On The Bold Stage Of Today We Wither Into Dust

alex || bisexual || she/they/he

[spyder-on-the-wall]

🕷️SeerLight🕷️

[gatheringbones]

“Life after menopause is exceptionally rare in animals. It can evolve only in creatures where grannies help younger family members survive. Only human, killer whale, and short-finned pilot whale females routinely live for substantial periods after they stop breeding. Like humans, killer and pilot whales have roughly twenty-five to thirty childbearing years, then can live another thirty or so. And as Ken’s just explained, some live a lot longer. Up to a quarter of the females in a group are postreproductive. These whales are not waiting to die; they are helping their children survive. As human children often benefit from their grandmothers’ attention, killer whale grandmothers boost their grandkids’ survival. A rather bizarre twist of killer whale society is that killer whale mothers remain crucial to the survival of their adult children. When older killer whale females die, their adult children start dying at high rates, especially males. Male killer whales who are under thirty years old when their mothers die suffer a tripling of the annual mortality rate compared to males in their age group whose mothers are still alive. Male killer whales who are more than thirty years old when their mothers die face death rates more than eight times as high as males in their age group whose mothers are still living. Daughters under thirty show no mortality increase after their mothers’ death. But daughters older than thirty when their mothers die have more than two and a half times the death rate of same-age females whose mothers are alive. Males’ handicaps of the extra drag of their huge dorsal and pectoral fins and the extra food required for their immense size (at around 20,000 pounds, males can be one-third more massive than females) seem to make them reliant on their working mothers for food. Females don’t have the males’ impediments, but while raising young, females may rely on food shared by their no-longer-breeding mothers. Adult females share essentially all the fish they catch, and more than half goes to their children. Adult males share their catch only about 15 percent of the time—usually with their mothers. While no one fully understands their strange death pattern following the loss of a mother, extreme parental care is likely at the root. Toothed whales are the world’s champion nursers. Short-finned pilot whales continue to produce milk for up to fifteen years after the birth of their last calf, likely nursing other females’ young. In bottlenose and Atlantic spotted dolphins (further study might reveal others), some females never give birth. Denise Herzing dubbed them “career females,” because their role in society does not include motherhood. They might be infertile. They might be gay. But their contribution is crucial: they do a lot of babysitting. When Herzing entered the ocean with a visiting nine-year-old girl, “White Patches, the eternal babysitter herself, had never seen me babysitting a young human before. Her excitement vocalizations were audible and electric and she continued to swim around us, eyeing the human youngster attached to me.” (Researchers sometimes call babysitters “aunts.” That’s precisely who they often are.)”

— Beyond Words, by Carl Safina

[sandersstudies]

Going to see children and adolescents dance badly, play ball badly, sing badly, play recorder badly because they are young: YES! YOU ARE LEARNING! INCREDIBLE!

[sandersstudies]

People are so rude about going to watch the children in their lives do stuff shittily. “Ugh toddler dance recital,” “ugh tee-ball weekend again,” “ugh nativity play.”

That guy learned what skipping is this year and now he’s playing the piano the worst I’ve ever seen but the best he’s ever done! AREN’T YOU CAPTIVATED BY THEIR ABILITY TO DO A LITTLE BIT WHEN PREVIOUSLY THEY COULD DO NOTHING? Be filled with wonder and joy!

[doctorbluesmanreturns]

PEER REVIEWED

[userfaramir]

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING — Behind the Scenes

[tlirsgender]

When you get more objective about the way nature is & away from weird anthropomorphic carnivore slander it is a little funny when the baby sea turtles hatch and every other animal in like a ten mile radius goes "oh fuck yum one million mini sliders"

[tlirsgender]

[ID: a screenshot of the original post's tags that read, "#real turtleheads know this is a play on sliders (turtle emoji) which are a type of terrestrial turtle. but it's also tiny hamburgers #which seems apt. #this has been another episode of Joke Explainer" /end ID]

Keeping these actually. Necessary footnote for this post

[tlirsgender]

Watching a jaguar casually walk up to an adult sea turtle headed back to the water after laying her eggs and eat it like why am I in my sea turtle violence era and why are they like this. Adult sea turtles aren't especially easy to eat in the water they'll swim around with shark bites taken out of them like they're just chillin. And then on land they just kinda

[tlirsgender]

Jaguar watching a sea turtle on the beach: oh fuck yum 100 pound slider

[tlirsgender]

Also today I learned that since the jaguar scares off other smaller predators it's actually good for the sea turtle population if there are jaguars there. Cause less babies get eaten by Everything Else. I'm gonna be honest I didn't even consider that a jaguar could be on the beach

[tlirsgender]

Every other animal in like a ten mile radius: I'm gonna be honest I didn't even consider that a jaguar could be on the beach

[zinesbycee]

(nods sagely) (nods basily) (nods rosemarily) (nods saltly) (nods star anisely)

[heatherwitch]

My resolution last year was to do one thing before bed that would make my morning feel easier, and that’s become a daily habit that I’m carrying into this new year.

Some nights even filling up the kettle and setting an empty mug out for my morning tea felt hard. But I was always thankful for it in the morning.

Other nights, one thing would lead to another, and I’d wake up in a clean house with everything ready to go.

And, on a rare few nights, the one thing that I could do to make my morning easier was going straight to bed and allowing myself to rest.

What stayed the same each day is that I would take a moment to think of what I could do for my future self and do it, even after a hard day. And I would wake up knowing that I had done my best and any effort—no matter how small—was a kindness to myself.

[one-bite-is-undercover]

I’ve been doing a lot of “a treat for future me” moments lately.

[heatherwitch]

That’s a great way to look at it, and I love this artist! (Anna-Laura: instagram / website)

[gay-pippin]

Hobbits that point at gay people

[redstonedust]

why do US patriots think they own "red white and blue" there's a lotta red white and blue flags out there. "i stand for the red white and blue" yass me too let's go costa rica 🇨🇷🇨🇷🇨🇷🇨🇷 let's go laos 🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦 fuck it up liberia 🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷 nepal get triangular with it 🇳🇵🇳🇵🇳🇵

[ventresses]

This is a perfect time to read the brilliant and unforgettable graphic novel(s) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, about growing up in Iran during and after the Iranian Revolution, and the rise of the oppressive theocracy that persists to this day.

Both graphic novels are available free online (Persepolis vol. 1, Persepolis vol. 2)

It also was adapted to a wonderful film (co-directed and co-written by the author) which is available to watch for free on Sundance Now (sign up for the free trial)

[depsidase]

[moghedien]

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

[moghedien]

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

[petulantpony]

i’ve said it before but i wish vaginas didn’t cost money

[petulantpony]

you literally can not have a vagina without paying for it. vaginoplasty for some, period products for others, if you want to stop buying period products that’s gonna be expensive medicine or an expensive procedure, recovery from surgery requires time off work and vaginoplasty specifically requires money spent on dilators. our bodies shouldnt cost us this much on baseline. having a vagina shouldnt have such a hefty tax on it. it makes me feel like i’m in a fictional dystopia written for middle school classrooms when i think about it.

[amuseoffyre]

One of my favourite photos from my trip to Warsaw in 2006

[theperksofbeingahugefuckingcunt]

Apparently my stepdad and I are fucking psychically linked because ?? every single time he makes chili for dinner I get a migraine. Without fail. And it became like a ha ha running joke because it happened so many times but now I’m living 3 hours away from my parents and I just texted my mom and

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME

[theperksofbeingahugefuckingcunt]

Happy disability pride month

[nose-bl]

via @ninjahijabimuse​

this is so much better i love it

[chasoc]

Can we talk about this after the whole lethal shootout thing? Person of Interest S5E10: The Day the World Went Away

[luntfontanne]

dearly departed fung wah bus may she rest in POWER 🫡 obsessed with ayo's go-to bit in her last press cycle being the great molasses flood and this time around it's the fung wah bus. real bostonian representation 🙂‍↕️

now you gotta pay like $35 for a bus to new york and it STILL will probably break down and leave you stranded at an ihop in connecticut :(

[luntfontanne]

imagine this 💭: open your eyes 🫵 CLOSE 'EM 🙂‍↕️ now open your MENTAL EYE 👁️ right? you are in a BUS DEPOT 🚏🚌 in the DEPTHS of boston chinatown 🏮🌆 you get the opportunity to take a $10-15 💸 bus that will take you to new york 🗽 in UNDER four hours ⏱️ sometimes THREE 🏃💨 it's like the concorde of buses ✈️ this thing's going a hundred miles— BIG bus, too🫸↔️🫷not a small bus 🤏 BIG ol' bus 🙌💪 HUNDRED miles an hour 💯 on the speedway 🛣️ sometimes? catching fire 🔥🧯 don't sit in the back 👈 don't sit in the front 👉 you will hit things 🧳⚠️ and things will hit you 🤕🔨 the bus? might explode 💥💥💥 THAT'S NOT YOUR BUSINESS ✋ your business is GETTING TO NEW YORK 🫡 and then you do :)