Marco Polo

Violinist, Seahorse Dad, Bane of Neurotypicals

[behaviornerdwithahat]

In case anyone finds it helpful because mobility aids are horrifically expensive and inaccessible…

And for those people who have access to mobility devices but might benefit from a second chair they can abuse without risking expensive damage…

Erik Kondo has made a website, Open Source Innovations, that details plans for DIY wheelchairs. These wheelchairs can be made from common materials like wood, plastic, and pvc. They are lightweight and can be custom fit to the user allowing from the same degree of movement you would get from a custom chair. And they are durable and easily repairable. (he has been stress testing his latest design by dropping it down stairs, dropping it out of a car, launching it across a driveway, and throwing it off a deck). Its 12lbs and I think he said its was in the $200 ish range for parts.

He also is working on cheap, open source, accessible designs for beach chairs, off road chairs, motorized attachments (think smart drive), and so on. Plus he skateboards in his wheelchair. Cool dude, helpful info, pass it on.

[sumi-sprite]

It's incredibly sad people have to resort to this, but it's a damn good resource. Use it. Spread awareness. Maybe one day people with physical disabilities won't need DIYs like this. But until then, reblog and share.

[this-is-accessibility]

This is Accessibility!

That's so amazing! It is unfortunate that so many people will need this, but very very cool that it exists

[organizationstationone4all]

OSI HOME- | Open Source Wheelchairs

That other link seems to be broken.

[theageofsims]

I don't care if you build, gameplay, story tell, create custom content -- or all of the above. If you're over the age of 30 -- reblog!

[someemochick]

[fishingscam]

op didn’t add a link so here’s a link to his patreon where all of his minis are free to download please support him if you can

[marlynnofmany]

I would absolutely download a dragon, and I’ve already shared this with my D&D group. We’re gonna have some adventures! Thank you to everyone who made this possible!

[sufficientlylargen]

This is leaving out the best part of his patreon, which is that he’s been doing polls for “silly models” to create for years, bringing us such wonders as the Baba Yaga Taco Truck, the Horse Head, Goostarian (Goose Astarion), a Pirate Ship Mimic, the Honkdra, and Definitely The Five-Headed Dragon God Tiamat And Not Five Wyrmlings In A Trenchcoat

[aeshnacyanea2000]

@elodieunderglass the Honkdra

[pasta-is-magnificent]

[kingscrown666]

[anarchist-rat-swarm]

M-M-M-MULTIKILL!

[what-if-doctor-who-was-yuri-yaoi]

[transnest]

This one is very true

[allsadnshit]

Being an adult in this recession and being like wow I am totally "splurging" on 3 new sets of cotton underwear and 3 pairs of socks like whoaaaaa hold your horses duke of the land where's all this money gonna come from

[robin-banks-and-breaking-hearts]

Third Time is the charm with name changes

Marco Polo and I are now making attempt #3 to change over his license to his new name and we are trying to get them the nonbinary (he uses he/they pronouns) "x" designation, on Friday. First two attempts we forgot the name change order and the second they didn't like that the original name change document (which has a wet signature) didn't have the state seal embossed on it when that particular probate court only embosses certified copies.

The probate court told me that after I went to the clerk to complain today and they gave me an additional certified copy as a consolation. They didn't ask for ID and Marco wasn't present and only asked for the last name and didn't give me trouble when I gave them his old last name and not his new hyphenated name. Super thrilled about that lapse in security protocol in hindsight. Maybe the clerk just remembers me from February when I helped Marco turn in his name change request form.

I am pretty memorable after all as a 6'2" trans woman.

[robin-banks-and-breaking-hearts]

@marcopoloexploresuranus and I finally got the DMV to change over his license and approve the X gender marker change. He is now known as Marco Solomon which is a name that fucks. His new license should come in the mail soon. This was a huge ordeal and Wrendezvous Later (our 4 month old) was perfectly behaved at the DMV.

[todaysbird]

there’s been a really bizarre trend in the past couple years of TERFS/radfems getting pissed off about biology posts. posts about the bilateral gyandromorph cardinal (one half male, one half female), posts about older hens beginning to crow and act like roosters, posts about animals being animals. and it’s hilarious because they interpret these posts as some kind of agenda. no! these are animals not choosing any gender identity or sexuality but being born into bodies they have no control over. weird how that happens in nature huh

[butchosprey]

never tell terfs about white-throated sparrow or they will lose their fucking minds

[tkingfisher]

Do you want to hear about white-throated sparrows?!

Of course you do, they’re fantastic. They come in two models, one with tan head stripes and one with white head stripes. But the gene that controls stripe color also has a bunch of other effects! It’s a supergene!

To briefly sum up a grueling amount of fieldwork by people who were probably not getting paid nearly enough, basically the tan-stripes are nurturers and the white-stripes are fighters, across both males and females. White-stripes chase away intruders more, tan-stripes bring more food to the nest. Tan-stripe females bring more bugs to their chicks than white-stripes, white-stripe females are more aggressive and sing more.

There is a reason Jordan Peterson picked lobsters, not sparrows, to get all MRA about, because the sparrow ladies are ALL about the tan-striped males. Sexy nurturing tan-stripe males are immediately grabbed up by the more aggressive white-stripe females (who are also dead sexy if you’re a sparrow.) Then the remaining birds pair off, so you get tan and white couples reproducing in virtually all cases—nurturing male with aggressive female, hyper-aggressive male with hyper-nurturing female.*

And this is good!** Because it turns out that they can have a tough time if they don’t mate across stripes—white x white sparrows often come out undersized if they come out at all. There was some cool recent genetic sequencing and one particular chromosome is way funky, inverted, and scrambled in the white-stripes. So now every white-stripe has a funky chromosome and a normal one, and every tan-stripe has two normal ones.***

This is all really unique and means that white-throated sparrows effectively have four sexes, because they now only reproduce with a member of the opposite stripe and sex chromosome, and their offspring may be any one of the four sexes. The stripes have essentially become a second sex chromosome.

The geneticists involved think the funky chromosome probably showed up as a weird import from somebody gettin’ jiggy with another sparrow species. Presumably this created a hypersexy female whose white head stripes brought all the boys to the yard, and very unusually, that bred true.

Is that cool or what?!

*No word on whether there is a resulting sparrow tradwife media genre.

**Leaving aside the impact on the emotional health of the non-sexy sparrows.

**A population solely of tan-stripes can reproduce safely, they’re just not that into each other.

[krakensdottir]

I reblogged this a minute ago but I’m going to reblog it again, because I want to add another non-binary bird species: the ruff.

First of all, look at it.

That’s a male ruff, specifically. You can see how they get their name. The females don’t have that fancy collar. They just look like sandpipers, which is what they are.

Like other sandpipers, these are wading birds, but they live in wet meadows and marshes instead of by the seashore. During the breeding season they gather together and the males hold territories, called leks, in which they display to attract females.

At least, some of them do.

Some male ruffs do not display in leks. They have plainer, often white, neck ruffs, and they sort of wander around the display grounds courting the females wherever. The interesting thing is that the territorial males tolerate this. Research suggests it’s because females are more interested in a display ground that has both kinds of males. The ladies like variety, it seems.

But it gets even more complicated. In 2006, a third male form was discovered. This form is extremely rare, and doesn’t have male display plumage at all. It looks just like a female ruff in the field. The other birds, however, can tell the difference, judging by their behavior. These female mimics travel with other males when the sexes split for the winter, and during homosexual mountings (which are common, as they are in many other animals), they often top.

What’s really interesting about these ‘cryptic males’, or faeders, is that they are apparently super sexy. Seriously. Females and males both prefer mating with them. And it’s believed that, like the satellite males, the presence of a faeder attracts more females to the area, which benefits all three forms.

And the thing about these forms is they are fundamentally different from one another. The plumage and behavior differences last throughout a bird’s life, and are determined by genetics. They are functionally three different genders - one of which shows natural intersex characteristics. All three can breed with females, and females are more interested in breeding when all three are present. They know that diversity is the good shit. Which makes them much, much smarter than TERFs.

[best-bird-tournament]

Good morning and happy pride, bird lovers! Please enjoy these funky facts and feel free to send in your favorite bird sex and/or gender facts this month!

[escuerzoresucitado]

cuddling

[quark-nova-deactivated20260116]

Important addition:

[desert-love]

[fidgetyhands]

I sometimes feel that I'm not doing enough with my life, but at least I grew my first two arms significantly before a cactus would have been expected to.

[sensiblereblogifposts]

Reblog if you grew your first two arms significantly before a cactus would be expected to

[ariadne-mouse]

me, unloading a fitted sheet from the dryer: *squinting* what's that you've got in your mouth

fitted sheet: nothing :)))))))

me, prying open its twisted jaws: na-ah!!! give it to me RIGHT now!!

fitted sheet: *resentfully spits out a wad of 3 very damp dishtowels, a pillowcase, and a pathetically sodden washcloth*

[steakosaur]

[bumblebeebats]

Just saw an ad for fucking Kellog's cornflakes wherein a shirtless blindfolded man tied to a bed is like "Wait.. are you... eating??" and it pans across the bed to reveal that his partner is, indeed, too distracted to have sex with him bc she is chowing down on corn flakes. Now I've been caught up in wondering whether:

a) John Harvey Kellog would despise this ad; the mere proximity of bondage-play to his brand name and beloved anti-porn flakes is unforgivable

b) John Harvey Kellog would enjoy this ad, because it shows a young woman forsaking the temptations of the flesh in favour of eating a wholesome and nourishing bowl of cornflakes

Cast your vote

A - that crunchy old man is rolling in his grave

B - it's literally demonstrating the flakes' intended purpose

C - what in the goddamn hell are you people talking about

Voting ended onOct 10, 2024

[bumblebeebats]

"Are you sure you want to post this without tags?" What, pray tell, tumblr, would I add to this post to help it reach its 'intended audience.' #cornflakes #bondage

[marcopoloexploresuranus]

Last year Easter was on Trans Day of Visibility and this year it's 4/20. Bit of a thicc caveman Jesus but I'm running on empty with Wrendezvous at six weeks old.

[tgirl-thucydides]

the fact that we are firmly in a time where conservatives are like "the actual founding fathers, who were slaveowners, were not racist enough for my taste" is wild

[seat-safety-switch]

You can tell a lot about the health of a civilization by their warning signs. Places with a lot of dumb folks will have very broad, very dumb warnings in public. "No feeding the birds." "Stop swimming in this drainage pond." That kind of thing.

Advanced civilizations have very precise signs. They've covered the bases of their regular, run-of-the-mill idiots, and now they're working hard to cover that other end of the bell curve: the talented idiot. When I was in Germany last time, there was a big warning sign that consisted of a 76-letter-long word that means "stop bothering this particular goose, Sven." I don't know who Sven was, but the goose looked pretty calm. It worked.

Now, I have a secret to tell you. You can just make your own signs. There's no law against it, except perhaps "littering," and the municipal sign factory doesn't have very good security. If you show up there past close and put in the door code that you shoulder-surfed off one of the employees returning from lunch a week prior, you have all night to fuck around with their sign-printing machine, making the most official-looking placards you can think of.

Is this wrong? I don't think so. It's a public space, and being able to put up an aluminum sign that says wacky crank shit is your right. For instance, just last week, I banned pickup trucks from parking by the playground. The cops figured out something was going on, because they didn't get any calls for toddlers getting backed over for a couple of days and sent a patrol truck to investigate. Took my sign right down.

What I discovered after that is that nobody keeps records of what signs are supposed to be there. Why would anyone put up a sign for no reason? They cost money, after all. The city is now suing the shit out of that officer for stealing the "no trucks" sign, thanks to an anonymous tipster who called in the theft. Guy wearing a reflective vest came by and put like four more of them up after the lawsuit made the news, just out of spite. I'm not entirely sure if he's actually a city worker; we ran into each other at 3am at the sign factory and just grunted. He was working on some really crazy signs about not feeding a particular swan. Probably German.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

[robinprinceofchaos]

If you are a British/UK citizen, there is currently a petition running (with only 125 signatures) that ends in June 2025. The petition calls for the government to make it so that you do not need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to change your gender.

If you are a British/UK citizen, and would like to sign:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/701159

If you're not a British/ UK citizen it'd be much appreciated if you could share this post !! :)

[destiel-news-channel]

clickable link

[the-ace-with-spades]

You can also sign it if you're a UK resident - you spend 6 months or more in a 12 month period living in the UK. No need to be a citizen.

This means that if you have a visa, EU settlement status, indefinite leave to remain etc. you can still sign it and it'll be valid