JVL
One Nice Bug Per Day
oozey mess
titsay
Monterey Bay Aquarium
izzy's playlists!
Product Placement
Today's Document
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
taylor price
No title available
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
wallacepolsom
dirt enthusiast
AnasAbdin
Acquired Stardust
YOU ARE THE REASON
Keni
Not today Justin
art blog(derogatory)
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@blackmarkettrombones
Gentiles/non-Jews of Tumblr, how well did you do in the quiz on Judaism 101 linked below?
0
1-4
5-9
10-14
15-20
21-25
26-31
32 :)
I’m Jewish/show results
This is the quiz and I did not come up with it, credit goes to @iswearbyalltheflowers on this post.
Absolutely no judgment, I’m genuinely really curious and I figured more people would answer anonymously here than on the original post.
I love the textures in the water and how those colors turned out! . Daily drawing 2224
my "once a year" pixel art strikes back,,, uhh super sonic but with my dark sonic take kinda idk
What if... Sonic saved Shadow in the end of SA2
[Voice of someone meeting their soon-to-be best friend in the entire universe]: You made a mistake, Murderbot, a really bad mistake.
Animated version of panel 2 below the cut; warning for bright moving lights/eyestrain.
‘Stellar Radiance,’ by David A. Hardy, painted for The Challenge of the Stars with Patrick Moore in 1972
translation: STOP FLIRTING WITH THE GUY IM A CLONE OF IM TRYING TO FUCKING RACE
how did sonic even get him to take that?
Men Moments
Unexpected smiles …
Always reblog twirling man.
unexpected whimsy
something something the deeply ingrained instinct to respond when someone offers you a handshake fundamental need for humans to connect and the extension of hands as a peace gesture something something in this essay
This is very good news. Hereditary peers to be removed from the House of Lords.
Source.
local green idiot
local yellow is fighting the local purple idiot
Starting a reading for class, and...
"originally Bilgamesh"????
so glad this came up on my feed bc i made my own!!
it took me 4hrs to make and i gave him eyes and some starfish frends
if you really loved me you’d make me a strawbster
During lockdown I worked on two projects: one was a ditch that needed to be cleared out of tules and cattails but turtles lived there. So I’d follow the excavator scooping out the vegetation and make sure no turtles were trapped in it, and if they were, freeing them and putting them in a safe part of the ditch. It’s extremely muddy, sticky work. Hold on, I have a photo of one of the guys:
No one is having a good time.
The OTHER project was going to destroy rare salamander habitat and so we had to buy some appropriate habitat. But every mitigation bank was sold out. I found a guy selling future mitigation bank credits through the powers of making a lot of phone calls and then, through the power of polite requests, got our Wildlife Agency rep to sign off on this plan. Except. You can’t say “I gave seven figures to a guy who promises to someday make habitat”, that guy could abscond. You also can’t be like “I supes promise to pay for mitigation AFTER the project.” because WE could not pay out. We were, for various reasons, disinclined to delay the project. The Wildlife Agency rep — bless her, she really held my hand through this whole process — was like “how about you put the money in escrow?” Great. A plan.
So I call an escrow company — which was not an organization used to being cold-called, much less by someone standing next to an excavator, covered in mud. I was trying to provide only the information needed to enable success and NOT go on a five-ten minute rant on salamander life cycles. Also I was DEEPLY out of my depth.
“Hi! I was wondering if you could hold money in an escrow account for a longer period?”
“… Well, in some circumstances we can hold it for up to 90 days — but we’d need to know the circumstances.”
“Ah! I need someone to hold it for up to two years? Do you know of any companies who’d be able to help me?”
“What. What is happening with the house that this is necessary?”
“Oh uh. It’s not a house, per se, it’s a rare salamander mitigation bank. It needs to be built.”
“The salamanders need a custom house?”
“No no no no no uh. They need a pond. We’re paying someone to make a pond. But! They need time to make the pond. Hence the escrow account. So. Who could?”
“So like a lizard house?”
“They are amphibians?”
“Let me. Transfer you to my supervisor.”
<after a pause a different person comes on the line but also unfortunately at this moment the excavator operator fishes a turtle out of the ditch.>
“Hi! Sorry one second I need to put down the phone to help a turtle.” <interlude> “Thank you so much for waiting! I’m back! Can you talk to me about escrow options?”
“What was happening with the turtle?”
“Oh it was trapped in some cattails but I got it out. Sorry for putting down the phone — you need both hands to grab them because they bite! I need an escrow account to hold funds for up to two years?”
“For a house for lizards? Are you a zoo?”
“Ah! Salamanders, actually! And a mitigation bank, not a house. I actually work for X organization.”
“What is a mitigation bank?” (The critical question!)
“Oh when you’re building something and need to impact some rare species habitat you can pay someone to make new rare species habitat.”
“Huh.”
“But this habitat is incomplete! It doesn’t have a pond. So my organization won’t pay until AAAAAAAAA excuse me sorry I fell into a ditch. My organization needs there to be a pond there before they pay for the property. So one path forward is an escrow account.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes absolutely!”
“What’s the cost of this bank?”
“Two million dollars.”
<the tenor of the conversation became markedly warmer at this point.>
“OK if you get my your contact information then I’ll email you some options and then we can discuss — do you have time now?”
“Unfortunately I do not have email access right this second. Also I need to get out of the ditch. Could we put a pin in this conversation and circle back tomorrow?”
“Of course, I look forward to working with your organization?”
“Thank you so much!”
“Good luck with the. Ditch. And turtles?”
“Thank you! Have a great day!”
most fantasy books or fics i’ve read that contained a desert biome fell back on real world prejudice and misconceptions in place of authentic worldbuilding for a place and people, and it is so telling that the trope seems to repeat itself
things like
the desert as a lifeless wasteland where ‘life is crushed underneath the shifting sands and blazing sun’ blah blah blah. deserts are full of life and they are beautiful and people have lived and prospered in them for eons. please read a book
the desert as an ugly or barren terrain where everything is harsh and threatening
the desert as something scary
the inhabitants as backwards religious zealots
the men as overly violent and oppressive
the inhabitants in need of outside instruction/intervention, i.e. “civilizing the savage”
the “harem” and women as exotic, sensual, mysterious
writing tribalism with no knowledge of how tribes actually function
djinn (or for the westerners, genies)
Islam Lite (the aesthetics or spiritual practices appropriated and stripped of meaning)
sprinkling random arabic words for ✨flavor✨instead of expanding your worldbuilding to include language as well
clothing as oppressive or mysterious, instead of serving its actual purpose (protecting you from the elements, which should be obvious but i guess it isn’t. covering your skin keeps you cooler and safer in most deserts)
people who live in deserts as ignorant, superstitious, uneducated
this isn’t worldbuilding, it’s just ignorance and bigotry
So true!
To anyone writing stuff set in the Mojave/Sonoran Deserts (and maybe the Colorado?) Please please please look up Palo Verde forests!! The trees are green but completely bare of leaves- they photosynthesize directly through their bark. And instead of leaves they have spikes! It's so trippy and cool to be walking through a lush green forest knowing that the nearest water is 50+ miles away.
Other Mojave/Sonoran specific things:
There's tortoises! They're pretty rare to see but you can often find their burrows, or sometimes skeletons
Nightjars will wait till you get super close and then fly up, scaring the crap out of you
There are areas called 'desert asphalt', which are large expanses of black volcanic rock. Looks totally different from any other part of the desert
There are jackrabbits everywhere
Everywhere there aren't jackrabbits there's lizards
It's actually pretty loud; there's loads of insects- mainly crickets and the like- but also lots of birds! You won't see them but by God you will hear them
Wildflower blooms in the rainy season are the most beautiful thing you'll ever see in your life. There will be so many flowers that you never even knew existed
If you live near any mountain range, you'll actually see thunderstorms fairly often. You'll never actually get rained on, but there's almost always thunder on the mountains, especially in the evening. Idk maybe that's a metaphor or something
Source: I lived on the edge of the Mojave and Sonoran for a bit, and most of my job involved wandering around the desert for 8 hours a day
