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I have a mental disorder. This is what happened when I tried to buy a gun.

How does buying a gun actually compare to getting psychiatric treatment? I decided to find out for myself.

It’s 7 a.m., and a police officer stops me at the gate of the only road that leads to Moon Island.

She asks me for my pass, which I scramble to retrieve from my messenger bag in the backseat of the car. Moon Island is a restricted property controlled by the city of Boston, even though it’s technically in the city of Quincy. But this is hardly the most bizarre or confusing part about my day. Because Moon Island is also the location of the Boston Police shooting range, and I’m here to take a target test so I can get my gun permit.

The officer furrows her brow as she checks my range pass, and I wonder if it’s that obvious that I’ve never actually shot a real gun before in my life.


She tells me to wait outside for 10 or 15 minutes because the range instructors don’t like it when people are early. This is the exact opposite of what the licensing officer told me when I scheduled my appointment three days earlier: "Try to arrive about 15 minutes early," she said. "The range instructors are nice guys, but they don’t like to be kept waiting."

Obviously, I’m off to a good start.

I drive across a land bridge and stand outside for a while, making small talk with some police cadets who are also there as part of their training. "You here for your permit test?" one of them says to me. "You’re the smart one." I’m not sure if this is meant as positive support for obtaining a gun permit or a joke about slogging through police academy. But it’s 7 o'clock in the morning, and I’m really not at my best.

When I finally walk inside the small classroom cabin at exactly 7:15 a.m., I make a mental note of the other people there to take the test — a white guy who looks to be in his 50s or 60s, a Hispanic guy in his 20s, and a straight white couple in their 20s or early 30s.

The instructor looks up at me, shakes his head, and says, "You’re late."

Then he hands me a bucket with 30 rounds and a .38 revolver.

Wait. Let’s back up. There’s something you should know about me before I go on about the shooting range: I have ADHD. And it has a huge effect on my life.

My brain is a massive ocean of too much information. Without my medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, it’s easy for me to get lost in the undertow. No matter how hard I try to fight the current, I still get overwhelmed and distracted by every strange texture I feel beneath my feet. This never goes away.

All illustrations by Kitty Curran.

And the medications that do manage to help me a little? They aren’t easy to get.

One of those is Adderall. I remember back in the spring of 2013 waiting around at CVS when a frowning pharmacist called me to the counter. Thanks to its status as a Schedule II controlled substance (such as barbiturates or opioids), there are no automatic renewals for Adderall prescriptions, and the doctor can’t call or fax one in either.

So every month, the routine goes like this: I call the doctor’s office three to five days before the end of the prescription cycle (but no sooner than 21 days since my last prescription was filled), then wait a few days for the request to get from the receptionist to the doctor. Then I travel in person to pick up the new prescription and hand-deliver it to the pharmacy.

But it doesn’t always go smoothly — like on that spring day in question. I was sitting in the CVS after I’d already gone a few days without my medicine, which made me all the more eager to get back to my "normal" functionality as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the pharmacist informed me they were out of stock and weren’t expecting another shipment for a week. D’oh.

With my prescription in hand, I biked over to another CVS, but they too were out of stock and would be for a while. This time, the pharmacist explained that the country was in the midst of a national shortage of Adderall, which had apparently been caused by some confusing collision of agendas between the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, and big pharmaceutical companies.

So I showed up at a third CVS that day and was elated to learn they actually had the medicine!

But 10 minutes of waiting turned into 15, then 45, and I went to check if everything was OK. It wasn’t. Massachusetts law requires pharmacies to substitute generic-brand medications unless otherwise specified by the doctor. But it turned out that my insurance only covered the name-brand version of Adderall, which they couldn’t give me because my doctor had not written "no substitutions" by his signature.

"Can’t I just write 'no substitutions' by myself with a pen? How would you even know if it was the doctor or not?" I asked.

"Well, I would know now," the pharmacist said. "And that would be fraud."

She had me there.

So I got back on my bike, went back to the hospital where I’d already been once that day, and waited in line again. I explained the whole scenario as I asked the receptionist to please just write "no substitutions" on my existing prescription. Because remember: These prescriptions aren’t accepted by phone or email or fax, and they’re only allowed to write me one a month.

After some five hours and 15 miles of biking back and forth (and enough stress to kill an elephant), I got my prescription. But that was just for one month. And while this was certainly a worst-case scenario, it’s unfortunately not so far off from every other month.

If you’re wondering what my monthly quest for ADHD meds has to do with buying a gun, you’re not the only one.

On Oct. 4, 2015, I was sitting in my parents’ couch, sipping on a whiskey, while my father watched CNN's coverage of the Umpqua Community College shooting that had claimed 10 lives just a few days earlier. We had just returned from a suicide awareness walk, and I couldn’t help but cringe each time the shooter’s mental health was brought into question by the news anchors, police chief, and other pundits. At one point, a reporter even questioned the shooter’s father directly about his son’s "mental makeup" despite the fact that the man was clearly in shock and mourning.

It’s the argument made famous by Ann Coulter: "Guns don’t kill people, the mentally ill do."

But the truth is far from that. Here are the facts:

People with mental illnesses make up about 20% of the population, and they are significantly more likely to be victims than perpetrators of gun violence in the United States. And more than half of gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides.

Realistically, less than 5% of gun-related killings from 2001-2010 were perpetrated by someone with a diagnosed mental illness, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2015. Mass shootings in particular account for less than 1% of firearm deaths, and some sources project mental illness figure into only about half of those.

I mean, it’s just kind of hard to draw any useful predictions or conclusions from those kinds of fractions.

So as I sat and listened to yet another dour cable news expert rattle on about how the 20% of Americans who are like me are basically tragic but indisputable monsters because we have psychiatric conditions, I decided I'd just about had enough of this unfounded link between mental health and gun rights. I grabbed my laptop and decided right then that I wanted to investigate this system.

Within five minutes, I’d found a listing for a Cobra 380 Derringer Big Bore pistol in Kentucky. It was hot pink and only cost $114.95. I made a burner Google phone number and email address and sent a message to the dealer that I was interested.

He called me 10 minutes later.

People with ADHD — we tend to be a little bit impulsive. So it’s a good thing I live in Massachusetts.

Gun laws vary from state to state, and — as I would eventually learn during the licensing process — this is a major factor in our nation’s gun problem. While Kentucky’s laws are very loose, for example, all online gun sales in the country must be shipped to a licensed dealer in the buyer’s home state. This meant that my little pink Saturday Night Special was going to be harder to get than I had hoped because I’d have to obtain a Massachusetts gun license first.

But it didn’t take long for me to learn that there are plenty of simple and semi-legal ways around this, too.

Most gun-control rankings consider Massachusetts to be the third-strictest state for guns in the union; by comparison, Kentucky ranks around 42nd. Massachusetts also has one of the lowest rates of gun-related deaths per capita, although it’s only fair to point out that correlation isn’t necessarily causation.

But if I was really determined to get a gun, I could have just applied for a Utah gun permit (which is available to any U.S. resident by mail for just $49 and is recognized in 36 other states) then driven an hour north to New Hampshire and purchased a rifle there. Or, I could have changed my legal residence to my in-laws' house in Vermont — I do spend enough time there, even if it is legally questionable. In both cases, I could still purchase and own a gun, even though I legally could not use it in my actual home state of Massachusetts.

This a pretty good summation of how confusing, obnoxious, and generally manipulable our country’s state-by-state gun laws are.

It's important to note that I didn’t actually want this pistol. I didn't plan to use it all. But I wanted to know if getting a gun really was as simple as they said it was, especially given the bureaucratic frustrations that I’d already lived through in my attempts to get proper mental health care. Gun control advocates and gun enthusiasts always seem to be talking past each other, and I thought that if I actually learned firsthand about how to buy a gun, I would be better able to understand the arguments on both sides of that debate and communicate with people instead of at them.

(Also, the city of Boston offers a gun buyback program that pays $200 no questions asked, and I thought it would be kind of hilarious if I could make a profit off of a cheap, crappy gun.)

As tempting as it was to try and skirt the system just to say I did it, though, I decided to go through the proper Massachusetts licensing process to see what it was like. So I signed up for the next available gun safety course in my area — which was eight miles away — and started the course 16 hours later.

That's how I ended up at a plastic folding table in a desolate warehouse just outside Boston at 9 a.m. on a dreary Saturday morning.

The bulk of this wide-open industrial space was a lobby of sorts, littered with gym mats and home exercise equipment. There was an empty glass display case to the left where inventory should have been and a few decorative firearms hanging on a section of the wall. The classroom part was sectioned off, with a few NRA posters to add pops of color to the otherwise bland drywall.

I took a seat toward the center-back, behind a friendly middle-aged couple from the nearby suburb of Tewksbury. I was genuinely impressed by the diversity of the room — seven women, including a black woman and a Hispanic woman, and 11 men, including one Asian man.

The three-hour NRA-certified class cost $100 cash, and the first half-hour consisted entirely of an instructional safety video created by someone with the National Rifle Association. Maybe it was my ADHD, which in my case, is accompanied by auditory processing problems, but it was really hard to sit still through 30 minutes of things like this:

"When a gun’s trigger is pulled, a specific sequence of events occurs. First, the firing pin strikes the primer or case rim and ignites the priming compound. The flame generated by the priming compound ignites the powder charge. The powder burns rapidly and generates a large volume of hot, high-pressure gas. At this time, the case walls expand against the walls of the chamber to form a gas seal. Finally, the high pressure gas propels the bullet out of the barrel at a high velocity."

Did your eyes gloss over? Mine did. It felt like a driver’s ed teacher explaining the combustion sequence of the engine, which might save you some money at the auto shop but isn’t necessarily going to make you a more responsible driver. It's certainly helpful to know how a gun works, but these dry and overly technical hardware explainers didn't actually teach me much.

The "safety" aspects of the video were mostly focused on gun ranges, proper home care, and storage for the firearm. And there were occasional mentions that yes, you should also be carrying it on your person at all times. According to this video, all gun-related incidents were "accidents," which were only caused by ignorance or carelessness.

So what exactly constitutes "safe pistol operation"? This was made explicitly clear:

"Knowing all the gun's safety rules is not enough to ensure safe shooting. Having a safety-oriented attitude is the most important factor in shooting safety. Thus, you should focus not only on learning the rules, but also on developing the type of attitude that ensures that you will follow them at all times."

In other words, safety is the practice of being safe, which you should do because it’s important and, thus, safe. Got it!

Oh, and there was something else about how you’re not supposed to operate a firearm under the influence of recreational drugs, prescription narcotics, depressants, or stimulants. But even with my Adderall, I was having trouble paying attention to the stale mechanical language in the video.

And there’s no way that it could be safer and legally required for me to be off my medication when shooting a gun ... right?

After the video, the instructor explained the basic local laws to us.

He was a heavy-set Italian-American man in a matched grey jumpsuit with a thick North Shore accent, and he did not hesitate to add the disclaimer that he was not a legal expert and that if anyone had any real questions about gun laws in the state of Massachusetts (which he only ever referred to as "Stupid-chusetts" and made us repeat that un-clever nickname back to him several times), they should consult a lawyer.

He explained that there are three different kinds of gun permits you can get in Massachusetts: the firearm identification card (FID), which limits the user to a rifle or a shotgun; a restricted license to carry (LTC), which allows for handguns and semiautomatics as long as they’re kept in the home or in the trunk of your car; or an unrestricted license to carry (LTC), which allows you to conceal-carry anywhere you’d like.

As for how to get each of these licenses? That’s where things get a little more complicated because it all depends on the laws of the town in which you reside, not the town you’re in when you’re carrying that gun. And when pressed on the details of what happens when, say, a Kentucky resident with a conceal-carry license shows up in Boston, the instructor just told us to repeat: "Stupid-chusetts."

For the most part, the instructor seemed to be less concerned about gun safety or etiquette than he was in helping us to not get arrested.

"You have to cover yourself," he explained. "Remember: It’s your gun. No discharging the gun within 150 feet of a home or a highway. So if you see Bambi running across the highway, you do not go over and start shooting at her. Everybody understand?"

He then reminded us that we cannot exercise our right to bear arms while in prison. In general, "exercising our right" did seem to take priority over, erm, anything else about guns.

While the instructor did insist that we do our best to follow all laws and signs that restrict us from carrying a gun with us into certain places, he also made it clear that this was stupid, even though it was the law. "Picture your kids in a classroom right now, some maniac comes through and starts shooting at everyone. There’s no such thing as shelter."

As if right on cue, he said, "The only thing that stops that guy is a gun. So they need to change that law so that teachers can start carrying guns. Everyone should be carrying a gun. If they haven’t realized that now, something’s gonna happen and they will. 'Gun free zones' do not work. They only bring the maniacs in."

Then he sighed and conceded, "But if you do see a sign that says 'no guns allowed,' it’s best to just obey the rules, OK?"

Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned that day was that it is, in fact, illegal to own a grenade launcher in the state of Massachusetts.

This is part of the reason that Massachusetts is considered such a strict state for gun owners: Even when you have obtained that license to carry, there are some extra rules about what you can and cannot own thanks to a statewide ban on "assault weapons."

Our instructor explained that the state restricts the length of your gun barrel, for example, and has an outright ban on high-capacity magazines of more than 10 bullets (which rules out anything made after September 1994, and these laws have been tightened even more since I took this class).

To be fair, there’s no clear evidence that banning semiautomatic weapons affects gun violence rates either way. In criticizing this law, the instructor did make a valid point: If someone is intent on murder, it’s not going to make much of a difference whether they have a 27-inch barrel or a 29-inch barrel.

But the rest of the class seemed particularly appalled at the idea that the government would dare impede their constitutional right to a grenade launcher. In fact, there was some brief confusion about which amendment, exactly, guaranteed our right to a grenade launcher. The instructor assured us that it was the Second.

10 weeks later, I checked off my next "gun owner" box at the Boston Police headquarters, where I swapped stories about day drinking during the Boston Marathon with an officer while she rolled my fingerprints.

That’s another fun detail about Massachusetts’ gun laws that you won’t find in most other states: You have go down to the police station and meet with an officer for an in-person background check. There’s no mandatory waiting period for this — you could feasibly show up the very next business day after you’ve taken your safety course — but since I’m a resident of Boston proper, things were booked up pretty far in advance.

One officer told me that it used to take two to four weeks to make an appointment in Boston. But ever since President Barack Obama announced his executive plan in January 2016, the phones had been running off the hook with residents who were eager to get a gun before the government took that right away from them entirely.

They said they were processing upward of 30 new LTC requests per day, and a surprising amount of them were from 21-year-old college students who were eager to accomplish this particular rite of passage. Car at 16, gun at 21 — for some people, that’s just how it goes, the officer said.

The actual interview and background check process was … fairly simple.

My small talk and banter with the licensing officer was surprisingly delightful. She explained to me that the Boston Police Department isn’t interested in preventing people from exercising their Constitutional right to bear arms. They just want to make sure that those who are armed fill a very basic and mostly objective criteria of competence and character.

What this meant was a few basic questions: Had I ever been convicted of a felony or violent crime or anything involving alcohol, narcotics, or operating under the influence? Had I been dishonorably discharged from the military, or had I ever been the subject of a court-sanctioned restraining order? Had I ever been committed to a hospital or institution for mental illness or substance abuse?

The formal part of this questioning lasted all of 15 minutes. I wrote "personal safety" on the official paperwork as my reason for obtaining an LTC, and that was good enough; no questions asked.

After the officer took my photo — and after I approved of the webcam-quality mugshot that would appear on my physical license — I asked what would happen if I had answered "yes" to any of the necessary questions. She said that some of them were dealbreakers while others simply required a written explanation and subsequent fact-checking.

I was surprised to learn that anyone who had ever been imprisoned for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence was banned for life from obtaining an LTC in Massachusetts. Felonies, restraining orders, and other situations, however, were evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

This might sound concerning, but the officer made a valid point in her explanation: People do dumb stuff all the time, and we’re all human, so you shouldn’t lose your rights just because you were a stupid high school senior who got caught with some pot or a stolen candy bar.

The only trick was, and still is, figuring out where to draw the line. Unfortunately, there's no objective criteria for what causes gun violence — and even if there was, the government wouldn't be allowed to find it. It would technically be discrimination if we didn't allow innocent people with psychiatric conditions (or disabilities or brown skin) to exercise their Constitutional rights. And it's not the job of the police to pass moral judgment on every would-be gun owner — nor should it be.

So that was that, I guess.

Then, finally, I ended up on Moon Island four days later, at the Boston Police shooting range, to try to pass a target test even though I’d never shot a gun before.

That’s the other thing Boston has that the rest of Massachusetts doesn’t: a mandatory shooting test. If I lived across the river in Cambridge — or in any of the 36 states that recognize that Utah gun license — I could legally get my hands on a firearm without ever actually touching one. But as a resident of the city of Boston, I also had to prove a bare minimum basic competency with a firearm before they’d let me buy one for myself.

At one point during my test, one of the range instructors saw me struggling to steady the .38 revolver in my hands, possibly because I had never held an actual gun in my hands before that morning. (And also I wasn’t on my Adderall because it’s illegal to operate firearms while under the influence of any kind of medication.) He walked over to me while I was reloading and offered some friendly advice. "Focus on the sight, not the target," he said. "Don’t pull the trigger, squeeze. Just breathe, relax, and keep it steady."

I did what he said — or tried to, anyway. Then I heard a loud pong come from somewhere near my target paper. "That was a pole," the instructor said. "You’re supposed to hit the target. Not the pole. And what’d my pole ever do to you?"

Oops.


That first time I took the shooting test was my first time handling a gun. 14 of my 30 bullets didn’t even hit the paper, let alone the target in the center of it.

In order to pass, you have to score a minimum of 210 out of 300 possible points on a standard target with rings for eight, nine, and 10 points. If you fail the first time, you can try again within two weeks; and if you fail the second time, you have to wait six months to try again.

They wouldn’t even tell me what I scored the first time around because it was so embarrassingly low. But they did make sure to tease me about losing to a girl — as it turned out, the only woman in our five-person group got the second-highest score.

Passive-aggressive sexist bravado aside, the test administrators were still surprisingly encouraging. They said they were confident I would pass the next time as long as I was relaxed and focused.

"We want everyone to pass, but if you can’t do it, we can’t pass you," one of them said as I left.

"And you know, if you’re close but not quite there, we’ll bump your score up for ya. We’re nice like that," said the other.

"We don’t actually do that," said the first one, with a glare.

When I returned two weeks later, I managed to score 256 points out of a possible 300, making me the highest sharpshooter on the range that day.

All I had to do was relax, take my time, keep both eyes open on the gun sights, and squeeze the trigger when I felt ready.

It might sound silly to enforce that shooting test requirement if someone like me can pass with flying colors the second time around. But I’d counter by saying that it taught me how to respect handling a firearm, which could make a difference for the hundreds of people who are killed and the tens of thousands more who are injured each year by "unintentional" firearm incidents. And frankly, that sounds a lot safer to me than letting any ol’ American walk into a gun store and leave with an M82, having never so much as ranked a high score on Duck Hunt beforehand.

As the licensing officer explained to me before I took (and re-took) the target test, only about 1% of applicants actually fail on both tries — not because of an inability to hit a target, but because they displayed dangerously questionable behaviors or attitudes on the range. If they acted like they were in a Western or a Quentin Tarantino film, for example, the officers on Moon Island would call up the licensing department and say, "That guy? No way." Even if they did ace the test.

That might be a bit subjective, but it's also a pretty low bar, so I'm totally OK with it.

So that's how I, Thom Dunn, someone with a mental disorder and who tends toward impulsiveness and distractibility, was granted a license to carry by the state of Massachusetts.

In these highly specific circumstances, a successful gun licensing process like the one in Massachusetts takes about as much time as it does to get a mental health diagnosis or to find an available therapist — about six to eight weeks if you’re lucky and up to six months if you’re not. And that’s in one of the country’s largest hubs for medical and life sciences. Most other states have fewer health care options and looser gun requirements.

And that's really the crux of it: Once you have a gun license — if your state even requires that much — you can buy a gun, and you’re good to go. $500 will get you a decent semiautomatic pistol and a box of bullets.

Mental health care, on the other hand, is an ongoing treatment. It’s not like a cold or a broken leg that mends over time. You have to keep up with prescription renewals, with therapy, and so on. You might learn to manage it over time, but it never really goes away. And when you're treated like a leper or made to feel like you're broken or weak just for seeking help — which tends to happen in this country — that only serves to make the problem worse.

I embarked on this whole journey because I was fed up with the link between guns and mental health. And now that I have a gun license, I'm still fed up with it.

Before I got my license to carry, I wasn’t a big fan of guns. And to be fair, I’m still not.

But I also have a whole new understanding of just how complicated the gun violence issue really is and how hard it is to determine who can or can't have a gun.

Blaming violence on neurological conditions like ADHD or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is about as ridiculous as saying, "It's not guns! It's Fridays!" Sure, there's been some overlap, but not enough for us to make any useful conclusions about it. People with mental illnesses are fully capable of leading happy, healthy lives, and their decision-making processes aren’t necessarily affected by their conditions. (And if they are, it doesn't usually manifest as flying fits of violent rage.)

But the question still stands: How do we stop guns from getting in the hands of would-be killers?

After learning how to handle a gun, I am more comfortable with their general existence, and I’m glad to have had the chance to speak with normal, rational human gun owners who, like me, were concerned about safety. Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised by that last part — after all, 74% of NRA members agree on the need for stronger universal background checks.

But to fix this, we can't punish or restrict innocent people before they've ever committed a crime. What we can do instead is the bare minimum due diligence in making sure that those who do have access to guns are of sound physical and mental condition — regardless of whether they have a psychiatric condition.

I actually think that a system like the one in Massachusetts could be a good place to start for that, but I'm open to a dialogue.

(There's also that issue of states' rights, which enable people to legally obtain illegal firearms just by driving to another state, but that's a whole huge conversation in and of itself to table for another time.)

As much as we like to think of ourselves as rational beings, research shows that our personal perceptions color the way we look at the world — for better and for worse.

Unfortunately, our public discourse about guns tends to revolve around mass shootings, which only make up a fraction of the overall gun deaths in the country. Often, we ignore the evidence to the contrary and convince ourselves instead that anyone who kills another person has to be mentally ill. But "being a murderer" is not the same as having a mental illness.

These fears and perceptions are why some people do actually feel safer with a gun despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.

They're why we talk about "criminals" and "bad guys" with guns like they're a faceless, monolithic evil. They're why attempted suicide is a felony in some states but killing someone based on a subjective claim of self-defense is legal in others.

And they're why we keep wrongly equating gun violence with mental illness.

It sounds strange, but these perceptions are a natural part of "healthy" human brain function. However, they also contribute more to our continued gun problem than mental illness ever will because they prevent us from having a productive conversation.

Perhaps the biggest roadblocks in addressing our nation's problem with gun violence, then, are fear and a lack of empathy — on every side of every argument.

As we've seen throughout history, one bullet has the power to change the world.

But so does a single idea. And it all comes down to the difference between those two things.

Bullets are made for destruction, even when they're used in self-defense. But ideas can be used to create. And I think that's a much more powerful thing.

There's a lot of complicated ground to address around guns in America. But it all boils down to the fact that violence only ever begets violence. If we want to live in a safer, saner world, then we need to stop exchanging bullets and start exchanging our ideas instead.

Photo courtesy of Kerry Hyde

Do cat buttholes touch every surface they sit on? Science answers.

Cat owners sometimes have unique questions that even Google doesn't always have the answer to. This is probably the sole reason cat forums exist, but one kid who needed a 6th grade science project decided to skip the cat forums for answers and instead use the scientific method. Kaeden Henry, a sixth grader living in Florida, bravely pondered a question few (if any one) has been brave enough to ask: do cat buttholes touch every surface they sit on?

Since cats do whatever the heck they want, training them not to jump on kitchen counters is a feat even Hercules struggles to complete. These fierce felines don't care if you're cooking dinner or trying to get comfy in bed. If they want to sit somewhere, they're going to do it. The thought of cat butts on that expensive Serta pillow designed to feel like you're sleeping on a cloud can gross people out, but thanks to Kaeden, you no longer have to wonder if the butthole itself is also making contact.

Courtesy of Kerry Hyde

The curious sixth grader is homeschooled and well-versed in the scientific method thanks to her mother's PhD in animal behavior with a concentration in feline behavior. And, since they own cats, the science experiment was pretty straightforward (and directly impactful).

To complete the experiment, Henry and his mom, Kerry Hyde, bought non-toxic lipstick and applied it to each of their cat's anuses. Then, the cats were given commands.

Courtesy of Kerry Hyde

"Non-toxic lipstick was applied to their bum-bums, they were then given a series of commands (sit, wait, lie down, and jump up. Side note: Both cats have been trained since kittenhood with a variety of commands, they also know how to high-five, spin around, and speak.), they were compensated with lots of praise, pets, and their favorite treats, and the lipstick was removed with a baby wipe once we collected our data in just under 10 minutes," Hyde wrote in a Facebook post.

The results? Turns out that, no, cat buttholes do not touch every surface cats sit on. Now, let's all take a collective sigh of relief while we go over the details. Kaeden's experiment covered long-haired, short-haired, and medium-haired cats (if your cat is hairless, you better stock up on Clorox wipes just in case).

"His results and general findings: Long and medium haired cat’s buttholes made NO contact with soft or hard surfaces at all. Short haired cats made NO contact on hard surfaces. But we did see evidence of a slight smear on the soft bedding surface. Conclusion, if you have a short haired cat and they may be lying on a pile of laundry, an unmade bed, or other soft uneven surface, then their butthole MAY touch those surfaces!" Hyde shares.

Now every curious cat owner can rest easy knowing that as long as their cat has hair, their bare bottom balloon knot is not touching the majority of surfaces in their home.

Courtesy of Kerry Hyde

The amusing experiment caught the Internet's attention. People laughed and commented, with one person writing, "This is probably the most useful information I’ve learned from a science fair project."

"Good to know!...I can now eat my sandwich left on the counter with confidence!" another writes.

Courtesy of Kerry Hyde

"A+++!!! Whew!! I am very grateful for your sciencing on this subject. My fears from walking in on my cat sitting on my laptop keyboard and subsequently being grossed out and cleaning furiously in a hyper-ocd manner have been somewhat allayed and now maybe I won’t have to use QUIIITE so many wipes." someone chimes in.

"Finally.. Someone answers the important questions!!"

History (Education)

The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of welcoming immigrants. That wasn't what she was made for.

Dr. Joy DeGruy explains how Lady Liberty's oft-ignored shackles symbolize her near-forgotten origins.

Photo credit: Canva (left), Atsme (right)

Many people are not aware of the chains at the Statue of Liberty's feet, much less why they are there.

With her flowing robes, flaming torch held high, and crown radiating out to the world like a beacon of hope, the Statue of Liberty has stood as an American emblem off the coast of New York for over two centuries.

If you were to ask the average American what they think of when they think of the Statue of Liberty, many would say she's a symbol of the liberty sought by people around the world who have come to our shores to find it. As the first American sight countless immigrants saw when they arrived at Ellis Island, with her pedestal bearing the words, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…" Lady Liberty has long been synonymous with the American tradition of welcoming immigrants.

But that's not actually what she was made for.

statue of liberty, liberty island, ellis island, immigration, slaveryLady Liberty welcomes people to New York.Photo credit: Canva

French politician Édouard de Laboulaye conceived of the idea for the Statue of Liberty to be built as a gift from France to the United States in 1865, the year the U.S. Civil War ended. That timing wasn't a coincidence. Laboulaye was a staunch abolitionist and president of the French Anti-Slavery Society, and his views were central to his commissioning of the statue. The statue was to be a gift celebrating the end of slavery in the U.S., as well as the centennial of the nation's founding and a symbol of good relations between France and America. Its ties to immigration wouldn't come until decades later.

Dr. Joy Degruy, sociologist, educator, and author of "Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing,"" shares a story about visiting the Statue of Liberty in her book and talks. She recounted the story to Brandi Harvey on the Vault Empowers podcast, informing people—many for the first time—that the Statue of Liberty's origin story began with anti-slavery activism, not immigration.

Watch:

As Dr. DeGruy explains, the original design had Lady Liberty holding broken chains in her left hand, not the tablet we see today. Sometime between the original drawings and the final design, those chains were moved to her feet—where they aren't visible unless you are flying through the air over them—and the tablet bearing the date July 4, 1776 in Roman numerals took their place.

Exactly how and why that change was made is not entirely clear in the historical record. But the fact that it even happened has not been widely shared, even by the people giving tours of the statue and sharing her history. DeGruy asked the tour guide about the chains on a visit and went on a hunt for the historical document showing the original design.

"So we go into the basement of the Statue of Liberty," she said. "We're in the basement of the Statue of Liberty. We find the document—encased in glass, behind figurines, facing a wall in a hallway. So here we have the truth, hidden in plain sight."

In a deep dive of the written historical records we have, researcher Rebecca M. Joseph, PhD. fact-checked various myths about the statue and her findings verified her anti-slavery origins as one of two parts of Laboulaye's vision of celebrating American liberty:

"The Statue of Liberty would never have been conceived or built if its principal French and American advocates had not been active abolitionists who understood slavery as the cause of the Civil War and its end as the realization of the promise of liberty for all as codified in the Declaration of Independence. But the Statue of Liberty was not intended entirely as a monument to the end of slavery. The statue’s form after June 1871 clearly embodies Laboulaye’s views on the two-part realization, in 1776 and 1864, of his ideal of liberty. The centennial of the American Revolution was significant to the French sponsors because the Civil War ended slavery and preserved the Union at a time when the France’s future was still uncertain. For the American republicans, it was a timely opportunity to erect a monument to their efforts and worldview. Laboulaye and his French colleagues also wished to send a political message back to France. Bartholdi cast the project in the broadest terms, hoping to encourage additional commissions."

\u00c9douard Ren\u00e9 de Laboulaye, statue of liberty, anti-slaveryFrench abolitionist Édouard René de Laboulaye, who commissioned the Statue of Liberty.upload.wikimedia.org

So how did we come to associate the Statue of Liberty with immigration? That's another interesting story, as Joseph explains:

"The conventional interpretation of the statue as a monument to American immigrants is a twentieth-century phenomenon. In its early years (1871-1886), that view was only rarely and vaguely expressed, while references to the Civil War and abolition of slavery occur repeatedly from its first introduction to the United States in 1871 up to and including the dedication celebrations in 1886. Immigrants did not actually see the Statue of Liberty in large numbers until after its unveiling. In the early twentieth century, the statue became a popular symbol for nativists and white supremacists. Official use of the statue's image to appeal to immigrants only began in earnest with public efforts to Americanize immigrant children and the government’s advertising campaign for World War I bonds. The 'immigrant' interpretation gained momentum in the 1930s as Americans prepared for war with Hitler and by the 1950s, it had become the predominant understanding of the statue's original purpose and meaning."

Since DeGruy raised the issue of the exclusion of the statue's anti-slavery origins, the Statue of Liberty national monument and museum has updated its educational program to include them. For some, it might seem like a mere factual correction, but for Black Americans who visit the Statue of Liberty, De Gruy says, it could potentially change their whole relationship to her symbolism.

"When Black people walk through, you hear white people say, 'Oh well, you know, my great great, and my great great…' but Black men, women, and children feel no connection to Lady Liberty. But how much prouder would they be if they knew that their ancestors that didn't come through Ellis Island, that came chained together in the belly of ships, that she was standing on those shackles? How much prouder would those young people be?"

Dr. DeGruy shared more about how Black Americans can find healing through hidden history. You can watch the full Vault Empowers interview with her here:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Science

Innovative farm in Virginia can grow 4 million pounds of strawberries on less than one acre

This method uses 97 percent less land and up to 90 percent less water than conventional farming.

A new way to grow strawberries with less land, less water, and more berries.

Strawberry farm harvests aren't something most of us calculate on a regular basis (or ever at all), but the numbers from a strawberry farm in Richmond, Virginia, are staggering enough to make it worth an old-school word problem. If the average American eats 8 pounds of strawberries a year, and an average strawberry farm yields approximately 20,000 pounds of berries per acre, how many people could a 200-acre strawberry field feed?

I won't make you do the math. The answer is 500,000 people. But what if a crop that size, providing enough strawberries for half a million people, could be grown on just one acre instead of 200? It's possible. You just have to go—or rather grow—up, up, up.

Indoor vertical farm company Plenty Unlimited knows a lot about growing up. In fact, it's their entire business model. Instead of the sprawling fields that traditional farming methods require, vertical farms have a much smaller land footprint, utilizing proprietary towers for growing. Plenty has used vertical farming methods to grow greens such as lettuce, kale, spinach and more for years, but now it boasts a vertical berry farm that can yield a whopping 4 million pounds of strawberries on a little less than an acre.

Growing indoors means not being at the mercy of weather or climate inpredictability (barring a storm taking out your building), which is wise in the era of climate change. Unlike a traditional greenhouse which still uses the sun for light, Plenty's indoor vertical farms make use of the latest technology and research on light, pinpointing the wavelengths plants need from the sun to thrive and recreating them with LED lights. Plenty farms also don't use soil, as what plants really need is water and nutrients, which can be provided without soil (and with a lot less water than soil requires). Being able to carefully control water and nutrients means you can more easily control the size, taste and uniformity of the berries you’re growing.

If that sounds like a lot of control, it is. And that idea might freak people out. But when a highly controlled environment means not having to use pesticides and using up to 90% less water than traditional farming, it starts to sound like a solid, sustainable farming innovation.

Plenty even uses AI in its strawberry farm, according to its website:

“Every element of the Plenty Richmond Farm–including temperature, light and humidity–is precisely controlled through proprietary software to create the perfect environment for the strawberry plants to thrive. The farm uses AI to analyze more than 10 million data points each day across its 12 grow rooms, adapting each grow room’s environment to the evolving needs of the plants – creating the perfect environment for Driscoll’s proprietary plants to thrive and optimizing the strawberries’ flavor, texture and size.”

Plenty even has its own patent-pending method of pollinating the strawberry flowers that doesn’t require bees. Even just the fact that this enormous crop of strawberries will be coming from Virginia is notable, since the vast majority of strawberries in the U.S. are grown in California.

strawberry fieldTraditional strawberry farming takes up a lot of land.Photo credit: Canva

Plenty's Richmond farm is currently growing strawberries exclusively for Driscoll’s.

“Partnering with Plenty for the launch of the Richmond Farm allows us to bring our premium strawberries closer to consumers in the Northeast, the largest berry consumption region in the U.S.,” Driscoll’s CEO Soren Bjorn said in a press release. “By combining our 100 years of farming expertise and proprietary varieties along with Plenty’s cutting-edge technology, we can deliver the same consistent flavor and quality our customers love — now grown locally. This new innovative farm is a powerful step forward in continuing to drive category growth in new ways for our customers and consumers.”

Is Plenty’s model the farm of the future? Perhaps it’s one option, at least. The more we grapple with the impact of climate change and outdated, unsustainable farming practices, the more innovative ideas we’ll need to feed the masses. If they can get 4 million pounds of strawberries out of an acre of land, what else is possible?

This article originally appeared in February

@danilyndesign/TikTok

30s look different for everyone

A 6-second video showing a handful of 30-something friends having a “girl’s night” is striking a heart nourishing nerve for millions.

In the video, posted by @danilyndesign, the camera pans over the group as the caption depicts the scene:

“Girls nights in your 30s. We're holding one girl’s babies, one girl is showing her hinge matches, while another girl is laughing about her ex husband.”

And then, Dani drives the point home:

“You’re never behind in life. You are exactly where you are meant to be right now.”


@danilyndesign Girls nights in your 30’s are what my younger self dreamed of. #girlhood #femalefriendship #girlsintheir30s #girlsnight ♬ Take My Hand - Matt Berry


With its simple yet profound message, it’s no wonder that the clip quickly racked up nearly 6.5 million views on TikTok, and spawned a ton of lovely conversations.

For one thing, people noted how it added a touch of nuance to the “it takes a village” concept. Often we think of villages as a necessity (or luxury, these days) for parents only, when in fact having a safe community is vital for everyone.

“This is ‘the village’! It's not moms at the center, it’s everyone that matters and everyone’s lives are valued and respected," one person commented.

Viewers also felt a sense of relief seeing how each chapter of life seemed to be fully embraced by the friend group. After all, everyone in their 30s has had their own personal set of milestones, challenges, heartbreaks, existential crises, that have helped shape the adult they are. Not always, but often, a lot of the arbitrary pressures we put on ourselves begin to dissolve by this age, so that we can better appreciate where we actually are in life, wherever that may be.

girls night, 30s, friends, making friends, motherhood, heartwarming, milestones, life in your 30s, first babyLadies having a girls' nightPhoto credit: Canva

“Beautiful and remember no matter where you are in the journey, we are allll just figuring it out day by day. Find joy in it wherever you can” one person wrote.

Another added, “I want to tell every woman stressed in their twenties that their thirties will be better, they just need to trust themselves and hang in there.”

“This is the post post every girl needs to see,” wrote a third. “You’re exactly where you need to be.”

For some, this particular insight came at just the write time.

“Needed this. I’m 28 turning 29. My besties are all either engaged/married with a kid and I can’t get past the talking stage. Then I remember our paths are different and I’m where I need to be right now,” confessed one viewer.

girls night, 30s, friends, making friends, motherhood, heartwarming, milestones, life in your 30s, first babyA woman showing off her engagement ringPhoto credit: Canva

Lastly, people had so much love for how this perfectly captured the immense value of long-term friendship. As one person wrote, "growing and evolving with friends is the most beautiful thing. They’ve seen so many versions of us and love them all.”

Another said, “Like in White Lotus when she said ‘I;m just happy to be at the table.’”

As cliché as it is, life truly isn’t about the destination—it’s about the journey. And those beloved relationships we cultivate along the way. We all contain multitudes, and hopefully our friend hangs can help remind us of that when we need it.

Frustrated mom puts baby shampoo in her own eyes to test which are truly 'tear free'

"Trying 'tear free' baby shampoos to see if our babies are being dramatic."

Mom tests 'tear-free' baby shampoo in her eyes. Some burn badly.

Having a baby can be stressful, especially because parents just want to do what's best for them. Because babies can't talk, though, it's hard to know if there's a problem. Of course, babies cry to alert us they need tending to, but are they crying because they're in pain or because they don't like bath water touching their face? Do they need a diaper change or is their left sock soggy because they just discovered they could put their foot in their mouth? The answer to "Why is my baby crying?" can be anything, but the last thing a parent wants it to be is pain.

Tori Keller has been having a hard time washing her children's hair due to all the crying even though she uses "tear free" shampoo. The bath time dramatics were enough to make her wonder if the problem was her children simply not liking their hair being washed or if it was the shampoo. Keller decided to put the baby shampoo to the test using her own eyeballs so she would know once and for all.

gif, baby, bath time, hair washing, baths, babiesBeauty Baby GIF by Aksan KozmetikGiphy

In her totally scientific experiment, the young mom happily hopped into the running shower wearing what appears to be workout clothing. Once she gets in and wets her face under the shower head, her husband, who is standing off to the side, squirts a couple of pumps of baby shampoo on her forehead and rubs it in, being sure to get it on her eyes. First up is the very familiar and extremely popular Johnson's baby shampoo, and quite honestly, the results look painful.

Nearly immediately after opening her eyes the shampoo burned so badly that she forgot she was standing right next to running water. Keller keeps yelling "Oh!" in increasing intensity as she seemingly doesn't know how to make the stinging stop. Finally, her husband points her in the direction of the shower head. "That one's bad" she says with her eyes are still closed.

shower, burning, eyes, shampoo, soap in eyes, painScreaming Oh God GIF by Film RiotGiphy

Next up is Aveeno Kids, which also claims to be tear-free. Much to the mom's relief, it is much less intense. Keller declares that it's "not terrible, it's a tiny bit of a sting." Phew. Aveeno still seems to be in the running for actually being tear-free, but she still has more shampoos to go. Next on deck is Honest Calm Shampoo and Body Wash and, once again, the discomfort is instant. It took Keller quite a bit of time to rid her eyes of the stinging.

@torikeller PART 3 of trying baby products 🤪 I’ll let you guys know if i can see tomorrow! What’s next?! #sahm #mom #motherhood #babyproducts #momcontent ♬ original sound - torikeller

The last one Keller tries is Equate Baby Shampoo which is also very uncomfortable. Keller really is a trooper because in other videos, she tries even more baby shampoos. People in the comments were thankful for the mom's dedication to "research" while others had bones to pick with their own mothers after seeing the results.

"This is so smart thank you for doing that. Aveeno it is for my baby!" one person says.

"I’m about to send this to my mom she SWORE the Johnson’s wasn’t burning my eyes as a child but it does!!!!!!"

"Thank you for your scientific research"

"I’ve never found a tear free product that didn’t obliterate my eyes. I still haven’t found a sunscreen that I can use on my face without going blind."

"This is so helpful! Thank you for taking one for the team babies!" one viewer cheers.