document on how to avoid too much Cu++ in municipal drinking water systems– helpfully says “The kinetic constraints on the formation of these solids in water systems are largely unexplored” (p. 42) because end equilibrium points are all you need to run a city water system safely. In other words, the experiments that would tell us how fast malachite dissolves in various types of water just don’t exist because nobody’s ever needed to know before. So we’d better assume it’s going to happen reasonably quickly, #for safety.
• So in best scientific fashion, we’re just going to bullshit our way ahead using what facts we DO have on hand: endpoint equlibria.
That orange box is how many moles of dissolved Cu++ Scaife got from sticking malachite in some water that had 0.171 moles NaCl/L (body salinity is about 0.154 moles NaCl/L so this is slightly more salty than people) at 30°C. He’s got no acidity in there, and again the salinity and temperature are slightly off from the vaginal standard. But this is probably the closest we’re going to get to data on how malachite behaves in vaginas anytime soon, folks. From this we can take away that if you leave malachite alone in a vagina you’ll get AT LEAST 9.12 x 10^-4 moles/L, or 5.8 ppm, of Cu++ at equilibrium.
• Recall from above that most “malachite” isn’t actually pure malachite, it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. The EPA document elaborates: “[T]raditional ‘eyeball’ identification of malachite by its blue-green color is extremely
unreliable, because almost all cupric hydroxysulfates, hydroxycarbonates, hydroxychlorides,
and even fresh cupric hydroxide can be some shade of blue-green. … Thus, the uncertainty in the computed copper
concentration in equilibrium with malachite is at least about a factor of 2 … until further experimental data focusing on this problem is generated.”
In other words, “do your math and then double how much Cu++ you think is going to be in the water, just in case.” So that gives us 11.6ppm Cu++, at equilibrium, with malachite in a (til now!) healthy vagina.
• Next step: do we have any idea what happens to bacteria in acid conditions with copper? OH MY GOD WE TOTALLY DO. Gyawali et al 2011 checked this out in the context of “so what if we rinsed tomatoes with a solution of lactic acid and copper, because that would be a safe & organic way to get rid of E. coli?” So now this post has officially ruined stalactites, vaginas, and tomatoes.
^This would happen. These are the counts of 4 E. coli strains exposed to various levels of lactic acid & Cu++ for 8 hours. This table only shows the end counts but it represents the death of 99.7% of bacteria*.
• Losing 99.7% of your vaginal flora is seriously bad news. You’re looking at really good odds of a yeast infection, bacterial vaginosis, and/or other infection issues. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to not be in the 4% of the population or so that’s sensitive to skin contact with copper.
• The good news? Biochemically speaking, you’re probably ok to put it in your butt. It’s not as acidic or salty in there, plus there’s a huuuuuge stockpile of gut microbes right upstream that can quickly repopulate the colon after spelunking is complete. However this stalactite is not flared at the base so it is the wrong shape for putting in your butt. Do not put this stalactite in your butt.
• This all looks like fun and games, but I think it’s really interesting that the internet’s mistake in concluding that this stalactite is fuckable is very similar to the mistake made by the Flint water management system. Hear me out.
• Central to the Flint lead poisoning crisis is that authorities only looked at & tested Flint’s water in its central treatment plant before it went out through the pipes. Not after it went through the pipes. They did not consider what would happen biochemically as it went through the pipes and metals started dissolving.
• Similarly, in concluding that the stalactite is fuckable, the internet only considered the stalactite itself. Not the biochemical processes that would happen to it as it, welp, went through the pipes.
• Media frequently reports that the Flint River’s water is “corrosive,” leading many to believe the river is full of industrial waste. This ain’t the case. You’d need industry to fill a river with industrial waste, and industry left decades ago. That’s why Flint’s so poor. So what IS in the water? Road salt. Plain old stupid road salt. The old Detroit-based source didn’t have salt because it came from Lake Huron which has a large, mostly rural watershed. Meanwhile the Flint River runs through a lot of towns, making it slightly salty as everything melts down in spring. And as we recall from the stalactite experience, a little salt is all it takes to get metals to dissolve.
• Information on this engineering problem was not coming through clearly from the engineering or chemistry sides. It took a biologist, pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, to document the real-time results and provide the data to kick-start a high-level investigation.
• Morals of the story: when dealing with a biological system pls consider asking a biologist, your vagina and/or city could depend on this
• Pls use a condom when fucking any water-soluble material
• Still don’t put the stalactite in your butt -3/10 do not recommend
wupacing 