Happy Times

She/Her, live the life you want for life will always be full of misery if you don’t take the time for happiness

[twiggy-boy]

"what is this BABY doing in space!???"

-Rocky, probably

[beardedmrbean]

[datclassydame]

Can @raccoonmilf vouch for this? Super rad if true.

[raccoonmilf]

Yes it’s true

[audarcy]

[verdare1]

I need to see this movie…

[kamenwriter]

[monsterhospital]

Its like this but Godzilla actually does show up

[lastoneout]

Wait this is some galaxy brain shit actually, I'm gonna have to start doing this.

[yorgen-sh]

[agnesmontague]

ive invented (note: dubious claim) something i call the bear diet which is mostly fruits and vegetables with fish as the main protein source and something like once a month you eat a few hyperprocessed foods of your liking because that is when you, the bear, raid a dumpster in the suburbs

[stellarskyes]

after the hyperprocessed foods, do you take tranquilizers to simulate getting captured by animal control and returned to the wild?

[agnesmontague]

i would settle for melatonin gummies but well. knock yourself out

[leggywormy]

It's end of May, yall know what that means

[nattousan]

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

[nattousan]

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

[nattousan]

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

[nattousan]

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

[nattousan]

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

[nattousan]

Madam....

[nattousan]

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

[nattousan]

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

[nattousan]

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

[nattousan]

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

[nattousan]

*does a little jig*

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

[nattousan]

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you

[nattousan]

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

[nattousan]

thanks for the reminder, kid

[nattousan]

at long last, we've reached the end...

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

i'll see y'all soon :')

[orcarriagesthatwork]

I think about this cake every day

[tizzymcwizzy]

sorry for exposing your tags but this is hilarious

[microsuedemouse]

OP, I hope you don’t mind me making an addition:

When I turned 17, we ordered a cake at the grocery store for my party, as we’d done many times before. If you wanted something written on the cake you’d write it into a section of the order form. We requested, very simply, “Happy Birthday Courtney”. When we went to pick it up the day of the party, this is what we got.

The bakery employees had absolutely no explanation for this. The order form, attached to the box, very clearly did not contain any of those extra names. Whomever had done the writing was no longer in, so there was no one to ask how this had happened. The fact that the name ‘Juan’ is misspelled bewilders me to this day. (I’ve never seen ‘Miley’ without the E, either, but it’s believable that someone might spell it that way.) Did this cake slip in from an alternate universe where I’m one quarter of a set of Hispanic quadruplets? Dyslexic Hispanic quadruplets, maybe?

This cake became the focal point of my party. At least two of my friends regularly called me ‘Courtney Mily Jaun Pablo’ for years to come. My siblings and I still reference it sometimes, eleven years later. It is probably the funniest thing ever to occur at any birthday celebration of my life, and may well remain so for the rest of my days.

I love a botched cake.

[helenarth]

one time me and some pals spotted one of those big cookie cakes in a store. it was done up with red icing and little X's for kisses and in the middle it said

No One Like You

now, it took us a while to realise it meant "(there is) no one like you". at first, we all parsed it as a botched "no one like(s) you"

for ages after when we'd wind each other up we'd declare "NO ONE LIKE YOU ☹️👎"

[itseasytoremember]

I just feel like it's important to post the Sacred Texts

[voidsetup1]

and out of the darkness - you you you you you

[lemondoddle]

[Description: a looping bouncy animation of grace and Rocky from project hail mary. Grace throws himself onto rocky for a hug, smiling and nuzzling his face to the top of Rocky's xenonite covered carapace. Rocky brings a claw up to ruffle Grace's hair and grace throws himself even more on top of rocky, rocky wrapping his arms around grace. End description.]

[gaycism]

[rockpapertheodore]

[thefugitivesaint]

What I dig here is the act of asking a simple question out of idle curiosity turns into a lengthy investigation into the answer to that question. This is the basic impulse behind science as a methodology. Why is that? How is that? Rudimentary inquiries that blossom into fully fledged theories (in the scientific sense, not the colloquial sense). I enjoy anecdotes like this because I find pleasure in people taking their interests for long walks and getting to an unexpected location, with unanticipated conclusions. Who would have guessed that the "Tri" in "Triscuits" was an abbreviation of "electricity?" Not me. Like most of the things I read on the internet, I thought to myself, "Is this story true?" Turns out that it is. Sure, the journey here involves nothing of consequence and the information revealed is next to worthless but the act of acquiring a definitive answer must have been deeply satisfying.

[thegirlwiththemooglehat]

I follow this lady on instagram who rescues cats, and i have been thinking about this video for literal months. behold the transformation of this wretched little beast

(x)

[whatsallthisnow]

I could not have anticipated that transformation if you had told me ahead of time

[drtanner]

This was nearly two years ago! I wonder how this little dude is doing now.

[garlicbunny]

“ok lets do warm up sketch”

“oh..”

[thornethenorn]

[midnight-sloth]

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

These wonderful people have a single braincell to share but unfortunately none of them are using it

[tiredkitchenwitch]

[insertunknownreferencehere]

being able to play songs in your head is cool and all but not really if you can't control what and when it plays so this is a visualization of me trying to concentrate while angel of music plays in my head

[depsidase]

[barkingbarghest]

Here is an article from NPR about it (May 22, 2026):

Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click. "Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from. "If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."

And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):

While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model.  Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.

And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:

When Google first started implementing AI-assisted results, news publishers warned of “catastrophic” impacts on the industry, much of which relies on Google search to drive users to their websites.  Last year, news websites saw significant traffic declines as chatbots increasingly replaced Google search as the primary way to find sites and ask questions.  Small businesses also noted drops in traffic to their sites from Google, which has traditionally delivered customers.   Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy & research at Amsive, a digital marketing agency, warned as early as last year that Google’s planned changes to search are “going to have a devastating impact on the Internet.”  “It will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers and it will disincentivize content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more,” she told Technology Magazine.  

[anarchopuppy]

noai.duckduckgo.com blocks all AI content in search results automatically

[daysleftofsecondterm]

in firefox’s latest update you have the option to turn off the ai features

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[salamandorange]

The most PATHETIC lil baby sounds...

[whitebear-ofthe-watertribe]

I love when little creatures who are entirely loved and well cared for have the BIGGEST baby reactions to normal things. Like yes sweet pea, you DO have the hardest life of anyone ever, for sure, and you’re SO BRAVE about this minor inconvenience of *checks notes* having some water touch you

[cephalon-sancti]

There is nothing sadder and more pathetic than a baby marine mammal having to get into the water. They are suffering the most out of any baby animal ever. How dare they be introduced to their natural environment.