If I were an evil emperor in a fantasy world, I would have a an enormous aviary full of exotic birds that are exceptionally well cared for. They would be from a distant enough land that there would be very few people in my kingdom that knew much about them, they would be a friendly but not overly territorial species, and moderately intelligent. Like puffins. They would not, crucially, be able to imitate sounds and 'speak', but they would be very trainable and curious. Occasionally importing new birds for my aviary would be the Big Frivolous Indulgence that my political enemies make fun of.
I will also have a sorceror in my employ. When a hero or a renegade or a political rival is in a situation where I can safely kill them, they will instead be turned into a bird and added to my aviary. I would not brag about this; it would be a complete secret, known only to me and my sorceror. In situations where I capture multiple people working together, only one would go in the aviary;the others can be imprisoned or killed or whatever. If they escape and I reacquire them later, another one can go in the aviary. The point here is that nobody going in the aviary can safely assume that another bird in there is their teammate.
Because I would be trickling real birds in there, too. And I would train some of them to do 'intelligent' things like tap out prime numbers or scratch shapes into the dirt with their beaks. I would train some of them to pick at the locks and bars as if they were trying to escape. I would not train them all the same way, or train many of them at all.
Sometimes, a new bird goes into the aviary -- fellow revolutionary? Or just a bird? Is it trying to communicate to you that it's human, or just being friendly and imitating you because that's what smart friendly birds do? People would develop opinions and theories over time. They'd amass in a group of the smartest ones, pretty sure that they're closest four or five friends are humans, are using their invented little language of wing-flaps and trills with a human mind behind it... but can they ever really be sure?
Most people, when going into the aviary, would assume that all of the birds are captured enemies. So why are some of them hard to have ongoing communication with, to learn about, to plan with? Are these the natural communication barriers of someone in a bird body, or does being a bird make them stupider over time? Will that happen to them also?
Sometimes, if I capture a pair, I'll imprison them separately, then turn one into a bird and put them in the aviary at the same time as a real bird that's trained to have a couple of their partner's mannerisms.
When I interact with the birds, even in private, I won't secretly mock them or make clever veiled references to their past or act at all like I remember that they were once human. They are my birds, that I imported at great expense. And I've brought a treat for them; some fresh fruit, and another friend to share it with! A new bird!
#on tumblr thereso many 'if i were evil' ideas that aren't evil. and then there's this guy. 10/10 villainy. would scar an entire generation.#full villain approval
Look, Evil Emperor is a high bar. Empires are pretty evil by default so if you want to earn the title of Evil Emperor instead of Normal Emperor then you've really gotta put the work in. You can't just do normal greed and oppression and slavery and outright theft and then blame your victims for it, every empire does that, even the ones that pretend they aren't by calling the slavery and theft by some different name. If you wanna be an Evil Emperor then you have to get creative.
If I were an evil empress then I would execute people via an esoteric mind blast power where I'd lead them into a room and burn away their personalities and memories until they were an empty vessel and then send them home to their families, newly innocent and pardoned, where they'd have to be taught who they were and how to live from the ground up like a baby. (Or abandoned, I suppose, depending on the family.) Except I wouldn't actually have any such powers. I'd have a shapeshifting power that I'd use to turn my enemies into a piece of furniture and turn that piece of furniture into them, then send home a polymorphed candlestick or whatever for their family to dote on while my enemy goes on the table to hold candles for the rest of their 'life'.
#see Derin knows how to evil it up#just curious why the emperor is an avid bird collector and the empress chose interior design#is there anything behind that choice?#also it seems like the emperor needs a sorcerer to do his dirty work while the empress does it herself#or does she have a sorcerer also#or a sorceress#I'm taking notes but i have questions for the teacher
Because the specific stereotypes for this type of evil emperor involve a man being too frivolous and and easily distracted by sadism and therefore easy for someone more intelligent and with a specific skill to control (evil sorceror), and the woman equivalent is too direct and aggressive and self-assured. Distractible, dependent women or self-assured, self-reliant men in these types of stories are heroes (unless there's something else to be used to make them evil, like turning them into a jealous mother-in-law). These sorts of fantasy stories fucking love gender roles, but in a subtle way so they can hide it behind an empowering female lead and make you sound like a buzzkill if you point out the trend.
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
i know things are hella grim in the nsfw/kink art circles especially in the last year --
but I'm hearing there's a NSFW-friendly ko-fi alternative built on atproto that's actively in the works, and being vetted by lawyers right now. as torrent-princess (OP) says, you should be able to swap out payment processors while keeping your account intact. this matters since even if stripe removes support, you'll still have a shop and all of your links intact. (ATproto is an infrastructure that bsky is built on, but is far bigger than bsky with far more opportunities.)
additionally, the Free Speech Coalition is working on a credit union specifically for adult work (including kink art) - here's the link so you can add your interest & support. Since this will be built by sex workers, there'll be far less risk of being debanked for spurious and puritanical reasons.
on a domain TLD level, there's an initiative here for a .furry domain built from the ground up by seasoned furries; it's unclear whether they'll support NSFW, but it's yet another promising turn of events for a group that's been similarly affected by censorship.
there are friends and allies out there helping to build a working parallel infrastructure. keep being vocal, keep supporting these initiatives when it's possible, and keep supporting your nsfw/kink artists. ♥
Knight getting older… knight with a bit of grey coming in… knight who finds it a little harder to put on his armour and walk the castle… knight with old battle injuries and faded scars
Today I wanted to talk about Kyle Bassinga. Kyle was a 21 year old man from Georgia, whose family described him as "a kind, thoughtful, and smart young man who loved nature, music, and the people around him". Kyle Bassinga was killed on February 18th 2026, just ten days after his birthday. He was found hanging from a tree in a park.
The police ruled it a suicide. The family and local community demanded an investigation. The police refused to change their ruling.
I know this website it too white for this to really go anywhere, but an understanding of the present reality of white supremacy in the United States is just so important to transfeminism here. Lynchings never stopped, white supremacy never went away, you just stopped looking.
@togglesbloggle commented on a post of mine expressing interest in hearing about the transition between hunter-gatherers and farmers in prehistoric Britain. Hence, I read up on the Mesolithic, the period between the Ice Age and the arrival of farming in Europe, and produced this post.
Mesolithic Timeline
The Early Mesolithic begins around 9300 BC, at the end of the Ice Age in Britain, and ran until 7900 BC [1]. Humans had been extirpated from Britain during the Last Glacial Maximum (23,000 – 11,000 BC), at the end of the Ice Age, when expanding ice sheets reduced the country to a polar desert [2] and were re-introduced in the Early Mesolithic through settlers following the coasts (in northern England) and the River Thames and its tributaries (in southern England) and left behind little but stone tools, with the exception of a deer hunting camp at Star Carr in the northeastern English county of Yorkshire (you will be hearing a lot about Star Carr in this post – it’s the best-preserved and best-studied British Mesolithic site). Then came the Middle Mesolithic (8300-6800 BC), marked by settlement across all of Britain, burials in Wales and southwest England and the appearance of hearths, pits and hazelnut shells in the archaeological record. Then we get the Late Mesolithic (7100-4500 BC), marked by middens (a fancy term for waste heaps), reuse of older pits, internal trade in stone, cave burials in Wales and cremations in southern England. Finally we have the Terminal Mesolithic (4500-3500 BC) marked by international trade – such as Danish stone axes in Scotland and Irish ones in northwest England – before farming, permanent settlement, pottery, polished stone axes, leaf-shaped flint arrowheads and the other marks of the Neolithic period began [3].
The Mesolithic Environment
After the ice retreated, for a period Britain looked like Alaska does today [4], but birch and pine soon sprang up, and hazel, lime, oak and elm followed as the climate became warmer and wetter [5]. Known mammal species in this environment include hedgehogs, moles, various types of shrews and voles, hares, beavers, red squirrels, dormice, foxes, wolves, weasels, stoats, pine martens, otters, badgers, brown bears, wildcats, lynx, wild boar, red and roe deer, elks and aurochs [6]. Rising rainfall levels also meant that bogs appeared [7], and from the aforementioned Star Carr we have a record of bog flora and fauna – a landscape mostly of reeds peppered with other species like water lilies and bulrushes and birch, willow, aspen and polar for trees, inhabited by aquatic insects like pond skaters and water beetles [8]. The temperature rose as the era wore on, with the Early Mesolithic having an average winter temperature of -4°C (24.8°F) and an average summer temperature of 12.5°C (54.5°F) [9], while the later Mesolithic was on average 2°C warmer than Britain today [10].
Mesolithic People
Human remains from Mesolithic Britain are rare – there are only 28 sites from the period with human remains, and 22 of them have had the skeletons broken into pieces [11] – but from genetic analysis on one of the few complete skeletons we have, found in Cheddar Gorge in southwest England and thus named Cheddar Man, we know that they had dark brown skin, black hair and blue eyes [12]. None of their clothing has survived, but it seems likely that it was made of leather, since Star Carr may have been a leatherworking site – it has a disproportionate number of scrapers and awls and evidence of collection of moss and bracket fungus, which may have been used in tanning – and Dozmary Pool in southwest England has a similar collection of Mesolithic hide-working tools [13]. We do, however, have good evidence for jewellery, with bone, amber and shale beads (a few with lines carved into them) from various sites, a shale pendant with lines carved into it at Star Carr [14] and a cowrie shell with holes in it found in a midden near Oban on the west coast of Scotland [15]. Mesolithic populations were extremely low, with an average population density of 0.02 people per square kilometre [16] and, based on surviving hunter-gatherer societies, probably consisted of small, highly egalitarian groups where authority was based on knowledge and experience, war was rare and violence was mostly used against would-be tyrants [17]. The role of gender in the Mesolithic has not been thought about much, and most writing about it has assumed a men-as-hunters and women-as-gatherers model which may not have been the case [18].
Mesolithic Technology
The standard Mesolithic toolkit consisted of burins (stone tools used for working bone and antler), barbed points made from bone and antler, stone axes used for dealing with trees and, in particular, microliths [19], small triangular flint blades which are the most common Mesolithic artifact [20] which are most likely arrowheads. In addition to those, we have the aforementioned scrapers and awls, used for hide work [21], and harpoons found in various places – including Carriden on the east coast of Scotland [22] and in the River Thames [23]. In terms of the stone used, flint is the one that probably comes to mind, and was dominant in some areas such as northeast Scotland [24], but other important tool-making stones included quartz, chert [25], bloodstone from the island of Rhum and pitchstone from the Isle of Arran, both on the west coast of Scotland [26]. An important stone source was the Isle of Portland off the south coast of England, which furnished chert used all over southwest England and (since it's only found at the largest Mesolithic sites) probably exchanged at feasts and meetings of tribes [27]. One of the main parts of Star Carr’s notability is its large collection of wooden artifacts, including a platform made of birch branches built over the water, wooden rods that may have been meant for basketweaving, construction (such as wicker fences) or making charcoal, a canoe paddle and rolls of birch bark [28] probably meant for extracting resin [29] in order to attach microliths to arrow shafts [30].
Mesolithic Settlements
The most notable Mesolithic settlement is Mount Sandel in Ireland, a settlement in Northern Ireland excavated in the 1970s [31] consisting of a set of pit-houses formed by circular arrangements of postholes (as wooden posts rot, they discolour the soil they stood in – this is how archaeologists can detect them) around hearths, with radiocarbon dates from the hearths suggesting they remained in use over decades, [32] and with a probable population of 8-12 people [33]. Other known Mesolithic houses in Britain, such as at Howick in northeast England and Criet Dubh on the west coast of Scotland, follow the same pattern [34]. We also have a stone structure, in the form of a possible windbreak from Rushey Brow in northwest England [35].
Mesolithic Food
Isotope analysis (chemical analysis of the ratios of isotopes of different elements in bone, in particular carbon and nitrogen, to determine things about that person's diet) suggest that Mesolithic people had a level of meat in their diet similar to carnivores [36], with the most important animal being red deer [37], which people gathered together to hunt in winter and disbanded in summer when resources (particularly plants) were more plentiful and thus cooperation less necessary [38]. Mesolithic people had domesticated dogs, whose job was probably to aid with hunting [39]. The other major source of meat was fishing, and what was caught varied greatly from place to place; on the Isle of Portland it was mainly crabs [40], on Caldey Island off the south coast of Wales it was mainly seals [41], on the Scottish island of Oronsay it was overwhelmingly fish [42] and the aforementioned midden near Oban was mostly made of limpet shells [43]. By contrast, Irish Mesolithic people lived by hunting boar and catching freshwater fish, particularly eels and salmon [44].
For plant resources, hazelnuts are the most common, being found in virtually all Mesolithic sites [45]. Interestingly, hazel was probably deliberately cultivated by Mesolithic people by lighting forest fires - many extant hunter-gatherer cultures start fires in order to send signals, drive prey towards traps, create pathways and open spaces or (relevantly here) cultivate certain types of vegetation [46], hazel has a high resistance to fire and the appearance of hazel pollen in soil layers often correlates with charcoal [47] - in spite of this, there doesn't seem to have been any substantial anthropogenic deforestation in the Mesolithic [48]. Other notable plants include water lily tubers at Star Carr [49] and Mount Sandel, apple at Mount Sandel and near Oronsay [50] and berries - including blackberries, sloes [51], crowberries and hawthorn berries [52] - at many sites.
Mesolithic Religion
One of the main sources of information for Mesolithic religion is looking at religious beliefs and practices of extant hunter-gatherer societies and looking for common themes. And there's an extensive list of common themes - rites of passage, sacred places, spiritual importance of animals, a three-tiered world (land, sky and sea or heaven, earth and underworld), shamans interceding with spirits, clean and unclean spaces [53], supernatural beings creating distinctive landscape features and being active within it, meaningful names given to landscape features, hearths as the places for telling stories, fire as a means of summoning and communicating with spirits [54] and so on.
For actual Mesolithic evidence of religion, the most famous is a set of headdresses made from deer antlers found at Star Carr. The two common theories are that they were used as deer disguises to allow hunters to creep up on deer, or that they were used in ritual dances - both are anthropologically documented, the former in North America and the latter in Siberia, and since the latter is more similar to Early Mesolithic England, the latter explanation is more likely [55]. Antler masks and headdresses are found in many cultures, since deer are an important food source and deer antlers are visually striking while the top of deer skulls are easy to place on top of human heads [56]. Other potential ritual objects include stone tools and harpoons dumped in the water on the same site, a shale carving - of a phallus, hips, or both - from Nab Head in southwest Wales and harpoons, and human remains disarticulated and mixed into middens on Oronsay [57], and the engraved pendant from Star Carr mentioned at the top, which may have represented a sacred tree (although of course this is highly speculative). For sacred sites, water was a major theme, with depositions of objects inside water such as at Bath Hot Springs in southwest England, and platforms built on water such as the one at Star Carr and ones at Clowanstown and Lough Moynagh in southeast Ireland - while they may be for fishing, they're more likely to be ritual sites, since it's far easier to build a boat [58], which we know Mesolithic British people had thanks to the aforementioned paddle at Star Carr and a probable boat fragment at Bouldnor Cliff on the south coast of England [59].
Burials are some of our main evidence for religion in most prehistoric cultures, and that holds true here. While there's plenty of diversity - cremation, disarticulation, individual and collective burials, burials with and without grave goods and even the burial of a dog - the standard was bodies being broken up (whether by dismemberment or being fed to animals) and placed in middens [60], which may reflect "dividuality", an anthropological concept where societies see humans as being constituted by their relationships rather than having an inherent identity. Finally, on Loughan Island in the River Bann in Northern Ireland, we have a harpoon tip made of human bone, which was likely done to channel the power of the person who the bone came from [61].
References
Conneller, C., and Griffiths, S., 2024, “Time and Change in Mesolithic Britain, c.9800-3600 calBC”, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, vol.90, pp.319-352
Lang, A., and Preston, P., 2008, “The Palaeolithic Period” in The Handbook of British Archaeology, Adkins, R., Adkins, L., Leitch, V. (eds.), London: Constable, pp.1-22
Conneller and Griffiths 2024
Osthoek, K. J., 2013, “The Nature and Development of the Forests Since the Last Ice Age” in Conquering the Highlands: A History of the Afforestation of the Scottish Highlands, ANU Press, pp.11-32
Evans, J. G., 1975, The Environment of Early Man in the British Isles, Elek Books: London, p.81
Maroo, S., and Yalden, D. W., 2000, “The Mesolithic Mammal Fauna of Great Britain”, Mammal Review, vol. 30, issues 3 and 4, pp.243-248
Evans 1975 p.94
Taylor, B. and Allison, E, 2018, “Palaeoenvironmental Investigations” in Milner, N., Conneller, C. and Taylor, B. (eds.), Star Carr Volume 2: Studies in Technology, Subsistence and Environment, York: White Rose University Press, pp. 123–149.
Pitts, M., 1979, “Hide and Antlers: A New Look at the Gatherer-Hunter Site at Star Carr, North Yorkshire, England”, World Archaeology, vol.11, no.1, pp.32-42
Preston, P., 2008, “The Mesolithic Period” in The Handbook of British Archaeology, Adkins, R., Adkins, L., Leitch, V. (eds.), London: Constable, pp.23-35
Cobb, H., and Jones, A. G., 2018, “Being Mesolithic in Life and Death”, Journal of World Prehistory, vol.31 no.3, pp.367-383
Brace, S., Diekmann, Y., Booth, T. J., Faltyskova, Z., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Ferry, M., Michel, M., Oppenheimer, J., Broomandkhoshbacht, N., Stewardson, K., Walsh, S., Kayser, M., Schulting, R., Craig, O. E., Sheridan, A., Parker Pearson, M., Stringer, C., Reich, D., Thomas, M. G., Barnes, I., 2019, “Ancient genomes indicate population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain”, Nature, Ecology and Evolution, volume 3 issue 5, pp.765-771
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Milner, N., Bamforth, M., Beale, G., Carty, J.C., Chatzipanagis, K., Croft, S., Conneller, C., Elliott, B., Fitton, L.C., Knight, B., Kröger, R., Little, A., Needham, A., Robson, H.K., Rowley, C.C.A. and Taylor, B., 2016, “A Unique Engraved Shale Pendant from the Site of Star Carr: the oldest Mesolithic art in Britain”, Internet Archaeology, issue 40
Connock, K. D., Finlayson, B., Mills, A. C. M., Boardman, S. J., Crone, B. A., Hamilton-Dyer, S., McCormick, F., Lorimer, D. H., Morton, A., Russell, N. J., Carter, S., 1991, “Excavation of a Shell Midden Site at Carding Mill Bay near Oban, Scotland”, Glasgow Archaeological Journal, vol.19, pp.25-38
Smith, C., 1992, “The Population of Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Britain”, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, issue 58, p.37-40
Spikins, P., 2008, “’The Bashful and the Boastful’ Prestigious Leaders and Social Change in Mesolithic Societies”, Journal of World Prehistory, volume 21, issues 3 and 4, pp.173-193
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Andresen, J. M., Byrd, B. F., Elson, M. D., McGuire, R. H., Mendoza, R. G., Staski, E. and White, J. P., 1981, “The Deer Hunters: Star Carr Reconsidered”, World Archaeology, vol. 13 no.1, pp.31-46
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Tiger found caged in abandoned home gets second chance at wildlife sanctuary: ‘He seems to be so happy’
The estimated 350-pound tiger was transported to the facility, an affiliate of the Humane Society of the United States, on Wednesday afternoon, and is settling in well, Almrud said. There, he will have the chance to roam in enclosures of up to three acres.
Almrud, who estimates him to be about 2 years old, described the moment he first walked onto the grass at the sanctuary as remarkable.
“It was just amazing to see him walk out on grass and to see him explore and have that freedom of movement,” she said. “It was just such a reward and fulfilling to us.”
Now, he spends his days rolling around the grass in glee, Almrud said.
“He comes right up to the fence every time a staff member is present,” she said. “He seems very amenable to our presence.”
The tiger is eating well – a combination of chicken, humanely raised non-processed beef and whole prey complete with organs and bones. It appears that he was being fed chicken, which is what owners of exotic cats often feed them, but chicken alone does not provide the complete nutrition they need to thrive, Almrud said.
In addition, caregivers are tasked with keeping the tiger mentally stimulated by creating “pretend hunting” games and rotating him through different areas so he has access to new smells and environments to explore.
“He seems to happy and content,” Almrud said. “Our staff is just falling in love with him.”
we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason
i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3
unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it
i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map
i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs
this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.
crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.
June 1st is TOMORROW. It means that GAY PEOPLE will exist, but only for ONE MONTH. Do not forget to buy your tickets to see them NOW, or else you will have to wait AN ENTIRE YEAR to be able to meet them AGAIN.
Hey, wanna make music? Yeah? Got a buncha money? No? Well that's perfectly fine, check this free stuff out:
Vital - A powerful wavetable synth, my personal favorite VST synth, very easy to figure out creating new synth sounds, with the help of the plenty of tutorials that are out there for the plug-in. (There are paid versions but they are completely unnecessary to get 99% of the features of the plug-in.)
Synth1 - A classic piece of synthesizer software.
Pendulate - An interesting, chaotic synth that you can make weird little sounds with.
Native Instruments' free plug-ins - Various cool VSTs, including the Komplete Start pack.
The Free Orchestra - A set of orchestral instruments for Kontakt Player (see previous link).
BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover - More orchestral stuff! This one has its own player so you don't have to download a separate VST to use it if you don't want to.
Magical 8bit Plug - A chiptune plug-in, intended for producing sounds like that of 8-bit systems like the NES and Master System.
Genny - A synth VST made to emulate the soundchip of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.
MT Power Drum Kit - A nice rock n' roll style drum kit plug-in.
This guy's weird VST collection - 6.4 gigabytes of weird VSTs, including some you might know, like Delay Lama and MeowSynth!
sforzando - A free player for soundfont files.
Musical Artifacts - A resource I mainly use to find soundfonts, on which you can find other various things as well.
Kilohearts Essentials - 30 effect VSTs including reverb, delay, compression, pitch shifting, transient shaping, ring modulation, phase distortion, and more.
Xfer's freeware VSTs - Exactly what it says on the tin, including the one and only OTT compressor.
Illformed - The good ol' dblue Glitch 1.3, Crusher, Stretch, and TapeStop.
Hysteresis and Fracture - Two interesting glitch effects, one being a delay and the other being a buffer.
Codec - A cool digital audio degradation effect.
Le Phonk - A slick distortion plug-in.
MAIM - An effect that mimics the sound of MP3 compression.
Soundly Shape it and Place it - One is simply an equalizer VST, the other is an effect that emulates a speaker (ex: a radio) and a space (ex: a cave).
Fresh Air - An effect that adds high end information to your sounds, to provide brightness.
ValhallaSupermassive - A combo reverb and delay plug-in that sounds quite big.
UnplugRed - A collection of various interesting VSTs, most of which have free versions.
Chowdhury DSP - I can't personally speak for all of these but their tape model effect is great for some lo-fi style effects.
TAL-Chorus-LX - A thick sounding chorus, good for "retro" sounds too.
Polyverse Wider - A great effect for widening sounds up, really simple too with only two controls.
Freesound - A good audio file resource, mainly for foley recordings.
Cymbatics Dubstep Starter Pack - A little sample pack with some good drum and synth samples.
fishmonger drum kit - A pack of samples from the album 'fishmonger' by Underscores!
WangleLine's sample packs - Free samples put out by my awesome mutual WangleLine!
aaand I might as well include this set of drums I made a while back :P
As for DAWs, it's been a long while since I've used anything other than FL Studio (not counting Audacity, which I still occasionally use for specific purposes), which, while being the only one I can directly recommend, is paid. However, I've heard good things about Reaper which has a "free trial" that you can technically use forever, akin to WinRAR. Additionally, I've also heard some good things about Waveform Free.
Velvet Worms: these cute little creatures are actually voracious predators that capture their prey with a projectile slime known as the "silly string of death"
Onychophorans, also known as velvet worms, look almost like a cross between a caterpillar, a millipede, and a worm, but they actually belong to their own unique phylum.
Above: a velvet worm of the genus Eoperipatus
The velvet worm's fleshy antennae, chubby little feet, and gleeful expression might make it seem kind of cute, at least at first glance, but these creatures are ferocious predators that prey on terrestrial arthropods like crickets, cockroaches, and spiders. In order to immobilize their prey, they shower their victim with a remarkably strong and quick-drying adhesive.
Above: another Eoperipatus species
As this article explains:
The velvet worm, a squishy little predator that looks like the stretch-limo version of a caterpillar, has a whimsical MO: it administers death by Silly String.
In the leaf litter of tropical and temperate forests around the world, velvet worms stalk the night on dozens of stubby legs. The pocket-size predator—whose species range from less than half an inch to eight inches long—can barely see, so it bumbles around, hoping to literally bump into an edible bug such as a cricket or a woodlouse. When it finds one, the velvet worm uses nozzles on either side of its face to shoot jets of sticky slime at its victim.
Above: genus Peripatoides and genus Eoperipatus
Velvet worm slime is ejected as a liquid, but it rapidly hardens into a gel as it soars through the air, forming fibers that are as strong as nylon. The substance then solidifies into glassy adhesive fibers as soon as it hits the target, trapping the victim in an inescapable net.
The slime can hit its target from up to 1.5 feet away.
Above: close-up of a velvet worm spraying its slime
The slow-moving velvet worm then approaches its prey, pierces the victim's exoskeleton with a pair of blade-like jaws, uses its saliva to dissolve the insect's innards, and then quickly devours its meal.
Above: the velvet worm's horrifying face as it prepares to feed
Velvet worm slime is quick-setting, strong, dissolves in water, and can also be reconstituted into new fibers. The mechanisms that produce these properties were unknown until just 16 years ago, when an Australian scientist discovered that the slime contains "chaotic proteins:"
The proteins are loaded with amino acids that repel one another, and they’re short of the water-repelling ones that help other proteins to establish a solid core. Rather than folding, they adopt open and random structures that are extensively coated with water molecules. Their watery sheaths prevent the protein molecules from interacting with one another. They can only do so when the water disappears. And that’s exactly what happens when the slime hits its target.
Insects are covered in waxy, water-repellent shells, but the velvet worm’s slime contains fat and detergent molecules that break past this defence. These chemicals, and the sheer force with which the slime is shot, means that it spreads all over the victim. The insect’s struggles seal its fate by drawing the slime into threads. Spread over a large surface area, the water in the slime quickly evaporates, unsheathing the proteins and leaving them to mingle for the first time. They form tight chemical bonds with one another and the once-liquid slime hardens.
Above: Eoperipatus feeding on an unknown arthropod and Peripatoides suteri feeding on a harvestman
Velvet worms are some of the oldest terrestrial animals on Earth, dating back to nearly 540 million years ago, when most of the world's creatures were still confined to the oceans. They're older than dinosaurs, trees, sharks, and even horseshoe crabs.
Surprisingly, their morphology has changed very little in the last 400 million years or so -- their fossilized ancestors look remarkably similar to the velvet worms that are still roaming the earth today.
Above: assorted velvet worms
The world's smallest species of velvet worm is Ooperipatellus nanus, with a length of just 5mm (0.2 inches); the largest is Mongeperipatus solorzanoi, which can grow to a length of 22cm (8.7 inches). Velvet worms can have between 13 and 43 pairs of feet, depending on the species
Above: the tiny feet of a velvet worm
The term Onychophora literally means "claw-bearer," which is a reference to the hooked claw at the tip of each foot. Together, these claws allow the worm to travel across uneven terrain, but they can also retract as it moves onto smoother surfaces. When the claws are retracted, the worm simply walks on the stubby little pads of its feet.
Above: Epiperipatus barbadensis
Sources & More Info:
Phys.org: Velvet Worm Slime
National Mag Lab: Cracking the Chemical Code of the "Silly String of Death"
National Geographic: Scientists Uncover Secret of the Velvet Worm's Quick-Setting Slime
Scientific American: Velvet Worm Slime Reveals its Sticky Secrets
Journal of the American Chemical Society: Peculiar Phosphonate Modifications of Velvet Worm Slime Revealed
Onychophoran Website: Onychophora
ZooKeys: An Updated World Checklist of Velvet Worms
iNaturalist: Velvet Worms
Harvard Magazine: Creepy Crawlies and Sticky Murder Weapons at Harvard
soooo tired of sex and romance always being tied together in committed relationships in fiction. I want fiction where the characters are 1) utterly devoted to each other 2) regularly fucking each other's brains out 3) not at all romantically inclined. the romance can go, but the devotion and fucking can stay.
Hey, wild idea here, but when you click the box to add alt text, you should still be able to see the image that you're describing. You shouldn't have to write image descriptions from memory.
