Halp, I've Fallen Into Tumblr

Evolutionary Anthropologist-in-training (B.A. in anthro/MSc Bioarch) born in 1980, unreformed dispenser of sarcasm, Lover of renn faires (yep that's me in the icon), skeptic who wishes she could believe. Everything is interesting. Trying to be a decent human and sometimes failing. I've been to a lot of places in the US, and some places not in the US. I'm only happy when I'm wandering.

[teaboot]

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying

[teaboot]

Well-to-do finance manager with tidy shoes: "Why hello, sweetheart. Can you say 'hi'? Aren't you cute. Are you on a trip with your mom?"

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

4 year old me, suddenly paying attention: Finally, A Person Of Intellect

[ierotits]

[experimental-heresy]

Maori content? On my Dash? I never thought the day would come. Also this is unbelievably accurate

[kyidyl]

There's actually a variety of active native communities on tiktok! I love them! ^_^

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Bank of England are letting you vote for what animals you want on their new bank notes: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/help-us-design-our-next-series-of-banknotes

Pine martens are an option!

PINE MARTENS??!?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Oh my god, you can choose up to two from each category:

HOW CAN I NARROW THIS DOWN

[v-spicata]

I chose the fox as one of mine, it's an obvious choice but it'd be nice to celebrate an animal so commonly denigrated. Not that old 'foul mart' has had much of a fun time of it historically either.

Some interesting options here in general, they've not just gone with the obvious animals.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I ended up not choosing the fox, purely because I actually reckon it's going to romp home - for all the controversy, it's the most common wild mammal people see in urban centres, and it's charismatic

I went pine marten, as I've been involved in helping their reintroduction to Wales, and then I wrestled with myself for an Age before finally going hedgehog.

Birds: puffins were the easiest choice. The UK - and Pembrokeshire Coast National Park in west Wales specifically - has a significant portion of the global breeding population of puffins, thanks to Skomer and Grassholm islands. In a country with the biodiversity depletion we have (bottom 10% of countries globally for biodiversity), the islands of Pembrokeshire are almost obscene in how high their biodiversity is, and it's for breeding specifically. We can be justly proud of those. Plus, puffins are fun clowns.

And then I agonised about the others until I finally went for the Great Spotted Woodpecker, a bird I do periodically see and get excited about every time

The Lumped-Together-Others: the bumblebee, you have to. I adore bumblebees.

And then I went for the marsh fritillary, because it's super endangered and I'm an environmentalist with a specialism in habitat management and ecology, and therefore spend a non-trivial amount of my time explaining how to manage for the little assholes.

But MY GOD it took me a while

[brightlotusmoon]

[kyidyl]

@bisquid , since this might actually apply to you. 😂

[bellamysgriffin]

ULTIMATE SHIPS CHALLENGE - Speeches [5/5]

[brightlotusmoon]

Semantic Knowledge Is Key to Human Innovation - Neuroscience News

Semantic knowledge is our cognitive toolbox, doubling innovation when combined with social learning.

What is it that makes humans so good at creating new ideas and technologies? According to this latest study, a vital role in the process is played by an often overlooked cognitive ability: our semantic knowledge or, more prosaically, our understanding of connections between things and how to apply it.

This present study invited over 1,200 people to play a computer game in which the aim was to create new “innovations” by combining various items. Some participants worked with familiar objects such as rocks and branches, while others had to perform an identical task using abstract symbols lacking any semantic significance.

The results were clear. When the participants were able to use their semantic knowledge, they were much better at findings serviceable combinations. Without such knowledge, on the other hand, they performed no better than random bots, a finding that still held when they had access to social learning – i.e. the chance to see what others in the group had managed to do.

[kyidyl]

To me this totally makes sense because the symbols act as reminders for entire segments of knowledge in your head. They're like tags to help you sort through all of the crap in your brain.

[banchie]

i've been phasing the phrase 'google it' out of my vocabulary and going back to 'look it up'. fuck you youve lost your generic trademark privileges

[kyidyl]

Ok so a friend of mine who is a lawyer ( @leftturnat4thandbananas ) explained it to me like this. A company can lose their trademark if their brand name becomes to synonymous with a generic action, which means that Google likely doesn't enjoy the fact that Googling as a verb has become synonymous with looking things up on the internet. If you really want to screw them, use it more not less. Make them as generic as possible.

[i-like-eyes]

pls stop calling your art “slop” its just another way of saying its “cringe” and look. I understand being young and feeling self conscious about your artwork, but your drawing of a kids next door au for an obscure plants vs zombies character that’s basically your own oc at this point wearing an outfit you wish you owned is so unique and so you and therefore so human. Dont you dare conflate it with slop and dont you dare stop making your art

[kyidyl]

I thought we were only calling AI slop....

[robotmango]

when i forget to log into ao3 and i have to click proceed to see an adult fic, i actually get a kick out of it. like i am an old timey queen and my bard is apologetic: “gentle lady, dicks doth touch in this next ballad. would you prefer another?” and i give him a gesture of command like, “nay, you may proceed, minstrel. bring forth the tale of dicks”

[berlynn-wohl]

hope it’s not too late; I made this in Scriptorium

[pikestaff]

"Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they're 15" this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit

[themythicalcodfish]

To wit:

[switchelsweets]

I want to share some wisdom from my high school art teacher.

In my AP Art class, there was a girl who was just starting to experiment with mixed media. At this point she was still playing around, trying to decide what direction she wanted to go with her portfolio. So one critique day, she brought in an abstract canvas with some rhinestone highlights and painted and real peacock feathers. She loved sparkles and peacock feathers so she thought she’d try introducing them a *little*. And after everyone had given some input, the teacher gave her his advice, VERY roughly paraphrased here:

“So here’s the thing… I do not like this style. These are just elements that do not speak to me personally, but I see that you like them, and you’re doing interesting things with them.

“My biggest critique is, I only merely *dislike* this piece. I want you to make me HATE it. Go crazy with the things that you like. Don’t hold back trying to make it palatable to people like me. Because I am NEVER going to like it. And if the audience does not like it, it should drive them crazy seeing how much YOU love it.”

Her portfolio was chock full of neon colors and glitter and rhinestones and splashes of peacock feathers and it was a delight. Our teacher despised every piece lol, but she got great marks and I think even won some awards. And more importantly, she was happy and proud of the results. Because she didn’t limit herself by trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy what she enjoyed.

Takeaway here: be as cringe as you want. Don’t limit yourself based on other ppl’s tastes. They’re not you, and you are incredible 💕

[magnuspeccatori]

This is the most inspirational thing I've read all week. Possibly all year

[lamignonette]

[themirokai]

Contemplating crimes….

[vaspider]

Mama, leaving her tail draped enticingly: kid, how am I supposed to teach you to pounce if you just keep staring at my tail? COMMIT THE CRIME, CHILD!

[innerchildabortionclinic]

the problem with genetically modified crops is not so much the genetic modification but the patenting of genetic codes (and crops in general) as a tool of maintaining agricultural imperialism, and for this reason I can't talk to most people about GMOs

[kyidyl]

Correct. The problem with GMOs isn't the crops themselves (humans have been genetically modifying crops the slow way for thousands of years.), it's Monsanto and other companies like them.

[finnglas]

when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.

[finnglas]

I love how every June this one gets dug up and passed around again, lmao.

[finnglas]

oh no is this what we’re doing now

[finnglas]

…relic…

*crumbles and blows away on the wind*

[ayeforscotland]

Every time the government talks about declining birth rates there never seems to be the realisation that if you make becoming a parent completely unaffordable then people will simply not have kids.

Shocking, I know. But do you know how fucking dire a situation has to be for people to simply not want to have children?

Not interested in ‘I don’t want to have kids anyway’ reblogs on this one, I’m obviously not talking about people who actively choose not to.

[teethed-tale]

That fact that women have reproductive and financial freedoms that were unheard of even two generations ago also contributes here.

[ayeforscotland]

That is very much women actively choosing not to have children which wasn’t the point.

[kyidyl]

It's relevant to your point for the segment of the population that might actually want to have kids but still are choosing not to because we've made that process so miserable that they're chosing to forgo having kids now that they have the freedom to do so. IMO, aside from the financial reasons you mentioned it's the second largest driver of the downturn in birthrate. Unless you were only talking about the poor financial situation exclusively and not the downturn in birthrate in general.

But like...if it's about the lowered birthrate then we really need to be talking about what it is that made having children so miserable that as soon as they had the freedom to do so, people stopped choosing to have children regardless of how they felt about children on the whole.

[ororium-z]

Happy Pride!

[rootbeergoddess]

Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions

[thesaltofcarthage]

I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.

[roycohn]

stop saying "gen z brought back bush-era purity politics" i grew up in the bush era and even then people weren't saying that you're a sex addict for having boring marital sexual congress in the same house as your children. this is just plain unhinged

[prof-grace-aspen]

Literally almost every millennial I know has a memory of accidentally walking in on their parents or hearing their parents having sex. It's fucking normal. Human beings have sex. Your parents fuck. Get over it. Being weird about it isn't healthy.

[whatsnewalycat]

I really loved Robert Evans’s response to this

[kyidyl]

I really want to know if that person has siblings. 😂 like Americans need to be normalizing sex between consenting adults more, not less. They are not imperiling The Children by acknowledging that sex happens. I, too, accidentially walked in on my parents when I was little. I also saw condoms in the trash in the bathroom when I was small and when I asked what they were my mom said they were "medicine for daddy". 😂 mind you, I was born 10 months after my parents got married so they were very much in their honeymoon phase for the early parts of my life.

[trb752]

Kodak Coquette Camera with matching lipstick and compact, 1930

[fae-they]

so are we keeping our glasses on or off during sex

glasses on or off during sex

on

off

i do not wear glasses (u better rb this)

Remaining time: 2 days 18 hours