Art, Cats, Fandom, Photography, and Puns.

[tranthony]

grout white shark

[creatingcuriosity]

Mending Monday

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[linddzz]

gotta be a term that isn't the dunning Krueger effect but is a kind of similar idea where the more deep scientists get into their topic and the more exhausted they get, the more likely they are to find stupid ways to describe things

[linddzz]

this post brought to you by a bunch of coral specialists at the end of a workshop voting to define coral, a complex animal, as "a rock with problems"

[stitchposts]

[creatingcuriosity]

Blue Tapestry

Armando Rabadán creates a photo negative tapestry with oil paint on paper. You can almost make out the images that one would expect to see on an old European tapestry, but the details are just out of reach.

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[blackholesun321]

Baby eridians, for a good portion of their lives, are soft-shelled, as Erid likes to call it. It takes a few molts (more than a few, but for abbreviation's sake) for their shells to entirely harden, absorbing minerals from around them and through their food to develop the shell on their exterior. If you need a comparison, consider how human bones fuse and we become less flexible as we get older.

But for a few years (cough, decades, cough), a baby pebble is about as hard as a soft-shelled turtle—or a normal turtle, if they're a bit older. Disadvantages aside, there is an advantage to being able to see your offspring's internal functions. And until their vocal bladders form and they're capable of making multiple complex sounds, being able to see what is hurting is absolutely helpful.

It's a universal experience among parents to lament the day they can no longer hear their pebbles' heartbeats.

That is to say, Rocky knows Grace is an adult, okay? He isn't someone who anthropomorphizes, and he isn't going to start now. Statement.

But when he first heard Grace in all his squishy glory— heart pumping away, lungs filling and deflating, organs digesting food— his brain went full baby-fever mode. Frankly, he was white-knuckling the urge to find the nearest hypothetical cave, bundle him up into a proper nest, and wait for his skin to absorb the surrounding minerals and start hardening properly.

But because Rocky is sensible and proper and not going to infantilize his best friend (he swears to God, stupid fucking instincts, shut the fuck up!!), he won't.

But sometimes the urge to squish his best friend is overwhelming. He just pinches at him through the permeable mesh of his ball. And Grace will screw up his face (so soft) and go what’s up bud? I piss you off or something? (He learns what bruises are and sulks for half a day afterward.)

All of that aside, once again, Rocky has gotten used to Grace's heartbeat, his clumsiness, and his one-tone voice. That's his best friend, and he's smart and just as capable as any other adult. He is also the cutest fucking thing to Eridian hearing. Is he also disconcertingly alien, definitely— His size, the limbs, the head protrusion (and other protrusions), the leakiness detracted maybe. But his cluster-sibling once cooed at and brought home a pet sulphur slug because, oh my spirits, hear his squishy respiratory system and you tell me that's not the cutest thing on the planet! It blurbles, Rocky! It fucking blurbles!

So, as Erid draws closer and Rocky/Grace become more excited and stressed. (The food has yet to run out, and as good as Erid is, they need substantial help from the human side to figure out how to make proper human nutrition. And finding the right informational packs in all of human knowledge is a very big undertaking.)

Rocky dreads the ever-looming talk he’ll need to have with Grace about the fact that Erid may, in fact, possibly find him very, very adorable. And that this might hamper communication for a second while he explains no, that is not a tall baby and no you cannot squish it.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[misscromwellsmonocle]

The Little Art Connoisseur (1863) August Friedrich Siegert

[darnitjack]

Last time this came around I showed my three year old and he said "He's little like me!" and stared for a whole minute (v. Long in toddler time).

[douche-canoe-regatta]

An extra delightful thing about Project Hail Mary is that, eventually, humans WILL go to Erid, and Eridians WILL visit Earth. And there's every likelihood Rocky will be there to see it.

For one, humans on Earth likely continued to breed astrophage, trying to minimize its range or damaging effects - any number of things. Rendering it sterile would be ideal, of course, but it was likely impossible until the mission succeeded. You can damn well bet your ass Stratt was out there chaining scientists to workbenches, trying to find or force a silver lining. She wouldn't be wrong: Astrophage IS an excellent source of fuel, which means it has great potential. PLUS!! the discovery of Taumeba gives you a way to control it.

Erid is only 16 light years away.

Imagine humanity pulled back from the brink, striving together to produce not one but TWO (at least!) huge joint efforts to save ourselves and each other. Project Hail Mary was followed the Taumeba Project, surely. The world comes together again.

I, however, like to imagine there was a third plan.

I think meeting Eridians became a worldwide obsession. Ryland Grace's legacy can be nothing but a collective triumph, though his contact with intelligent alien life is somehow second to saving the Earth and who knows how many other systems. Once saved, the next major project would surely be meeting our interplanetary friends. How would we say "hello"?

Let's say Earth's initial overture is a simple probe, Voyager style. What do you send? Well, they know Grace may still be out there, or at least was/is known to Eridian culture. He's the one link; the only common element.

The probe launches, and what it's full of is love for Ryland Grace. His childhood pictures. Interviews with his students. Thousands of statues and dedications and documentaries. Videos of worldwide celebrations of the Day of Grace. Kids' drawings of Rocky with laboriously-written thank you notes, thick with crayon so the Eridians can see. We love him too. We love you already.

Given their longevity, I imagine Rocky and Adrian opening the probe together, trilling over memories of their old friend. Stories they only heard about secondhand or not at all. Joy and triumph and thankfulness and hope, all in one small interstellar package. Amaze amaze amaze.

After all, it's Full of Grace.

[nerdman23]

Why is everything this fandom produces peak

[creatingcuriosity]

Curious Covers: Remarkably Bright Creatures

Tova, who lost her 18 year old son years ago and her husband recently, keeps herself busy working as an overnight janitor at the aquarium. Cameron, who was abandoned by his mother at age 9, and never knew his father, comes to town looking for his father, but finds a home and a job. Marcellus, the giant pacific octopus, nearing the end of his life, knows something that connects the two of…

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[memorycycle]

i hope a ceiling fan falls on the empty spot in the bed next to you and it starts understanding your needs

[rosetower]

this post always makes me so emo... here's me next to my ceiling fan that i turned off for the first time in months to draw

[memorycycle]

stop reblogging this post without the art this is the only version that exists now

[targetedknowledge]

[alex-and-nova420]

made this into a gif bc i liked it so much. shark Denied

[the-haiku-bot]

ALTmade this into

a gif bc i liked it

so much. shark Denied

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[creatingcuriosity]

Bird Nest Goddess

This modern Venus by Emma Plunkett is tree and mother and home all in one nurturing whole.

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[wirenettle]

I see your bloodymary and i raise you: The Hail Mary Diaries

[stars-bean]

Fantasia (1940) dir. David D. Hand, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske

[hayleywilliamsfan84]

i keep laughing at the way that eridian culture in the movie and eridian culture in the book are not contradictory at all, if you accept that movie rocky is just a total FREAK

grace: boy i sure can't wait to meet other eridians haha! rocky, putting on a shirt for the first time in four years: rocky has something to tell grace but does grace promise not to be mad, question?

[specialagentartemis]

Consider also the opposite:

Grace: Hey, uh, Rocky…

Rocky: You have a question, Grace my best friend Grace?

Grace: yeah. um. Why does everyone else wear clothes and you. Don’t.

Rocky: oh. That’s because they’re mostly from 🎵🎵🎵 and people are weird about clothes there.

Grace: what

Rocky: in 🎵🎵🎵 they think it’s wrong to have your carapace uncovered in public. Which is stupid. It’s a CARAPACE who cares if your carapace is out. We all have one. My country understands this. I can’t help it if the space program was primarily organized by the 🎵🎵🎵 government because they’re the ones with power and resources so everyone who works at the space elevator thinks they need to wear clothes even when they don’t actually have to.

Grace: Rocky are you a nudist

Rocky: don’t know word. I’m 🎶🎵🎶 and also the Savior of Erid so the 🎵🎵🎵 guys can’t tell me I have to wear a shirt anymore. SUCK IT

(Meanwhile a significant chunk of Erid is going NOOOO THE GUY FROM THE NUDIST COUNTRY WAS THE ONE TO MAKE FIRST CONTACT??? While Rocky is like #FreeTheNipple and no one’s allowed to argue because he’s Savior of Erid)

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[whatisamildopinion]

'rocky learns to swear in english' is great and all but have we considered the equally hilarious alternative: rocky makes grace a little harmonica so he can use tone indicators in eridian, does not realize how terrible of a mistake this is until it's too late. grace catches onto tone indicators FAST and he is DEVASTATING with their application. grace does not use eridian swears but rocky gets to hear "are we choosing kind words" and "I'm not mad I'm just disappointed" in eridian roughly thirty times per day