Sailor Lady

how its going

There’s a bunch of right-wing people posting memes about “”DOGE”” making the government more efficient by removing funding from “”dumb bug researchers”” and I am now realizing how little the average person knows about entomology and its importance

Excuse me while I get sad .

There is a community note correcting this post about the importance of researching insects - including the reproductive habits of insects. But still the fact this was posted and 2k people liked it makes me sad 🥲🥲

"stupid researchers studying the mating habits of beetles" people when they can't afford groceries because an invasive beetle species is decimating crops

An actual conversation I had with a colleague.

Colleague: so they were using the wrong species to pollinate their crops.

Me: what do you mean?

Colleague: well they were using a fly species from Canada and they’re growing onions in Texas. The fly they were using was dying in a day in their greenhouses because it’s frigging Texas in May/June.

Me: and no one was studying this or telling them otherwise?

Colleague: not till me.

Me: so they were wasting all that money on an inefficient pollinator and losing out on crop yield.

Colleague: yep…

And yet these idiots want to cut entomological research funding. Yeah, good luck with that. Come back to us when there’s huge outbreaks of pest insects and arbovectors that we were studying but y’all decided it was “too stupid” to fund.

As someone who's been a lover of traditional folk music from the British Isles for several decades, one thing I've learned is that "True Love" didn't always mean what you think it means. In the older songs, "true love" is not some mystical quality, some type of connection that is magically better than other Loves. No. A love that is "true" merely means that your Love is "true TO YOU." "True" as in faithful and loyal and trustworthy. A lover who will stand by you and with you no matter what comes. True the way a good sword is True. True the way a good knight is loyal. The contrast is "False Love," which is a lover who betrays you, who cannot be trusted.

"True Love" isn't something you find, it's a vow and a choice that you make, every day, to BE TRUE.

THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST cast at the OSCARS — 1992

Well fucks? Get to it!

Petition is live for six months only; deadline is July 9, 2025. Currently at just over 7K signatures:

This petition got frozen before the election last year, it’s recently been unfrozen - anyone who can sign it please do

SO! here it is! The roof comes off with the rafters attached; the floor for the 'ground' level is also removable--remember that this is designed to sit in about 3 inches of litter. The windows are inset so that after this is fired, I can cut and glue in little panes of stained glass.

If I can fit this cabinet into my van, then it's coming home with me to be converted into the Redwall Mouse Cabinet. To my eye, this doesn't look like a "true" antique so I won't feel too bad about modifying it, which is mostly going to be chew-proofing all the interior surfaces. I was thinking about two options for ventilation and could use advice from the Fancy Mice People, wheresoever they be. I summon thee! Minions, tag the mouse folks!

Anyways. I'm going to add hardware cloth on top so that I can safely add lighting from the top while keeping cords and electricity out of reach. That's easy enough.

Option one is replacing the glass in the door with alternating sections of glass and wire/metal mesh, to allow air circulation while keeping litter contained at each shelf level. I could also get a big (and probably more expensive) sheet of acrylic and drill holes in it. Is there a desirable density for vent holes? Drill press (my beloved) is willing to find out!

Option two would be cutting "windows" of mesh into the back, each above litter/shelf height. But because this is obviously to be backed against a wall, I wonder if that would be insufficient air circulation? I could add thin USB powered fans (also outside of the cage and out of reach) to force air circulation, but I know mice are sensitive to drafts and have delicate respiratory systems, so I don't want to be kicking up dust. I guess I could do a fan blowing across the back to draft air out indirectly?

I could also do a combination of the two. I don't want to replace the curved glass because that's the pretty part. I will be making sure that I have drawer-like shelves to allow for about 3" of litter on each level, and climbing routes between them.

@kedreeva might be able to advise about mouse stuff!

I did already, but seeing the cabinet, I can offer some more!

You can't completely chew proof something with edges like this without getting into welding. You can make it chew resistant using the acrylic and seal it with aquarium silicone (which they will chew, but if you use a glove/tool to smooth the edges of where the silicone meets the acrylic this will a) make it harder to start chewing the silicone and b) make it harder to chew the edges of the acrylic. But ANY imperfection or edge they can find, they'll eventually chew. You can also cover vertical stuff with 1/4" or 1/8" hardware cloth (which you may be able to get coated with black so it's less visible/noticeable) which should prevent most chewing since they have a hard time getting through that size. Screen they will pull apart pretty easily, it has to be welded hardware cloth.

As for drafts- they're not actually that sensitive. I worked in research husbandry, and the ventilated caging piped air in through a hole in the back and that blew air all over the cage with pretty decent force, and it was only rarely that any mouse attempted to cover the hole (usually moms with newborn pups, and solo-housed geriatric mice that were having trouble with thermoregulation. If you're providing hides and warm nesting material, and you're not trying to blow in absolutely frigid air, then they shouldn't mind the air moving at all. I've known folks that keep mice in their garage year round, and the only problem is keeping the water unfrozen. So, whatever you want to do for air circulation, if it circulates air it'll probably be fine. Your best bet is to create flow- one vent area blows stuff in, one area blows stuff out. If you're blowing top to bottom, the air should be coming down into the bedding, rather than kicking dust up from it. All our flow hoods at work either blew air back to front (to toss pathogens out of the work area) or sucked/pushed air down top to bottom (so only clean air came down into the cages), and it makes sense, since you want air flowing into the bedding if possible, to keep it dry.

For dust- while most beddings are dusty to one degree or another, you CAN put bedding in a fine mesh or cheesecloth type bag and shake it out before use to get rid of the really fin,e particulate, BUT, there are beddings that have less dust. Ground cob is good for drainage at the bottom layer, and aspen holds shape well for tunneling.

You can also add stuff that's less dusty, like krinkle-cut shredded paper (which you can get in bulk for cheap AND pretty colors if you want to pay extra, or you can find some interesting shreds like this dictionary crinkle cut shred), but be aware that a lot of the little shops selling the colors in the second link are just buying in bulk and reselling small quantities for a huge markup. Which the reselling isn't bad, since many people don't need 10lbs of shredded paper, but you'll go through that much if you start giving it to the mice, because they LOVE IT SO MUCH. It builds great nests and helps bedding hold form so they can tunnel and stuff.

Thank you!!

Re: the floor in the clay building: I also was hoping to leave it with no floor and put it on stilts! I built it with walls and a roof and everything and only then realized I had too much cross-sway and it had to have a floor to keep it square. Sigh...

Thank you very much for the links! 10 LBs seems like an enormous volume of paper (thank god I have a hayloft) but oooo a green field of paper grass for the meeces....

I absolutely will weld on this project if I have to. I'm not set up to do it here but I do have shop access elsewhere, and I can powder coat everything to reduce rust. I'm anticipating that the exposed wood is gonna get covered in glass, steel, or acrylic, with as few exposed edges as I can manage. The shop understands the exhortation of whimsy and is used to my nonsense.

A kimono dealer in Japan mentioned that he might, potentially, possibly maybe, get a small spot on a news show about his shop.

"Estate Sale" style lots of assorted items to bid on is not common in Japan like it is here. So odd lots of old kimono are very cheap, often $100 USD or less for half a dozen items. But they aren't necessarily items that would be worn together, if someone has a sense of formality, colours, types of kimono, etc. They're great for mixing with yofuku or maybe photoshoots as-is, but if using as intended...

Look y'all. The autistic gaijin kimono collector most certainly didn't take this as a sign to make review photos as perfect as possible. Right?

The first set:

The kimono + fan came from Kazuma. The other items are from my collection.

The single-layer synthetic kimono reads as an odori piece, so it's paired with a gold odori obi and bold red accessories. The collar and obiage match in fabric type (ro) but I don't have a red summer obiage (the cord on the obi belt) and I thought one might not have the right effect if this were on stage anyways. The fan is also for dance performances.

I think now, I should have done bunka musubi, but I went with a long hanging obi inspired by geisha in Tokyo area.

For this, I chose entirely summer items, ro whenever possible to match the juban. This only features the summer obijime from the lot.

The nearly-black colour with pampass grass is a symbol of deep summer and a hope for coming coolness. Deep eggplant purple and brilliant gold is another summer choice, linking with January references to eggplant and a desire for cool weather. The obi is tied in a big, airy otaiko in an asymmetric knot, a reference to days of kitsuke long gone by.

The brilliant red obiage is a classic pairing, and the nearly-white blue obijime is the colour of snow. They stand out against the colour of the obi very well. The obijime very nearly matches the grass pattern.

The fan tucked into the obi is made of light-coloured wood (dark wood is for autumn and winter) and has a simple pattern of swirling green maple leaves, tinged in gold. Momiji (maple) will not become gold until later in Autumn. Right now, green and black are vibrant, and the gold in the fan pairs with the gold in the obi. Hints of a breeze also evoke a cool feeling.

For the last set, the fukuro obi and michiyuki is from Kazuma.

I picked a bold floral hitoe kimono with komono (accessories, lit. "small things") that were bright and cheerful. The collar and obijime match here, pulling from the purple details in the flowers. The obi also has elements of orange and gold, akin to the orange and yellow in the flowers. The white silk obiage has cute triangles of bright colours, in pinks, yellow, orange, and turquoise.

I wanted to make something a fun 20-something would wear out with friends.

Since the kimono is so youthful, as are the coordinating pieces, I wanted to do something ... not boring.

A musubi that is not ginza/tsunodashi, otaiko, or ribon (ribbon). Something cute! Fluffy looking! Effeminate! Something that in passing, is layered and has curves like the tiny flowers in the kimono. Maybe I was successful.

The obiage too, I wanted to be youthful but not childish or too "formal" like a furisode. Especially since the "creative" musubi (knot in the back of the obi) are too often reserved only for the long-sleeved formal kimono. Hnnn. I wrapped it in a way to show off the colourful patterns and tucked in one side to make a cute ruffle, again to mimic the obi and kimono pattern.

A plain obijime then, would be boring by contrast... so maybe don't make it TOO showy, like it's a furisode, but a little bit wavy and fanciful.

How did I do?

(X)

i’m going to let this video speak for itself. bc i don’t even know what to say anymore. i don’t know how we come back from this level of radicalization among young people to the point where holocaust denial has become the norm.

White supremacists would be fucking *delighted*. Hell, *are* delighted.

To add to this:

Not only were two-thirds of European Jews killed, but the ones who remained faced violence and antisemitism even once they returned home from the camps. There were even two massacres of Jews who'd returned to their towns post-Holocaust; I have a friend who's descended from one of the survivors of the Kielce pogrom, in which the town's non-Jews forced the town's Jews into a barn and set it on fire. Most Holocaust survivors didn't feel they could stay, and left. Those in the Soviet Union who stayed experienced a cultural genocide where their Judaism was outlawed.

What this means is that the entire European Jewish civilization of language, art, folklore, foodways, literature, theater, and traditions was basically destroyed. The legacies of some of these things persist in a fractured manner, but something of great is now gone with no hope of true recovery.

It was also not just the Ashkenazi world. Salonika (now called Thessaloniki) in Greece used to be a Jewish city. In the 16th century it was known as "Sabatopolis," Shabbat city, because ships passing by on Friday nights noted the city was dark because lights could not be lit on Shabbat. It was a center of Jewish culture and scholarship, with Jews from the Ashkenazi world coming to study there. By the 20th century, it was majority non-Jewish and the centers of Jewish scholarship had moved to places like Lublin and Vilna, but it still had a large Jewish population.

87% of the Jews in Greece were killed. Do you understand? Only 13% of Greek Jews survived the Holocaust. This is what a campaign of extermination means. The goal of the Nazis was to kill every last Jewish man, woman, and child. In the world.

On that note: I want people to realize that before the Holocaust, there were only 16.6 million Jews in the world. Killing six million meant that more than a third of our global population was gone in just four years. In the ensuing decades, many Jews married non-Jews and raised their kids non-Jewish with the goal to intentionally assimilate for safety so their descendants would be unharmed in the event of another Holocaust. Some of these people kept their Jewishness secret from their families and only revealed it on their deathbeds. They figured, better to hide and lose their identities than to die.

We have not yet been able to recover our population. As I mentioned, before the Holocaust, there were 16.6 million Jews in the world, and just a few short years later, there were less than 11 million. Today, there are still only 15.7 million. After 80 years, there are still fewer Jews in the world than there were before the Holocaust.

The other thing I would like people to understand is that the Holocaust was not a one-off; it was an escalation. Jewish life in Eastern and Central Europe was marked by periodic massacres and constant persecution. The middle ages were especially bad, with a number of large massacres. There were also discriminatory laws in many times and places, for example ones disallowing Jews from owning land. In the late 19th century, pogroms (which were violent riots in the Jewish sections of towns) flared up. This is what spurred the wave of immigration to the US around the turn of the 20th century; that and the fact that we could sense that something horrific was on the horizon.

Also, in Yuval's video, he mentions that the Holocaust was purely based on hatred, and not out of motivation to steal money or land. I don't actually agree; Jews had to surrender their possessions and bank accounts, and I assume that was used to further the Nazi war effort. Everything was taken from them; even the glasses off their faces and the hair off their heads, the latter turned into socks and mattresses. Their homes were also immediately taken from them by their neighbors; some did not even wait until the Jews were out of sight before beginning to loot the possessions left behind, and then moving in.

On a personal note, my maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors. My grandfather had a wife and two children who were killed on arrival at Auschwitz. This was normal; even at work camps, children and their mothers were gassed on arrival. His son, my uncle, Usher Meilich was ten when he was murdered; his son Yehuda Yaakov was nine.

My grandmother was one of seven siblings; only three (herself, her brother, and her sister) survived the Holocaust. Her sister, my great-aunt Rochel, was gassed at Auschwitz along with Rochel's two-year-old son, Zelig. Her parents, my great-grandparents Henna Taltza and Moishe Yehuda, were murdered as well. When I was a little kid I asked my mother if she had grandparents; she had to explain to me that they'd all died before she was born.

I am telling you this not because you deserve me opening up my heart and scooping out the names of half my family tree gone to serve you on a silver platter, but because some part of me believes that having names to attach will break someone's hard shell and inspire some compassion. But it feels degrading to need to do this at all, and maybe it won't even help. I hate having to turn out my pockets like this.

Look. I have no interest in claiming that the Holocaust was "the worst tragedy to happen to humanity," whatever the hell that means. But I am desperately trying to convince people that it was a real tragedy that happened to real people and that we bear the scars and wounds to this day; from intergenerational trauma (a term coined to describe the effects of Holocaust trauma on the grandchildren of survivors, before it was coopted on social media to describe the negative cycles of every dysfunctional family everywhere), to massive language loss, to loss of art and folklore and theater, to our non-recovered population numbers, to the cemeteries left unprotected against local populations destroying them and turning Jewish gravestones into paving stones to be walked upon, to the trauma that manifests itself in catastrophic violence against Palestinians.

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

the reblog map is all of us holding hands btw

We are each other's night sky. No one is alone here.

@theshitpostcalligrapher



Got it

so, i don't particularly mind when the Drakes are abusive and/or completely absent in fics (note that the followinig train of thoughts is based on the fics i read and absolutely not bases on the comics)

but

i feel like we tend to forget that Tim is still a Drake. like yeah he was adopted by Bruce and, depending how you see it, has lived in the manor for a few years. but still, he was raised by the Drakes, specifically by the Janet Drake. the one woman the press knew better than to badmouth. she was feared, liked and respected at the same time

like, there's no way that woman would leave her only son, the one she carried 9 month, alone for weeks without teaching him how to behave as high society. he's the one supposed to represent the Drake name everytime he's outside, whether it's at school, on a walk or at galas. so naturally he could tell when he's being followed and photographed, by people or paparazzis (which could have helped him learning how to not be seen, hence being able to follow batman and robin around at the age of 10 without being found), and then flashing his best natural smile. the guy is strikingly beautiful and he knows how to accentuate it with make up (rather usefull skills between the bruise at night and the eyebags in the morning) depending on what he's wearing. and obviously he knows how to dress, as in it's natural for him. he knows which colours to associate and do it without thinking. even if he's borrowing some of his siblings' clothes, he'd still accord them. he would litterally debate with Alfred about which brand his better or which suit would be more adapted to a gala.

i did hear about Janet teaching Tim a maths formula to know people status ? not sure if it's canon, but obviously Tim would know about anyone at any gala and be able to tell who's richer based on language, clothes, facial expressions...

and then high society (and the press as well) also tends to forget that before being Tim Drake-Wayne, he was Timothy Drake, son of Janet Drake, and know how to talk and insult someone without insulting them. he knows exactly what to say and how to say it so people would know they better not play smart with him. (rip anyone who try to belittle any of siblings, he'll rip them apart while smiling)

Janet raised him with the belief he'll take over Drake Industries, so when Tim took over WE, he wasn't totally thrown to the sharks (he still had the help of Lucius), he learnt the name of each and single employes (which is a looot) and a few things about them. he can tell when someone is trying to manipulate him at a board meeting, he knows how to deal with the money... he's definitly highly liked and respected by the employes of WE

and on another note, you cannot make me believe the guy does not know how to cook. banned from the kitchen ? bullshit

like if we follow the whole idea of absent parents then that means at some point Tim had to take care of himself. maybe he had a nanny or something, but she was definitly not there all the time. so my headcanon is that he does know how to cook, and is in fact a good cook. like he'd been alone for weeks and had to learn how to cook an egg, then make a salad until he could do more complex receipes

all to say that my man Tim knows how to carry himself and bend the world to his needs because that the least Janet would expect from him, and he's never going to embarass her, ever

Story time, one time Red Robin climbed in through my window, looked around like he was confused, then saw me on the couch and goes “wrong apartment”. Is there a RIGHT apartment to break into???

Not yours

fun thing about herding and/or generally neurotic breeds: they are really good at following rules you have instituted, but they will also make their own Dog Rules they will follow stringently whether or not you like it

despite never being reprimanded for getting sick if my dog throws up she will ‘tattle’ on herself and run over to me, show me the throw up, then hide and start shaking uncontrollably. nobody taught her to do this. she has decided that throwing up is a punishable offense until the end of time

my dog has decided that it’s solely on her shoulders to ensure there is peace in my house…if the cats fight she stands between them to ‘break it up’ and/or herds them away, if my rats have an argument she goes to the cage door and barks until they stop. not sure why she has decided she must carry the weight of the world but she has

My collie had a rule he made up that the sheep were not supposed to graze right by the fence. He would sound the alarm and race out there to chase them off if they grazed within 6' of the fence.

I, personally, liked when they grazed right by the fence cause that's less fence line I had to trim, but no. Was Forbidden Grass. By order of the Collie in Chief.

Mouse and Ptarmigan by Sandara Tang

Was delighted today to discover a crisp, brand new “ICE-Free Zone” sticker on the front door of my local LUSH Cosmetics. Apparently they’ve been ICE-Free since 2020, training their staff how to deal with ICE officers and not accept unlawful raids

In their honor, may I recommend their cornstarch-based powder lotions? Anti-sweat, anti-chafe, these are so great, I’ve been using them daily for years! Fat folx, I swear this stuff is a life-changer.

I’m quite partial to the jasmine-scented Silky Underwear, or there’s the lavender-chamomile Sleep Dust