Question Loft

~ = | All these things exist together. | = | Warning: lots of bugs, some body horror as a treat | = | Dedicated comics/writing tumblr: entitycradle.tumblr.com | = ~

[entitycradle]

Commissions for the Houston Food Bank

Hi everyone. Donate $1 to the Houston Food Bank and message me a screenshot of the receipt and I will respond with a doodle of my choice. $1 is the equivalent of about 3 meals. Donate $3 and I will make a doodle of your choice.

Houston is better positioned to provide food relief than many cities because they have leftover funding from the response to Hurricane Beryl last year. Also, the dems have folded and the federal government has (informally?) agreed to end the shutdown. But there's still a lot of uncertainty for people in my city. The Houston Food Bank has multiple locations and also delivers meals, with programs aimed at children, adults, and seniors. Consider sharing this.

[historybizarre]

The “Deviant” African Genders That Colonialism Condemned | JSTOR Daily

European travellers and anthropologists found that their gendered worldview didn’t easily map onto the societies they encountered.

In “pre-colonial times,” wrote the late feminist scholar Niara Sudarkasa, women in West Africa were “conspicuous in high places.” They led armies, often played important consultative roles in politics, and in the case of the Lovedu people (present-day South Africa), they were even supreme Rain Queens. What it meant to be a woman in many African pre-colonial societies was not rigid. “Among the Langi of northern Uganda,” writes Sylvia Tamale, dean of the faculty of Law at Makerere University Uganda, “the mudoko dako, or effeminate males, were treated as women and could marry men.”

….

This practice of same-sex marriage was documented in more than 40 precolonial African societies: a woman could marry one or more women if she could secure the bridewealth necessary or was expected to uphold and augment kinship ties. The idea that a female could be a husband perplexed Europeans, and often lead to fantastical conclusions.

[fhtagn-and-tentacles]

CREATURE

by IVAN PALMA

[weirdsatellites]

Dispatch #80511 from SBIRS GEO-5 (L CLEARANCE) 1. Tango Bravo Block 2. Stygian Grid

[unplaces]

S Kedzie Ave, Chicago, Illinois.

[ymutate]

Tù.úk'z v2

realm of absurd hope

[teaboot]

My first time operating CCTV cameras I was handed control over what was essentially 50 independently moving eyes that collectively covered an area about the size of a football field and from that experience I now know that

Suddenly having 50 moving eyes can make you disoriented and barfy and the adjustment period sucks ass

It takes both more and less time than you’d think to figure out what the structure as a whole looks like and where those eyes ARE

After you get used to it the entirety of the structure itself and all of the eyes you can see from feels like an extension of your nervous system in a very bizarre way. Like I have dreams now from the perspective of A Building and I’m not sure how to describe that.

Once you are aware of an unreachable blind spot it nags at you constantly and you can feel it like a hard little lump under your skin you need to poke and scratch at and it’s ardghgguychgghhbhhhbhhh

[teaboot]

And on top of that, having operated CCTV at multiple locations now- my favourite and most comfortable one having excess of 60 cameras- it can be REALLY hard to suddenly jump to a different operating interface and display configuration, because all the muscle memory is wrong

On my COMFORTABLE system, the one I spent the longest time on, I never had to think about what code I needed to punch in. If I needed to watch a specific person, I could follow them all over the site without thinking about it.

Now at a different location, all the manual equipment and codes and lag and resolution are different, and it feels like going from playing the piano to driving stick shift on the left side of the road with my feet

The closest I imagine I can equate it to is like. Getting really really good at painting with a pair of prosthetic hands, and then suddenly having them swapped out with someone else’s

[teaboot]

Not the best depiction, but. Feels like this

[nateconnolly]

The Labyrinth was an organism. It could grow, fight infection, and move toward resources. It sought out water and light. When Daedalus made his son's wings, he had no other material -- he had to fashion them from pieces of the Labyrinth itself.

But amputating a brick of the Labyrinth does not kill the piece removed. The maze is like a centipede: amputated flesh can survive and eventually regenerate into a whole, functioning animal.

The wings of Icarus survived even though the child did not. Its feathers were scattered across the land. They are broken -- but alive. Already, they have begun to regenerate. Their mutant forms warping back into Labyrinths.

When Icarus wore the wings on his back, each feather was an ordinary size. Small enough to be used as a bookmark. Now each is at least one hundred meters tall. The largest rival skyscrapers.

Living infant Labyrinths. With fleshy brains

And eyes that see

And stomachs that wait to be explored

If you liked this, check out my AO3 for original fiction.

[olliemnjones]

comic about being in a room

[xaoca]

37 Village Drive / Escher Colonial by Paul Octavious

[herpsandbirds]

This is easily one of the CRAZIEST videos I've ever gotten. I was rafting down a river when a Yellow Jacket came, landed on my bright pink waterproof phone pouch, and started drinking from the water droplets that had gathered there.

The most amazing part is how the water droplet magnifies the Hornet's mouth parts, so you get to see them up-close!!!! It was FASCINATING to witness!

Here's some of my favorite still shots from that video:

What do you think? 🥰

[weirdsatellites]

Manifest #7210 from NROL-129 (L CLEARANCE) 1. Fastness of Plasma 2. White Noise Sanctuary 3. Valley of Statues

[mbari-blog]

A little lantern for the deep. ❤️🏮⁠

Pandea rubra, also known as the red paper lantern jelly, may have a bell measuring just eight centimeters (about three inches) across, but its graceful tentacles can stretch much farther, trailing behind as it drifts through the water.⁠ ⁠ These delicate jellies are found in oceans around the world, from the surface to depths of 3,300 meters (10,000 feet), where they feed on tiny krill and copepods. Their transparent dome and flowing tentacles are a reminder that some of the ocean's most remarkable animals are also among its smallest.

[dinoswordsb]

This is in no way the best way to post it but it is the only way I could get the format to stay

[the-hydroxian-artblog]

Kilroy is actually the most terrifying machine lifeform ever holy shit.

the best part: he's nothing but flesh and blood! thanks for appreciating him. he freaks me out

He only has his "weird" face on when he no longer sees a need to appear human. It usually also means that the witness is not going to be a liability much longer.

[mathematikerin-freyja]

Contemplating a future where you can buy some tools and create your own custom insects from scratch in a specialised bug workshop. The first rule would be always make the bugs look more scary. The second rule would be always attach more knees. Spikes too if you got em in stock. Aside from that though it would be pretty free form artistic expression, and maybe there would be a television show where people show off their most imaginative new species of insects. I know what I would invent if bug workshop were a real hobby. Do you?

[m---a---x]

I think genemodding bugs is comparably easy to diy

To get more knees you need more legs or more knees per leg. Both can be done by controlling the gene sequence responsible for the general bodyplan (the hox system). I forgot the reference, but i saw someone explain it by demonstrating how to add extra segments to a centipede (or millipede?). Your creation might not be livable anymore though and working with (pre-)embrionic insect stemmcells is probably a bit of a pain. All of that should be reasonably well understood though, there is a lot of literature about it

[m---a---x]

Regarding the hox system, the same channel has a video explaining it starting at 18:50

[overflowchute]

one of my favorite silly 3d reality revelations i ever had was when i read a puzzle of sorts which was like. Okay, so if all directions are the same and totally arbitrary, why is it that mirrors only reflect images horizontally and not vertically? :) It's fun to think about

[overflowchute]

The one who flipped… WAS YOU!