Freundlichkeit entsendet goldenes Licht

not to worry mutuals, I’ve recruited a halfling to detect any and all spike traps on your dashboard, just make sure not to scroll too fast so he has time to find them

yeah okay ill reblog that

doctor who lore is insane because you would think the fact that the doctor has a brother would be common knowledge amongst fans and yet

They have a what

The key characteristic of Holmes and Watson is how judgemental they are. Judging other people is their favourite pastime. Judging each other is their love language. Aloud or silently, openly or passive-agressively, publicly or privately, together or separately, they're judging everything and everyone. You exist? They're judging you.

The 'women can always sense a man nearby' r*dfem narrative has always been incredibly funny to me. If anything, I'd say that the opposite is true.

Before I transitioned I had three different lesbians tell me that I was really fucking up their whole lesbian thing by being the only man they'd ever been attracted to.

On top of that, the number of times I heard, 'you're nothing like other men' directly coincides with every woman I've ever dated.

From this data I can conclude that dykes can sense other dykes even if absolutely no one knows what's happening.

I should also note that pretransition I dated exclusively bisexual women. I literally could not stand dating straight women, and they had absolutely 0 interest in me.

I forgot where I was going with this, but bisexual women, I love you so much.

When I still thought I was bi (I'm a lesbian) I dated a statistically improbable number of "guys" who eventually came out as women.

I find it so fucking funny that none of us knew and yet there we were!! It honestly helped me piece together that I'm not actually attracted to men azgcgdfjj

When I came out to one of my exes (we're still on good terms), she took a long hard look at me, and then said, "You know, this actually makes a lot of sense, really."

(The reason we broke up was that the relationship felt awkward. "It feels like I'm dating a girl," she'd said at the time.)

as a trans man i dated someone who normally only ever went with lesbians and was very apologetic about this to me in case it somehow invalidated my gender identity. anyway after six months of fucking me through the mattress they started T. so not only was my gender not invalidated, it was contagious.

It was gut-wrenching when I realized that many people alive today have never seen a truly mature tree up close.

In the Eastern USA, only tiny remnants of old-growth forest remain; all the rest, over 99%, was clear-cut within the last 100-150 years.

Most tree species here have a lifespan of 300-500 years—likely longer, since extant examples of truly old trees are so rare, there is limited ability to study them. In a suburban environment, almost all of the trees you see around you are mere saplings. A 50 year old oak tree is a youth only beginning its life.

The forest where I work is 100 years old; it was clear cut around 1920. It is still so young.

When I dig into the ground there, there is a layer about an inch thick of rich, plush, moist, fragrant topsoil, packed with mycelium and light and soft as a foam mattress. Underneath that the ground becomes hard and chalky in color, with a mineral odor.

It takes 100 years to build an inch of topsoil.

That topsoil, that marvelous, rich, living substance, took 100 years to build.

I am sorry your textbooks lied to you. Do you remember pictures in diagrams of soil layers, with a six-inch topsoil layer and a few feet of subsoil above bedrock?

That's not true anymore. If you are not an "outdoorsy" person that hikes off trail in forests regularly, it is likely that you have never touched true topsoil. The soil underlying lawns is depleted, compacted garbage with hardly any life in it. It seems more similar to rocks than soil to me now.

You see, tilling the soil and repeatedly disturbing it for agriculture destroys the topsoil layer, and there is no healthy plant community to regenerate it.

The North American prairies used to hold layers of topsoil more than eight or nine feet deep. That was a huge carbon sink, taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it underground.

Then European colonists settled the prairie and tried to drive the bison to extinction as part of the plan to drive Native Americans to extinction, and plowed up that topsoil...and the results were devastating. You might recall being taught about the Dust Bowl. Disrupting that incredible topsoil layer held in place by 12-foot-tall prairie grasses and over 100 different wildflower species caused the nation to be engulfed in horrific dirt storms that turned the sky black and had people hundreds of miles away coughing up clods of mud and sweeping thick drifts of dirt out of their homes.

But plowing is fundamental to agricultural civilizations at their very origins! you might say.

Where did those early civilizations live? River valleys.

Why river valleys? They're fertile because of seasonal flooding that deposits rich silt that can then be planted in.

And where does that silt come from?

Well, a huge river is created by smaller rivers coming together, which is created by smaller creeks coming together, which have their origins in the mountains and uplands, which are no good for farming but often covered in rich, dense forests.

The forests create the rich soil that makes agriculture possible. An ancient forest is so powerful, it brings life to civilizations and communities hundreds of miles away.

You may have heard that cattle farming is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. A huge chunk of that is just the conversion of an existing forest or grassland to pasture land. Robust plant communities like forests, wetlands, and grasslands are carbon sinks, storing carbon and removing it from the atmosphere. The destruction of these environments is a direct source of carbon emissions.

All is not lost. Nature knows how to regenerate herself after devastating events; she's done so countless times before, and forests are not static places anyway. They are in a constant state of regrowth and change. Human caretakers have been able to manage ancient forests for thousands of years. It is colonialism and the ideology of profit and greed that is so destructive, not human presence.

Preserve the old growth forests of the present, yes, but it is even more vital to protect the old growth forests of the future.

the best part of each x-files episode is waiting for the end to see who's gonna do the sign off report cause when it's scully it's usually something like "once again, despite my partner's opinion to the contrary, i cannot confidently say that there is any scientific basis to the theory that alien ghost blood was responsible for the disappearance of the crack in the liberty bell" meanwhile if it's mulder we get gems like "are we alone in the universe? what does it truly mean to be alone? did bigfoot fuck the speaker of the house? as always i am left with more questions than answers and don't know who to trust and i think scully changed her shampoo and..."

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

Op's tags

#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op

The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.

This post feels like watching an iceberg go by in clear water. The amount of stuff going on beneath the surface of AO3 just astonishes.

(ID in alt)

Women can write m/m. Men can write f/f. Asexuals can write filthy smut. Lesbians and gay men can write m/f. It's all arbitrary anyway. Who give a shit.

"Oh but they don't have an experience of-" I don't have any experience committing or solving murders either but that's still mostly what I read and write about.

I've never banged an alien but here we are.

You've never banged an alien yet! There's always time!

Whenever I think about the Twilight movies my mind instantly goes to the scene where Bella first steps out of her father's car holding a tiny cactus. And then I remember the parody movie they made of Twlight where the main girl steps out the car with a gigantic cactus.

Projection beam 🇫🇮 🇫🇮 🇫🇮 🇫🇮 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the first time I’ve ever seen an archer in a film run out of arrows or collect used arrows to reuse later.

Accuracy: You’re doing it right.

accuracy? this is a movie about a small band of fantabulous people with random superpowers who defeat an alien invasion led by a guy with golden goat horns and you’re worried about accuracy?

firstly: tony, nat, and clint do not have superpowers, they rely on their skills to survive

secondly: thor is not human, other than the use of his hammer, he is relying on the natural strength and fighting abilities of his people

thirdly: bruce and steve were both perfectly ordinary until science got involved

lastly: what supervillain doesn’t have at least one questionable fashion decision?

accuracy matters

i’m gonna cry omg

questionable fashion decision

more Dungeon Meshi in Wind Waker style! (first part)

I like the idea that Link could stumble on Laios's party in dungeons, maybe after the miniboss, and they offer you a meal that replenishes your health, sort of like Yeto from TP! You could take some with you in a bottle like grandma's soup. There could be a funny interaction if you show Marcille a joy pendant, and she thinks it's really pretty until Laios and Senshi tell her it's actually a treasure bug.

I’ve played a ‘thinking of a thing’ 20 questions type game with my mother since as long as I can remember. We’ve done a lot of different themed versions of it varying from fictional characters, McGuffin objects in media, actors, books, random items, etc. The average guessing time has a pretty wide range, too. Sometimes it takes forever to guess Tom Hiddleston. Sometimes it takes a minute to guess Gangs of New York.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday we did cats in media.

Folks. It took us less time to guess what cat it was than anything we’ve ever imagined in all the time we’ve been playing. Seconds. Every cat, accurate and immediate recall. Even the most out-of-left-field two seconds on screen cats. Literally Patrick, the cat in a framed picture in one episode of The Mighty Boosh.

I don’t know what this says about us as humans that we can’t think of Neil Patrick Harris for 30 minutes, or Catcher in the Rye, but could name a cat who’s tail was in the shot accidentally in a low budget comedy from 40 years ago in a minute… but I think it’s probably fine.

this “bon appetit” meme has turned into some sort of bizarre telephone game where each incarnation sounds more and more different than the original. in what way does “bon appetit” sound like “osteoporosis”

i don’t know but it’s cracking me up every time i even think about it

bon appetit -> bone apple teeth -> bone ??? ??? -> osteoporosis

this has layers, man

ily, menswear guy