i'm just vibing at this point. mostly reblog stuff but once in a blue moon might post smth about one of my hyperfixations so stay tuned
(art tag is migt_art)
they are sexually mature at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD.
their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.
longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years
toxic flesh
has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.
lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion
largest genome of any shark
eats everything including moose and polar bears
ma'am you are delightfully strange and I'm privileged to share a planet with you
hello!! I just saw your rocky puppet and I LOVE him! I’m inspired to make a rocky myself, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind sharing a little bit of your process? is he paper mache? thank you for sharing him with the world 🤩
Omg thank you so much!!
Here's the process I did! (Under a read more cause I can imagine that some of my followers dont care about this 😄
It's very easy, it just takes a while!
I made this one with foam rubber, which came from upholstery foam!
- make basic shapes of carapace and legs with scissors. No worries about it being smooth, he is a rock.
- cut legs where you want the joints to be. I changed the legs a LOT later, because I made them too 'muscle' and less 'rock'
- string sturdy string or fishing wire through carapace to where the legs should go. A very big needle helps a lot here.
- string the legs to the carapace like beads.
- tie a knot, little bit of hot glue on the ends to make it stick
- cut remaining string
- hot glue an aluminium stick into the back, so you can use it to lift the body/do body movement.
- hot glue sticks to front legs and whatever legs you'd like (I did all five so it's a multi-person puppet if I want him to be)
- paint in fun colours, don't forget to make the sticks black. I used acrylic gel medium so I could get the face smooth, otherwise he'd have a crack down the middle. You still see his 'muscle' arms in this picture. I make him more rock-like further on
- have crashout because your 2 am brain thinks he looks like a sandwich
- make fun references on the arms (I did a petrova line, his family crest, his mission patch, an extra Adrian quote etc. He's even got a music box in there! It plays twinkle twinkle little star 😁)
- I did his green gemstones by cutting holes in the foam, painting them green and filling them with UV epoxy.
- his face is made by getting a hot Stanley knife and making the cracks in the gel medium
- his hands are movable by running the same fishing wire to the fingertips and back through the arm, through a metal straw.
If you don't want his hands to move, just cut basic finger shapes into the foam.
yes, India made legal gender change impossible
but the doctor down the street who gives me my T shots
in a clinic so small that it's just two rooms
was excited for me when she said my voice had dropped
yes, India made legal gender change impossible
but the receptionist who could see that I was a man
didn't bat an eyelash when I asked to see the gynecologist
and called me sir when he asked how I wanted to pay
yes, India made legal gender change impossible
but the barber cuts my hair exactly how I want it
and never gave me strange looks for being in a men's salon
not even back when I didn't pass as one
yes, India made legal gender change impossible
but my friends have always gendered me correctly
and stick to it even when it confuses other people
and my friend's little sibling calls me older brother in Kannada
yes, India made legal gender change impossible
but my dog learned my new name quicker than the humans
and she runs to give me a kiss when she's told to
without being confused about who's being referred to
yes, India made legal gender change impossible
but I can feel the Adam's apple growing in my throat
and my muscles getting stronger, and my smile more real
and I'm growing a beard, and I talk more freely
yes, India made legal gender change impossible
but I'm here, and I'm alive, and so are you
and there are good people, people who care
and don't let them make you forget that--
you are not alone.
the thing is, stephen king is generally pretty good at creating complex, well-rounded characters, which makes it all the more jarring when one of those characters abruptly comes out with what i'll term a "kingism". i don't know how best to define a kingism other than "you'll know it when you see it". it's the voice of the author intruding on the voice of the character, and in this case the voice of the author has a bad sense of humour and is ravenously, inexplicably horny
one of the hallmarks of a kingism is that when a character is being Horny On Main (or In Maine), they can never do it in a normal way. they have to come up with a sequence of words that nobody has ever said before in the history of the english language. here's another example:
Imagine you meet an alien that's entirely blood and fat. Like all the white blood cells and red blood cells and lipids kept in your body are just out there. That's their entire body, a blob of blood jelly. Even their brain is completely fluid. They constantly forget things and don't seem to notice the connection
They see electricity, the same electricity of your brain. If something is not charged they can't see anything at all, and a room of non-conductive objects would be a complete sensory deprecation chamber. They can see a little bit, but they are nearly blind and only use it to notice sudden changes. If you flash a light at them they scream. Instead they just bring a device that generates a charge everywhere they go. They claim their whole planet is charged, but you have doubts
This apparently allows them to see secrets of the universe. They knew about the big bang through out their entire history, because they can apparently just see the beginning of the universe. They find it beautiful, but not all that interesting. You are jealous
Despite being in space, they have not yet discovered steel or had the industrial revolution. It's basically still alchemists and philosophers, but the alchemy and philosophy works and got them to space. You are no longer jealous
They rely on the temperature being way below 40 degrees Fahrenheit so all the fat stays solid and frozen, and die if it's warm. They consider you burning
They get all their energy from air, like eating, to the point they cannot hold their breath at all. They get other things from food, but refuse to prepare it aside from digestion. They just plop it in basically untouched
They age in dog years, dying a few months after turning 9, and only reach adulthood at age 4. That's an absurd amount of time to spend as a child. The one you met is apparently 5 and considers himself a mature adult. The tantrums say otherwise. Yes, he also has arcane knowledge naturally. You are more surprised they live this long considering everything else about them
They have 4 genders and assigned you one, maybe randomly. Kind of rude, apparently very complex, but they have no idea how to explain it. You aren't asking
You are an Eridian and have just met a human. You must now convince your mate to let you keep them.
The European Union already forced Apple to abandon its proprietary charging port and adopt USB-C across its entire iPhone lineup. It just did something bigger. A new EU mandate requires every smartphone sold in Europe including Apple devices to feature a battery that can be replaced by the user without specialist tools, without voiding a warranty, and without sending the device to a manufacturer approved service center. Batteries must maintain a minimum capacity threshold after a set number of charge cycles and replacement parts must remain available for up to ten years after a model goes on sale.
The consumer electronics industry built its current business model around batteries that degrade, cannot be replaced at home, and create a natural upgrade cycle every two to three years. The EU just legislated that model out of existence in the world's largest regulatory market.
Apple, Samsung, and every other manufacturer now faces a choice between redesigning their devices for the European market or accepting that their current hardware architecture is no longer legally sellable there.
Given that no company walks away from European consumers voluntarily the phones are going to change and once they change for Europe the rest of the world will ask why theirs still do not.
The fun thing about finnish is that the way you ask for things in a polite way has been in-baked into the suffixes you use, so you don't have to use many words when few do trick. Like asking someone "could you give me [-]" is "voisitko antaa" in written and some variation of "voisiksä antaa" in spoken dialects*, but instead of asking "could you", the polite polite way to ask is "haluaisitko", not as can you, but would you want to. The tone distinction is so clear that asking someone "could you [do thing]" instead of "would you want to [do thing]" is less of a polite request and more of instruction - someone's gotta do it, and the task is being assigned to you.
On the other hand, dropping out the conditional out of the question turns the tone into a passive-aggressive threat. If someone tells you "stop that" as an imperative, "lopeta", that's a command. Asking in conditional, could you stop that, "voisitko lopettaa" is a polite request. "Haluaisitko lopettaa", would you like to stop that, is so polite that depending on the tone it might be sarcastic politeness that indicates hostility.
But asking someone "do you want to stop that", "haluatko lopettaa tuon" is a matter of "do you want to stop doing that voluntarily, or do you want me to stop you." By physical force, if necessary.
* the different form varies depending on what first and second person pronouns are used in the specific dialect. This is a whole another rabbit hole so for shortcut I'm doing the examples in the southern finnish dialect that I have grown up speaking
Since I use it a bunch in my speech, I also want to shout out "viitsisitkö antaa". I don't think there's a proper english word to translate it with, but the closest approximation of the meaning is "could you be bothered to give me" - however while the tone of the translation could easily be read as passive aggressive, if you're just saying it politely, it moreso has this tone of, like... "if you would be so inclined I'd appreciate it".
Which sounds like pretty dramatic appeasement behaviour when I write it out like that but it's also just a nice, polite request, pretty much on par with the "haluaisitko".
You can certainly say "you wouldn't happen to have a [thing] that I could borrow?" in english, too, but I do like how in finnish, the latter half of the sentence is not stated out loud, just implied. You don't word that question like that unless you're asking whether you could borrow it. Which also gives the other person the opportunity to soft launch a "no" by pretending to not notice the implied part. So a conversation can go two ways, it's either:
"Hey wou wouldn't happen to have a hammer?" [Can I borrow your hammer?]
"Yeah, what do you need it for?" [You can. What are you working on?]
Or it can go like this:
"Hey wou wouldn't happen to have a hammer?" [Can I borrow your hammer?]
"I do own one, yes." [I am ignoring your implied request. Whatever you want to borrow it for, I don't want to let you.]
"Can I borrow it?" [I am ignoring your implied rejection. I need to borrow it.]
"What do you need it for?" [I will not let you have it unless I know what you want to do and approve of it.]
I don't know how much of this kind of thing is just finnish culture, though, and how much of it is just how neurotypical people universally talk. But the implication waltz is definitely a big part of finnish conversation style.
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