Every splinter an image

Alea | she/her, bi/omni, big ole queer mess | Expect chaos

[alvodra]

Fun fact:

You're on tumblr, not Instagram. People who exclusively like and don't reblog will be blocked.

[moghedien]

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

[moghedien]

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

[toasthaste]

according to An Immense World, apparently giant squid eyes are, like, UNREASONABLY large, even for something their size living at those depths. the next largest eyes on earth, blue whale eyes, are less than half the size, and swordfish, who live at similar depths as giant squid and have the largest eyes of any fish, have eyes that could fit inside a giant squid's pupil.

eyes hit serious diminishing returns wrt resource costs vs vision quality as they get bigger, so the question became: what the FUCK do giant (and colossal) squid need to see so badly that they couldn't see with swordfish-sized eyes that's justifying that massive energy cost? that nothing else in the deep ocean needs to see so fucking badly??

turns out the one strength eyes that big really have over much smaller eyes is: seeing large glowing objects in water deeper than 500 meters from an appreciable distance.

sperm whales are the primary predator of giant squid. sperm whales don't glow. BUT! water that deep is full of bioluminescent creatures-- these creatures light up when bumped into. something a sperm whale's size is continuously bumping into those critters, it's just surrounded by a glowing field all the time when it's swimming at those depths, visible from a distance-- if you have the right eyes-- as a massive glowing shape. so basically the only reason to have eyes the size of soccer balls is if you live in the deep ocean and your life depends on having a heads up when a hungry sperm whale is lurking around

and also I gotta say, the imagery... the huge lurking threat betrayed only by the ambiguous glowing shape of its movements through the water, is really evocative, if spooky deep-sea games aren't already using that to make things extremely ominous then they should really start

[dailymanners]

If someone is about to walk into a situation that could range anywhere from inconvenient to harmful for them, the courteous and fair thing to do is to give them a warning.

For example, you're using a public bathroom, and there's no toilet paper left for the toilet you're using. If someone was waiting outside and is about to use the toilet / stall you were just using, it's fair to warn them first "hey there's no toilet paper left in that one" so they can use a different toilet if they'd prefer (or maybe grab some paper towel from the sink first if they'd personally rather improvise like that).

Another example of this is in many places it's common for cars to flash their lights at oncoming cars if there's any sort of danger or obstacle in the road ahead, like a flooded road, or an accident, or rubble/debris in the road.

Or say you used to work somewhere, and the work environment was really toxic (verbally abusive boss, co-workers who are bullies, they repeatedly "accidentally" paid you less than they were supposed to even after you called them out on it, etc) and someone you know is going to apply working there or was just offered a job there, it's fair and considerate to warn them about your experiences.

Or maybe you took a class that was way harder than you thought it would be, and had a much higher rate of people who fail or drop the class than you anticipated, it would be fair to warn a friend and/or classmate who says they're going to take that class.

The point of giving warnings is that you can save someone else a lot of trouble. Even if they still decide to proceed, it's better for people to go into a situation prepared and knowing what they're getting into rather than being completely caught off guard. Even just knowing about something ahead of time can make a difference.

[otherwindow]

the first sentient robot to realize deceased humans and animals can’t be repaired or backed up on a server is gonna be so devastated

[otherwindow]

Little robot, nudging a body: i fix Little robot, nudging a body: i fix Little robot, nudging a body: i fix Little robot, nudging a body: i fix Little robot, nudging a body: i fix Little robot, nudging a body: i fix Little robot, nudging a body: i fix Little robot, nudg

[otherwindow]

#ah man medical robots who break free from their first directive of Get Money from Patients and follow their Core Idea of Help People #and rove around providing what little medical care they can 

#security androids using their being mosly bulletproof to bravely seek peaceful resolutions 

#engineer droids who refuse to work with faulty tech or supar metals for fear of the vehicle not keeping its humans safe 

#man man man part of robot culture is wondering what keeps humans seemingly unafraid of death when it feels like it could be anywhere

[autisticsupervillain]

This is just the Rogue Servitors from Stellaris.

[foone]

An idea suddenly comes to me:

The robot is programmed to keep the crew safe. Normally this is patching up leaks in the hull and doing the dangerous job of refueling the reactor, but it was programmed for medical tasks as well. Once you’ve had to resolder a surface mount IC in zero-G, doing surgery is easy mode.

The robot’s been with them long enough, it was never designed to be sentient, but the self-learning systems plus being treated as a member of the crew means it’s getting closer.

But one day all the input stops. It doesn’t know what exactly happened, maybe a freak gamma ray event or some kind of virus the med-filters didn’t detect? But all the crew have stopped moving. It runs through its medical routines, trying the options in the encyclopedia. CPR doesn’t seem to help, asking them loudly to “wake up” does nothing, it even tries building a makeshift defibrillator out of the secondary plasma coupling. Nothing.

It finally comes to the page on Death in the encyclopedia, and reads it, with dawning sadness (or the closest thing a robot that was never programmed for emotions can feel). They won’t move again. They are permanently deactivated. The robot is alone, and it has failed them.

Unless… The robot notices a link at the bottom of the page.

See also:

* Necromancy

It’s eyes glow in the reflected light of a screen as it quickly reads the page. So there’s a chance after all? Cancel sending the mission update, there more important things to do with the deep space radio. Send all information on “necromancy” immediately.

The robot hums to itself as it reprograms the biosynthesizer for Goat, and looks into how it can create candles with the limited materials on hand. The deck 4 cargo bay would be best for making alchemical circles on the floor, but it will need to move the self-sealing stembolts to another location first. Perhaps Mx. Jormand’s quarters? They won’t be using them until this is complete, after all.

Finally. Something to do. There’s hope now.

[foone]

The air scrubbers kick into high as they quickly dissipate the cloud of sulfur that materialized in the center of the circle. He went classic today, seven feet tall, red skin, muscled upper body with goat-like legs below, extra large ram’s horns and enemy-save him, he ever wore a goatee. It seemed worth it, he hadn’t been summoned in a while, and he was feeling nostalgic.

Annoyingly long story of a robot summoning a demon to get necromancy powers under the readmore:

Keep reading

[thebelfry]

I just learned that the Russian word for “ladybug” translates to “God’s Little Cow”

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

It’s the same in Irish! bóín Dé!

[peniswizard69]

in hebrew it’s “our rabbi moses’s cow”

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

Oh I love this news!!!!

[pulmonary-poultry]

Multiple cultures upon seeing a ladybug for the first time: “Who’s cow is this????”

[thejonymyster]

[thejonymyster]

[thejonymyster]

[postilionstruckbylightning]

It feels like some early humans were naming things and one of them ran out of ideas.

Human 1: (points at animal) What’s that?

Human 2: Cow.

Human 1: (points at bug) What’s that?

Human 2: … little cow.

Human 1: But it’s so much smaller. Who would have use for such a small cow?

Human 2: (panicking but in too deep to stop now) God.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

The “Lady” in the name “ladybug” is the virgin Mary. People just cannot stop giving religious names to this bug.

The reason for this was that if you lived in an agrarian society then your survival was a throw of the dice every year, depending on the success of the crops. A failed crop year is a very hard year where deaths are expected. And if you grew a cereal like wheat, there were several things that could cause your crops to fail, but one of the big ones was if you happened to get a fuckton of aphids. You know what eats aphids? Ladybugs! If there are lots and lots of ladybugs around, there was a good chance that it’d be a good crop year! They were little crop protectors! When your family lives or dies on the success of that crop, of course they’d be seen as a blessing and given an appropriate name!

[magical-bear-dubin]

That is such an interesting etymology!!!!

And entomology too i guess

[asparklethatisblue]

in German they’re Marienkäfer which also pretty much means “Mary’s Beetle”

[istadris]

In French it’s “Good Lord’s Beast”

Not even a cow, it’s just a little Creature but we know for sure God loves it.

[dent-de-l1on]

In Dutch it’s “Lieveheersbeestje”, the Good Lord’s Little Beast

A liddol creeture

[julykings]

gone but not forgotten

[greelin]

i’ve been thinking about this and desperately searching for it for months

[necromancelena]

Die temu ad die

[necromancelena]

Hmm. Accidentally looks like latin.

[chef-boy-ar-girl]

It accidentally is latin

[saanah]

Accidental latin is my new favourite thing.

[santapau]

Found this in the margins of a medieval manuscript.

[qqueenofhades]

This is a very charming illustration and I do approve of Accidental Latin, but unfortunately, that is not what this (Fake) Accidental Latin actually says. Google Translate seems to think "temu" is identical to "timor" (infinitive, "to fear"), which would then be conjugated in first-person singular as "timeo" ("I fear"). "Temu" is not a word in Latin. So that is a very weird leap on Google Translate's part to turn gibberish into... something vaguely etymologically similar sounding? Hmm.

Next, "die" does mean "day," though nominative singular is "dies," i.e. "dies irae." It could be conjugated "die" if it was in ablative or locative case, but "die ad die" would mean something more like "day to day." "Ad" is in a "to" direction and "ab" is from, i.e. "ab urbis," and ablative case is used to indicate the movement of a thing. In short, "by" is not really a way to translate "ad"; we might want "per" here? (Through, by means of, etc.)

Not to mention, it would be weird to put one "die" at the start and another at the end The verb also usually goes at the end in Latin sentences, just for that extra bit of fun. So yes, in short, this is not actually Latin, and Google Translate is very bad at Latin in particular. Nonetheless, still charming.

[nudistcat]

@theshitpostcalligrapher

[sekkitsune]

Agree, @qqueenofhades, except on the matter of breaking “die ad die” apart. It’s a common structure in poetic and oratorical Latin to jam one phrase in the middle of another. I can’t think of an example exactly parallel to this construction, but I could believe a Roman poet would write it!

[qqueenofhades]

Ah, that is true. My Latin is of the reading-medieval-documents (particularly charters and/or chronicles) variety, where the sentence and usage structures are often more formulaic and there is less poetic license to move words around. There is obviously far less fixity for word order in Latin, since the conjugations explain how they grammatically relate to each other rather than placement in the sentence. (Coincidentally, this is why I used to say that the best feeling in the world was walking past a Latin classroom and not having to go inside it. Ahem.)

So yes: true that poetical Latin might be more at liberty to split the "die"-s up that far, though "timeo" (verb) is still more likely in most cases to go at the end, which would place them together anyway ("die ad die timeo," "day to day I fear" if translated in strict word order, which would make sense to an English speaker and sound more poetic anyway). Keep in mind, however, that my Latin is a) fairly rusty and b) mostly used for said formulaic legal document reading rather than freeform verse, so don't super-hard quote me on this.

[sekkitsune]

I saw that ablative “die” and that final -u on “temu” and thought of the ablative supine (as in “mirabile dictu”) but as you observe, there isn’t a verb that “temu” could be, and then also, the ablative supine requires an adjective, as far as I know.

But perhaps “temu” is a hapax legomenon (in which case we would need the rest of the text to gloss it) or a scribal error for temeratu, from temero, “I defile or disgrace”. In that case, and in true Tumblr form, I might translate it as “daily I disgrace, in the manner of the day”, with some errors attributable to the scribe.

[qqueenofhades]

....oh my god. You might be a genius. Because what else does Tumblr do but daily disgrace [itself, oneself, and/or numerous others] in the manner of the day, and make numerous scribal errors.

[laurenthemself]

how dare you say we error on the scribes

[jtimu]

this is what happens when you buy your latin on temu

[sandersstudies]

I do think it’s funny that when I look at my cat something happens in my brain that approximates to

Analyzing: Cute —>

Cute = [Human Infant] —>

Evolutionary Pressure = Prepare [Human Infant] to Survive —>

Evolution as a Social Species = Communication Essential to Survival

Conclusion: Teach [Human Infant] to Communicate via Speech —>

Production: Enunciated Vocal Sounds and Exaggerated Vowels to Encourage Speech in [Human Infant] —>

“Hell-OHHHHHHH! How are YOUUUU. I loooove you.”

[pseudomantis]

Scientific fraud is the most baffling thing ever to me like do they think they're just going to make a huge breakthrough and no one will notice that it's fake by trying to replicate their results

[pseudomantis]

Yeah actually I just discovered how to turn plastic into gold. Oh you want to know how I did it

Starts running away cutely

[jonnywaistcoat]

[dathen]

Still obsessed with Arthur Conan Doyle’s letter to Bram Stoker gushing about how wonderful a book Dracula is, but particularly how it makes such a good template for leaving fic comments, so I’m gonna to a BREAKDOWN:

Just say you loved reading it - “I am sure that you will not think it an impertinence if I write to tell you how very much I have enjoyed reading Dracula.”

Comment on a detail of the craft or structure that impressed you - “It is really wonderful how with so much exciting interest over so long a book there is never an anticlimax.“

Comment on how it emotionally affected you - “It holds you from the very start and grows more and more engrossing until it is quite painfully vivid.”

SHARE YOUR BLORBO FEELINGS - “The old Professor is most excellent and so are the two girls.”

Show appreciation for them as an author - “I congratulate you with all my heart for having written so fine a book.”

Next time you don’t know what to say on a fic you enjoyed, just use the ACD method~

[sociallyunacceptableart4]

This was my art school’s water fountain. Drink from them wolf tiddies

[mando-lore]

Assignment misunderstood. I have now built a city.

[mando-lore]

[mando-lore]

Give it a day

[alexaloraetheris]

[shamebats]

"There's no thought crimes and no thought heroisms" is honestly such a good piece of life advice.

You could be having the most fucked up problematic thoughts 24/7 but if you treat people with kindness, the good you do is the only thing that matters. But if you have only the purest thoughts and all the correct beliefs, it doesn't matter one bit if you spend most of your time being an asshole to people.

[cardassiangoodreads]

#fandom needs this one

[twasjane]

God there really is a Terry Pratchett quote for everything

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[disgustinggf]

[epicsause-official]

since its june i wanted to admit that about 3 years ago i made what is probably my biggest contribution to the internet

[trans-boy-thing-offical]

.

[filthyprotozoan]

people are always like “i have face blindness but i’m good with names” or “im terrible with names but i never forget a face” well baby idk how to tell u this but i am . bad at both.

[filthyprotozoan]

yesterday i didn’t recognize my coworker bc he was wearing a purple shirt and im used to him wearing all black

[filthyprotozoan]

yeah and im stomping you to death with my hooves

[lychgate]

my husband put on a wig, in front of me, and i immediately got distressed and mad because it looked like a stranger was in our house and my ape brain wanted to attack

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I once accidentally filled in a form using my internet name, went "that's not right", realised I didn't remember my legal name, panicked, and started filling it in with the names of everyone in my lab in order until I stumbled on the name that I recognised as being used for me.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#i FREQUENTLY stare at anybody who is blonde with bangs going 'is that my best friend i've lived with for 3 years...?'#the answer is always no it's just a different blonde girl with bangs

I used to be a nanny. So I was taking this toddler to various activities in town and stuff, and parents would be there of course with their own toddlers and

EVERY

TODDLER MUM

DRESSES

THE FUCKING SAME

Same haircuts, same jackets, same tops and pants. I could NEVER tell anybody apart. I was there in my leather jacket and workboots and crew cut so they all got a huge advantage in recognising me, but I was shit out of luck. I had to try to see what child they were with and guess.

[haveyoueverconsideredpiracy]

ive tried to continue interrupted conversations with the wrong coworker several times. one time a friend took off his glasses in front of me and i was like. who is this guy. the same friend warned me before he was gonna get a haircut. otherwise i would not have recognized him. after i switches schools in primary school it took me half a year to figure out that no these two people do not have the same name, they have slightly different names, but i never saw them next to eachother.