Bi-ology. i. haha. geddit

usually screaming about CR or biology - rarely use tags, sorry! sometimes posts art or writing. Maggie/Aggy, she/her, 27, bi, biologist, Canadian

[blorbologist]

On the Backburner

Royai / M / Riza Character Study, Post-Promised Day, PTSD, Injury Recovery Complete!

Chapter 5: Just Three Days

"Thanks, Lieutenant," Alphonse sighs. A brittle cascade of straw-gold hair falls to each snip of her scissors. He sits very still, though she can tell he wants to lean back or feel out her progress. "This feels better already!"

Riza chuckles, musses his bangs - no, that's not settling quite right. She takes a little more length off; Alphonse reflexively closes his eyes.

"I know you and the Colonel got hurt pretty bad, and you must be really busy with military stuff too," he continues hesitantly, "but I really appreciate that you could visit today."

Of course. He asked for her.

(Not as an extension of Colonel Mustang - because she's Lieutenant Hawkeye and he remembers she used to keep her hair short. She shouldn't be so surprised; Edward trudged to her door to return a gun and ask about Ishval, all those months ago. He'd never seek out the Colonel like that.)

(She's going to miss these boys.)

(Has missed them; the Colonel has neglected to visit, and it wouldn't do for his adjunct to visit alone. He would probably throw a fit.)

(He couldn't exactly say no to such an earnest request. They're leaving tomorrow; Alphonse has another month of monitored recovery ahead.)

Alphonse's hair almost blends in with the white towel on his shoulders. Riza brushes some off, using the pause to peek out of the bathroom. Edward is curling a small, brightly-colored dumbbell with his reclaimed arm, talking animatedly with Mustang as he does the same. Seems the Colonel is irritated to have been left with a lighter weight to work with. She catches something about 520 cenz and inflation and investment. And Führer.

[CH1] [Keep reading on AO3!]

[rohie-deactivated20191102]

“Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

— I Know What You Think of Me, Tim Kreider for the New York Times

[owlmylove]

after YEARS of seeing this quote online and finding it to be the most deeply and resoundingly profound writing i finally found the source article and absolutely nothing could prepare me for this opening paragraph

[bi-icon]

Okay but the whole article is really interesting and also contains this quote which I’ve never heard before but really like:

“Anyone worth knowing is inevitably also going to be exasperating”

[feignedsobriquet]

i love @makingtrouble's poem for their cat, socks, so so very much i needed to eat it draw it 🥹🥺

[codes-and-stuffs]

i do think we should normalise being like. platonically enamoured with someone. perhaps i love and admire you dearly and there's nothing romantic about it

[quietsphere]

It's so funny when yt people are watching old 2d animations and say shit like "wow this movie holds up so well for how old it is" YEAH because art is eternal and the technology is not. that's why good art direction will always outlive the futile pursuit of hyperrealism, which will always show all the faults and wrinkles of the technology available at the time. a good ass painting will forever be a good ass painting if only there are eyes to see it.

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Being an adult will have you unironically craving a vegetable

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Being an adult will have you unironically sad about a parasite outbreak in fresh vegetables.

[lesvegas]

passing in public makes me feel like white shrek

[lesvegas]

literally how it feels

[welpnotagain]

[valtsv]

"here's my original character, Man Who Sucks But Loves His Daughter Very Much" and it's a guy who worships at the altar of patriarchal violence and the woman he uses as an excuse and an effigy to absolve him

[valtsv]

well i think his daughter should tell him to kill himself

[baatjr-deactivated20150830]

yes teenage girls can be dramatic and wild but honestly have u ever even seen what happens when u tell a grown man ‘no’

[guooey]

themessangerpigeons

[guooey]

Tears

[hunter-rodrigez]

So I do 3D modeling and printing as a hobby, and a few weeks ago I designed wheel guards meant to prevent office chairs from running over cables and clothes... or your pet's tail.

I got the idea from cowcatchers old locomotives used to have.

Anyways, yesterday I uploaded the model to Thingiverse, and just hours after uploading it, the Community Relationship Manager of the whole website left a comment suggesting I enter the model into a competition that's currently being held on the site.

So I did... and now it's in third place not even a day later. First place is $500, but the competition still has a month to go.

Then the Community Manager contacted me again, telling me they want to feature my model in an upcoming design promotion.

Just, what is happening? I mostly made this thing for myself in, like, an hour, and now it's suddenly super popular? This is all a little bit overwhelming 😵‍💫

Other models I worked on for weeks didn't get nearly as popular. I swear, it's impossible to predict what people will like.

Anyways, if you want to print the wheel guards yourself, you can get the model here or here.

I also made a quiet version you can stick furniture felt pads on.

[chekhovs-raygun]

@bonyfish

[pingo1387]

having a headache while hydrated is so unfair. you were supposed to protect me.

[shower-thoughts-last-responder]

Waking up from a nap and still having a headache is so unfair. You were supposed to save me.

[json-derulo]

having the Aviation Accident Investigations Autism™️ has actually done wonders for the way I process and respond to my own fuck-ups

[json-derulo]

And I don't just mean "oh, my little work mistake is actually nothing compared to a fiery crash that kills people," either. The reason commercial flight is so many orders of magnitude safer than any other form of transportation is because after every accident and incident, an independent regulatory body investigated it with the express goal of figuring out exactly what happened, why, and how to prevent the same thing from ever happening again—not to root out which person deserved the blame or the liability.

It's a simple, shockingly effective idea. It's also worlds away from how most people approach their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

[json-derulo]

Because it’s never just one person’s fault. And even when it is, it still isn’t. 

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

Everyone eventually has a bad day. Every component breaks down. Every computer gets a bad a Windows update and spirals into a reboot doom loop. If it’s possible for one person’s mistake to domino into a mushroom cloud of a fuckup, then that task is too critical to be one person's sole responsibility. The accident sequence starts with the design of the system—so how do you improve the system to keep it from happening again?

[json-derulo]

oh yeah. The “modern commercial aviation is the safest form of transport” thing only applies to planes, btw. A helicopter is a beautiful metal horse that wants to break its legs and die so so so badly

[mizuthe-cat]

they should make a my friend that doesn’t have to go through ten william horrors every single day

[qqueenofhades]

I appreciate all us Tumblr oldsters absolutely roasting that "do you have any friends 4x your age" poll, truly.

[cringecorp]

they say you can't pour from an empty cup but i've been doing it my whole life and aside from all of these mysterious ailments it's working out great for me

[teaboot]

"I don't believe Tarot is real, but it does work"

Expand on that, king (genuinely curious)

I feel like…

okay, so it’s a lot like conceptual art, or like introspective meditation, at the risk of sounding pretentious

Like. It’s not so much about “the cards are a portal to a higher wisdom that knows more than me” thing- it’s more of a, “given the symbols drawn, could I interpret them posing a question or possibility or suggestion?” Followed by, “is this applicable to my current context? COULD it be?”

Like.

I don’t lay out á tarot hand and say “ah yes, the devil and the tower, I am about to be betrayed”

But I MAY lay out a hand and say, “okay, devil and the tower. Something treacherous and danger. Am I approaching a treacherous or risky situation in my life? What might be a tipping factor? Am I being deliberately reckless? Maybe I should spend some more time working on X project I’ e been thinking of before spending money on it” or “you know what, I HAVE been kind of uncomfortable with X thing, I should say something” or “yeah okay I KNOW Tom from work sucks to work with, I KNOW, yeah maybe I should consider ways of handling that”

Less of a magic oracle, more of a tool for doing literary analysis on real life. Like simplifying everything and laying it out flat so I can gain some distance to untangle my problems without in-your-head crap like projected feelings and social obligation getting in the way and muddying the waters.

So like. I don’t think tarot cards can legit tell the future, but I DO think that self-reflection, mindfulness, and consideration sometimes allow us to predict and calculate our own circumstances.

So, IMO- It’s not real. But it works

If that makes sense