At Toba aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes
literally in tears at this video....such good helpers......

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

if i look back, i am lost

Kaledo Art
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hello vonnie
Three Goblin Art

Origami Around
Claire Keane
KIROKAZE
AnasAbdin
One Nice Bug Per Day
dirt enthusiast
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸

Love Begins
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

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todays bird
noise dept.
Stranger Things

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@floating-by-tots
At Toba aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes
literally in tears at this video....such good helpers......
the lotus pier of jiang chengs childhood is gone, its disciples and vendors, even its stray cats ran off or died in the fires. but the world repeats itself in funny ways and as the years go on from its rebuilding some of the things he remembers come back. one day jiang cheng notices that the shimeis use the same pond as their predecessors to get away from the boys, without having ever met them, the new merchants that move into town find themselves laying out their stalls in the same formation, he finds a stray with her kittens tucked away into the same corner as the cats from his childhood had used, despite the whole area having been burnt and rebuilt. his youngest disciples sit in the same corner of the food hall, the older ones find the same inns to drink at, the teens still dare each other to jump from that one tree into the lake. the lotus pier of his childhood may be gone, his parents, sister and brother too, but things have a funny way of repeating themselves that are both excruciatingly painful and warm at once.
This reminds me of the students' hostel I lived in for a couple of years back in uni and the interaction i had more recently with a couple of girls who were currently staying there. I was on the train going back home after a visit to the capital. I overheard them talk and it sounded awfully familiar so i said hey and got to know that they went to the same university and college as me (different major) and are staying at the same hostel then we started talking about said hostel and the ladies running it, the archaic rules of the hostel, the tricks on how to get away with breaking them and despite being 6+ years apart atleast, we were talking as if we lived at the same time the same experience. It made me think about places, how much memory they hold, how places hand off to its inhabitants as much as they take and builds this sense of connectednes and shared experiences even between people who may never meet eachother. I felt all sorts of feelings and my already immense love for older buildings and communal spaces grew even more and i walked about feeling like i was part of sth bigger that will continue long after im gone
the lotus pier of jiang chengs childhood is gone, its disciples and vendors, even its stray cats ran off or died in the fires. but the world repeats itself in funny ways and as the years go on from its rebuilding some of the things he remembers come back. one day jiang cheng notices that the shimeis use the same pond as their predecessors to get away from the boys, without having ever met them, the new merchants that move into town find themselves laying out their stalls in the same formation, he finds a stray with her kittens tucked away into the same corner as the cats from his childhood had used, despite the whole area having been burnt and rebuilt. his youngest disciples sit in the same corner of the food hall, the older ones find the same inns to drink at, the teens still dare each other to jump from that one tree into the lake. the lotus pier of his childhood may be gone, his parents, sister and brother too, but things have a funny way of repeating themselves that are both excruciatingly painful and warm at once.
fucked that you can’t fix other people especially when you really care about them. Oh so im just supposed to be there for you while you suffer. like a useless cunt gargoyle
A mood
i could be your pet rock. id be very good at it
ive had some time to think and honestly i dont think id be a very good pet rock. i dont know what i was thinking. theres too much anger in me
so, there's no good way to really breach this topic. however, I am going to throw this stone and hope for the best.
Jiang Cheng rebuilt his sect with his own hands. Which means that he had to personally recruit cultivators and convince them that fighting for the Yunmeng Jiang Sect against the Qishan Wen Sect was worth it. This requires an incredible level of social skills and most importantly—skills to understand people so that he can get his message across. Simultaneously, all this requires him to have some form of friendship with his disciples, which means that Jiang Cheng has....friends besides Wei Wuxian! We read the story from WWX's POV so obviously JC's most prominent relationship in the text will be with him! And that's true, they grew up together and WWX's decisions caused heavy problems for the both of them! You cannot disregard their relationship! However, that does not mean that at the end of the novel Jiang Cheng is "friendless" with a threatening personality that scalds anyone who dares to come close. There's no punishment for Jiang Cheng at the end—only understanding of the choices of the other person, and finally a chance to move on from the questions that have been haunting him for years.
THANK YOU! This! Ok, so look. I was trained as an archaeologist.
That means I look at ruins. A lot of ancient ruins, in all sorts of places. One of the MOST common reasons a place becomes a ruin? War. In war, there is pillaging. It is part of the whole, "utter destruction of our enemy" thing. Now, many times, those places and communities do not survive or rebuild. But! Some of them do! And the ones that do have some things in common. They have a charismatic leader, who is smart, savvy about money, trade, and making connections, and who the people LIKE. Because if the people HATE you, you don't stay in power. Nobles revolt, peasants revolt, crops fail, etc. Point is, a bad leader dies. One way or another. Sometimes, even if they are a GOOD leader, they still die (see Cleopatra. By all accounts, she was a darn good leader. She was just up against Rome, and a Roman leader who HATED her. It was a bad situation.).
Now, let's translate this to a completely fictional story, which really isn't completely fleshed out. It's mostly told through hearsay, conjecture, and pretty terrible observation. So, what can we gather from this mess? Well, Lotus Pier is crushed by the Wen. Now, what that actually means sort of varies depending on what version of the story you are looking at, be it live action, donghua, or web novel. One has the whole sect burned down, needing to be completely rebuilt, buildings and disciples, books, treasury, all of it. One, from what I can tell, has the buildings standing with damage, but everything most probably looted, all the people and disciples killed, and the area probably defiled. And one, also from what I can tell, has everything pretty much ok, with just the need for new disciples. Y'all can please correct me if this is wrong!! So, from the get go, we can say the sect is financially broke. The Wen probably looted and took all the money, gold, precious things, and everything not nailed down and either melted it down, carried it off to Nightless City, sold it, or destroyed it. If JC got anything back, he would have had to probably steal it back or go through the halls and treasury of Nightless City and do some looting of his own during the Sunshot Campaign. Which is, quite honestly, what I would have done. Just grabbed as many disciples as I could and told them to take everything they could. Strip it bare. Doors, wood, precious stone, metal, books, weapons, herbs, medicine, fabric, food, horses, chickens, load it up, haul it back to Yunmeng. Look, do you REALLY think the Wen stopped at looting Lotus Pier? I don't. They looted all of Yunmeng. You conquer a land, you do so COMPLETELY.
JC had to be smart. In three months, he gathers enough people to train, to make a small fighting force. A small, TRAINED, fighting force. While ON THE RUN. Do you have any idea how hard that is? How much discipline that takes? Take that whole Mulan I'll Make a Man Out of You training montage and speed it up times like 3 or so. Now do it on the run. Yeah. That. His disciples are probably the desperate and the last ones standing. The ones left of whatever sects or villages the Wen rolled over. The ones who want nothing more than revenge. JC speaks their language. But, he has to KEEP speaking it. He has to keep offering them something to keep them interested, to keep them with him.
This is why he CAN'T protect WWX when he steals the Wen from the Jin camp. His whole sect is made up of people who were destroyed by the Wen. And it's just rebuilding. He has very little political capitol. Yes, his parents had lots of political capitol. They are VERY DEAD. The powerful sect they commanded? Destroyed. The monetary capitol they had? Gone. He is literally starting from less than NOTHING. He has a MEMORY. He is leveraging that up the wazoo. He is bluffing his ass off. And he has a sister to protect that is effectively held in another sect. Yes, she has the protection of the sect's matriarch. And the heir, for what that's worth (not much). But the sect leader is a crocodile. Not a snake. He is a PREDATOR. And JC KNOWS it. He knows that whole sect is DANGEROUS to his sister. That they can destroy his little sad sect. Moreover, they can incite OTHER sects to destroy his sect without ever getting their swords dirty.
Yunmeng is a trading hub. Look, it is on a confluence of rivers flowing into a lake system. That is probably the reason the Wen wanted it. It is the fastest, easiest way to get goods anywhere. Water is the lifeblood of civilization. Always has been. You control the waterways, you control trade, you control the money and the people. This is HOW JC builds his sect back up in 13 years. Trade. What, you thought it was LUCK? Nah, bro. Like I said, a good leader has to be SMART.
But here's the thing. We see MDZS through WWX's perspective. His, and everyone who supports his viewpoint. So what serves to prove his points. Which needs to cast someone in a bad light. JC becomes that foil. LWJ, who really has no clue what it takes to run a sect, to protect people politically, to deal with people who want to tear you down, who only sees things in black and white, and who has always had a prejudice against not only JC, but Yunmeng Jiang itself since the Cloud Recesses Study Arc, serves to support that. The entire Lan clan, in fact, serves to do that. They also serve to show the hypocrisy of the entire cultivation world. 4,000 rules, and they only follow them when it suits them? And punish only those who they really want to? Yeah. But that's a WHOLE nother rant. The point is, that all the nasty rumors? Some of them were probably very useful for JC.
What do I mean by that? Ok. So you have a very fragile sect. Lots of newbies. Not a lot of financial, political, or social capitol. If a stronger sect wants to squash you, all you really have to stop them is the memory of when your sect was powerful. And that is being RAPIDLY eroded by your 1st disciple running around acting INSANE. You are constantly having to apologize for him, because you have NO FUCKING CLUE what the HELL he is doing. Why? BECAUSE HE WON'T TALK TO YOU!! HE'S ALWAYS DRUNK! He's never there! Where is he? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS!? NOT YOU! You look incompetent! You go to your sister, the only person who your crazed 1st disciple brother will listen to. She says to just give him time. Won't ask him what's going on. Won't help. Won't come back to your sect, because she is working on getting married, and you are doing your best to support that (while your brother hates it). So, you are fucked. And the other three major sects are allied, and allied AGAINST you. Are you losing disciples? That is never actually said. What about rebuilding Lotus Pier? Rebuilding Yunmeng? Is there famine? How's trade? Are people moving back? Are crops getting into the ground? Honestly, how JC didn't drop dead of a heart attack, or stress ulcer I don't know. But somehow, he rustled up enough to get his sister married, and managed to somehow start to grow his sect. And then the whole world blew up in his face. And he lost the rest of his family, except for one little baby. And you have to wonder, how much did the Jin make him pay to stay in Jin Ling's life? And is this where the terrifying reputation begins? Because somehow Yunmeng Jiang gets the unfuckwithable reputation. If there is any sect leader you don't offend, it's Sandu Shengshou, and if there is any sect you don't offend, it's Yunmeng Jiang. That is one hell of a reputation.
So, to recap. JC is not a horrible sect leader. He's a smart, savvy, successful sect leader. I would hazard to say he's a much better sect leader than his father ever hoped to be. But no one wants to admit that. Because the story is from the point of view of WWX, and we all know how that goes. Not that I don't like WWX. But, the story is written from one point of view. Looking at other povs is interesting. And fun. 😀
Absolutely yes, this, this 100%.
I am fascinated with the sociopolitical implications of Yunmeng Jiang's return onto the world stage in 13 FUCKING YEARS! From total destruction (whether the buildings remained or not does not matter if they're empty) to standing shoulder to shoulder with a sect gilded in gold - and all that well within a single generation!
Like, unless the matters of cultivators happened in total insulation from the common folk, and a bloody war could be fought alongside a dude tilling his field (which...unlikely), JC found himself in a situation where not only his ancestral home, whole extended family, and main fighting force has been decimated... He was also facing either a complete rebuild of or, at the least, reintegration with the local economy.
And because I am also of opinion that the Wen decided to attack Yunmeng as a part of an intelligent expansion plan (you get not only the trade, you also get water, taxable population that dathers around said water, and fertile croplands possible thanks to said water), I am also convinced that they've looted the everloving shit out of the region, redirected all trade and harvests to their capital, and set up their own people in place of local ruling class.
JC, during and post-Sunshot was facing a situation completely out of scope for the other sect leaders. Sure, Gusu was burned - but that was just political posturing by WRH. Burning of the knowledge he found unpleasant, you can say. Gusu still had most of it's people and population standing. Qinghe wasn't conquered and Jin only gained during the war. Not only was Yunmeng as a refion was (I strongly suspect) economically thrashed, the Jiang Sect was pretty much culturally destroyed.
They were left with 3 people, out of which one was a woman (harsh, but a patriarchal society gonna patriarch), one was gone, and one was known as the unfavoured son. You'd have to be insane to throw your lot in with YMJ at the beginning of the campaign, and follow some kid into the battlefield against the force that just wiped the floor with two of the four strongest competitors in that race...
Either insane, or finding Jiang Wanyin really fucking convincing.
If a fantasy world has an ancient tree of wisdom, that means it must also have young trees that are dumb as shit. Just giving terrible advice like, "the evil wizard is kinda hot"'
okay. rude.
Cats logic 🤷🐱🐈
i got my cat one of those giant hamster wheel things so she could entertain herself then i showed her how it worked by putting her on it and spinning it slowly then faster then as fast as possible. and the good news is that she looooves her wheel. she just loooves being a hamster cat. but the bad news is that she doesn’t know how to use it solo so she will sit by it and scream until i spin the wheel for her. and if i dont go fast enough shell scream some more. so im hunched over this big wooden wheel turning it like igor and my cat is running so fast that shes panting like a dog and if I slow down even a little she’ll go MEEEOOOWWWWW and i frankly think I need to join a union or something. that bingus has no respect for me.
not exaggerating the scream thing either. my roommate sent me pictures of my wretched bingus yesterday and, as you can see, she puts her whole face into it. her body contracts like an accordion. she yells so hard that her ass gets two inches closer to her face.
I rarely bring this up because it feels like fairly silly and low-stakes compared to all the other effects of american imperialism, but one of the funniest things when Americans deny that living in the imperial core and the center of global cultural hegemony confers them any sort of privilege over people from the imperial periphery is that like. In order for this conversation where you tell me you have no privilege over me to even be able to take place one of us had to learn the other's language, and it wasn't you.
I think the fact that by default the onus of learning the other's language to enable communication is always put on the other side is a pretty significant privilege on the cultural front.
Someone commented this post with "So if I learned, say, Hawaiian and talked to a hawaiian person, then the hawaiian would be privileged? Come on, think about what you're writing, man" and then blocked me as soon as I tried to reply, so.
Monolingual anglophones are a deeply solipsistic people unable to think about international power dynamics on any level beyond the individual to comprehend that "one guy making the individual choice to learn your language" does not represent the same level of linguistic hegemony and privilege as "millions of people all over the world learning specifically your language because they're expected to be able to speak it as a near-universal requirement for any kind of upward mobility while learning a second language is never expected of you"
that subversive part of dishwashing where your dishes start washing you
“Cats don’t actually love you”
A cat is a small creature in the middle of the food chain that is fully aware that you are a very large thing that could stomp its head in at any moment and yet it chooses to rest its tiny little head on your leg for a nap and spreads out on the floor near you exposing its belly and its most sensitive organs. It brings dead mice and bugs to you to share food.
Don’t you get it? This tiny thing trusts you. It wants to help you too. It licks your leg thinking that it’s helping. It kneads on you to find comfort. It shares its body warmth with you in the cold and gives you your space in the heat. It hisses at other mammals it sees outside including other cats in an effort to protect its family.
Cats love you so so much. But they will keep trying to eat plastic.
it's healthy for academics to have professional feuds. enrichment activity
Holy shit. "The demese ef the Ne'enderthels: Wes lengege a fecter?" published in the Science magazine
short but sweet
an interesting linguistics find! so I'm reading this text from 1908 and it keeps referencing "hp" in the context of "not being at full hp" "applying your full hp to a task" etc
and I'm like....... okay that is a perfectly normal way to describe energy and reads totally clear to me, but I KNOW you don't mean hit points/health points which is the first place my brain goes, so what are YOU using hp to mean
and it's not explained in-text, which means it was common enough to not warrant explanation to the 1908 audience, so gotta look elsewhere
horsepower. turns out it's horsepower.
and I'm absolutely FASCINATED that a commonly used initialism from 1908 now stands for something different AND YET the contextual meaning is still the same to a 21st-century reader
I could hand this guy my nintendo switch and he'd be like, ah yes I understand, this ''''pokemon'''' loses horsepower throughout the fight
language is amazing