[curioscurio]

i can’t wait for when chatGPT and ai image generation also crashes and each prompt cost $50 an attempt. oh you can’t get your stolen big tiddy anime ghibli art for free anymore? you want to buy real big boy art from real artists now? beg for it. beg for it like a dog.

[artichokefartichoke]

[utah-mountain-drifter-deactivat]

Adding Fuck to LOTR, from the Hobbits.

[thatblondeperson]

I fucking love them so much

[peach-foxgloves]

No one ever tell me anything bad about the person who runs this account.

the person who runs this account, Katie Gouldin, is an evolutionary biologist who has an EXCELLENT podcast called Creature Feature which compares and contrasts the weird behaviors of man and beast! she is super cute and funny too!

[lavender-lily]

oh thank GOD

[andypantsx3]

just want to add i love how much she hates elon

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

yeah okay ill reblog that

[baddywronglegs]

She is also credited by the Audubon society with coining the word “birb”

[noelbadgespugh]

[akayna]

Wait I have a picture I saved off Tumblr from a couple years ago that is very similar in style!!

[wanderthewood]

[gayhoediaz]

do you guys wanna see my favorite video on the internet yes you do

[dracula61]

[angelsamericana]

i love how everyone on this website interacts with each other in ways that are so socially impermissible irl. how did we get here

[angelsamericana]

like i know none of us call people we barely know "bestie" out loud. i know none of us say "i am kissing you on the mouth" in response to every mild compliment. but god i wish we did

[angelsamericana]

(recent) tumblr exclusive linguistic phenomena:

bestie (said to someone you've never spoken to directly)

so false worstie

we are holding hands

i am kissing you on the mouth

you're going in the soup

variations on "your dad looks gnc af" "YOURE INSANE"

mutuals (technically this exists on other social media but not in spirit)

[gunshots] (people say this on twitter but they say it wrong)

using periods incorrectly to. fine tune the cadence of a line

my beloved/my beloathed

hyperspecific day of the week holidays e.g. flat fuck friday

variations on gaslight gatekeep girlboss

and, of course, prev tags

[ehentalix]

I think my absolute favorite is "Thank you for the input, Tumblr user [[wildly inappropriate username]]"

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[freshpickle]

artist: wednesday holmes (ig @hellomynameiswednesday)

[orofeaiel]

Staircase, Mount Rainier National Park

[thebibliosphere]

Hey, US citizens who are eligible to vote, today is National Voter Registration Day!

As someone unable to vote in the country I live in, I’d like to take a moment to encourage everyone who is eligible to vote to check their voter registration.

Deadlines are coming up fast in many states, and many states have been purging their voter rolls to try and suppress the vote. Don’t let them take it from you.

You can use this link below to check your voting status, and remind your friends/family/followers to do the same; it only takes a couple minutes.

I Will Vote

Be a voter. Find everything you need to vote in your state's next election.

And remember, if you’re vote didn't matter, the bastards wouldn’t be working so hard to take it from you.

[mariacallous]

In North Carolina, one of the crucial battleground states this election.

[catchymemes]

[the-last-teabender]

I've seen (and heard about) a lot of Oxventure posts that are talking about how Oxventurers Guild was bad but Wyrdwood is good.

One - I hate to see two bad bitches pitted against each other.

Two - Speaking from experience, you can't be a table like Wyrdwood without having been a table like the Oxventurers Guild.

Did people not know the rules? Yes. Did people play suboptimally? Yes. Did Johnny bend rules and consequences to move things along? Yes. But people seem to forget that the first Oxventure campaign started with basically zero previous experience. We were watching people learning.

Yesterday I was talking with @randomthunk about this, and I compared watching Oxventure from beginning to present like reading The Dark Tower. Reading The Gunslinger and watching that story progress over seven books gave me confidence as a writer. You can start imperfect. You can make mistakes. You can be less than your best as you're getting your feet under you, and a willingness and enthusiasm to do that will take you to greatness. Plus, it's a story of an author evolving as much as it's a story of Roland Deschain going to the Tower.

I think many many other actual plays have given people unrealistic expectations, where Oxventure (as I've said before) brought me back to gaming. And as much as I think a person could come to Wyrdwood new and love it, the Oxventurers Guild campaign makes what comes next so much more meaningful. We've seen what each player does well across the original and side campaigns, and we got to see that because of the freedom the first campaign gave them. Now we get to see those natural talents paired with an understanding of the system (which we were already seeing in Blades and Deadlands, but now we have a 1 to 1 comparison).

In my first stint in gaming 20 years ago, I didn't have the freedom at my original table to learn and make mistakes. You got it right or you got mocked. I have good tables I love now because I began seeking out tables that reminded me of Oxventure: willing to go on tangents, willing to help each other, okay with fudging things on the fly if it preserved our good time. I'm a better player now because I had those experiences.

tl;dr your taste is your taste and some things are naturally gonna hit you better than others, but writing off the Oxventurers Guild because the mechanics weren't as tight is missing the entire point of how this group has evolved.

[sitta-pusilla]

The US finally takes aim at truck bloat - The Verge

The US finally takes aim at truck bloat

The government is taking aim at big SUVs and trucks.

This week, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) stunned safety advocates by proposing new vehicle rules that it says will help reduce pedestrian deaths in America. The new rules appear aimed directly at the trend of increasingly massive SUVs and trucks, which have been shown to be more deadly to pedestrians than smaller and midsize vehicles.

Never in its 50-plus years in existence has the regulator issued new rules for automakers requiring them to change their vehicle designs to better prevent pedestrian fatalities. If enacted, the new rules could change how vehicles are designed in the US — permanently.

“It’s good to see NHTSA acknowledge that a myopic focus on pedestrian detection — which is imperfect — is no substitute for actually regulating car bloat,” said David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative and a Verge contributor. 

In recent years, NHTSA has issued a handful of new requirements aimed at reducing the number of pedestrian deaths. Earlier this year, the agency announced that automatic emergency braking would be required in all new vehicles. It also updated the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), also known as the five-star safety rating, to account for technology that can help reduce pedestrian injuries and deaths. But it’s never before taken aim at vehicle design.

The rules announced this week would update the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), the government’s bible for everything that’s required in a new vehicle before it’s sold — from steering wheels to rearview mirrors — to set testing procedures to simulate head-to-hood impact, with the aim of reducing head injuries. If enacted, automakers will have to test their vehicles using crash test dummies representing adult and child pedestrians for the first time. NHTSA says the changes could save up to 67 lives every year.

“The US has never used pedestrian crash test dummies officially,” said Angie Schmitt, author of Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America. “I thought they were going to continue to avoid doing that even though Congress had sort of told them to do this — but apparently not.”

The proposed rules come amid a deadly period for pedestrians in this country. Each year, cars kill roughly 40,000 Americans. But while automakers have become very good at protecting people inside of vehicles, they have essentially neglected the safety of people outside of them.

SUVs and trucks, two of the most popular segments in the US, have become larger and heavier than ever before. In 2023, 31 percent of new cars in America weighed over 5,000 pounds (2.27 tons), compared to 22 percent in 2018, according to a recent investigation by The Economist. And with the shift to electric vehicles, many of those vehicles have become even heavier. The Ford F-150 Lightning has a curb weight of around 6,500 pounds, roughly 60 percent heavier than its gas equivalent.

Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths have skyrocketed in recent years. Between 2013 and 2022, pedestrian fatalities increased 57 percent, from 4,779 to 7,522, NHTSA reports. In 2022, 88 percent of pedestrian deaths occurred in single-vehicle crashes.

“I think it will exert positive pressure,” Schmitt said of the new proposal, “and maybe rein in some of the industry’s worst excesses.”

The shape of a vehicle, especially the hood, also plays a critical role in determining whether a pedestrian can survive being struck. Vehicles with hood heights of more than 40 inches and blunt front ends angled at greater than 65 degrees were 44 percent more likely to cause fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Automakers often point to the increasing use of technology in vehicles — cameras, blindspot detection, automatic braking — to help reduce pedestrian deaths. But rarely do they address the role that vehicle design plays in crash fatalities. That’s because big trucks and SUVs are not only popular but also better moneymakers than smaller vehicles. SUVs have a profit margin that’s 10–20 percent higher than smaller cars because they command a higher price while costing only slightly more to manufacture.

Safety advocates celebrated the news, while also noting that vehicle design is only one piece in a large, complex puzzle to make roads safer. That includes lower speed limits, infrastructure improvements, and increased enforcement of traffic laws. Many note that Europe has already gone much further to protect pedestrians, enacting rules that would prevent many of the largest vehicles produced by US manufacturers from being sold on the continent.

“Considering NHTSA estimates the new standard would save 67 lives a year, it is a step in the right direction, but it still falls behind what Europe has successfully done,” Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said. “Numerous proven solutions must be employed to improve the safety of all vulnerable road users.”

The new NHTSA proposal is an important step, but it’s just the first of many needed to turn this crisis around.

[gunsandfireandshit]

This is the ideal truck body. You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.

[caats]