LEDbiantastic

[hylianengineer]

There is one very important thing I need people without major dietary restrictions to understand: the distress caused by allergies, celiac disease, and other food restrictions is largely not about the food.

Do I miss some foods I can't eat anymore without getting sick? Sure, but that's not what really bothers me. What bothers me is being excluded from a huge portion of human social life of which food is a crucial component. What bothers me is the stress and social stigma of trying to figure out what I can safely eat. What bothers me is the amount of extra work and cost that is required of me to identify, obtain, and prepare safe foods. What bothers me is people treating my needs like a nuisance, as though I chose to be like this - as though their brief inconvenience to check an ingredients list is unreasonable, when I deal with this every day of my life forever.

I don't miss the food that much. I miss not having to worry about what I eat. I miss freedom. I miss when trying new foods and new restaurants was fun instead of a minefield. I miss not having to plan my entire life around the need for safe foods.

Food is such a basic human need, and a lot of people don't really need to think about it. When your danger foods can be anywhere and everywhere, suddenly your entire life revolves around avoiding them, and it massively sucks. You get used to it and it's not a big deal most of the time, but then you go to a new restaurant, or your office has a potluck, or you've been invited to a party and suddenly it feels just as miserable and exhausting as it ever has.

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Oh BOY! Story time! All the way back in 2016, on our way back from Munich for a EAVP meeting Sven Sachs got a mail by Georg Göltz, attached were some first images of an incredible specimen. That evening we went over the material again and again...

I remember saying, "well, that looks like a large owl feather" and oh boy... Some time after Sven got Johan Lindgren and Dean Lomax on board who likewise recognized the importance of the fossil and made it happen that all the necessary tests were done to ensure that...

We would get as much information out of the specimen as possible! Now, quite a few years later we can finally show what has been brewing behind the academic curtains for a while.

Temnodontosaurus is a ichthyosaur taxon that is nearly as old of Paleontology itself, and yet, after more than 200 years of research history new details still reveal themselves. This flipper that Georg Göltz found not only showed the flipper outline that was unexpected...

But also revealed completely novel structures that have never been found in a living or extinct animal. Already, kind of, known where the parallel skin grooves that are very visible, even under normal light, but more important are the tiny, light structures on the back of the fin...

These are not bony but cartilaginous in nature and get the new name, chondroderms. These tiny spikes, embedded in the skin, supported a serrated trailing edge that stretched over nearly the full length of the flipper. As closer inspection revealed that these weren't just...

...impressions but that large portions of the skin structure were preserved. Which this wealth of data the researchers were able to do something pretty cool, they could build a digital model of a Temnodontosaurus flipper and test it's properties.

While not that efficient in improving the hydrodynamic properties these structures seem to reduce noise, similar to owl feathers! A puzzle piece that was so far completely absent from any considerations about the livestyle of these early Jurassic predators!

However this fits well to what we already knew. Large eyes, long but robust jaws and stomach content that consists of other fast prey like belemnites and other ichthyosaurs speak for a ambush predator, in this case a silent one.

I became part of this project first as a interested observer but only a few month before it went into review Johan asked me to make some artwork of the press release. As I had a rather tricky perspective in mind I actually build for this a model of Temnodontosaurus.

Eventually a took a shot of the model in a way that satisfied me and I went to finish it digitally. We decided to show it swimming into a swarm of belemnites. The specimen has a small flipper injury to show of better that structure of the fin.

There is much more to say about this fossil but thankfully the paper, published in Nature, is OPEN ACCESS! have a look!

Adaptations for stealth in the wing-like flippers of a large ichthyosaur - Nature

Analysis of a fossilized front flipper of the Jurassic ichthyosaur Temnodontosaurus that preserves details of soft tissue indicates the pres

[visorforavisor]

I think disability justice would be easier if abled people understood that being disabled is a mixture of all three of

I can’t do that without negative consequences

I can’t do that unless I have support for it

I can’t do that

and that trying to treat one of these as if it’s another one will get you nowhere.

[latinamericane-deactivated20250]

oscar isaac, john boyega and daisy ridley attend the european premiere of star wars: the rise of skywalker on december 18th, 2019 in london, england.

[sartorialadventure]

Daisy Ridley in Vivienne Westwood:

With John Boyega, in a  blue Agbada, a robe traditionally worn by men in West Africa, with gold detailing. A Fila, a traditional Yoruba cap, finished the look:

[lamortwrites]

Women being described as handsome >>>>>>>>>>>>

[lamortwrites]

TARGET AUDIENCE REACHED

[1000cavalry]

Women being described as dashing

[red-eye-radio]

So I thought y'all would like this too This great white comes to the jersey shore every year and this year they named her and have been tracking her hella so this is Mary Lee and she decided to show herself under this rainbow for pride month A true gay icon

[victoryyodel]

#This is the representation I’ve been looking for

[miscellaniaofself]

@feryx

[proxymagic]

[willgrahamscock]

why would you ever outsource fun to chatgpt? are you stupid? you can make mediocre shit by yourself too.

[willgrahamscock]

you're missing out on all the crazy euphoric moments where you execute an idea flawlessly, sending it to your friends and feeling the genuine happiness at their reactions to something you made authentically. you're robbing yourself of something beautiful.

and I get it, writers block, artists block, depression can really be terrible, but once you break out of it (and you will) it will feel like climbing Mount Everest.

[willgrahamscock]

peace and love on planet earth! you are saving the environment AND you’re cool!

[willgrahamscock]

WE ARE PROUD OF YOU!!!!

[victusinveritas]

[naughtypiggy]

Scientists uncovered the nutrients bees were missing — Colonies surged 15-fold

Scientists have developed a breakthrough “superfood” for honeybees by engineering yeast to produce the essential nutrients normally found in

TLDR- Modern agriculture pollen is low in nutrients, and there aren’t enough wildflowers. Science has to develop vitamins to supplement the diets of agricultural bees. So plant some wildflowers for the wild bees near you.

[heydocverdant]

you’ve heard of vitamin B, now get ready for bee vitamins

[anyataylorjoys]

The Watermelon Woman (1996) dir. Cheryl Dunye

[seeveekat]

Hey this movie is really important in queer history! It was the first feature length film directed by a black lesbian! You can watch it here for free!

I really recommend you do because while it is a rom-com (and a drama), it also looks at how the stories of black queers are over looked in history.

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[hypokeimena]

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

[creekfiend]

the thing is that I think lots of the time we talk about childhood trauma cycles wrong, because people will frame it as like, "this happened to this person, which is why they act like this" and really it's like, "all children learn social behavior via what is modeled for them by the adults around them and their peers; if what the adults in your life model for you repeatedly, over a long period of time, is that they get their needs met by dehumanizing others, then you will learn that the way needs get met is via dehumanization"

it isn't about how certain things being done to you somehow write Abuse Into Your Psyche, it's about learned behavior. it's about not being shown alternative models. (INTO MY LOUDSPEAKER) IT'S ALL ABOUT NOT BEING SHOWN ALTERNATIVE MODELS

[cricketandmouse]

They’re passive aggressively cleaning each others faces in the banana bed rn

[cricketandmouse]

peace and love on planet earth….

[what-even-is-thiss]

Some people might think I’m an optimist but I’m not. I’m a realist that’s going to try to increase the good things in this world if it kills me.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I want to severely push back on the idea that cynicism is any more realistic than optimism. There are good things in the world and there are bad things in the world. Totally ignoring one or the other doesn’t make you more correct.

You also have the power in your individual life to crowbar the long arc of the universe towards justice. Don’t just expect that things will be bad or good. Start yanking. Beat the darkness back with a stick, dammit.

[hope-for-the-planet]

I hope you don't mind me jumping in here, but I wanted to add that this outlook is very much backed up by the peer reviewed research.

Jamil Zaki is one of the biggest researchers in this area. He describes both pessimism and blind optimism as flawed viewpoints that demonstrably obscure how we see the world.

Research shows that even though our society tends to view a cynical viewpoint as smarter or even more moral, cynical people are worse at problem solving and cognitive tasks, worse at telling whether someone is lying, have measurably worse physical and mental well being, and are less likely to vote, protest, volunteer or otherwise take steps to make the world better.

Instead Jamil Zaki advocates for "hopeful skepticism".

Skeptical in the sense that you evaluate people and events from a neutral place based on evidence and personal experience, not on fitting them into an assumed narrative of "people always bad, things will always inevitably get worse" or "people always good, things will always inevitably get better".

Hopeful in the sense of knowing it is possible to make things better than they are now, curious to see possible paths to a better world, and understanding that we all have agency to move the needle in a better direction.

Social media and mainstream news do not provide a hopeful skeptic perspective--they are almost always a barrage of pessimism. This is on top of the already formidable human negativity bias. Most of us have to go looking for sources of positive news and intentionally shift our focus to see the good in other people to balance out the negativity.

If anyone is curious to learn more about this, episodes S9E11-S9E14 of The Happiness Lab podcast are free and do a really good job of covering this research. Jamil Zaki also has a whole book about it called Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.

[memeuplift]

[nessahero]

I will die very young, indeed

[dduane]

The above speaks to an issue referred to in psych in the latter part of the last century as "stroke hunger". Eric Berne (the father of the transactional analysis school of therapy) was one of the first to connect the importance of physical touch to human beings to both their developmental and psychological histories.

Berne introduced the idea of strokes into transactional analysis based upon the work of Rene Spitz, a researcher who did pioneering work in the area of child development. Spitz observed that infants deprived of cuddling, touching and handling (in other words, not receiving any physical strokes) were more likely to experience emotional and physical difficulties. Berne took Spitz’s observations of these infants and developed theories about the needs of adults for strokes. Berne postulated that adults do need physical contact just like infants, but have learned to substitute other types of recognition for physical stimulation. So while an infant needs cuddling, an adult craves a smile, a wink, a hand gesture, or some other form of recognition. Berne defined this requirement of adults to receive strokes by the term “recognition-hunger” or “stroke-hunger”.

But the need for actual physical touch remains, even for adults. And discovering safe and consensual ways to achieve this deeply necessary goal remains—in our Western cultures anyway—a challenge.

[morgangalaxy43]

The Outsiders and Fried Green Tomatoes are two of best books about a friendship (love story) that has a bittersweet ending

[ledbiantastic]

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg is pretty explicitly gay for the time period it was written in. Fannie Flagg was a queer woman who dated Rita Mae Brown, author of the lesbian classic Rubyfruit Jungle. The Outsiders is not explicitly queer as far as I could tell when I read it.

[lgbt-tiktoks]

Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]

[nattousan]

i felt like these tags really added to the experience, thanks @cynderxdustypaws for your knowledge

[naamahdarling]

This is one of the most powerful images I have ever seen, and I will reblog it every single time because every single time it brings tears to my eyes.