A Strange Stimuli Blog

this is basically strangestimuli w/ slightly more gore, porn, and wordy stuff from the current social movements (the good and bad [like awful alt right stuff])not worht following.                                                                                                                                                                                                                         well, a bunch of you are following now despite warning, but im pretty happy it seems to almost just be mutuals  : )

[pinklemonadewithsugar]

These don’t belong to me (in fact, not sure where they’re from? Found it a long time ago and lost the source)

And while I’m not a fan of a majority of these without my own twist, they do give me some ideas, so maybe they’ll give someone else ideas too~ if I get any ideas I’ll write them down <3

[turb0-pad]

qp the clown says hello~~ ☆Wig done by me☆ ☆Original Auguste Blanc Face by me☆

~~please do not remove caption~~

[jones-friend]

Legendary Commentary: 5c

“Slivers are evil and slivers are sly; And if you get eaten, then no one will cry”

Its time to explore one of the most depraved but most iconic creature typings in MTG’s history. If you haven’t had the pleasure of playing against slivers what you need to know is slivers are hive minded. Each new sliver you play to the board grants all your slivers the same boon. They generall have “all slivers gain flying” or “slivers you control get +2/+2”. The more slivers that get played the worse the board becomes.

All six of these commanders are really variations on the same theme. We’re going to take a look into how running this commander changes the way your deck plays.

Sliver Queen was recently subject to buyouts and as part of the reserved list is sitting at $96.90 market value at the time of writing this. If you can make it past the price tag a 7/7 tribal for 5 is very good. On top of that she spawns more 1/1 sliver tokens. With sliver synergy this is different than spawning zombies or soldiers because all your slivers are equally terrible. You can have more attackers and faster using excess mana to make buffed up slivers.

Sliver Overlord has two things going for it. Like Queen we have a 7/7 tribal for 5. The first ability lets you tutor for the sliver you need, which means you can tutor for the relevant sliver ability you want to give ALL your slivers. The second ability can be worked over with Ameboid Changeling and other forced Changeling effects to steal your opponent’s creatures. Its a much more oppressive build that helps your slivers choke everyone else out of the game.

Slivers big.

Sliver Hivelord was M15’s attempt to make slivers more balanced. A recent spike sets this card at about $30 at time of writing. Here your slivers are harder to kill so you can swing with what would normally kill them, using “damage to creature” effects are safer. Boardwipes become one sided as well for added bastardly actions.

The First Sliver is my favorite on the list here. Slivers have varying CMC’s and The First Sliver puts your deckbuilding skills to the test. This isn’t Maelstrom Nexus, this is EVERY sliver spell so you can pack Wheel of Fate cards with the intent to cascade into them off your small drop slivers. With careful cmc tuning and proper sliver choices one 6 drop sliver can play several more. Like a terrible nesting doll filled with horror. Disgusting.

Hah! Fuck you!

And that wraps up slivers! 5c doesn’t host a wide array of tribes but it does have a lot of tribes in it. I’d love to hear your most slivered thoughts. Safe planeswalking.

[gardencorekid]

With all the talk about telling people to start planting and growing crops to feed themselves and their communities during this time of crisis, I’m surprised I haven’t seen much about HOW MUCH to plant to feed people. Here’s a good article to serve as a jumping-off point, to give people an idea of when to plant and how much to plant to keep people fed. Keep in mind that unless you live on a fairly sizeable plot of land that has ideal growing conditions, you probably won’t be able to completely feed a family of four, at least with traditional gardening methods. However, you can still heavily supplement your diet with homegrown food if you plot your garden carefully.

How Much to Plant per Person in the Vegetable Garden

It's time to plan the vegetable garden, but how much should you plant per person to feed your family?

Some things you can do to save space include growing plants in stackable towers rather than flat rows. Not everything can grow this way, but growing herbs or even strawberries or some kinds of tomatoes in them can save a lot of space. Bonus points if you can get some vertical vining plants like beans or tomatoes to grow up the sides of them to maximize the space used.

Hanging planters can also be used for things like tomatoes, herbs, some berries, etc. The people who grew up watching TV in the 2000s may remember ads for the topsy-turvy tomato planter. I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of them, but it may be good inspiration for creative DIY hanging planters.

Many people don’t seem to know this (to be fair, it’s not very intuitive), but small melons and gourds can be grown vertically on a trellis. You will need pantyhose or something else that can act like a sling for when the fruit gets large enough, and you’ll also want to make sure the trellis is very sturdy. Here is an example of a watermelon growing on a trellis, with squash growing in the background:

Other good options that require a bit more DIY are hydroponics towers and walls. It’s basically just a series of pipes with holes for plants to grow out of. The only downside is they will require very regular fertilization and supplementation with other micronutrients that are essential for plant growth, because the plants are typically grown in either a non-nutritious medium like coconut coir or nothing at all.

Planter walls are the next step down, basically just building shelves with pots in them to fill with soil. Put these on a wall that gets good morning sun and some afternoon sunlight for best results. These and hydroponics both also have the advantage of being able to hook up to your gutters so that rainwater will go towards watering your plants rather than just being wasted.

If you want to get really fancy, aquaponics is the next step up. With aquaponics, you create a system that circulates water between plants and a tank full of fish. The fish waste provides fertilizer for the plants, and the plants help filter out the waste so the water stays cleaner. I’ve heard they’re a bit tricky to establish, but once you find the right balance, all you’ll need to do is feed the fish. This has the added bonus of providing a source of fish for people who can’t eat things like nuts and legumes but need protein. Here is a link to an article explaining what aquaponics is, how it works, and how it differs from hydroponics.

What is Aquaponics? | The Aquaponic Source

WHAT IS AQUAPONICS? What is Aquaponics? Many definitions of aquaponics recognize the ‘ponics’ part of this word for hydroponics which is gro

I also want to add that if you don’t have the space or ability to maintain a large garden, there are other options. Find or create a group with access to enough food to supplement or completely fulfill your diet, and offer another service. If you have space for a vermicompost bin or tower, that can still help contribute to the garden. Learning other skills like soap making, cooking, sewing/knitting/crocheting, electrical skills like wiring and soldering, welding, woodworking/carpentry, etc. means you will still have valuable skills to contribute towards the group, and this will set up the basis for a larger mutual aid network within your community.

[patchwork-fr]

Glitter and Gold • 1628456

aka first impressions on the new apparel

[sheabutterbitch]

Observing that someone is upset or is not in a good mood and immediately relating it to yourself, inferring that you are the cause of their bad mood is self-centered thinking. It’s easy to do this, especially in romantic relationships but you should really remind yourself that people have feelings and emotions outside of you. Anger, frustration, sadness etc. can be expressed while having absolutely nothing to do with you. That is okay.

[sealcontent]

hope this isn’t derailing, just wanted to add a thought: you may be especially prone to this if you were previously in an intimate relationship with someone who did consistently get upset with you for innocuous shit you did that had nothing to do with them. you might have ended up hyper vigilant to others’ moods down to even very small cues, like slight changes in facial expression or someone not laughing at a joke you make or even the absence of emojis from a text message, because in your past these were warning signs that meant “your actions have displeased me” that could show up at literally any time in response to anything, that you couldn’t afford to miss. one of the most important things i and i think others like me have had to learn is that a) healthy people aren’t looking for reasons to blow up at you for every arbitrary thing you say and do, and b) healthy people do not broadcast their displeasure through fucked up little coded messages which you’re expected to be tuned into and interpreting 24-sev. they will just straight up tell you if the issue is with you, lol. that paranoia and vigilance exists inside of you because there was a time in your life when it helped you protect yourself from harm, but it will shoot your healthy relationships in the foot if you continue to live in a headspace where everyone is always secretly mad at you

[brokehorrorfan]

Deep Cuts Clothing has an Alice, Sweet Alice (also known as Communion) design available on short-sleeve ($25) and long-sleeve ($30) shirts.

[jaubaius]

[anarchapella]

Please fucking lie to your employer. Like they don’t need to know your mental health issues or what drugs you do. Ffs

[thecolorsfucked]

its not lying if its to employers or cops

and look up ur rights on what they can and cannot ask u many places ban asking about ur record and transportation status and things like that resources will also tell u how they reword sketchy questions so ur prepared

[mixingpumpkins]

Hey. Take it from a former HR person… this goes double right now. I just spent some time putting in some job applications myself (not for HR, lol) and got about 15 interviews. And idk if it’s because of COVID uncertainty or if places just don’t fucking care anymore because they know people are desperate for work, but the amount of straight up illegal shit my interviewers asked me was appalling. (That’s not even counting the questions that were technically legal but clearly fishing for information they’re not legally allowed to ask.)

A tame example? Two questions into a phone interview, the guy on the other end of the line asked: “How old are you?” I said “Excuse me?” - giving him a chance to rethink that. He didn’t. “How old are you?” “Sir, you are not allowed to ask me that question.” “Well, I want to know. I’m asking.” “And you’re legally not allowed to ask me that. I’m not required to tell you my age.” At that point, I guess he managed to remember an old HR bulletin or something (I hope to god he wasn’t actually HR himself), and he said, “Well, I need to know if you’re over the age of 18.” (Which is what he should have asked in the first place… or not, since that was in the application that he could have read.) “Yes. I’m over the age of 18.”  And we moved on. Two questions later, he tried another illegal question. I called him on it again and ended the interview, citing that a workplace with such a clear disregard for the law, especially upon first contact with a potential employee, was not going to be a good fit. (They offered me the job anyway, lol. I didn’t send a thank-you or a response.)

At a different interview, the majority of questions were “fishing” questions - just looking for that info they’re not actually allowed to ask. (This person was also either not really HR or an HR person who was exceptionally bad at their job.)

I could tell they were getting frustrated when I dodged answering the personal stuff, and they actually got extremely upset when I mentioned later in the interview (re: less relevant work experience) I had worked in HR. They were super flustered for the remainder of our time, and I watched them skip over questions on their sheet they had clearly planned on asking. They KNEW they were being sketchy and were counting on me not knowing anything about HR - or my rights - and so they got upset when I did. These were super tame examples. I’m begging you, if you’re job searching right now, PLEASE know your rights. Please know what interviewers are allowed to ask. Please don’t volunteer information or elaborate more than you’re required to about personal things. Save your words (and everyone’s time) by elaborating why you’re good for the position/what you can do. I may create a resource list on this shit later but PLEASE PLEASE KNOW THIS STUFF BEFORE YOU TALK TO AN EMPLOYER. This goes for anywhere you’re interviewing as well as your current employer. This also goes for HR. HR may be the person you go to when shitty stuff happens, but that doesn’t mean they’re your friend (or competent). They don’t need to know your age (beyond 16+, 18+, or 21+, depending on the job). They don’t need to know your medical history. (For the love of god, do NOT answer the “have you been diagnosed with depression?” question.) They don’t need to know if you have kids or whatever. They don’t need to know a LOT of those things that may appear on an application, including your veteran status, whether you’re on/have been on unemployment, etc. They’re not entitled to know specifics about your transportation (unless you’re using that transportation for the job, like Uber/delivery drivers). Look this up for your state/the job’s state. Beware questions like “What year did you graduate?” if you’re like me and don’t put dates on your resume (I just put amount of time spent at employers, not dates of employment). They’re fishing for your age. It’s “Oh, you know, 100 years ago,” if you feel comfortable making a joke, or “About [generic number, like 5 or 10] years ago” if not. Also beware things like the “What do you do in your free time?” question, even if you already work there. This is not a friendly getting-to-know-you question. This is a basis for judgement. Not up to an invisible standard? They’re going to be biased against you for pay raises, promotions, etc. Mention kids/lots of family/social engagements? That’s a tick against you for not being the kind of person who lives to work (yes, it’s gross and stupid). Mention lots of solitary things? Cool, that’s their mental note to ask more from you because you’re “not doing anything anyway.” By all means, be friendly with your coworkers/talk about shared interests if you want, but it is none of your boss’s business, and be aware what could get back to them.  Don’t. Tell. Employers. Shit.

[bitchesgetriches]

We wrote up a handy list of those illegal questions here:

10 Questions You Should Never Be Asked in a Job Interview 

[crawly]

just learned about a building in london that is so poorly designed it becomes a death ray that melts cars and creates a downdraft effect with wind so powerful that it knocks full grown adults to the ground

[crawly]

[crawly]

imagine being knocked over by a gust of wind from this ugly ass building and then being cooked TO DEATH by the sun reflection like what a way to go

[millenniumitem]

i learned about this like last year or somethign and this building is literally th satan come alive. building that tries to fucking kill you and fry you like an egg

[super-metroid]

this is some shit out of a final destination movie

[brandongeurts]

Pleased to announce I did the art for Nashville grind weirdos Yautja’s second album. The Lurch. Comes out May 21 on Relapse Records.

[vodcar]

when the capitalists die out either thru global warming or revolution will we be able to start homegrown internet

[vodcar]

been reading about dual power and how to grow my own tomatoes and i’m wondering how and if we’ll be able to start commie internet lol

like obviously the internet is this huge electric capitalist controlled hardware infrastructure thing so after all that shuts down is there a way to do it ourselves lol

[vodcar]

i want to come home from a hard day on the communal allotment, kiss my Wife, crank up my generator, and start sharing meams!

[anarchopuppy]

GOOD NEWS: the homegrown commie internet is in the works! Across the world, people fighting against censorship and for a more democratic internet are building mesh networks (meshnets) of long-range wifi (LoRa)

Since wifi is just a standard for sending data through radio waves, and radio waves can go a pretty long way if you use ‘em right, it’s not that difficult to connect two computers by wifi from across town. Then you just keep adding more computers to the network and you’ve got internet!

Small antennae, like for connecting across the neighborhood, can literally be built out of trash

And a larger, more accurate one can be built pretty cheap too

(You can also reuse an old satellite TV dish, or really anything else that’s roughly parabolic)

There are LoRa meshnets in places like New York, India, and all over Europe: Spain (pictured below), Greece, Austria, Germany, etc

As for sharing fresh mëmês, the network to go to is Scuttlebutt. Unlike most social media, Scuttlebutt posts are stored on your computer and sent directly to your friends’ computers (rather than being stored on the cloud and sent to a central server). It works just fine over traditional internet, but you can also view and interact with it offline, and it has protocols for connecting over any means that two computers can share information - that includes LoRa, as well as hardwired connections, sneakernet (basically mailing a USB stick back and forth), etc

What that means is you always know that your info is just as safe as the network it’s sent on and the computer that receives it - no one even theoretically has the ability to collect and sell it all. And, since it’s all run on your computer, there’s no servers to go down or companies to go out of business that could destroy the whole thing

You can read more about this kind of stuff here (or here if it’s cloudy in Barcelona)!

[4amsnow]

there’s also the work being done by the DCPT, left-behind Detroiters meshing together their neighborhoods to share overpriced high-speed connections among the community and producing these good good educational documents, especially this rad resource page. building meshnets to share a global uplink is very similar to building meshnets for the purpose of intracommunication and these resources are useful in both cases

[anarchopuppy]

I’ve had a couple people ask about how to join/organize something like this, which is great! The best list of active projects I know of is here, though you should also do a search online if you don’t see one in your area in case they missed it. For those without a nearby group, put a pin here and try contacting nearby pins as well - you can use the instructions on buildyourowninter.net as well as the DCPT’s resources as linked above to get set up!

Please reblog this version so others can get involved!

[literaryeagle]

For my tenth Evangelion book review, here is Sore o Nasumono - Shin Seiki Evangelion Concept Design Works (That Which Forms It - Neon Genesis Evangelion Concept Design Works), published by Kadokawa Shoten.  As the title suggests, this book is full of concept art… mainly in the form of black-and-white sketches, but there are also several full color illustrations at the beginning, including a nice foldout page.  The book is not available in English or French, but the fascinating (and sometimes bizarre!) pictures include a number of ideas that didn’t make it into the final version of the anime, so this book is quite interesting to look at even if you can’t read Japanese.  The illustrations are mostly the work of Ikuto Yamashita, the mecha designer for Evangelion, so there’s a lot of focus on the Evas, or related weapons and equipment.  However, there is also a section at the end devoted to conceptual art by Seiji Kio, concentrating on Nerv’s architecture plus some miscellaneous designs.

This book is also noteworthy for containing pieces of two stories written by Yamashita that didn’t make it into the final version of the anime: a TV Last Scenario “Prot” which was his suggested ending for the Evangelion TV series, and Another Movie Episode which was going to be a film taking place after the series.  This movie scenario included a mysterious contamination which altered people’s minds and eventually changed their physical appearances as well, causing them to look like werewolves!  Here’s part of an illustration that shows Asuka as a werewolf, plus Shinji sharpening a large wooden stake, and Rei holding a gun with her middle finger on the trigger (What the heck?!):

Pretty weird, huh?  This movie plot also featured a weapon referred to as the “Shinigami no Sebone” (Spine of the Death God).  You can see Unit-01 wielding it on the book’s front cover, shown at the very beginning of this book review.  (By the way, the book has a removable dust jacket, although the cover art hidden underneath is just the same image in orange and white.)  What’s interesting about the Spine of the Death God is that the idea seems to have been revived for Yamashita’s light novel Evangelion ANIMA, which has a weapon with similar capabilities called the “Tenshi no Sebone” (Spine of the Angel).  Want to see a couple more ideas that didn’t make it into the TV series but eventually showed up in various other Evangelion works?  Keep reading for the rest of the book review, plus a few more pictures!

Keep reading

[sundayday]

"Annihilation!" she shrieked at me, flailing in confusion. "Annihilation! Annihilation!" The word seemed more meaningless the more she repeated it, like the cry of a bird with a broken wing.

Neural Networks Create a Disturbing Record of Natural History in AI-Generated Illustrations by Sofia Crespo via Colossal

[bogleech]

Notes for drawing (and writing) insects

I do something like this almost yearly and it feels like it gets a little longer every time!

Personally I draw either cartoony stuff or hybrid monsters where none of this is mandatory, but here are some of the things I sometimes see missing or inaccurate in insect artwork that was meant to be lifelike, and even if you only do alien, monster or cartoon arthropods, or you don’t make art at all, you might still like to know some of these things!

First off, an insect leg pretty much always has 9 segments. #1, the coxa, is what attaches it to the body and can be a short little “ball” or a whole long piece, but almost always bends DOWN. The last five segments are almost always very short, forming a super flexible “foot” or “tarsus” ending in a set of claws and sticky pads. All spiders have this “foot” as well!

The foot is even still present on the claws of a preying mantis - growing right out of the “sickle” like this, and still used as feet when the mantis walks around or climbs. Basically ONLY CRABS have limbs ending in simple points!

Insects don’t just have side-to-side mandibles at all, but an upper and lower set of “lips” like a duck bill! In some, however, these parts can be very small or even fused solid.

Insects also typically have four “palps” on their head, an upper and lower pair, which evolved from legs and are used to handle food!

Most *FLYING* insects have ocelli, single-lens eyes in addition to their multi-faceted compound eyes! Some flightless insects can also have them but it depends on the species.

All legs and wings are always attached to the thorax!

Caterpillars still have six legs! They’re very small and up near the head. All the other “legs” are actually just suckers on its underbelly.

You will be forgiven for never drawing this but this is how many parts a mosquito’s mouth actually has. Every piece you can find in another insect’s mouth - the “upper lip,” the mandibles, the palps, etc. - are all present as different needles and blades!

The word “bug” originally referred only to one group of insects, the hemiptera, including stink bugs, assassin bugs, aphids, cicadas, bed bugs and water striders to name a few. One distinguishing feature of this group is that it did away with all those separate mouth parts - all “bugs” have just a single, hollow “beak” or “proboscis” to feed through!

The vast majority of insect groups have wings or at least members with wings, and all insects with wings have  FOUR of them…..except that in beetles, the front wings evolved into solid, protective shields for the hind wings, and in true flies (which includes mosquitoes!) the hind wings evolved into tiny little knobs with weights on the end, called halteres, which the fly’s fast-paced brain uses to feel its orientation, altitude, speed, surrounding air pressure and other fine data making them quite possibly the most advanced aerial navigators on the planet. OTHER NOTES THAT DON’T NEED ILLUSTRATION:

Insects and other arthropods HAVE TRUE BRAINS in their heads, made of brain cells like ours. They can learn, memorize, and make decisions.

Insects do have males and females and obviously only females lay eggs. Fiction is always getting this wrong, but I guess it also does so with birds so whatever.

Of insects, only termites, ants, some bees and some wasps have fully evolved a eusocial colony structure with “queens” as we think of them. Of these, the termites are actually highly specialized cockroaches, and the rest (bees, ants, wasps) are the same exact group.

The scrabbling, clicking noise associated with insects is usually added artificially in nature footage for dramatic effect. While their movements likely emit some sort of sound, it’s probably no “louder” proportionately than, say, the sound of a cat’s fur as it walks. In other words it should not be noticeable; what kind of animal survives as a species if it clatters with every step??

Compound eyes do not see a bunch of identical little images. There is no advantage to any organism seeing that way. An insect sees one big picture just like you do.

Only some insect groups have “larvae.” Others have “nymphs” which resemble fully grown but wingless insects.

The only insects with a venomous bite are some true bugs and some flies. There are no beetles or roaches or wasps or anything else that inject offensive toxins through their mouth parts, as far as I know!

The only insects that lay eggs inside other insects parasitically are certain wasps and flies. There are also NO arachnids that do this.

Only certain bees, wasps and ants have stingers on their abdomens. These are modified from egg laying appendages, so it’s also only ever the females.

The only other kind of “sting” in any insect is a venomous hair or spine, mostly seen in caterpillars.

[revretch]

Here’s an exploded diagram that shows insect mouthparts in more detail (using a grasshopper as an example, because grasshoppers, cockroaches, and mantises all preserve pretty basal mouthparts that other insects have fused):

The labrum and the labium are the top and bottom of the “beak” respectively, and you can see the labium has the bottom two palps on it. The only parts bogleech’s post left out are the maxillae (where the other palps are), which come below the mandibles. In a grasshopper/roach/mantis, the mandibles can be thought of as big incisors that slide out, and the maxillae are like “cheeks” holding food in on the sides!

Not noted in the diagram are parts the maxillae and the labium are further divided into. The part at the base of the labium is the postmentum, and it splits into two prementa, which themselves split into a glossa and paraglossa each. (Not super obvious on the grasshopper–the inner paraglossae seem to be mostly evolved away, so you’re mostly just looking at two big glossae at the end.)

Then, each maxilla has a stipes at the base, which splits into two parts–the galea on top, and the lacinia on the bottom.

Overall, the bits at the end end up working like lips, in that they help to manipulate food, and teeth in that they can also help chew it up!

Also, attached to the inside of the labium is the hypopharynx, which is kind of like a tongue! (It can’t taste, though–that’s what the palps are for.)

Here’s an image that shows how these mouthparts have fused in a bee (top left), butterfly (top right), and a mosquito (bottom right)! You can see how in the bee and the mosquito the proboscis is mostly made out of the “bottom lip,” but the butterfly’s is mostly made out of the “cheeks.” Also, unlike the other two, the bee has held on to its mandibles, so it can still bite! (Interestingly, ants have mouthparts very similar to bees–the only different is that the proboscis has shortened back up into a bottom lip. They’re never getting those maxillae back the way they were, though, and only have the two labial palps now.)

[bogleech]

Reblogging for more sciencely explanation!

[unomoralez]

[feelingbluepolitics]

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

100% TRUE

[sallyyates]

Pro tip: If you copy and paste a link that said “no free articles” into a private/incognito browser, it will let you read the whole thing.

[fail-sage]

also if u press the “esc” (escape) key on ur laptop before the page fully loads, it won’t load any pop-ups blocking u from reading. if the article has images, then this method sometimes does not u see them. but! the words will be fine :)

[bestgirlsystem]

If the site is particularly badly designed, you might just be able to delete the overlay itself. Right click > Inspect element and delete the line of HTML (it’ll be highlighted automatically)

[woodentempest]

hey kids there is a website called outline.com that will let you read from pretty much any news site with a paywall for free

[runcibility]

outline.com is amazing - it hasn’t failed yet on any site that I’ve tried it on.

There’s a chrome extension and firefox extension.

[kojaqu]

Saving this information for when I get off work…