Da Vinci and Wilde

29, she/they, lesbian. For those of you who need it, I have tags marked 'Funny' and 'For the bad days'. You'll probably find a few fandoms here as well, such as Undertale, Good Omens, and others, so that's there. _Please note, if I have ever 'liked' a piece of fanart or work, I am simply saving it to blog later. Typically my phone skimming/dashboard browsing lasts a few minutes in my lunch break at work. I will come back and probably tag it, just don't have time in that moment. _ You ever want a chat or send questions, you know what to do.

[asparrowdraws]

Gaming Dice.

I learned a lot about edges and light and color relationships here.

[greywolfheirs]

PAINTING!!! THIS IS A PAINTING

[sensoryscorpio]

CHAT THIS IS A PAINTING!!!

[almaignismare]

I went over this post twice before realising. I was like "oh it's just set up like a still life painting, right". NO IT'S FUCKING NOT!

[plaguedocboi]

So every year, my aquarium does a captive lobster hatchery project (hence all the loblings). The reason we’re doing it is because in the wild, loblings only have a 1 in 25,000 chance of surviving their larval phase. They’re plankton as babies and everything eats them. Additionally, as the Gulf of Maine warms, they are having even lower survival rates because the blooms of copepods they feed on as babies are happening earlier in the year, and they’re missing it.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Conservation is so fucken sick

[maswartz]

[fractally]

This has been my main argument against "AI" from the very beginning.

OpenAI scraped the entire web. All of which had been a labor of love from humans. Wikipedia is the backbone of a lot of LLMs, and that was volunteer human labor. They stole it and now they're selling it back to us.

And worse, they're trying to destroy the free sources that they stole from. It's destruction of human knowledge on an unprecedented scale. The burning of the library of Alexandria has nothing on this.

[depsidase]

[bluecichlid]

Text: My classmate in med school studies for seven hours every evening and exercises daily. I used to ask him how did he manage it & he said, "I'm very disciplined". I met his wife yesterday, she told me how she cooked him three fresh meal daily, mowed their lawn, ran all errands, cleaned the house weekly, and handled all social plans. It made me wonder how many times "discipline" means a woman doing all of the other essential work that keeps a life going.

[klapollo]

Washington Post is paywalling the article but it looks like Taylor Farms — a consumer bagged salad brand that also supplies produce to grocers and fast food chains like Taco Bell, Walmart, McDonald's, Chipotle, Burger King, KFC, and Meijer —may be at least one of the sources of the current cyclosporiasis outbreak.

Taylor makes bagged greens, salad kits, chopped salads, the works. Keep avoiding supermarket greens, but keep an especially close eye out for this brand/supplier. The above list of grocers and fast food chains is NOT exhaustive, so please continue getting lettuce and other raw produce taken off your burgers, sandwiches, etc.

[klapollo]

Iceberg lettuce sold at Taco Bell linked to cyclospora outbreak | CNN

Shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms and sold at some Taco Bell restaurants has been linked to a multistate outbreak of cyclosp

Non-paywalled article now on CNN.

[memeuplift]

[klapollo]

if youre in the US (especially the northeast + michigan) i would avoid bagged salads/greens and generally wash your produce very thoroughly unless you want the diarrhea parasite

[klapollo]

Outbreak of diarrhea-causing parasite grows to more than 1,000 cases

Michigan is experiencing its largest outbreak of a parasitic infection that causes severe diarrhea. Nearly 1,000 people have been diagnosed

this is not life-threatening, but also who wants weeks of diarrhea and a fucking parasite in them lol. if you suspect you've already had this and it's passed, i would see a doctor. you might need an antiparasitic anyway. if you're actively sick, see a doctor and they might be able to prescribe medication to help you get over it faster.

try to avoid eating raw vegetables, scrub fruit with a produce brush and rinse thoroughly with water. again, don't bother with premade greens or bagged salads. if you buy lettuce, remove the outer 2-3 layers of leaves.

there are UNVERIFIED rumors that the greens have been linked to a company that sources to taco bell. some locations have been actively pulling fresh ingredients like lettuce, avocado, and pico de gallo to mitigate the threat, so i would avoid any products from them just in case. considering how vast supply chains are, i'd be wary of any fast food greens in general for now.

[3liza]

the outbreak is in 31 states as of yesterday, its everywhere. source is still unidentified but is likely in either fresh uncooked produce or in food that was processed at a large plant with contaminated water. cooking food at home thoroughly is advised. removing the outer leaves of lettuce wont prevent infection, the cyclospora is drawn into the veins of the lettuce along with water from the ground.

stick to food you are cooking to a safe temperature yourself at home if possible.

[robertreich]

ICE is bigger and worse than ever, although the major media have stopped reporting on it. Not only is ICE’s reign of terror intimidating many undocumented immigrants and their families — preventing them from seeking the healthcare they need or attending school or going to court — but ICE is also sweeping into its maw many American citizens who are protesting Trump’s police state. Do not lose sight of this. More thoughts on how we should respond on my Substack (in my story).

[urie]

ICE killed another person in maine today, just days after the murder of lorenzo salgado araujo in houston

the maine immigrants rights coalition has released a statement confirming he was a 26 year old columbian man who was authorized to work in the US and had a valid social security number

will update this post with a gofundme link if/when one becomes available

[muddypolitics]

New York bans data center construction for a year, rattling AI industry

New York’s data center moratorium may become the blueprint for anti-AI movement.

New York became the first state to pause all construction of massive new data centers after Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul announced a one-year moratorium on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

The state-wide ban applies to data centers using 50 megawatts or more, officials told Reuters, and it won’t be lifted until the state figures out what “consistent standards” for responsible data center development in New York should look like.

it’s a start

[beardedmrbean]

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.

Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.

[schmergo]

The summer between the end of high school and the start of college, I wrote a ridiculous play about pirates and put on a staged reading with some friends at an amphitheatre at a local park before a small audience of friends and family. It was never published or staged again. But I just got a message from an old high school friend I haven’t seen in years. He accidentally quoted the play in a conversation with friends, was asked what he was quoting, he couldn’t remember either, and wracked his brain until he finally remembered it was that silly play reading that we did one day in the park over 10 years ago. It made me happy. (The line was, “Huzzah for mercantilism!” by the way.)

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

I just love that this is part of human life. Our memories don’t just pick up quotes from great art, literature, and music, but little things, too.

[podcastwizard]

LIKES TO CHARGE REBLOGS TO CAST

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

you people aren't CASTING

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

NO

[ryllen]

🐚

[birthofcassiopeia]

just gonna uh

just gonna leave this here if that's chill

[also @vale-river can we go with mechaman nocturne for her, u know bc bat singing hear me out-]

harper by the one and only @eiigeia ✨

[birthofcassiopeia]

I just realized that at this point, after escaping the red ring’s control via prison, sonar doesn’t know if Robert is alive or not. The ambush that got sonar put under red ring control was the same battle that put Robert into his coma. :(

[parakeet]

PlayStation putting out a legal notice saying they’re removing 500+ movies from user accounts days before announcing they’re getting rid of physical discs for games is an interesting choice

[enki2]