[gharibajameel]

horses are inherently funny because they come in so many sizes. like draft horses

this looks so fake. this horses skull is bigger than the dudes entire torso. this horses NECK is thicker than the dudes entire BODY.

and then at the opposite end of the spectrum you have shit like this shetland pony which ALSO looks fake

what the hell happened to this thing who bred this line of ponies to be so ridiculous

[hapalopus]

fun fact, while most mini horses and ponies look fat, like the shetland above, some are genuinely just scaled down versions of regular horses

you look at this and think “wow that’s a horse i bet I could ride that” but you’d be wrong because this is an american shetty and it’s the size of a large dog

also fun fact, this is the world’s smallest horse, thumbelina

and this is the largest horse ever, brooklyn supreme

[wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva]

I would fucking die for Brooklyn Supreme

[insomniac-arrest]

I find it kind of funny that human babies are so fragile and helpless and useless that natural selection went like HARD-hard on humans finding babies cute. This thing is a wailing messy resource sinkhole so please find other reason to enjoy it. And the humans that did find baby cute and invest time in them, the crazy bastards?? Lived!!

And now there’s so much spill-over from “baby cute” gene that humans see literally any “baby” creature that even slightly resembles us, like

and we’re like 😍🥰🤩🥺🥺🥺 I wanna love you so bad. I wanna make so many images of you, you are so small, just baby. I’m inventing new emotions as we speak bc I love you so much.

Like, I’m almost convinced humans didn’t even domesticate dogs bc we thought they’d be useful, we saw some puppies and it activated our Big Boi Primate Baby buttons, it wasn’t even logic time baby, it was 🥺 time.

[sqgworld]

The funniest thing about that is the fact that neuroimaging of elephant brains have proved that they think that we – humans – are cute in exactly the same way. They most likely want to squish and cuddle us the way we want to do with puppies based on the firing of their neurons.

[insomniac-arrest]

This is so important to me.

Actually hatebros, “survival of the fittest” means you have to make as many friends as possible in one lifetime. Naruto understands Darwinism better than you.

(These images are sourced from ethical places to interact with elephants)

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

reblogging for “Naruto understands Darwinism better than you”

[stolligaseptember]

do you ever tire of how, like, dramatic anxiety is?? it’s like. bitch. bitch. it’s not that serious. we’ll live. it’ll probably be a pain in the ass, but we’ll live. so stop making me feel like i’m actively dying.

[pippinstook]

Ok, so, as most know hobbits LOVE mushrooms, but what if they love ALL mushrooms, even the poisonous ones. What if a hobbit’s body is able to handle more of the poison and it doesn’t affect them at all. And they love it!

[pippinstook]

And then they nearly give Aragorn a heart-attack when they’re heading to Rivendell. 

Pippin, just being pippin: Look, MUSHROoms!!

The other three, running at full speed: MUSHROOMS!

Aragorn, who is a skilled ranger who knows every plant, tree, and flower to survive: No those are poisonous!

Frodo, who’s mouth is stuffed full: No they’re not. We eat these all the time back in the shire.

Merry, speaking with his mouth full, spitting mushroom everywhere: Yeah, they’re definitely not poisonous. Do you want one?

Aragorn, now having an existential crisis: No, n-no. I’m good.

Sam, mumbling under his breath: Well I wasn’t gonna share anyways.

[enide-s-dear]

@penny-anna this seems like your kind of hobbit lore

[elidyce]

… OKAY NO WAIT THIS IS IMPORTANT

What if that’s the reason Sam and Frodo survived in Mordor? 

What if all those references to noxious fumes and tainted water and everything were completely literal? They avoided eating anything made there, but they had to keep drinking and breathing. 

What if part of Mordor’s defenses was that it’s literally poisonous to any creature not specifically bred to live in those conditions? What if Faramir was so careful about warning them about drinking the water because he knew it was fatal? What if Sauron’s general lack of concern about shit going down inside his own borders (aside from treachery, which apparently happened a lot) was knowing that any Mortal Man or Elf or Whatever that wandered in was gonna be stone dead in a few days, and his desire to catch any infiltrators on the borders was to keep them alive long enough for questioning?

And then these two hobbits who have spent their entire lives merrily ingesting enough poisonous fungi for breakfast to give Shelob a stomach-ache trot into Mordor and drink the poisonous waters and breath the poisonous fumes and scratch themselves on the poisonous thorns and feel mildly unwell.

Years later Sam gets a pained note from Faramir asking him how the hell he and Frodo survived when all the water is tainted with arsenic according to the survivors of the exploratory party and Sam writes back confused ‘What’s arsenic, it tasted bad and a bit metallic, that’s all I know honestly’ and Faramir goes to rant at Aragorn about how bizarre this is and is really confused when Aragorn goes into full-on flashbacks of watching those four tiny dumbasses STUFFING DEATH CAPS INTO THEIR MOUTHS LIKE GODDAMN CANDY. 

[pippinstook]

Oooooo, I like that!! And it would make sense after Boromir went on and on about how impossible it was to be able to breathe in Mordor.

[lilnasxvevo]

Death caps are actually really interesting because they kill you (if you don’t receive proper treatment quickly enough) by destroying your cells over the course of a couple days by, basically, blocking your cells’ ability to create proteins. To my understanding the reason death cap mushrooms don’t poison themselves is because their RNA polymerase is structured differently. So it could just be a simple case of “hobbits are inherently immune to some things that will easily kill a human or an elf”—kind of in a similar way to how there are lots of things that humans can safely eat that we have to keep away from our dogs and cats because that food is deadly to them but not us.

So my first interpretation of the original post was that hobbits can eat deeply toxic mushrooms not because they’ve ~built up an immunity~ Princess Bride style, but because they’re so genetically different from humans that it’s like, “no no no, this mushroom isn’t toxic, it’s just toxic to YOU guys,” the same way we don’t consider grapes or chocolate to be toxic even though those foods are very dangerous to dogs.

[underthehedge]

Maybe like an evolutionary adaptation to their enormous food requirements: Mammals differ in their ability to detoxify poisons in part based on their dietary evolution. Cats for instance, as hypercarnivores, absolutely suck at detoxifying poisons - their all meat diet means they’ve lost a lot of the metabolic pathways in the liver that other mammals like us and dogs use to neutralise toxic compounds. This is why it’s so easy to accidentally poison cats, this is why you can’t use spot on dog flea stuff on cats; the dog version is about 10x stronger as a dog’s liver starts immediately breaking down the compound so the dose must be higher to be effective, while a cat can’t glycosylate the medication and so it just kinda stays in them unchanged till they excrete it. 

Plants are full of poisons to prevent things eating them, yes that includes lots of the ones we consider safe. Humans, as extreme omnivores adapted to way more plants in their diet than dogs, can eat all sorts of things that will kill a dog because we’ve got a load more metabolic pathways that degrade or modify toxic compounds we eat. Many herbivores, especially ruminants that have extra microscopic helpers to detoxify stuff, can eat things that will murder a human stone dead: deer will eat yew trees ffs. Rabbits eat death caps with no ill effect.

With how much hobbits eat (probably need a lot of energy to fuel their enormous, overworked livers), there’s got to be a lot of selection pressure for not being choosy, and even for being able to handle accumulation of other things like heavy metals just due to the sheer quantity of stuff they consume. Mordor was a polluted land, heavy with toxins usually present only in minuscule quantities in the air and soil, but hobbits eat their bodyweight in potatoes alone every week and are used to high doses of environmental pollutants and just kinda shrug it off as their liver slaps a few methyl groups on things and fires them off to the kidneys for removal. 

Consider this though: Their weird biology makes them stupidly susceptible to something other races are fine with. Like how Sydney funnel-web venom is mildly irritating to most mammals like cats and dogs, but, due to some quirk in primate sodium channels, can kill humans. Everyone gets used to the hobbits just munching away on assorted deadly poisons, maybe flavoured with a little lead, casually drinking hemlock tea and seeing Sam and Merry absolutely lose their shit at someone getting a nettle sting or eating broad beans because “those things will kill you!!!!”.

[maneth985]

I mean…this seems completely feasible, if you consider lembas bread, a bite is enough to fill the stomach of a grown man, Merry ate FOUR whole breads and barely burped, Sam and Frodo ate about a quarter piece of the bread a day plus whatever food they could get their hands on in the wild.

[schmergo]

To all the parents out there who bundle their babies up in the winter time with those little hats with the little ears that make them look like little teddy bears: You are doing the lord’s work. Seeing tiny ewoks toddle across the grocery store parking lot is just what we all need sometimes. My joy is immeasurable and my day is restored.

[vitariesocks]

Comic on having long-COVID as a young person. Sending love to others who may be similarly suffering.

Ko-Fi

(ID under the cut)

Keep reading

[vitariesocks]

This is getting traction again as cases surge. I want to repeat what I’ve said on Twitter: In the 4 months since I’ve posted this, none of my symptoms have improved. I’m nearing 2 years post-COVID with zero improvement, no answers, and little hope. Take this seriously.

[ravensinflight]

I love that Geralt is like “I was beaten and starved” when talking about his childhood training, and is constantly trying to get Ciri to rest, eat, and feel good about herself. Geralt says the cycle of violence ends with me; meanwhile, Ciri’s over here:

[rongzhi]

A snack fishing game for children at a mall. The price to play is around 58-68 RMB (9-11 USD), depending on the child's height.

[libraryofjoy]

Lady of shallot. Lady of onion. Lady of garlic. Lady of chives.

[skiptomy]

its 4am and I have no control over what i draw

[anarchetypalarchive]

i saw this post earlier about therapists and it reminded me of my old therapist paul, who in my opinion is one of the greatest men alive and who did not put up with my bullshit for even one second

anyway i go in to see paul one week in the summer of 2016, and i’m doing my usual bullshit which consists of me talking shit about myself, and paul is staring at me, and then he cuts me off and says that he’s got a new tool for helping people recognize when they’re using negative language, and gets up and goes over to his desk

and i’m like alright hit me with that sweet sweet self-help article my man, because i’m a linguistic learner and whenever paul’s like here i have a tool for you to use it’s pretty much always an article or a book or something

paul opens a drawer, takes something out, and turns back around. i stare.

i say, paul.

is that a nerf gun.

yeah, says paul.

i say, are you gonna shoot me with a nerf gun in this professional setting.

he happily informs me that that’s really up to me, isn’t it. and sits back down. and gestures, like, go ahead, what were you saying?

and i squint suspiciously and start back up about how i’m having too much anxiety to leave the house to run errands, like it was a miracle to even get here, like i’ve forgone getting groceries for the past week and that’s so stupid, what a stupid issue, i’m an idiot, how could i–

a foam dart hits me in the leg.

i go, hey! because my therapist just shot me in the leg. paul blinks at me placidly and raises an eyebrow. i squint again.

i say, slowly, it’s– not a stupid issue, i’m not stupid, but it’s frustrating me and i don’t want it to be a problem i’m having.

no dart this time. okay. sweet.

so the rest of the hour passes with me intermittently getting nailed with tiny foam darts and then swearing and then fixing my language and, wouldn’t you know it, i start liking myself a little more by the end of the session, which is mildly infuriating because paul can tell and he’s very smug about it 

anyway i leave his office and the lady having the next appointment walks in and i hear what’s all over the floor? and paul very seriously says cognitive behavioral therapy tools.

[natalieironside]

I find myself getting less and less ambitious the older I get.

When I was graduating high school I wanted to do great things and be super famous and change the world.  Now I just want to hang out and not bother anybody.

[natalieironside]

“Where do you see yourself in 5 years” just chilling hopefully

[bettedavisgf]

my toxic trait is never tracking my periods so every 28 days i gaslight myself into thinking the world is ending when the pms symptoms hit me like a freight train

[securityunit-ese]

Okay so like…A few weeks ago I saw this in a dollar store and thought it was pretty neat so I bought it

and now I’m wondering if I jinxed myself because like a couple of weeks after, I  bought this:

[securityunit-ese]

he’s looking more and more like the plate every day, i think i did accidentally buy a prophetic plate

[securityunit-ese]

I think the brown is taking over purposely so he can match the plate???

[securityunit-ese]

getting entirely too similar for comfort

possibly he is growing to match the plate?

[mindfulwrath]

the portrait of Doggian Gray

[adampvrrish]

my fatal flaw is that if i don't want to do something i just won't do it like mama raised a quitter for sure.. i'll be doing something and suddenly be like damn what if i just didn't 🤔. very freeing but also i suffer so many consequences

[science-bastard]

lab coat worn off the shoulders has got me acting unwise

[teslacoils-and-hubris]

‘unwise’ is a fun way to say lab safety violation 

[pr1nceshawn]

How Food Looks Before It’s Harvested.

Sesame Seeds

Cranberry

Pineapple

Peanut

Cashew

Pistachio

Brussel Sprouts

Cacao

Vanilla

Saffron

Kiwi

Pomegranate

[biochromium]

exactly 1 minute ago i had absolutely no idea what the plants sesame seeds and peanuts came from look like and i am shocked and surprised

[elodieunderglass]

for some reason every time I see pineapples growing I laugh out loud. Like, the punchline is it’s a pineapple!!!!!!!!! it’s a pineapple

[kawuli]

An Interesting Fact About Peanuts, while we’re on the topic of food-plants:

Peanuts-you-eat grow underground, but they are NOT part of the peanut plant’s roots. Peanut plants are ambitious little fuckers and plant their seeds themselves. They flower like any perfectly reasonable legume, but once the flowers have been pollinated the plants do something called “pegging” (no really), in which they drill the stems where the flowers used to be into the ground. And that’s where the peanuts you eat form. Like so:

(src)

[elodieunderglass]

I’m going to pull myself together to endorse this Extremely Interesting Fact, but it’s going to be a real struggle

[gallusrostromegalus]

Ain’t botany fun?

[notsowittywriter]

New graffiti in Norwich!