anyone else remember being 13 on tumblr and every morning youd scroll down until you got to posts from the night before like it was the morning paper 

hello blackfeatherdragon

Someone is doing just fine after his neuter surgery

lmao what

this ko-fi store rules

Santa Akai is coming to town 🎄

completely enamoured with this beast

In a monumental discovery for paleontology and the first of its kind "Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia"

Abstract The frozen mummy of the large felid cub was found in the Upper Pleistocene permafrost on the Badyarikha River (Indigirka River basin) in the northeast of Yakutia, Russia. The study of the specimen appearance showed its significant differences from a modern lion cub of similar age (three weeks) in the unusual shape of the muzzle with a large mouth opening and small ears, the very massive neck region, the elongated forelimbs, and the dark coat color. Tomographic analysis of the mummy skull revealed the features characteristic of Machairodontinae and of the genus Homotherium. For the first time in the history of paleontology, the appearance of an extinct mammal that has no analogues in the modern fauna has been studied. For more read here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-79546-1

I always knew it was possible, but I never dared to hope.

Lemme tell u guys a story

In my freshman year, my great grandma passed away. She never threw out or sold anything worth keeping if she could help it, having grown up in the Depression, so when she passed, my grandma suddenly inherited a lifetime’s worth of treasured items. She distributed most of them to her kids and grandkids, saved some sentimental items, and donated most of the clothing and trinkets to charity. I got back the stuffed leopard I’d given great-grandma in the hospital; the fur was still as soft as it’d been when I bought it. One of the biggest things she had to sort through was jewelry. For a year after my great-grandma died, my grandma was setting out organized rows of costume jewelry on basement tables and chivvying her granddaughters to take what they wanted.

And then, after all the choosing, she snuck me into her room while my cousins picked through wristwatches. On her bed were two small jewelry boxes: an old wooden one, and a cushioned one in white pleather.

“I brought you in here because if I gave these to your cousins, they’d sell it. I don’t want these sold. Do you understand?”

I understood.

This is the story of the biggest lie my grandma ever told her mom.

Great-grandma’s birthstone was garnet, and she loved the look of the stones, but could never justify paying for some. Her husband worked constantly, and so did she, and new clothes for the kids was more important than jewelry at the time. When my grandma was 16, she saved her first paychecks to buy her mom a garnet ring for Mother’s Day; that’s what was in the wooden box. The original receipt, handwritten, was crammed into the lid. Great-grandpa saw that ring and teared up; he’d always wanted to get his wife something nice like that, but hadn’t ever had enough money for it. Determined, he vowed to change that. He set aside money for years, slowly, hiding it away in a box in the attic, vowing to buy his wife something she could always wear with her ring.

Time passed, and inflation happened, and he slowly squirreled money away in the hopes that jewelry might get cheaper again sometime. Time passed again, and age had little mercy on him. He got older, typed up a note, and placed in in the box, describing what the money was for; he knew his time was near. Under no circumstances was the money to be spent on anything other than giving his wife a nice gift. The letter read, “One day, my dear Ruth, you’ll have garnet earrings to match that ring.” It’s what great-grandma had always mourned missing; she had such a nice ring, and no good earrings to go with it.

Well, men don’t live forever, and when great-grandpa passed away, my grandma cleaned out her mom’s attic as she prepared to move somewhere smaller. Going through boxes of polaroids and paper clips, she stumbled on the box of earrings money, note and all. She stashed it with her coat, and after that day of cleaning, went to the jeweler before her mom could try and spend the money on something too sensible. She came back with the white pleather box; sure enough, still nestled inside that box were two clip-on garnet earrings.

”Mom never got her ears pierced, you know. That’s why it took so long to find a good pair.”

Once she’d gotten the earrings, grandma presented them to her mom, along with the note. The paper was obviously old and warped by moisture, but it was legible. My great grandma cried happy tears and treasured those earrings more than any other jewelry; the last gift her husband could give her. Decades after the fact, I’d seen her wear them to Christmas parties and worry over them, checking that they stayed on her earlobes.

There was never any note from great-grandpa. Never any box. Never any earring money. My great-grandpa had spent his saved money keeping himself and his wife confortable throughout retirement. To set aside hundreds of dollars, even a bit at a time, for garnet earrings, was never a thought that crossed his mind. My grandma had seen her mom, exhausted, wracked with grief, and lied through her teeth about where she’d gotten the money for those earrings. She faked the note and everything, making sure her mom wouldn’t wonder where the money came from, and never winced at the pinch in her own pockets. And she never told a soul, not even my mom, until great-grandma was safely and thoroughly buried herself.

I was explaining the numb white scars on my right index finger, and someone asked "but why would you put your finger against the blade of a hand mixer" and the entire chat repeated "intrusive thoughts" and "call of the void" immediately and almost in synch. And people started talking about how they've injured themselves that way, and a few people said they learned a genuine lesson.

yikes. I've almost never had that with anything -- but I have felt the siren call of the Hobart Dough Hook

This is an industrial stand mixer (often it has a grating attachment to that round top port sticking out like a pipe end on the top left of the pic) and Hobart is a very popular brand for these machines, which are often nearly as tall as a person

the thing hanging from the mixing arm into the bowl part is a dough hook

it looks like this and spins around mixing the dough

Here is a smaller one, but you can see what it looks like when it goes

So one of my first kitchens, everyone who got shown how to use the enormous 5ft tall Hobart we had, they got some variation of this speech:

"DO NOT reach into the mixer while it's on. I know, you think that now, but you're going to get comfortable around it, it's going to seem like it's moving slow, and you're going to feel like reaching in there to check the dough or something without turning it off. DON'T. DO THAT. One guy a couple years ago went to the hospital with every bone in his arm broken and a dislocated shoulder and it was from reaching into this exact machine we're using today. You're going to feel like you can reach in real quick without stopping the machine, and I'm telling you, turn it off first."

I got that speech too, and sure enough, there came a day when I felt the urge. Which i resisted. But then. Then there started to be reasons to reach in there.

Like maybe the person using the grating attachment hadn't cleaned the port good enough and a couple of strips of grated carrot fell onto the dough, where it would stay sort of oscillating on the top of the dough ball for a little bit before getting sucked down to be kneaded deep into the dough. It's a single button to stop the machine, but, for some reason it just seems like such a hassle, and you've always wanted to do it, c'mon, look how slow it's moving...

So i did. And it was fine! Altho i could see why people get it wrong, what seemed like about a 3 second window actually turned out to be less than a full second once you got your hand down there, and there really wasn't as much space as it seemed like there was, and the angle you had to go at did slow you down just a little... But now that i knew all that, i should be fine to do it as long as i was careful, right?

Then one day it happened. I must of brushed ever so slightly against the metal of the dough hook. It is shaped and moving in a way designed to draw material in toward the center and down and it tugged my hand ever so slightly in and down.

Which would have been fine but I was already touching the dough, so it tugged my fingers into the dough just enough for it to get the slightest grip on them, which tugged my hand in just enough to get caught between the hook and the dough which gripped it surprisingly hard and yanked my hand down and in a circle like having someone hold your hand tightly and spin in a circle and all my joints locked up against each other painfully so fast!

Luckily I was able to get my arm out before I suffered more than a sore shoulder, hurt elbow, and sprained wrist and sprained finger... but things went from totally fine to sheer panic faster than anything i've ever experienced.

Even so, only a week later and barely recovered, I caught myself just before i reached my hand into the dough bowl while it was on, the siren call of the Hobart singing strongly still.

So many people felt it. I heard so many close call stories. Some models like the Hobart 660 comes with this wire cage safety guard now, and I guarentee it is 100% because no matter how you warn people, they can't resist reaching in while it's running

you just don't get shit like this with 8-episode streaming seasons

THE ONION OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE

so quite a lot of people expressed interest in a guide to lion dance! and since the lunar new year is coming up in a couple weeks, which means everyone’s exposure to lions is probably going to increase, i figured i’d go ahead and make it! right click + open in new tab to fullview, etc etc, i hope it’s helpful, although if you only take one thing away from this powerpoint, it’s this: lions are not dragons

disclaimer: i learned fut san style at an american university, and the senior members of the troupe were almost all from hong kong and taiwan, so most of my knowledge is drawn from what they taught me. lion dance varies widely depending on the style and the country of origin, and many schools do things differently! this is just an attempt to establish a baseline and give you a really basic intro to one of my favorite art forms. :)

THATS YOUR MOTHER MASUMI DONT BEND DOWN TO TALK TO HER

My parents have a “Festivus” party every year and this year I found this sign on their bedroom door

certified door post