YES BABY

Brontë, 20, this blog is a clusterfuck

[deaddolin]

me, 21 years old: *still kinda lookin around for cool sticks and odd looking rocks that might reveal latent magical powers*

[knifepadme]

academia is ruined, we need to throw it back to the days when scholars were only after the cure for death, i want to wear a cool robe and get funding from the king to just do whatever the hell and kind of poison him

[everydaylouie]

ghost choir 👻 🎵

[teacupfulofstarshine]

I DID NOT THINK ANYTHING COULD TOP GHOST DUET

I WAS WRONG

I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO BE WRONG IN ALL MY LIFE

[ziraseal]

the first avengers was a lot funnier than we gave it credit for. I remember not knowing it was coming out until the week it happened. some scenes looked like they had budgets of $10 million. some scenes looked like they had budgets of $10. robin scherbatsky was randomly there. it was the third movie with RDJ and he still looked energetic to be in the franchise. 2012 black widow who was the only black widow we cared about. everyone’s drama about why mark ruffalo was there instead of edward norton. thor’s dumb haircut and dramatic entrance. steve roger’s gay ass outfit. chaotic good.  

[ziraseal]

the blatantly plastic armor that Chris Hemsworth wears

[ziraseal]

I’m watching this and laughing every other character had a major speaking role or their own movie and then Jeremy Renner is just trying his best

[ziraseal]

JOSS WHEDON WHAT IS THIS DUMB ASS INSTAGRAM FILTER YOU USED IN AN ACTUAL MOVIE

[fifty-shadesofgay]

oh god remember when all we cared about was shawarma?

[gfwayu]

i hate how reward systems never work for me like i can’t just say “if i finish this assignment i can have a cookie” bc my brain is like “…..or u could just have one right now” and i can’t argue with that logic

[truestoriesaboutme]

Self-imposed deadlines don’t work either because I know the guy who set them and he’s full of shit

[four-female]

ghostbusters?

[the-feminists-are]

taking over! i’m

[an-adult]

virgin!

[fullmetalfisting]

Posts like this make me realize that I never read anyone’s fucking url

[solarsyrup]

Since the two best-selling games of all time are Tetris and Minecraft, I think we can safely say that people fucking LOVE squares

[k25ff]

(art by soup-erb on Tumblr)

[lonelyroommp3]

in general i think new york is very good for my social anxiety because no matter how much of a freak i’m being i know it’s probably not the weirdest thing people have seen today

[lonelyroommp3]

case in point: i felt bad about bringing my unwieldy luggage onto a crowded train, until the man sitting next to me pulled a live fish out of his backpack

[flyingpurplepizzaeater]

be the surreal nonsense you wish to see in the world

[popokko-deactivated20210315]

me: hmm what happens if i forcibly bend this thing

thing: *breaks*

me:

[traitorous-bastard]

[threesideddream]

this literally better than the original song dndhkshsjsh

[gallusrostromegalus]

I JUST HEARD THE BEST THING

So I’m watching a Sir David Attenborough (Natural Curiousities on Netflix), to cope withe the crushing lonliness of solo housesitting, and he’s on about Really Weird animals and talks about the origins of the pheonix- a bird that people travelling though Africa only rarely saw shrouded in the streamy mists of volcanic soda lakes (which are literally boiling hot and also extremely caustic).

And all they’d see is the occasional bit of bright red plumage and see these things bobbing in and out of the horrible death clouds coming off the lake, and naturally came up with the myth of a firebird what the fuck ELSE would be living IN A GODDAMN VOLCANO??

The Central Africans told this to the Egyptians who told the Greeks* about this mysterious animal, and they ran hog-wild with it to create the now-famous Pheonix, but-

The bird they were seeing in those volcanic lakes?

FLAMINGOES.

FLAMINGOES ARE THE ORIGIN OF THE PHEONIX MYTH.

MAJESTIC

(Image Source: Chris Kotze)

*There is significant academic debate about who told who what when (esp as the firebird myth has cropped up multiple times and been culturally exchanged many, MANY times) but the Flamingo>Egyptian Bennu>Greek Pheonix>European Pheonix chain is fairly well agreed upon.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Some of my favorite tags so far:

@asleepinawell “Natural Curiousities” is on netflix and I think the PBS streaming app.  BBC streaming keeps crashing on me but probably there too.  It’s very much like his usual work, but with 500% more “Look at these funky specimens and the frantic scribbles of early scientific illustrators confronted with a fucking kangaroo” and “I’m Sir David Fucking Attenborough And I’m Going To Snuggle This Cheetah”

@heedra  You are correct! According to Wikipedia: “The name “flamingo” comes from Portuguese or Spanish flamengo, “flame-colored”, in turn coming from Provençal flamenc from flama “flame” and Germanic-like suffix -ing, with a possible influence of words like “Fleming” THEY WERE TRYING TO TELL US ALL ALONG!

@melifair  You’re in good company- I used to call them “Pimentos” until I was three and finally got the hang of the Letter “F”

Also, Apologies about the spelling. I have a reading disorder and it causes me to mis-read and by turn misspell certain words, especially ones with two nonidentical vowels in the middle of the word like Their and Becuase. Good thing we all know what I’m talking about anyway!

[coherent-paradox]

But how could you not tell us WHAT THE FLAMINGOS ARE DOING IN A VOLCANO?????

[gallusrostromegalus]

So Flamingoes are pretty badass.

They’re hyperspecialized filter-feeders, not unlike krill-feeding whales, and thier heads are shaped Like That, so they can dangle thier heads in the water, suck up water full of algae and brine shrimp and other goodies, and filter them out with thier Spiny Tongues.

(Image Source Apparently, according to the Ancient Romans, Flamingo Tounge has a “Superb” flavor. You Wacky Roman Bastards)

But the lakes with the tastiest and most dense algae and arthropods are not Normal lakes.  African Lesser Flamingoes (lesser becuase they have a smaller range, but probably our phoenix given how people were travelling at the time) like to hang out in extremely Alkaline Lakes where thier favorite algae grow, and those lakes are mostly in the volcanic Great Rift Valley.  Where the lava and occasional venting of hot toxic gasses happen.

In addition to the wierd diet, and caustic water, Flamingoes can also cope with some pretty intense climate.  The Alkaline Lakes Lesser Flamigoes like are also VERY HIGH in the mountains, where they cope with low oxygen, Intense UV radiation, and rapid and extreme temperature fluctuations- below freezing at night and heatstroke hot in the day.

You can tell how well a Flamigo is Flamingoing by it’s color! The lovely red-pink color comes from the algae and arthopods they eat: the better-fed and healthier a flamingo is, the more intense thier colors will be! Zoo famingoes can thrive on a wide variety of diets, but thier colors will fade, and it will cause everyone to lose romantic interest, so they have to be fed a special color-intensive diet to keep breeding programs going.

So while Flamingoes probably weren’t the bird you were picturing when you thought of a Phoenix , they’re Pretty Badass and worthy of the mythic lore.

M A J E S T I C

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

The “color intensive diet” flamingos are fed basically just contains concentrated carotenoids (the red-orange, fat soluble type of pigment that flamingos normally inject in their food). 

The main reason for this is that it’s virtually impossible to replicate a flamingo’s wild diet in a human care setting. Brine shrimp (the main arthropod they eat) can be farmed as a feeder colony - aquariums do it all the time - but doing so in the bulk required to feed flamingos would require a huge amount of time, space, and staff effort. Feeding the brine shrimp the correct algae to keep flamingos in their appropriate coloration would also require a large aquaculture effort. And at the end of the day, you can’t set up a self-sustaining algae/shrimp/flamingo ecosystem in an exhibit that has to be drained and cleaned regularly, and it’s really hard to ensure large birds are getting appropriate nutrition when they’re eating incredibly tiny arthropods. Because of all that, flamingos in human care are fed a pelleted diet with the appropriate nutritional content… with a side of concentrated pigment of the type they’d be ingesting naturally. 

[pics-that-make-you-go-hmm]

[vampire-crimson]

you walk in here and they deal with every single problem youve ever experienced in your life and then you go to the cash register and they kill you

[steampunktendencies]

Wearable chainmail octopus - Piece created by weaving together over 15,000 anodized aluminium rings by hand. The result is something kinetic, fun, and strange. Artist: Vanessa Walilko

[lady-halibuts-chambers]

…………………..I love it

[cheaphalloweencostume]

i hate that post that’s like “what you named your stuffed animal as a kid is a personality test” cause the only notably named “stuffed animal” i had as a kid was one of those wretched baby dolls w hard plastic head feet and hands and a soft fabric body and i kept him fully nude at all times and often hurled him across the room just to hear the plastic THOCK against linoleum and his name was Bigfoot Larry so whatever that says about me i don’t wanna know

[kotortwo]

*clicks page 2 of google search results* the deep web

[whitecache]

Weeping Flowers 11480 x 16000