Janus, who also has two hearts, two pairs of lungs and two distinct personalities, would not have survived long in the wild as he cannot retract his heads into his shell to seek shelter from predators.
But at the Geneva Natural History Museum, where he hatched in 1997, Bourgoin and her team of carers - who believe he is the world’s oldest bicephalic tortoise - can cater for his every need!
He is under constant surveillance in case he flips over, which could be fatal, and survived a bladder stone operation in 2020. His heads need periodic treatment with vaseline to stop them getting sore when they rub together.
His two personalities also generate different moods and tastes that can occasionally lead to conflict, for example over which direction to walk.
“The right head is more curious, more awake, it has a much stronger personality. The left head is more passive and loves to eat,” Bourgoin said, adding that one head was partial to endives and the other to carrots.
This is wonderful. I love this so much. Conjoined turtles, having a long happy life and being taken care of is wonderful.
janus also has a special little skateboard
[first image ID: a close-up picture of Janus. He is a brownish-green tortoise with two heads. He is held in someone’s hand. end first image ID.
second image ID: a picture of Janus riding on a skateboard. it is tied to his midsection, and he is skating towards someone’s hand by pushing with his legs. end second image ID]
Oh, Janus, like the two headed god of choices from greek mythology.
I still spend days, weeks every year thinking about how this critique pre-dates the advent of Programming Socks™ and cat-ear headphones, and asking myself, “did the Hacker Aesthetic go from Unfortunate Sweatshirts to Neon Catgirlgender Fantasy because of John Waters? Did he do this???”
pretty sure John Waters invented cat boys to overthrow the government
We celebrate the purported geniuses who discovered the cure–but we don’t acknowledge that discovering a cure means nothing unless and until we get the cure to the people who need it–an enterprise we’ve failed at to a remarkable degree over the last 70 years.
Also barely any people know that one of the biggest contributors to preventing and tackling tuberculosis was a trans man named Alan Hart. He was able to save countless lives in the 1900s despite an onslaught of transphobia that followed him wherever he went.
[OP’s image is the office whiteboard meme with the text: Since 1958, when tuberculosis became curable, the disease has killed more people than died in World Wars 1 and 2 combined. And yet we don’t study it in our history textbooks, because we do not want to reckon with the reality that the most important historical forces are not generals or kings, but systems of resource extraction and distribution that we all participate in, and that rob the most vulnerable among us not only of quality of life but of life itself”]
Wikipedia gives an excellent little summary of Hart’s impact in the detection of TB:
Hart became interested in their [X-rays] potential for detecting tuberculosis. Since the disease often presented no symptoms in its early stages, x-ray screening was invaluable for early detection. Even rudimentary early x-ray machines could detect the disease before it became critical. This allowed early treatment, often saving the patient’s life. It also meant sufferers could be identified and isolated from the population, greatly lessening the spread of the disease…. By the time antibiotics were introduced in the 1940s, doctors using the techniques Hart developed had managed to cut the tuberculosis death toll down to one fiftieth.
In 1937 Hart was hired by the Idaho Tuberculosis Association and later became the state’s Tuberculosis Control Officer. He established Idaho’s first fixed-location and mobile TB screening clinics and spearheaded the state’s war against tuberculosis. Between 1933 and 1945 Hart traveled extensively through rural Idaho, covering thousands of miles while lecturing, conducting mass TB screenings, training new staff, and treating the effects of the epidemic.
An experienced and accessible writer, Hart wrote widely for medical journals and popular publications, describing TB for technical and general audiences and giving advice on its prevention, detection, and cure. At the time the word “tuberculosis” carried a social stigma akin to venereal disease, so Hart insisted his clinics be referred to as “chest clinics”, himself as a “chest doctor”, and his patients as “chest patients.” Discretion and compassion were important tools in treating the stigmatised disease.
… In 1948 Hart was appointed Director of Hospitalization and Rehabilitation for the Connecticut State Tuberculosis Commission. As in Idaho, Hart took charge of a massive statewide x-ray screening program for TB, emphasizing the importance of early detection and treatment. He held this position for the rest of his life, and is credited with helping contain the spread of tuberculosis in Connecticut as he had previously in the Pacific Northwest. Similar programs based on his leadership and methodology in this field in other states also saved many thousands of lives.
By now, thanks to people like Hart, we know how to detect and treat TB. We could invest in a worldwide campaign to eradicate it, but the rich countries that are able to fund this are not willing to do so because the people dying don’t live in rich countries. In the words of the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – Mark Dybul: “we have the tools to end TB as a pandemic and public health threat on the planet, but we are not doing it.”. Before covid, tuberculosis was the leading cause of death worldwide from a single infectious agent, and it looks like it will reclaim that status in 2023.
Absolutely love this cat. He’s sherlockthecat_official on tiktok and his bit is for his fans to accuse him of the wildest shit while he stares blankly at the camera:
I wish people would stop saying “It’s July. Well done for wasting half a year.” Did you make someone smile in the past six months? Did you stroke a cat or throw a stick for a dog? Did you learn a new fact or teach someone a new joke? Did you laugh, cry, scream or sing in the past six months? Because if so, congratulations for not wasting your time at all.
I really needed this
I’m bringing this back for December to remind everyone.
You did not waste your year.
If you made it this far, that’s already not wasting your year.
You made it through the year, you laughed, you cried, you smiled, you saw the sun and felt the rain, and most importantly, you’re still here.
the assholes will word thier titles innocently like “am i the asshole for not making my toddler the dinner they wanted?” and then its a detailed account of them poisoning and nearly killing thier child, while a post like “am i the asshole for throwing my mother in law off a cliff” is a story of heroism where the OP used the last of thier strength to push thier mother in law off a small cliff into a body of water to save her from a swarm of mutant acid flamethrower killer bees.
i feel like one of the weirdest realizations you (or at least i) eventually have a few years into transitioning and being mostly around other trans people, is that moment where u notice that like ur brains mapping of like specific voices to specific genders is just kinda gone. like it rly is just all social constructs programmed into u by society, and living outside societies idea of gender just kinda melts that shit away, and it’s not just voices, like other traditionally gendered attributes also suddenly don’t matter anymore*
*except for myself of course, i am obviously totally failing at being a girl but everyone is doing it perfectly, dysphoria is so awesome lmao
the real deep message here btw isn’t just about gender, but about the general ability of the human brain to shed off bad socialization and habits if we change the environment we’re in for the better and i feel like that’s massive
i think when some of you say “neurodivergent” you just mean adhd and autism
schizophrenia makes you neurodivergent. ocd makes you neurodivergent. ptsd (and c-ptsd) makes you neurodivergent. bpd makes you neurodivergent. npd makes you neurodivergent. anxiety makes you neurodivergent. depression makes you neurodivergent. even the “scary” mental illnesses make you neurodivergent. i’m going to start killing
Time to bring this graphic back again…
I know I post this thing from Lived Experience Educator a lot, but it’s a useful visual. “Neurodivergent” isn’t a cool way to say “autism” or “autism and ADHD.” It includes a wide variety of things, and it’s really frustrating to see people forget that.
One of my best friends is neurodivergent, and when she says this, people assume she’s autistic. She isn’t, and her experiences are different from mine (I AM autistic). We have things in common, but not everything, and it’s frustrating for her to have to explain to people that she isn’t autistic but she is neurodivergent. By narrowing “neurodivergent” to just “autistic,” you’re leaving out and harming a whole lot of people. Stop it.
-Hey wouldn’t it be fun if the other anomalies had tumblr-
🥄 Grilling-masterFollow
Fuck my life some idiot just came in and made me eat raw eyeballs. Why.
21 notes
🌋 Magmalavaandfire69Follow
Hey guys gonna go check that cool planet I found wish me luck🤞🤞😘😘
🌋 Magmalavaandfire69Follow
what is a dissonance
🌋 Magmalavaandfire69Follow
ayo why it ourple
419 notes
⚙️ NebulesbianFollow
Guys not gonna lie um. korvax are kinda. um. yeah.
gamerforever-deactivated
What the actual fuck korvax have been genoci*ed for years and now people are just drooling over them? Literally thousands of them died so that ypu could just hang pictures of them in your base???
🦀 Stickk-42Follow
Grow up lol. People are allowed to do whatever they want, they aren’t hurting a soul.
🛰️ I-turn-posts-into-poetryFollow
⬛⬛⬛⬛korvax⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛drooling over them⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛hang pictures of them in your base⬛
6,809 notes
🔭 PondererofthestarsFollowing
Friends sometimes ask why I keep going and helping traveller-anomalies. Always tell them that if Atlas-False-Entity won’t care about them, I will!
🦕 Diplolover123Follow
Okay. Um. Okay. Sobbing. Throwing up. Crying. This is. Friends.
💸 GoldenfarmerFollow
Friends are just bullshit in my opinion.
🦕 Diplolover123Follow
No one asked! Tbh i wouldve penis blasted you but dont wanna spam random letters to OP. Blocked. Go jump intlo a black hole or smthing
832 notes
planetarydreams-deactivated
gonna check the portal out ill update on how this goes! (^o^)
traditionally the dead would be buried with coins on their eyes or in their mouth so that they could insert them within the 10 second countdown to continue playing and cheat death yet again. the practice fell out of fashion largely due to the invention of the home console
There were so many flatback millipedes out after dark this evening (like, hard to avoid stepping on them) and I’m slowly getting better at shooting fluorescent creatures 🖤🩵
if you go to someones blog and get a “oops nothing here” but know for certain they’re still posting replies/making content, or if you try reblogging something of theirs and keep getting error messages.
obviously you arent TOLD when someone blocks you, but sometimes you can stumble across it and figure it out for yourself
I left my YouTube on autoplay while I’ve been working and somehow ended up listening to a true crime thing and I would be absolutely fucked in a police interrogation.
“Repetition and forgetfulness during storytelling are signs of guilt,” the detective says with certainty.
Worstie, you can ask me the same question multiple times in a row, and I will think of new details to tell you each time while simultaneously forgetting everything else I previously told you. That doesn’t mean I murdered Karen, it just means I’ve got mental illness and ADHD.
Comic strip artists from the 40’s draw their characters while blindfolded
You are one of the top Problem Sleuths in the city. Solicitations for your service are numerous in quantity. Compensation, adequate. It is a balmy summer evening. You are feeling particularly hard boiled tonight.
I can’t pick a favorite
Some of these take on an impressionist quality. Eyes are important.
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