Genuinely the easiest form of protest is boycotting and it’s more available than ever it’s never been easier to pirate or shoplift or just buy a fucking alternative youre not going to die if you don’t get your overpriced treats
I rly want to delete instagram like all i do is argue with Zionists and terfs and LGB without the T dickheads on here all day and it’s literally affecting my mental health lol gang gang
Sooooo I'm a bone artist and processor so I have a lot of bones about. My wife @hornybirdnoises taught me how to process them for myself since that's the only way to be sure that the animal wasn't killed for its bones. I love bones and working with them but I can't stand the thought of supporting animals dying for it, if that makes sense.
However now there are lots of people on Etsy who sell bones that I can't compete with because they're either buying farmed bones or farming them themselves. I only have what I find via my channels (hikers, homesteaders, taxidermists, etc) so I can never compete in volume. I also process them from carcasses to clean bones which can take upwards of a year whereas other folks will happily sell greasy or badly processed bones - if you're not in the hobby then you'll never know you've been sold something subpar until the bones start to smell or crumble or whatnot.
I have some luck with social media and direct selling that way so I have to stay on the various social media to try and make sales where I can. It isn't easy mostly because I'm awful at photography and social media presence soooooo yeah.
Also your blog is very fun and I love every time you write out a sound effect.
These are all bones I processed my own self from a ridiculous number of animals. Also I have.... Thirty-one animals processing right now, including a pet cat that I'm cleaning the skull of so the family can display it.
person of interest asks the question 'what if you saved me from myself and gave me a purpose and showed me that I could save people, and then what if you became one of the only people in the whole world who I could rely on, and also what if I had your voice in my ear every second that I was awake and everywhere I went I knew you were watching my back, and what if I would kill for you even when you don't want that, and what if I chose you over everything.' I don't know where I was going with this.
I read this as "person of Internet" as in My Online Friends and I was just nodding along agreeing with every point when the tag brought me up short. I then read the first bit again.
I still stand by my initial reading though. I've so many friends who have reached across time and distance to hold my heart and keep it beating when I hadn't the strength myself.
Thanks so much to @nichestars for tagging me in this!
Last song: I actually didn’t listen to music at all at work today which is shocking. I exercise very early in the morning on weekdays and have determined that kids movies are pretty good to work out to at an ungodly hour: do not require much thought or attention, bright and cheerful, engaging. Which is all by way of saying that I started watching Encanto for the first time during my workout this morning, but didn’t get very far into it so my last song is The Family Madrigal.
Currently watching: Surfski and I always have several shows that we rotate through slowly. At the moment we’ve got Star Trek Voyager, Landman, the West Wing, Abbot Elementary, and The Vampire Lestat.
Current obsession: Uh, to be completely honest, work is kind of sucking me dry lately and I don’t really have the energy for an obsession at the moment.
Currently reading: Radiant Star by Ann Leckie, which is the latest novel in the Imperial Radch series. I was kind of meh on the last two books (Provenance and Tranaslation State) but so far I’m really liking this one.
Currently working on: I was working on the Kiera of Tyrosh-focused follow up to If You Call I Will Answer, and I have about 6k words written but see above on work kicking my butt. Not really any juice left for writing in my non-work hours. One of these days I’ll pick it up again because I really love it and may be able to convince like 3 of you to read it.
Tagging: Absolutely zero pressure tags for @thunderwhenhepurrs , @tinyfrenchowl , @eidetictelekinetic , @kantama , @threefill , @tochira with apologies if you’ve already done this and I missed it.
I see I am being tagged by celebrities now. @themirokai wishes to see me blush. The blushing shall now commence.
Last song: Technically it's an retrowave mix but for the purposes of this I'll say Level Up by Vienna Teng. It's a soft song that'll get your blood moving and I find it quite the inspiring piece. Great for listening to at loud volumes in a car.
Currently watching: Smoking Behind The Supermarket With You has proven quite charming so far. I recently watched all of The Amazing Digital Circus with my wife and we've been having great fun talking about it at length. She wants me to watch I Saw The TV Glow but that's a no thank you from me!
Current obsession: The bones I've got processing and where to find more bones. I currently have twenty seven carcasses (all but three are just skulls) processing in a friend's yard (I love them very much) and am planning to go look under some local bridges to see if I can find anything there. I actually find domestic animal bones to be most compelling and hardest to acquire, especially since I have very stringent ethical standards I adhere to for my own brain.
Currently working on: A sort of 1984 sex worker/dragon thing I just rediscovered in my journal. Also a story of a Lady Catherine de Bourgh style platypus who is so offended that anything should impede her quest that it must be removed immediately and so it is.
Tagging with absolutely high pressure @treesarewhispering and @cwicseolfor and @spuxee and and and @idiomagic and @meowmeowsabortionclinic and @incorporealbagelbeing and @zahai
Okay yes the triangles are fun but consider that they are an absolute nightmare to put into chainmail. Please stick with the stripes for the sake of my poor hands! I make every pride patch possible so please don't wish more triangles on me.
Stripes. Easy. Simple. So nice.
See how nice!
The amount of work I had to do to get that triangle to look triangle will haunt me for the rest of time.
the "gangle should KILL jax for abusing her" + "jax (accidentally) (possibly) KILLED her (abusive) mother >:(" cognitive dissonance is interesting. is it not abuse when it happens to a trans woman?
demonizing her for committing suicide. degendering her after her death. it's almost like a real life trans woman committed suicide, the reaction is just that lifelike 😁
i havent watched a single second of this show. i know absolutely nothing about it. but the ways people have been talking about this jax character are absolutely chilling. ive said for a long time that fiction is a safe place for people to let their bigotry run wild, and this is a fucking excellent example.
I hate to "back in my day!" about it, but I honestly don't remember ever coming across such virulent fandoms before the Internet. I'm sure pockets existed, they always have, but now is a very..... hateful time, as it were.
Stories are stories. That is all they are. Jax is a character, a fiction, something that does not exist except in this story as part of that story being told. They do not exist, they have never existed.
If someone writes a story you love then all you should consider about that story is telling others why you love it, why the writer did such a great job, and uplift that story so maybe more like it will be made. Maybe that creator will make something else like it!
That creator owes you nothing. That maker owes you nothing. What they have made is not yours in any way, shape, or form, no more than (a terrible analogy but oh well) dating someone means you now own them as a being in their entirety. You have been gifted this story, this character, this time, but it isn't yours.
These characters, these stories, are not you. They never have been. If you see yourself in them then that's because it's a good story! It's evocative! It's making you think, making you consider. That's a mark of quality! That doesn't mean you can now outsource part of yourself onto this story, this show, this whatever.
I adore the show Leverage. It is, hands down, the best show in my own opinion. With this in mind if someone starts to mock it or be critical of it around me I tell them hey, I really love it so can we talk about something else? or I make an excuse to leave. I'm not going to tell them not to have an opinion, not to think or consider, because my emotional attachment is only for me to deal with.
Jax is a nuanced, grey character. She is a character who has been abused and abuses in turn, who tortures herself and ultimately decides to off herself when she realizes the truth of that world - that it is indeed real and she's been abusing real people. She's driven real people to suicide by her actions and those are actions she chose over and over, time after time. She choose to see those around her as Sims, things she could puppet about and do whatever to with no consequence to any of those actions.
The narrative doesn't forgive her this. If anything the narrative drives home just how bad Jax messed up - the last thing she says is "I don't wanna go" when it's too late. She's already made the choice.
Pomni doesn't forgive her. I think Pomni would've started to forgive if Jax had approached her honestly but that never happened. Jax pushed her away until she couldn't anymore and then what Pomni offers is the taking of a confession - a final tale. She doesn't tell Jax that her actions didn't really matter, didn't really hurt anyone. She just bore witness to them and loved Jax all the same.
If anything hers is the last cruelty. It is Jax being shown that if she had just tried at any point, tried to choose anything other than abuse and inflicting pain, she could've found friends. She could've known love. She could've lived honestly, happily.
It is driving home the point of what suicide is. It's an end. It's no more choices, no more chances. It's showing the view from halfway down when you realize you gave up too soon but now it's too late. You can't change anything. It's not closing the book - it's tearing out the pages. Stories left undone, untold, unfinished.
Jax was abused by both mother and father. Her father was never there and after the divorce abandoned her entirely to her mother, who viewed her as a husband stand-in. Jax knew suffering and pain and that who you are is the greatest agony you can inflict on anyone else.
She was a cornered animal who never understood she'd been freed. There are feral animals who you can feed for years but if you tried to touch them they would still tear into you - trauma etches itself deep. That skinny dog that skulks on the corner will still bare its teeth at you because it's been hurt enough times to know that baring the teeth is the safest choice it can make.
The difference is that Jax could've tried to be different. She could've tried at so many points and each time she chose the easiest route. She chose abuse, pain, shame, and neglect. The things she knew best.
Her story isn't forgiven. The narrative doesn't forgive her. Gangle doesn't, Pomni doesn't, no one does, but they do grieve her. Even if someone is awful to you you can still love them, still hope they'll get better, and it will break your heart clean in two when you realize that will never happen because of the choices that person has now made.
She didn't commit suicide because she couldn't bring herself to face her victims. Majority of her victims were dead already, or near enough for that world's purposes. The person she could no longer face was herself. She couldn't look it all in the face because what had she done?
My dad let himself die of diabetes. His dad tried to get him to the hospital but he refused. He had insulin ready for pickup at the pharmacy but he didn't take it. He had a job where he only had to work one or two days a year but his father still paid him a full wage. He wasn't suffering for money, trying to make his supplies last.
He was such a miserable person that he couldn't even kill himself cleanly - he just let his blood turn to sugar and his sister was the one to find him days later when he didn't show up for a meeting with her. This was during the summer so you can imagine what she walked into when she did go to his house.
Looking back I can see where he could've made other choices. He could've reached out. He could've not screamed at me all my childhood. He could've been kind when I was young. He could've called me.
My dad was abused and abusive. He died by his own hand, through negligence and ignoring all the people around him who truly loved him. His death ended up causing the death of his own father and mother from COVID, as no one at his funeral was masking. They'd avoided crowds since 2020 but for their son they went and were there, wheezing and on oxygen tanks and hoping any minute they'd wake up and their son would still be alive.
All this about my dad. Words that fail to encompass all he was, a story you can never see the way you got to see Jax's story, but I can tell you I still grieve his death. I still wish he'd made different choices. He was such a non-entity in my life that I forget he's dead but still I wish I had the chance now to make amends - to meet him as he was.
His choice means I'll never have that chance. His choice killed his own mother and father. Yet I still grieve him - we all still do. Even if only to say "you damned idiot" to his memory. We don't forgive him but we remember him. If he were an abstracted beast I would sit with him, I would talk to him, and I would miss him.
Jax's story is one that resonates. If you've lost someone, if you've known someone, if you've loved someone, any of those, you know Jax's story to some extent. You got to see what happens when someone who was abused chooses to continue the cycle, over and over, until it finally ends as anyone could've predicted.
You got to see what abuse begets - how it perpetuates itself in time, in bodies, in suffering. You got to see how it isn't a clean wound - Gangle doesn't know how to cry for Jax. She wants to, she feels she should, but she can't. Not until she's faced with the reality of what Jax has done, with the end of everything Jax can inflict on her. Jax tortured her, bonded with her, was with her, and all of that was real for her.
The ideal story? The one that Gooseworx is being lambasted for not telling? It's a dream. A fantasy. A story that ties up every loose end, tidies up after itself, and says nothing new. The story where Jax is Punished for his Evil Deeds is a soppy bedtime tale you'll forget come morning compared to the story that was actually told.
This story? It's a fantasy that is terrifyingly real. It's a story that eggs will watch, that the suicidal will watch, and maybe it will change their own stories. Maybe they will choose to live as their own selves, maybe they will choose to live.
It's a story that I recognize. The story of what it is to love someone who abuses, who is so tangled up in their own hurt that you can never reach them, and what that feels like. What it is to watch them from the outside, to desperately reach for them and be rebuffed until you can't reach out anymore. What it is to see those flashes of who they are past the abuse, past the pain, and wanting with everything you've got to meet that person just once, only to find that that person is gone forever.
This is the bravest story Goosworx could've told. Anyone who lambasts them for it is a fool and a charlatan who does not appreciate the gift we've been given, the lives this story will change.
I spent the afternoon arranging our books by size and color (and it’s so satisfying and looks amazing) and my partner came home and stared in shock at the bookcase and then said “i’m a librarian, you can’t do this.”
it has occurred me during this process that apparently not everyone thinks about books by what color they are? like, literally when i’m looking for a book, i picture it in my mind. i have a very…tactile experience with the books i read and idk! i thought everyone did that lol.
my partner was like “how will i find [this book] for instance” and i replied “easy, it’s purple” and he looked at me like i was a witch.
This actually is interesting in terms of information-seeking behavior, which is a thing librarians think about a lot and often actually study (some library jobs require you to publish, and academic librarians, for instance, will often use the students at the college they work at to study how they search for information in order to figure out how to best provide them services).
When you go for an MLS (Master’s of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for “professional-level” library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I won’t go into here]), one of the things you study is the organization of information. This deals with how to determine what a book or other material is “about"—a concept we tongue-in-cheek call “aboutness"—and how to convey that to a potential user of the item and make it easy for them to find. Things like keywords and subject headings, do I put this book about how often wild birds attack aerial drones in with books about birds or with books about technology, if its a fictional novel do I put fantasy in it’s own section or mix it in with all of the other fiction, so on and so on.
OP is organizing books by how they would look for them. OP’s partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because it’s their personal library: they know basically what books they own and they only own books that are relevant to them, and if they know what the book looks like, that can be a quick way to find it.
In a library that assumes the public (or people who do not own that particular collection of books) are using the collection, that doesn’t work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesn’t know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, they’re lost. That’s why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what it’s “about”, and then put books about the same or similar topics together, marked with labels and signage so a person unfamiliar with the book or collection can find their way to it.
Basically, OP’s system works for their own personal library, because it’s best suited to how the primary user—OP themselves—looks for books. OP’s librarian partner is coming from a background of thinking in terms of a public-facing collection, where aboutness is the key criteria and communicating it to a user unfamiliar with the collection is the priority.
As a person with aphantasia (no mind's eye) this sounds like a nightmare. I can't picture what things look like so I'd have to go to this person each time I wanted to find a book to ask them where it is.
That being said it does remind me of how the Jackaby organized his books.
Because Etsy is a cesspit of AI and dropshipped bullshit now... can you guys drop me links to stores of independent artists?
They can make clothes and accessories, they can sell prints or stickers or pins, they can make tiny figurines (I LOVE tiny figurines), they can make dice, they can make something I haven't thought of, their store can even be on Etsy itself, you JUST have to be sure they're a real person who actually makes their own art.
Artists please self-promote. Non-artists please shove any stores you like at me, brag about your artists friends, and/or reblog so the artists will see this. I want you to destroy my activity page.
the first chapter of Moby Dick rewritten in tiresome modern idiom
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - it's none of your business how many - being mostly broke, and bored with the land part of the world, I thought I would sail around a little and look at the watery part of the world. I'm probably the most mentally healthy person you know. Whenever I feel my face getting grim; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself accidentally reading the ads in the window of funeral homes, and following funeral processions through traffic; and especially when I'm hangry, and only my extremely strong moral principles stop me from deliberately going out in public and methodically slapping people's earbuds out - then I know it's high time to get to sea, ASAP. This is my substitute for getting in fights. I'm too mentally healthy to kill myself; I quietly and considerately put myself on a ship and sail myself away instead. There is nothing surprising in this. Everyone feels exactly the same way, and if they don't, they're lying.
You think I'm lying? Exhibit A: a city. Go to your local coastal city. Everyone is looking at the water. They drive over from other neighborhoods just to come to the water. They make a day of it. They're not doing anything, they're just staring at the ocean. Why? Is it because they all work office jobs? No! Here come more of them! They cram themselves up to the edge of the water and stare at it. WHAT DO THEY WANT? WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING AT. Perhaps the ships themselves all packed together, each one with several compasses on it, creates some kind of critical mass - all of the small compass-magnets on all the ships in the harbor combining into one really big magnetic field - and the people get sucked into the field and trapped there. That's science.
Exhibit 2: the countryside with lakes in it. Every path you follow in the countryside brings you to some water, such as a stream. There is magic in it. If you take your standard fool with ADHD dissociating in the middle of a supermarket and put them outside and give them a shove, they'll automatically lead you to water (if there is any nearby) (try it). Another good experiment to try is to get lost in the great American desert in a caravan supplied with a metaphysical professor! Try it in the great American desert at home!
Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are a match made in heaven. Married forever. That's science.
Here's an artist who wants to paint you the dreamiest, most enchanting landscape. What does he put in it? Trees, meadow, cows, a cottage with smoke coming from the chimney, obviously. He will probably put a path in it and make lots of triangular mountains in rows and have them be different shades of blue (naturally.) But there's gotta be a stream in it. Go visit the prairies in June, and wade for forty miles through knee-deep through tiger lilies. What's missing from this picture? Water!
If Niagara Falls was made of sand instead of water, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why would a guy given a handful of cash have trouble deciding whether to buy a coat (which he needed) or go to the beach? Why are all the best, healthiest, sexiest and most mentally healthy people obsessed with the sea? (You get me.) When you were first on a boat, did you not succumb to VIBES? Consider ancient Persia. Consider ancient Greece. They understood about vibes, and also gods.
SURELY ALL OF THIS IS NOT WITHOUT MEANING.
And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all! You get me! You understand it now.
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I get weird, don't you dare imply that I buy a ticket and get on a boat. I have never had money in my life. How dare you. Anyway I don't go as a passenger - that's bougie, and something boring people do. Passengers never have a good time. And although my C.V. is incredible - I go to sea SO MUCH, you guys, I have lots of experience - I don't go as a boss, or a cook. That sounds like far too much work. Hard work. Disgusting, respectable, bougie, and far too responsible. I can literally only look after myself. Do not ask me to look after ships or shit. In fact, I have only a vague idea of what a ship is. There's so many different kinds of ships - don't get me started and DO NOT GET INVOLVED. Also, I'm allergic to glory.
It's kind of attractive to go as a cook. I mean, I'm allergic to glory and there's some glory attached to the position of the ship's cook, but, like, you're not management-track and so it's still credible. But I don't really want to cook (say) roast chicken. I really fucking love to eat roast chicken. I'm one of the best at doing it actually. I really appreciate when people go out of their way to butter, season, baste and roast a chicken for me. Picture a roast chicken and I am Looking Respectfully at it. Maybe something more, maybe I'm worshipping it. Don't make this weird. If you want to get weird about my relationship with roasted chicken, why aren't you getting weird about the ancient Egyptians? They ate roasted hippos (look it up) and the pyramids were basically pizza ovens. So it's pretty hypocritical to think that I'm being weird about roasted chicken when I've never made mummies out of chickens or built a religious pizza oven dedicated to honoring them: check and mate, haters.
Anyway - I like to go to sea as a manual laborer. A simple sailor. Salt of the earth… er… sea. Yeah, true: as a job it sucks. They make you jump around, order you around, treat you like shit. They expect you to jump around the boat like a grasshopper. And yes, at first, this sucks. It's degrading, especially if you come from a middle-class family. Worse, it's awful if you've already had some kind of professional job before signing on to be the dirt on the boss's boots - like, if you went to college and worked as a teacher and actually got kids to pay attention to you, really feeling this connection to work/teaching/identity or some shit, and now you are just literally the scum on this captain's boots, in the lowest possible job in the world. It hurts! It hurts your dignity. But the hurt, and also the dignity, both wear off in time.
So what if some old bastard sea captain orders me - ME! - to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, compared to the shit in the Bible, compared to the shit in the news, compared to the shit everyone else has to take. Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. We're all just serfs under capitalism, right, so why not just be honest about it: I prefer the honesty. Anyway, however the old sea captains may order me about - slapping and punching of course - I have the satisfaction of knowing that it's the same experience everyone else on Earth has, but more honest. Everyone else in the world is being served the exact same way. Either in a physical or a metaphysical way - sometimes people get the shit beaten out of them in person, sometimes online, sometimes emotionally, it happens to you in EVERY JOB, you sign on to get pushed around and slapped in the teeth: so the point is that when you're a sailor, it's a clean and honest slap. All the workers of the world share the same universal slap to the face that gets passed round, one slap passed all 'round the chain, like paying it forward, but it's a slap; and we should all accept this Universal Slap as the price of living, and then offer each other healing back massages, brother to brother, and slap each other and then kissed the places we slapped, and be happy.
I could examine that but I'm not going to.
Anyway: I always go to sea as a sailor. I've said that already. You're welcome. BUT THE POINT IS, they pay you. If you're a passenger, they don't pay you, at least, not that I've ever heard of [citation needed] (do they pay passengers?? Is there a job I can get where I can be a passenger and get paid?? Look this up.) Yeah so passengers have to pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. (That's Adam and Eve. You get it.) But BEING PAID. GETTING PAID IS THE BEST. NOTHING COMPARES TO GETTING PAID. EVERYONE LOVES THAT SHIT. Which is surprising, since we also apparently believe that money is the root of all evil, and isn't there something in the bible about "no rich people can get into heaven," right? And yet it's universal, literally everyone loves payday. Ah! How cheerfully we send ourselves to hell.
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor (I've said this already) because it's FRESH AIR AND EXERCISE. Okay so think about ships. Normally, bosses stand on the "bridge" thing, and because we're sailing a boat, the nose is going into the wind and the butt part of the boat is at the back. That's how wind works. But if you think about it, winds usually go in one direction more than other directions (unless the men have been eating beans and farting: it's Pythagoras, look it up) SO if you're a boss standing on the boss-deck, the wind is blowing FROM the sailors TOWARDS you, and YOU ARE ACTUALLY BREATHING THE AIR THAT SAILORS ALREADY BREATHED. The boss THINKS he breathes it first, but he doesn't. He gets the air at the BACK of the boat and sailors get the air at the FRONT. So it's better to be at the front of the boat (sailor) for health reasons. This is a metaphor for life and work, etc.
But I have smelled the sea lots of times as a paid sailor and WHY I should decide to go on a whaling expedition - ok so you know how there's an invisible police officer of the Fates who has me under constant surveillance, who secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way? YOU get me. You know him. "The poor FBI agent tasked with reading my search engine history" YOU GET ME. Anyway, "Ishmael, why, after having a perfectly well-reasoned, and very smart of you, part-time job as a spontaneous random sailor, did you decide to escalate that to joining a WHALING EXPEDITION, which is worse in every way?" Well, ask my fucking secret FBI agent, he can answer better than anyone else. Including me. You get me. Also, obviously, this was predestined, part of the Universe's Grand Programme for its talent show, which was all scheduled way before our time. The concept of sending me on the whaling voyage comes in as a kind of interlude or solo between the main performances of the Universe's great talent show. I bet it was advertised llike,
"PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF THE UNITED STATES EMBROILED IN ONGOING LEGAL DISPUTE.
Whaling voyage by some guy called Ishmael.
BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."
Like a commercial break in between the big acts. A filler episode. Lightens the load for everyone else. Though I can't explain why the stage managers - the Fates - chose such a shitty role for me, a WHALING VOYAGE of all things, when it feels like others were given magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces - it seems a little unreasonable at first. Why doth Ishmael get shat upon, etc. But then I think about all the circumstances, the plot points and motivations that were cunningly presented to me under various disguises - FBI agents, bouts of random hanger, gay awakenings, you get me - and you can see that actually, I was set up. And worse, between them all, these Fates and Circumstances conspired to make me believe it was all my own choice and good judgment. Is Free Will an illusion? Are my decisions bad? We will NEVER know because I, Ishmael, am just a little guy that the Universe plays head games with.
One of the ways the Universe tricked me into starring in this performance and then mocking me for it was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself (whaling expeditions usually contain whales.) Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then of course, if you have a whale, you have the wild and distant seas where the whale rolls around with his body-the-size-of-an-island; the dangers and nameless perils of the whale; whales are also found in interesting places I haven't seen; this all tipped me over the edge. Maybe normal people could've resisted, but I am tormented with an everlasting itch for obscurity. I hate everyone else's oceans. I want the forbidden seas.
You know The Horrors? Of course you do. You might be surprised that I, the most mentally healthy person you've ever met, a person who is self-aware enough to go to sea when they're at their fucking limits, a guy who likes fresh air and manual labor and normal things, is familiar with The Horrors. Well, you'd be surprised. I know what's good, I'm an extrovert. But I'm still quick to perceive The Horrors. And how I deal with the horrors is a very extroverted thing: I'm social with them, if they'll let me. It's smart to be on good terms with The Horrors. You should always be on good terms with your permanent neighbors. That's how extroverts deal with The Horrors, and I recommend it.
I think that's enough explanation for why I welcomed the whaling voyage. The great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild figments of imagination that pushed me into doing it, the whales came marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah. They marched into my innermost soul in endless processions and occupied it, you see, I was quite helpless under this occupation - I consented to the haunting and the whales marched in to haunt me - and amidst them all was one grand shrouded white phantom, like a snowy mountain in the air.
You get it.
You know how it is, with whales.
(read the actual first chapter of Moby Dick here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm)
So due to other Moby-Dick bookbinding reasons I was remembering this post and then I of course also remembered I have the power to do uh. this.
illustrations (including cover) from the Rockwell Kent edition (1930)
the truly important thing to remember when typesetting a tumblr post is matching the seriousness of the text (you get it) and i think Ishmael would approve and MAYBE just maybe when i finally typeset the whole darn brick i'll pick up the vibes from this post and this typeset and just CONTINUE it in the actual text so thank you @elodieunderglass for this beautiful nonsense
people will say “they’re only friends” and then show me two people who would crawl through broken glass to hear the other laugh once. two people who have memorized each other’s coffee orders, fears, childhood stories, and emergency contacts. two people who would haunt each other’s houses as ghosts. be serious.
Just an FYI—the original intention of this post was to challenge the way people say only friends, as though friendship is somehow lesser than other forms of love. As if being deeply known, cherished, and chosen by another person could ever be a small thing. Normalize profound platonic love. Some of the most fulfilling, transformative, and enduring relationships we will ever have are friendships. 🫶🏼
I've friends who I would crack open my rib cage for them to crawl inside if they asked.
When people look at such as Sherlock and Watson or Frodo and Sam and _insist_ that their bond can only be explained by romantic love I honestly get so confused - have you never loved a friend that deeply?? That they are part of your very self and who they are allows you to be your self in the best way???? Have you never had that privilege???
You can ship as you like, but friendship is a love that changes you every bit as deeply as romantic love.
just watched jurassic park and from a meta perspective im thinking sadly about how the behavior the carnivores display is way more indicative (at least to me) of wanting to play and lacking stimulation in their lives than actually wanting to eat the human characters. and they got so so demonized for it
JP dinosaur behavior analysis with a healthy dose of headcanon included from someone who doesnt know much about behavioral science. for funsies
ok so first of all lets start with the t rex. her very first moment is the goat leg ending up on the car, but we can see in the next shot that she is very capable of swallowing the goat whole. so how did that leg get there? given evidence that t. rexes were likely social creatures, i like to imagine that the leg on the car was more “here you go have part of my meal because you’re small” for the humans
next is her communication. i want to look at one specific thing, which was actually the thing that prompted the post
to me, that certainly looks like eye pinning. eye pinning is a behavior in birds that signals high stimulation. here’s what it looks like in a bird
it can be positive or negative, but in this case it’s probably not negative, because there’s nothing forcing the rex to stay there. if she wanted to leave the situation she could hit the bricks
the continual roaring also sort of suggests play behavior to me. there’s not really any sense in making a shitload of noise at your prey (unless you’re trying to scare them out of cover, but we know she doesn’t need to do that because we see she’s strong enough to just break into the car) so, especially because they keep screaming, that reads way more like “im making noises and they’re making noises back ^w^” then it does as trying to intimidate prey for some reason
play behavior also makes sense because we know, canonically, she’s crazy understimulated. alan grant says as much when he mentions that they aren’t feeding her in a way that promotes hunting behavior. the way she noses at the jeep and spins it really just looks more like curious interaction than anything, as well as all the chasing people she does
next, the raptors. their really famous scene is the kitchen, but first let’s establish some facts about them. we know from muldoon and what we’re shown that:
- they’re smart enough to use one of their own as a distraction for flanking maneuvers
- they’re good at problem solving enough to wait until the electric fences are turned off to systematically test them for vulnerabilities
- they’re absurdly fast. “60 mph on open ground” fast
- they are absolutely not in a big enough enclosure
- they’re not fed in a way that promotes hunting behavior either
so when you put all this information together and then look at the kitchen scene, i don’t believe for even one second that the “hide behind the counter” routine is fooling those two raptors for any time at all. that entire sequence of loudly scrambling around the kitchen while something that can keep pace with a cheetah pretends it can’t catch you? yeah that makes WAY more sense as play behavior than it does hunting, especially since we see numerous times that there are many things on the island easier to catch and eat than a bunch of skinny humans (this goes for the rex, too!)
the bit with the noises is also true here. more true, if anything. muldoon tells us the raptors are ambush predators, so why on earth would they get into a hunting ground and then risk scaring their prey off with the loud barking calls? “hi we’re here come out and play” is a much more sensible use of a call loud enough to hurt a human’s ears from across a room in that situation
in conclusion: damnit john your girls are bored as fuck. give them a horse ball or a frozen pumpkin stuffed with meat or something
A little advice from someone studying extremist groups: if you’re in a social media environment where the daily ubiquitous message is that you have no hope of any kind of future and you can’t possibly achieve anything without a violent overthrow of society, you’re being radicalized, and not in the good way.
If the solution to your problems sounds like “we need a blank slate” it’s a lie. There are no blank slates, and the closest approximation people can generally imagine is “burn it all down and let God/fate/history sort it out”.
That’s not problem solving. It’s barely catharsis, in practice. It doesn’t just create more problems than it solves, it destroys more solutions than it creates.
Put the apocalypse down, and back away slowly.
Real solutions to complex, systemic problems are not so easily reduced to “us good, them evil; kill them.”
The author has specifically asked that this part of the poem not be quoted out of context; here’s the rest of the poem: https://guante.info/2020/10/14/trickortreat/
TO THROW A WRENCH IN THE BLOOD MACHINE: Five (Season-Appropriate) Metaphors for Voting
by Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre
VOTING AS PRESSURE ON THE WOUND:
After the battle against the killer robots, I become aware that my leg is bleeding. And I know that applying pressure does not, on its own, heal the wound, but it will buy time for the medic to arrive, for the healing to begin.
VOTING AS FIRE EXTINGUISHER
When the haunted house catches fire: a moment of indecision. The house was, after all, built on bones, and blood, and bad intentions. Everyone who enters the house feels that overwhelming dread, the evil that perhaps only fire can purge. It’s tempting to just let it burn. And then I remember that there are children inside.
VOTING AS THIS ONE SMALL THING
I’ve tracked the werewolf to its lair, deep in the basement of the old doll factory just outside town. Upon entering, I have the option of flipping the light switch from off to on. Either way, the battle will be difficult. Either way, victory is not guaranteed. But the werewolf can see in the dark, and I can’t. So I will do this one small thing. I will summon what light I can. And I will keep going.
VOTING AS HIGH GROUND, CLEAR SIGHT LINES, AND MULTIPLE ESCAPE ROUTES
It’s been said that during the zombie apocalypse, the undead are not the biggest threat, that the real monsters are the human survivors who will hoard resources, betray one another, and fight endlessly amongst ourselves. And it’s true: survival is about so much more than just not getting eaten by zombies. But not getting eaten by zombies is still an important part of the plan.
VOTING AS WRENCH IN THE BLOOD MACHINE
Our village has existed in the shadow of Dracula’s castle for years, and has been the site of many battles against him. Now, he’s running for mayor. His platform: rather than turning into a giant bat to hunt his victims one-by-one, he will take control of the village’s resources, its watchmen and bureaucratic machinery, creating a system that will more efficiently identify victims and supply him with fresh blood.
Will defeating Dracula at the polls end his reign of terror? No. But what it will do is deprive him of one specific set of tools that he will otherwise use to hurt people. It will allow us to think offensively rather than defensively, because when the forces of darkness are not knocking on our doors, it frees us up to go knock on theirs.
And yes: there is always more work to be done. There is always more horror beyond that which is right in front of us.
And those who study monsters are right: if we only think short-term, we lose.
But those who fight monsters have taught me: short-term and long-term thinking are not mutually exclusive. We use every tool we have access to, every opportunity to shape the terrain of battle, every advantage we can seize. We don’t split up. We don’t leave anyone behind. We don’t wait for some hero to save us, whether a knight in shining armor or an opposition politician. We fight the monsters. And when the sun rises, we do the work of creating a world in which there are no monsters.
We win. For the fallen, for our families, for the fact that dawn is not promised, it is carried—in this blood, still hot, still coursing, defiant, inside us.
When I lived in Korea spam was popular enough to be given as a big gift pack during specific holidays. When I got one myself I passed it to one of the Korean teachers and won her eternal devotion.
So yeah. At least in Korea this branding would be nothing unusual.
Folk, I’m gonna vaguepost for a sec here, but it’s an important one.
If you are in the United States and not employed by a zoo or sanctuary or a veterinarian working with a facility, if anyone for any reason offers to allow you to touch a big cat, please do not do it.
No matter how much you want to, no matter how much it is a dream, understand that it is a violation of federal law that could get the facility the cat lives at in very serious trouble. It does not matter if it is through the fence, or in the context of a trained behavior, or if the cat is on a leash. Even if it feels “safe” or they swear the facility condones it.
It’s starting to appear that lots of zookeepers have not been informed appropriately about the scope of the law - or in cases where they do know it’s inappropriate, they are sometimes being overridden by their management and forced to allow encounters. (Even at accredited facilities!)
We do not know exactly what the penalties could be for that happening within an accredited zoo (yay badly implemented laws) but it typically comes down to being risk to a) the cat’s welfare b) the facility’s ability to have any big cats at all and c) someone, either the facility owner or the person offering, could go to jail or pay serious fines. There are two instances of this happening at AZA zoos that were leaked recently and we may now find out how bad it’s going to get for them.
Lots of facilities will have big cat pelts as educational biofacts that they will allow you to touch. You do not ever need to take the risk associated with touching a live big cat - generally anywhere, and especially in the US.
And for some reason, if you ever are in that situation and unethical enough to actually touch the cat? Don’t post it on social media and definitely don’t make that post public. 🙄
I literally got to touch three different big cat pelts today in one zoo visit (didn’t take a photo of the lion one). You! Don’t! Need! To! Touch! Live! Cats!
The volunteer did not know where these pieces of pelt came from - they often don’t. Generally in the US they are either sourced from US Fish and Wildlife confiscations (as part of a collab for educational programs) or they’re actually from previous collection animals. The latter is much rarer because it’s pretty emotionally hard for staff, but it means you can touch them without worrying it’s an animal you might have loved.
I’ve seen a couple comments in the tags suggesting zoos should trade biofacts from their deceased animals for educational purposes - it’s a good idea, but a little more complicated than that!
Most of the animals people want to touch something from (elephants, rhinos, cats) are protected under at least one and sometimes multiple federal laws. Those laws extend to cover their bodies after they pass. States may also have additional laws regarding what can be done with the remains of endangered species or marine mammals. IIRC I’ve been told by keepers that some zoos can’t even keep chunks of elephant tusks broken off of live animals (this happens, sometimes) because of ivory laws. Even if they’re just burying them on site, they have to keep detailed records to prove they’re not illegally selling the remains of protected species. So it’s a lot more complicated than just being able to keep and do whatever with the remains, even for businesses with all the right paperwork and compliance to own the live animals.
Next, you’ve got to process the remains to turn them into a biofact that can be used. I don’t know of any zoo that does this themselves. That means they’ve got to find a credible business that can clean skeletons or process pelts, make sure they can receive the remains (laws often prohibit movement of protected species across state lines, even if not alive), and then pay for the process.
Sometimes other institutions have a claim on the remains that could preclude other options, too. I know of a number of facilities with agreements with major museums or academic research groups who will take remains to study them or prepare them for display. I don’t know if the zoo can overrule them and say they’d like to keep a specific animal’s remains for other uses - probably very contract specific.
Then, right, you run into the same issues if you want to move finished biofacts between zoos. There’s a lot of laws that govern what can move where and if money can be involved, and it can require a lot of paperwork.
You also have to think about the fact that there are extreme cultural differences across the US regarding if it’s “okay” for zoos to use their animals that way. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where the mentality is more… anti-exploitation focused? Even about good zoos. Let animals be animals, don’t commercialize them, etc. When I walked into a big Midwestern zoo a bunch of years ago and found a docent on the front plaza with an entire tiger pelt for people to pet - from a recently deceased animal that guests remembered - I was honestly kind of horrified? But after talking to a lot of people over the years I’ve really come to understand it’s a regional difference that seems to parallel how prevalent agriculture and hands-on experience with farming or game animals is culturally. There are still some things that blow my mind, though, like the time I found an elephant education cart with an entire taxidermied ear being used for outreach, or the lemur leg a docent had that was preserved bone and fur and all to show off the grooming claw.
All of the complications - logistical, legal, cultural, emotional - mean it’s much easier to get confiscated items loaned from US Fish and Wildlife to use for education. And this actually serves a second purpose! There is a massive warehouse in Colorado that holds a fraction of the illegal animal parts that USFWS has confiscated over the years. I’ve been and it’s… incredible and horrifying and really, really full. They don’t want to destroy the items if they don’t have to, but space is finite. So loaning out items as biofacts is a really good solution. It makes space and it provides a clearly legal avenue for educational facilities to access preserved pieces of protected animals. I also feel like using confiscated biofacts honors the animals, in a way, giving a second meaningful purpose to an item produced through senseless commercialized death.
We know that people appreciate and care about animals more when they can see them and have meaningful “interactions” with them - and using biofacts people can really touch and experience is a wonderful, safe way to do that. I find most docents and volunteers don’t know where the biofacts they’re using have been sources from, so it’s hard to know if a pelt is a previous collection animal or a confiscation in the moment. Regardless, it’s an incredible opportunity to understand an animal a little better (and much, much safer than doing so with a live one).
There are ethics in everything and this very much ties in with one of my greatest issues with bone collecting - if a person has (x) number of remains that are all the same size/condition/level of cleaned then you need to be very suspicious of them. If they're offering bat remains of any kind you need to immediately call them on it and educate everyone in range of just how horrible that is and what devastation bat collecting for remains causes.
No matter how much you want a thing or want to do a thing stop and think of how this thing or opportunity came to be.
Bones aside (I have so many of them) let's look at such as what OP speaks of, like big cat encounters.
Big cats are incredible. Humans have been fascinated and terrified of them for a very, very long time and it's a very seductive thing to think of touching one, petting one, knowing you're safe from this incredibly dangerous animal.
So you go to the roadside zoo or whatnot that offers a chance to pet a tiger cub or a full grown tiger. You pay the money, get a photo, and get to talk about it forever after.
But here is what lack of curiosity can lead to: the people you paid for the experience drugged the adult tiger to within an inch of its life because if they hadn't it would've reacted to so many strangers touching it with violence, because why wouldn't it? Wouldn't you?
That tiger cub was taken from its mother and sold to this zoo just so folks can hold it and coo over it and admire how very cute it is. It won't grow up to have any sort of life because it will likely sicken and die very young because these animals were never meant to live in these circumstances.
Lets hop over to another example. Elephants. Amazing animals that are megafauna such as we don't usually get to see. Again an animal of fascination and wonder.
Elephants have been used as performing animals for a very long time. They are also incredibly social animals and will stay with their mothers for a very long time, so how do circus elephants become trained from a young enough age to learn the tricks they do?
Babies are taken from their mothers and broken. It's, if I remember rightly, a process that happens over several days where the baby is essentially beaten until it learns that no matter how it screams it can't escape. There is no help, no rescue, no mother or herd. There are only humans and suffering.
But now you can see it perform! You can even ride it! You pay the money to the people who sell the elephant's body and they continue to use that body until it is wracked with pain and deformity, as their bodies were never meant to do the things forced upon them in various industries.
I feel I'm wandering in this (ADHD anyone?) but the long and short is that if you want a thing, think of how it got there. Think of what had to happen for it to be possible. If you want to touch a living tiger resign yourself to the fact that you doing so is harming an animal in some way, or at the very least putting it and yourself at risk.
To that end if bones are your thing then think about how these bones came about. Look at who is selling it and how likely they are to have had access to this animal without killing it for its bones or pelt. If they say they acquired the remains ethically ask what that actually means, and interrogate what isn't being said.
Don't buy a fox or coyote tail at a convention and then post somewhere asking if it was ethically sourced. It wasn't. Think about it - can you imagine someone somehow finding that many foxes or coyotes with ridiculously full and fluffy tails just out in nature somewhere, already dead and this person just so happened to know how to remove and preserve all the tails? If you've ever gone hiking or into wilderness how many dead things did you see, and how many with fur that looked that good?
It's an old pet peeve of mine, especially since I work with people who do kill animals. I work with hunters, trappers, farmers. All people who will kill animals for various reasons, not all of which I agree with, but none of them are killing the animals so I can have their bones. I am being granted the remains so I can then process the animal and let its death go that much farther, and therein lies the vital difference.
What I do isn't pleasant. There are bones I want that I will never have because there is no way for me to acquire those bones without an animal being killed for them. If I'm lucky I might have access to somewhere with remains who will let me take them, but if not I've just had to make my peace.
Hi! Are you cis in the UK and you'd like to support trans rights? Great!
How: buy a trans flag pin and wear it in public.
Why: chaff is an overwhelming amount of false positives so that when a missile gets close to the plane, it hits the chaff and not the plane.
In practice: the goal is to make it DIFFICULT to identify trans people to target with bathroom bans, and to create many FALSE POSITIVES for businesses.
Basically, you might get accused of being trans and kicked out, because of the badge. You say: I wear the badge because trans rights matter.
You follow up with a letter to the business saying you're fucking furious because some nosy dipshit just tried to play fucking genital police with you in the loos. You know lots of trans people (don't name any, if you do) and you wear the pin in support and you're disgusted at them for allowing this.
Blame the business for allowing the behaviour.
Businesses see that their cis customers are getting bothered over a badge and may clarify trans-inclusive policies, so they can kick out the bathroom botherers instead of nice cis allies.
You only need to buy and wear the badge, and you are protecting trans people. You can be genuinely heroic. Even one cis person doing this helps, and everyone you get to join in helps even more.
This is why I made my patches - super easy to attach to just about anything and interesting enough to stand as art pieces, as well as signaling all sorts of prides!
Patches, all sorts. I had great fun figuring out all the patterns I have, though memory issues mean I often have to recreate the patterns as I've already forgotten how I did it the first time.
My rainbow bracelets are very fun - excellent stim toys and very hard to ignore. Also subtle enough that if someone makes a fuss it's very easy to make them look a fool for caring!
If you feel drawn to them here's the link to my shop: https://boundlessennui.myshopify.com/
Hey, if you can pay shipping I've got some skulls that could do with your magic. In exchange for singing my praises to all and sundry, of course! This sheep would love you, for example.
And mostly I make jewelry and mandalas. I'm always processing more bones so I always have more bones about! Some do end up with shiny bits but rhinestones have never called to me as they do you!
Ooh, your work is stunning!
The sheep skull is a little intimidating, size wise. If you ever have anything of a smaller scale, I would totes love to experiment!
A decade or so ago, when we lived in New Orleans, I blinged out a deer femur (I think that's what it was?) in an ocean theme as a gift for Anne Rice at her Vampire Ball. I'll have to see if I can dig out a picture...
To be fair I have skulls ranging from rats to goats to boars. Rabbit skulls might be the sweet spot for you, though I'd be interested to see what you could do with a nice rat skull or two.
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
