honeysweetstudies:

Government shutdown

Hi everyone. With the government shut down, my family is in a tight spot. My father isn’t getting paid, we’ve had a recent car accident (the vehicle is a wheelchair accessible van for my disabled brother, so we need it), annual bills are coming up (HOA fees and such, we’re already in the process of telling out HOA that we can’t pay and to extend our grace period). Things are really rough right now, and we don’t know what to do. I only have so much in savings with my own bills to worry about, and I can’t go back to work until the campus opens up again. So I’m turning here to ask for help.

My family is without income and scared. Please spread this post and donate to my PayPal to help my family stay afloat for January.

I’m gonna put this in queue to post twice a week until everything is resolved (which will hopefully be soon). I can’t express how scared I am.

If you want to commission me to receive something for your money, please DM me. I do digital art and can write stories of any length for you. We can negotiate the prices and my limitations, but given my situation, I’m open to consider anything.

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and share this.

Please reblog!

ari-no-exorcist:

starlightomatic:

africanaquarian:

africanaquarian:

apparently food inspections stopped bc of the shutdown so things bout to be real fucked up for some of us

“The Food and Drug Administration has stopped routine food safety inspections of seafood, fruits, vegetables and many other foods at high risk of contamination because of the federal government’s shutdown…”

Most companies are probably going to continue their regular food safety procedures, but a few things you can do to reduce some personal risk:

Buy hard, solid veggies and fruits (apples, melons) or ones with rinds (bananas are probably fine). Scrub the peel/rind thoroughly with soap and water before consumption.

The more solid and dense the meat, the less likely it is for contamination to spread very far. Buy your meat in solid cuts, NOT GROUND. Especially not ground chicken rn, salmonella bad.

Cook things thoroughly. Follow guidelines for the internal temperatures meat is supposed to reach and stick to those guidelines. Use a meat thermometer. Make your steaks well done for a while.

I’d stay away from shellfish as a whole if I were you. The diseases you can get from it are some of the nastier ones. No sushi for a while, too. If you have fish, make sure it was frozen following anti-parasitic guidelines and cook thoroughly.

AVOID LEAFY GREENS. This is where we’ve been seeing the most outbreaks lately, so be very careful.

The pregnant, elderly, immunocompromised, and the very young are the ones most at risk in an outbreak. If you are in one of these groups, be extremely cautious and avoid soft cheeses and prepackaged deli meats. Check on friends and family in these groups. Report symptoms of foodborne illness to a doctor so they can report to the state health depts that are still running.

Even with these in mind, remember that most outbreaks of foodborne illness are due to things like improper cooking and storage. Stay safe out there, folks 💙

just-ichimatsu:

Hello! Mod Ichi here, I’m only posting this once because I really, really hate the idea of annoying people, especially on a blog focused on art requests! My mother and I are federal government employees affected by the furlough, it’s been going on since late December, and if we’re lucky, the earliest we’ll get paid for work again could be February. She’s even being made to work without pay still, given her position. I’m a much lower grade so I’m stuck at home for over a month trying to find odd jobs since our work policies don’t allow or reccommend filing unemployment and we’re definitely not allowed to see other work. If you guys don’t mind just spreading this around, my family and I would appreciate it. The tiniest donations are always appreciated as well, but please don’t worsen your financial situations for our sake, so don’t feel bad if you can’t! Please! I’m hoping to get out of this funk and continue running this blog more acticely with Mod Sav. Thank you all for your patience during the lulls here, I’m grateful and consider myself lucky to have your support!

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/goverment-shutdown-cuts-out-23-income-for-family

Paypal: http://paypal.me/husbando/

Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/ichimatsu

ranger52enroute:

1. We do NOT automatically get back pay. Congress has to pass legislation approving it. There is a non-zero chance that we won’t get paid at all.

2. If we apply for unemployment and then get back pay, we have to pay that unemployment money back to the state, with very few exceptions. We are not getting “double salary”.

3. We are not “getting a vacation”. Since we cannot predict when the government will reopen and we’re not bringing in a salary, most of us are sitting around trying not to spend money on anything but the essentials, anxiously awaiting word that we can return to our jobs. It is not relaxing or fun.

4. We cannot legally do ANY work during the shutdown unless we are excepted employees, and then we can only do necessary duties. That means that I legally cannot communicate with colleagues, write papers, conduct research that will protect lives and property, distribute publications that the taxpayers paid me to write about volcanic hazards, talk with the media about subjects in which I have expertise, etc. Zero. Zip. Nada. My scientific career has basically come to a grinding halt.

5. If we get another job during a shutdown, the ethics rules we’re legally bound to follow mean that it cannot be in anything related to the expertise for which we are federally employed. That means other jobs we could qualify for in the interim are likely going to be lower-paying and insufficient to cover the expenses that we’ve normally planned for.

6. Federal contract workers may never get paid for the time they cannot work during the shutdown, since their employers are under zero obligation to give them backpay. They are often the lowest-paid people in our workplaces to begin with, and shutdowns hurt them immensely.

I’m just going through some tags to reblog the help posts of people affected by the shutdown, don’t mind me.

regina-draco:

EMERGENCY. PLEASE READ

As many of you know, there has been a partial government shut down which means government employees including military members have been without pay for almost a month.

My partner is in the Coast Guard and has currently been without pay for almost a month. His family rely on food stamps and due to the government shutdown, have not had access to it for almosg a month.

I have listed new items on my depop to sell as soon as tomorrow morning so that I can help my partner and his family with any bills that they may have as well as helping put food on the table until the government opens again.

My depop is HERE I am currently only able to ship within the US due to shipping costs.

I also have pokemon cards I’m auctioning off HERE that can only be shipped within the US.

I have my redbubble where I sell my art HERE I only make 10% off each sale and I don’t get the money immediately but anything is better than nothing and I can just transfer him the money once it shows up in my paypal.

If you want to, you can donate directly to my paypal HERE but leave a note ‘CG’ ‘Coast Guard’ or something like that so I know where it’s going. I will be posting updates for the donations given (photos of me sending the donations and his reaction) and keep you updated on how they’re doing.

He won’t like it but he’ll get over it, it’s a surprise and I want to try and help him out when no one else will.

I need everything gone ASAP! The quicker I can get them some money so they don’t have to worry about anything, the better.

I’ll continue to add items as much as I can and hopefully my partner and his family will be okay until things go back to normal.

korean-disaster:

guys, the government shutdown is so much more than, “oh, looks like no laws are getting passed”, the FDA isn’t checking your food for things like E.Coli because nobody is there to. I repeat, your food isn’t getting checked by the FDA for disease inducing bacteria because the stupid orange man won’t get his wall.

this extends to literally everything the government looks over.

people who work with the government? aren’t getting paid. who cares about federal-prison guards and law enforcement anyway, who needs airport personnel? environmental hazards? who needs to check on those? certainly not us. food stamps? who needs those anyway! it’s not like people depend on them and could get kicked out of their homes during the coldest months of the year without access to those. home loans? yeah, whatever. even fucking museums and national parks can’t be properly accessed.

And guess how I found out? A Snapchat story. Yeah. Hurts to hear.

so yeah maybe you should care, because the longer this continues? the worse things get. i know you don’t paticularly care about people you don’t know, but for the love of all that’s on this unholy website, start caring.

here’s some links to additional articles

This one by The Atlantic, where I got most of my information:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/580036/

This one by CNN, which further lists things this shutdown effects:

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/01/10/politics/shutdown-effects-list/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

This one by CNBC, which focuses on the economy:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/01/10/government-shutdown-could-start-to-hit-economy-as-it-moves-into-uncharted-territory.html

And literally so many more written if you just look it up.

I couldn’t find much on how to help government workers (they’re all mostly how to deal if you’re not getting paid by the govt.), but there’s probably some petitions on change.org so go and check those out.

rtahuniverse:

Victim of the U.S. partial federal government shutdown

I know this has nothing to do with the theme of my blog but I’m beginning to run out of options. I have no intentions of making this political or to advocate for any particular point. Bottom line is that since December 26, 2018 I have been unable to go to work at my federal government position because of the partial government shutdown. And even though this couldn’t have happened at a worse possible time right after the holidays, I’ve been doing my best to work with my landlord and creditors to achieve some form of leniency on upcoming payments that are due.

But as I continue to not be paid, I still need to eat, get around to look for temporary employment and have at least at little bit of money on hand if, God forbid, I have a serious emergency.

If there are any people who could possibly help me by donating or by even reblogging this, I would be eternally grateful.

If you can donate:

PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/tjbilbo

Venmo: @TBilbo

CashApp: $TJBilbo

Thank you for taking the time to read this and thank you for your support.

autodidact-adventures:

Holly is also known as: Holm, Holm Chase, Holy Tree, Hulver Bush, Hulm.

Holly grows very slowly (though more quickly after the first 4-5yrs), and is more likely to grow tall when among trees that don’t grow faster than it does.  In Italy, and in the woods in France (especially Brittany), is grows to a much larger size than in Britain, where it seldom grows over 1.0 – 1.3 metres tall, or 60cm in diameter.

Holly tree.

It will grow in any soil (so long as it isn’t too wet), but grows best in rich, sandy or gravelly loam, with good drainage and a moderate amount of moisture at its roots.  Its growth is usually stunted in very dry places.

Holly will grow in nearly any soil that isn’t saturated with stagnant water.  The best place is a thin, scattered oak wood – it will grow up at once in the gaps.  Even the worst winters rarely injure it.

Like the beech tree, the trunk of the holly tree often has small wood knots – smooth nodules of solid wood embedded in the bark.  They can easily be knocked off/out by a quick blow.  The bark is smooth and light grey, often with faint crimson touches.  It is often infected with a very thin lichen, which has many curved black lines as its spore-bearing structure (fructification).

Bark of an old holly tree.

Knobbly growths on a holly tree trunk (Cumbria, England).

The leaf’s prickles point alternately upwards and downwards.  Only the end prickle is in the same plane as the leaf, and most of the upper leaves only have this one prickle.

The leaves have no taste or smell.  They fall off the tree after several years, and because of their leathery texture & durable fibres, they take a long time to decay, withstanding effects of both air and moisture.

Flowers appear in May (late spring), and are succeeded by berries, which mature in October/November (late autumn).  One tree will rarely produce an abundance of flowers two years in a row.  The male flowers fully develop, but the female flowers don’t [?]  If the tree is clipped a lot, there aren’t likely to be many berries.  The berries are usually most abundant in the upper part of the tree.

Birds, rodents and large herbivores (including deer & sheep) eat the berries in late winter, after the frost has made them softer & more edible, and they have fallen to the ground.

Each seed has 3-4 seeds, which germinate in their second or third spring.  This delay means by that time, they will usually have been buried in a heap of earth for a year (or more) previously.

Young plants should be transplanted when 30-45cm high, and in autumn. Holly exhausts the soil around it more quickly than most deciduous trees, so if it’s going to be a holly hedge, the soil around it should be well-trenched and moderately manured if necessary.  The holly plant will take at least 2yrs to recover from being transplanted.

Holly is excellent for a hedge, as it is easily kept trimmed.  It forms very thick hedges that are basically impenetrable.

In Morbihan (a department in Brittany, in north-west France), the peasants gather the young holly stems to feed to cattle from November to April (late autumn to mid-spring).  The stems are dried and bruised, and fed to the cattle three times a day.  They are a very wholesome food; and lead to good milk & butter production.

Apparently, a holly-stick placed in a hutch for the rabbits to gnaw on will act as a tonic, and restore their appetite.

Uses of the Wood

Holly wood is hard, compact, and very even throughout.  It is beautifully white (except in the centre of very old trees), and polishes very well.  Because of this, it is much prized for ornamental ware, especially for inlaying (such as in Tunbridge ware). Its grain is also very even, making it valuable to the turner [woodturner?].

It has a slightly greenish hue when freshly-cut, but soon becomes perfectly white.  Its hardness makes it superior to any other white wood.  It retains sap well, causing it to warp, so it must be well-dried and seasoned before being used.

Examples of the wood.

Spalted English Holly (turned).

The best time to cut holly is in the spring, before the sap rises.  A sloping cut, as opposed to a straight cut, prevents moisture from remaining on the cut part, which should also be covered in a coating of tar for the same reason.  The side growths help draw up the sap, so they should be left.

Holly wood is often stained blue, red, green or black.  When stained black, it usually serves as a substitute for ebony (e.g. in the handles of metal teapots).  Holly wood is used to make mathematical instruments, and blocks for calico printing.  Although it is inferior to boxwood, it has been used as a substitute for it in wood engraving.  Wood of the silver-striped variety of holly is said to be whiter than the wood of the common kind.

Straight sticks of this wood are often used for the stocks of light drivings whips, and for walking sticks.

English holly (sanded).

English holly (sealed).

English holly (endgrain - cut across the growth rings).

Endgrain (x10).

History

In Ancient Rome, people sent holly boughs, together with gifts, to friends during Saturnalia.  The early Christians adopted this custom, but some obviously didn’t approve – an edict of the Church of Bracara forbade Christians to decorate their houses with green branches at Christmastime.  (Saturnalia was about a week before Christmas.)

In pre-Christian Britain, the Druids decorated their houses with evergreens during winter, so their home could be an abode for forest spirits.

In old church calendars, Christmas Eve is often marked templa exornatur (“churches are decked”).  According to legend, holly first sprang up under Jesus’ footsteps.  In Northern Europe, the plant is referred to as “Christ’s Thorn” for this reason.  It is also called the “Holy Tree” (including in England).

“Holme” and “Hulver” are also popular names for holly.  It used to be called “Holme” in Devon, “Hulver” in Norfolk, and “Holme Chase” in one part of Dartmoor.

Medicine

The leaves, berries and bark have medicinal properties.  Leaves that will be dried should be collected in May or June (late spring/early summer), on a dry day, preferably around noon, when there is no longer any trace of dew on them.  Stained or insect-eaten leaves shouldn’t be used.  Fresh leaves are also used.

Holly leaves have been used as a diaphoretic (to induce sweating), and an infusion (prepared by soaking the leaves in liquid) of them have been used to treat catarrh (inflammation of the mucuous membrane leading to excessive mucus in nose/throat), pleurisy and smallpox.

Juice of the fresh leaves has been used for jaundice.  The leaves’ febrifugal (fever-reducing) & tonic properties have been useful for intermittent fevers and rheumatism.

They have been used successfully when cinchona bark (an Andean flowering tree in western South America) has failed, in the form of a powder, infusion or decoction (prepared by heating/boiling the leaves to extract a concentrated essence).  This substitute works because of ilicin, a bitter alkaloid contained in the leaves.

Cinchona bark.

The berries, on the other hand, are violently emetic and purgative (laxative).  Even only a few will cause a human to vomit excessively very soon afterwards.  However, they have been used to treat dropsy; and powdered berries can treat bleeding as an astringent (causing the contraction of skin cells & other body tissues).  They were also used in the past to treat colic.

The English botanist Nicholas Culpeper (c. 1616 – 1654) stated that “the bark and leaves are good used as fomentations for broken bones and other members as are out of joint.”  A fomentation is a poultice.

Holly bark can also be used to make birdlime.  The bark is stripped off around midsummer, steeped in clean water, and boiled until it separates into layers.  The inner green layer is piled up into small heaps, and left until it ferments, which takes about a fortnight.

The sticky substance is then pounded into a paste, washed, and put aside to ferment again.  Finally, it is mixed with some oily substance (preferably goose-fat).

In northern England, holly was once so abundant in the Lake District that large quantities of it were used to make birdlime, which was shipped to the East Indies for destroying insects.

In the Black Forest (in south-west Germany), holly leaves have been used for tea leaves.  In Brazil, “Paraguay Tea” is a popular drink, made from the dried leaves & shoots of Ilex paraguariensis, a South American species of holly also known as yerba mate.

Ilex gongonha and Ilex theezans are also used for tea in Brazil.  All three of these species are valuable as diaphoretics and diuretics (increase urination).

The leaves of Ilex paraguariensis (and several other species) are used in dyes.  The unripe fruits of Ilex Macoucoua have high levels of tannin, so when bruised in a ferruginous mud, they can be used in dyeing cotton, acting somewhat like galls (a type of abnormal swelling growth on the outside of plants, fungi and animals).

Ilex paraguariensis.

Pliny

Pliny the Elder (d. 79 AD) wrote about holly in his Naturalis Historia, calling it Aquifolius (“needle leaf”).  He states that it was the same tree that Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 278 BC) called Crataegus, but later commentators deny this. According to Pliny:

Crushed holly leaves, mixed with salt, are good for diseases of the joints.

Holly berries – for menstruation, coeliac problems, dysentery and cholera.  A wine made from them can help with diarrhoea.

A decoction of holly root can extract objects embedded in the flesh, and can also be used for dislocations and swellings.

A holly tree planted in a town/country house will ward off magic influences and protect the house from lightning.

Holly flowers cause water to freeze (he attributes this to Pythagoras).

If you throw the wood at an animal and miss, it will roll closer towards is (also attributed to Pythagoras).  It will also compel the animal to return and lie down by you.

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