absolutes are quicksilver.

the world is awake tonight. it is lying on its back, with its eyes open. ( personal blog. )

[nemfrog]

Strange Birds

Internet Archive

[metamorphesque]

"The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)

[arsarteetlabore]

Giuseppe De Nittis, Italian impressionism, L'avvicinarsi del temporale, 1868

[petaltexturedskies]

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (originally published in 1998)

[gremlininho]

looking. at you

[aqua-regia009]

Baroque portal and cypresses on a Mediterranean shore (Edited), 1898 - oil on canvas — Ferdinand Keller (German, 1842-1922)  

[venustapolis]

Aurora Borealis (Frederic Edwin Church, 1865)

[freakinfur]

☠︎︎Old Demonia catalogs☠︎︎

[389]

Silver crystal - Dendrite (metal) A silver crystal, electrolytically refined with visible dendritic structures

[kosmogrl]

[asteroidtroglodyte]

[prokopetz]

You wouldn’t think that flamingoes are extremophiles just from looking at them. It’s like somebody tried to build the vertebrate equivalent of that fungus that lives inside nuclear reactors, and ended up with a gangly pink dinosaur with a spoon for a face.

[calloutnevvegas]

For everyone in the comments asking how flamingos are extremophiles:

Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning

Don’t fuck with flamingos

[revretch]

….. Didn’t know most of that

[iamthekaijuking]

Huh… so that’s why zoos don’t put them somewhere warm during winter.

[revretch]

Oh yeah, this leaves out what I *did* know about them–they can also survive hypersalinity. That is, water so salty it kills practically everything else–water so salty it burns your skin.

American flamingos just drink that shit

[bogleech]

(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.

When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.

It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:

[assuming-dinosaur]

Some species of flamingo actually subsist almost entirely on a diet of bacteria! In other words, there is a species of dinosaur that eats only bacteria and lives in lakes so toxic they would kill almost anything else—and it is best known to the average person as a kitschy lawn decoration.

[kosmogrl]

[andernell]

My piece for the @monoceroszine project! Was a pleasure to work along side some amazing artists and writers! 

[quiltofstars]

Ptolemy's Cluster, M7 // Marcelo Alves

[thechildrensmuseum]

Because it is finally Halloween season AND National Arts and Humanities Month’s Poetry Day, we’d like to share this Classics Illustrated edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and Other Poems. It doesn’t get much creepier than the illustration and opening lines of The Sleeper!

[amnhnyc]

Have you ever seen a white Common Raven (Corvus corax)? No, this isn’t a new species… or a ghost. 👻This Raven’s striking pale plumage is the result of the genetic mutations leucism or albinism. Leucism is a reduction in all types of pigmentation, including melanin. Albinism is the inability to produce or distribute melanin. One hint to tell the difference? Individuals affected by leucism often have blue eyes, while individuals with albinism have pink eyes. White Common Ravens are rare. An estimated 1 in 30,000 individuals is born without this species’ signature black plumage. 

Photo: cedarleaf, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

[thingsfromthedirt]

Houseboat: Reflections of North America's Floating Homes... History architecture, and Lifestyles (1977)

Ben Dennis and Betsy Case