Things found on my desk

a black cat and physics texts

[serialnumber002]

canada lynx voted the animal of all time. Boy why are you so paws

[serialnumber002]

put those thigns away

[5149eszter]

[rohirric-hunter]

"You could get up early and do it before work" I could also wait for a magic beanstalk to start growing in my living room LMAO. Let's focus on things that happen in the real world

[windows-in-art]

Portrait Of An Enemy.

Lucia Heffernan

[dark-magician-girl-meets-world]

Okay, can we talk about Lucia Heffernan though?

[wileycap]

I think the most hilarious place to put Post-Canon Sokka would have been the university at Ba Sing Se. I think he would have made a great unhinged professor. Also, in true Sokka fashion, he should have completely dodged fame. Momo is more famous than he is.

He wants to demonstrate to the class how this thing called electricity works, so he's going to be bringing in a Firebender, so everybody be cool, we're all friends here... and in walks Princess Azula of the Fire Nation. One-time conqueror of the city. One of the students is currently writing an essay on how her brief rule of the city affected fruit trade. She says she considers the class to still be her subjects as she doesn't acknowledge any pretenders to any of her thrones, but for now you're exempted from bowing and "Your Highness" will do. It's a really interesting lecture.

"Okay, guys - hey, listen up, everyone - I won't be here next week, me and Aang are going to-" yeah right, sure, Professor Sokka knows the Avatar. Except, of course, the Avatar walks in sheepishly and says that Appa might have gotten into Sokka's hybrid crops, and then you all have to sit there and watch your professor chase the Avatar around with a sword.

One postgrad student is specializing in Water Tribe Cultures. She's currently studying the massive cultural shift that happened in the Northern Water Tribe at the end of the war - oh, and Professor, I absolutely know that you're from the Southern Water Tribe, but it's just that the shift started with Master Katara, and of course I don't think that every person from the South knows one another haha it's just that I need to ask her some questions and I thought maybe you could help me write a letter or write a letter of introduction or...

Sokka looks at her blankly and goes "yeah, she's my sister. KATARA!" which is followed by a faint answering "fuck you!" from Somewhere and to the horror/elation of our postgrad, Master Katara bursts in and is promptly beaned in the head with a rock by Professor Sokka. Her brother. her hero and her professor are siblings and currently brawling on the floor.

Sokka does not teach or study history, but he does sometimes sit in on lectures about recent history. Whenever he does, several doctoral students flock in to sit near him (even if it's an intro course) so that they can eavesdrop on his grumbling. (No matter how they try, an "overheard utterance" is not a valid source according to their professors. No, we have no sources on the Avatar's bison taking part in combat - sky bison are not war animals and...)

He gets regular deliveries with the Beifong family crest on them, and he goes "sweet, Toph must have found some new minerals" and at this point nobody needs to ask which Toph. He seems to have friends everywhere, literally everywhere. Wang was headed out to this massive swamp to study if it's one big organism, and Sokka told him to find some guy named Hue and "don't mind the loincloth." One time the university gets shut down because the Earth King wants to visit. Oh, visit the University? What an honor- Of fucking course not, he wants to visit Professor Sokka, who yells at him and his royal guards for interrupting his day. The Earth King and his many, many royal guards then sheepishly say sorry and file out.

The last straw is when - not a week after he yelled at the Earth King - the assistant head of the Political Science dept walks in to the faculty lounge to find Sokka having tea with a nice normal man dressed in Earth greens for once, and can't resist a little joke. "Let me guess, you're having tea with the Fire Lord." And then she can instantly tell that she fucked up, because both of them go stock still.

So when the two men awkwardly stand up and proceed to introduce the Fire Lord whose portrait she has in her office because she is the assistant head of Political Science as Li, a server at the Jasmine Dragon, she just says "hello Li" and leaves to find a bottle of something strong.

[earendil-was-a-mariner]

The least realistic thing about the Lord of the Rings is that a team got together for a group project, decided everything in one meeting, and their plan worked.

[nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui]

The group abandoned the original plan halfway up Caradhras, split up several times, some group members started looking into different projects, found new partners and ended up doing something else, the original plan was abandoned early on, and the project was salvaged at the last moment by the one group member that didn’t get sidetracked. Sounds like a pretty astute description of teamwork to me

[charlesoberonn]

One of them also died.

[herpsandbirds]

Yellow-breasted or Indochinese Green Magpie (Cissa hypoleuca), BATH TIME!!!, family Corvidae, order Passeriformes, Viet Nam

photographs by Leo Ngo

[blackcatphysics]

I love corvids so much. The sheer range of colours they come in, how beautifully they photograph, and their ability to lend an air of creepy so effortlessly to any place they choose. Exhibit A: the only photo I've been able to get of the crow building a nest on the windowsill of my workplace. (The other windowsills are the territories of the pigeons. The bird spikes along the outside sill are nest support, not deterrents, to the local wildlife.)

I work in a 1932 building that used to be the City Coroner's Court, Morgue, and Autopsy, is now a museum, and is most definitely haunted. My co-worker pointed out that it looks like a hand, not a wing.

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

really enjoying all the videos Muslims have been posting of their cats looking like this

when the humans are up at 4 am for suhoor

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

[muslimgamer]

@petermorwood

[petermorwood]

رمضان مبارک

:->

[trek-tracks]

Thank god he has a PhD in Monkey Wrangling

[trek-tracks]

you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

[thefaeriefeatherdark]

I’m sure someones already said this but I often see Tumblr described as a hellsite. This is fundamentally incorrect.

Tumblr is the faesite. Everybody is super confused and lost, you keep running into random places. Somehow you end up stuck there forever after interacting a couple of times. The people are all strange, everybody simultaneously seems to be from the future and the past as if time is meaningless.

[stargazing-at-the-moon-deactiva]

YES

[amysnotdeadyet]

also technology breaks at random, and sometimes you just suddenly feel a thousand years old

[variablejabberwocky]

everybody has a half dozen names and none of them are their “real” name.

which name(s) you know gives you different powers over them.

there are Rules but you mostly have to figure them out for yourself.

getting the Rules wrong or breaking them can cost you more than you ever even knew you had.

Maximum Horny at all times

be careful what you wish for or you just might get it

Gift Of Prophecy

Illegal Use Of Bones

[wintersoldierfell]

Holidays are unusual but important and have very specific rites attached

[what-even-is-thiss]

Yeah I saw the lovecraftian horrors and didn’t succumb to madness. What- no I’m not a cultist, James. For Christ’s sake. What you’re forgetting my friend is that HP Lovecraft wasn’t a flexible man. His brain simply wasn’t stretchy enough to take it all in. I however, have short term memory issues. Flexibility is the name of the game when you can’t remember if you ate lunch or not. What’s the size of the universe? Big. You knew that already, James. Come on now. You don’t need to witness the terrifying ocean at the base of the entirety of reality itself to know that. Pass the brandy.

[what-even-is-thiss]

You must imagine the character I’ve created here wearing a suit and a monocle, by the way.

[thesilvertophat]

During a Eldritch Horrors based tabletop RPG my character was a young dandy who wasn't particularly interested in all this monster mystery stuff but his father (my brother's character) was a researcher who WAS very into it, so Bertie went along to make sure the old man didn't get into too much trouble. It was your average Eldritch Horrors RPG in that you don't make your characters with the expectation that they will survive for very long, both the game itself and the genre are very intent on turning your characters inside out, driving them insane, and blowing them up in no particular order.

The thing was, everything in this nightmare hellscape just seemed to keep coming up Bertie because the man was too stupid to realize what genre he was in. Every time he had to roll for a sanity check whenever he saw something crazy, the dice treated him so well that he just... didn't get it. Gee that sure is a funny costume. There's something wrong with that dog. These mean guys in stupid hats are trying to hurt that young lady, we can't have that! I had not built him this way, his intelligence stats weren't even that bad, random chance just made it so that this man was living a scooby doo adventure while everyone else was being consumed by The Horrors. The final straw was at the end of an adventure when Bertie escaped from the cultist headquarters by breaking out through the mansion's front window on a motorcycle with a hot rescued sacrificial maiden clinging to his back and leading the cultists on a merry chase through the hedge maze while the other adventurers escaped. His sanity score? HIGHER than when the adventure had begun. He had found the whole experience quite thrilling and felt very good about life in general! Bertie retired from adventuring to marry the maiden he rescued and care for his aging father and delight and bemuse his friends at the gentleman's club with stories of his 'wacky' adventures. I didn't want to risk breaking his ridiculous lucky streak.

[themoonwritesblog]

link HERE 👈🏽 for the I Forgot Coffee Mug ☕ a perfect gift

[azuralt-deactivated20240129]

[r-dtoblack]

oh big speckled paws we're really in it now

[wizardarchetypes]

everyone say “i love you practical effects.” via alexgv_ee on Instagram (by the time my queue posts this, the TikTok ban will have likely happened)

[making-friendos]

A copper retriever with her unoxidised puppies

[making-friendos]

Such a beautiful family ❤️💚

[2nd100yrs]

Lilian Harvey, 1928

[fixomnia-scribble]

Same girl same.

[blackcatphysics]

The only thing missing is the cat that claimed the lap. (And if you think there isn't a lap there you've not lived with determined lap-cat)

[nickyflowers]

i bet there were guys in the 1800s who were super fucking Reddit about everything, but no one had the right word yet for why those guys were so annoying. so they just had to wonder

[doctorbluesmanreturns]

Der lästige Kavalier (The Annoying Gentleman), by Berthold Woltze, 1874.

[disgruntled-foreign-patriarch]

that is a "hello darkness my old friend" face if I ever saw one.

[safetynot9uaranteed]

Cybersmith off his shits

[marzipanandminutiae]

keep in mind also that this girl is

A. A teenager, since her hair is almost fully down (the longer skirt and her traveling alone make me think maybe 14-15), and

B. In mourning, as evidenced by her entirely matte and unornamented black dress, gloves, and hat

so this guy is pestering a young girl who's just lost someone close to her, in absence of clear social cues meant to convey exactly that

[shinyhappygoth]

I recently saw it pointed out elseTumblr that, a remarkably easy detail to miss, she is going for her hatpin. The clear social cues are about to escalate.

[lyricwritesprose]

I for one think that is very valid of her and that hatpinning That Guy should still be considered a socially acceptable and perhaps even laudable option.

[splicerthedicer]

I recently watched a really good video about this:

[madenthusiasms]

“He fell onto my hat pin. He fell onto my hat pin ten times.”

[blackcatphysics]

I'd always missed the hand moving towards the hat pin when I saw this picture .

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Yellowjacket-Mimicking Moth: this is just a harmless moth that mimics the appearance and behavior of a yellowjacket/wasp; its disguise is so convincing that it can even fool actual wasps

This species of moth (Myrmecopsis polistes) is one of the most impressive wasp-mimics in the world. The moth's narrow waist, teardrop-shaped abdomen, black-and-yellow patterning, transparent wings, smooth appearance, and folded wing position all mimic the features of a wasp. Unlike an actual wasp, however, it does not have any mandibles or biting/chewing mouthparts, because it's equipped with a proboscis instead, and it has noticeably "feathery" antennae.

There are many moths that use hymenopteran mimicry (the mimicry of bees, wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, and/or bumblebees, in particular) as a way to deter predators, and those mimics are often incredibly convincing. Myrmecopsis polistes is one of the best examples, but there are several other moths that have also mastered this form of mimicry.

Above: Pseudosphex laticincta, another moth species that mimics a yellowjacket

These disguises often involve more than just a physical resemblance; in many cases, the moths also engage in behavioral and/or acoustic mimicry, meaning that they can mimic the sounds and behaviors of their hymenopteran models. In some cases, the resemblance is so convincing that it even fools actual wasps/yellowjackets.

Above: Pseudosphex laticincta

Such a detailed and intricate disguise is unusual even among mimics. Researchers believe that it developed partly as a way for the moth to trick actual wasps into treating it like one of their own. Wasps frequently prey upon moths, but they are innately non-aggressive toward their own fellow nest-mates, which are identified by sight -- so if the moth can convincingly impersonate one of those nest-mates, then it can avoid being eaten by wasps.

Above: Pseudosphex laticincta

I gave an overview of the moths that mimic bees, wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, and bumblebees in one of my previous posts, but I felt that these two species (Myrmecopsis polistes and Pseudosphex laticincta) deserved to have their own dedicated post, because these are two of the most convincing mimics I have ever seen.

Above: Pseudosphex sp.

I think that moths in general are probably the most talented mimics in the natural world. They have so many intricate, unique disguises, and they often combine visual, behavioral, and acoustic forms of mimicry in order to produce an uncanny resemblance. Moths are just so much more interesting than people generally realize.

Sources & More Info:

Journal of Ecology and Evolution: A Hypothesis to Explain Accuracy of Wasp Resemblances

Entomology Today: In Enemy Garb: A New Explanation for Wasp Mimicry

iNaturalist: Myrmecopsis polistes and Pseudosphex laticincta

Transactions of the Entomological Society of London: A Few Observations on Mimicry