Kazuki Coud

90's babs, he/him they/them ace as hell XD

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

Clip of Lucy Dacus on the Las Culturistas podcast.

[overseer-picard]

It’s difficult to fully articulate the hold that Patrick Stewart had on audiences when TNG was airing. Between the hundreds of magazine covers, the talk show circuits, and the paparazzi nonsense, the amount of baldness puns editors were compelled to create was astounding.

It was like the media fixated on this man because he had catastrophic levels of charisma and audiences were losing their minds over him (TNG was regularly beating network shows in ratings), yet he was so far removed from the narrow Hollywood standards of beauty that it vexed and haunted these people for years.

Baldness was a joke in Hollywood. 75% of George Costanza's identity revolved around bald jokes. If you were a bald actor, you were cast as a villain or a buffoon, never the hero. And if you were losing your hair, you had to slap a wig on or risk losing your career. Yul Brynner was somewhat of an exception but he was from a much different generation of Hollywood and even Bruce Willis didn't fully shave his head until 1994 (post TNG success incidentally).

In Patrick Stewart's case, there was often an undercurrent of snide putdowns with many interviewers, drawing focus to his baldness over and over and over again with low hanging jokes. It was like you could see their vanity-based paradigms cracking in real time and it was strange to witness. Imagine how bizarre it would be if talk show hosts today could only ask The Rock, Vin Diesel, or Jason Statham about their bald heads.

But karma swooped in to the rescue. In 1992 Stewart was voted TV Guide's "Sexiest Man on Television" with a whopping 54% of votes. He beat out the likes of Luke Perry, John Corbett, A. Martinez, and even Burt Reynolds (with a total of 20 contenders).

The middle-aged bald guy in the syndicated sci-fi show beat out the hottest of the Hot Guys™️ and it wasn't even remotely close.

^ Bald joke

So yeah, today he's an old, revered thespian who is occasionally Charles Xavier, but not only did Patrick Stewart pave the way for other bald actors to be considered leading men, he discombobulated Hollywood with his unconventional attractiveness and it was amazing.

[beardycarrot]

Don't forget that he originally auditioned for TNG with a wig on, and the executives were sold on his performance... but then swooped into the dressing room right after so they could see him without it. They wanted to see for themselves how authoritative yet approachable he came across with his natural bald head.

Now, I don't actually know which wig it was that he auditioned with... he apparently got The Wig Mandate last-minute, so his wife had to pick one out from one of the plays he had recently acted in. Rumor has it that it was the wig he wore in "I, Claudius".

...But this is the image usually associated with the story:

I've heard people claim that they decided to let him go without a wig because they just couldn't arrive at anything that looked natural, or that they didn't want to deal with having to put the main character in a wig every day. These people are obviously just making stuff up without actually thinking very deeply about it; for every single scene featuring Worf, who appears in all but four episodes of TNG, Michael Dorn had to be fitted with a latex forehead and makeup, a wig, and fake facial hair.

The reality is that Patrick Stewart looked perfect as-is, and it sent a strong message. In a near-utopian, post-scarcity society, in which you can do whatever you want to do, be whoever you want to be, and look however you want to look... some people choose to be bald.

[mostro-rotto]

[cryoverkiltmilk]

"This is my weird son. He can't climb for shit, but he is handsome and strong."

[cryoverkiltmilk]

#cats be like#is anybody adopt that#and don't wait for an answer

[stalker-among-the-stars]

Everything that isn't food is a cat from the perspective of a cat. Cats can look upon the true form of eldritch monstrosities and keep their sanity. They'd just see another cat. A fucking weird-looking cat, but a cat nonetheless.

[dduane]

An always-reblog. 😄

[the-forest-library]

[the-forest-library]

Love it when a post finds its intended audience

[thedogeveryonehates]

new fav video just dropped

[evilwizard]

me: *covered in scratch marks* i am still a powerful and respectable wizard, you know

my imp krongus: *doubtfully* yes, my lord

me: i did eventually kill the mouse with a needle for a sword

krongus: it’s just that it was so close, my lord

[frog43]

wha t if oregon trail was called wagon age: oregons

[naamahdarling]

This made me so angry the first time I saw it I’m reblogging it again.

[luxiethefool]

happy 10 years to wagon age oregons

[vulvalini]

[fictionadventurer]

I love that Jules Verne asked the question "What kind of person could circumnavigate the world in 80 days?" and decided that the answer was not a groundbreaking explorer or genius inventor, but a guy who's really, really, really obsessed with train and boat schedules.

[oqmemphis]

my final paper for my CS degree was literally "how can we algorithmically optimise for the fastest possible circumnavigation route on commercial flights?", which incidentally required me to adopt a very good working knowledge of what flight options are available at what times (and also led to me accidentally memorising several hundred airport codes)

[oqmemphis]

incidentally the fastest possible route seems to be about 51 hours, if you're working from 2022 schedules like i was. if you use current schedules and are very optimistic about how quickly you can transfer between flights, you can maybe get it down to around 48 hours (also known as 25 millivernes).

[fictionadventurer]

The very best thing about tumblr is that you can make a post about a 154-year-old novel and get responses like this.

[traumasurvivors]

Even if I didn’t have a solid plan, in the back of my head, I always assumed I’d kill myself.

Now I’m an adult and people my age have their lives in order and I’m stuck here, confused, because I never planned to be alive and I’m so far behind.

I feel like I’ll never catch up.

[traumasurvivors]

Hey all.

I want to make an addition to this. I made this post a long time ago.

I’m currently back in university, and I’ve made so much progress with my trauma. I’m in a loving relationship.

Things can and will get better. It’s not too late.

Nothing is perfect by any means. But I’m happy I’m still here and didn’t kill myself. I hope you get to that point, too 💕

[traumasurvivors]

The addition is important! I see the original post circulating a lot, but the addition is important!

[traumasurvivors]

New addition two years later. I’m still going strong!

I’m getting married. I’m still in that loving relationship.

I’ve learned that there’s no real timeline. It’s okay. And while it sucks that I lost time, there’s still so much for me to experience and enjoy.

[traumasurvivors]

Newest addition. 7 years after the original post!

I got married last month! My dog is laying on me snoring. I’ve learned to have healthy friendships and relationships. I’ve learned that I’m not alone and that even when things are hard, I’m going to be okay.

[traumasurvivors]

This showed up in my notes again. And here we are. 2026.

I’ve been married a little over two years. I just got home from friendships that feel like home and family. My husband and I have our own place. I have a full ass book ready to be published.

I don’t know. I’m still in a good place and I can’t believe how far I’ve come from my original post.

[guooey]

[how-to-be-a-grouch]

Daryl Cagle, November 23, 2003

[wingstothesun]

Going to add something here as a few people in the notes don't know the significance of the date here, or think this might be a dig at Sesame Street somehow - on November 18th, 2003, there was an absolutely landmark legal case in the state of Massachusetts that ruled that civil unions in that state needed to be given the same rights as marriage. This was HUGE - gay marriage was not legally recognized in any state at the time, and civil unions were the closest you could get. This is a WONDERFULLY hopeful, sweet comic drawn five whole days after an enormous, major step forward for gay marriage POSSIBLY being legal. Massachusetts wouldn't even properly legalize gay marriage until May 2004, and it was the first state to do so.

You can Google Goodridge v Department of Public Health for more details.

[massachusetts-official]

Official Post of Massachusetts

[plaguedocboi]

So every year, my aquarium does a captive lobster hatchery project (hence all the loblings). The reason we’re doing it is because in the wild, loblings only have a 1 in 25,000 chance of surviving their larval phase. They’re plankton as babies and everything eats them. Additionally, as the Gulf of Maine warms, they are having even lower survival rates because the blooms of copepods they feed on as babies are happening earlier in the year, and they’re missing it.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Conservation is so fucken sick

[were--ralph]

I CCAN'T BREATHE

[pangur-and-grim]

I told my little nephew that I'd wave at his airplane when it flew over my house today, and he very calmly and politely explained that it wouldn't be possible to see me due to the limitations of human vision. I said he just had to squint real hard, and he took a deep breath and went into the toddler version of "see, what you're not understanding–"

[pangur-and-grim]

[scorpionlafemme]

[random-brushstrokes]

Francisco Domingo Marqués - Cat sleeping on a cushion (1892)

[mothric]

thinking about the time a former housemate said to me "hey I put these box fans in the living room because it's hot" while gesturing to the fans that I was actively sitting in front of because it was hot. and I said "okay thanks." and she kept standing there like she was waiting for something else so I said "am I blocking the airflow? do you need me to move?" and she said no I'm just letting you know they're here, in the living room, for circulation. and I said well yes, I did put that together. I am enjoying them. thank you. and she looked confused. so I asked "am I meant to do something with this information or are you just informing me?" and she said no I'm letting you know they're here because It's Hot In Here. she seemed a bit aggravated, and her emphasis seemed deliberate.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

about a month later she brought up that conversation as the moment it actually clicked for her that I Am Autistic And Will Not Magically Intuit The Unspoken Request You Didn't Ask Me.

[mothric]

I have observed enough allistic communication to know that generally, if somebody points something out to you that you can already see or are already clearly interacting with, they are making an indirect request. but as I don't know what the request is, the only way forward is for me to guess (and likely get it wrong), or prompt the allistic to tell me clearly what they need.

however, allistics don't realize they do this, so asking them to say the unspoken surprises and confuses them. this is not their fault. allistics can be quite emotionally fragile and perceive directness as confrontation, so they habitually rely on indirect speech and coded language to preserve others' feelings. this is why they may find it difficult to be direct, even when asked. I have found that with enough gentle encouragement and reassurance that they are actually helping you, you too can achieve successful communication with your allistic friend or loved one. :)