Fuck It

@ihave-n0idea

Talk to me about tarot cards and memes Pansexual Pronouns: w/e man idc

24.4K posts

this site has one setting

I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record. And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.” So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.)

It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful. It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons.

There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:

The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.

You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks!

But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense.

You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking

Apocalypse whenever, Mothmeister

freedominthedarkmp3

Obsessed with this title askfjdha

childweanedonpoison

EN translation of the title from Italy: “Does the Covid 19 vaccine make you gay? You wish! Unfortunately, science does not work miracles.”

30-minute-memes

I pronouns you not guilty

I PRONOUNS YOU NOT GUILTY

inthefallofasparrow

Six of Swords

randomnessofamind

trashcanniballecter

Y'all wanna see a weird cucumber illuminati cup I found at the thrift shop?

trashcanniballecter

Cucumber illuminati cup

Knowledge is knowing that this was a promotional cup that accompanied an unusual cucumber-and-rose flavored gin.

Wisdom is knowing that explains nothing.

transgenderization

uh oh gamer moment!! *kisses you so sweetly*

saintemiliosandoz

THE WHAT

im fucking begging you,,,, blease run your product names through a test group,,, pleas e

who tattled

thingsfromthedirt

A mother and baby potoroo spotted at South Australia’s Cleland Wildlife Park enjoying a little snack in the sunshine.

roomba-with-knives-taped-to-it

“No man is an island” oh really? Really? What about him?:

hearthome-deactivated20210601

I made a reddit account specifically to make this post. Let’s see how this plays out.

Some of them are catching on!

Others are…not 😂

I kind of feel bad for how seriously some people are taking this (one person suspects I’m in a cult)

Dropping hints

Let’s see how long before the post gets taken down

The devil works hard but reddit mods work harder

I submit to you that the most iconic feature of any animal is either unlikely or impossible to fossilize.

If all we had of wolves were their bones we would never guess that they howl.

If all we had of elephants were fossils with no living related species, we might infer some kind of proboscis but we'd never come up with those ears.

If all we had of chickens were bones, we wouldn't know about their combs and wattles, or that roosters crow.

We wouldn't know that lions have manes, or that zebras have stripes, or that peacocks have trains, that howler monkeys yell, that cats purr, that deer shed the velvet from their antlers, that caterpillars become butterflies, that spiders make webs, that chickadees say their name, that Canada geese are assholes, that orangutans are ginger, that dolphins echolocate, or that squid even existed.

My point here is that we don't know anything about dinosaurs. If we saw one we would not recognize it. As my evidence I submit the above, along with the fact that it took us two centuries to realize they'd been all around us the whole time.

cheeseanonioncrisps

XKCD

So that people don’t need to go through the notes:

- We have fossils of spider webs

- Paleontologists have reconstructed the larynx (voice box) of extinct animals and we have a pretty good idea what vocalizations they were capable of

- Fossilized pigments have been found in a variety of taxa

- Soft tissues fossilize more often than you think; we have skin impressions for like 90% of Tyrannosaurus rex’s full body (shoulder blades and neck are the only bits missing)

If pop culture is your only window into extinct animals, then you do not remotely understand how much we know.

We know the entire lifecycle of a tyrannosaurus. We know from the sheer amount of remains we have, from every stange.

We know roughly how they sounded (as the person above me said).

We know they had remarkable vision.

We know they had the second. strongest sense of smell in history.

We know from their bones that they grew to a certain size and stayed there until about 14 or so, then absolutely ballooned up to their adult size in about three or four years.

We know they likely lived in family groups, because we have bones with certainly fatal injuries for a solitary animal (broken legs and such) that are completely healed.

We know exactly how other dinosaurs look, down to colors and patterns, because bones are not the only information that is preserved.

The Sinosauropteryx is one such dinosaur. Because pigmentation molecules were preserved in the feather impressions, we know it's colors, and it's tail rings (which one would argue would be it's "iconic feature."

(Art credit Julio Lacerda)

Microraptor is another! We know from feather impressions that it had four wings. We know from pigmentation that it was an iredecent black, like a raven.

(Art credit Vitor Silva)

This is not limited to dinosaurs, or feathers. We've found pigmentation in scales and skin. We've completely reconstructed two extinct penguins, colors and all. We've figured out the colors of some non-avian and non-feathered dinosaurs. We can identify evidence of feathers existing on animals without feather impressions.

We have feathered dinosaurs preserved in amber.

We can defer likely behavioral patterns through adaptations we see in bones, and from the environments they were found in. We can see how certain movements evolved through musculature attachments (yes, how muscles attached is often preserved). We know avian flight likely evolved by "accident" by the way early raptorforms moved their arms to strike at their prey.

We also understand behavior in extant animals and can easily speculate likely behaviors in extinct animals. (A predator running for it's life is not going to exhibit hunting behaviors)

We learn and understand way more from "rocks" than paleontologists are given credit for. And if you watch a movie like Jurassic World, which has no interest in portraying anything with any sort of accuracy, and your take away is "We can't possibly know anything about these animals," then you don't understand science.

As for shrinkwrapped reconstructions, we understand how muscles attach, and how fat works. Artists who lean into shrinkwrapping are are not generally concerned with scientific accuracy, or biology. They're only concerned with Awesombro.

If true paleoartists tried to reconstruct a hippo, while they naturally would not get every bit correct, it would certainly look like a real animal, and not that alien monster that tumblr is so fond of using as "proof" that paleontologists don't know anything (an art piece that itself was extreme and satirical, and a condemnation of the particular subset of paleoartists I mentioned earlier)

Every time paleoblr tries to show you how extinct animals actually looked, all we get is a chorus of "thanks i hate it" and "stop ruining dinosaurs!"

gunsandfireandshit

Bears are just like, guys

had the worst toast-buttering experience today

@theindomitablerioghan artist rendition

ursulaklegun-deactivated2024122

help…i have a white cat with heterochromia who looks just like this and now i can’t look at him without thinking “a cat with homophobia in its eyes ❤️”

I can’t remember where I found this for the life of me but polar opposites

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