Growth capitalism is a deranged fantasy for lunatics.
Year 1, your business makes a million dollars in profit. Great start!
Year 2, you make another million. Oh no! Your business is failing because you didn't make more than last year!
Okay, say year 2 you make $2 mil. Now you're profitable!
Then year 3 you make $3 mil. Oh no! Your business is failing! But wait, you made more money than last year right? Sure, but you didn't make ENOUGH more than last year so actually your business is actively tanking! Time to sell off shares and dismantle it for parts! You should have made $4 mil in profit to be profitable, you fool!
If you're not making more money every year by an ever-increasing exponent, the business is failing!
Mozilla, in its finite wisdom, embedded LLM bots into recent versions of Firefox for the vitally-important purpose of… naming tab groups. Now, some users are noticing CPU and power usage spikes caused by a background process called Inference.
Ugh. Reminder again for Firefox users to visit your about:config page, search for the browser.ml.chat.enabled key, and set that to false:
If yours says true then double-click it until it reads false.
Doing that turns off the AI chatbot features in Firefox, but also the stupid new LLM tab-naming feature that's rolling out.
Breaking my hiatus to bring everyone’s attention to the fact that Cornwall is now attempting to be officially recognised as a nation within the United Kingdom.
Kernow has its own language, culture, history and identity. The language was forcibly removed by the English until the last monolingual speaker died in 1777–her name was Dolly Pentreath. It has existed as a kingdom before England had ever existed. Historically, Cornwall has been a place exploited for minerals and resources and labour. Currently, it still is. There are now ghost towns where once thriving fishing villages stood (Mousehole, Pentreath’s home, was one of these). Cornwall is now a playground for second home owners who drive up house and rent prices and drive out permanent residents and workers. Local businesses go out of business and struggle to stay afloat when the influx of tourists come who only purchase from supermarkets, putting nothing into the local economy. There is a long, long and often very gruesome and bloody history behind this—leaders of rebellions executed all the way into 1715.
If you are in the UK, and sign the petition to get this to a debate in Parliament.
aint it crazy how many people realize they're queer when they have the language to express how they feel and a support system to encourage self exploration????
right at the beginning when she's like how do I help my son feel loved and accepted I'm here shouting
"QUEEN YOU ALREADY DID THAT BY TAKING HIS SIDE AND LEAVING THAT NO GOOD HUSBAND FOR HAVING THE AUDACITY TO KICK YOUR BABY OUT!"
And Good for her! this is the only response to a man who kicks out a child.
I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:
isn’t he beautiful
listen to the SOUND when he bites
and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them
That would be Cassius, a very old Saltwater crocodile who is estimated to be around 114 years old and lives at Marineland Melanesia in Green Island, Australia. His official measurement is 5.48 meters, which makes him the largest in captivity currently. Because Utan is only slightly smaller and much younger, (only in his 50s), he will likely break Cassius’ record eventually. But for now, Cassius holds the title:
He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.
A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.
And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator. He is estimated to be just over 6m.
This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:
It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.
The Bull Shark lost.
THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out. The Dominator:
And that’s STILL not the biggest.
The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs). He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines. It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.
And here’s why:
Also, to prevent credit from getting buried on a separate reblog, I have been informed that the above image of the crocodile with the cartoon eyes and halo was made by @rashkah! (And it is wonderful and I would like to thank him for its existence, because it perfectly captures my feelings about terrifying giant primordial reptiles.)
As far as Brutus is concerned I was led to believe that he lost that arm when relatively young.
Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.
Here’s him with a prey.
And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!
Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.
This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.
So how big is Gustave?
No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.
His estimated size is of at least 5,5m but some give him over 6m.
The terrifying parts are:
1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.
2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.
3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.
And this is NOT ALL.
Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.
He lived to tell the tale - my question is:
What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?
*Crocodile Dundee voice* Mate, that’s not Gustave:
THIS is Gustave:
And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE. He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.
This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:
And THIS is a god among his kind:
This is it, folks. The Final Form. THIS is what peak performance looks like.
Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship. Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth. EVER. Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates. Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet. It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.
That’s a problem.
Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure. Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.
But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM. What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces. A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area. The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.
Compare, 26 inch skull:
vs 29 inch skull:
Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).
And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:
and Purussaurus:
The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure. This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:
and a truly extraordinary individual:
One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look. A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth. They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down. Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.
Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:
Lolong! It means Gramps or Grandpa, because he’s a relic of an ancient world where crocs more massive than he was walked the earth. His body is on display somewhere right now though I forgot where.
He used to sit at the back of the bus, cup his hand, spray deodorant into it, then open it and light it on fire with a lighter in one fell swoop to try and impress girls.
He had to stop because the bus company begged our school to tell him to stop bc of legal liability. His hands never actually got damaged after doing it for about a year.
While we were all at the local park doing legal things that teenagers would do back in the late 2000s, my friend here found a rock at our old smoke spot that was unusually smooth and flat. He liked it so much that he took it to the woodwork classrooms at school, drilled a hole in it, and hung it on a necklace.
When we asked why he weanwearing this dinky-ass pebble on his neck, he claimed it prevented him from ever getting food-related illnesses: wouldn't get food poisoning, couldn't over-eat, was able to ingest anything (prior to him finding The Amulet, a few of us used to play a game called "Devil's Piss" where we would take turns shoving random food bits into a bottle of coke, and the first person to take a sip would get two dollars from the other players).
When we all asked him for the proof that this rock is magical—because nobody believed him, obviously—he said to meet him behind the History block at lunch, where he said he would drink two litres (or half a gallon) of milk in one go and not puke.
We met him there, and about ten of us all watched him down a whole bottle of strawberry milk in two or three breaths.
He didn't puke.
He jumped up and down and punched his stomach to prove it.
The ‘Bridgerton’ star called the ruling “stomach turning and disgusting.”
Nicola Coughlan Raised Over £70,000 for Trans Rights Following U.K. Court Ruling
The Bridgerton star called the ruling “stomach turning and disgusting.”
Allen J. Schaben/Getty Images
Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan has raised over £70,000 (roughly $96,000) for the trans charity Not A Phase following the U.K. Supreme Court’s Wednesday ruling that the legal definitions of “man” and “woman” are based on a person’s “biological sex.”.
The ruling’s long-ranging effects are still up in the air, but it is poised to have chilling, far-ranging effects on trans rights in the U.K. As legal researcher Jess O’Thompson explained on LGBTQ+ news site Queer AF, trans people in the U.K. can now be excluded from all “single-sex” spaces under any circumstances and cannot make equal pay claims.
British anti-trans advocates have been publicly celebrating the news, including Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who posted a photo of herself enjoying a cigar and drink on X with the caption “I love it when a plan comes together” after reportedly donating over £70,000 to For Women Scotland, the anti-trans organization that had brought the Supreme Court case forward. Yet other U.K. celebrities, like Coughlan, have wasted no time publicly reaffirming their support for the trans community in the ruling’s aftermath.
On April 17, Coughlan took to Instagram to announce that she was launching a fundraiser for Not A Phase, a trans charity that aims to improve the lives of trans adults across the U.K. “through awareness campaigning, social projects, and funding trans+ lead initiatives,” per the organization’s official website. The actress originally set a fundraising goal of £10,000 and pledged to match donations up to that amount.
“To see an already-marginalized community… be further attacked in law is really stomach turning and disgusting, and these people celebrating it [are] more stomach turning and disgusting,” Coughlan said in a video. “If you are a cisgender person who is an ally of a trans person, I think now is the time to just… speak up and make your voice heard, and let your trans, nonbinary friends and just the community at large know that you’re there for them and will keep fighting for them.”
Just an hour after launching the fundraiser, Coughlan shared on her Instagram Story that fans had already met her £10,000 target. In just over 24 hours, the fundraiser has raised well over £70,000 at the time of writing. She has since set a new fundraising goal of £79,699.21 (roughly $105,725).
Coughlan isn’t the only cis U.K. celebrity who’s spoken out on behalf of trans rights following the Supreme Court’s ruling. On April 17, The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood re-shared a post from LGBTQ+ activist Ellen Jones to her Instagram Story denouncing the ruling.
“Pure rage,” Wood captioned her story. “This country is a hell hole.”
Coughlan’s Bridgerton co-star, Charitha Chandran, also called out the ruling in an April 17 TikTok that has received over 2.3 million likes.
“How pathetic to target one of the most oppressed groups in our society,” Chandran said. “Honestly? Loser behaviour… You don’t care about women. You just want to target those who are already oppressed.”
Well yes salmon does have some fat in it! And it is good! Try and eat it with some carbs, like potatoes, or maybe blinis. Why not add some vegetables as well? Steamed brocolis, grilled leaks, roasted eggplant, and maybe some cream? That sounds delicious.
Bro why did you censor the snake's cloaca on the snake anatomy post??? It's a snake?
I didn't censor anything, what -
oh. Oh, no. That's meant to be a line to show where the tail begins. Oh no, now I look like some weird prude.
Yeah, that's meant to help people grasp the anatomy and visualize how small the tail is in relation to the torso. Not meant to be some kind of weird snake privacy screen
