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Dumping anything out of an aquarium—fish, animals, and plants—can have devastating consequences for Texas’ natural waterbodies. This is true for both freshwater and saltwater aquariums. Never dump them into a natural body of water or flush them down the toilet.

THE NEXT INVASIVE SPECIES COULD COME FROM YOUR AQUARIUM.

Your aquarium fish, animals and plants are likely not native to Texas. This makes them an invasive species. When they’re dumped into the wild they can introduce disease or become serious predators, killing off local fish colonies, and damaging reefs and vegetation that keep our underwater ecosystem alive and healthy.

THE LIONFISH INVASION

What started as a beautiful pet is wreaking havoc on our coastal ecosystem. Lionfish are from the West Pacific Ocean and don’t belong here. They are believed to have been released in Florida by unsuspecting aquarium owners and have been spreading rapidly since. This aggressive and venomous fish can grow up to 19 inches long and has no natural predators here. It has become a major pest causing enormous ecological and economic damage. This invasion has reduced the number of local fish like juvenile grouper and snapper, shrimp and crab species. They can also completely strip reefs. If you see one, report it immediately.

See the whole story on how the Lionfish has become a threat.

acti-veg

Don’t buy fish at all if you can avoid it, alive or dead. The fishing and pet trades are ruining marine environments, and they do it in full knowledge that consumers are just dumping fish into non-native ecosystems. There is no accountability, no checks, no origin tracing

Yet despite this, there is almost no discussion about the problematic nature of the pet trade itself. We just hear the same thing over and over, concerns about disposal rather than supply, oh and ‘they’re delicious we can just eat them!’ Sentient, intelligent beings should not be commodities to be be bought, sold and discarded in the first place.

HERE’S THE DUCKS.

you missed the best part

deanhoney-deactivated20220819

what she says: i’m fine

what she means: the words “christmas tree” are used in the hobbit, and since we know that bilbo is the author of the hobbit, hobbits must have christmas which means there must be a middle earth jesus. but hobbits seem to be the only ones who have the concept of christmas which means it was probably a hobbit jesus. but frodo says in return of the king that no hobbit has ever intentionally harmed another hobbit so who crucified hobbit jesus?? were there other hobbit incarnations of religious figures?? was there hobbit moses?? did jrr tolkien even think about this at all??

maramahan

Wait wait I might actually have an answer

Tolkien wrote The Hobbit like waaaay before he even dreamed up the idea for Lord of the Rings, so when he DID dream up LotR, he had a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t make sense. Like plotholes galore

Like for example in the first version Gollum was a pretty nice dude who lost the riddle contest graciously and gave Bilbo the ring as a legit present and was very helpful and it was super nice and polite and absolutely nobody tried to eat anyone because this is a story for kids and that’s very rude

But that doesn’t work with LotR, so Tolkien went back and re-released an updated version of The Hobbit with all the lore changes and stuff to fix everything that didn’t work

This is the version we know and love today

BUT rather than pretend the early version never existed, Tolkien went and worked the retcon into the lore

If you pay attention in Fellowship, there’s a bit where Gandalf is telling Frodo about the ring and he mentions how Bilbo wasn’t entirely honest about the manner in which it was found

To us modern readers, this doesn’t make a ton of sense, so mostly we just breeze by it–but actually that line is referencing the first version of The Hobbit

The pre-retcon version of the Hobbit is canonically Bilbo’s original book. The original version with Nice Gollum is canonically a lie Bilbo told to legitimize his claim to the ring and absolve him of the guilt he feels for his rather shady behavior

Then the post-retcon version is an in-universe edited edition someone went and released later to straighten out Bilbo’s lies

So it’s 100% plausible that the in-universe editor who fixed up Bilbo’s Red Book and translated it from whatever language Hobbits speak was a human who knew about Christmas Trees and tossed the detail in to make human readers feel more at home, because that’s the kind of thing that sometimes happens when you have a translator editor person dressing up a story for an audience that doesn’t know the exact cultural context in which the original story was written

Tolkien was a medieval scholar and medieval stories are rife with that sort of thing, so like… yeah

There’s a good chance it maybe did cross his mind

scripturient-manipulator

@old-gods-and-chill LOOK AT THIS THAT’S SO COOL

wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva

Not only all that, but Tolkien was also working within a frame narrative that he wasn’t the real author, but a translator of older manuscripts; so, in-universe, the published The Hobbit isn’t actually Bilbo’s book, but rather Tolkien’s copy of an older copy of an older copy of an older copy of Bilbo’s book. So when errors and anachronisms came up, he would leave them there instead of fixing them, and he may have even put some in intentionally; what we’re supposed to get from the “Christmas tree” bit is that the first scribe to translate the book from Westroni to English couldn’t come up with an accurate analogue for whatever hobbits do at midwinter.

anarcho-tolkienist-deactivated2

Yes. Another example of tolkien doing this is him using, for instance, Old High Gothic to represent Rohirric - not because the people of Rohan actually spoke that language, but because Old High Gothic had the same relationship with English that Rohirric had with Westron (Which is the Common Language spoken in the West of Middle-Earth). There’s tons of that stuff in the book.

anarcho-tolkienist-deactivated2

Like, Merry and Pippin’s real names (In Westron) are Kalimac Brandagamba and Razanur Tûk, respectively (to pick just one example of this). Tolkien changed their names in English to names which would give us English-speakers the same kind of feeling as those names would to a Westron-speaker. Lord of the Rings is so much deeper than most readers realise.

jumpingjacktrash

tolkein’s entire oevre is just one epic in-joke with the oxford linguistics department imo

bookhobbit

#i thought it was old english representing rohirric but i have read lotr one (1) time so

No that’s right! The basic point still stands and is neat but a lot of Rohirric names are translated as Old English, like Theodred and Eorl and so on. Another interesting thing is that he sometimes modernized them to modern English because, apparently, those names were intelligible to Westron speakers, either because Gondorians knew them or because the Hobbits recognized them from their dialects (they once lived near the Rohirrim and borrowed a bunch of words, including their name for themselves). Here’s a good link about it from Tolkien Gateway, it’s SUPER cool.

Also if I correctly recall (it’s been a while so I might not) there was a draft of TTT where Tolkien intended for Theoden to greet Our Heroes in Old English. This was in The Treason of Isengard and I have a very distinct memory of reading it at about fifteen and being completely floored and baffled by the fact that he just…wrote an entire speech in Old English for Theoden to say. Like, can you even believe. I absolutely love how much flavor and care he put into the languages in LOTR.

vardasvapors

#other than in respect of certain blind spots #the answer to ‘did tolkien even think about this’ #is almost always ‘the man spent twenty years overthinking it' #and it’s either a moving philosophical reflection or a dumb joke he put in to annoy cs lewis (via @simaethae)

maedhrosrussandol

This is brilliant.

amalkathewitch

Tolkien fandom I love you but im illiterate

sassysambucky

Fandom Racism

If you don’t want to read this, unfollow me and anyone else who is black. I’m not playing with y’all.

I’m tired of nonblack people writing Sam Wilson in predatory roles and minimizing his trauma and need for healing and therapy like everyone else - especially given that he is a black man first, veteran second, and these are canon-based fics. If you don’t understand that nuance, literally don’t write him until you can.

Yes, I just read some shit that said Sam’s pain was okay because it wasn’t worse than Bucky’s and that Zemo is some kind of generous white martyr (mind you, he used Bucky and Sam the whole show, felt no remorse for killing the black king of a black nation, and is based off of Nazi comic material). And this isn’t an uncommon occurrence.

Black and brown fans don’t have an escape because we have to experience racist bias in real life just to then read it and writers want to cry, “It’s just fiction!” instead of doing the anti-racism work on themselves. Art includes the manifestation of real thoughts and systemic biases. Art is not an excuse.

This fandom has a lot of work to do. It’s not enough to have ‘good intentions’ when you’re still putting biases back into the world that are harmful. You’re different from your grandparents, cousins, uncles? PROVE IT instead of whining when black readers are tired of dehumanization of blackness.

PS. anti-racism is a life-long journey, not reading an article and a book and calling it a day. This also extends to POC who engage in anti-blackness. Do better and check your cousins. I should not have to.

mortalityplays

it is truly astounding how unembarrassed people are to have less basic curiosity about the world than a rural peasant from the 1400s

mortalityplays

someone figured out how to eat tapioca and you won't boil an egg

mortalityplays

I don't like the phrase 'learned helplessness' bc I think 90% of what we use it for right now isn't learned helplessness at all, it's learned refusal. Nobody actually thinks they are too stupid and incompetent to try boiling an egg or to click on the second page of google results, they just can't be fucking bothered and have learned all kinds of cargo cult structural inequality talking points to justify it.

Ohhh schools don't teach critical thinking any more ohhh my parents never taught me how to boil water ohhhhhh not everyone is privileged enough to have the time and energy to read two whole wikipedia articles I have no choice but to go through life with the accumulated knowledge of a dead beetle.

lightheartedsuggestion

What’s going to make you happy right now? Is it some cake? Is it a nap? Is it calling your mom? Is it going on a drive and blasting music? Is it taking a bath? Is it reading a book?

Check in with yourself because you deserve that happiness, whatever it is.

thecatwhowalksbyherself-deactiv

I use this with my hospice patients a lot. Because “is there anything I can do to help?” rarely gets a response. But, “I’ll be here till 6:30 and would like to do one thing to make your room more comfortable before I head out” frequently does get an answer. Often something they deem “too small to bug anyone with” like closing the blinds so there’s no reflection on the tv, or repositioning their socks because the heels have wandered into the front and are uncomfortable, or they want ice cream before dinner today, or getting an extra blanket.

I also use this on myself. What’s one thing I could do to make my environment more comfortable right now? Does it cure my mental illness? Hell no! Does it make me feel more in control of my feelings and the world around me? You betcha!

ladynorbert

I’m going to try to apply this to my current situation, since right now things feel very out of control. Thanks!

beaft

my cat hates taking his pills. the only way we can get him to eat them is to turn it into an elaborate pantomime - we take the packet out of the cupboard slowly and hold it up, saying “oh!! what’s this? what’s this? a TREAT? a TREAT for louis????” while making surprised faces. we offer him a pill… then, before he has a chance to sniff it, we wag our fingers at him and replace it in the packet so it becomes a Tantalising Forbidden Mystery. we continue doing this until he’s so confused and excited that he will eat the pill as fast as possible, just so he can find out what it is before we can take it away from him again. as soon as he’s eaten it he looks utterly disappointed and betrayed, like a child who just ate a delicious sweet only to find it was a chocolate-coated brussels sprout. it never gets old

autumngracy

Op this is the funniest thing I’ve ever read

fucktheflagandfuckyou

op how could you just hide this from me in the tag this makes this objectively 10000000% funnier

stalling

50 First Doses

skyline-sunset-in-my-veins

You trick Louis? You trick Louis like a common fool? Oh jail, jail for owners ONE MILLION YE-oh what’s this? A treat?

lakemichiganbaby-deactivated202

“i do not dream of labor” yes u do. labor is fulfilling. u dream of a world where ur labor isnt exploited and its that or starvation. i guarantee u dream of labor. labor is a necessity and in and of itself is a good thing.

lakemichiganbaby-deactivated202

if u dream of having a garden, of painting murals, cooking or baking for people, researching in a lab, or writing stories, u dream of labor. which is good! we all jus hate having our labor exploited and being underpaid for the value of our work. nobody wants to just sit at home and do NOTHING as quarantine proved! in and of itself labor is fulfilling and contributes to the betterment and advancement of society, too many people are just barred by arbitrary divides (class, education) and unable to perform labor they’d be best suited for, or that type of labor (arts, service industry) is undervalued and underpaid.

deadmomjokes

It recently came up in conversation with my toddler that some birds can talk, and this has caused her great concern.

See, we were talking about how movies are pretend and how in real life, animals don’t talk. I mentioned that there are some birds who talk a little bit, but not like the animals in movies, and she just looked at me like “???”

So I informed her that some kinds of parrots can copy sounds that people make, and can learn how to say words. I thought this would give her a giggle, as fun new facts often do, but she was just deeply perplexed and a little worried about this.

“Birds can talk?” “Do they ask questions?” “What do they say?” Why do they talk?” “Do chickens talk?” “What about Blue Jays?” “Why do some birds talk?” “How do they talk?” “Birds TALK???”

We showed her a video of a parrot doing the “Hello, pretty bird, give a kiss” thing, and she was dead silent the whole time, hugging her comfort pillow with her knees to her chest. We asked if she wanted us to turn it off, and she shook her head. But we also asked if she wanted to see another one, and she shook her head even harder.

I don’t know why it has distressed her so greatly to learn that some birds can mimic human speech; but then again, I don’t know why it doesn’t distress the rest of us more to know that some birds can mimic human speech.

I keep thinking about that post that’s like “The first person to hear a parrot talk was probably Not Okay.” Because that’s exactly what happened. She had never been introduced to the concept, and her entire worldview got SHOOK.

philosophicalparadox

Part of why Ravens are considered Spooky Bad Things We Associate With The Faeries is because they can and do mimic human speech - but much, much better than a parrot. With a parrot, you can tell something is off about the sound. You can tell it doesn’t belong to a human. Ravens don’t sound like that, no, cause they’re overacheivers. (And passerines). They sound EXACTLY like the voice of whoever they are mimicking.

But more importantly they love the sound of human laughter. No one knows why. But it is totally, 100% possible, and it happens to this day, to walk along the paths in the Black Forest and suddenly hear a strange kind of giggling sound, or maybe even a very clear, definitely human sounding “hello?” “Hiiiii!” Or “let’s go!”.

However, it takes a lot of practice for them to copy sounds as perfectly as they do, so you’re equally likely to hear something that definitely sounds human-like, but the words make no sense and the sound is unlike any language you know.

Ravens at the Tower of London do this all the time. Theyre pretty sociable with humans though, so they do it quite openly. I have seen videos of people, mostly Americans, look absolutely spooked out of their skins when a big ol’ raven (mind ye, these are birds that are 2 feet tall with a 5 foot wingspan) comes waltzing up on the deck and starts talking to them.

And ravens, especially the ones there that have been bred and raised by humans for centuries, don’t just imitate - they have one of the same language processing genes we do, and they understand the way a toddler might that things, places, and individuals have names, and can string together basic sentences much like an african grey.

I know because I used to work with one, Darlene, who knew, quite well, what she wanted and how to ask for it. If you were preparing her breakfast, she would hop on up and investigate. She used to be an illegal pet, and had been taught “manners”. That is to say, if she went for something and you told her, sternly, “mind your manners missy!” She would stop, look at you, perhaps for up to a minute, and then point with her beak to what she wanted. If that did not work, she would ask, in plain English, “grape?” Or “Darl have grape?” And lord help you if you gave her anything less than what she asked for. She would throw it at you, and try to bite you, sometimes while saying “No!” In the same tone as I imagine she was reprimanded in her home.

So yeah. Parrots arent the only ones.