the vaticans multicultural anime girls are wearing the racism rosary 💀

Well this is apt:

...

Wait...

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.

First off, amazing find.

That said, it's so frustrating it isn't old and fang-y enough to provide an obvious answer to if the teeth had cheek-pockets or not.

It’s like every week something weird happens.

I can’t even begin to imagine how many episodes would be improved just by Picard giving a stumbling, awkward exposition of the episode’s plot to the crew

ALL episodes could be improved if we saw Picard’s awkward, stumbling exposition to the crew of what’s going on that episode. In fact, I really wanna see that.

“Attention crew, this is your captain speaking. You may notice my voice sounds different, and uh, long story short, I’m 12 again. Another transporter thing, we should really get that looked at. Anywhooo if a little blonde kid starts ordering you around, don’t ignore him, because it’s me. Ok. Bye.”

“Okay so, you may have noticed large parts of the ship transforming into some kind of Mayan temple, and Commander Data running around and talking in several different voices. We are aware of the situation and taking steps to restore things to normal.”

“Q’s fucking back again”

This might be fun to do as a fan video project.

Like, edit together some of those shots of people walking through corridors, and do a voiceover with a slight tinny filter, and be like “All Crew: this is Ensign Turing with today’s update: We’ve entered a realm of non-space and there’s some non-corporeal energy being here who wishes to learn about humanity, including death. The captain has activated the self-destruct. Please complete your will and any last messages by 1300 hours at the latest. Thanks!”

just go through the episodes and record the PA announcements the crew might have gotten 2/3rds of the way through the episode.

If you're having a bad day, just remember that it's going to be winter soon and imagine what will happen to all the Cybertrucks ❤️

Salt-rusted unprotected steel panels... Meltwater getting into poorly constructed and poorly isolated electronics... Stuck in snowdrifts that a real truck would have been able to deal with... Oh, those are indeed happy images. Yes indeed...

It's winter in the US is anything happening to all the cybertrucks

No snow here yet. Lots of Cybertrucks in my area, so I’ll keep an eye out.

Keep us updated I am so curious to see how they handle Normal Weather

There should be Cybertruck Winter, like Fat Bear Week. Where we see which cybertrucks fall first and which ones make it to the end in usable condition.

Dispatch from the far northern hemisphere and have witnessed a Cybertruck in the winter wilds.

We're early enough into the snow season in that the damage isn't obvious. My guess is that exposure to road salts are really going to destroy these ambulatory dumpsters, but we won't start to see that until spring. Road salt is difficult to impossible to get off in a regular car wash, and we know that Cybertruck can't handle even that.

On the one I saw, any metallic shine that the Cybertruck had was completely lost in a combination of cold winter temps, light street grunge, and lower ambient sunlight. It was the same color as my friend's early 2000s silver pickup truck. One of the big draws, imo, is that stainless steel panelling and to see it turn into the same shade of grey as one of the most popular truck colors twenty years ago would be disappointing to me. It's not special anymore.

Local Cybertruck enthusiasts who are salty dogs at winter driving have started vinyl wrapping their automotive basket cases. The trend seems to be to go from the door windows down, which gives them a beach cooler vibe that is similarly underwhelming.

They’re already having issues! The head lights are sunken in for some reason. This means there is a shelf to hold snow in front of the lights and block them.

Now, every car has to have the snow cleared off the headlights before you drive, but this is way worse. That shelf collects snow as you drive. People have to pull over and clear the snow off mid-drive because they lose their headlights.

WHY ARE THEY BUILT THAT WAY

How is it that we're STILL finding whole new ways for this thing to suck?!

Video by The Panda Redd on TikTok

i’m spending today thinking about how saber toothed cats ALSO probably had a potato form.  how they also had a stage where they were fat little babies with very triangle tails and tiny squeaky voices.  how they also probably play wrestled and failed badly at calculating jumps.

i’m going to fistfight god for killing them off before i could personally see fat potato saber kittens

Like this?

UPDATE: We finally got the see the potatoes

tumblr please stop telling me to wd40 a mouse

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Likes to charge reblogs to FUCKING cast

Please for the love of god. You should be able to change controls WITHOUT TAKING YOUR EYES OF THE ROAD. There is no reason to have to look at a SCREEEN while DRIVING

there's this word in Serbian 'vukojebina' which literally means 'the place where wolves go to fuck' but they use it to mean 'in the middle of nowhere'. it sure does the job well, but the visual stayed with me longer than I would have liked it to.

for chinese we have 鸟不生蛋, which is used to describe a land so barren and remote that not even birds would lay their eggs there.

In German we have "am Arsch der Welt", which means "at the world's ass"

In Finnish it's "Jumalan selän takana" - behind god's back.

I propose that these are all the same place. The world's ass, behind god's back, where birds would not nest and where wolves go to fuck.

In Spain we say "en el quinto pino" (the fifth pine) which then became "el quinto Coñequistán" aka the Fifth Cuntistan, implying the existence of four more nearby Cuntistans

Should I watch this Yes or No

nobody said anything so im just gonna watch it anyways, gotta say this is some high budget porn even the set is accurate

this actually looks like a screenshot from tos, incredible

Spock is British 😭

She's sucking his dick and he's checking his tricorder??? im gonna cry that's so spock

wow just like in Space seed

i'm so charmed by the fact that you can tell some of the actor has watch star trek before lmao, Spock says illogical and he does the vulcan finger kissing with the girl, Kirk does the patented shatner pauses and still eyefucks spock

Khan released a virus into the air system and Dr McCoy learns that a spike of adrenaline will cure the sickness, the dialogue is incredible.

incredible leap of logic Christine

Kirk and Spock got infected with the virus so they have to double team Uhura ✊😔 but spock is reluctant which gave us the awesome line

oop! turn out spock WASN'T infected? he just wanted to fuck Uhura with kirk

They even did the star trek happy ending 😭

with the Spock and McCoy bickering too hfjkrahgjkslbuelgw

Surprise! There is a sequel, should I watch it?

PLEASE DO

Im going to try! they made three of these but I can't seem to find videos of the 2nd and 3rd one I only found posters of it aaaaaaa

This is the sequel and I can't find it anywhere!!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭

this can’t be real

He put them together at the kids table that doesn’t exist I’m fucking crying

its easy to make fun of this (and i think we should) but its also important to note the description of this new department that trump has given

[transcript: "together, these two wonderful americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies - essential to the 'save america' movement," trump wrote. "i look forward to elon and vivek making changes to the federal bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all americans."]

to be clear: trump is planning to create a new department whose purpose is literally to deregulate and defund government oversight. this will lead to corporations having greater freedom to fuck over consumers while making more money, and he is putting two billionaires in charge of it.

sure, maybe this is just a ploy to keep them quiet. giving them the illusion of power in exchange for backing him. but lets not forget all the regulations trump cut during his last term

which has directly led to the constant recalls of consumer goods and foodstuffs over the past several years. the recent e coli outbreak at mcdonalds? the boars head listeria recall? these are the products of deregulation. getting rid of laws and standards that protect consumers by making sure money hungry corporations dont cut corners.

the funny name is a smokescreen. keep your eye on these fuckers.

people who think that their dehumanization of other people is justified and safe because they are a marginalized group need to read more on the Rwandan genocide. You Are Not Immune To The Genocidal Mindset No Matter How Justified It Feels.

nothing will save you from being a human monster except yourself. there is no identity, no social status, no experience, nothing that will give you some immutably upright moral standing. all that stands between any of us and horrific acts of violence is our choice not to do that. of course some of us have more access to greater acts of violence than others. but NEVER start thinking that you are exempt from making deliberately ethical choices, because your mission is just so so pure and good that anything done in its name must be justifiable. that is the devil talking. no one is that damn special

After seeing yet another popular tumblr post with thousands of reblogs bemoaning the state of comments on fanfics these days - more specifically, the supposed lack of commenting these days, as opposed to The Good Old Days - I have decided that this is in fact a hill I am willing to die on. I'm making a separate post about it rather than reblogging the latest iteration, though. This is hardly the first time I've seen these types of discussions, and my issue is with the mindset in general, not any of the specific people who hold it.

In the most recent version, the entire post with all its various arguments and assertions was plenty frustrating across the board, but it included one line in particular that cut beautifully to the heart of my issue with this type of discussion. The line in question:

Once I read this bit, I had to stop, take a few deep breaths, and then go make my own post before I imploded over the sheer level of NOPE this line inspired. And okay. The thing is... I want to say this as gently and kindly as I possibly can, but I need to be real blunt for a minute, too.

That line I quoted sounds like a wannabe social media influencer.

It sounds like a person who thinks fandom is - or should be - comprised of fanfiction writers, aka Valued Content Creators, and their respective communities of readers, aka Content Consumers, a strictly distinct group from fic writers, for whom they create fanfiction content and who in turn pay them back with attention and validation in the form of comments and praise.

It does not sound like a fanfiction author who enjoys the creative hobby of writing stories based on characters and worlds from existing stories, engaging in their hobby within a community of other likeminded creators of fan content.

Frankly, fandom has always been worst when it starts obsessing over Big Name Fans who wind up treated like elite fandom social influencers, instead of hobbyists engaging in a fun hobby together based on mutual interests. A shift towards the idea that every fanfic writer should be effectively a social media influencer whose community consists of fans reading the content they oh-so-lovingly create (but only if they get enough positive attention from passive consumers, presumably readers who don't write their own fic or expect comments back from the author in return) sounds like an absolutely awful direction for fandom to take.

I don't want fanfiction and fandom spaces to turn into another social media space full of Our Valued Content Creators, all fighting to build the largest "community" of passive consumers turned devoted followers.

Again, that sounds frankly fucking awful.

The people who only read fanfiction are not your fanfiction community, because they are not engaging in the shared community hobby of writing fanfiction. Your fanfiction community is, perhaps, the other people who are also writing their own fanfiction based on someone else's original work.

So perhaps if comments really are declining on fics these days, instead of asking why passive readers aren't heaping praise on every fic they read and making sure it all happens where the Valued Creator can hear it, you should ask yourself how many other fanfics you've commented on recently, and then go comment on another one if you're still feeling down about your own work.

Or, I dunno, find a fic author you admire and send them a message on tumblr, if you've already commented on all of their fics that you read and enjoyed.

Or start your own discord for likeminded fans, or find a way to set up your own fandom forums centered on your personal fandom interests and invite other fic authors to come join.

Or, like, anything that involves reaching out to the actual community of hobbyists you can reasonably consider to be a community you are actually a part of.

Aka, other fanfiction writers.

As somebody who's been writing and reading fanfiction since the third season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while waiting for Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass to be released—

YES. Doesn't anybody remember back when fanfiction commenters on LiveJournal were plainly mean? Remember the Plot Protectors Continuum? Remember "sporking"?? Every entry in Fandom_Wank??? FANDOM WAS NEVER KNOWN FOR BEING NICE so I get very suspicious when there's some appeal to unironically be like "we used to be a country"—no we bloody well were not I was there.

And now I read things like "I don't like it when readers comment how they don't usually like this trope or that ship but that my fic is the exception, keep that to yourself nobody wants to read your comment" and then make the surprised pikachu meme face when they get fewer comments. Or when readers make discord servers away from the comments section where they can actually relax with their friends, instead of...getting condescending lectures about how they worded their admiration was inappropriate because it wasn't bootlicking enough.

I say this as a fanfiction writer. The sheer egotism and entitled whining that I read from fanfiction writers who spout those bytes is almost appalling. We are never beating those emotionally-fragile-snowflake attention-economy-algorithm-brainrotted allegations.

Rambled in the replies but actually going to pull it out -- I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it strikes me that people may be seeing comments as *creating* community rather than the *result* of community.

In some cases yes, comments are totally how you meet someone and start trading ideas and become friends. But often the comments are the result of the general bonds you've built throughout fandom, an expression of community.

It seems like a lot of people are feeling that loss of community and craving it, and are focused on what was likely a *sign* of the underlying community strength (and size, and age, and activeness, which is why it waxes and wanes with the fandom) rather than the thing that created that community in the first place.

Reblog if you're a partially muscled skeleton screaming for 30 seconds by the perimeter fence on November 14th

Just saying 🤷‍♀️