official boob post

w

water tribble

water tribble

water tribble

d

desert tribble

desert tribble

d

dessert tribble

dessert tribble

dessert tribble

h

hot tribble…..

hot tribble

hot tribble

c

cold tribble..

cold tribble

cold tribble

d

dirt tribble

dirt tribble

dirt tribble

c

crystal tribble

crystal tribble

crystal tribble

r

rubber tribble

rubber tribble

Rubber tribble

g 

garden tribble

garden tribble

garden tribble

s

stone tribble

stone tribble

stone tribble

s

shiny tribble

shiny tribble

shiny tribble

l

light tribble

light tribble

light tribble

c

cat tribble

cat tribble

cat tribble

c

cloud tribble

cloud tribble

Cloud tribble

b

bubble tribble

Bubble tribble

Bubble tribble

T

Tumblr tribbles

Tumblr tribbles

Tumblr tribble

What the hell is a tribble

Call-Back

Delayed Reaction

The Echoer

Overly-Long Gag

Rule of Three

Shout-Out

Underground Monkey

Check out my ongoing comic Crow Time. It has crows, and also neat pantheons of epic beasties.

annotating your books is amazing once you stop giving a fuck about making it fancy/ "academic"

one of the most fun times i had was annotating mary shelley's frankenstein, and that's because on multiple occasions i underlined gay parts and just wrote "sus" and "bestie idk how to tell you this..."

but i also pointed out possible metaphors and parallels, and this helped me learn something very important:

your intellect/intelligence flows more freely once you stop feeling like you have something to prove.

and even if you just add funny annotations, it still means that you read the book, thought about the story and the writing and understood things like the use of irony, humour etc.

(if you prefer not to annotate your books, that's alright too, of course.)

also: the books you read/ annotate do not have to be "classics".

i never understood pretentious people's obsession with "the classics"; they act as though no new or differently written book has anything to teach us, they pretend that there is no depth just because they don't deem it as valuable. but let me ask you this:

if we only read and analyse the Classics, how will we ever discover new classics? we will be stuck reading the same books, or at least the same styles of books, over and over, and that is the very opposite of learning, the very opposite of the actual point of reading (and, let's be honest, it will also be way less entertaining).

in order to grow as readers, and as writers, we cannot afford to focus only on old classics, because many of those old classics were also judged and seen as pointless "entertainment for the masses", or even as harmful at the time they were written, because they were so different from what was usually written at that time (a great example of this is Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray).

i would also like to say here that once i stopped pressuring myself to read what other people considered valuable, not only did i discover other writing styles, i also did find classics that i very much enjoyed. but still, if you do not want to read those, there is nothing wring with that and you are not less intelligent, or somehow a "worse reader" because of that.

and, yes there are books that are badly written, and objectively pointless, but in my experience people naturally avoid those books, no matter if they are old or new or anything, and reading these books does not make you stupid.

so, basically, my point is:

read whatever you want, and read however you want.

classics, no classics, only classics, annotations, not annotations, audiobooks, e-books, paper books, it is your life, your bookshelf (or audible profile, i guess?), and other people's opinions, especially disrespectful ones, do not matter.

that doesn't mean that being criticised rudely will not hurt, of course it will. but you will learn to look past that, because people will always have something to say, something to complain about. find friends and fellow readers who are kind and respectful of your reading choices (finding people who like reading the same things as you is even better, if you can, but interacting with people whose opinions differ from yours can be a great learning experience, as long as these people are kind and respectful; and trust me, you will find these kinds of people in your life)

so go on, read, learn, and do not listen to arseholes /gen

LOOK AT THESE CUTE ANIMALS AKAJAJAJAJSNAJ

@evilwriter37 @lif-61

I have to reblog this. This is pure gold

I hope this isn’t a hot take but everyone, regardless of income level, deserves to have nice things in their life and to experience occasional luxury

I want everyone to have access to basic necessities and a high quality-of-life. But I also want people to thrive, and that means more than just the basics. Humans deserve to have good lives! They deserve to live in comfortable homes, and take vacations, and eat a variety of foods, and explore the world they live in, and be surrounded by bright colorful things that make them happy. People deserve to be excited about being alive! They deserve to enjoy the amazing things this world has to offer! And it’s ridiculous that in a world full of this strange new abundance of wealth and wonders and resources—things beyond anything our ancestors could predict!—the majority of the population still struggles just to meet basic needs.

Humans deserve better lives. All of us, not just the ones on top.

“Our lives shall not be sweated From birth until life closes Hearts starve as well as bodies Give us bread, but give us roses”

Oh I love this.

“Bread and Roses” was a powerful early 20th century political slogan associated with women’s suffrage and worker’s rights. It was popularized in part by the Jewish poet James Oppenheim, in his breathtaking poem (quoted above) of the same name, and used famously in the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912.

The message of Bread and Roses resonated deeply with underpaid, exploited workers of the era, who worked long hours for abusive employers, for unlivable wages. Sound familiar?

Yes, we should absolutely bring this slogan back for the 2020s.

(Full poem below!)

Keep reading

“Tacos and high-speed internet”

Tacos and High-Speed Internet!

The song is beautiful.

This rendition from the film Pride, about the solidarity between the gay community and the striking miners in 1980s UK

new abyss just dropped

what features does it have over the old abyss?

arcade game and library

The hell are you talking about

what i said

new abyss dropped

there weren’t enough abysses so they built a new one. it has an arcade

What in the fuck

it’s called the Deep Dive Dubai, and as of a few days ago it’s the deepest swimming pool in the world! (surpassing Deepspot)

It’s a horrifying abyss of calamity luxury diving center that breaks the world record at 60m (196 feet) deep. For reference, imagine like…a 20 story apartment building. Which is what its design is based on actually—an abandoned apartment building! Fun lifelike props simulate environments you will find naturally occurring on the ocean floor (in a few centuries anyway, when the flood times come) including:

yeah, i wasn’t kidding about the arcade.

they’ve got foosball and even……pool.

ko-fi

ok, but does it actually have an arcade machine

I thought this was a hyper-realistic video game render my brain feels like it’s going to melt.

I- I do not dislike this but it feels wrong and I honestly feel like it’s so close to uncanny valley that I can’t tell if this is one of your ‘ha I wonder if i can trick tumblr’ posts or something real

edit: So I looked it up, it’s real. What the fuck

ok but if you want something that looks like a poorly rendered video game, i recommend the second deepest swimming pool in the world, aka:

located in Poland for some reason, it goes to 45m (148 ft) deep. Like Deep Dive Dubai, it contains an abysmal abyss of inscrutable depth a simulated blue hole (underwater sinkhole or cavern).

here is its hole :)

and yes it is absolutely designed like a video game from 2007 made by a dev team who was not especially invested in the success of their employment company

a puzzle game maybe. look there’s the playable character!

compared with the original post, you can see that abyss graphics rendering has come a long way in a few short years months! (Deepspot was built in 2020 and only held the world record for 6 months)

hopefully by setting up more and more realistic versions of their natural habitat, various leviathan cosmic entities will soon be tempted to make their nests in our dimension! same principle as bird boxes :)

ko-fi

the cooking show I’m watching is rated PG-13 for language and nudity

no it’s not cutthroat kitchen or gordon ramsey it’s a documentary exploring the anthropological & historical significance of cooking, and the dangers of the mass industrialization of food.

and i misspoke it’s rated TV-14 (for language and nudity)

this guy is so fucking angry about sliced bread (justifiably) that he really came out on camera with this absolute banger of a quote:

utterly scathing and yes this is from a 60 minute documentary episode dedicated entirely to the subject of Bread

You can’t just not tell us why sliced bread is terrible D8

right ok so technically it’s not sliced bread but industrial, mass-manufactured bread that is…causing problems. Here’s the theory as the show presents it:

For about ~10,000 years bread was a fucking staple of the human diet. we evolved to eat this food, our bodies, our societies were built on this food, but all of a sudden we’re seeing a general rise in gluten sensitivity* (which may or may not refer to a single medical condition, but does seem to be separate from celiac disease? The research is very confusing. I have no idea if or how the following info applies to celiac disease specifically, sorry!). Aka our bodies are rejecting this food we’ve spent 100 centuries eating. Where is this coming from?

Well, a big part of it is probably that less than 100 years ago corporations changed the definition of bread. (Like, figuratively and literally, they petitioned the FDA to change the legal definition of bread so they could put in additives.) In fact, industrialization has changed the process and the ingredients used to make bread, to the point manufactured bread is a profoundly different product from what our ancestors knew as bread. Let’s start with:

1) The Process: For thousands of years, humans relied on naturally occurring wild yeast and bacteria found in the air to make (leavened) bread and bread starters (fermented dough used to “start” new loaves. hence the term “sourdough”). you can still do this at home–all it involves is leaving a mixture of water and flour lying around for a few days. notice something missing? that’s right, YEAST. this process of making bread involves yeast–yeast from the air around you–but it doesn’t involve concentrated baker’s yeast. Baker’s yeast refers to various strains of yeast that are added directly to flour & water mixtures as a leavening agent. This allows the bread to rise more quickly and cuts down on the overall production time. Convenient, right?

Now, adding yeast is not automatically a bad thing, and bakers have been doing it for a damn long time in interesting ways (such as using yeast from beer brewing). But lately we’ve taken it to extremes–we’ve gotten too good at creating more and more efficient forms of commercial Baker’s yeast, specifically for industrial use on a mass scale. Manufacturers want bread to rise as fast as possible, because that is how you get more product on the shelves. Making bread in factories now takes a small fraction of the time it used to.

And why is this a problem? Because it turns out a more traditional “long fermentation process allows bacteria to fully break down the carbohydrates and gluten in bread, making it easier to digest and releasing the nutrients within it, allowing our bodies to more easily absorb them.” [1] This (added to the fact that some commercial breads contain extra added gluten) has the unfortunate result that the product you buy from the grocery store is less digestible and nutritious than the bread human societies traditionally relied upon. Hence the rise of gluten intolerance–the gluten we are eating is simply more difficult to tolerate than gluten in properly fermented bread. (This is the reason many people with gluten sensitivity don’t experience symptoms when eating more traditionally made, longer-fermented sourdough.)

That’s not the only issue though. There’s also:

2) The Ingredients. not just the countless additives, but specifically: the flour. See, a grain of wheat is…incredibly nutritious, honestly. It has almost everything we need to sustain life and health. Civilizations did–and do–rely on bread as a fundamental dietary staple, to the point that you can track political instability with rising wheat prices. It’s essential. Look at this:

In a single grain, the essence of life.

So yeah, wheat is nutritional. We can build bodies and civilizations out of wheat. But it’s also, like…super difficult to access that nutrition. Well, more so than with most foods. If you eat a handful of wheat grains, a spoonful of flour–your body can’t digest that, you get basically nothing out of that (also raw flour isn’t safe to consume, don’t do that). Unlike many crops, wheat relies on being carefully and correctly processed in order for the final product to be as nutritional as possible. As stated above, part of that process is about fermentation. Another part is the quality of the flour, what it contains and how it has been milled and treated.

And that quality has changed a lot in just a century or two. Take white flour, for instance. White flour has been around for a long fucking time actually, but until the late 19th century it was considered a luxury item, a treat for the very wealthy. White flour was never considered a staple food–until industrialists learned how to manufacture it cheaply. [2] And then it was everywhere. And suddenly, surprise surprise, we started to see a rise in nutrition related illnesses. Because the bran and germ have been stripped away, white flour has only a fraction of the nutritional value of whole grain. But because this gives it a higher shelf life, it was more convenient (and profitable) for manufacturers. So when they learned about the health issues, what did they do? Go back to making healthier flour?

Pshaw. Of course not. No, instead they kept removing nutrients, then artificially adding them back in. And that is how we got enriched flour–flour which is still significantly less nutritious than whole wheat flour. [3] And this is what the previous quote about capitalism was referencing. The food industry created a problem, and rather than undoing the problem, they created a whole new business to “fix” it:

And thus came the mass rise of “enriched” foods.

Eat Wonder Bread! It has as much protein as roast beef! As much calcium as cottage cheese! As much iron as lamb chops! No need to eat real foods, when you can eat highly processed foods instead! Don’t cook your own meals, let trustworthy corporations feed you! Mass-produced factory foods are easy, are healthy! There will be literally no downsides or long-term repercussions to public health & wellness!

So yeah. Much of what we think of as “bread” is chemically and molecularly distinct from traditional bread, and is very different (and less nutritional) than what our ancestors were eating even just a century ago. (On an individual level, I’m not sure how to mitigate this, other than by purchasing the healthiest options available (e.g. whole wheat, sourdough), buying from small bakeries/farmer’s markets, or baking bread at home. Lately there has been a rise of small health-concious brands focusing on traditional fermentation and whole ingredients; some may be available in your area. But ultimately, it’s the entire wider system that needs to change.)

And there you have it! I have never been so incandescently furious about wonder bread. This documentary will do that to you–and will change your whole understanding of modern food. It’s a 4-part netflix series called Cooked (2016), based on Michael Pollan’s book of the same name. Most of the info above comes from the third episode, and is accurate to the best of my knowledge (but let me know if I got anything wrong).

*I want to be perfectly clear though, gluten itself is not inherently bad. It’s being demonized in the press on no scientific basis, just to push yet another diet fad. Unless your body has actual issues with gluten (e.g. celiac disease, gluten sensitivity) there are no proven benefits to eating gluten-free. There are, however, benefits to eating less processed, more nutritional (delicious delicious) bread.

tip jar :P

I know I’ve said this before but vampires

therefore I am in dire need of a heist film where a group of vampires band together to steal back their old stuff from museums

Oceans 1100 AD

Very interested in the hardest part of this beign the vampires trying to trick someone into granting them permission to enter the premises earlier in the day

I feel like this has several simple solutions!

(all ideas shared on this blog are public domain, feel free to go nuts. you can find more story ideas like this on my ko-fi)

I don’t know if I can contain my “The Muppet Christmas Carol has better costume design than most Oscar-nominated period dramas” rant until after Thanksgiving you guys, I have…so many Thoughts

Ok, buckle up kids.

Basically they did not have to go as hard as they did here. A Christmas Carol covers 60 years of fashion through flashbacks and they still manage to do nearly everything right. 

I’m mainly going to be talking about the human actors here because it’s harder to judge Muppet costumes proportionally, but those costumes are still on point 90% of the time.

First off, A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, and anyone who knows me knows I love the absolute train wreck that was mid-19th century men’s fashion. Do you like plaid? GOOD, BECAUSE IT’S ALL PLAID. Mixed with whatever else your little Victorian heart desires, color schemes be damned. Go wild.

This of course means I absolutely love Fred.

This outfit is hideous and it is also 1000% on point.

We also get to see him in a different outfit the next day, along with his wife and some friends.

First off, MORE PLAID, good for you. Second, I can literally find near-identical images of both these ladies’ dresses just by googling “1843 fashion plate”, I shit you not. To the damned year.

A good part of the story involves travelling through Scrooge’s life, so we get to see the costumes varying wildly over the course of several scenes. This was a time when styles were changing rapidly, and you had to keep up if you wanted to be fashionable and keep up appearances. Fashion changed so fast that you can often pinpoint an outfit to within a year or two like the ones above. 

First, we go to Scrooge’s childhood school. Given the timeline that’s normally put forward Michael Caine is definitely not old enough to play Scrooge, but ignore that for now. Let’s say if Scrooge is 75ish in 1843, it’s about 1783 when we see him leaving school and going off to be an apprentice. We actually see a few years of Little Scrooge fashion, but it’s fairly standard stuff. Scrooge doesn’t have a super childhood and his clothing is pretty plain, but it’s totally on par for the time. Why this haircut though? It makes me sad.

Then we jump ahead a few years and it’s about 1789. The whole group is attending the Fozziwig Christmas party and have gotten tarted up like they’re about the storm the Bastille, including Gonzo and Rizzo.

Again, they look absolutely ridiculous and it is absolutely accurate. 

Now, this is super ostentatious and a lot of people would have considered it way too French for their taste in this time period. But it definitely did happen (I’ve seen stripey bubblegum pink menswear in person) and like. It’s the Muppets. So, Rule of Funny.

Scrooge and Belle are dressed way closer to average Londoners of the time, and it’s worth noting that both are supposed to be somewhat poor. Fozzy pays everyone well but Lil’ Scrooge is still a skinflint and Belle is just getting by. They’re both looking darn good but their clothes are much more understated than everyone else’s and maybe even on the verge of out of style. 

Even their hair is pretty good. Including his. Also, holy shit does this guy look like he could be a young Michael Caine. Like, he doesn’t actually look how Michael Caine looked when he was that age, but if I didn’t know that I would totally buy it. Wow.

Then we jump ahead another ten to twelve years or so. This is the period I know the least about, especially when it comes to outerwear, so Jane Austen stans please comment. I don’t think it looks too bad though.

Here’s a couple of fashion plates from 1801 and 1803 for comparison.

I’d also like to point out that there is a wide variety of costumes based on social class that we get to see in the 1843 “present” that you wouldn’t really notice. So while the Scrooge family that’s doing alright for itself is wearing the latest looks, the rest of the town is not. A few of the women in the crowd dancing around Scrooge during “It Feels Like Christmas” are wearing dresses a couple of years out of date. Not too far, but you can see some looks from the tail end of the 1830s before women started shrink-wrapping their sleeves onto their arms.

You can see something similar to these outfits from 1839 in the crowd.

Contrast this with Mrs. Cratchit, who is living in poverty and has put on her absolute best dress for Christmas; it’s silk but it’s ten years out of style. 

This would have been the height of fashion in the early-mid 1830s.

And that’s important for making a world look real. Fashion was super important back then, but even so average people weren’t necessarily chucking their clothing out every year to keep up with the latest fashions unless they could really afford to. You would get there eventually, but you don’t want everyone in your universe, rich and poor, to look like they just stepped out of the latest fashion magazine. 

It’s absolutely astonishing to me that they put so much effort into this. I don’t tend to go down the rabbit hole of nitpicking historical costumes in movies as much as some, but when a movie that you never expected does it very right it just throws me for a loop. 

Was everything perfect? No, I don’t think any movie is. But this is the damn Muppets. They were under no obligation to do this. Add to that the fact that it’s one of the more accurate renditions of the story, to the point of including a ton of the original dialogue, both through the characters and through the narration, and they just created a masterpiece. 

skirt doodles! here’s the whole collection (so far) of my skirt outfit doodles.

my skirts fit XS-4X and have pockets deep enough to fit a nintendo switch

store.mayakern.com

every day i am percieved™️

There is a reason for this though!

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply. 

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail. The fact that you find joy in the process of reading (or listening!) to stories–that is what matters.

Another day, another weirdly specific experience that I learn is connected to adhd.

….i want that printed out on a t shirt actually

Can someone… Shorten this

ok!

hello tumblr for the bargain price of $6.66 i will present to you one of my Top 5 Most Embarrassing Childhood Misadventures 

Ok so here’s the setup. When i was like 7, my parents moved us into a house where my sisters and I shared the upstairs, which was split into two bedrooms. I got a separate room bc I was the most territorial the eldest. Both bedrooms had these weird little attached attic…space…things that were essentially unfinished closets. they were padded to the brim with this stuff:

i later found out the company that sells it had an advertising deal w/ the pink panther cartoons. that detail is completely unrelated to this story.

fyi that pink stuff is fiberglass insulation. my mom, presumably, at some point, almost certainly told me not to touch it, and that it contained crushed glass, and that I absolutely should not touch it, listen to me [deadname], look at me: the pink stuff is dangerous so do not touch it. 

i say presumably, bc i was unmedicated at the time and my hyperactive 7-year-old brain tended to filter out unnecessary information. 

also, in my defense, that stuff is fluffy. like it may contain glass, but soda bottles contain glass, and they don’t hurt to touch. and neither did this stuff! it was pretty soft actually. i would occasionally pat it with my bare hands while hiding in the dark swaying back and forth pretending i had been kidnapped and was being held hostage in the belly of a pirate ship and it was fine. so after awhile my brain just sort of put the pink stuff in the category of “don’t eat it or anything and you’ll probably be fine.”

i would later wish, above all wishes, that i had heeded my mother’s warning.

 ok that’s part one, i gotta go make breakfast

ok i had bantam bagels

PART 2

a pertinent detail about my bedroom attic: it had a crawl space. just a tiny little black tunnel that disappeared into the house beyond. i naturally, one day, became curious about where exactly it disappeared to. and how far.

my curiosity was compounded by the fact that the crawl space headed directly towards my sister’s bedroom. upon further reflection, it was very possible that the crawl space in fact connected both attics. 

i should at this point discuss my sisters’ bedroom attic. while mine was mostly used for storage and for sitting alone in the dark listening to scary radio shows that gave me nightmares my sisters had rather brilliantly decided to repurpose theirs into a clubhouse/Stuffed Animal Storage Facility. from what i had seen, it was stuffed to bursting with goddamn stuffed animals. it also had, i believe, a little tea table. and they had drawn on the walls. all in all, very makeshift and cozy.

i say “from what i had seen” because generally speaking, i wasn’t allowed in the Stuffed Animal Storage Facility. it was Their space, and of course there is not more territorial group of people that children of the age group 12 and under. Also, i was the least popular member of the household, except possibly for one of the hamsters. 

So the scene has been set: I am a 7-year-old delinquent who just so happens to be obsessed w/ espionage and bank robberies and I have discovered a secret tunnel from my bedroom to my sisters’ Forbidden Clubhouse.

i consider myself a victim of circumstance. the events that followed really wrote themselves.

OF COURSE I WENT INTO THE CRAWL SPACE

what possible other ending could this story have? one sunday afternoon when i had nothing better to do, i decided to test my hypothesis that i was narrow enough to fit into the itty bitty tunnel.

and i WAS! an ancient and world-weary 8-year-old couldn’t have done it, but i was just stick-like enough to manage. i strapped a flashlight to my wrist and got on my hand and knees and crawled through that fucker! this, it transpired, was a colossal undertaking, as i was only technically small enough to fit into the wall. there was very little additional room to, for example, bend my knees and elbows. i ended up propelling myself forward mostly by inching along with my toes & wiggling like an eel. it was not very effective!

i got stuck several times. i tried to go back several times. it turns out there is no feasible way to turn around in a tunnel that is exactly as wide and as tall as the width of your shoulders. in one of my darker moments (i was stuck behind the bathroom wall, probably quite close to the toilet) it occurred to me that i had no actual proof there would be an opening on the other end. this presented certain concerns. it turns out it is rather difficult to drag yourself backwards by your toes.

i persevered! propelled by panic and (most of all) a lack of other options. 30 minutes and 10 yards later, i confirmed there was indeed an opening on the other end, which did indeed open into my sisters’ attic, because i was indeed a veritable genius. 

it was at this point i discovered my sisters were not in their bedroom. they had, in fact, at some point decided to go downstairs. meaning i would not be able to burst out of the attic to the shock and astoundment of all bystanders. 

i waited patiently for almost an entire minute. and then, observed only by the glossy plastic eyes of a hundred passionless plush toes, i tiptoed quietly away and hobbled back to my bedroom. 

This was, naturally, the beginning of the most woeful, misery-filled fortnight of my short and sorry life.

FINAL PART

So i returned to my daily life, content in the knowledge that i had once again escaped the consequences of my actions, like the protagonist i so truly was.

Until. 

The next day.

Monday evening. Oh, Monday evening. After a long, tedious day at school, I lay peacefully in bed, content in the expectation of a well-deserved rest. Set down your constant burden, human, and rest thy weary soul.

But then. A sensation of dread swept over me. It had begun.

The ITCHING.

Did I mention the crawl space was lined with fiberglass insulation?

As it turns out, dragging yourself against 30 feet of finely crushed glass does, in fact, beget consequences. Microscopic shards of glass DO NOT CARE if you were wearing clothing at the time. they go where they choose. and that miserable Sunday afternoon of my wretched folly, they had chosen to

EMBED THEMSELVES DIRECTLY INTO MY SKIN.

What words to describe the suffering of the next 2 weeks? Reader, I took so many showers. SO MANY. Hot showers first thing in the morning, directly after school, and again before dinner, and right before bed. There was never any hot water left. i SOAKED. i SCRUBBED. i WEPT like the PITILESS WRETCH i so truly was reduced to.

and the itching would. not. STOP. Everywhere, it was everywhere, arms and legs and torso and FACE. Oh my stars it was so bad. I rubbed up like a cat against brick walls and desks corners and furniture. i scratched. i prayed and discovered that the gods are either powerless or indifferent to our suffering or perhaps are merely moderately entertained. nothing helped. 

two weeks. two weeks of ITCH, before my skin finally, finally expelled the invaders. It was misery. My sisters were unamused (and somewhat bored by the matter, and told me not to go in their room). My mom was unimpressed. And me? I was not excused from school (probably due to the fact that as an undiagnosed autistic kid in chronic discomfort, the adults around me were already in the habit of ignoring my constant complaints.)

(which how fucked up is that, that my base level of discomfort was so high that the adults around me didn’t believe i was in more pain than usual when 80% of my skin was literally embedded with glass???)

Anyway. long story long:

ko-fi / paypal

this post now has fanart!

by @skip-the-clumsy-dragon​

Remember kids, the House Meat is spicy, dont touch it

Did! Not! Enjoy! This! Addition!!!!

Huh. You've mentioned the pink stuff before. I definitely remember that.

Ok this wikipedia article is pissing me off so much 

yeah i’m gonna re-write this fucker

goddamn. there is so much bias in the first paragraph alone:

this is an EXCELLENT example of the way word choice and tone can be used to create bias and transform the truth to suit the writer’s purposes.

Here’s my re-write: 

i got rid of the passive tone (which distances Profumo from his actions), and changed the photo. notice how the original writer chose a photo taken before the scandal, portraying Profumo in a respected position of power, a powerful man seated at a desk. I chose a photo taken in the aftermath. Which would you say more accurately reflects the context? 

some other changes:

“denied impropriety” like he’s some maiden aunt clutching at pearls. No, what he actually did was:

oh, and he wasn’t

he was, in fact

after lying through his teeth. now here’s my favorite bit:

what does that MEAN? what the hell does that MEAN??? oh boo hoo hooey the Prime Minister’s self-confidence was damaged, how dreadful for the poor dear. the poor sweet man…

fuck that. in fact, Profumo’s actions

of the government, and rightly so.

oh, and the young woman in question was a model, not a “would-be” model. But ultimately her profession has no relevance here–what is relevant is that a middle-aged man in a position of power slept with a 19-year-old. I wonder what motive the original author could have had, to choose to emphasize her career over the fact she was still a teenager…

Words can be used to bend anything. Pay attention to tone. Pay attention to authorial intent. Pay attention to what is included and what isn’t. Question everything. But especially question the language used to describe historical and current events. Every writer has an agenda–look for it. Above all: 

Read critically.

ko-fi / paypal

#this is not a commissioned post (it’s a ‘fuck you you bastard’ post) but i wish it was #SOMEONE GIMME 4 BUCKS I SPENT A SPITE-FUELLED 80 MINUTES WRITING THIS I have so much spite I am flooded w/ spite rn

Why are you wasting your time on us, Gaud?

i need some of you to realize that call out culture, by design, rewards people who make the most outrageous & aggressive accusations, without regards to truth or context. it encourages people to misconstrue, to erase context, to outright lie. it feeds the instinct to attack, with or without cause. 

and that naturally enables certain types of people (terfs, exclusionists, bigots) who already have a vitriolic bandwagon behind them, to target & harass minority bloggers whose inclusive platforms they do not like to see becoming popular.

this has happened time and again, it has driven good people off this site, it is traumatic and unhealthy to everyone involved. purity culture creates an atmosphere of fear & paranoia, i am begging you to reexamine this attitude of mob violence in online spaces

the tags, since people keep reblogging them: #seriously yall……this happens time and again and i’m getting fucking sick of it #do you remember i-am-a-fish? do you remember when you let ace & trans exclusionists target & harass i-am-a-fish off this site? i see the same tactics being used time and again on different ace & trans & nb & gnc bloggers. and it WORKS! it works every time! people on this site fall for it every time and i am SICK of it

#would you just. look at people’s blogs and judge them on their recent and overall actions. #if people have been personally hurt by them then yes listen to victims #but don’t take screenshots of posts from years ago as the sacred truth #i see bloggers apologizing again and again for the same things and then realizing: ‘oh shit they don’t want an apology. these people just want more shit to throw at me. these people just want to use me as a target. an apology was never going to be enough’. that is an incredibly toxic cycle that leaves no room for growth, and exposes vulnerable people to mob harassment. 

#and also….let people grow? i’m proud of how quickly the standards of what is appropriate and respectful are changing & progressing. we are all constantly learning new things about what is and is not appropriate to say. and that’s good!! but the result is that what we considered appropriate a year or two ago we now know probably shouldn’t be. so like…look at people’s recent posts if you want to know their recent attitudes. don’t go attacking people for stuff they said years ago unless you have reason to believe they still believe & are perpetuating it #especially when so many people on this site are goddam teenagers holy shit #i honestly wonder if that is the reason so many people in online spaces are unwilling to admit they were wrong or change their opinions. bc we’ve erased the concept that you’re allowed to be wrong and grow and update your opinion.

a superhero on an intergalactic adventure trying desperately to save the world in record time so she can get back to the birthday party her wife is throwing for Jennifer, their adopted 2 year old

she travels through the universe, periodically interrupting battle scenes to remind co-workers and hostile alien entities alike that she has to be home by 5 to help her wife wrap the presents

her co-workers are unsympathetic, to the surprise of the friendly alien delegate they picked up along the way. Kr'zkex thinks it’s nice the hero is supporting her wife’s desire to “properly celebrate Jennifer’s first year with her new family”. the other heroes on her team groan every time she brings it up

in the end, she saves the world just in time. Kr'zkex gifts her with a priceless magical space orb “for Jennifer.” the hero makes it home with minutes to spare, kisses her wife in greeting, and tosses the orb to Jennifer, who promptly starts batting it back and forth with her paws bc Jennifer is, in fact, an adopted 2 year old housecat.

I literally flinched in delight at the end

that’s the ultimate goal of each and every one of my posts!

I stopped breathing. I love you so, so much.

SPIDER RAIN

let me introduce you to a few 100% real, totally unphotoshopped photos!

yep, that is REAL! spider rain EXISTS! and is a regular phenomenon! that happens and is documented! and involves MILLIONS of spiders!!!!! RAINING DOWN ON CITIES!!!!! THAT’S A REAL THING THAT HAPPENS UNAVOIDABLY!!!!!!!!!! i need to foam at the mouth in hysteria for a few minutes, but when I calm down i’ll give you some Spider Rain Science Facts  

Spider Rain Science Facts™

Spider rain refers to events of mass ballooning. many spiders have the ability to move through air by using spider silk as a sort of parachute. that’s right: spiders can FLY.

when spiders do this en masse, you get millions of spiders travelling through the air on gossamer strands of silk (the phenomenon is also nicknamed “angel hair”). if you aren’t afraid of spiders, apparently this can be quite beautiful to watch. in fact, i would argue it should be called spider snow, not rain, bc many viewers report the combination of white silk threads and the gentle floating motion make it resemble snowfall. except for, you know. all the spiders. (video here)

Spider rain is not uncommon, though the size and location varies. Theoretically, it can happen anywhere that colonies of social spiders live. These colonies are scattered around the world, but they only consist of 23 species, compared to over 45,000 non-social spider species. Spider rain usually occurs in unpopulated or rural areas, but occasionally the wind can turn (literally) and spiders accidentally end up is urban areas, as happened in Australia, where spider rain is most common (*pretends to be shocked*).  

In fact, not all spider rain happens on purpose! Strong winds blowing through a colony can pull webs off their anchors, leaving spider and home airborne, as happened in Brazil where: “While the humans gawked below, the flustered spiders were simply trying to pull themselves together after an unexpected journey.” Spider rain is highly dependent on local weather, which provides spiders with both the ability and sometimes the need to migrate (as happened in Pakistan after widespread flooding).  

And before the Americans breathe a sign of relief–it hasn’t happened in Texas yet, but there’s a colony just east of Dallas to keep an eye on :)

We don’t. It’s….not really a problem? The spiders are like, really tiny, so even the venomous ones aren’t able to bite humans–our skin is just too thick for their itty bitty fangs. It’s still occasionally a pest issue, with the main issue being that their webs can be thick enough to cut off sunlight from crops.

But spider rain is mostly harmless (unless you are a spectacularly unlucky farmer), and it doesn’t happen often enough to pose a real problem. The real risk is to the spiders–most of them aren’t expected to survive the trip. Fortunately, only a small percentage of them need to in order for the colony to survive and set up shop somewhere new.

Overall, spider rain is a good thing! The spiders keep the skies free of disease-carrying insects, and in turn provide food to birds and small animals. It’s beneficial that a staple of the food chain can disperse so widely and quickly. In fact, ballooning is one of the reasons spiders are often the first animal to reappear on land that’s been destroyed. Their appearance after a fire or flood is a sign the ecosystem is recovering. which is, sort of beautiful actually.

and here’s a photo of a spider colony

this is a commissioned post. next up, someone pay me to write about flying ant day!

Tags can be blocked on both desktop and mobile by going to Settings → Account (Settings) → Filtering

Weren’t you paid NOT to do this?!

ultimately you all decided not to negotiate with terrorists, which i respect, but that means living with the high cost of your principles. ideals are made of gold and light, but human lives are made of blood and tears, and spill with slippery ease; choose carefully what hills to build and die upon

What the fuck, Gaud. How can you slap something so philosophical on a spider hostage post.

LITERALLY WHERE ELSE WOULD I PUT IT

*wistful* The current situation with social spider research is just absolutely heartbreaking, after Pruittgate when an extremely prolific and very collaboration-heavy scientist working with them was found to be… outright making data up to support his hypotheses and not actually doing experiments himself.

So everyone who collaborated with him has put a ton of work into papers no one trusts anymore, he’s involved with basically all the social spider work in the past twenty years, and as a fucking bonus he happened to be gay and collaborated particularly with other junior researchers in his orbit especially junior queer folks, so we’re hit a little disproportionately hard.

That isn’t to say Gaud here is wrong on the natural history or the mass dispersal events. That shit isn’t specific to Pruitt, of course. It’s just that it’s going to be a very long time before social spider research recovers and people come back to the behavioral ecology of social spider species as a model, and I think that’s very sad because they’re wildly interesting.

I cannot believe I just learned about Spider Raingate from a researched post I myself wrote about Spider Rain